On the Origins of Tundras: A Tale of the Lore
Of all the realms in our world, not one rivals the harsh isolation of the Southern Icefield. And no god matches its Lord for stubbornness and apathy - or so most would believe.
Countless millenia ago the Icewarden settled at the cold edge of the world. He lived far from His brothers and sisters, preferring the silence and tranquility of His empty arctic kingdom to Their company.
As the frigid drake had said to the elder Earthshaker: ** "This is the way of it. We were resolute enough to keep this world from destroying itself, but now We have another charge. It is evident that We will never hold off the residual darkness together, so We must do so apart. It is time to separate." **
Chaos and ruin seemed to follow the others of the Eleven wherever They stepped. Even in His youth it seemed the other deities always destroyed rather than created. Weary of the wars the others constantly waged, the god wanted no part in this new Age, wanted nothing to do with the idiocy of His kind again.
Why can the world not be as My element? the Icewarden thought to Himself. True perfection and peace is only to be found in the nature of Ice itself. Utter stillness - that is the only way. If He was to guard His domain from the remnants of the Shade, He would do so without the interference of the others gods or their elements.
Resolute and faithful unto His own ideals, He set about the task of keeping His brothers and sisters out of His home - permanently.
Into the seas the Icewarden sent entire armadas of icebergs to blockade the coasts of His home from meddling trespassers. Upon the land the god raised countless glaciers to cap the mountains peaks and render impassible the valleys and passes below. Into the sky He cast heavy, slate-grey clouds full to bursting with snow and hail to entrap the south in ice unyielding.
At the heart of it all the god constructed His bastion and sanctuary: the Fortress of Ends. He threw up walls so tall and thick that not even the Flamecaller could have melted them. Within the ramparts the Icewarden created a frosty labyrinth so full of twists and hidden dangers that only its master could possibly navigate the maze.
The Icewarden took His place in the very center, at last finding the unbroken solitude He had been craving.
For a very long time, He maintained an unbroken period of isolation. He heard no news of the other gods, and They similarly received no word of Their reclusive brother. Not once did They bother the furry footed drake, for His many fortifications had made even the idea of a crossing His borders a tiresome thought.
Naturally, the Icewarden made no move to visit Them, either. As the years of silence stretched on into decades and then into centuries, the very name and existence of the Ice god began to fade from Their memory. It seemed that He would finally be granted His wish of a lasting and lonely peace.
And, indeed, He would have achieved His ultimate goal - that is, if a certain meddling god of the air had not chosen to interfere.
One day, the Icewarden was roused from a deep slumber. It was a small disturbance, hardly worthy of a god's notice. Yet He had existed in such complete stillness for so long that the slightest breaking of it was enough to call His attention. Growling with the voice of glaciers clashing, the god pried open His pale eyes for the first time in decades.
A breeze, a breath of air only scarcely warmer than the rest of the Icefield. Mild annoyance bloomed in His chest, the first stirring of true emotion He had felt in an Age.
Who dared to come uninvited into His territory? For, surely, only an intruder could have broken the tranquility of His realm. That thought was enough to wake the Icewarden completely. Urged by indignation and a desire to quash the source of the din, He resolved to investigate the matter.
So with a creaking and crackling of frost (for remaining still for long had rendered the drake nearly immobile) He got to His feet and ventured slowly to the outermost walls of His Fortress.
"Who wakes Me from My slumber?" He hissed aloud. "Who dares to cross My borders and desecrate My sacred domain?"
"I dare, o grand Lord of the South~" came the sing-song reply.
Suddenly, out of the overcast sky above, the spiraling form of the Windsinger burst forth. He laughed and frolicked like a guileless hatchling through the air. Carving the atmosphere with His long body, He twisted the clouds above and the snow below into a frantic flurry of white. Rays of sunlight filtered though the cleared sky and cut through the gloom that had hung over the Icefield for so long.
The Icewarden, for his part, was not amused. Not only was the god trespassing, but He was throwing the entire realm into noisy disarray with His horrid dancing and whooping. Turning a stoic gaze upon the god of Wind, the air around them became impossibly colder.
"If You have come to issue a challenge," He growled, "I shall give You no quarter."
"Oh, I mean no offense!" The Windsinger was earnest in his answer, coming to a stop near His frigid counterpart. "I have merely come for a visit - and perhaps a game, if You will agree to it, dear friend."
Again, the other god's response was a poor one. The faintest hint of a snarl curled about his lips.
"You are no comrade of Mine. Now leave hence from My domain. I shall not tell You again."
"Oh, believe Me, I would," sighed the seafoam god, "if I but could. Yet can a place truly be absent of wind, of air itself? By extension, can I, the very breeze incarnate, truly depart from a place even when My body has physically left? It makes very little sense to Me, then, to make Myself scarce when I would still be present anyway. Do You not think so as well, good dragon?"
Stunned into quietude by the rather convoluted nature of the Windersinger's explanation, the icy drake could only pull his head back and blink at the smirking deity. He had to admit there was at least some sense in His peer's words, and His logic was solid enough.
Taking advantage of the the other deity's silence, the wind god drew even nearer, a mischievous and playful twinkle in his glowing eyes.
"In any case, about that game of which I was speaking..."
And so, to a rather nonplussed Icewarden, the Wingsinger proposed a wager. For what purpose He had made the challenge in the first place, though, the serpentine god would not say. It was, quite simply, to be a game of wits between Them, a game of riddles to be precise. For every question that the Windsinger answered correctly, the one would receive a single strand of the ice god's fur. For every question that the Icewarden answered correctly, He would hear nothing but blessed silence from the windbag for at least a day.
The Icewarden much resented the intrusion and by all rights should have chased Him out of the arctic. Not to mention He knew nothing of the trespasser's sincerity or true purpose in this quest.
Yet He knew there was no refusing the other god. He remembered the Windsinger as the persistent and determined sort, and it would only be more troublesome in the long run to avoid the inevitable.
Besides, if the other god's reputation for a short attention span was true, then He would be rid of the nuisance sooner or later and left alone once more. Surely the Windsinger would eventually become bored with the charade, and what were a few pieces of fur in the course of things?
Little did He know just what sordid affair into which He had been drawn.
A master of storytelling and wordplay, the Windsinger took to the riddle game like a fish to water. Every query the Icewarden tossed His way, the god quipped back an answer barely a moment later.
And the icy titan soon found out that He was far outmatched by His counterpart in this duel of wits. For every one riddle the Icewarden answered correctly He guessed two more incorrectly. Eons of being secluded, it seemed, had left the god rather unworldly.
The game dragged on for so long that the Icewarden would become often become weary and call for a recess. Ever the good and merciful sportsman, the Windsinger was only too happy to oblige, leaving and returning a relatively short time later.
"But of course, My friend," He would say. "You must rest. We cannot have very much fun if You are tired, now can We?"
The Icewarden would only grunt noncommittally, and the cycle would start once again upon the other god's next "visit."
At first the god of the south dreaded those times when the Windsinger came to call, and rightfully so. Always the serpentine drake came soaring and roaring over the icy mountains. Always He would kick up the flawless snow with His plumed green tail. Always He would crack the ice of the glaciers with His bellowing "songs." Always the peace of the tundra was shattered by the gales stirred up by His laughter, the windstorms summoned by His chortling.
Not to mention the fact that the Icewarden was slowly but surely becoming quite bald from the whole endeavor. Legends say that the reigning god of the Southern Icefield was once covered head to toe in long pale fur. The Windsinger's wager, however, was fast murdering His secret vanity and robbing Him of those luxurious locks.
With regards to Their respective natures, the gods simply could not be more different.
The one could hardly be bothered to leave His Fortress, and the other simply refused to limit His escapades to His own territory. Where one could go for an Age with uttering a single word, the other apparently could not keep quiet for more than a few seconds. The Icewarden was the epitome of constancy and reserved silence while the Windsinger could not contain His vivacious self even if His divinity depended upon it. The wind was everything that the ice was not and never wanted to be.
And yet.
As the game between Him and the other god played on, the Icewarden would begrudgingly acknowledge the slight benefits of having the wind deity in His home.
His constant struggle in the riddle game had made quite clear how ignorant He was of the world at large. That painful personal flaw, of course, vexed Him to no end. Given the Windsinger penchant for visiting all of His siblings frequently and for extended periods of time, the serpentine god was a well-informed if somewhat gossiping sort. Through all the conundrums and the few civil conversations conducted between Them, the Icewarden was able to learn much about the goings-on of the lands beyond his own.
Sometimes the Windsinger would even bring trinkets and specimens He picked up on His travels. The first such occasion left the ice god quite baffled.
"What is this... thing which you have brought to Me?" He had queried, brows furrowed and head tilted in muted curiosity.
"Why, my dear Icewarden, it is a scarf!"
The Windsinger beamed proudly as He held up the long piece of cloth for the other god's inspection. Its vibrant aqua hues matched the expanse of the sky, the sheen of distant icebergs under sunlight. Not waiting to ask the Icewarden's permission, He flung the scarf around His companion's neck and looped it snugly into place.
Touching at the soft fabric with His claws, the ice god was still wracked with puzzlement.
"You mean this as a gift?" He rumbled. "It is for me?"
"Indeed~" warbled the Windsinger. "You see, it is only that I feel rather responsible for the rather bare state of Your hide, as it were. Perhaps it is foolish to presume that the Lord of Ice should ever feel chilled, but I thought that this trifle would help the matter somewhat. Please, do accept it, a humble trinket though it may be."
Too bewildered to properly respond - and oh how often He found himself in that state with the wind god - the Icewarden could only nod with a grunt of affirmation. He was left wondering over the strange token for days after. Never before had He been given a present. Moreover, never before had He been the recipient of another's fond attention. The only real conclusion He could come to was that the Windsinger was a very strange deity indeed.
After that initial instance, the wind god would bring all manner of gifts as offerings to the Icewarden. The cold god learned to just accept the tributes He was given and in time even looked forward to seeing what specimens the other deity would bring Him next.
Sand-bleached fossils from the Shifting Expanse, ancient manuscripts from the Sunbeam Ruins, sparkling precious gems from Dragonhome - the Windsinger brought a bit of everything from the dragon realms. The Icewarden took to stowing them away within the Fortress, His ever growing hoard preserved in the ice.
It did occur to Him that He ought to return the favor out of politeness, but once again He was at a loss in terms of social etiquette. So the Icewarden merely let the thought pass out of His mind, resolving to let the Windsinger do as He as wished in this matter as He did in all things. And if the frigid god warmed up ever so slight over the years to the other deity's open heart and gift-giving, then it was His own business.
And what had begun as a seemingly simple contest between the two gods had bloomed into a reluctant friendship.
Decades of visitations and riddle-making become a tradition between the gods. The Icewarden's time began to run on a clock that centered upon the Windsinger's comings and goings in His territory, matters having long since moved beyond the confines of the original wager.
So when the god of air suddenly ceased in His visitations altogether, the Icewarden was understandably quite disturbed by His companion's unexplained absence.
Apprehension had the cold god on edge as the months stretched on without word from Windsinger. For days at a time He would pace upon the ramparts of the Fortress, eyes upon the sky and ears open for the faintest whistle of the breeze He now knew so well. Yet He saw neither scale nor feather of the god, heard neither laughter nor song, no sign whatsoever of the only one amongst His kind that He called "friend."
At last He admitted even to Himself that He was deeply worried. His worry manifested itself in the very realm around Him. Blizzards and hailstorms began to spawn all over the Icefield. The tundras and mountains became impossibly dark and frigid and would have killed every thing if there had been a living soul in the land to begin with. The land and its master grieved sorrowfully for the absence of the wind god.
What has happened to Him? the Icewarden thought mournfully, His mind drawing the worst conclusions. Had some ill fortune befallen His friend? Had one of the other gods struck Him down in war? Or had the bright spirit of the wind, perhaps, having His fill of the Icefield and its lord, finally grown weary of visiting after all?
There had been a time He would not have cared a whit about the well-being of another. Once He would have been content to pass eternity silent and alone. Yet now He was all but undone by the mere absence of the wind god He adored. The Icewarden's heart, it seemed, was no longer so cold or so untouchable.
One day, He could endure the waiting no longer.
The Icewarden left His home in search for the Windsinger. He set out across the sky, streaking like a living comet through the blue. He moved beyond His borders for the first time since the beginning of the Age, determined and prepared to search every distant corner of the world for whom He sought.
As it happened, however, He did not have to travel very far at all to find His Windsinger.
He found the bright god resting upon the steppes of His own famed plateau. The serpentine form was coiled loosely and dozing upon a bed of fuzzy white. Upon closer inspection, the Icewarden saw that it was a great nest made out of His very own fur.
"Now You are an indolent cur! Wake up and explain Yourself!" cried the hitherto worried god, frost spreading in angry waves about Him where his paws touched the earth.
Yet the other deity kept on snoring and sleeping. Thrusting His muzzle towards the Windsinger, He poked His chilly nose right into the long vulnerable belly of the Shade-cursed drake.
Rousing at last and wriggling like a shocked Spiral, the Windsinger shrilled indignantly, "Ah, by the magic that shaped Us! Whatever is all this fuss about?"
"I thought You wounded or Shade-possessed or worse, You great windbag!"
Taking a moment to compose Himself, He went on in a slightly quieter tone. "There are those among the Eleven who do care for the, erm, fate of Their peers. Sending the occasional messenger to alert the rest of Us of your status - at the very least - would be most prudent on your part, Windsinger. Have you been here all this time, napping the eons away?"
Eyes lighting and lips drawing upward in a knowing smile, the flippant wind god merely shook His head.
"Now You are one to talk about concern for one's peers. My, but You are the dramatic nesting mother dragon, My dear friend. I never would have guessed. And while I have indeed been keeping to My own territory of late, I have hardly been lazy. You merely caught Me during a brief recess. I have been quite busy, You know."
"You? Busy?" scoffed the Icewarden, still rather cross. "The sun would sooner drop from the very sky!"
"Do not mock Me, if You please. Indeed, all this toiling has been for Your sake. The act of creation, I will have You know, is an exhausting endeavor even for a god."
Moving aside, the Windsinger revealed a pile of fluff He had been concealing within His coils. Initially, the Icewarden could not see how the veritable mountain of fur differed from the rest of odd nest. Then, a silent gasp escaping Him, He saw it... or rather, them.
Tiny figures, made of His fur and fashioned with a decidedly draconic bearing. Their pelts were all the colors of winter: the dark blues of the arctic sea, the greys of ice and stone, the white of the purest snow, and even the ebony of the long solstice night. Fuzzy splayed toes, ideal for moving with ease across thin ice sheets and through thick drifts. Flared antlers, perfect for scraping away in the tundra for food beneath the snow. Leathery wings, broad and taught for gliding upon the mountain winds. Gentle faces and strong bodies, warm and hardy bearing even in sleep.
They were, in a word, perfect. No doubt, of all the creatures of the world, they would survive an existence - thrive, even - in the Icewarden's harsh and bitter lands. And, with a start, He realized that this was the Windsinger's exact purpose - children of the southern god's very own, born of ice yet shaped by the expert strokes of the wind.
"For the longest time," the god of breezes said in the wake of His companions awed silence, "I watched from afar as You sequestered Yourself beneath the ice and snow. I watched You as You lost Your connection with the world that birthed and loved You. Year by year, I saw Ice itself begin to slip away from the circle of the Eleven.
"When the Others had forgotten Your very name, I knew I could stand by no longer. I resolved to set out and fetch You, to bring You back to Us. Slowly but surely I wanted to draw You about of the shell You had crafted about Yourself, and I like think I succeeded, at least part.
"Icewarden, though You may not realize it, this world needs You. We - the Eleven, Our children - are not whole without You. Light is hollow without Shadow to offset its brightness even more. Nature cannot progress without the trials of the Plague. Fire must have Water to temper its passions. And the Wind's song is an incomplete melody without Ice to help reach its highest and truest notes."
Scooping up the little and as yet unborn dragons in His grasp, the Windsinger held out His creations in humble offering.
"To My dearest companion, I bring My final gifts. Firstly, these children, a new breed to cherish and protect, to bring life to Your lands if You but bless them with life in turn. And secondly, My loyalty and friendship eternal, to stand by and give You strength in the darkest of times if You but permit Me."
The Icewarden is a cold god, ever noble and unreachable in His divinity, ever stubborn and unyielding in His bearing. Yet on that day so long ago, a warmth to rival the flaming core of the Great Furnace took hold in His chest. And though most would deny it, there are those among us who believe it exists still.
And, in perhaps the only instance in His long life, The Icewarden smiled.
"The first gift I shall most graciously and gladly receive," He replied at long last. "The second, however... Oh, have I been mistaken this whole time, then? For I thought, indeed, that You had become My friend every since the moment You dared to cross My borders."
A whistling peal of heart-deep laughter echoed from the Windsinger in joy, and the Icewarden found Himself echoing the sentiment. Roaring winds and frostbitten air mixed and intermingled about Them in a wild song, becoming a palpable force about them. It merged and spiraled, high into the sky, taking the shape of a great hurricane. And ever after it was known as the Twisting Crescendo. And ever after it has spun upon the border the Plateau and the Icefield, a living testament to the joy of the two gods.
And so it came to pass that the Icewarden took under His wings the children crafted for Him by the wind god. Hollowing out a safe haven for them in the heart of His land, He named the breed for the flat and gentle land which was their birthplace - Tundras. And He cared for His children forever after, if sometimes aloofly and from afar. For though He was a god perfectly capable of passion and feeling, a deity of Ice had to maintain some reserved dignity, after all.
Therefore, each and every Tundra today is endowed with the hardy and unchanging nature of Ice and the wandering, laughing spirit of the Wind.
(And if the breed has somewhat of a pension for forgetfulness, well, it is entirely the fault of the Windsinger. Obviously.)
Fin.
Of all the realms in our world, not one rivals the harsh isolation of the Southern Icefield. And no god matches its Lord for stubbornness and apathy - or so most would believe.
Countless millenia ago the Icewarden settled at the cold edge of the world. He lived far from His brothers and sisters, preferring the silence and tranquility of His empty arctic kingdom to Their company.
As the frigid drake had said to the elder Earthshaker: ** "This is the way of it. We were resolute enough to keep this world from destroying itself, but now We have another charge. It is evident that We will never hold off the residual darkness together, so We must do so apart. It is time to separate." **
Chaos and ruin seemed to follow the others of the Eleven wherever They stepped. Even in His youth it seemed the other deities always destroyed rather than created. Weary of the wars the others constantly waged, the god wanted no part in this new Age, wanted nothing to do with the idiocy of His kind again.
Why can the world not be as My element? the Icewarden thought to Himself. True perfection and peace is only to be found in the nature of Ice itself. Utter stillness - that is the only way. If He was to guard His domain from the remnants of the Shade, He would do so without the interference of the others gods or their elements.
Resolute and faithful unto His own ideals, He set about the task of keeping His brothers and sisters out of His home - permanently.
Into the seas the Icewarden sent entire armadas of icebergs to blockade the coasts of His home from meddling trespassers. Upon the land the god raised countless glaciers to cap the mountains peaks and render impassible the valleys and passes below. Into the sky He cast heavy, slate-grey clouds full to bursting with snow and hail to entrap the south in ice unyielding.
At the heart of it all the god constructed His bastion and sanctuary: the Fortress of Ends. He threw up walls so tall and thick that not even the Flamecaller could have melted them. Within the ramparts the Icewarden created a frosty labyrinth so full of twists and hidden dangers that only its master could possibly navigate the maze.
The Icewarden took His place in the very center, at last finding the unbroken solitude He had been craving.
For a very long time, He maintained an unbroken period of isolation. He heard no news of the other gods, and They similarly received no word of Their reclusive brother. Not once did They bother the furry footed drake, for His many fortifications had made even the idea of a crossing His borders a tiresome thought.
Naturally, the Icewarden made no move to visit Them, either. As the years of silence stretched on into decades and then into centuries, the very name and existence of the Ice god began to fade from Their memory. It seemed that He would finally be granted His wish of a lasting and lonely peace.
And, indeed, He would have achieved His ultimate goal - that is, if a certain meddling god of the air had not chosen to interfere.
One day, the Icewarden was roused from a deep slumber. It was a small disturbance, hardly worthy of a god's notice. Yet He had existed in such complete stillness for so long that the slightest breaking of it was enough to call His attention. Growling with the voice of glaciers clashing, the god pried open His pale eyes for the first time in decades.
A breeze, a breath of air only scarcely warmer than the rest of the Icefield. Mild annoyance bloomed in His chest, the first stirring of true emotion He had felt in an Age.
Who dared to come uninvited into His territory? For, surely, only an intruder could have broken the tranquility of His realm. That thought was enough to wake the Icewarden completely. Urged by indignation and a desire to quash the source of the din, He resolved to investigate the matter.
So with a creaking and crackling of frost (for remaining still for long had rendered the drake nearly immobile) He got to His feet and ventured slowly to the outermost walls of His Fortress.
"Who wakes Me from My slumber?" He hissed aloud. "Who dares to cross My borders and desecrate My sacred domain?"
"I dare, o grand Lord of the South~" came the sing-song reply.
Suddenly, out of the overcast sky above, the spiraling form of the Windsinger burst forth. He laughed and frolicked like a guileless hatchling through the air. Carving the atmosphere with His long body, He twisted the clouds above and the snow below into a frantic flurry of white. Rays of sunlight filtered though the cleared sky and cut through the gloom that had hung over the Icefield for so long.
The Icewarden, for his part, was not amused. Not only was the god trespassing, but He was throwing the entire realm into noisy disarray with His horrid dancing and whooping. Turning a stoic gaze upon the god of Wind, the air around them became impossibly colder.
"If You have come to issue a challenge," He growled, "I shall give You no quarter."
"Oh, I mean no offense!" The Windsinger was earnest in his answer, coming to a stop near His frigid counterpart. "I have merely come for a visit - and perhaps a game, if You will agree to it, dear friend."
Again, the other god's response was a poor one. The faintest hint of a snarl curled about his lips.
"You are no comrade of Mine. Now leave hence from My domain. I shall not tell You again."
"Oh, believe Me, I would," sighed the seafoam god, "if I but could. Yet can a place truly be absent of wind, of air itself? By extension, can I, the very breeze incarnate, truly depart from a place even when My body has physically left? It makes very little sense to Me, then, to make Myself scarce when I would still be present anyway. Do You not think so as well, good dragon?"
Stunned into quietude by the rather convoluted nature of the Windersinger's explanation, the icy drake could only pull his head back and blink at the smirking deity. He had to admit there was at least some sense in His peer's words, and His logic was solid enough.
Taking advantage of the the other deity's silence, the wind god drew even nearer, a mischievous and playful twinkle in his glowing eyes.
"In any case, about that game of which I was speaking..."
And so, to a rather nonplussed Icewarden, the Wingsinger proposed a wager. For what purpose He had made the challenge in the first place, though, the serpentine god would not say. It was, quite simply, to be a game of wits between Them, a game of riddles to be precise. For every question that the Windsinger answered correctly, the one would receive a single strand of the ice god's fur. For every question that the Icewarden answered correctly, He would hear nothing but blessed silence from the windbag for at least a day.
The Icewarden much resented the intrusion and by all rights should have chased Him out of the arctic. Not to mention He knew nothing of the trespasser's sincerity or true purpose in this quest.
Yet He knew there was no refusing the other god. He remembered the Windsinger as the persistent and determined sort, and it would only be more troublesome in the long run to avoid the inevitable.
Besides, if the other god's reputation for a short attention span was true, then He would be rid of the nuisance sooner or later and left alone once more. Surely the Windsinger would eventually become bored with the charade, and what were a few pieces of fur in the course of things?
Little did He know just what sordid affair into which He had been drawn.
A master of storytelling and wordplay, the Windsinger took to the riddle game like a fish to water. Every query the Icewarden tossed His way, the god quipped back an answer barely a moment later.
And the icy titan soon found out that He was far outmatched by His counterpart in this duel of wits. For every one riddle the Icewarden answered correctly He guessed two more incorrectly. Eons of being secluded, it seemed, had left the god rather unworldly.
The game dragged on for so long that the Icewarden would become often become weary and call for a recess. Ever the good and merciful sportsman, the Windsinger was only too happy to oblige, leaving and returning a relatively short time later.
"But of course, My friend," He would say. "You must rest. We cannot have very much fun if You are tired, now can We?"
The Icewarden would only grunt noncommittally, and the cycle would start once again upon the other god's next "visit."
At first the god of the south dreaded those times when the Windsinger came to call, and rightfully so. Always the serpentine drake came soaring and roaring over the icy mountains. Always He would kick up the flawless snow with His plumed green tail. Always He would crack the ice of the glaciers with His bellowing "songs." Always the peace of the tundra was shattered by the gales stirred up by His laughter, the windstorms summoned by His chortling.
Not to mention the fact that the Icewarden was slowly but surely becoming quite bald from the whole endeavor. Legends say that the reigning god of the Southern Icefield was once covered head to toe in long pale fur. The Windsinger's wager, however, was fast murdering His secret vanity and robbing Him of those luxurious locks.
With regards to Their respective natures, the gods simply could not be more different.
The one could hardly be bothered to leave His Fortress, and the other simply refused to limit His escapades to His own territory. Where one could go for an Age with uttering a single word, the other apparently could not keep quiet for more than a few seconds. The Icewarden was the epitome of constancy and reserved silence while the Windsinger could not contain His vivacious self even if His divinity depended upon it. The wind was everything that the ice was not and never wanted to be.
And yet.
As the game between Him and the other god played on, the Icewarden would begrudgingly acknowledge the slight benefits of having the wind deity in His home.
His constant struggle in the riddle game had made quite clear how ignorant He was of the world at large. That painful personal flaw, of course, vexed Him to no end. Given the Windsinger penchant for visiting all of His siblings frequently and for extended periods of time, the serpentine god was a well-informed if somewhat gossiping sort. Through all the conundrums and the few civil conversations conducted between Them, the Icewarden was able to learn much about the goings-on of the lands beyond his own.
Sometimes the Windsinger would even bring trinkets and specimens He picked up on His travels. The first such occasion left the ice god quite baffled.
"What is this... thing which you have brought to Me?" He had queried, brows furrowed and head tilted in muted curiosity.
"Why, my dear Icewarden, it is a scarf!"
The Windsinger beamed proudly as He held up the long piece of cloth for the other god's inspection. Its vibrant aqua hues matched the expanse of the sky, the sheen of distant icebergs under sunlight. Not waiting to ask the Icewarden's permission, He flung the scarf around His companion's neck and looped it snugly into place.
Touching at the soft fabric with His claws, the ice god was still wracked with puzzlement.
"You mean this as a gift?" He rumbled. "It is for me?"
"Indeed~" warbled the Windsinger. "You see, it is only that I feel rather responsible for the rather bare state of Your hide, as it were. Perhaps it is foolish to presume that the Lord of Ice should ever feel chilled, but I thought that this trifle would help the matter somewhat. Please, do accept it, a humble trinket though it may be."
Too bewildered to properly respond - and oh how often He found himself in that state with the wind god - the Icewarden could only nod with a grunt of affirmation. He was left wondering over the strange token for days after. Never before had He been given a present. Moreover, never before had He been the recipient of another's fond attention. The only real conclusion He could come to was that the Windsinger was a very strange deity indeed.
After that initial instance, the wind god would bring all manner of gifts as offerings to the Icewarden. The cold god learned to just accept the tributes He was given and in time even looked forward to seeing what specimens the other deity would bring Him next.
Sand-bleached fossils from the Shifting Expanse, ancient manuscripts from the Sunbeam Ruins, sparkling precious gems from Dragonhome - the Windsinger brought a bit of everything from the dragon realms. The Icewarden took to stowing them away within the Fortress, His ever growing hoard preserved in the ice.
It did occur to Him that He ought to return the favor out of politeness, but once again He was at a loss in terms of social etiquette. So the Icewarden merely let the thought pass out of His mind, resolving to let the Windsinger do as He as wished in this matter as He did in all things. And if the frigid god warmed up ever so slight over the years to the other deity's open heart and gift-giving, then it was His own business.
And what had begun as a seemingly simple contest between the two gods had bloomed into a reluctant friendship.
Decades of visitations and riddle-making become a tradition between the gods. The Icewarden's time began to run on a clock that centered upon the Windsinger's comings and goings in His territory, matters having long since moved beyond the confines of the original wager.
So when the god of air suddenly ceased in His visitations altogether, the Icewarden was understandably quite disturbed by His companion's unexplained absence.
Apprehension had the cold god on edge as the months stretched on without word from Windsinger. For days at a time He would pace upon the ramparts of the Fortress, eyes upon the sky and ears open for the faintest whistle of the breeze He now knew so well. Yet He saw neither scale nor feather of the god, heard neither laughter nor song, no sign whatsoever of the only one amongst His kind that He called "friend."
At last He admitted even to Himself that He was deeply worried. His worry manifested itself in the very realm around Him. Blizzards and hailstorms began to spawn all over the Icefield. The tundras and mountains became impossibly dark and frigid and would have killed every thing if there had been a living soul in the land to begin with. The land and its master grieved sorrowfully for the absence of the wind god.
What has happened to Him? the Icewarden thought mournfully, His mind drawing the worst conclusions. Had some ill fortune befallen His friend? Had one of the other gods struck Him down in war? Or had the bright spirit of the wind, perhaps, having His fill of the Icefield and its lord, finally grown weary of visiting after all?
There had been a time He would not have cared a whit about the well-being of another. Once He would have been content to pass eternity silent and alone. Yet now He was all but undone by the mere absence of the wind god He adored. The Icewarden's heart, it seemed, was no longer so cold or so untouchable.
One day, He could endure the waiting no longer.
The Icewarden left His home in search for the Windsinger. He set out across the sky, streaking like a living comet through the blue. He moved beyond His borders for the first time since the beginning of the Age, determined and prepared to search every distant corner of the world for whom He sought.
As it happened, however, He did not have to travel very far at all to find His Windsinger.
He found the bright god resting upon the steppes of His own famed plateau. The serpentine form was coiled loosely and dozing upon a bed of fuzzy white. Upon closer inspection, the Icewarden saw that it was a great nest made out of His very own fur.
"Now You are an indolent cur! Wake up and explain Yourself!" cried the hitherto worried god, frost spreading in angry waves about Him where his paws touched the earth.
Yet the other deity kept on snoring and sleeping. Thrusting His muzzle towards the Windsinger, He poked His chilly nose right into the long vulnerable belly of the Shade-cursed drake.
Rousing at last and wriggling like a shocked Spiral, the Windsinger shrilled indignantly, "Ah, by the magic that shaped Us! Whatever is all this fuss about?"
"I thought You wounded or Shade-possessed or worse, You great windbag!"
Taking a moment to compose Himself, He went on in a slightly quieter tone. "There are those among the Eleven who do care for the, erm, fate of Their peers. Sending the occasional messenger to alert the rest of Us of your status - at the very least - would be most prudent on your part, Windsinger. Have you been here all this time, napping the eons away?"
Eyes lighting and lips drawing upward in a knowing smile, the flippant wind god merely shook His head.
"Now You are one to talk about concern for one's peers. My, but You are the dramatic nesting mother dragon, My dear friend. I never would have guessed. And while I have indeed been keeping to My own territory of late, I have hardly been lazy. You merely caught Me during a brief recess. I have been quite busy, You know."
"You? Busy?" scoffed the Icewarden, still rather cross. "The sun would sooner drop from the very sky!"
"Do not mock Me, if You please. Indeed, all this toiling has been for Your sake. The act of creation, I will have You know, is an exhausting endeavor even for a god."
Moving aside, the Windsinger revealed a pile of fluff He had been concealing within His coils. Initially, the Icewarden could not see how the veritable mountain of fur differed from the rest of odd nest. Then, a silent gasp escaping Him, He saw it... or rather, them.
Tiny figures, made of His fur and fashioned with a decidedly draconic bearing. Their pelts were all the colors of winter: the dark blues of the arctic sea, the greys of ice and stone, the white of the purest snow, and even the ebony of the long solstice night. Fuzzy splayed toes, ideal for moving with ease across thin ice sheets and through thick drifts. Flared antlers, perfect for scraping away in the tundra for food beneath the snow. Leathery wings, broad and taught for gliding upon the mountain winds. Gentle faces and strong bodies, warm and hardy bearing even in sleep.
They were, in a word, perfect. No doubt, of all the creatures of the world, they would survive an existence - thrive, even - in the Icewarden's harsh and bitter lands. And, with a start, He realized that this was the Windsinger's exact purpose - children of the southern god's very own, born of ice yet shaped by the expert strokes of the wind.
"For the longest time," the god of breezes said in the wake of His companions awed silence, "I watched from afar as You sequestered Yourself beneath the ice and snow. I watched You as You lost Your connection with the world that birthed and loved You. Year by year, I saw Ice itself begin to slip away from the circle of the Eleven.
"When the Others had forgotten Your very name, I knew I could stand by no longer. I resolved to set out and fetch You, to bring You back to Us. Slowly but surely I wanted to draw You about of the shell You had crafted about Yourself, and I like think I succeeded, at least part.
"Icewarden, though You may not realize it, this world needs You. We - the Eleven, Our children - are not whole without You. Light is hollow without Shadow to offset its brightness even more. Nature cannot progress without the trials of the Plague. Fire must have Water to temper its passions. And the Wind's song is an incomplete melody without Ice to help reach its highest and truest notes."
Scooping up the little and as yet unborn dragons in His grasp, the Windsinger held out His creations in humble offering.
"To My dearest companion, I bring My final gifts. Firstly, these children, a new breed to cherish and protect, to bring life to Your lands if You but bless them with life in turn. And secondly, My loyalty and friendship eternal, to stand by and give You strength in the darkest of times if You but permit Me."
The Icewarden is a cold god, ever noble and unreachable in His divinity, ever stubborn and unyielding in His bearing. Yet on that day so long ago, a warmth to rival the flaming core of the Great Furnace took hold in His chest. And though most would deny it, there are those among us who believe it exists still.
And, in perhaps the only instance in His long life, The Icewarden smiled.
"The first gift I shall most graciously and gladly receive," He replied at long last. "The second, however... Oh, have I been mistaken this whole time, then? For I thought, indeed, that You had become My friend every since the moment You dared to cross My borders."
A whistling peal of heart-deep laughter echoed from the Windsinger in joy, and the Icewarden found Himself echoing the sentiment. Roaring winds and frostbitten air mixed and intermingled about Them in a wild song, becoming a palpable force about them. It merged and spiraled, high into the sky, taking the shape of a great hurricane. And ever after it was known as the Twisting Crescendo. And ever after it has spun upon the border the Plateau and the Icefield, a living testament to the joy of the two gods.
And so it came to pass that the Icewarden took under His wings the children crafted for Him by the wind god. Hollowing out a safe haven for them in the heart of His land, He named the breed for the flat and gentle land which was their birthplace - Tundras. And He cared for His children forever after, if sometimes aloofly and from afar. For though He was a god perfectly capable of passion and feeling, a deity of Ice had to maintain some reserved dignity, after all.
Therefore, each and every Tundra today is endowed with the hardy and unchanging nature of Ice and the wandering, laughing spirit of the Wind.
(And if the breed has somewhat of a pension for forgetfulness, well, it is entirely the fault of the Windsinger. Obviously.)
Fin.
**Directly quoted from the Encyclopedia - Epilogue: Flight Rising
