Ward To Know

"T-that's a ward?" Sola asked. Her eyes were focused on the small trinket I held out over the palm my hand. 

"Yes," I said. The shock of finding out that wards were no longer widely used or known still lingered at the back of my mind.

The ward I held was in the shape of a shield standing over a wooden platform. It was a standard protection ward, more or less, since it wasn't specialized.

It could be argued that a shield ward or defense ward, specialized as they were, would be better suited. 

However, a shield ward would invite more attention even when it's activated to destroy itself, since it would use a more concentrated form of magic. Shield wards also needed manual magical inputs to change states. That meant that if I needed it to turn solid, invisible, or both, I needed to be present nearby so I could make it do so.