Once they lost sight of Donaldson, the lizard laid Renalia down on the ground, a claw still at her throat. It sat cross-legged, and with its other hand, pressed down on her chest. Five blades extended, digging into her protective [Bogling Skin]. But, with meticulous control, they stopped short of piercing her human skin.

The message was clear: move and die versus stay and live.

Satisfied that Renalia understood, the lizard removed the blade from her throat. She patched the cut with [Bogling Skin] and slowly rotated her head to check on Lexi. The toxic pool still encroached on Lexi’s island, but had slowed its advance.

“Help her,” she pleaded. She looked at his one eye, trying to convey her urgency. “Please, save her. I won’t do anything.”

It gurgled its laugh as its lips drew back in a smile, displaying a row of sharp fangs.

“What do you want with P-Jabal?” Renalia asked.

It didn’t answer, but it started changing. Its scales lost their luster and started fusing. Its imposing tail shrunk and drew back into its body. The vertical slit of its reptilian pupil morphed into a circular dot. And, to Renalia’s fascination and disgust, the empty eye socket filled with fluid. An orb, twitching and rolling all the while, took shape. It–or rather he–winked at her when the eye finished forming.

The transformed man, with familiar brown skin, looked down at her. He said something in Papa’s language. She didn’t understand, but the words “bint Jabal” snapped back a memory she had long since forgotten.

Her Papa cradled her in his arms, rocking her back and forth. His gaze locked lovingly on her face as he repeatedly murmured a phrase to lull her to sleep. Renalia bint Jabal Al O’Brien. Renalia, daughter of Jabal, of the family O’Brien.

“W-who are you?” she asked, eagerness mixing with dread. As a child, she had wanted nothing so much as to learn about her parents’ pasts. Now, though, she feared for what they hid.

He glanced away from her and cackled maniacally, no less disturbing than the reptilian laugh. Renalia turned to look at what he found funny. The pool of bile had found a path of least resistance and reached Lexi’s backpack, disintegrating wherever it touched. Puffs of smoke rose in the wind as items fell into the corrosive liquid.

Renalia struggled, but blades extended before her eyes, blocking a good portion of her vision. The naked man shook with laughter, but the blades remained fixed, promising death if she moved.

Jabal kept pace with Donaldson as the hunter explained the situation. The father in him wanted to run ahead and rescue his little girl. But his soldier training cautioned against rushing in without gathering information.

The more he heard, the more anxious he became. For the day he dreaded had arrived.

He had tried so hard to be a good man these past years. When others insulted him, he turned the other cheek. When the villagers “accidentally” bumped into him, he apologized.

But his attempts at a humble and peaceful life were for naught. The sins of his past have caught up with him.

No, not him, but his daughter. Fury and apprehension drove him to go faster. However, the battle-weary hunter soon slowed to a jog, his magical speed exhausted.

“I’ll rescue them,” Jabal said to Donaldson. “Just keep the other hunters away for their safety.” No longer caring about secrecy, he [Blinked] to the edge of his vision, leaving a void in the air that filled with a pop.

His body reminded him why he only reserved this ability for emergencies, even when secrecy did not matter. Prior to re-opening his eyes, he physiologically registered sensory signals that his consciousness was still ignorant of, like the abrupt absence of ground and the subtle displacement of air. A wave of nausea hit him, subsiding only after he visually confirmed a location change.

A couple of blinks later, and [Target] highlighted his daughter in the distance.

He blinked high overhead to survey the scene. He fell as he considered the potential avenues of attack. But Mad Majunda had not forgotten his training either, maintaining full control of the situation.

While he could blink into the man and slay him instantly, the blade claws were a problem. Unlike a cat, the steel daggers’ natural state was fully extended. But, like a loaded crossbow, Majunda kept them inside his body, reveling in its dramatic reveal.

With no easy rescue plan, he teleported back to the ground, far enough away to avoid surprising his former squadmate.

The man had aged well, still possessing a full head of hair and smooth skin. He had a chiseled face that many would call handsome at first glance. Few would sneak a second glance, though, after catching Majunda’s eye. How he looked back at them unnerved them.

Majunda grinned as he spotted Jabal, the drying blood highlighting the start of crow’s feet around one eye. “I knew you couldn’t resist my invitation.” He patted Renalia’s head, who bore it without expression.

A pang of nostalgia shot through Jabal upon hearing his mother tongue. But worry for his daughter overwhelmed all other thoughts. Blood coated her face too, running down her chin and neck. He didn’t know whose blood it was though, as neither sported visible wounds.

“Renya, are you okay?”

“Papa, help Lexi. He’s hurting her.”

“You got me, Mads. So let the hunter go. She has nothing to do with this.”

“Hm, I was saving her for later,” Majunda said. “It’s been so boring this past week, waiting for your daughter to show up.” He drummed his fingers on Renalia’s chest while he considered the proposal. His finger-blades stabbed into her armor repeatedly.

Renalia remained silent and unmoving.

His brave daughter helped Jabal avoid rising to Majunda’s bait. “The other hunters in the village will come to rescue her. But if I return her, they won’t bother us.”

“Oh, very well.” Majunda waved him off.

Jabal teleported to the island of dirt and wrapped his arms around Lexi, connecting their bodies enough for his teleportation to include her.

“Jabal,” Majunda said, lifting a finger high off of Renalia’s chest. “Come back soon, hmm?” He slowly unsheathed the blade attached to the finger.

Jabal reappeared some seconds later, Majunda’s curved knife still far from his daughter’s chest.

Majunda retracted his metal claw. “Ah, you’re no fun.”

“I’m back, like I said I would. So let my daughter go. We’ll talk, just the two of us. Or whatever else you wanted me for.”

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“Ah, nah, nah, nah. If I let her go, you’d just run away with her. You’re so very good at that. She’s staying exactly where she is right now.”

His daughter remained calm, not provoking her captor. But anxiety roiled within Jabal. He needed to get rid of Majunda before this monster could hurt his little girl any further, whether intentionally or accidentally. “Why are you here, Mads?”

“Is that how you greet an old friend?” Majunda shot back.

Jabal knew Majunda well enough to understand that Mads was savoring their fear and prolonging his pleasure. Back in their army days, Mads Majunda would raid the prisoner pens during stretches between battles. He would take his time carving into his victims, inflicting as much pain as he could before they bled out. But the ones Lieutenant Murchad could rescue fared arguably worse. So overwhelmed with terror, those prisoners eventually took their own lives.

After Lieutenant Murchad died, they tried to disrupt Majunda’s indulgences. But, unlike the Lieutenant, Majunda did not respect them enough to tolerate their interruptions. He would turn from crazy-mad to angry-mad. And angry-mad Majunda did not limit his anger to the prisoners.

Jabal now had to tread that fine line, somehow stopping this game that the sadist played without devolving into a fight with a monster. Renalia would not survive such a battle if Mads stopped playing around and tried to kill them instead.

And Jabal had to do all this under time pressure, too. He had told Donaldson to leave the situation to him. But he suspected the hunters would impose justice themselves against a Petravian who hurt one of their own. He had limited time before the hunters provoked a murderous psycho.

“We’re not friends.”

“Fine, not friends. But we were brothers. And you abandoned us.”

“I didn’t abandon you,” Jabal said. “Squad D annihilated us at Airondale. There is no ‘us’ anymore.”

“So many Lost Boys died that day. But Sand-eater Syed got out with some others. You and I survived too. Yet you ran away when we needed you. To do what? Live among the enemy?”

“The war’s over,” Jabal replied. “And what could I have done? I was a soldier, not an officer.”

“Bah, Squad D defeated us, but the war lasted for several years after that. And, even then, however loudly they proclaimed the peace, the fighting didn’t end. Not 'til recently. Too much hatred on both sides to lay down the sword on some liege’s say-so. Yet, here you are, married and a father for many years.”

“Yes, I ran away. But I never liked the fighting, not like you did.”

“Hah, not the fighter? I’m good with a knife”–Majunda lengthened a finger blade and pointed at him–”but we all know who the real Butcher is.”

Jabal hung his head. “The army stuffed me so full of weapons that I became a weapon. But I was never a warrior at heart. This is the real me.” Jabal played a melody with one hand, harmonizing with his vibrating fingers; in the other, he conjured a ball of dancing lights.

Renalia wrinkled her brow, confused at his display of her favorite powers. Majunda, however, barked a laugh. “You’ve become weak, living among the sheep. That one”–he gestured at the shrinking island among his bile–”was not half bad, though. Maybe I should have kept her around instead of you.”

“Is that why you’re here? To finally get the battle you’ve always wished for? Fine, let’s do it. Let my daughter go and I’ll fight you. To the death.”

“I suppose that was part of why I sought you out. I’ve always wondered which of us was stronger. But family life has made you soft, Jabal.”

Jabal [Enlarged] and encased himself in stone. “Hard enough for you, though.”

Renalia gasped at the revelation of his powers, but Majunda just raised an eyebrow. “Nah. Like you said, your heart’s not in it anymore. It’ll be as boring as pounding rock.”

Jabal released his powers, ignoring the small part of him that wanted to hold on to it. “So why else are you here, Mads? And how did you find me, anyway?”

“Ah, you remember this?” Murchad clenched his teeth and drew a claw along the forearm holding Renalia down. Reaching into his flesh, he withdrew a glass vial the size of a child’s finger.

“The bloodmancer… I thought that was just a ruse to keep us from deserting.”

“Nah, it’s real. Whatever he did to your blood”–Majunda shook the vial–”a drop on my tongue lets me know which direction to take. The army didn’t believe you had died at Airondale. They wanted the bloodmancer to find you, but I got to him first, brother.”

Majunda placed the vial back in the wound he had opened. He morphed his arm into his lizard form and changed back, his forearm slowly re-knitting itself. “Didn’t think I would have your back, did ya? Out of everyone in my life, I’ve known you the longest. That’s gotta mean something, right?”

“Oh, I … Thank you, Mads.” Jabal thought of Majunda as a horrible and repugnant monster. Something he had striven his whole life not to be. But he realized now that Majunda had not always been like this.

When they met, twenty-some years ago, they were two scared kids forcefully recruited into the army’s experimental unit. Maybe his childhood had so damaged him that Jabal didn’t know how to make friends. But Majunda was right. They were brothers, born from the same suffering.

“Ha! You are surprised. You think I’m a monster? That I was born like this?” Majunda raised both hands, extending his claws out to their full length.

Jabal tensed. He saw a glimmer of a chance. Blink into the gap between the knives and Renalia, cover himself in [Stone Skin], wrap her in his arms, and teleport away. But he also saw so many ways for Renalia to get hurt. And, if Majunda found him once, what would stop him from doing so again?

Jabal hesitated and in that delay, Majunda smiled, showing his teeth.

Majunda returned his hand to Renalia’s chest. “You think I want to have this-this unrelenting need to cut into things?” He traced a claw on Renalia’s black leathery skin, applying enough pressure to part the outer surface. “To see them bleed?” He sunk his claws into Renalia’s armor.

Jabal tensed, but forced his fists to unclench as the claws did not penetrate deep enough to draw blood. Majunda could still be playing with them, but Jabal sensed his former squadmate fighting with himself. Trying to find a way back to his humanity.

“You remember when they gave me [The Killing Gas]?” Jabal asked.

“Yeah, you partied hard that night. I’ve never seen anyone drink so much, not then and not since, either.”

“I wasn’t celebrating, Mads. I was drinking myself to senselessness.” He had told no one this story before, worried that he would scare them. But Majunda would understand. Perhaps the only one that would.

“Because every waking second, I wanted to envelop myself in a cloud of death. That card was strong enough to kill everyone in camp. The entire camp, not only our unit. But I was enough of myself to understand that it was the ability that wanted to end everything, not me. So I replaced it as soon as I could. You could do this too. Focus on what is you and what are the cards. Then, when you can, get rid of the ones that fuck with your head.”

“I have a full deck of death, Jabal. I’d be fifty-something by the time…” Majunda frowned and squinted at him. “Wait a minute. It hasn’t been that long since you deserted. Half your deck should still be from the Masked Ones.”

Jabal materialized his Deck, letting Majunda see the true him. His little girl’s eyes widened at his colorful cards. She craned her neck off the ground, eyes eagerly scanning his Deck. Jabal mentally sighed. No reactions when Mads toyed with her with five sharp knives, but this made her struggle.

“How is this possible? How did you get rid of all the cards that the Masked Ones forced into our Cores?”

Jabal’s [Target] highlighted various shapes in the distance, confirming that hunters from the village were coming. Some were assholes, which he understood, given the recent hostilities between their countries. But some were truly decent folk. He would not want any of them to come to harm.

It was time to try another tack.

“I’ll tell you… If you let my daughter go. This has nothing to do with her. I’ll stay and tell you, brother. On my word as a Lost Boy.”

Jabal could see the struggle on the ex-soldier’s face, with hope and curiosity finally winning out. He felt awful for lying to Majunda, but he would do anything for his daughter.

Majunda nodded and lifted his hand from Renalia. She laid there, uncertain if this was a trick.

“Renya,” Jabal called. “Come here.”

She leapt up, tears springing to her eyes as she ran to him. He hugged her a little harder than he intended.

“It’s okay now. Go back to the village. Tell Mama an old friend showed up, but I’ll be home soon.”

Renalia pulled away to look at him. “You’re not coming?”

“Not yet. I’m going to finish chatting here and see him off. Go.”

With Renalia on her way back to the village, his muscles, tensed since entering the bog, relaxed. Renalia and Eireann were safe. No matter what price his past extracted from him now, he had protected the two most precious things in his life.