A final dream. Francine had aged, her hair the silver of stars, pinned with crystal flowers.

She stepped to the plinth of the citadel’s amphitheatre, as she had once so many years ago.

Before the plinth was a large crystal bowl of ash. Arrayed around the bowl were the symbols of primordial elements, interconnected by the complex lines of an alchemist’s star.

As before, the tiered rows of marble seats were filled with rapt and eager faces, the silence tense with anticipation. Only this audience was not dressed in the robes of graduating students, new acolytes of the Guilds. These figures wore the bronze, silver, and gold trim of advanced practitioners of alchemy.

Francine cleared her throat and began to sing, a low and steady hum. As she sang, the sigil for the element of Ash began to glow, a slow pulse of amber red. The charcoal within the crystal bowl began to tremble, writhing into floral shapes as the bowl, too, began to sing.

As the light of the sigil became brighter, almost too bright to look upon, Francine raised a gong of brass and crystal. Tapping the gong once with the polished wood of a mallet, the ash within the bowl disappeared.

Francine hummed new tones, a lilting melody of three notes as the sigil for Air illuminated, a bright honeyed yellow.

Without ceasing her hum, Francine reached forward and tossed a handful of blue petals into the bowl. They caught and spun, tumbling in spirals within the bowl as they were caught by invisible eddies of air.

As one, the audience gasped.

A new tone, a faster melody, a ring of the gong and the air became water. Small beads pattered like rain to fill the crystal bowl. The sigil for Water sparked to life, a bright aqua green.

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Many members of the audience shifted in their seats, leaning forward the better to see a miracle at work.

Another ring of the gong, and Francine’s voice rose like a flute above the hushed mutters of her enraptured audience.

The sigil for Fire roared to life, the burning blue of hottest blaze as the water combusted to flames.

The audience was openly exclaiming at the display, standing in their seats as robed guards attempted to maintain quiet and order.

Francine heeded no-one, her attention fixed on the display at hand. Visibly fatiguing, she raised mallet to gong another time, whistling a high, keening tune.

The flame twisted upon itself, spinning into the lightless vacuum of true Void. The corresponding sigil blinkered a searing violet, testing the limits of visible light.

Caressing her gong in ringing spirals of her mallet, Francine unwound the Void, back to Flame, to Water, to Air, and to Ash. The transmutation so complete that nothing seemed changed at all.

The quiet in that moment, as Francine placed her gong on the plinth, was thunderous.

Francine gazed out across the faces of the hall, her eyes filled with starfire and victory.

She had revealed through song and colour the primordial spectrum of substance and nothingness. The archetypes of creative matter made into living proof of a unified cosmic design.

Her great work was completed. Her work was just now truly beginning.

Applause erupted as, one by one, the alchemists began to clap, standing in deafening ovation. Francine smiled and bowed, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Claudia felt her colours erupt, sparkling with pride and wonder. Distantly, she recalled the words her sister had spoken, the night before her Choosing so long ago.

You need to be sure. Absolutely certain of what is worth giving the whole of yourself over to…

This, Claudia thought to herself, as the last of her ghost’s lights bloomed with surety. This is worth it.

With a final wish, a last burst of intent and sunset-coloured light, Claudia’s pride, her respect, her admiration and her love threaded skyward.

In those moments as she stepped from the plinth, down into the shadows of that hallowed hall, Francine’s eyes burned with the light of the setting sun.

Claudia dreamed no more.

~~~

The End