Outside of time and space, that is where the final confrontation was truly held. After his vessel struck the final blow interceding the blue haired lord's attempt to seal the fell dragon for another thousand years of slumber, they gathered here: the defiant avatar, their defeated other from the future where Grima reigned victorious, and the fell dragon himself.
Grima seethed at the impudent whelp standing across from him, a young man with a solemn face framed by silver locks of hair. A look of calm replacing the fierce determination set in his eyes as he regarded his doppelganger and the overthrown god.
"You fool…" Grima hissed through his jaws full of teeth while his former mouthpiece lay crumpled in a heap beneath him, "You insolent fool! Have you no idea of the magnitude of your folly?" The dragon roared out, acrid spit flecking the ground between the tactician and him. "I offered you ascension, yet you clung to those verminous Shepherds like an insect! Do you think they will morn your death? That their love for you will bring you back? Do you still believe in Naga's words? Oh yes, I know what she told you. Ludicrous!" the dragon-god reared his head up haughtily glaring down with his six red eyes and two almond shaped holes with his parody of a human face. "Your death will be celebrated by the humans as they continue to extend their pitiful existence! But I will not be stopped here." Grima spread his wings in a display of superiority even in this realm of nothingness. "I will return to the land of the living once more and not even you can stop me, whelp!" An eruption of fire cascaded out of the fell dragon's maw and engulfed the figure of the defiant avatar.
Grima laughed victoriously while his broken puppet stared listlessly at the churning embers. However, the tactician from the future past lifted his head when a bright aura shone through the dissipating cloud of fire. He inhaled sharply. Standing in the midst of smoke and flame was their alternate, flanked by the ghostly images of the band of friends and warriors who made up the Shepherds. The specter of Yillse's blue haired Exalt grasped the shoulder of the resolute tactician who stood with an unchanged expression of peace and confidence.
"Our future is closed off from you Grima, now and forever." The silver haired tactician spoke with finality cutting through the silence.
A bellowing roar was the fell beast's response.
"Keep your pathetic future then! I have other avenues to escape through, other incarnations like this one," A feathered wing is gestured to the wincing tactician who doomed their future to Grima after unwillingly killing their best friend. "Wherever and whenever the heart of Grima still beats strong is where I will forever be!"
Robin narrowed his eyes as the aura of light faded back into him along with the apparitions of his friends. Grima cackled at his avatar's frustration as the void around them rippled like a disturbed pond of black water.
The boasting was cut short though, when out from the darkness stepped forward a multitude of men and women of varying sizes and statures. Some of them were wearing the familiar hand-me-down Grimleal cloak while others decked out in the garbs of various classes of fighters. All of the gathering shared one thing in common: a mark of Grima stamped on the back of their hands.
The entire assembly rested their hardened faces upon the fell dragon.
"Wha-what is this?" Grima hissed in confusion. Yet despite himself, Grima knew exactly what was happening. This was not the first time Grima was confronted by his avatar. Yet this time, all of his incarnations who had laid down their lives to wipe him from existence converged in this one plane, where the boundaries of space and time no longer apply. Hundreds, no, thousands of men and women stood as one force against the fell dragon. Even the threads that connected Grima to the timelines where his spirit still lingered seem lost in this entanglement of insolence.
For the first time in his known lifetime Grima felt true despair.
This made no sense to him. How could this many incarnations of himself reject him so outright? Scorn the power and turn away from the gift of immortality?
They could have all been gods, yet they clung so desperately to their humanity.
They all disgusted him. Because of them he was going to die. He was going to die and Naga and her ilk were going to live. All the death and destruction he wrought would be for naught. Grima would be forgotten.
Forgotten.
That one word sent tremors of fear throughout the serpentine dragon's body. "No…" the dragon rasped as his composure, his façade of control, cracked.
"No! No! No! No! NO!" The fell dragon thrashed and swatted and trampled the figures of rebellious humans before him. But there were no bones to crush, no flesh to melt on them, they were all like a haze that would fade for a moment but solidify a few seconds after. Grima could do nothing to them as they did nothing but stand defiantly in his presence. "NO! I refuse to be forgotten again!" Grima bellowed out in depression.
The expressionless human face of Grima contorted into that of anguish as the red orbs that wreathed it glowed angrily. Throbbing veins appeared on the face's brow as the skin around the red glowing eyes slowly turned black and the grotesque sound and smell of burning flesh filled in the void. Tears flowed freely out of its empty eye sockets and Grima desperately struggled to peel the skin that was discoloring with the claws on his wings.
Expressions of shock and apprehension flicked across the gathering as the fell dragon tore off the semblance of humanity on him like a scab. Where the human eyes were was now a flaring red snout knitted together by sinewy muscles that were red and throbbing. On the tip of its nose was a person sized indent.
"Pathetic." Rumbled out a livid voice that sounded like many voices speaking as one. The mask of flesh lay on the ground and black fire burned it away until there was nothing left but the shape of a shivering hairless humanoid dressed in taters and broken armor.
The bumpy caravan jostled Grima out of his musings and made him nearly drop the book of fables out of his hands. His eyes flickered to the soundly sleeping Marine, the heat of high noon finally getting to his apprentice. A small smile tugged at the giants lips before his brows furrowed as he once more looked upon the image illustrated on the page he was on.
The twisted portrait of an Earth Dragon snarled back at him.