But the worrying truth was that most peculiars’ abilities were not well-suited to combat. We weren’t soldiers. We weren’t superheroes. In the face of an organized assault, the best most of us could do was to hunker down and hope for the best. Maybe ten percent of us could muster any kind of aggressive defense. It’s why we needed the home guard, relatively useless as they were. And why we’d depended for so long on the protection of ymbrynes and their loops.
