Aftermath: An Epilogue to Silence for the Damned

Udyr wandered through the snow, the soft crunch of his footsteps drowned out by the maelstrom of sound around him. The furtive fear of a nearby rabbit mixed with the focused hunger of the owl stalking its prey from up above. Udyr could feel himself preparing a rapid descent to deliver the killing blow. He had to shake himself loose before the owl's sensations overpowered him.

It had been 3 days since he himself had eaten a meal. 3 days since the Ursine butchered that city, the avatar of the Volibear at their head, a merciless force of destruction that razed it to the ground. Udyr couldn't bear to let even a morsel of food enter his mouth. Not after what he had seen; not after what he had felt. He could still hear the warbling screams of the dying, twisting into terrible shrieks as their limbs were torn from their bodies before they had drawn their final breath. He could still feel the mindless, primal bloodlust of the Ursine, not a simple desire, but an urgent need for brutality. He could still taste the fallen on his lips, his claws and fangs digging into their flesh, greedily ripping it from the lifeless bones that once belonged to a man like any other. Perhaps a father, who had been struggling to do his best to raise his daughter, just as Udyr had raised the skinny little girl who had become a powerful Warmother. He thought he could stop Sejuani from enlisting the savages. He knew they could have fought that battle in a better, more honorable way, had they just done it themselves. There was no need for so much death and destruction; no need to decimate an entire city and all the lives it carried. But such is the nature of war. Pain and suffering follow difficult decisions made to protect one's own people at any cost. A veteran of many battles, Udyr knew this to be true. He knew he might have to make an even greater sacrifice to save the girl he loved like a daughter. He just wished they hadn't paid such a high price.

The horrors of the Ursine would forever haunt his mind, even moreso than the constant voices surrounding him. It would take its place alongside the weight of his past mistakes, the burden of shame and guilt that were a constant reminder of his failures. Udyr once more resolved to never let the Volibear take anyone away from him ever again. He would do whatever it took to protect his Sejuani from that horrible fate.

But for now, he desperately needed the calming quiet of meditation to soothe the raging storm inside himself. It had been a long and tortorous 3 days' travel and he had finally come upon the clearing he had sought. Udyr knelt down and began to clear his mind.