EX ch. 1: Light Snuffed Out
Primera leaned up against the door, tears streaming down her face and hands covered in black sludge. Deep down she was cursing herself for her rash actions. She may not have liked Joshua, but even she knew he was their only ticket out of their current situation, and she just ruined everything for everyone. It didn't take long for her to hear footsteps descending the stairs and she turned around to see Mersé standing there with her halberd gripped tightly in her right hand. Primera knew what was about to happen, but part of her didn't want it to, and instead wished there was a way to turn back the clock and stop herself from making such a terrible mistake.
"You aren't going to do…what I think you are…are you?" Primera asked Mersé with a trembling voice.
Mersé couldn't even bear the thought of what she was about to do, but knew it had to be done. She had never killed another human before and didn't want to imagine what it feels like afterwards. To her, Joshua was her new drinking companion and had even proved her point in that the king and High Priest Noscrim were too judgmental when it came to his overall abilities. She had enjoyed every second of getting to rub it into their faces that they were wrong and felt vindicated when she went and gave the king the report Eristia had given her.
"…We can't just leave him like this, it would just be too cruel." She replied to Primera's question.
The remorse in her voice hid her own true sorrow. She raised her halberd with the spear point aimed down at Joshua's head. Mersé thought of the little life lessons he had given both Wilmarina and Elt at the bar when they crossed paths on the way there. She had never expected something so mature to come from someone like him that it had taken her by surprise. Such thoughts caused her to hesitate for only a moment before she snapped back to reality.
"I'm sorry…" she said to Joshua before the spear pierced directly into his left eye socket.
Mersé leaned her halberd against the wall next to her after giving it a forceful tug to free it from his skull. The noise caused Primera to look away from the painful sight in front of her. She watched as Mersé reluctantly made her way up the stairs with both hands trembling while she held back tears of her own. Primera looked up the stairs to see Sasha looking down at her with rage and tears streaming down her cheeks. She turned and disappeared, following Mersé. A hard thud could be heard from upstairs before Mersé let out an agonized cry. This caused Primera to tilt her head down in shame and anguish. Reality was beginning to hit her hard now that Joshua was gone. The others would more than likely abandon her due to her actions. She knew she didn't deserve forgiveness, but just wanted some way to escape this nightmare.
Primera could hear the others upstairs discussing what to do next. Some of them said it would be best to go back the way they initially had come like Joshua said, others were skeptical of the idea. Then they began talking about what to do about Primera, causing her to slump down to the floor and look at her hands. While it wasn't actual blood on her hands, it felt like it might as well be, and it felt like fire on her skin. The burning sensation was becoming too much, so she walked over to the sink in the kitchen. She looked down at the faucet in strained confusion before turning a knob with a blue dot on it next to the spout, causing water to come out. She stuck her hands under the stream ad let the cold water wash away the sludge smeared on her hands from pressing on Joshua's shoulders. The skin on her hands was red and irritated from where the sludge had been smeared on them, but the water helped to soothe the burning feeling on her skin.
As she observed her hands, she couldn't help but think about how Joshua had chuckled as he lay there on the ground at the foot of the stairs just staring up at the ceiling. She wondered what had passed through his head to get him to do that. Was it his life flashing before his eyes? Was it realizing his actions were just futile attempts to escape death? Whatever it had been it had left her confused and scared when she saw him chuckle. It had been a log time since she had seen someone in between life and death since the death of her parents, and as much as she thought she had seen everything by twenty-three, the universe had found a way to shake her to her core. Primera sat down in front of the sink and pressed her legs up against her chest while letting out a slight sniffle. She could no longer hear everyone else upstairs, which meant they must have reached a conclusion on what to do next, but that also meant they decided on what to do about her. The only thing she could do now was accept that fate no matter what their decision was. She began to sob softly as she could hear someone finally coming down the stairs and awaited her punishment.
A/N: Here is a little something that will show another side of things for this story at times, the EX chapters. It'll give insight on the aftermath of certain deaths for Joshua, or show what the other character's are going through should they get separated from him.