#she was a dancer learning from the best performer in the placidium

[warwaged-moved]

Though concern bade her return home, she had not been prepared for what greeted her arrival.

When Irelia left home for the Placidium, the only sorrow had been that of parting. Ruu had begged her to go, while Kai complained to their parents he was not allowed to leave and train under the Kinkou, despite being a year older. Ohn had given her a hug and wished her luck, then tried to comfort mother and father. 

Not one of them begrudged her decision ( One must needs be blind not to see your talent, O-ma had said, when Irelia told her lady Zinneia herself had agreed to teach her. Your parents will understand. ) They had, even if they did not want her to leave. They loved her, mother had said, and to deprive her of the opportunity to learn from the best the Placidium had to offer would be no act of love, but of selfishness.

None had been happier than her O-ma, though. It had been her grandmother who taught her, when she was still a little girl, each movement of their traditional dance. They danced with silks, grandmother used to tell her, but their art was more precious than even its beauty suggested. It connected them to the Spirit of Ionia itself, she would say; and through it, magic was brought to life in ages past.

She had not believed, regardless of her respect for O-ma and love for dancing. Even as she left, accompanied by Zelos in her journey to the Placidium, Irelia sought only to become a performer like the one that would teach her. Every spring, she would watch the dancers perform in the festival, ofttimes from Zelos’ own shoulders when she was not tall enough to see. None had been happier for her path than O-ma, but Zelos had been the one most proud ( to the point of embarrassing her, Irelia had claimed, when he began to brag on her behalf for any who would hear ).

They were all dead now.

She had not seen their bodies. When she arrived, the noxians had all but claimed the place as their own, steering ionian civilians through the streets like cattle. The Xan were a noble family; their house, ancient and with more room to spare than most others in the surroundings, was being prepared to be occupied. What flowers were left from those that mother had grown in the gardens lay trampled by noxian steel; many had been removed when the earth was turned to dig the seven graves of the house’s former inhabitants.

For one ever so sure on her feet, it felt like there was no longer a ground to stand upon.

The conflict did not take place long before, though Irelia would not realize that until later on. As the fate of her family settled, she felt only the numbness and despair of grief, frozen in place as everything her loved ones held dear was thrown away, still not fully grasping the fact she would not see them again. 

If asked, she would not know what came upon her, where the courage came from. It was just impulse, desperate, perhaps hopeless. One of the soldiers carried the metal crest of her family; the one she had been taught to honor and love, connection to those who came before, and symbol that would one day connect her spirit to those who came after.

Much like dancing, there was no thought, just movement.

Xan Irelia, then last of her family, a twelve-year-old girl, weaponless and unprepared, ran towards the steel-clad noxian instead of away. She grasped at the crest, trying to wrestle it from the soldier, desperate to free it from noxian hands. It is only by the sheer surprise he shows at her defiance that she almost wrenches it free -- only to be hurled to the ground with strength far beyond necessary to stop a girl with no proficiency in combat.

Admiral Duqal, the leader of the invading force in her village, is the one who pushes her away violently. Somewhere between annoyance at the upstart child and delight in having one to make a show of punishing, he orders the soldier to place the crest on the ground. I want to see it in pieces, he said, and immediately his men sought to obey the order, a heavy iron maul used to tear the symbol of her family to pieces.

“ There is still place in the gardens, ” Irelia recalled he had said afterwards “ Dig another grave and get rid of her. ” 

She knew death would come for her, but she did not care. It didn’t even matter that the slap of the armored hand that had sent her to the ground hurt. Though the tears had begun to fall some while ago, she barely noticed them. Her gaze remained upon the shattered metal. The pieces felt like a part of her -- torn apart, broken, something once whole now destroyed beyond repair. 

They felt heavy and weightless, somewhere between the weight of grief and the nothingness of being numb. They felt... they felt. An extension of herself, pulsing with magic she had never known she possessed, resonating with a feeling most out of place --- the serenity that always took over when she danced with silks, only more vivid, sharper. 

Instinct is that of one who had performed the same practiced movements for years, since she was a little girl, learning from her O-ma how it was done. In a single fluid moment, the shards swiftly fly towards the soldiers, cutting them clean. Before the others could recover, the would-be blades flew back to her, once more just the pieces of a broken crest as she gathered them in her arms and ran.

Admiral Duqal had haunted her every night since. She did not recall the other men’s faces, only his, though the soldiers she fell would often make appearances in her worst dreams, faceless, lifeless, and yet trying to drag her along. 

Irelia wished she could genuinely claim some of her tears had been for the lives she took and the blood she spilled. Even at twelve, she could not. She had been terrified, fearful, revulsed; never guilty. Admiral Duqal had haunted her every night since -- and every night, her chest burning with rage and resentment, she promised he too would have a taste of her blades.

She would never be whole again; but like the pieces of her family crest, the break had only made her sharpest.