"Impressive display for one yet so young," said Morgain, stepping through a shadowy rift in the dank air of the sewer. She had just felt Covenant make the transition back to the Otherworld, so she felt safe revealing herself. "It seems he's managed to keep a little of the power of Avalon locked within himself, despite his wanderings."
Hovering above the green water, her royal attire held aloft seemingly by invisible attendants, Queen Morgain floated to a corner of the room far from the platform where Covenant had banished his personal darkness. Holding up a man-shaped silhouette in her left hand, she summoned a globe of light in her right and began the man-shadow across the surface of the water.
Suddenly, the shadow refused to move with her backlit silouette, as though it had become stuck to the water. "Ah, there you are," she whispered, a playful smile touching her lips. "Wake up, shadow of my nephew... We've things to talk about." Positioning her hands over the area of man-shadow, she willed her power into it. "Take of my life to make yourself whole, shadow... Become my son and the heir to my knowledge!"
Slowly, the churning muck beneath her turned a decidedly darker color and began to take on a more solid appearance. It bowed up toward her, as though some foul creature lurking beneath the surface was blowing a gigantic black bubble. She rose higher and backed away, willing still more of her power in the growing boil of blackness. "Drink deep of the power of Avalon, my ebon son, and grow strong!" she screamed, a growing madness burning in her eyes.
As the bubble grew to a height of 7 feet and detached from the surface of the water, Morgain laughed madly. Summoning still more of her power, she sent into the sphere a lance of pure white light. The bubble burst into a shower of gray radiance, leaving a man hovering where it had been a moment ago.
His skin was a twilit grey, and his eyes seethed with dark energy. He seemed to exude a darkling aura, bright in its blackness. The room seemed a bit colder for his presence, though even in his newborn nakedness he seemed untouched by the cold.
"My, you look so much like your father... I expected a resemblance, but you are truly a dark parody. The shadow must have touched him even more deeply than I had thought. I'll have to be more careful... Arthur was too close to death for comfort, and we don't want another episode like that." She stared at him, clearly in awe of how perfect the union of her power was with Covenant's. "Truly, I thought the magic of Avalon inherent in the armor would be enough to bring you forth, but his burst of strength seems to have made you his equal in power. Come," she said, beckoning him toward her, "I have knowledge to impart."
He hovered slowly, silently toward her, trailing wisps of shadow all the way. His gaze was locked to her own as he approached and his face betrayed no hint of emotion, but she knew he was frightened and confused. He seemed to have inherited his father's refusal to bow to fear and instead to approach it head on, despite that it could kill him, rather than admit his fear and run.
She smiled warmly, raising her hands to his dusky face. "I shall not harm you, my son... yours is the power to be feared. You are of the Light of Avalon, yet also of the Darkness of Death. Yours is the power of shadow, and in shadow all things are possible. Now, receive the knowledge you are heir to," she said, light enveloping her hands.
Laying her hands alongside his head, the shadow of Henry Pendragon convulsed. His mind was filled with history and language and the mysteries of magic. He knew all the things his mother knew, or so much as she allowed him to know (foremost among the things he knew in that instant: he only knew what she wanted him to.) As the light receded from
her hands, he backed away from her.
"Thank you, mother. Being born fully grown, yet fully dumb... kinda sucked." He smiled, knowing that his use of modern slang would please her. She wanted him to fit in to this world of man as though he belonged, and he wanted to repay her for giving him form. "Before all I could do was be... thinking is much better than just being. I'd say I'm happy to be alive, but you didn't give me that, did you? Happiness, that is." He kept smiling, though never once did it rouch his eyes.
She shook her head sadly. "It was not I who denied you joy, but your father. He cast you away, that he would no longer carry you within himself. You are his rage, his sadness and his hatred. You are the darkness of Henry Pendragon's soul, and will forever be all that he is not." Morgain appeared to be truly saddened by his loss, but he doubted her sincerity.
"I guess I'll just have to kill him, then. Maybe when I absorb his soul I'll get to be all that he was," he said, stretching his arms out to his sides. As he did this, the shadows swirled and gathered to him, cloaking him a cocoon of deepest black. Slowly, the darkness began to cling to his form, coalescing into a blackened parody of the armor gifted to Covenant.
Queen Morgain's eyes widened in surprise. "No! You mustn't attempt such a thing! Already have I lost one son and nearly a brother to such nonsense, and I shall have no more of it!" she screamed at him, her voiced magnified by her power. Echoes resounded from a dozen tunnels, driving home her command.
"You will be as a thorn in his side, but no more! Do justice with your dark power; feed on the souls of those who dare attack you! Strike fear into the hearts of all who see you, make the common man think you are him-- but if you should even be on the same plane at the same time as your father, I shall be forced to lock you in the realm of shadow for all eternity!"
She was seething with rage, due to something so simple as a little death; it made no sense to him. "Fine... No killing dad. I get it. So basically I just get to walk around, starving, until some idiot works up the nerve to attack me? Who could be that stupid?! I'll starve to death if I wait for that."
The anger on her face slowly melted into mirth. She chuckled at first, then laughed uproariously. "Silly boy! The streets of this city are filled with people that stupid!" She broke off, laughing hysterically. "Truth be told, there are hundreds wandering the sewers who would happily attack you, though you sheathe yourself in darkness and retaliate with powers beyond their comprehension! With knives, no less!" She continued laughing as though this were all a great comedy, though he couldn't understand why. In his mind, people insane enough to attack him with a knife were not funny, just pathetic.
"Right, so why are we still here, if the food's out there? This being born and instantly educated stuff is really making me feel a little thin." He raised his breastplate to reveal that he was, in fact, growing somewhat translucent.
"Of course. Come, my son... once you are registered as a hero, you may begin your feast. If you attack anyone before you are registered, you will only be detained longer before you get your fill." Summoning a portal, they stepped into the streets of the city.
"Mother, what am I called? You gave me knowledge, but no name... how am I gonna strike fear into the hearts of men with no name?! 'Oh no, run! It's... That grey guy with the armor!' That just doesn't say mass panic like, say... 'Lord of Doom'."
Morgain laughed quietly. "I do believe hunger is affecting your behavior, boy. As your father was named for his grandfather, so shall you be. Your name shall be Arthur, but you shall be known as the Scion of Shadow, Pact between the way of light and the way of darkness. I think it's most appropriate, don't you?" she asked as she settled into a self-satisfied smile.
"Woohoo! I get to sound like a pompous *** just like dad! Now can we please do this registration thing? I'm fading away, here."
So there you have it. I'm a bad good guy. Maybe a good bad guy. Whatever... I eat the souls of bad guys... call it what you like. Don't get me wrong; nobody I feed from dies, but they will never get rid of the nightmares. 
As far as making the common man fear me, well I don't think that's working. It seems they're used to you freaks smashing, burning, freezing, etc. the bad guys. I suck the life out of a buncha guys wearing face paint, stare menacingly (I think it's menacing... isn't black energy oozing from my eyes menacing?) at their former victim, and what happens?! She gives me a damned hug! I don't want hugs! I want her to run in terror! I'm scarrier than the idiot with a baseball bat!
I haven't seen mother since she left me at City Hall. I'm not sure what her plan was anymore, and I'm not sure I care; I've got my own plan. Somehow, some way, I'm gonna get warm. With all the wierd crap in this city, making me flesh should be easy enough... I just have to figure out how.
So, if you can help me become a real boy, just let me know. Otherwise, if you see me coming down the street, do me a favor: scream loudly and run away. I have an image to protect.
You don't know me. You very likely don't want to know me; I'm not a very nice person. Hell, I don't even know if I qualify as a person, really. Sounds cryptic, doesn't it? Well let me tell you a little about me... but first, you need to know about my parents, if you can call them that.
My father was born around 1500 years ago on a quaint little island called Avalon. His father was the legendary King Arthur and his mother was none other than the Lady Guinevere. Now this name you may know: Covenant, Scion of Avalon. I've never met him, but I hear he's a nice guy. Did I mention I hate him? Well I do.
Anyway, he's heir to the power of Avalon, as you can probably tell by his oh-so-modest name. Mother tells me his being born there linked him to the magic of the place. She also tells me she engineered the whole thing, what with the mortal wounding of my grandfather/uncle by my brother/uncle/cousin (geez... complicated much?) Mordred. She made sure he was wounded so badly he'd have to spend years under the care of the Sisters of Avalon.
So my father, Henry Pendragon, grew up on Avalon. When he was somewhere around 10, the Sisters of Avalon saw that everybody was abandoning the old ways in favor of the Christian god, so they decided the only way to preserve the power of Avalon was to take the magic elsewhere; they broke the physical island away from the spirit of the island and moved the spirit to the Otherworld, some dimension that's neither here nor there, but is open to anyone or anything that doesn't have a rightful place (think limbo, and you'll be close.)
So Covenant stays with the spirit of the island, hoping to learn more about his power, which mother and the other Sisters happily teach him. Oh, did I forget to tell you she'd been Arthur's chief caretaker throughout his recovery? Some people know she's one of the four Queens of Avalon, but just in case you didn't, you do now. Anyway, one day the Sisters receive a vision from God, who apparently holds them in high regard for conceding to His power. It seemed that it was time for Covenant to leave; he had a destiny to get on with.
The Sisters told him all about the vision and gave him a perfect mental image of the man whose lead he needed to follow. So he left, transported through the mist to where he needed to be-- England, as it turned out. He was searching for a man who called himself Servant 12, or who would eventually call himself by that name.
Servant 12 had been called by God to gather 11 heroes beside himself and beat back the growing forces of evil as the Millenium Paladins. (Hey, I'm just using the words mother gave me... No making fun or I'll be forced to eat your soul.) Well, not too long after he found Servant 12, mother set more stuff in motion. She sent a guy to attack them, setting their hotel on fire at the same time. Mother knew that Covenant would have to alter his powers to put the fire out.
After that, she just needed to let him sink into the "woe is me, I don't have god-like power anymore" depression. Predictably, when he began noticing he was defeatable by common thugs, he felt weak (despite the fact that he can wave his hand and send those thugs flying... Some people just don't know power when they see it.) Mother-- who you may have figured out is none other than Morgain Le Fey-- took this opportunity to suggest to the Sisters that they should craft an enchanted suit of armor that would focus his new power into a semblance of the old.
Mother knew something the others didn't, though: she knew how father's power truly worked. He's a conduit of some sort... he has to draw on the power available in his environment. So she put a little something extra into the armor; she made it focus his will to do battle above all else, something the Sisters could not disagree with as it would see him through the harder battles.
It was a simple matter of manipulating a vahzilok woman after that. Covenant was overpowered, blinded by the battle fury, and easily tricked into drawing on the only power around him: the power of darkness. He defeated the eidolon, played with her for a bit (which I wish I could have seen,) then came to the realization that he was being bad. (Boo hoo!)
Oh, the drama of that scene... He threw off the darkness in a blazing display, crying all the while to the Sisters, as though they had anything to do with it. Fact is, he broke mother's hold on the armor, and even she doesn't know how. She thinks he may have tapped the last reserves of his old power to pull it off, but it really doesn't matter-- this is where I come in.