The Dragon and the Songstress
is a one-shot Fire Emblem Fates fanfic by The Apocryphal One.
During a bedtime story session, a young Kana gets upset that the only fairy tales involving dragons depict the creatures as evil, and asks her mother Azura to tell a story about a good dragon. While those kinds of stories don't exist, Azura doesn't want to disappoint her daughter, so she makes one up on the spot using the events of the Revelation path and her relationship with Corrin as a very loose basis.
Thus comes the tale of the dragon prince Kamui, and how he saved the human princess Aqua from the curse of a nameless evil sorcerer.
The Dragon and the Songstress contains the following tropes:
- Birds of a Feather: Kamui and Aqua get along because they can empathize with each other's loneliness.
- The Cavalry: Kamui is almost overwhelmed by the sorcerer's minions...when the dragons appear with the humans, having allowed them to ride on their backs to save the day.
- Didn't Think This Through: Kana gets upset from hearing a story about a dragon getting slain, as she's part dragon. Azura realizes a little too late that reading a story like that to her daught wasn't a good idea.
- Enemy Mine: The humans and dragons can't stand each other, but they care about Aqua and Kamui respectively, and they're eventually willing to work together for their sake.
- Evil Sorcerer: The Big Bad of the fairy tale is an evil sorcerer that has cursed Aqua.
- Fantastic Racism: In Azura's tale, humans and dragons are said to hate each other. Kamui thinks Aqua will flee from him when they first meet just because he's a dragon. Later on, the other dragons refuse to help him figure out how to break her curse just because she's a human. The two factions eventually overcome this for the sake of their respective prince/princess.
- Framing Device: The story of Kamui and Aqua, the meat of the fic, is being told by Azura to Kana as a(n impromtu) bedtime story.
- Fractured Fairy Tale: Some of the conventions of fairy tales are purposefully inverted or Played With. Instead of the protagonist being a handsome prince who slays an evil dragon to rescue a princess, it's a dragon prince that goes off to slay an evil human. Additionally, the only true antagonist is the sorcerer; while both humans and dragons are portrayed as being obstacles to Kamui, they aren't unambiguously evil and are able to eventually overcome their mutual distrust and work together, whereas in most fairy tales anyone in the way of the protagonist is evil.
- Interspecies Romance: The dragon Kamui falls for the human Aqua, and, after he acquires the means to change into human form, they eventually get married.
- Mythology Gag: The characters in Azura's story are very heavily based off the ones in Fates. Kamui is Corrin, Aqua is Azura (doubles as a naming gag, as Kamui and Aqua are their Japanese names), the sorcerer is Anankos, the rainbow-scaled dragon is the Rainbow Sage, the humans are Hoshido, and the dragons are Nohr. Justified in this case, since Azura had to come up with the story off the top of her head and found inspiration with what was most familiar to her.
- Necromancer: The unnamed sorcerer has the power to animate the dead, which he uses to send Undead Mooks against Kamui.
- No Ontological Inertia: The curse inflicted on Aqua goes away after the sorcerer who inflicted it upon her is slain.
- No Name Given: The rainbow colored dragon that assists Kamui and the sorcerer that cursed Aqua are not given names. Azura only gives them descriptors to identify them.
- The Noun and the Noun: The title.
- Oh, Crap!: Azura has a brief moment of panic when Kana asks for a story about a good dragon. Those kind of tales don't exist, but Azura also doesn't want to disappoint Kana and cause her to cry any more than she already has.
- Ominous Floating Castle: The sorcerer's castle is described as being in the sky, where only a dragon can reach. This is obviously an analog for Gyges, the castle in the floating continent that was Valla.
- Storybook Episode: In comparison to Apo's other Fire Emblem works.
- Undead Mooks: The sorcerer has a legion of undead that he uses as soldiers.
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: In-Universe. Azura's story is basically a very simplified retelling of an important part of her past (Fire Emblem Fates: Revelation) that also employs some In-Universe Artistic License to appease Kana.
- Villain-Beating Artifact: An unnamed "sacred blade" is said to be the only way to kill the sorcerer.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Kamui is able to assume a human form using a stone given to him by the rainbow-colored dragon.
