Valley of Music - Astire

*Step*.

Every beat of the music reverberated through Astire's body.  Or was it through her soul?

*Step*.

Each pulse rippled through her, the gossamer strands of light that made up her phantasmal arm pulsing and flashing a rainbow of hues in response, sending prismatic patterns dancing across the cavern wall.

*Step*.

Matching the beat of the music was easy, for her, at least for something as simple as moving. There was always music in her soul, music only she could hear, and it took effort not to move to it in day-to-day life.  Here, though, the beat would suffer no refusal, and everyone had to dance to it.

*Step*.

As far as she was concerned, this was almost perfect.

*Step-step-step*.

A quick flurry of movement accompanied a crescendo in the music, and she found herself face-to-face with a bat almost as big as she was, screeching and beating its wings to a swift tempo, with two more behind.

*Step*.

The bat flew at her, and she slipped aside, her blade flashing from its sheathe, carving the air and monster alike.  She raised her other hand, allowing a thread of light to slip from its normal form, grasping the light in her phantasmal fist and flicking it out, where it writhed like a serpent and came to rest in front of the two remaining bats, blazing bright as they came closer.

*Step*.

The light faded back to its softer levels, the charred corpses of the bats fell to the ground as she stepped between them.  Even in death, the impacts of their bodies with the carven floor was perfectly in sync.  She advanced, the ribbon of light swirling behind her like some kind of inverse shadow, tracing intricate patterns to the underlying melodies.

*Step.*

She saw the skeletons, but she almost didn't see the hulking mass of rock coming - not because it was dark in the caverns (not that the darkness had ever hindered her before) or because she wasn't looking, but merely because she had grown accustomed to the way that the beat controlled everything.  But the golem was stronger than the bats and skeletons she'd been fighting before, strong enough that it wasn't helpless in the grasp of the beat the way she was.

*Step.*

She leapt back, shifting her posture and sliding her blade back into its scabbard, raising both hands. The ribbon of light disintegrated into a thousand motes that began to swirl around her, brighter and brighter until there was a physical force there that stirred the dust and soot at her feet, and she held the power as long as she could, unable to tell if the beat was building to a crescendo for her or against her -

*Step-step-step*.

The blast of light tore free of her, fraying her phantasmal arm as it slammed into the golem with enough force to lift the hulking mass off its feet and slam it backwards, and she leapt, a whirl of motion in mid-air as her blade left a trail of light in the air that arced towards the golem and took its head.

*Step*.

She landed perfectly with the beat even though she could never have timed her jump that precisely, sweeping forwards in a pirouette as the golem collapsed behind her, raising her free hand, and a pulse of positive energy leapt from it, washing over the skeletons and reducing them to harmless bones.

*Step*.

The beat let her breathe, let her recover, but even now, every motion she made she realised was connected to one of the underlying melodies if not the main beat.  Even her panting as she tried to recover her breath was in time with the beat, just faster, just as the wingbeats of the bats had been.

*Step*.

This place was impossible, incredible, mystical - and terrifying.  Whatever this beat was, it was stronger than anything she'd ever seen in her life, and she wasn't sure if she wanted to stay forever or run as far and fast from this place as she could.

*Step*.

She straightened up, the beat buoying her on, deeper into the caverns.

*Step-step-step*.