"Not even à la mort, not that either of us could cast it. The book says it doesn't work for psychic mals, so probably not on other immaterials. If there are any spells that do work on immaterials, they must be proprietary;  neither of the authors seems to know any."

"Neither does the author of the journal article, but ..."

She hesitates too long, giving her friend a chance to cut in

"But there are spells to turn immaterial things solid. And once they are solid ..."

"Once they are solid, you can kill them.

"But the only spells I have found so far are low power, like mal-solidifier. It might work on a juvenile but if we tried it on a brume we would  get killed, so don't. We need something better."

"Evocations."

Mari looked puzzled.

"Aren't they artifice spells?"

"Evocations bring something intangible into material reality. If you want to give your artifice some intangible characteristic, or if you want your artifice to give something else some intangible characteristic, inflammability, say"

She glances down at the ring on her finger.

"you use an evocation. But not just for artifice. Apa knew someone who had a shield spell that was really just an evocation. So what we need..."

"Is an evocation of brumes. We could ask the void, or search in the library."

"Better yet, an evocation of mals, something that works for other immaterials too.

"If we can't find one we could look at whatever evocation spells we do find for ideas on how to write one."

"We need more heads working on this. There's Marcy. And Franklin."

She stands up, waves.

"And Kevin. He's their artificer."

Marcy spots the wave and heads over, Franklin following (Kevin is still getting food). "Did I hear you saying you needed an artificer?"

"The Brumes are immaterial, so we need a way of killing immaterial mals before they kill us. ASince we can't kill something that isn't physically there ..."

"We need a way to materialize immaterial mals. It occurred to me that an evocation is a spell, or part of a spell, that takes something intangible and makes it real. An evocation of brumes should make them solid for us to kill. Since evocations are  used in artificing, an artificer might have a better idea than we do about how to find, or write, such a thing.

"Neither of us is really an artificer, but Kevin is."

"And you, or Franklin, or one of your other people might have  other ideas of what to do about immaterial mals. The Brumes just appeared, but there might be other immaterials later in the year."

"An easily findable evocation for all immaterial mals sounds like the sort of thing that would be pretty widely known if it existed, but maybe there's something that works on brumes specifically. I'll ask my wall and look around the library." They'll have already done that, of course, but probably not in, for example, Igbo. "And I'll ask Kevin if he knows anything about how to kill them. Or how they got in--he's been learning about all the ways matter gets in and out of the school and how they're warded."

"I might be able to make a container to trap immaterial mals. It wouldn't hold for long, so we still need a way to kill them, but I could probably hold one still long enough to hit it with everything everyone else comes up with."

"That sounds dangerous. If you can make a container that holds them, can you make a shield against them, a physical shield or a shield spell or some sort of armor?"

She turns to Marcy.

"Which of you is best at writing spells? Put Kevin together with an incanter and they might figure out something."

"How they got in ... I couldn't find them in the Maleficaria Studies text and  and don't remember seeing them in the picture on the walls. I only have the freshman text, of course — someone should borrow a copy of the senior text from one of your seniors and see if it mentions them. If not ... ."

"If not that means they are a new mal, a mutation or something someone created this year. In which case there won't be any spells for killing them yet."

"Or else they might have just started to get into the school. There are a lot of mals out there; Maleficaria Studies may only bother with ones that have been seen here. In which case there might be spells, just ones not covered in our classes.

"You should ask Kevin if there is some way a part of the wards that used to keep immaterials out could have broken down."

"We should be trying to learn about other immaterial mals too. If there are spells for killing them, or turning them solid and then killing them, maybe they could be changed to work for Brumes."

"The only one I know about is mal-solidifier. I doubt it would work on even the little tiny Brumes, let alone the big ones. We need something better."

"Armor would work with my affinity, but it would take a lot longer to make. Shields, not yet."