Notes

It was different from Azura’s dance that yielded and gently coaxed the world to watch and come aid her will. It was assertive, commanding, not in a forceful way, but as if it was only natural for the world to bend to her ways, that /she/ can bend the natural laws to her will. All eyes couldn’t be helped but drawn to her, not as a gentle murmur to come watch her dance, but as if there was a spell cast over everyone’s minds, an invisible hand turning their heads towards the performance. For all Corrin knows, there was.

There were no wind instruments or percussion, unseen and unsung yet heard all the same, but an orchestra of all instruments harmonizing into a hypnotizing symphony. Corrin could almost point out where each instrument was. There, the string instruments. There, the brass. A crescendo on that step, and a decrescendo on that spin.

Magic could be felt, seen, in every movement, dancing and wrapping around her. They seeped out from every pore and crack of the earth and through the walls and spilled out from the tips of her fingers. Corrin had felt dragon veins, yes, but they were only faintly visible. This, they thought, was how dragon veins were created.

At the end, she held her pose for one, two seconds, then collapsed. From the many practices Corrin had watched of Acura, it wasn’t a bad kind of collapse, when the performer overexerted themselves and needed a healing stave, but the pleasant kind, one of relief when a performer had finished their magnum opus and felt that no movement could be better, so they stop moving instead. Still, Corrin felt the urge to go catch her fall.

Breathing deeply, Layla pushed herself onto her arms, and gazed up at her fellow dragons, her expression one of a cautious excitement, as if she wanted to be happy but afraid the spell would break if she did, “The curse… Did… Did I?”

The surrounding figures’ wide smiles and enthusiastic nods gave her the answer.