Basically rewrote it, so it is a little more friendly.
Let nothing go wrong today, for the Sisters are pickier than Nanny and they will choose one of the other girls to be their Apprentice in Training. The shame upon the name of my family would be too much to handle. Mama, I know you are watching me from the stars, keep me strong.
Lani was huddled in a corner of the Towemea Great Hall, home to the Towemea Sisters. Her nervousness was growing worse by the minute, looking at the strong faces of all the girls that crowded around her. Some were staring flat out at her, some were turning their haughty noses up; she looked like a simple farm girl, with her plain smock and lank black hair, whilst they wore the finest silks and stunk of money. They expect me to be weak. Or to be like Glendolina. I can't live up to their expectations, no matter what I do. I don't even know whether I am strong, compared to these other girls. How can I compete with their pedigree? Three women appeared from nowhere in the centre of the hall. Their imperial looks of almost disgust commanded even the most snotty of the potential Scients to silence their self-important mouths.
“We will call out names in a randomized order. You will go with Ginta and be assessed on your skills. The assessments will also be randomized, so some of you young ladies who are planning to swap hints, cannot cheat.” A death-glare was sent out to certain girls in the crowd, making them gulp. “Whilst an assessment is enduring, the rest of you will be detained in here, where you will entertain yourselves, whilst me and my sister, Chema, look over you.” The icy tone of Amelda suited her strict appearance; her robes were black with no embellishments, as the other two did and her structure was meticulously thin.
“The first name I would like to call out is: Lani Mayoin, from Tumblegreat. Please come this way, dear.” An unexpected homely tone of voice came from Ginta, smiling at Lani, who thought she was going to throw up any second. She felt the stares on her back, as she made her way through the throng of her peers and down the implausibly long Hall. “Have no fear. I can see, through your thick aura of nervousness, that you are very strong. You were trained well by Mildweather, no doubt.”
“N Nanny trained me to the limitations of her skills. I had to do most of the training, myself." She didn't know what to say, so concentrating on not throwing up her mind went blank. They reached a small door that Lani would have missed, if she hadn't nearly walked into Ginta, when she walked in front of her.
"The assessment starts now. In this room, I will tell you what to do, and then quite simply, you will do it." Ginta opened the door and stepped to the side to let Lani in.
The room was no bigger than 10 metres in length, with pock marked white walls and a set of awkward-looking wooden targets, hovering at a sedate pace over her head. Strangely, she felt herself calm; the butterflies and sick deflated. She already knew what to do, she just needed the word to start. This was the first exercise Nanny had shown her, back when she had only just mastered the art of summoning the magic. She began to smile.
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“Son, I want you to be the one sent to the Towemea Sisters. I am proud of your progress in the arts of healing and alchemy, even more than any of your brothers. You have achieved so much and would do a lot better with the Sisters, where you can prove your worth of power outside of healing the little one's cut knees and Grannies' rheumatism.” The middle aged man, fat and balding, wheezed to his youngest son, with a proud smile on his pudgy face that spoke volumes of 'don't disappoint me' to him. The gaudy yellow of the jacket that he wore always made his son sick to the stomach. To him, his father was nothing but a moral-less greedy man, always ready to bend over to have piles of money sifting through his fat, greasy fingers. Bobinus, with his slight but strong build and penchant for wearing no other colour but black, always found that he wished his mother had never gone away with the Prince who wooed her away five years ago. Not that she was better than him, but she would never use his talents to gain money. She firmly believed in the arts being used to do good in the world, not for money.
“I am honoured Father, that you chose me. I will go and make the journey to Towemea when I have completed the set of phials I was working on. I promise to make you proud.” Bobinus didn't want to go. His dead tone and the loud exhalation of breath at the end of that sentence proved that to his father, who overlooked this and views his son as the money-making commodity as he was for him. To have a hero in the family, is to gain fame and when you do something as rare-to-come-by as the art of healing and substance manipulation well, you could say that that the gold purse increases thousandfold.
Bobinus could see the gold pieces shining in his eyes when he looked at him one last time and turned away from his Father and raced down the stairs, to the Laboratory that he called his home, within his home. “Good bye, Father.” His voice carried over his retreating shoulder.
The Laboratory was nothing but a basement, large and sparsely decorated, save for a rather large cupboard full of the materials of the trade, a meagre working table, covered with metal sheets and some very curious looking elegant bottles. The table was accompanied with a wooden bench that was worn in the shape of a bottom, from years of Bobinus practising the art of alchemy on seemingly endless sheets of metal and sacks full of sand, kindly lent to him from the Flayshinuas, who lived in the Desert land, Theomard.
This room was the reason he did not want to leave. He didn't want to leave all of his discoveries and his blatant flaunting of the minuscule reserves of magic he had, for he knew that as soon as he would be gone, his Father, Mr Moneymaker Aranigob would root about and make money off anything he found by selling it to the King. Or some rich merchant from Competyi or, even worse, from Seedelen. He hated only one thing more than his father, and that was the religion of Nash, that had caused more wars over the past few thousand years. He shuddered to think of the losses this fake 'King' had cost the world, particularly here in Candinia.
Opening the cupboard door, Bobinus grabbed the large black bag from the bottom shelf and carried to the table. Shoving some of the sheets of metal to the side, he placed that bag down and began hurriedly cramming all of the contents of the table into it, not caring if the phials were going to be broken by the metal. He raced over to the cupboard again but this time pushed out an entire shelf of phials that had herbs, sands, metals and liquids that he needed. They fell to the ground. No crash was heard because they floated upwards and very slowly, made their way for the bag. Wasting no time, Bobinus flashed over to a certain floor board, flicked it open with a clever stamp and grabbed as many of the papers that kept hidden there as he could. They went into the now bulging bag. The strings were pulled tightly to seal it and with a swing of arms, it was heaved upon his shoulders. Slamming the door closed with his foot, Bobinus hoped that his Father wasn't already loitering in the corridors to spy on his room.
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