Ludworth leaped from a nearby tree, spanned the twenty or so feet effortlessly, and landed on the deck. Isaac attempted to slam the door, hopeful that the protective rune he had preemptively drawn on it would stop the stitch, only to discover that his head had never been the actual target. The ax had struck precisely so that it prevented the door from closing. Ludworth charged, grasped him by the collar, and forced him back through the open door into the cabin. Then the magician stood face to scarred face with the stitch. The jigsaw scars looked more ragged up close. The master's work was getting sloppy.

“You fucked up,” Ludworth said.

“Is this about the time I set you on fire? Or the time I threw you off a bridge? Or the time...how many times have I killed you anyway?”

Ludworth tried to smile but his patchwork face didn’t have enough skin. He hurled Isaac across the room. The magician landed on the couch, which flipped under his weight and sent him sliding across the hardwood. He would have been content to just lie there but the stitch hauled him back up and banged him against the wall. “An apprentice Isaac? Really?”

“What are you talking about? I don’t have an...”

The stitch slapped him. It was just a cuff but the inhuman strength bloodied Isaac’s lips. The magician was debating the wisdom of any more sarcasm or denials when over Ludworth’s shoulder he spied Julia enter the room. She moved with stealth, a throwing dagger dangling from two fingers. She readied her aim.

“No! Don’t!” Isaac shouted. It was probably the first time she heard his voice raised with panic. It startled her and stalled her action.

“So, who is this?” Ludworth asked, his narrowed eyes looking Julia over. “She who will not be named as apprentice?”

Julia palmed the blade. “Who are you? Or should I ask, what are you?”

Ludworth turned back to Isaac, went nose to nose with him. “Isaac and I are old friends. Almost family one could say.”

“That’s a stretch. But she’s not my apprentice. My apprentice got blown up in a balloon factory accident. This is a...hired escort.” Isaac knew this to be a terrible attempt at lying but did it more to display his contempt for Ludworth’s intelligence.

Julia didn’t play along. “Say the word Isaac and I’ll put a blade through his head.”

Ludworth chuckled. “She doesn’t sound like a hooker.”

Isaac frowned. “It’s kind of a roleplay thing we do. She pretends to be a dangerous assassin. I’m her target. Hijinks ensue.”

“Is that the truth?” the stitch asked Julia. “Are you hired flesh? If so, the knife is an interesting sex toy.”

Julia bristled. “Keep talking and I’ll give you some new scars. Isaac, why are you goofing around with this monster? We should be digging a hole for his corpse already.”

“Fiery,” Ludworth said to Isaac. “How do you think she’d do in one of my hunts?”

At the mention of the hunt Isaac’s face hardened. “I’m pretty sure she’d kill you as many times as I have. If not more.”

The stitch smacked him again, drawing more blood. Julia reached her limit with the situation and hurled the knife. Ludworth, never taking his joyful eyes from Isaac’s bloody face, casually caught the blade, flipped it over, and threw it back at her. The dagger flew true and the sudden reversal of her attack left Julia rooted in place. Then the knife froze in midair, the gleaming tip inches from her face. She looked to Isaac, who had his hand out, targeting the dagger with his telekinesis.

Ludworth, who had been waiting for the sound of her body hitting the floor, looked at the floating blade, then back to Isaac with a semi-admiring grunt. Julia stared at the tip of her weapon for several seconds, sweat on her brow. With a hard swallow, she took it out of Isaac’s magical grasp with trembling fingers.

“Run along, you curiously dangerous hooker,” Ludworth said to her. “I need to have a chat with Isaac.”

“Julia, give us a few minutes,” Isaac told her sternly. He worried she may be too headstrong to listen but, shaken as she was, she relented, and with an angry glare and defeated posture she left the room.

The stitch laughed, all too fake in its volume, like an attention-needing bully. “An escort. Nice try Isaac. Sometimes I wonder why you even bother lying. You have no talent for it.” Ludworth released Isaac’s shirt with a contemptuous shove as if he wasn’t worth the time it would take to rend him. “You want to know the one thing I always admired about you?” The stitch walked across the room to gaze out the window. Isaac was curious about this but knew Ludworth well enough to know the stitch would answer his own question. “You, of all the students the Master has had over the ages, were the first one to somehow understand him. You were the first to learn his game well enough to play. That is the only reason you yet live.” It was odd to hear praise from this enemy. “I thought for sure that this time, this fucking time, he would have hit his limit, that he would have had enough of your bullshit and put an end to you.”

“The Mad Magician still letting me slide eh?”

“Yes.” The stitch whirled to face him. “Do you have any idea what the Master has done to any of his students who dared to attempt to pass on any of his knowledge? Only he may judge who is worthy. And it doesn’t matter if Arrangement told you to do it or the Reliquary trained her. You set it all in motion.” Ludworth sighed like he’d just lost a board game. “I have no idea why he continues to tolerate you breaking his rules.”

As satisfying as it was to hear the defeat in Ludworth’s voice Isaac couldn’t help but pile on. “You really don’t get it, do you? That’s why you’ll always just be a henchman—a pile of spare parts built to do his menial tasks. That’s why he’ll let you get killed over and over and just keep putting you back together, getting a little uglier each time. Because you don’t get it.”

Ludworth stiffened. “Enlighten me.”

“All of Bizot’s rules are all tests. Don’t break any of them and he’ll get bored. Break them all and he’ll get offended. Both paths end with death sentences. You have to learn when and how to break his rules, just enough to make him interested enough to allow your continued existence.”

The stitch had smugly been expecting to refute the magician’s argument but was left with only a hate-filled glare. “Since you’re the first apprentice to last so long, I suppose that I’ll have to bow to your expertise on the matter. But he’ll weary of you eventually and then I’ll be there to end you. And with you gone, I’ll be free to round up your hidden strays.”

Isaac used the back of his hand to wipe blood. “So why are you here, if not to pick a fight?”

“I am here as a warning that he is always watching. Remember that you wander this world only by our master’s good graces and be grateful that you have legs to do so. Don’t assume that your new apprentice or even Arrangement can protect you should he change his mind.” The stitch opened the door to the deck. “Now then, this is a really splendid cabin. I think I’ll sit on the deck and enjoy the evening until the master comes along to fetch me.”

Isaac’s blood went cold. “Bizot is coming here?”

Ludworth flopped into a deck chair and propped his feet up on the railing. “He is. You should hang around and say hello. We’ll see if he’s as generous face to face or if he does a quick reversal after seeing you and burns you down on the spot. They don’t call him the Mad Magician for nothing.”

Isaac didn’t respond. He had snatched up his Everbag and was out the door.

***

“So, let me get this straight. This stitch monster, that used to kick your ass all the time, tracks us down. He breaks in, talks trash, smacks you around, and then steals our cabin.” The earlier specks of fear that Julia had exhibited were gone, boiled away in her anger. Having to share her seat with Testiculies only added to her aggravation, as the cat had beaten them both to the truck.

“It’s not like we owned the cabin. It was a rental, and you didn’t like it anyway,” Isaac said as he drove too fast on the dark, rural road. He checked the rearview mirror several times, expecting some kind of monstrous power to be on their heels. But there was nothing. There were no flashes or flames to denote the pursuit of a powerful being and the cabin had long since been swallowed up by the dark woods. He slowed down lest he flip the truck on one of the sharp turns.

“We should’ve fought him. We could’ve taken him.”

“Think so? What’s your assessment based on? When he threw me across the room or when he almost buried your own blade between your eyes? You’re not ready for what Ludworth can bring.”

She pondered that, sighed, and looked out the window. “I guess I can’t argue.”

“Sometimes you have to know when to take a hit and move on. This was one of those moments. Killing him, if he can even be permanently killed, would have brought us nothing but trouble. I should know. I’ve killed him multiple times and it just pisses him off. He was only there to deliver a message. No point or benefit in making more of it.”

By the time they reached the highway, Julia had moved from smoldering anger to bored sulking. "So, what did he mean when he said, ‘hidden strays’?”

“You heard that?”

“Yeah. It’s a small cabin.”

Isaac sighed, drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. Under all previous circumstances he would have ignored the question, or at least clumsily avoided it. But now, having confirmed that the Mad Magician was still neck-deep in his business, Isaac saw little use in continuing to be clandestine about everything. “When I escaped from him, I took a bunch of students with me. The younger ones, or those that didn’t have the aptitude or temperament to survive long, and I put them into hiding.”

“That must have really pissed him off.”

He mulled her statement for a moment. “Honestly, it didn’t. You see, I wasn’t the first apprentice to get away, which meant that my escape needed to have more of a flourish. I had to spice it up. And it worked. He was too impressed with my creativity to kill me for it. That’s been our game ever since.”

“Kind of a fucked-up game,” she said.

“Yeah,” he replied and moved to change the subject. “And next time I come up with a clever on-the-spot cover story about you being a hired escort, you better play along.”

“Fine. But no one would ever fall for that. Even as a pretend hooker, you couldn’t afford me.”

Isaac mildly chuckled at that for a moment, until Julia looked back out the window. Then, with a telekinetic push, he shoved Testiculies across the seat into her lap. He laughed harder at the ensuing chaos of hissing and yelling for the next several miles.