"Mother, who are they?" I asked, my eyes still glued on the large group of people we just passed. I'd seen them before in the guild, dressed in their overcoats, strange goggles that made me dizzy, and always smelling of brimstone and gunpowder. Today they seemed to be lobbing what seemed to be large balls of explosives across the Guild's immaculate lawn and blowing large chunks of dirt up into the air.
"Those are the Guild's Alchemists," she said, that hint of disapproval in her voice I knew well. "Always throwing those dangerous bombs around and setting things on fire. Lunatics, if you ask me," she turned to face me and shrugged small half-shrug. "It's a shame, really, that your father decided to accept those people into our guild. It used to be such a …" she paused, searching for the right word, "professional," she smiled, satisfied, and looked back forward. "Yes, it used to be such a professional place, this Guild. Well, it was, before those…animals joined us. Don't become one of them, Adeline. They are but the practitioners of the primitive of the arcane arts, lacking the discipline to do much of anything else…" and she droned on, saying something or other about how alchemists are really just glorified doctors who grasped the very basics of magic… But of course, I wasn't listening.
I was too busy snapping on goggles lobbing bombs across the lawn.