The first shells hit with stealth. It's only in the vids that bombardment comes screaming down from the skies with ample warning. In real life, artillery shells are faster than sound. The first thing you know of them, they're exploding among your positions.

  The first thing I knew of the bombardment was a burning in my lower back. Like sitting on a hot rock, or leaning against an open flame. It traveled up my spine, slowly at first, then faster and faster until I felt like I was on fire.

  Around me, the kids started stumbling into positions at the edges of the big ward.

  "Ail," the professor wheezed, "take Reith's place."

  More shuffling. And then the ward going up.

  The burning in my spine cut off, the absence of pain like a soothing blanket. Crudmucking stupid way to raise the alarm. The ward itself was wobbly, the mages un-synched. They conjured, threads of force flowing by me. Felt like being dipped in a warm pool.

  No force in the ward itself. Strange. The Newm mages were keeping the force-net unanchored between them. Why not infuse it?

  Because that would require a voidmucking amount of force. And it would turn a ward this size into a giant fire bomb. When it shattered, all that force would dissipate along a single crack, likely causing a pillar of flame. And the ward was crudely drawn, gaps between the stones not filled in. And they were mages, not warders.

  So they kept the force-net active by tossing the threads between each other, holding the spell in their minds instead of turning it into a solid ward. No wonder they looked exhausted.

  An explosion high above, a deep boom. High caliber, heavy cannon, maybe even super-heavy. The spell wobbled. Another shell exploded above Cant City, and the spell wobbled again, worse this time.

  Someone groaned. The professor stumbled, going down on one knee. Only a third of the white circles were filled, most of the Newm mages still struggling to sit up. There weren't enough mages to keep the spell stable. And these were ranging shots. Once the barrage started in earnest, the shells would break through.

  Crud.

  The kids needed help, before they burned out. I rushed into the circle, heading for an empty spot. Meaning to take up a position and fuel their ward.

  Except it wasn't a ward, it was a spell. Keeping it in my mind would simply burn me out, too.

  Think. Wasn't that what the rectors at the Academy kept telling me? A minute of thought saved an hour of grief?

  The spell wobbled, a burning sliver of sizzling metal in my mind. Definitely not a ward. The threads of force were like hoses, had the same tingly, slightly oily feel as active warpstone engines.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  What were they doing?

  Magic was manipulation of force. Wards were the delayed, precise manipulation of force. A force dome should feel like a cold, dead, hard bowl. Not a hot warpstone engine or razor ward.

  Another explosion above us, closer this time, shrapnel pinging against the College's roof tiles. One of the mages, a kid in her late teens, cried out, blood dripping from her nose.

  A force ward would have stopped the shrapnel the way my armored coat stopped it. What were they doing? Hot, tingly, greasy, shredding.

  Riot cannon.

  The crudmunging mages tried to keep an artillery barrage at bay by tilting the void inside the planet's gravity well, shredding the shells as they were falling. No wonder they couldn't hold the force. They were trying to shift an entire planet with their minds.

  Idiots. They were all going to die from the strain. Amazing they hadn't died yet.

  But I'd worked with funky warpstone engines my entire life. The Bucket's engines had run on warpstone dust glued together with biopolymers without exploding, much. I could stabilize a warp spell. All I needed were the right wards.

  "Hey!" someone yelled as I dove into the middle of the mage-circle. Female voice. Carter.

  "Stay out of it!" I yelled back. If she shot me, I'd broil her alive with my spare flame ward.

  My engraving drill bit into the smooth stone on the floor, dust flying from the drill head. Lucky it wasn't wood. Wood splintered.

  "Sir?" Dil's voice, back to its smooth, fluid, calming tone. I ignored him, cutting my ward freehand. Arc, arc, straight, angle, all connected, flowing into each other, cutting each other up. Partitioning the force, directing it.

  "Viis!" came Martens' yell. I almost didn't react, forgetting the name on my envoy code. Stupid. Martens would notice. "Get out of there."

  He didn't notice. Occupied with what I was doing. Hesitant. Not ordering anyone to shoot me, yet.

  "They're wobbling," I called back. "I need to stabilize them."

  "What the void does that mean?" Martens said. Not to me. He stood by the professor, but the professor was straining, his face red, his beard quivering.

  A barrage of shells hit the improvised riot cannon field above us, great booms, a shower of shrapnel like rain. The mages choked, cried out, slumped.

  I completed the ward, conjured a thread of force. It slammed into me, ripped from all the loose magic bouncing around, hot and painful. Wait, hold it back, feeling the strain on the magic working above my head.

  Slow. Steady. Don't let it shatter my ward.

  Infuse.

  The thread flowed into my ward, filling it, allowing me to tune the working above me. Instantly, the mages sighed. Some of them straightened. It must have been like having a full shipping crate removed from your shoulders.

  I started on my next ward.

  By the time the barrage ended, I had seven wards cut into the floor. Two of them had shattered when I infused them, either because I'd been too rough, or because the stone wasn't smooth enough to hold them.

  But the mages were holding. Three more nosebleeds, one man, the professor, with blood running out his ear, turning his shining-white hair into a dark, sticky mess. One mage fainted and carried away to a camp bed by the wall.

  I'd lost track of the number of shells. In the thousands, maybe tens of thousands. My head was cracking, black and gray spots dancing before my eyes in tune with my heartbeat, my migraine clawing furrows through my mind.

  "What did you do?" Martens said. There was a hint of awe in his voice. The professor started to walk up to us, but stopped cold at Martens' words.

  "Later," I croaked, slumping down to the floor. Most of the mages were. The floor was nice and cool.

  "Here, sir," Dil said, handing me a hot cup. The smell of roasted nuts hit me the moment I tilted it, boiling bitterness filling my mouth.

  "Crud," I said. "It's coffee."

  "Yes, sir?"

  "Don't drink coffee," I said, holding the cup out to him.

  Then I fainted.