Chapter 232 - 233: The Wrong Kind of Help

The west training yard was already crowded with students dragging practice weapons and battered wooden shields out of the equipment sheds.

Arthur found a spot on the sidelines, leaning comfortably against the fence while adjusting the leather splint on his left wrist. Morwenna had barred him from joining full-contact drills until his wrist healed, and he fully intended to take advantage of it.

Out on the grass, Emily was loosening her shoulders with a heavy ironwood practice blade. A few yards away, Felix wrestled with the straps of an academy kite shield; Aegis Bulwark was currently quarantined beside their dormitory window, still trying to air out the stench of yesterday’s roadside contract.

Arthur was just considering whether he could get away with sitting on a nearby bench when Morwenna’s iron whistle cut across the yard.

"Listen up," Morwenna ordered, pointing her practice sword at the grass. "Today is extraction. You are pushing through a hostile perimeter to bring a wounded teammate to the evacuation line. Sterling, Thorne, you’re on extraction. Vance, get over here."

Arthur pushed off the fence and walked onto the dirt. "You need an observer?"

"I need a casualty," Morwenna said. "You’re it."

Arthur stared at her. "My legs work fine, Instructor."

"Congratulations, you just took a mace to the kneecap," Morwenna said dryly, her crimson eyes showing a hint of amusement. "You’re in shock, you can’t walk without help, and your job is to be rescued, not tell everyone how to do it. No skills, no weapons. Get on the ground."

Arthur looked at Emily, who was grinning openly, then down at the dirt. He let out a long sigh and lowered himself onto the grass.

Morwenna signaled two second-year vanguards and a skirmisher to the opposite side of the yard. The objective was a white chalk line thirty yards away. Felix had to cover the retreat while Emily got Arthur across the line.

"Begin," Morwenna called out.

Emily hooked her left arm under Arthur’s shoulders, hauling him upright so he had to hop awkwardly on his right leg. Felix stepped in front of them, bringing the borrowed kite shield up just as the two second-year vanguards charged.

Wooden swords cracked hard against Felix’s shield. He held the line, but the skirmisher immediately broke wide, circling around to hit their exposed flank.

"Watch your left, Felix, he’s cutting the angle," Arthur said, trying to keep his balance while Emily dragged him backward. "Emily, step right so he can close the gap—"

Morwenna blew her whistle sharply. "Casualties do not give tactical lectures, Vance! Bleed quieter!"

"Suffering a leg injury doesn’t mean I suffered brain damage!" Arthur shot back.

"It means you’re in shock and slowing your team down," Morwenna said, unimpressed. "Reset to the starting line."

They dragged themselves back to the start. On the second attempt, the skirmisher managed to get around Felix entirely, landing a solid strike across Emily’s ribs because she only had one hand free to parry.

By the third reset, Emily looked thoroughly annoyed.

"Begin," Morwenna ordered.

The second-years charged. Felix braced his shield. Emily didn’t bother hooking her arm under Arthur’s shoulders this time. She dropped her practice sword, ducked low, drove her shoulder into Arthur’s stomach, and hoisted him clean off the ground.

Arthur had a moment of genuine, breathless surprise as he found himself folded in half over Emily’s shoulder in a perfect fireman’s carry.

"Whoa, Thorne—!"

"Shut up and hold still," Emily grunted.

She took off at a dead sprint. Her boots kicked up dirt as she hauled his entire weight across the yard.

Felix threw a quick shield-bash to stagger the vanguards, turned around, and realized his extraction team was already fifteen yards away.

"Wait!" Felix yelled, scrambling after them.

The skirmisher tried to intercept, but Felix managed to get his shield up just in time to deflect the wooden blade. Emily carried Arthur straight across the white chalk line and set him down on the grass, rather less gently than he would have preferred.

Arthur rolled onto his back, brushing dirt off his coat while trying to catch his breath.

Morwenna walked over, her boots crunching on the gravel. She looked at Arthur lying on the grass, then at Emily, who was shaking out her shoulders, and finally at Felix, who was jogging across the line panting heavily.

"You got him across the line," Morwenna said flatly. "Wonderful. Now Thorne has no sword, Sterling’s ten yards behind you, and all three attackers are still standing. What happens when they catch you?"

Felix opened his mouth.

"Think carefully before answering, Sterling," Morwenna warned.

"It was a brilliant tactical adjustment," Arthur argued from the ground, propping himself up on his good elbow. "We saw an opening and took it."

Emily looked down at him. "Your contribution was acting like a sack of grain."

"I was exceptionally cooperative," Arthur pointed out. "I didn’t even kick."

"You nearly kneed me in the jaw when I picked you up," Emily disagreed.

"Getting your casualty across a marked line is not a successful rescue if you leave yourselves defenseless," Morwenna told the group, her voice carrying across the yard. "I’ll give you credit for improvisation, but your communication was garbage."

"We definitely deserve a passing grade for speed," Arthur said, finally standing up and dusting off his knees.

Morwenna looked at him. "When your wrist heals, Vance, you are more than welcome to demonstrate a better solution."

Arthur decided to reserve judgment.

As the second-years went to collect their dropped practice weapons, Morwenna stepped closer to the rack where Arthur was grabbing his satchel.

"You looked entirely too pleased being carried across the yard by a woman, Vance," Morwenna remarked dryly, her voice pitched just low enough that Felix wouldn’t hear over the clatter of wooden swords.

Arthur looked at her. "I’m a very supportive partner. I like to let my teammates shine."

"I’m sure," Morwenna said, turning away to blow her whistle at a group of stragglers. "Keep off the wrist."

Emily headed toward the washrooms to clean up, and Felix took the borrowed kite shield back to the quartermaster. Left alone in the courtyard, Arthur pulled his crumpled Magic Theory worksheet from his bag and stared at the red seven out of ten Elena had slashed across the top.

He needed to figure out the dissipation math before the assessment block.

Rather than walking to the East Annex and risking the ire of the desk monitor, Arthur stopped by the academy’s message desk and handed a copper to the courier on duty.

Got a third-year mana distribution problem. Need someone who can actually do the math. Let me know if you have time.

Iris’s reply arrived at his dormitory two hours later.

Eastern library, back tables. I have my own research to finish. Bring the worksheet.

When Arthur walked into the quiet air of the eastern library late that afternoon, Iris was sitting at a wide oak table near the back windows, a massive reference volume propped open in front of her alongside three pages of tightly written notes.

Arthur pulled out the chair across from her. Iris glanced up, capping her ink pen.

"Let me see it," Iris said, holding out a hand.

Arthur slid the worksheet across the table. Iris scanned Elena’s diagram, looked at the red marks, and then read through Arthur’s calculations.

"You widened the primary intake bridge," Iris said, tapping her finger against the parchment. "And opened a dispersion groove here."

"It stabilized the circuit," Arthur pointed out, resting his right arm on the table. "The output held at eighty-five percent."

"It did," Iris agreed. "You spread the charge across the primary ring before it reached the narrow gate. That kept the pressure down, but you were feeding almost twice as much mana into the ward as you needed."

Arthur shrugged. "The roof stayed up."

"Try keeping it up for an entire day like that. You’d spend a fortune on mana crystals."

"Well, I’m a hunter, not a city architect," Arthur said. "So how do I fix the math?"

Iris pulled the worksheet closer and studied the third-year dissipation formula Elena had written in the margin. She frowned at one part of the equation, reached for a reference book from the stack beside her, and flipped through the section on load distribution.

Arthur leaned back in his chair, watching her with a faint smile.

Iris caught his expression and gave him a flat look. "I am a first-year, Vance. You are the one who actually sat through this lecture this morning."

"Fair enough," Arthur conceded.

Iris pushed the textbook aside and pulled a blank sheet of parchment between them. "You’re treating the mana entering the circuit and the pressure building at the junction as interchangeable values. They aren’t. Let’s look at a simpler model."

She quickly sketched a two-ring circulation loop, marking a single gate between them.

"That’s not the same circuit," Arthur objected. "Mine had three rings and a grounding channel."

"The same principle applies," Iris said, tapping the drawing. "This gate can safely bleed five units at a time. What happens when eight keep coming in?"

"Pressure builds up behind it."

"Right. So what did you do when your circuit started doing that?"

"Widened the intake and spread the charge through the primary ring," Arthur said. "Stopped the pressure from bouncing straight back."

"And it worked. But look at how much extra mana you had to feed into the ring to keep everything balanced." Iris tapped Felix’s solution on the worksheet. "Sterling relieved the pressure through the grounding channel instead."

"I tried that. Nearly shook the frame off the desk."

"Because you pushed too much through the gate at once. You have to calculate how much the grounding channel can safely handle before you start adjusting things."

Arthur looked between the two diagrams. "So I was trying to fix the pressure without knowing how much I actually needed to bleed off."

"Exactly."

"And Felix worked that out before touching the gate."

Iris nodded. "Which is probably why he got full marks."

"You could’ve left that part out."

"You asked me to explain your mistake, Vance."

Arthur sighed and pulled the worksheet closer. He scratched out his original equation and tried the substitution again. This time, the numbers made considerably more sense.

Iris checked his work and pointed to a value he’d carried over incorrectly.

"Almost. Fix that one."

Arthur corrected it.

"Better," Iris said. "Now try the next one yourself."

"I thought I came here for help."

"You did. I’m helping."

Arthur slid the worksheet back into his bag, satisfied. He glanced at the massive, ancient-looking volume Iris had been studying before he arrived. It was open to a diagram showing a series of complex, overlapping circular arrays linked by faint dashed lines.

"Still looking into the alarm plates from Warehouse Nine?" Arthur asked.

"The principles behind them," Iris said, her eyes lighting up slightly as she looked back at the book. "Those Second-Era plates used separate triggers and receivers. I was trying to determine if multiple detection points could feed into a single receiver without the signals interfering with one another."

"Like a perimeter wire?"

Iris nodded. "Most basic signaling wards assume one trigger and one alarm. If you link five triggers to the same receiver, their signals overlap. If two trigger at once, the receiver just gets a jumbled pulse of ambient mana."

Arthur looked at the dashed lines connecting the diagrams. "How do you know which one tripped?"

"Some designs use distinct pulse patterns," Iris explained, tracing her pen over the page. "One long pulse for the north gate, two short pulses for the south. But the array gets incredibly cluttered when you add more nodes."

Arthur frowned, thinking back to the dark tunnels of the Tomb of the Veiled Knife and the ambushes he’d walked into.

"An alarm that just tells me someone is nearby is practically useless if they approach from two directions at once," Arthur said. "But what if the first alarm is a distraction?"

Iris paused, looking up at him.

"If I’m an intelligent enemy," Arthur said, leaning his forearms on the table, "and I know you have a perimeter wire, I’ll deliberately trip the east line to make you look that way. Then I’ll attack from the west while you’re distracted. If the receiver can’t handle simultaneous inputs clearly, or if a false alarm jams the channel, the system is a liability."

Iris stared at the page for a moment, her pen hovering over the parchment.

"You would need frequency separation," Iris murmured, her pen flying across her notepad as she started sketching a new receiver node. "If each trigger runs on a slightly different mana frequency, a resonance crystal at the receiver could split the incoming signals by color... but a false trip would still tie up that specific frequency channel..."

Arthur leaned forward, suggesting a few ways a hunter might space the triggers along a tree line, and asking how hard it would be to make the alarm reset itself automatically after a false trip. Some of his ideas Iris dismissed immediately because they required too much ambient mana, but a few made her stop and rethink her node placement.

For a long time, they completely forgot about the Magic Theory worksheet. They argued over signal delays, crystal costs, and line-of-sight requirements, their voices occasionally earning a sharp shush from a passing librarian.

When Iris finally glanced up at the tall arched windows, the afternoon sun had already dropped behind the western towers, casting long shadows across the library floor.

Iris sighed, dropping her pen onto the table. "I didn’t even finish the Chapter on resonant frequencies."

"You’re the one who kept asking how hunters set ambushes," Arthur pointed out, stretching his shoulders.

"I was gathering practical data," Iris disputed, though she began gathering her notes and closing the heavy reference tomes.

Arthur stood up and absentmindedly reached across the table with his splinted left hand to pick up the largest leather-bound book to hand it back to the return cart.

Iris immediately put her hand flat on the cover. "Leave the heavy one alone. You have a splint on that wrist for a reason."

"It’s just a book, Rowan," Arthur said, amused.

"You have one good hand, Vance. Try using it," Iris said, pulling the heavy book toward her.

Arthur laughed and picked up his satchel with his good hand instead.

"Thanks for the math help," Arthur said.

"Study the substitution step," Iris reminded him, opening her own bag.

He left the eastern library as the academy was settling into its evening routine, the walkways filled with students heading toward the warm, brightly lit windows of the dining halls.

As he walked down the stone path toward dinner, Arthur pulled his worksheet out of his bag and looked at the messy corrections Iris had made. He finally understood how the back-pressure worked, and he had a decent idea for a perimeter alarm system if Iris could figure out the crystal resonance.