Avery scares them. 

It's not the fact she is a Summoner who holds their lives in their hands, nor is it the fact that they are so attached to her that anything happening to her would destroy what little was left of them, it wasn't even the dangerous gleam always circling the bright green depths of her eyes. 
 

What scared them, was her smile.
 

Being bound to a Summoner means that on the rare occasion strong emotions can filter through the bond they share and be conveyed to the Warriors or Summoner not experiencing the emotion first hand. The twinge of shock that resonated through the bond was nothing unusual from their Summoner who was still relatively new to the world they lived in and shocked often; the tidal wave of betrayal and anger that followed was felt even though all but three were in their cards and sent them to their knees with its strength.
 

The trickle of understanding that followed over the next hour had as much of a calming effect as trying to treat a burn with hot water. 
Unable to stand the impact of another wave of emotions coming through, those outside their cards retreat inside to recover and place a barrier on the bond not knowing how ineffective the others found it to be.
 

Recovering in their domains was always the best way to place blocks within the bond and heal from any trauma it had caused, whether emotional or physical, their domains relied on their health to remain in existence and prioritized them over everything. So when another wave rippled through the bonds, unhindered by the barriers supposedly created, they knew it was for their good that they face the Summoner waiting for them on the other side.
 

Answering the summons sent not an hour after the second wave left those willingly appearing on the floor of their Summoners bedroom, those more apprehensive found themselves forced from their safe spaces and lying in a heap on the carpet, a pile of tangled limbs and aching backs. 
 

Pulling themselves up and joining the semi-circle that had formed around the girl, everyone looked to her for instructions or answers only to find her sitting calmly leaning against the end of her bed, hands lying lightly on her knees as she smiled at the group of eleven looking at her.
 

For her to smile so candy-apple sweet after experiencing such powerful and negative emotions, something had to be wrong. It had to be.
 

"Avery?" Luhan breaches the silence hesitantly, "Is everything okay."
 

"Everything is fine Luhan. Everything is perfectly okay," She responds in an equally sweet voice, honey dripping from her words.
No one dares speak, all sensing something not quite right about their precious Summoner but not being able to place their fingers on the source.
 

"I was angry you know?" She starts, head thrown back against the bed, staring up at the ceiling. "I was so angry when I figured it out, I'm still angry I was so blind. Everything seems so obvious now that I look back but I think that's what made me the angriest. I took you in and treated you like my own family, freeing you from years of oppression and I let you be yourselves for the first time in who knows how long. I told you things I've never told anyone and you repaid me with hostility and secrecy. I fed you and gave you a place to be yourselves and I was still never included. You never told me and that made me angry, you were my family but I wasn't yours."
 

Confronted by her harsh words and the hidden truths it speaks, no one says anything, scared that this was the end of them, everything had finally fallen apart and the lives they had managed to build around the girl that had become their world was crumbling. 
 

Armageddon was upon their paradise. 
 

And the silence was the first hail of bullets upon their palace.
 

Without warning, she speaks again, "I understand you know."
 

"Understand?" DO responds "Understand what?"
 

She continues as if he never spoke, having thought too long about what she was going to say for him not to follow the script she created. "I understand why you didn't tell me, why you kept it hidden. Anything to protect your family right?" A sad smile creeps over her cherry painted lips, the hue slightly smugged across the corner of and faded from where she continually bites her bottom lip.
 

"My family, we used to be so close. My mother was a primary school teacher, my Father a director at a law firm, they were so different from each other but so perfect together, like puzzle pieces or two stars from the same sky. My mother used to tell her students stories, reading to them with different voices and magic thrown between the pages of every tale she spun. My Father went overseas every year, volunteering, and donating to charities to help those less fortunate than us. They were amazing, exceptionally selfless people."
 

She pulls an old photograph from the small box none of them noticed beside her. The scene familiar only in the fact that the two people captured had been seen by them all once before, but this time, instead of a night sky framing their dark silhouettes, the couple stand wrapped around each other in front of what was likely their house. 
 

The woman is thin, but not unhealthily so, her short dark hair falling to her shoulders in smooth curl