“Hey, wake up. Stop sleeping.”

Something prodded Damien in the side. His eyes shot open and he bolted upright, only to see Henry’s blobby form floating in front of him. Damien let his breath out in a quiet sigh, turning to squint out the crack at the bottom of the door. There was no light.

“What do you want? Why aren’t we using my mindscape for this?”

“You’ve been using it too much recently,” Henry replied. “And it wouldn’t have been as cool in there. More of the second reason than the first, really.”

“Never could have guessed,” Damien mumbled, wetting his lips and shaking his head. He swung his legs out of bed and pulled his coat on, wrapping the scarf around his neck. “What is it? And this better not be something about goats.”

“No goats,” Henry promised. “But we’re going to need to go somewhere were people can’t watch. This is a surprise, after all. It’s more fun if we get to use it multiple times.”

Damien cocked an eyebrow as he strode out the door, closing it gently behind him. He headed out of the mountain made for the secluded peak that Kat had sparred him on weeks ago.

You sound pretty excited. What’s this about?

“Telling would be spoiling.”

Its your full manifestation, isn’t it?

“Hey! How’d you know that?” Henry floated around to cut Damien off. “That’s no fair! Did you figure out how to read my mind? That shouldn’t be possible, you never studied anything about that. Unless you waited until I was distracted…”

No mind reading. It was just kind of obvious. Have you even been doing anything else these past weeks? It’s literally the only thing you’re working on. You also kind of confirmed it, I was only guessing.

“I – bah.” Henry crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes at Damien. “Now I do not want to do it.”

Don’t be a sourpuss. You brought me all the way out here, and just because I know what you’re doing doesn’t mean I know what the surprise is. If it’s anything half as cool as Quinlan’s transformation, I think it’ll be more than worth it.

Henry harrumphed. “I’m way cooler than her stupid little lizard. What can it do, anyway? Set itself on fire? Anyone can do that at least once.”

Damien rolled his eyes. Henry complained the rest of the climb up the mountain and until they reached the small sparring arena. He walked into the center and raised an expectant eyebrow at Henry.

“We’re alone here, so I guess I’ll talk normally,” Damien said. “Go on, then. Show me!”

“It just feels so lackluster now,” Henry said mournfully. “The wind has left my sails, and my heart is empty.”

They stared at each other.

“You stole that from a smutty novel.”

“I most certainly did not.”

Damien cocked his head to the side.

“Okay, I might have,” Henry admitted. “But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”

“Are we really going to do this?”

“No, no. I’m getting to it,” Henry said, waving a tentacle dismissively and floating over before. “Alright. You ready for this? Behold!”

Henry rose into the air. Crackles of dark energy rippled across his purple flesh as his eyes lit with burning light. A dull hum washed over Damien’s skin, carrying an energy that made his teeth vibrate in his gums.

Then it vanished, sucked back up into Henry’s body. Damien glanced around, making sure he hadn’t somehow missed it.

“What was that?”

“You’re watching me,” Henry said crossly. “It’s making me nervous.”

Damien’s eye twitched. “You have definitely been reading too many of those novels, Henry. I’m going to have to stage an intervention at this rate. Just show me the damn thing. I want to see it!”

“That’s what the chick in the novel said too,” Henry said. He cackled at Damien’s expression, then dove into the ground and vanished into Damien’s shadow. Rivers of ice curled through his veins, wrapping up around his legs.

He went stiff as energy coursed through his body, flooding his muscles and covering his skin. Waves of dark energy pulsed off his body as shadowy threads shot out, whipping around his skin and connecting to his clothes.

The mage armor turned black around him in the same way that it typically did when Henry was entering his Battle Manifestation, but it didn’t stop. The cloak stretched out even further than it had before and eyes spit open all over it.

Greaves of black metal formed over Damien’s legs, building themselves up to his waist, where a plain chest plate took the place of the cloth armor. Eyes sprouted over it, twitching around before shifting to stare straight ahead.

The shadows continued up, forming jagged shoulder pads and encasing his arms in the slippery metal.

“Eight Planes,” Damien said, shifting his footing. He couldn’t even feel the weight of the armor. It felt like he was just wearing his normal mage armor. “What is this?”

“Armor,” Henry said, a mouth splitting open in the center of his chest plate. “What did you think it was?”

“Creepy armor,” Damien agreed. “What does it do? It kind of looks like a scarier version of your Battle Manifestation.”

“Oh, this is my new Battle Manifestation,” Henry crowed. “I just wanted to show you this first. The eyes are the same ones I use for my own magic. You haven’t learned that particular spell yet, but I’ll be able to use it while you fight. It should be pretty effective.”

Damien studied himself, wishing he’d brought a mirror of some sort. “It looks intimidating. I like it. Are there other new features?”

“The armor will function like a better version of your Mage Armor. I can also control more parts of it, so I can do more than annoy people with tentacles during fights. Also, it’s freaking badass.”

“I’ll give you that,” Damien admitted, still trying to get a better look at the rest of Henry’s creation. “Well done. It looks great.”

“Hah. If you’re impressed with this, I’m about to blow your socks off,” Henry said. “You ready for my Full Manifestation? Actually, wait. Ask me some questions. Try to figure out what it is.”

Damien rolled his eyes, but Henry’s enthusiasm was infectious. And, considering his companion had been working on it for so long, it would have been rude not to play along at least a little – so long as Henry didn’t slip in too many sex jokes.

“Considering we were both jealous of Quinlan’s Full Manifestation, is it something big?”

“Not as big as hers,” Henry replied. “But sleeker. More intimidating.”

“That was a given, to be honest,” Damien said. “Everything about you is intimidating to most people. Uh – it’s not a giant eyeball or something, is it?”

“Nope. That sounds lame.”

Damien tried not to let the relief show on his face. “Well, you don’t exactly have a natural form like a dragon would. You’re just a blob of shadowy, brain melting stuff. Did you fashion it after a monster?”

“Something like that,” Henry said. “But not just any monster. It’s one we know. I thought it was fitting.”

“A monster we know?” Damien asked, pursing his lips. “I don’t think we know any monsters. I’ll throw in the towel. Just show me?”

“Very well. Feast your eyes upon the most intimidating Full Manifestation that has ever existed on the Mortal Plane!”

The ground before Damien rippled as his shadow stretched out around him. It lost its form, turning into a circle on the ground around him. Darkness bubbled, curls of ropey energy lifting off it and floating into the air.

Shadows rippled like a pool, gathering in front of Damien as a humanoid form started to take shape. At first, Damien though Henry was just returning to his normal, shadowy figure. That quickly proved to not be the case.

Henry rose to stand several heads above Damien. Instead of the typical shadowy flame that made up his body, this one was solid. Purple light trailed and pulsated along its surface.

The new body was lithe and tall, bordering on malnourished. Henry’s hands ended in long, spindlelike claws. His face was empty, aside from a single, purple tinged eye. It swiveled to look down at Damien as two massive, axe shaped wings erupted from Henry’s back. Their edges looked as sharp as blades, and there were two thin, ropey lines on each of them.

“Eight Planes,” Damien said, taking a step back despite himself. Henry looked beyond menacing. If he didn’t know better, he would have thought his companion was the monster from a tale told to keep children in line. Henry’s ribcage poked at the edges of his dark, pulsating skin, and the area where his mouth was shifted ever so slightly, as if he were trying to breath from behind a heavy blanket. “That’s terrifying.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Henry said. His voice layered over itself, reverting to how he had sounded when Damien had first spoken with him. “I’ve gathered the aspects of my true form and tried to bring them out in a way that won’t just end up killing everyone around us – including you.”

Thin bolts of white light rippled within his body before fading away. Henry examined his hand, nodding to himself. “And I think I did a damn good job at it.”

“What can you do?” Damien asked. “Aside from cut things – those fingers look sharp.”

“I’ve got a passive tear spell running on them,” Henry said, swiping a hand through the ground. His claws carved clean through it without even an ounce of resistance. “But that’s the least of it.”

His wings extended, casting a shadow over Damien. “I’ve got wings, so we can fly now. Much better than Warp Stepping yourself constantly in the same place to hover.”

“Agreed,” Damien said. “You look fairly fast as well.”

“Faster than you, slower than Sylph and Kat,” Henry confirmed, lowering his wings. “But the speed is just a nice little bonus. That wasn’t what I was really going for. As I said, I aimed to get as many aspects of my true form as possible without actually completely revealing it.”

Henry sank into the ground and rose up a short distance away from Damien. “I can move through the darkness so long as it’s within my domain – the domain being that ring of shadow I made around you.

He stepped behind Damien and wrapped his arms around the boy’s neck. As soon as his body touched the mage armor, it shimmered and melted, joining into it. Within instants, Henry had completely merged into his body, leaving only the huge wings behind.

“And you’re part of my domain, so I can mesh our bodies together. That means I can give you my wings, among a few other things.”

“Okay, that’s pretty nice. I see you stole that from Quinlan or Kat,” Damien said with a grin.

“Kat,” Henry admitted. “They looked cool. But I made them better. This is the main part of my Full Manifestation – everything else was just secondary.”

He separated from Damien and stretched his right wing out. One of the lines along it shuddered, then peeled open, revealing a pale white eye. A wave of energy pulsed through Damien as the world morphed.

Colors drained away. Rocks bent and the walls danced as his attention was pulled into the center of the eye, as if nothing else existed. Damien staggered. His eyes narrowed and he steeled his resolve. The feeling felt almost familiar. He shook his head and the strange vision vanished as the world returned to normal.

“Incomprehensibility,” Henry said, letting the eye close once more. “You’re incredibly resistant to it, but most people won’t be. It’ll incapacitate weak opponents completely and cause a fair amount of trouble for stronger ones. It probably won’t do much against someone like Second or other Void creatures, but I think you can see how it would be useful.”

Damien let out a whistle. “Yeah, I can see that. There were two lines on each of your wings – does that mean you’ve got four eyes that do similar things?”

“Yep,” Henry replied with a grin. “Well, something to that affect, anyway. It isn’t perfect yet. I might have gotten a little too excited and jumped the gun on telling you. I’ve only got one of them working, and another is close.”

“Well, what’s the other?”

The other line on Henry’s right wing snapped open. Instead of an eye, there was simply a dark void behind it. A howl filled Damien’s ears as his vision faded and the light on the mountaintop started to vanish. Streamers of energy spiraled into the void. With every passing second, Damien’s vision gave out even more.

There was a pop, and his sight flashed back to normal. Henry flexed his wing and let it lower. “That one’s fun. I’m not using darkness magic – I’m literally absorbing the light, so even people that have ways to see in the dark won’t be able to use them. I can convert that energy as well, but I haven’t gotten it functioning in a way that won’t break your other people’s puny mortal minds on accident.”

“Eight Planes,” Damien said, shaking his head in disbelief. “That’s terrifying. If I didn’t know better, if I saw you standing somewhere, I would assume that you were still trying to destroy the world.”

“And it isn’t even fully complete yet,” Henry crowed, striking a pose. “I’m so much cooler than Quinlan’s companion. The last two eyes will be on a completely different level if I can get them working.”

“You going to tell me what they do?”

“Not yet. I don’t know if they work yet, and I might just end up changing their purpose if I can’t make them work how I want them to.”

“That’s fine,” Damien said, walking in a circle around Henry. If he hadn’t seen Henry in his true eldritch form, this would have been without a doubt the most terrifying version of him that he’d ever been in the presence of. His skin prickled despite his logic telling him that there was nothing to worry about. “I can’t wait to show Sylph this. She’s going to be so impressed. Brilliant job, Henry. Seriously. You must have worked seriously hard on this.”

“I did,” Henry said. “Compliment me more.”

“Nope, that’s all you’re getting,” Damien said with a laugh. “How much do we have to hide this? Is it going to give your true nature away to anyone? Or can we pass it off as something from the Plane of Darkness still?”

“I’ve made sure no Void energy will leak out. We’re totally safe,” Henry said. The shadows surrounding them fell away as his form sloughed away and he returned to his blobby form. “Can we show off to some Mountain Hall people first? We don’t get to see Sylph for a while, and I’m impatient.”

“Oh, absolutely.” Damien grinned. “I bet Kat will take us up on it. I want to see what you can do against her. Let’s go. It shouldn’t be too long until people start to wake up, and I’m sure she’ll take us up on a little sparring.”