Smoke trailed from his blackened nails. The T-shirt he was wearing split down the back as the boy’s frame filled out. A jagged row of blood-red spikes tore through his skin along the length of his spine. He hurled back his head and screamed, spewing fire in a mushroom cloud above him. As one, the Vikings shuffled back. Odin tried to maintain his grip, but Angelo was growing exponentially, and soon his neck was too broad for the Allfather to hold on to. There was another rip as the sleeves of the shirt surrendered to Angelo’s bulging biceps. His toes distended, sprouting curved black claws. The plastic straps of his flip-flops snapped as his feet rapidly outgrew them. His skin too was changing. It wasn’t just the colour – now a reddish-brown, like dry desert mud – it was the texture too. Rough, coarse scales covered his flesh, like a fish with a bad case of psoriasis. Odin’s eye swivelled up and down as he examined the creature that now towered above him. “A dragon!” he announced.
