"—The graduation ceremony will officially begin in thirty minutes. Students inside the First Grand Hall who are not participating in the ceremony, please leave as soon as possible. Relatives of graduates may remain in the circular corridor on the first floor to observe the ceremony!"
"—Graduates, please find your academy's formation and wait patiently in your assigned ranks! Noise, horseplay, and similar behavior are strictly prohibited!"
"—How did a little fox get onto the stage? Whose pet was left unattended? Let me emphasize once again: graduates may bring pets and constructed lifeforms to the ceremony, but they must keep control of them. Pets are strictly forbidden from running about. Once discovered, they will be expelled from the venue!"
"—Members of the Forest Flower Choir, please prepare to enter. Abanaik Band, please stand by!"
"—The graduation ceremony will begin in twenty-five minutes..."
Slow, clear, resonant announcements emerged from the Trumpet Flowers twined around the auditorium's surrounding pillars. Some Trumpet Flowers directed the guests in the viewing stands to their seats; some reminded the graduates in the center of the hall to maintain proper decorum; others hummed songs single-mindedly from beginning to end, as though the surrounding clamor did not exist.
The Forest Flower Choir's intermittent a cappella sound check rang out.
The gentle prelude of the first movement of Berlioz's 1827 Symphonie Fantastique, "Reveries and Passions," slowly flowed through the air above the First Grand Hall. Ribbons of richly colored light rolled through the starry sky overhead along with the music, soothing the fervent and urgent magical fluctuations in the auditorium.
At the center of the hall.
The graduates of the four academies stood in four clearly divided rectangular formations, dressed in their respective academy robes and quietly awaiting the moment their deans would move their tassels. Huge, translucent academy emblems