When dawn broke, the fire had reached the river. Sleepy soldiers crawled out of their tents to begin their day when the massive cloud of black smoke that blocked off the western sky drew them to the riverbank. Soon, thousands stood together in a quiet crowd, staring at the fires of hell that raged little more than a stone’s throw away, separated from them by what seemed like an inadequately narrow strip of grey-green water.

While the river prevented the fire from spreading in their direction naturally, the wind could carry burning embers across and set their side alight as well. To prevent that, the general ordered the division to split into groups and spread out along the shore to watch for fires and extinguish them before they became a problem. The assignment gave the soldiers and adventurers a much-needed break after weeks of marching and fighting, and it could’ve been an enjoyable day by the river if not for the inferno filling the air with heat and smoke.

Edwin’s party was as usual exempt from the duty. Since Bordan was part of division command’s inner circle he was always in meetings or doing other important stuff. Salissa went off to train with the mages, who had only needed a few sessions to take to her instruction with gusto, which left Edwin and Leodin free to do whatever they wanted. Leodin decided to head down to the river and join a group of adventurers he’d befriended at dipping their feet into the water while Edwin followed Salissa to the College area and looked in on the ritualism team. Sick of their cramped quarters, the three mages had set up a table outside their cart to enjoy the opportunity to work in lighting that wasn’t shed by a lantern or a magelight.

“So, how did it go?” Edwin asked after greeting the three of them.

“Splendidly!” Archibald said, rubbing his hands with joy. “The ritual didn’t miss a single one of the fireballs it engaged!”

“None of them got through?” Edwin asked, surprised. “Impressive.”

“That’s not quite correct,” Rolf said, throwing an annoyed look at Archibald. “One fireball did in fact get through, but thankfully our colleagues among the soldiers blocked it with shields, so no harm was done.”

Edwin looked at Archibald questioningly, but the journeyman waved off Rolf’s objection.

“When they realized we had a way of intercepting their projectiles, they tried to overwhelm the ritual with sheer numbers, firing fireballs off in quick succession. Just as we’d theorized, the weakness of the current iteration is our ability to reload the pots with rocks. Even then, the men refilling the pots almost managed to keep up. It was a resounding success, if only because it proved all our expectations.”

Rolf sighed. “The four receptacles were firing off in such quick succession that one of the men was still in the process of loading when the telekinesis activated. Instead of a load of rocks it ripped off his arm and flung it into the sky. He was lucky that more of his body wasn’t above the opening or he would’ve been tossed across the river and died.”

“He was fine!” Archibald said, scoffing. “The healers were right there and stopped the bleeding immediately. He had no reason to get this angry about it, others have lost much more than an arm in this stupid war.”

Ludmilla put her hands on her hips, frowning at their team leader. “He got angry because you thought you could get him to stop screaming by telling him that we’d anticipated this happening! How did you think that would go?”

“Bah.” Archibald said, turning back to Edwin. “Anyway, we’ve already started improving the ritual to incorporate what we’ve learned yesterday. Here, let me show you.”

A few minutes later Edwin and Archibald were animatedly talking their way through the proposed fixes and improvements, many of which were still just ideas, quickly scribbled down during the battle, when the smile on Edwin’s face froze and a jolt of panic flooded his body with adrenaline. It took his brain a moment to catch up with his subconscious and to replay the last few seconds of conversation to find what had spooked him.

“Ah, there’s your mistake,” Ludmilla had quietly said to Rolf. The two were sketching out one of the alterations on the table a few steps away from where Edwin and Archibald were looking at the blueprints pinned against the wagon’s exterior. “I knew the numbers looked strange; you calculated the delay rune as a resistor. You need to do it like this… There we go. Now let me run it through Walter’s Equation again…”

“…which would be great, except… Edwin?” Archibald paused, noticing the strange look on his face. “You alright?”

“Hm?” Edwin said, mind and heart both racing. He forced his facial muscles back under his control and managed a semi-realistic smile. “Oh sure, I just got distracted, sorry. Say, Ludmilla, did you just say Walter’s Equation?”

The female journeyman looked up from her calculations in surprise, nodding. “Yes, it’s one of the formulas we use. Ritualism is a lot of math, actually, because we need to make sure that the rituals we plan work how we want them to and are safe.”

“I knew that,” Edwin said with a nod, “I just hadn’t heard of that one before. What does it do?”

“Calculates the mana consumption.” Rolf said, holding up a piece of paper with a jumble of numbers on it.

“It does so much more than that!” Archibald said indignantly. “Yes, you can use it to get an approximation of the mana requirements of running a ritual, but that’s just the beginning. You can calculate how thick a magesilver channel needs to be to withstand the mana flow, or if the flow speeds of different sections match. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to use delay and capacitor runes nearly as effectively as we are!”

“Huh,” Edwin said, stunned. This definitely hadn’t existed before. Walter had invented a whole host of equations and formulas to deal with the finer details of ritual math – without them, the Immortalizer would never have been possible – but he’d created most of them after he’d gone into hiding. Shortly after passing his master’s exam, Walter had made the decision to embark on the path that led him to shed his humanity and ultimately to the creation of the Immortalizer. Knowing that he would need to disappear, he had stopped sharing his thoughts with his colleagues, only fulfilling his obligations and avoiding any attention.

“Just out of curiosity, where does it get its name?” Edwin asked.

“No!” “Don’t!” Rolf and Ludmilla shouted, groaning when Archibald’s face lit up and he slapped his hands on Edwin’s shoulders.

“Hah! I should’ve known you’re a man who recognizes quality when he sees it!” The journeyman turned and strode toward the wagon’s back door, pulling Edwin after him. “Let me tell you about the most brilliant man you’ve never heard of!”