Birdsong in the Northern Hemisphere is beautiful. Soft, lyrical, sedate, the twittering of thrushes and the chirping of robins. 

Birds from the Southern Hemisphere sound like angry dinosaurs.

The sky fills with screeching. There's nothing like it, no human throat could make a sound as harsh and metallic. One could wake a drunk from sleep. A flock could raise the dead. White birds emerge from every tree, blotting out the sky. Ten thousand pairs of wings fill the air, ten thousand throats screeching their warcry. Together their sound shakes the underworld. These are the soldiers of Princess Jezara, a weaponized mass migration, the swinging jaws of a trap meant to isolate a foe most terrible. 

Fallweaver smiles mutely and gives you the thumbs up. Blue lights in her ears - some noise-cancelling technomancy? A weakness. Leaving her unprotected would have left you with no way out.

But before you can exploit it, the machete swings down. One of the screaming birds has transformed into a warrior, bright in full-body warpaint. She attacks in chereographed sequence before taking wing and rejoining the whirlwind of the flock, lost in the storm of birds - as behind you another bird changes into a second handmaiden who launches her own offensive. This is the shapeshifter's chosen battleground: to hide amidst a storm of birds, where any feather might conceal a blade.