"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."

"I don't think we should give up on the library yet. There's no way maleficaria studies can cover everything that might get in, and any spell we can write in a hurry is going to be worse than what someone else will have come up with and probably harder to cast. But the big ones, if not the smaller ones, are enough of a threat that if we find or write something that just needs more mana thrown into it we can bring in some upperclassmen."

Being too lame to handle something on your own that you should be able to handle on your own gets you killed; failing to ask for help when it's the most efficient use of resources also gets you killed.

Kevin made his way over while the others were talking, having rejected the sausage (now all over the floor and the student four down the line, who was a bit less wary) and loaded up on biscuits. He swaps one of his biscuits with some of Marcy's eggs without asking; she smiles at him.

"I don't know that I can build anything especially good against immaterial mals, but I can figure out how they got in. Where was the first one spotted? I'll start there. And, hm, if I can work with someone who knows how to make a spell affect an immaterial mal I can make something to keep them out of a specific section of hallway. Or reverse that, make Franklin's container suck them in when they get close." 

(It's very inconvenient how none of the Boston freshman have ever seen Ghostbusters and don't know to make a reference to it.) 

"What about a physical shield, like what knights used to carry? Something you could hold a Brume off with. Would that count as armor for your affinity but be much easier to make?"

"The only armor I know anything about is woven fire, and the Brumes ignore fire — I tried burning one and it didn't even notice."

"The first one I know about was just outside my language lab Monday. It killed two people. Clara got away and I helped her back to her room. I haven't heard about any earlier than that."

"My affinity is specifically containers; I don't think I could get a shield to work well enough."

"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."

Ellen nods, puts the book she was carrying on top of one of the dictionaries.

"Is there anything special or any language we should be looking for, beyond Brumes and immaterials and solidifying? Mari has better luck in the library than most people. She even found a copy of Von Neumann and Morgenstern for a nice African boy who wanted to know about game theory."