"Of the stereotypical options I think I have a fair chance at being able to cast or at least co-cast a timespear, but flying through the maleficaria air force isn't a bad angle to consider."

Annisa is thinking about graduation strategies involving Malak!! She's kind of getting ahead of herself there, but it's nice to be appreciated.

"I do weapons. And I'll have a much better idea junior year where that leaves me, but it's a lot more fun sitting in that room trying to think of ways out than sitting there not doing that."

"Any kind of weapon? That's really flexible."

"Yep, I got awfully lucky. When I was little we thought it was just knives, and my father had me trying to extend it to swords with no luck, but then one day I got a slingshot and had it spitting little lightning bolts...turns out it's anything I can use, and the swords were just too big for me."

"Huh! Wonder what shop assignments you'll get after the generics."

"I have a long list of things that are technically sort of a weapon if you really push it and I want to see how many of them I can get away with. But that's for junior year, probably, my plan for this year is mostly for my baby's first knives to be better than everyone else's."

"Legit. The slingshot did not turn out to be practical?"

"Maybe we'll get some ideas in History of Artifice. So far it seems fairly combat-heavy." 

"Maybe it'll get to the ideas that haven't been obsolete for centuries later."

"Tiny lightning bolts are great for impressing Scholomance interviewers with but they don't do more damage than, like, pebbles. I could change my mind about this as I learn how to do more stuff but my current thinking is that ranged weaponry isn't worth it? If you're out of stabbing distance, you can and should just run, and if you're in stabbing distance it's hard to beat a knife - or maybe a shortsword, now that I'm not too small to craft 'em. The things on my aspirational list for junior year are more like - can I get in-affinity shielding if it bites, can I get in-affinity divining if it's weapons that light up in the presence of enemies, can I get mana storage better than the lousy average if it's a mana-storing dagger..."

"Light-up swords would be very Lord of the Rings, which is a completely excellent reason to do things."

"If dual-use mana storage was worthwhile I'd bet it would be more common, it's much too useful to leave on the table. ...I wonder if you could do area of effect weapons, sonics or something like that, anything that's meant to stun large numbers of mals at once – " 

"Ranged weapons seem useful? You're right that you should usually run, but sometimes there's something that runs faster than you, or - in the graduation hall you're running towards most of the mals and being able to down the nastiest ones before you get within reach seems good..."

"And if you're cornered it could come up."

"Yeah, maybe. There was a kid I saw at orientation who had a very pampered gun, I guess we can see how that works out for him."

"I bet ranged weapons will be more useful when you're more powerful. Like, when you're a junior and you have to take classes in more dangerous places and you don't want to skip for mals that are just inconvenient, but also don't want to spend the mana on frying them with a spell unless you have to."

"Yeah. And in anticipation of that you might want a crossbow or whatever earlier on, for practicing."

"I think crossbows aren't good unless you're in a formation with lots of people, they take too long to load."

"I mean, it could be a magic crossbow that generates its own ammo that only lasts for four seconds, or something? I don't really know how feasible that is, though, I'm creative writing."

"Daggers that come back sounds maybe a better idea, gets you range and a hand-to-hand weapon and only one hand used up between them. Or a bayonet I guess?"

"I feel like learning to throw daggers accurately might be harder than learning to hit things with a crossbow but I don't actually know and it'd probably depend on the enchantments anyway. Though would you want the dagger back in your hand if it had just punctured something nasty?"

"It's less getting more ammo in than getting the crossbow to the point where it has enough stored energy to fire the ammo again without relying on the strength of the user. I think the thing that makes it a crossbow is the cranking mechanism? Maybe you could have it crank really fast with magic, I guess."

"..maybe it'd be less mana-intensive if it was recalling, rather than rapidly generating, ammo, but you don't have it in your hand, just back in your bow or whatever...I don't actually know for sure, though. I got all excited and got a book of famous magical weapons and then my father said, Annie, that's mostly stuff that adults spent decades on, get good at knives and if you're still alive when you're seventeen pick one of those fancy projects for graduation, not sixteen of them. And he was right, which is tragic."

"It's why I asked Annisa for a practice knife and not a sharp one, for sharp I've already got something better than we'll be able to make in here." Also you can't just ask someone to make you a maleficer's knife, that's incredibly sketchy.