Edwin took off his armored gloves, hanging them on his belt and massaging his fingers. He had been wearing full armor the whole day, and while it wasn’t particularly uncomfortable to him, it always felt freeing to get out of it. He was walking against the flow of the train, the carts passing him by in the opposite direction, as ninth auxiliary was once again marching at the rear. An ox turned its head to look at him and Edwin scratched its neck, the animal lazily flicking its ears and giving a satisfied snort. He patted it on its rump in passing and continued on his way.

The command meeting had been in the first third of the train so he had a good distance to walk and passed by most of the division. Several times soldiers greeted him with nods, which he returned. A few minutes later, a series of carts painted a distinctive light blue caught his eyes. The mage contingent’s vehicles were driven by men in uniforms of the same bright color, though their most distinctive feature were the exceedingly grumpy and morose expressions.

The College guards weren’t a fighting force, their usual jobs were to guard the doors of the Pel Oreis campus against unauthorized entry and to look good in their colorful outfits as ceremonial guards for important official functions. It was a boring but cushy job, and those who took it were looked down upon by literally everyone else who wielded a weapon for a living. That the College had forced them to act as their drivers and bodyguards during the war was just another sign of how bad things had gotten.

Edwin stopped, a small symbol on the side of one of the carts drawing his attention. It had been a long time since he’d last seen the emblem of the school of ritualism, as the pictorial representations of the branches were only really used internally. Running his hand over the familiar symbol as it slowly rolled by he was overcome by a flight of whimsy, and before he could talk himself out of it, he stepped behind the cart and knocked on the back door. It opened, a curious face looking down at Edwin from between an unruly mop of red hair and a healthy smattering of freckles. The Journeyman studied him for a moment, seeming unsure what to make of the strange figure.

“…yes?” he finally said when Edwin didn’t speak first.

“Hello,” Edwin said with a smile and a small wave. “I’m Edwin. I was just passing by on my way back from the command meeting when I noticed your cart and thought I’d drop in. This is the ritualism team, right? Master Gregory said you guys were working on a solution for our fireball problem.”

“Uhm…” the young man said eloquently, clearly unsure what to do. Edwin distantly remembered him from the time the mages had first arrived at the fort, but he’d never been particularly good at names.

“…would you like to come in?” the mage said, finally deciding on a course of action.

“I’d love to,” Edwin replied, pulling himself up and through the door. The mage’s eyes widened as he noticed Edwin’s impressive size now that they were both standing at the same level, but he pulled himself together quickly.

“I can show you what we’re working on if you want, but it’s all quite technical,” the man said as he led the way into the room, where two more young mages, a boy and a girl, were looking up from the table they were sitting at. “I’m not sure how much of it you’ll understand.”

“Well, a teacher of mine once told me that breaking a problem down to explain it in a simplified manner can help you understand it better yourself,” Edwin said, his smile widening as he studied the room before him. Stacks of papers with half-drawn designs and mathematic equations were covering every surface, with several blueprints hanging side by side on one of the walls. It felt achingly familiar, so much so that he could almost smell the dusty carpet of Walter’s old study. “What are your names, by the way? I remember you from the fort, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” the red-haired one said, blushing. “My name’s Archibald, Journeyman Archibald. These are my colleagues Journeymen Rolf and Ludmilla.”

The two others waved as they were introduced. Rolf was short and thin, with a serious expression. He might have been decently handsome if not for his abject failure at growing a beard, the sparse and patchy abomination all the more noticeable against his light skin. Ludmilla shared his brown hair, but that’s where the similarities ended. She was a little chubby, with a complexion that was unusually healthy for a ritualist, and charming dimples that appeared when she greeted Edwin with a hesitant smile.

“Is this all of you?” Edwin asked, surprised. Gregory had made it sound like he had a crack team of experts working on the problem, but Archibald hadn’t reached thirty yet, and the other two had likely only been Journeymen for a year or two.

“This is it,” Archibald confirmed, sweeping his hands out as much as possible in the cramped cart. “The ritualism team in all its glory. Guys, move over so we can show him what we’re working on.”

A bit of shuffling and the four of them were arranged in front of the three blueprints on the wall. Walter surfaced from his cage, studying the drawings. They were good. Clearly unfinished, but Walter could appreciate the craftsmanship.

“Alright,” Archibald began, pointing at the left-most blueprint. “This one is what we’ve been trying to get to work for the past week or so. How do I explain this…? Fireballs are made up of two elements, the ball itself and the liquid mana that fills it. When the ball hits something solid, it explodes, creating a powerful shockwave and also spraying the burning liquid everywhere. If it was just the explosion, a simple shield would be enough to block it, but the fire covers a wide area.

“This is what happened in the battle today, apparently: The shields protected the area right where the fireballs fell, but the fire itself made it past it and still injured a number of soldiers. Now, the basic idea behind this ritual comes from the fact that the liquid mana burns away within a few seconds after the ball explodes. That means that if we block it while it is still high up in the air, the fire will burn out before it reaches the ground.”

“Simple enough,” Walter said, scratching his chin, “except manifesting shields far away is prohibitively expensive.”

Archibald gave him a surprised look but nodded in agreement. “Exactly! To reduce the mana requirement, our first approach was to reduce size. We’re not using the shield to actually block anything, only to cause the fireball to explode, so the size doesn’t matter.”

“Good thought!” Walter said, his eyes following the lines on the blueprint. “What’s the problem?”

“Targeting. The precision required to place a shield that’s smaller than a dinner plate right in the path of a fast-moving fireball over a hundred meters away is almost impossible for a ritual. We tested it, not with actual fireballs of course, and we only managed to intercept one in ten projectiles.”

“Not a good ratio, especially if you spend the mana whether you succeed or not.”

“Right,” Archibald said, pointing at the blueprint in the center. “Which leads us to ritual number two. This one is really just the evolution of the first one. We tested out how much larger we would need to make the shield until it safely intercepts the projectile. The answer is ‘nineteen times’, which is, quite simply, unreasonable. So, when Master Gregory told us to produce something workable until the day after tomorrow, we had to scrap our initial concept and start from scratch.” Archibald sighed, pointing at the last remaining blueprint.” Number three over there is a basic dome-shaped shield. It will protect the soldiers underneath from fireballs, which fulfills the requirements.”

“But you’re not happy with it,” Walter guessed.

“Of course not,” Archibald huffed. “It’s a brute force solution if you can even call it that. We will need to make a separate ritual for every two-hundred-man unit, which will take a lot of time and resources for little effect. Then, they’ll need to stay close together whenever fireballs are flying, or they’ll be trapped outside the shield. We don’t have enough time to build them all with automatic triggers either, so the mages embedded with the soldiers will have to manually activate and deactivate them every time.”

Walter continued scratching his chin, once again missing his magnificent beard or at least the soothing scratching of bone on bone. It helped him think.