"No! Don't eat him!" Rabbilyn lunges at Bogar, his effort futile as the pain in his hips overcomes his muscles and the boy collapses onto the ground again.

Bogar starts enjoying teasing the boy, finding this a rare entertainment in the dull alleys. "Loook, leetle winged boooy. I'm eeeting yoor frieend. . ." Bogar lifts the rat's arm to his mouth, then speaks in a falsetto voice, now pretending to be Eep. "Ohhh! Help! Hee ees eeeeting mah aarm!" The collector breaks into a string of annoying laughter as he sees Rabbilyn's tormented expression.

Rabbilyn screams again. "Stop!" As a ball of lightning forms in his left hand, the boy's feature changes. Rabbilyn's eyes adopt a feline pupil. The feathers on his right wing molt away, and two full-sized demonic wings now stretch out in awakening on the boy's back. Bogar watches in horror as Rabbilyn's frame expands, until the child, now a mass of dark muscles and claws, become as big as he is. . . then a foot taller than he is. . . then two feet. . . three feet. . . and Rabbilyn is no longer recognizable as Rabbilyn, but a towering creature from hell. Bogar screams as the creature scorches his left leg into a charcoal crisp, and hears its pleasured laughter as his arm is ripped out of its socket with a sickening tccchh, just like the sound of him ripping a leg off of a delicious cranium rat. . . .

"Today I will perform the annual check-up of the subject, who is now exactly 12 years of age. I will start off with a blood analysis for the unusual change in Rabbilyn's left wing in the past four months. Kreilor and I have been most troubled due to its alteration from a Deva's whiteness to the black mess it is right now. Perhaps this is the result of the recent domination of the planes of evil, Baator and The Abyss, in acquiring new territory. Anyhow, I will also test the subject's full range of emotions by means of magical manipulation. . ." Kreilor reads Xia's journal again. He doesn't marvel about how she could detach her jubilant personality in her journals, but regrets having left the house during the examination. Perhaps, with their combined powers, Xia and he could have. . . but Xia could never hurt Rabbilyn. Not even if she knew it would be better for the multiverse itself.

Kreilor had a vague notion something like this would happen. From the first moment Rabbilyn's wings molted, he was worried. And did he leave the house that day, not because he was gathering herbs, but because he was avoiding? Avoiding. . . certain death had he remained with his child? Kreilor closes Xia's journal and shakes the thought away. "I am not a coward," he mutters. . . perhaps only to convince himself. And despite his conscious suppression, he knows that he tricked Rabbilyn into Sigil because he was afraid. Kreilor is no Dustmen berk with all that True Death talk. He wants to live! He wants to enjoy living! And he is powerful. So powerful that he is much more intimidated by something beyond his control, unfamiliar and dangerous. The same fear in lowly hive dwellers, only more so. So he tricked Rabbilyn away. He knew what he was going to do as he waited for his child to wake up. And before that, when he saw his child unconscious amid his wife's scattered corpse. And perhaps before that, when he left the house to gather herbs, not noticing the sorrow in Xia's eyes as she watched her husband escape his fate. Like a coward.

"But how am I going to come back? I hope mom won't be too worried." Rabbilyn asked innocently. "Why, with this purple crystal of course. You're old enough now that you should adventure a little on your own. Your mother agrees with me too." Kreilor's laughter was forced, but the child didn't notice. He doesn't know that the crystal is no portal key. The crystal is nothing, and Kreilor enchanted it to shatter the moment it enters Sigil so the boy doesn't get angry at his father and the wraith of the dark, powerful creature will not reach Kreilor. "Go now. I'll wait for you right here." Kreilor tries to smile as the boy disappears through the portal, clutching the useless crystal carefully.