The man who pushed open the door was about to say something, but coughed as a cave full of smoke began to leak out.
“Y-your Highness?!” the man yelled.
He noticed me, his eyes widening in horror as he looked down at the still form of the prince's corpse. He appeared next to me and I didn’t know if he moved so quickly that I had been unable to catch it or had teleported.
What I did know was that when he pushed me away from the Prince it was as though a bull had hit me. I felt ribs crack and my head hit something as I whooshed through the door to the outside.
“Zach! What is all that smoke?! Did the attackers already invade there?” came a voice that sounded like Tario, the guy who had spoken with the prince inside the cave.
“T-the P-pri-” the man who must’ve pushed me coughed from inside the cave.
Then I registered what Tario had said. Attackers? What attackers?
My question was answered as a block of stone landed onto one of the knights standing a few feet away. Around me the knights were hastily putting on armor or readying Ability Cards. I saw mist coming in from the forest around and haunting ghastly figures moving about.
I recognized that ability, it was from one of the head’s of a hunting party from my tribe. I looked up, while my tribe told children to stay away from the tops of the Labyrinth, that was because we were weak and ignorant of the dangers.
Our huntsmen however took the name of our tribe to heart. I saw more than two dozen figures standing at the tops of the wall of the Labyrinth, and although they weren’t birds, stones the size of a grown man fell from above.
I apparently wasn’t the only one from the tribe that had decided to come for revenge. They had better trackers than me so they must’ve seen the corpses of the children.
Several of the knights threw out techniques to intercept the falling stones, and one man in particular was standing on the wall of the Labyrinth. Not the top like my tribesmen, on the side, as easily as if it was flat ground.
A ball of white light was floating behind his head like a silver star and from it arrows made of the same light destroyed a dozen falling rocks.
“Zach! Report!” the man standing on the wall yelled.
Zach, the man who had pushed me out the door ran out, his face was filled with a myriad of emotions that I couldn’t decipher.
“He’s dead Captain Tario, the Prince is dead.”
Tario spun, and a rock hit him full force, it broke on his body without him moving an inch.
“How…” Tario asked, his voice cracking.
By then my mind had finally recovered enough to remember that I was how, and if how did not leave as quickly as possible how was going to get herself skewered by a hundred light arrows. A few of the other knights had finally noticed me, or more specifically, noticed my hand which still carried the Legendary Card. This card was priceless, it was something that so few people had that it was given good credit to its classification of Legendary.
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I didn’t know what was on it, and what kind of power it would give me, but I immediately added it to my hand.
I immediately added it to my Hand. The Card melted into the skin of my left hand and disappeared. I felt nothing, no influx of power or increased senses, and I didn’t have time to test it out.
I ran straight into the haunting mist. The mist’s effects were quite well known among my tribe, the user, Neferal could identify anyone inside the mist and locate them, and if the user wished phantom images could follow someone and make them get lost.
Hopefully the guy noticed who I was and didn’t use his other Card in tandem. I had seen the prey he had taken out with it.
Someone landed right next to me, it was a hulking man with fur covering every inch of skin and two broad headed axes in his hands. His face was elongated into a snout with glistening white fangs.
I sighed in relief.
“Pitch.”
“Lux,” he growled, half probably in anger and half because he was a big wolf man.
“Do you kno-”
“Yes, we were on your trail when we discovered the bodies. I’ll get you out of here while they try and get to the prince.”
“The prince is dead.”
“What?!”
“I suffocated him in his sleep.”
I didn’t think a wolf guy could show surprise that well, but the way Pitch’s circular black eyebrows rose was comedic. Then he gave me a wolfs smile.
“Good.”
I mirrored the smile with my own.
Then a sword pierced Pitch’s stomach and continued straight into my left eye socket.
I blacked out in pain, the only other sensation than the wrenching burn in my eye was the feeling of my voice shrieking out in pain. In only a few seconds I felt wind in my hair, but I didn’t know if I was being carried, if the wind had suddenly started going crazy, or if I was flying through the sky like a bird.
“LUX.”
I focused on the growling voice right in my ear, letting it push a bit of the pain away.
“Pit-”
I felt a burning queasiness as I remembered why I was in pain, so I vomited right onto my clothing and Pitch’s fur.
Pitch made no comment as we hurdled through the misty forest. I was barely able to look up and focus my eye on Pitch’s face, half of it was missing.
His Body of the Dire Wolf Card was Uncommon, it gave him incredible stamina and strength for an Uncommon Card at least. But whatever had hit him in the head took out most of the flesh on the left side of his face so that I could see the bone of his skull.
He noticed my gaze and gave a half sagging grin.
“We were all prepared to die…” he had to pause to breathe roughly as he ran, blood falling down his face like a waterfall. “If it meant that we killed that bastard and saved you. Well…” another rough breath. “To be honest most of us didn’t care about you more than we did revenge, but I wanted to make sure you lived after all. Wouldn’t be able to look at your tent anymore if your entire family died.”
Pitch had been close to my parents since I was born. He was family, the entire tribe was. Something slammed into Pitch and he tumbled onto the ground, me being in his arms I was crushed, the air driving from my lungs. Pitch rolled and I was released from his grip.
I tried to get to my feet, but I was in pain, disoriented and missing an eye. I fell back down to the ground.
Looking up I saw two figures, one was the man who had thrown me from the cave and the other was the Captain Tario guy. Both were covered in blood, but neither had any wounds.