Before the Storm

Chapter 32: To Brave... The End

Before the storm, there was a loose end flying recklessly in the wind. Before the storm, they all thought it was Tygren. They didn't expect it to be who it turned out to be in the aftermath

But just because they lost more than they could bear did not mean that all was lost to them entirely, and one night, reconciliation is had between those who were empty inside

Author's note: character development moment. I couldn't resist the parallels, and I couldn't resist the lemon and raspberry moment. all it takes is to remember the first interaction that they had for it to really play out

it's not a total copy and paste job, so while I have included a lot of the content from ch1, things were added within it as well as onto it. you'll see why I did it maybe as you go

but the irony is not lost on us. writing a prequel called *After*math, and then a sequel called *Before* the Storm... that was the plan. we knew what we were doing XD

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Dusty. Damp. Disused.

Dirty. Dingy. Dank.

Abandoned.

However, not forgotten.

The Knights of Ardonia had not stepped foot in this place united in too many years. Some would say it was because they had no need to. Some would say it was because they lost too much to go back – that their team died with the last war. Some would say the two reasons were combined – that they had no need to because they lost so much in the last war...

If they could call it a war after the secrets that they had to hide.

Still to this day, no-one knew of the final sacrifice that the former Deathsinger gave to Ardonia in his attempt to gain so much, only to lose it all in the end. There had been many a time that the remainder of the team – wherever they were – had heard past tales of the dreaded Deathsinger and his heated endeavour during the Great War. They heard the way that they still spoke his name with a shiver down their spines, the quick blip in their lips, the pregnant pause as they second-guessed their words. Each time, every single one of them wanted to correct them, to tell them that they were wrong, that they didn't know half the story, that they were spewing exaggerated intentions; but each time they opened their mouths, a shiver was sent down their spines, there was a quick blip in their lips, and a pregnant pause before their words. They couldn't help it.

They weren't sworn to secrecy as they had been. They could shout atop the rooves of cities and yell from high on the mountaintops of the truth they had seen with their own eyes, but it would be futile in the end. No one would hear them for the words they spoke – the truth they uttered.

But with Senn they were. They could not utter the deeds that he had committed in the name of the man who had come before, swearing the same. It was all but circles in which they found themselves running – vicious circles, never ending – and it was futile to waste their energy thinking otherwise.

In the end, they stopped trying, and they let their own making of history fall to the wayside – the lost answers of a truth that people stopped yearning for. The Deathsinger was dead, and so was Senn, and that was all there was to it. People stopped asking how. They stopped asking why, or "who did it?" or "who was the hero?"

To tell them that the Deathsinger died to time itself would be more futile than the story they had to tell of a valiant young man, misguided by intentions, lost to the darkness – a man who did not know that he was lost to the darkness until his light had been taken from him, stolen. They knew better than to waste their breath on a populous driven by false deities and deceit. They simply had to settle for what they knew and hope that a time would come once again where they could scream at the top of their lungs: