"Hurry up, you two!" Lady Ascart said, pulling Lord Claes and the Third Prince away from Katarina, "I know she was totally amazing and you probably fell in love with her all over again when you saw her, but we have another show to put on! Get dressed so we can get to it, and you can continue this at the ball!"

"But…" Lord Claes said, looking pained.

The Third Prince just looked insolent.

Prince Alan sighed, grabbed the two by the backs of their costumes and started to drag them to the dressing rooms. "I'll get these two dressed," he said, "You two get going."

"You're officially Best Prince, Alan!" Lady Ascart chirped happily, before she dived into her own dressing room. With a speed that would have most noble ladies trying to look innocent as their menfolk sent suspicious looks and pointed questions about why they took so long to get dressed, Lady Ascart was changed and out again. She grabbed her brother by the hand and started dragging him as well. "Come on brother, I need your help for this magic I'm going to do."

"Magic?" Lord Ascart said, looking briefly back to Katarina before allowing himself to be led away by his other beloved. "What magic will you be doing, Sophia?"

Sophia puffed up with pride. "I'm going to make an announcement!"

Maria was already at their chosen launch site, behind the east building. It was far enough that most of the festival events didn't reach back there, which was ideal. She was in the process of lighting the rods with the slow match when the Lord Claes and the princes finally arrived, wearing the working clothes that had apparently been a gift from Katarina. It was a surprisingly practical gift, all things considered, a tough, well-wearing set of garb for rough work that was all right to stain. Not things a noble would ever think they need, except for the girl who used one all the time.

The two still looked disgruntled about something, but Lord Claes was businesslike as he took down the protective hardened earth cover around the prepared charges of gunpowder. After examining her notes about the amount of powder she'd used in a mortar versus the maximum achieved height, the Third prince had not only fashioned a decent powder to height ratio from so little, and seemingly disparate, data (Maria had been planning to take more samples before risking making a correlation) that actually seemed to be right, he had managed to devise choreography for this using the differing volumes of the colored charges upon exploding, the various heights that could consistently be achieved and the few colors they had.

The whole array was already prepared, carefully loaded pre-measured paper bags full of lofting charge in deep holes in thick stone blocks, packed and with the color charge already on top, the alternating fast and slow match poking out of the holes, still unlit. Lord Claes had used his magic to extract the stone from underground and what he'd learned in lithology classes to reinforce and layer the rock to resist the forces the charges would be exerting on them. On launch, they would also be surrounded by a thick layer of dirt in case they still shattered.

Every charge had been prepared the night before, but they quickly inspected each hole to check for dirt, calling Lord Claes to extract them when they found it. They did this twice before they heard Sophia's voice echoing through the air, the signal to begin.

"Lord and Ladies, high and low," she announced, her voice carried by a combination of her and her brother's magic as Maria and Alan started using the rods to light the fuses, occasionally blowing on the matches to get them to brighter flame. "We are pleased to present, for the pleasure of all, an entertaining display of practical alchemy. Please direct to your attention to sky in the east." There was a pause. "No, the other east!" Another pause. "It's were the sun comes up in the morning!" Pause. "Oh right, not many here ever see that… Could someone please point those nearest to you to the east?"

The Third Prince sighed, and raised a hand, launching a jet of fire far into the air overhead, tilted away from the holes in the stone.

"Yes, that way, where the fire is. Thank you, your highness! And no, that wasn't the display."

Maria worried for this country, she really did.

She and Alan signaled the matches were lit and burning fast as they leapt behind a low stone wall and into the trench on the other side. Keith made a face in concentration, raising dirt to enclose the stone blocks, and revealing a small hole at each of their bottoms, were a little black powder was now visible. The Third Prince called flame and sent fire rolling along the exposed holes at the bottom of the stone blocks.

Only one of the stone blocks cracked as the gunpowder caught, sending their charges into the sky.

They didn't have time to enjoy the sight. Maria and Alan were already running to light the fuses of the next wave…

At the Academy, in the town of Estus, and even, once they realized something was going on, in the Ministry, people stared at the night sky, lit as if by magic. Not Light Magic, of course. Anyone who's ever worked with a Light Magic wielder knows Light Magic does not actually produce visible light.

With claps like muffled thunder, the night bloomed with color. Purple, blue, red and yellow sparks flared, fell and died, making a strange, echoing musing as the very sky seemed to bloom with strange flowers.

Academy, town and ministry fell silent, staring at the wondrous sight before them– or rather, above them– as if children anew seeing magic for the first time. Even the children in Maria's care, who had seen been like before, fell silent, realizing they previous weeks had been merely spoonfuls to this feast of wonder.

After a short eternity, after much too long, after not long enough, the display ended, and only stars and the moon, beautiful corpse of the ancient goddess Gwyndolin, glittered in the sky, suddenly seeming so much less and lonely.

And then, for the second time that night, an audience went insane. All, save for the Seath-case curled up in the corner in the fetal position and crying about the rebirth of the gods or the dragons or the Old One of myth or possibly the sky falling and wishing he worked in a SANE place…

When Lord Claes, the Princes, and Maria herself finally arrived at the ball, fashionably but excusably late, they were greeted by thunderous applause as Lady Ascart quickly joined them to get her fair share of basking in adoration.

They were soon occupied with answering questions from many, starting with the First Prince their (very enthusiastic) brother, his beautiful (also enthusiastic) fiancée, Lady Hunt, and (to the 'surprise' of many) their own sire the King and Queen, who had somehow arrived unexpectedly and unannounced. To gain relief, they (intelligently but cruelly) threw Maria under the large swinging log covered in spikes by proclaiming her to be the initiator of the venture.

Maria had to be bland and uninformative as she made small talk about how she had noticed certain properties of certain salt causing a difference in coloration of flame when burned, before enthusiastically and courtier-facedly moving on to how she could arrange for such shows, but they would be expensive and time-consuming…

Even this near-blatantly asking for money did not deter many, and some nobles were eager to be the first to commission future displays from her, which she had to carefully put off without offending them, claiming she needed to finish in the Acadmy first before she would have the time…

In all this, it was almost an hour before someone finally said, "Hey, where's Katarina? Shouldn't she have gotten here by now?"