By Cool Waters

I lay down last night, and discovered that Pikka had a story to tell me.

And so, here this evening, I get to give it to you, dear reader. Come with me then and discover a little more of our friend the wandering wizard, and how it was, in this case, that she found herself seeking succor...

By Cool Waters - A Story of Pikka the Victorious by M. K. Dreysen

Pikka lay by the river. In realistic hope that the two battling forces she'd spent two days avoiding would finally get down to their business. Without involving her in it.

Well. It was realistic. Right up until the demon found her. "The wizards require your attendance."

"Don't they have that part of their little war well enough accounted for, Unbound? I would be superfluous to events, I'd think..."

"Likely. They have paired their strength. They have demanded this chore of me. Thus..."

"I'll go, I'll go." Little sense that it made, Pikka thought but did not say.

The demon's presence forced the battling soldiers apart, enough for Pikka and her escort to pass through the blood and fear, the shit and the fury.

The spellworks that had dogged Pikka's heels and caused her to seek the safety of the river bank in the first place, had ceased. Utterly.

Excepting a faint shimmer, some sort of bubble. "A quiet interlude?" she asked the chaos agent.

"They required space and time for negotiations between themselves."

Pikka nodded. However the battle wizards had arrived here, they didn't want those doing the killing and the dying to overhear the sellout. When it inevitably came.

Speaking of which. "How many Halls have you, Unmade?"

The demon, relatively short at twice Pikka's height, leaned over to study his charge's face in detail. "Three."

Pikka nodded again. "Which means, at any one time, that there are servants, underlings, which you might consider your most favorite."

"This is the way of odd numbers."

"And some group you would in turn call your... least? Favorite?"

"This too is consistent with the properties of mathematics."

"Would you like an obnoxious pair of male wizards as trophies, to inflict upon, or award as the occasion might merit, your least or most..."

The demon breathed in her words, tasting them, testing them.

And then he cast the full weight of his attention upon Pikka. She felt his mind searching... for that which she did not carry. Pikka smiled, faintly, and cocked an eyebrow. "Didn't find what you hoped for, then?"

The demon shrugged. "It is my nature to search for unintended loopholes. I will depart this world, fully and completely, when you deliver to me these annoyances." He nodded, and Pikka continued on toward the moment the wizards had cast around themselves.

"Oh finally..." "wonderful, fantastic, that means..." "oh shut up and let me..." "no, she's mine, I did the summoning..." "and I the binding!"

The argument between the pair went on for minutes. Pikka understood then how the battles and the blood on the ground had come to be.

She considered them fascinating, a true example of the inflexible determination so many wizards were known for.

She worried more about what lay in the very bottom of her backpack, there, yes, shit where... the point of the needle of course jabbed her finger. But at least the thread was still well wound.

"Gentleman, please. Why am I here? I want no part of your war."

"Yes, but..." "you don't need to craft" "or cast fire or shadow" "you need only decide" "between us" "it is a brilliant idea..."

The twins, as Pikka now discovered the wizards to be, explained their goal.

And Pikka grudgingly agreed with their idea.

If not quite for the same reasons. "Very well. I will choose which of you is, indeed, the more puissant." This being the ultimate point of contention between the brothers. "And then you, and your Unbound servant, will release me safely to my travels."

"we will" "we will"

"Of course I will honor my agreements," the demon concluded.

"Here then is how I will measure your strengths. Arssos, your hem is unraveled. Let me secure it with invisible thread."

She knelt; the bone needle flashed, inserting clearly visible, plain linen thread into the hem seam folded between Pikka's fingers.

And yet, when Pikka stood from her work, Arssos lifted his robe, ran his finger over the new seam, only to find no trace of the material of Pikka's working.

Only its very strong, very well crafted, very real effects.

Arssos nodded his acceptance. And so Pikka walked to his brother, a length of visible linen trailing along behind her.

"And you, Parssos. Your sleeve is ripped..."

Here to, when Pikka left off her work, Parssos found only whole cloth, with no visible mark of its repair.

Pikka repeated her work, on other small rips and tears in the brothers' robes. She wove her threads between the pair.

And then, satisfied, she stepped back to the demon, the linen skein barely visible now between her fingers. Satisfied then, she tore the thread free of the spool, knotted the end thrice over.

And handed the knots to the demon. "Here, I believe you'll find this satisfactory."

The brothers started squabbling as the now truly Unbound servant wound the thread around his fingers. With each loop, their voices rose.

In pitch, but not in volume. With each loop, the twin wizards shrank, just a little, and pulled closer, just a little more, to their new master. By the time the pair had come halfway to the demon, raw chaos had begun to shine from his smile. "I find that I am inclined to thank you. This is an entirely unexpected prize, friend?"

Pikka did not give her name. Nor did she ask it of the Unmade. "We part here on equal balance?"

The demon dangled his trophies, now nothing more than a high pitched buzzing pair of beads on the threads dangling over his palm. "If anything, I have come out ahead. Should you ever need a small favor?"

Pikka did not habitually deal with the Unmade. But she also didn't like unnecessarily closing off her options. She named a place and a time of season.

"Done," the demon said, and then the Unbound returned to his realm, the squealing pair of wizards clutched tight to his breast.

Pikka waited until the walls of the bubble vibrated, signaling their momentary dissolution, to craft an illusion of the demon to accompany her across the battlefield.

It would be the next day before the soldiers realized their wizards weren't likely to return.