He twisted around and locked upon my gaze. Even through the green blaze, it seemed as if his eyes had changed color, gone black. They looked unlike they ever had before, and yet somehow more familiar than I could fathom.

“Andromeda!” he called as the light shot out of his face in wild lashing tendrils. “Shield your mind.” His voice was filled with incontestable command and yet, at the same time, more desperate than I’d ever heard it. “Look away!”

No! I didn’t want to turn from him. How did the eleven screaming madmen that surrounded us have souls worthy to be consumed by him, but I did not? Why would he not let me too be driven mad? It was the one last thing I had left to desire! I was frantic for it, and I refused to be denied! If I would die here tonight, then at least I would die finally truly knowing him.

However, despite my resolve, a sudden painfully blinding flash made my treacherous hands cover my eyes on impulse.

I could still hear Epistola shouting alien incantations, but her voice was cut off by the boom of Riley’s. “What was it you said? Look at me now?” he mocked. “LOOK AT ME?! AS YOU WISH.”

No, it wasn’t fair! I could not allow her to see him without seeing him myself. I forced my eyes open, although the brilliance was almost too much to bear. It shone all colors and no colors, and washed off Riley as if he were radioactive. Amid the sparkling storm, I first thought the dazzling green cast to his skin was a result of the glow, but as I focused, I realized that his flesh had actually changed color. My mind tried to grapple with the continued illusion that he was growing, the feeling that I was somehow shrinking, but then I understood that this time—this time, he was actually getting larger.

Energy bloomed behind him and first one, and then two, huge leathery wings unfurled from his back in an explosion of light and darkness.

The screams of the cultists were overwhelmed by a pulsing thrum, almost musical, that drowned out all other sounds. It seemed as if Riley were coming closer to me, but I realized that he was just continuing to literally inflate in size, his form spreading across the stage, stretching toward the catwalk. His limbs were thickening, larger than trees, his hands stretching into vast webbed things tipped with long razor claws, and his face…

His head transformed before my eyes, stretching into an inhuman shape, his hair disappearing, his nose flattening out, his eyes spreading to vast shimmering black rainbow orbs… and his mouth obliterated as countless tentacles spilled from his face, lashing with shimmering tendrils of pure iridescent energy.