I didn’t see the corpses first, I smelled them, and I heard the buzzing of wings.

It was the children, dozens of kids piled on top of one another, dead.

I choked back a sob, and stood shocked in place as I looked for my sister among the bodies. I recognized most of them, even some of the toddlers.

It was in my searching of the corpse pile that I realized what the buzzing was. There were bugs of course, but that was not the main source of the noise. There was a flock of small normal sized hummingbirds, but instead of normal wings, theirs were bladed like many swords layered on top of one another.

I watched as one of the hummingbirds swooped down, and used its wings to rip apart a chunk of flesh from one of the older children. The flesh flew up into the air and half a dozen of the birds dove in tearing at it further, then devouring it.

I had to hold myself back from screaming and running up to look for signs of my sister, but I had no Body type cards to strengthen my skin against those bladed feathers.

Apparently there was no reason for me to hold myself back. The birds noticed me anyhow, trilling screams pierced my ears and the birds dashed for me in blurs of silver light.

I had no real combat cards, Cleanse might have been an Uncommon Card but it had no combat effectiveness. Smokey Hands was only Common, but scuffles with kids inside my tribe had made me learn that there were ways to use every card to my advantage.

I pushed my hands out in front of me and activated Smokey Hands. I could control how the smoke exited my hands to an extent, not anything that would cause any damage from the force of it, even for these small birds, but enough to direct it.

Dark smoke propelled forward in a wave, catching the entire swarm of hummingbirds. They scattered, and so did I. I could hear the wheezing trills of the birds as they coughed up, trying to expel the toxic gas from their lungs.

I could also hear the fluttering of wings as a few of them still aimed for me.

I took out my pan.

I swatted away two of the bladed birds and barely dodged out of the way of a third, it’s razor sharp wings left my shoulder in a blended mess of bloody flesh, but these birds were not particularly strong so it didn’t cut too deep. I didn’t trust the thinner blade of my dagger to be able to accurately hit the birds so I didn’t bring it out, instead I continued to blast balls of smoke at the birds.

The minute or two that I spent smacking birds with my pan and throwing smoke at them felt like I had been running as fast as I could for hours. Once the birds realized I was not easy prey, and that the smoke was bad for their lungs, they began to fly away.

I panted, shuddering as I felt the warm blood seep down my body from half a dozen grated cuts, but the birds were gone.

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When I remembered why I had been there in the first place and I wished that the birds had been my only issue.

The pile of dead children was still there, insects buzzing around, and I fell to my knees crying.

The Labyrinth had never been a kind place, I had know plenty of people that died in its walls, my parents being the ones that still haunted my dreams, but children, we protected children, we loved children, we kept them innocent as long as we could until they were old enough to face the harsh reality that was our world.

I vomited and my vision began to darken. I couldn’t breathe and my stomach was burning. I had been once of those children not long ago. I had wanted to grow up as fast as possible, and once my Hand had formed I had gone out to kill animals and get some cards from the Lotto Box. Even as a twelve year old I thought myself an adult.

I wanted my mom’s food, my dads warm embrace and words of comfort. I wanted my doll, the one I had carried around everywhere when I was younger, the one I had passed onto my sister.

But I couldn’t be a child anymore, the child had been unable to protect her sister.

It took a few minutes, but as my breaths grew more steady, my heart grew cold. I steeled myself and looked to the pile of bodies once again. I forced myself to analyze, to understand.

The children, all of them, had slit throats. This was not the work of a monster from the Labyrinth, this had been deliberate, human. I quelled the rage within me that built from that, it wouldn’t help me understand.

Why? That was the question, why would humans, almost certainly the Prince and his people, trick the minds of a outside tribe to hand over their children, take them a day’s travel away, then kill them.

The answer was easy. This was like when someone wanted to obtain a specific type of card. The Lotto Box would give a person a card when it filled, but it was not entirely random. If someone did nothing but kill spiders, then the chances of them getting a card that related to silk or poison or even controlling spiders would be much greater, not guaranteed, but at least it would be a real chance of happening.

This also included for the rarity of the card, killing nothing but monsters that were classified around the Epic rarity would increase the chances of receiving an Epic Card greatly.

Children though? Children were not strong, nor did humans tend to give a specific type of card, at least not that I knew of, perhaps there was something, but the Elders kept it a secret because they didn’t want people slitting each others throats in the night.

Or maybe it was just something that this Prince knew.

My angry analysis froze as I saw something at the bottom of the pile. A wooden doll, covered in blood, a small tanned hand wrapped around it. I followed the hand up to the shoulder, then the slit neck, then the face. Misu was staring back at me, dead fishes eyes wide. There was no emotion on her face, but I felt the accusation anyways.

I died then, in a way my twelve year old mind could never of imagined, not even when my parents had died themselves was I affected like this.

I wanted to take my sister from the pile and bury her, or if I couldn’t do that burn her. Something, but the scavengers had come back for their feast, and even more followed to assist.

The metallic whistle of hundreds of the sword winged hummingbirds sounded out from the distance along with their trills echoing out like battle cries.

The anger I had felt for these birds died, they were just animals, the real monsters were the ones that did this to begin with. Those were the ones I needed to kill.

I left my sisters corpse there to be devoured. Preserving the bodies dignity would not bring it back to life. The idea of killing the Prince on the other hand, that felt like it was the only thing keeping me from falling apart.