“Isn't it ironic that a nightmare can masquerade as a dream?” ― Ken Poirot
They were gods masquerading as a humble troupe. Who could say what their goals were if they could truly be called mortal. The humble façade placed in front of everyone who visited, those who only saw the upper halls and rolling steppes of the bamboo forested land claimed by the troupe itself. Even the youngest of their members knew things did not run the same way there as outside the clan.
Their origins were muddled, somewhere born in the Southern Icefield, though they had grown and grown in size until they’d roosted near the Fortress of Ends. But they’d grown discontent with the constant threat of Gaolers, and the great and terrible things that lived further still in the ice of the Icewarden’s deepest lair. Despite their love and hate of the god who held more power than they, they could not stay. The great migration, a thing that was personal to all who undertook it and the many who didn’t survive. Numbers of them fell to the Gaolers who could catch them, the fierce blizzards sweeping over them to freeze their wings to sides and pin them to the ground.
They’d only escaped from a wrathful vengeance of the older god because a single Gaoler had defected. Aquilo, as he’s known now, felt moved despite his lack of soul and memory. He was defective, more than his siblings in the Gaolers and the younger Tundras, in his inability to recognize friend or foe. If only they had known what lay in wait for them in the Windswept Plateau....
