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The nightmare didn't feel like it was imaginary. Pyx couldn't help the fact that immediately upon waking from the wretched thing she ran to Katherine's igloo. There was still the sign with Katherine's name crossed out, the boards blocking anyone from accessing the doors, and, once Pyx got through the boarded-up entrance, the gravestone was still there. Katherine still wasn't there.
The bee hybrid slumped to the ground in Katherine's house, recounting what had happened in the nightmare.
They had gone mining, supposedly a safe and harmless expedition the group would go on. Pyx had agreed to go, her own death no longer weighing as heavily on her memory making being underground a bit more comfortable again. It was her, Everest, Generic, and Katherine heading into a small cave near their base. If there was one thing Pyx was sure of it was that she and Everest had died in the deep dark on the other side of the mountain, meaning it wasn't likely there was any under the igloos.
She thought she was sure.
When she noticed the off-black cyan goo from afar, the excitement hit before the memories did. She wasn't scared of the warden, she didn't even know if she was capable of being scared of it considering she couldn't remember any time or any life where she had cowered in the face of the hulking beast. So, deciding to throw all caution to the wind, she and Generic went closer to the sculk.
Per usual with sculk, Pyx was the first person to set a shrieker off, deciding to play it off that it wasn't her when Everest asked. The darkness that came with the piercing scream of the sculk only made her hyper and wonder how long it would take for a beast to emerge again.
The second time a shrieker went off for her was when she led Katherine down to show that the sculk really wasn't dangerous. This time, when the scream of the shrieker brought the darkness, Pyx couldn't help the laughter that escaped her. There was only one more time she could get away with setting one of those off before the beast came and she wondered who would be able to get away in the event of such a monster pulling itself from the earth.
The third time the shrieker went off, Pyx wasn't there to witness it, nor did the scream cut far enough through the air to alert her to it happening. Maybe that's why, when she and Everest were chatting and smelting some iron, the fourth shriek hadn't initially alarmed her.
She had just shrugged off the noise, noticing how the darkness that came with the shrieks didn't reach her or Everest. It wasn't until she heard the bone claws of the warden tearing through the sculk, shooting light pain through the sculk growing on her, that she had realized what was happening. For once, Pyx stayed mostly quiet, following her soulmate back up to normal stone level, far enough away from the sculk to be safe.
Only then did she speak again, mostly jokingly as she uttered: "If Katherine dies I'll cry."
She could hear the warden's angry shout and the snapping of bones echo throughout the cavern.
She knew it was a dream though, it had to be. Pyx knows that for a fact because she woke up right after that and now she was here. Katherine can't have died, it was a dream, a nightmare, it was fiction. She sulked back to her and Everest's shared home, opting to just power through the sadness and mourning trying to scrape her insides clean. The now-distant memory of her jokingly adopting Katherine a few weeks prior making her stomach churn more.
There was only a week of this overwhelming sadness and despair before Pyx could hear a familiar voice talking to Rei outside in the amphitheater. The bee hybrid didn't go outside right away, peeking through the door to her igloo to verify what she heard.
There was Katherine.
Granted, the sea bunny was a lot more zombie-looking now but she was alive! Or maybe undead, Pyx had no clue but she could see that Katherine was there and not just gone so she hardly cared to figure out the finer details. Before actually going out to actually talk to Katherine for the first time in a week, Pyx silently swore to herself that no matter what happened, she was going to make sure Katherine lived. Well, at least make sure Katherine would outlive her, no matter how selfish that may be.