Inside the shack, Mortarion sat beneath a lamp, studying an enormous map drawn on animal hide. Beside him, the gaunt old doctor wore a peculiar pair of crystal magnifying spectacles and scribbled furiously on a sheet of coarse paper, calculating something.
"Mentor. Mortarion." Typhon set the thick soup on the table and greeted them respectfully.
"Sit down, Typhon." Mortarion raised his head and gestured for him to sit.
The old doctor merely glanced up at him before lowering his head again, absorbed in his calculations. He continued muttering to himself: "...Wind speed correction, the vertex of the parabola... no, the energy loss at this angle is too great. We need to increase the propellant's burn rate..."
Watching the old doctor play the muttering "scholar," Typhon's lips curled into an almost imperceptible sneer. He turned to Mortarion and lowered his voice. "Brother, we're taking too long."
In that day's fighting, they had successfully captured the outer fortress of the xenos lord Gethsalam, but their advance had been halted by a new kind of corrosive toxic mist released by Gethsalam's sorcerer guard.
Mortarion's expression darkened, and he nodded. "I know. Our mentor is already working through the night on a new formula for the filter material. He says that as long as we can find a certain alkaline mineral, we can keep casualties to a minimum."
"A minimum? That still takes time!" A note of impatience crept into Typhon's voice. "How much time do we have to wait for him to plod through those ridiculous 'experiments'? Brother, war demands sacrifice! We can't stop our march toward vengeance just because we're afraid of losses!"
The pen in the old doctor's hand paused, but he did not look up.
Mortarion frowned. He could sense the brutal impatience in Typhon's words, and it made him