Naomi sat back on her heels. “Let’s see what you can do.”
Scorio summoned his Heart. It appeared unchanged, yet somehow had a more ominous, ponderous sensation to it, as if it exuded a new form of danger. Scorio considered it, suddenly nervous, then willed it to ignite.
His reservoir opened and his Heart burst into Iron flames. Sweet power and deadly puissance flowed into his body. There was no particular need to draw on the ambient mana, so instead he watched the flickering flames, making no effort to control them beyond their natural state.
“Well?” demanded Naomi, tone turning toward the eager.
Scorio inhaled deeply and summoned his scaled form.
The change was distinctly different.
His talons extruded as before, their tips white-hot and gradating down through bright orange to cherry red before merging with this black-scaled hands, but the scales themselves… no longer was he covered in a uniform coat of diamond-shaped scales, each fluted and with a raised ridge.
Now his body was enveloped in a variety of ebon armored plates and finer scales. Across the back of his hands, up his forearms to just above the elbows, then over his deltoids formed black scales so thick and large they were more akin to leathery plates of armor. His upper arms were textured with fine, granular scales, but again the heavier plates sculpted around his deltoids, bulking them out further.
Scorio gazed down at himself. His chest and abdominal wall were similarly plated, the armoring composed of scores of tightly fitted wedges, with the largest covering his pectorals in great vertical bands. His torso was patterned with arching, gleaming smaller plates that simulated his abdominal muscles if they’d been fragmented into three times as many smaller plates.
Down his thighs, over his knees, down his shins and the tops of his feet to where great talons protruded over the caldera floor. He could feel the plates across his shoulder blades, sweeping down to the small of his back. The backs of his thighs, his calves. Everywhere else was covered in the flexible, fine-grained scales, so that he felt dressed in a suit of armor, flexible, organic, yet obdurate, unyielding.
As always, his robes had disappeared, to be replaced by a metallic belt from which hung a black curtain of cloth that draped to just above his knees. He turned his palms over, marveling, and then caught Naomi staring.
Not at the new plating, but at his head.
“What?” he asked, and then realized it.
His face, his head, it had all changed. Always he’d grown backswept horns, their ridges sharp, but now his face, it all…
He reached up and touched a protruding, saurian snout. His jaw length had expanded and was lined with a profusion of inch-long horns that came to a point at his chin. His mouth was long, seamed, his nose sunken into mere nostrils that were twin near horizontal slits. More spikes emerged up the harsh length of his cheekbones and over his brow, so that his eyes were sunken between their growths, and his horns…
He had four of them now. Two whose backswept plating began just above his eyes and swept back directly over his head, short and curling up at the tips, while two massive ones emerged from his temples at a sharp backward angle to extend what felt like a whole foot behind his head.
Yet, massive and ornery and alien as his head now felt, it didn’t feel heavy. He opened his mouth - was it a maw now? - and touched his fangs. His burning talons felt pleasantly warm against his lips, his gums. His crocodilian teeth were sharp and triangular, and from the sight of Naomi’s face they had to be… impressive.
“By the gods,” she said, sounding dazed. “You’re…”
He always grew taller when he entered his scaled form, but Naomi appeared even smaller than usual. He frowned, gauged the difference, and realized he had to stand over seven feet tall now, perhaps closer to eight, his shoulders broad and massive, his torso tapering as before to narrow hips, his arms long and powerfully muscled.
Scorio inhaled deeply and felt the plates that banded his chest expand with his ribcage. Power coursed through him like magma through the tunnels below, and he felt light, lethal, yet viciously strong.
“Wow,” managed Naomi, gathering her wits. “That’s… that’s a new look.”
Scorio leaned forward slightly and pulled his saurian mouth into a smile. “Frightened?”
“You forget what I change into?”
He straightened. “Good.”
Naomi walked around him. “Are the finer scales weaker? Because if so, you’ve traded some good defense for a lot of weak spots.”
“One way to find out,” he rasped, cutting his tail from side to side.
His tail.
Scorio whipped around, causing his tail to slash around with him, darted his head from side to side, then reached back to grab his tail by the base where it emerged from the small of his back.
It was muscular, perhaps two yards long, and tipped with a great barb that made even him wary to handle it.
“A tail!” Naomi grinned darkly. “Finally, a development you can be proud of.”
Scorio drew it before him. Dorsal spikes emerged from each vertebrae-like segment, each looking wickedly sharp.
Nobody would be grabbing his tail without instant regrets.
He released it and tried to swing it to one side then the other. It felt clumsy, like using an arm you’d fallen asleep on. The best he could do was wag it from side to side, and that with some encouragement from his hips.
“Aw,” said Naomi. “You’re happy.”
“I’m not wagging my tail out of happiness, Naomi,” he rasped. “It’s… it’s going to take some getting used to.”
Naomi said something, but he closed his eyes and focused his energy within. The potential for his wings were there as always, so he extruded them, keeping them to a moderate width, and extended them out wide. Glancing at them he saw they’d remained much the same, though they appeared more muscular, with the edges furrowed with thick, sharp scales.
“Alright,” said Naomi, stepping back as he fanned his wings. “Now that’s a pretty disturbing sight.”
Scorio bared his fangs but allowed his wings to return. “Prepare yourself.”
Her eyes instantly narrowed. “For what?”
JUMP.
His command blasted forward as if he’d bellowed, rich with authority and power. Naomi’s eyes snapped open wide as she leaped some three feet straight up.
She landed in a crouch then snarled and tore up into her Nightmare Lady form, tail lashing back and forth in her own white-hot fury. “Don’t you dare do that again.”
Again Scorio grinned and spread his arms. “I warned you. But since you’re here, why don’t you test this new armor of mine?”
“With pleasure,” she hissed, and her tail sped over her shoulder to spear into his chest, its wicked point slamming home into one of the broad, vertical plates.
It felt like a punch, and since he’d not been ready to receive the blow he took a few steps as he caught his balance.
But the tip had only scratched his broad plating.
The Nightmare Lady’s sulfurous green eyes narrowed in displeasure. “Not bad.”
“Hmm.” Scorio ran his talons over the plating of his stomach. “How about -”
Her tail came scything around and slammed into the finer scales that ran up his ribs to his armpit. The blow was vicious and caused the scales to split and crunch. Scorio leaped aside, landing neatly, and immediately raised his arm to inspect the damage. She’d cut a gash through the fine, pebbled scales, but nothing grievous; black blood trickled down his side, but it was a negligible wound.
“Weaker,” she said, “but more in line with what your scales were before.”
“So not weaker,” he said, pouring more mana into his Heart so that his healing would speed up. “Just the same.”
“Compared to this thicker plates they’re a weakness.”
“Perhaps. They allow me to keep maximum mobility.” Scorio swung his arms about, wincing at the pull of his muscles along his wounded side, but even that slight pain was fading. He twisted about, touched his toes, then leaped several times, bringing his knees up to his chest. “Yep. Mobility isn’t impacted.”