Val has been pointedly trying not to get roped into the snowball fights happening in the streets, but that doesn't mean he actually succeeds. He's not even sure if the snowball that hits him is targeted or a misfire, but he's not actually above retaliation either way, so, fine. He packs a snowball, and throws it with what is the accuracy of someone trained to hit targets with anything that can class as a weapon—

—only it doesn't seem to actually hit the target in question, which makes no sense, because it should have been a clean shot. In fact it seems to hit something a little closer to him, something that only really registers to him not because of familiarity with magic, but technology. When your unit deploys invisibility cloaks, you get used to watching out for or being the invisible target that takes a misguided hit.

Not that he can say that's what's happening here, but something certainly is, and in trying to understand what he does leave himself a rather open target, instead of retaliating and walking off as he intended.