"Maybe if you made a set and a bunch of people held them in a box formation like a Roman testudo." She attempts to convey the concept with hand gestures. "It'd be a lot of material but less per person than armor would."

"Or if I can find a shield incantation that makes a bubble all the way around someone and works on brumes. I've got something like that for physical stuff already."

"I bet I could scrounge enough plywood or something for tower shields. They wouldn't need to stop a blow, just hold a spell."

"We are looking for three things: A spell to kill Brumes, a spell to turn them solid, and a shield incantation that stops Brumes. Let's meet in the library after lunch and see what we can find."

"And we should watch for any reference to Brumes that will tell us if they have always been around or are something new or very rare. Apa should have told me about them, about any powerful immaterial mals he knew about, and he didn't."

"Those sound like good priorities. And we should all ask our rooms, too, as soon as we get the chance. The more people trying the more likely we are to get something useful if it's in an obscure language."

"So we should all meet in the library after lunch, bring with us anything we got from the void. Talk to other people for ideas, recruit anyone interested into the research.

"Can we use the Boston room? Ours is pretty small and we share it with two other enclaves so it gets crowded."

"If it isn't full of upperclassmen, sure." And the conversation winds down for the moment in favor of calories going into faces, which hasn't become any less important.

(After lunch, the library. Mari has found two books and a pamphlet on her way to the Boston room. She looks into the room, doesn't see Marcy, turns back to Ellen.)

"I could go back into the stacks and see what else I can find while you wait here for Boston."

Ellen shakes her head.

"The library is safer but it isn't safe. I want to look through the book on transformations on the chance it may have something, that leaves the other two for you. I expect the rest will be here before we get done."

She mutters a quick detection charm then takes one of the books, props herself against the wall, opens it. Mari puts the other book down at her feet, opens the pamphlet.

The Boston contingent arrives shortly after and everyone can pile into the reading room; Marcy has a rolled-up scroll that looks like it belongs in a museum and Franklin has a sketchpad covered in inscrutable geometry.

"Any luck on your way up here? My wall gave me this," she raises the scroll, "but it appears to be by the renowned Greek mage Illegible McChickenscratch so I don't know if it's any good yet."

"My wall gave me a solidifying spell in Magyar, but it's almost as wimpy as mal-solidifier and uses more mana. Mari found a book on transformations, but I haven't found anything useful in it yet. Any guess what language your chickenscratch is in? I don't read Greek yet, but Mari does."

"Oh, it's definitely Greek. Mari, want to help me transcribe this?" They're all sufficiently entangled on the not getting killed by ambush brumes project that "half the transcription work and use it if it's useful" is a reasonable price to charge for the spell even if it turns out really good.

"Do you have a dictionary? If not I'll go find one."

"Thanks! I don't know if I'll need it yet but it can't hurt." She spreads the scroll out gently on a table where nobody will get an unwanted faceful of half-familiar alphabet if they don't want one, pulls out a notebook and gets to work making a clean copy. αν δεχτείτε επίθεση από . . .

Mari heads into the stacks, followed by Ellen. Fifteen minutes later she comes back, puts two dictionaries down on the table, starts reading over Marcy's shoulder. Ellen, who is carrying a third book, opens it and starts reading.

"Awesome," she says at the arrival of the dictionaries.

Transcribe transcribe lookup . . . "Yeeeaaaah, no, if I'm not reading this totally wrong it's useless. Even if someone actually figured out how to do it they'd get a tribunal called on them."

"Twice useless. It doesn't say how to do it, and if it did we wouldn't."

Ellen gives her a puzzled look.

"What does it say?"

"Apparently, there used to be a process for dumping mana, or possibly malia, into a person in a way that leaves them poisonous to immaterial mals, and then leaving that person out to get eaten so the mals die with them."

"He was using a slave. Apparently they had wizard slaves, maybe from conquering another city and enslaving everyone — they used to do that. He doesn't say how you poison mana and we don't have any slaves."

"And wouldn't feed one to a Brume if we did.

"I don't believe it would work — mana only has two states. Does it say he ever actually did it?"

Mari shakes her head.

"No. Maybe someone asked him for a solution to the problem so he made one up."

"If we did have some way of poisoning mana we could put it in a leaky crystal and throw it at the Brumes. But we don't, and I cannot see how we could.

"But the idea that mana is all they see might still be useful somehow."

"Yeah, that sounds like a harder problem than scaling up the mal-solidifier. I vote we go back to the stacks."