"Light-up swords would be very Lord of the Rings, which is a completely excellent reason to do things."

"If dual-use mana storage was worthwhile I'd bet it would be more common, it's much too useful to leave on the table. ...I wonder if you could do area of effect weapons, sonics or something like that, anything that's meant to stun large numbers of mals at once – " 

"Ranged weapons seem useful? You're right that you should usually run, but sometimes there's something that runs faster than you, or - in the graduation hall you're running towards most of the mals and being able to down the nastiest ones before you get within reach seems good..."

"And if you're cornered it could come up."

"Yeah, maybe. There was a kid I saw at orientation who had a very pampered gun, I guess we can see how that works out for him."

"I bet ranged weapons will be more useful when you're more powerful. Like, when you're a junior and you have to take classes in more dangerous places and you don't want to skip for mals that are just inconvenient, but also don't want to spend the mana on frying them with a spell unless you have to."

"Yeah. And in anticipation of that you might want a crossbow or whatever earlier on, for practicing."

"I think crossbows aren't good unless you're in a formation with lots of people, they take too long to load."

"I mean, it could be a magic crossbow that generates its own ammo that only lasts for four seconds, or something? I don't really know how feasible that is, though, I'm creative writing."

"Daggers that come back sounds maybe a better idea, gets you range and a hand-to-hand weapon and only one hand used up between them. Or a bayonet I guess?"

"I feel like learning to throw daggers accurately might be harder than learning to hit things with a crossbow but I don't actually know and it'd probably depend on the enchantments anyway. Though would you want the dagger back in your hand if it had just punctured something nasty?"

"It's less getting more ammo in than getting the crossbow to the point where it has enough stored energy to fire the ammo again without relying on the strength of the user. I think the thing that makes it a crossbow is the cranking mechanism? Maybe you could have it crank really fast with magic, I guess."

"..maybe it'd be less mana-intensive if it was recalling, rather than rapidly generating, ammo, but you don't have it in your hand, just back in your bow or whatever...I don't actually know for sure, though. I got all excited and got a book of famous magical weapons and then my father said, Annie, that's mostly stuff that adults spent decades on, get good at knives and if you're still alive when you're seventeen pick one of those fancy projects for graduation, not sixteen of them. And he was right, which is tragic."

"It's why I asked Annisa for a practice knife and not a sharp one, for sharp I've already got something better than we'll be able to make in here." Also you can't just ask someone to make you a maleficer's knife, that's incredibly sketchy.

"I dunno, don't people usually need more than a year of practice with making a certain kind of weapon before they make a really good one? I guess I'm probably thinking of mundanes. It does seem like you'll probably only have time to pick and get really good at one of them, though."

"Yeah. Still, good to have a list of possibilities. Just because I need to make good use of my Spanish Inquisition spellbook before I ask for another doesn't mean I don't write down ideas for what's next, then I have a lot to sift through when I have the chance."

"Does the Spanish Inquisition have good spells? - not that it really matters, I don't have Spanish."

"Wow, does the school think you have some heretics you need to torture?" 

Malak edges away from Bella with an exaggerated look of terror.

"Oh no, the spanish inquisition."

"I don't know why it's from the Spanish Inquisition specifically! It had a soneta for cancelling ongoing potion effects and my best guess is that that was maybe a time when wizards were fighting enough for this to come up such that a spell was written."

"Well, seems like it might be real useful in here, considering."

"Yeah, maybe the school is telling me I will have to fight maleficers." Sigh.

Another student sits down at their table uninvited. This one's a freshman, not a senior, and she brought a whole plateful of crusty bread rolls for the table, which she plonks down right before taking a seat directly opposite Annisa.

"Annisa, right? Hi! I'm here to lightly threaten you," she says cheerfully. "April, Toronto enclave. Please be sufficiently threatened to get nice and cooperative but not so threatened that you start making things up just to placate me. I know perfectly well that you didn't kill Chantal and I don't even want to take her stuff back, I just want to ask you a few questions about what happened to it."

OK lunch was fine but this is really making her think she's better off taking all meals alone in her room.

What the fuck.