Archive of Our Own ^beta

Despite what it seems like, Grima does not, in fact, loathe the very concept of humanity.

Obviously nobody believes him when he states this. Well—obviously nobody would believe him if he were to ever admit it. But he has a certain reputation to maintain, fell dragon and all. If he were to blame it all on one person, it would have to be the idiot of an alchemist that popped him into existence.

Is it really too much to ask for a few minutes of existential contgemplation before being shaped up to be the byproduct of some... highly questionable fluids?

Grima’s not really one for screaming meltdowns—they’re indistinguishable from his murder howls that accompany his breaths of ruin, and without the nuance that a human face grants, it’s bound to be misinterpreted—but he contemplates having a few during his stint with the stupid alchemist.

“You ought to treat me with the respect I deserve,” Grima demands of the bumbling idiot at one point. “I dislike being confined within your little house, and your little country, and this... stupid, little world.”

The idiot pales as if Grima had just said I will fling your guts onto the streets and rain blood and fire down upon the entirety of human existence, which is not, in fact, what Grima said.

But whatever horrible concoction spilled into the idiot’s goat milk and oats made Grima a patient god.

So he waits. Patiently, he might add. He accepts the blood because he understands that medication ought to be taken on a regular basis and also because he finds the idiot’s cultish frenzy hilarious, and once he’s had his fill, he disposes of the idiot man and his hellhole laboratory.

That worm wasn’t a particularly nice person, anyway. Grima doesn’t mind a little bit or muder every here and there—all in good fun, really—but would it have killed him to give Grima a warning before indulging himself in betrayal?

Apparently, yes. Oh well.

Certainly everyone had to see this coming. An entity made from a smoothie of dragon blood (murder sourced), human fluids (murder sourced), and some very rare and now extinct ingredients (most definitely murder sourced) is bound to be at least a little vengeful.

But Grima makes a point not to be pointlessly vengeful. That would be foolish. No—he has taste, and that taste is impeccable.

“Life is fleeting and boring and pathetic,” Grima declares to the crowd of awestruck and terrified humans beneath him. It’s the wings. Or maybe the eyes? Probably the wings. “I am a god, but I am not your god. I am vengeance and destruction—the end of the world.”

The crowd gasps and clasps their hands together in an action worryingly similar to a mob of cultists, so Grima quickly adds, “The end of your worlds. Pray for vengeance so that you may burn your enemies, then set yourself to the pyre. Perhaps, if you have done well, you will be reborn to a new name, a new life, and a new fate.”

There the crowd goes all reverent, which is a nice feeling. Warm and fuzzy, as humans would say.

The crowd becomes a group becomes a council becomes a state becomes a country, and soon enough, Grimleal is the official religion, and the humans do fairly well living as best they can because death is inevitable and life is fleeting. Half the time they’re terrified of him, and the other half he’s their reason to live.

They’re confusing, obviously, but Grima doesn’t need six eyes to see that. Anyone with enough common sense to suggest that maybe shanking each other for the sake of peace is a bad idea is a prophet in Grima’s eyes. And he has six of them! He has the authority to make that decision.

Anyway. He’s become rather fed up with watching in on a room full of overgrown children screaming at each other because of land and money and lineage. He’d rather kill them all and be done with it there.

Frankly, Grima couldn’t care less whether or not they lived or died, hello, god of destruction here, but it’s nice to have a good image in someone’s eyes.

Case in point: around year one thousand of his time on this mortal plane, one particularly determined sorceress marches up to the Table, hurls half the priests off the mountain, maims the other half, and comes out of it even more furious with nothing more than a split lip.

“Lord Grima,” says the sorceress, in the same tone one would say festering maggot pile.

“Oh, I like you,” Grima says approvingly.

The sorceress pointedly ignores him. “I’m going to lead our people out of the desert and into a better home,” she says, like an idiot, but an idiot that Grima’s becoming alarmingly fond of at an alarming pace.

“This desert seems to have worked quite nicely as a home,” Grima points out.

“Oh yeah? Tell that to our dipshit neighbours who insist on screwing us out of every single goddamn coin we get off our stupid long hours in the quarries.”

“Ah. Politics, is it?”

“Is that what they call a pack of feral monkeys throwing themselves at anything shiny within a continent's reach because they’re collectively braindead and have rabies? If so, then yes.”

Oh, Grima has to see where this is going. “I find this proposal very interesting,” he tells the sorceress, leaving out the part where he thinks her antics are peak comedy.

“Then hand over some of your blood so we can get to business,” demands the sorceress, and by the end of the day, Grima has a new champion, and she’s probably the funniest thing that’s ever happened to him.

So maybe he’s being a little hypocritical. It’s war, clearly, but the sorceress doesn’t waste time with the nitty-gritty. She essentially says: life sucks, no fault to our god, he’s a god of destruction, not prosperity, but very much fault to our northern neighbours, because fuck them.

Grima figures he can enjoy a bit of fun every now and then.

From a Plegian viewpoint, the sorceress is practically a vengeful goddess of her own right, hurling thunderbolts at everything that moves and practically sneezing fireballs. Without the convenient history of political exploitation, corruption, and classism, she’d probably be a raving lunatic. Instead, she’s a hero with a fondness for instilling deep and lasting trauma into her enemies.

Observe: the sorceress rallies the people of the desert with the mighty, divine powers of logic and sentence structure.

Their neighbours are assholes of the highest calibre that insist on making their lives hell. Following that logic, they should be given a good thrashing, and, failing that, be purged from the annals of history.

So Grima watches cheerfully as his people charge out of the desert like a people possessed and make the entire continent into a warzone.

Obviously he doesn’t condone pointless death. In fact, it rather annoys him. Weekends allowing, he enjoys smiting the occasional disillusioned hero. The world could really do without even more of the ridiculous I will die for my country and friends and family because it’s the right thing to do spiel.

Death and destruction are Grima’s job, and he hates when people try to do it for him. All they do is make a mess of things.

And really, for all that their enemies insist that Grima is the literal embodiment of the apocalypse, Grima considers himself just like any other massive dragon entity.

He enjoys listening to his worshipers’ prayers. He enjoys exacting righteous vengeance. He enjoys the sweet dates desert-dwellers offer unto him en masse every other week. He enjoys being read the newest publications of Chronicles of the Crownless Prince and engaging in furious discussion with the priests who aren’t terrified to death of him about character development and existential dread. He enjoys his life as a massive dragon entity, which apparently is some kind of unforgivable sin in Ylissean culture. He’s half convinced that they teach their children that rocks are edible and anything foreign must die.

People should really be more like his champion, Grima thinks, watching pleasantly as she methodically destroys Ylisse’s forces and gives the occasional motivational rally.

They go something like you have one life so you’d better make something out of it, but you’re also not allowed to die, and if you die, I will personally hunt you down and kill you. It’s kind of hilarious.

But seriously, his people are doing so well that Grima almost feels bad for the poor Ylisseans. His people have an amusing tendency to leave their enemies alive in whatever twisted, terrible shape they come out because doing so is adjacent to the fact that life goes by once and only once, and as long as you have two metaphorical legs to stand on, then you’d better get up and stop being a workplace hazard to everyone else who’s just trying to get by.

Which is a pretty philosophy, Grima decides. He actually kind of likes it.

So he sits back and enjoys the show until some irritating flea comes out of nowhere with a repurposed mollar from a dragon that’s apparently older and more powerful than Grima, which is unacceptable. Also, his people are dying in droves, which is very much not entertaining.

Lo and behold, the fell dragon himself takes a day trip to the front lines, where the sorceress gives him a particularly unimpressed look.

“Nice of you to finally join us,” she says. If her hands weren’t occupied conjuring up a storm of catastrophic proportions, she’d probably be greeting him with a knife or a rude and blasphemous gesture.

“Well, I heard about your new pest problem, and being one of the beings whose existence is threatened by said pest, I thought to take a look,” Grima says cheerfully.

“Oh, please. He’s only threatening because Naga knocked out a tooth smashing her stupid head against a mountain lamenting her people’s ignorance and some human caught it.”

This is possibly the best day Grima’s ever had. “And the fact that our people seem to be dropping dead at a worrying pace?”

“He tripped over an ant nest waving his magic knife of destiny around. A particularly stupid ant nest.”

“Well, I’m sure we can work something out between the two of us,” Grima says reassuringly.

“You’re a dragon,” the sorceress points out flatly. “You’re the dragon. And—no, shut up, Naga’s not a dragon, she’s an overgrown lizard, Ylisse is a murderous harlot, and she’s the idiot that fell in love with it. Whatever. You’re the dragon, and if you can’t squash a few bugs, I’m going to seriously have to reconsider my faith.”

“How you wound me,” Grima says, because he knows it’ll make his champion angry. It does. It’s hilarious.

What’s less hilarious is the following chain of scuffles. His people fight well, and his champion leads them well, but for some unknown reason, Naga’s idiot manages to kill the sorceress, and Grima really doesn’t like when people break his things.

“I am the end,” he howls, partially because he can, and mostly because it’s dramatic and great for morale. “You are not deserving of this world.”

Which implies that his people, the Grimleal, the Plegians who don’t find his worship particularly interesting but find overturning classism very interesting, and whoever might’ve hopped onto this burning, breaking carriage of a mission, do deserve the world.

His people, as he really should’ve expected, go wild.

What follows is one of Grima’s less impressive moments. He ends up getting pricked in the nape, which hurts an awful lot more than advertised. Even more embarrassingly, it puts him to sleep for a good thousand years, which... no. That’s just insulting.

So obviously the first thing he does upon awakening is demand, “How many blasted volumes of Chronicles of the Crownless Prince did I miss?”

Interestingly enough, his voice, which is commonly known as the breath of ruin, comes out as a squeak. A very... snakey squeak.

This is not a promising development.

Grima takes a moment to look down at all six inches of his draconic, serpentine glory. Even he can’t convince himself that his tiny wing nubs are particularly glorious.

Then he takes another moment to look up and process the fact that a human child is staring at him with the burning intent of capturing everything within crawling distance in an unfaltering grip and subjecting it to the horrors of the human oral cavity.

White hair, red eyes. Plegian. Plegia. Well, at least one thing went right.

“I don’t suppose you know,” Grima grumbles, then makes a valiant effort to escape what he’s discovered to be a nursing crib before the horrid child lets out a screech and wraps one hand around his tail.

The most traumatizing fifteen minutes of his life pass by in terrifying flashes. He’s going to die because a human newborn smashed his brains, which he would like to remind everyone are very good and sizable brains, out against a crib. He’ll go down in history as the fell dragon, Grima, defeated by an infant still developing spatial awareness. He’s going to wake up in another thousand years and throw himself into a volcano. He’ll never live this down.

Thankfully, he’s spared the indignity of death by blunt force trauma when a gaggle of nursemaids rushes into the room, followed by a man with the constitution of a willow tree and a cloak sporting six eyes.

Everyone except the child freezes when they spot Grima dangling miserably from the tiny hand of someone who’s shaping up to be his executioner.

“I will garrote all of you unless you pry this treacherous thing’s hands off me,” Grima informs the newcomers.

“Lord Grima?” one of the nursemaids whispers intelligently.

“Unless you can name another six-eyed, six-winged dragonic god of ruin, then by all means, proceed with your daily routines. But if you have any desire to live to see tomorrow, get this brat’s hands off me.”

Which they do. Very efficiently. The lanky Grimleal practically vomits out apologies, something about his son being young and unaware, and how he’s so incredibly honoured to witness the rebirth of his god, etc, etc. Grima stops listening after the third round of irrelevant rambling.

“Do tell me that you haven’t formed a cult in my name and revived me via ancient ritual,” Grima says carefully. He narrows his eyes and tries to look intimidating from atop the side table which he’s been placed on. He has a sneaking suspicion that he would be as terrifying as a sock if not for his extensive reputation. “I would be greatly displeased.”

“No, Lord Grima, never,” the lanky Grimleal—Valldar? Validar? Unimportant. The current king—hurries to say. “Your teachings forbid the practice of necromancy, for life only possess value because it can be extinguished.”

Grima breathes out a quiet sigh of relief. At least his people didn’t lose their minds during his extended absence. That would be terrible for his nerves.

“And the boy?”

“My son, Lord Grima. He... he is the first to be born with your brand since your fall a thousand years prior.”

Certainly that slipped Grima’s observation as he was being swung around like a hacky sack. “I see,” Grima says slowly. “My champion’s bloodline still survives. Rather fortunate, given the circumstances.” The circumstances involved being gutted and strung up in the streets, but that’s a real mood killer, so Grima leaves it be.

Anyway. The child’s name is apparently Robin, and as Grima really should have expected from the inheritance of the fell brand, the brat has an absolutely terrifying aptitude for magic.

It’s maybe day three of Grima’s new life as a tiny snake of ruin, and he’s being carried around on a pillow past the nursery when something explodes in glorious fashion, blowing out the door and half succeeding in scaring Grima to death.

He leaves the nursemaid unconscious and singed by the wall, then takes on the laborious and humiliating task of wriggling his limbless body to where the wretched infant is giggling like a maniac.

“You horrible child,” Grima tells the tiny fiend, using an embarrassing amount of force to slam the Elfire tome closed. “You are a drooling, cackling, crawling hazard, and your very existence demands that kingdoms fall around you.”

Robin laughs. Grima would consider smiting him out of existence if not for the unnerving fact that his ridiculous baby face is ridiculously endearing.

“Clearly you lack discipline and proper mentoring,” says Grima. “Unacceptable. No mortal who bears my brand will be so irresponsible with my blood. Do you know what that means, child?”

Robin giggles and shoves a fist in his mouth.

“I will of course take you under my wing—I do have six of them, after all—and I will ensure that you live a stupid, ridiculous, long life, as I am very much a perfectionist by nature, and my last champion only managed two of three. Am I understood?”

“Ubu,” Robin says gleefully.

Grima nods sagely. Mutual understanding is key to proper communication. “Excellent. I will inform your father, and I will have the head of whichever nursemaid thought tomes to be suitable entertainment for a newborn.”

Then Grima meets the nursemaid and finds himself reconsidering his decision.

“I’ve not the patience to wait until the young lord starts speaking,” says the utterly insane and categorically irresponsible nursemaid. She shuffles through Robin’s toybox, discarding every other toy with a look of blatant disgust and replacing them with unmistakably lethal tomes. “We’re at war with Ylisse, milord, and it would be an unforgivable waste of talent and time not to utilize Robin’s innate potential.”

Grima’s slightly concerned and incredibly annoyed that nobody thought to inform him of the war that’s apparently been raging on for the better part of a decade. The nursemaid reflects his thoughts, which immediately shoots her all the way to the top of the list of currently living mortals that Grima tolerates for the sake of entertainment.

“Forgive me, milord, but I find it difficult to see how you’re to mentor young lord Robin given both his age and your current form,” says the nursemaid, whose name Grima has learned is Anila, which is a name she apparently despises.

“Anila, my precious ex-priestess, you greatly underestimate my ability,” Grima says sweetly, because he doesn’t have the advantage of terrified obedience he gets from most people, and also because he’s evil. “I’ve handled worse. Have you any scripts regaling tales of my last champion? She was hilarious. Also extremely lethal.”

“She’s also dead,” Anila informs him.

“Oh, yes. But she had fun, didn’t she? I certainly did.”

Anila gives him a look like she’s just stuck her hand directly into a furnace and is only now realizing that it’s going to hurt. “Clearly you have no experience dealing with children,” she states.

“Children are just small humans,” Grima says confidently, “and I am a god. He will submit to me.”

Robin makes a cheerful, unintelligible sound from where he’s smacking two wooden blocks together.

Grima tries not to puff up proudly too obviously. “See? He’s cooperative.”

“It’s your funeral,” Anila grumbles, then ignores both her god and her charge for the rest of the afternoon as she pieces together some dismembering spell.

---

“I despise everything you stand for and I wish you were dead,” Grima tells the tiny, mewling, awful child.

“Ehfuya,” Robin says happily. “Ehfuya! Eh-fuya!”

“Stop that,” Grima snaps, and all but wrestles the Elfire tome out of the horrid creature’s grimy hands. Then he crawls up onto the cover and hisses at the boy. “Who raised you like this? You are but a tiny maggot that lacks the dexterity to walk upon two legs. There is no justifiable reason for your pathetic behaviour. Are you secretly a pyromaniac? Is this the secret you’ve been hiding from me, you arrogant mortal?”

Robin coos and makes grabby hands at the tome.

“Stop that,” Grima repeats, batting away a tiny hand with a tiny wing. He’s alarmed at the rate at which Robin’s magical potential is growing, but he’d rather die again than admit such a thing. “Is this the reason why the nursemaids refuse to linger around your chambers? It must be. Anything with a fraction of survival sense would flee this country after witnessing your amateur attempts at arson.”

Robin bounces eagerly, likely recognizing the word arson as something good and fun and child-friendly. Naga save them all.

“You’re doing the lord’s work, Lord Grima,” Anila says, taking a gratuitous moment to peer over the top of her book. “Perhaps you ought to take over my job entirely. The example you’re setting is awe-inspiring.”

“You’re all heathens and I will smite you from this earth,” Grima informs her.

“Do tell me when you gather up the power to do so. It’s been a long time coming.”

“I’ve been in a magically induced coma for a thousand years, Anila, don’t take that tone with me. And I’m your god, excuse you, so I’d like to be treated as such.”

“You’re a god, but you’re not my god,” says Anila, and damn it all, Grima really did make a debacle out of that, didn’t he? That’ll show him to be dramatic. He should really stick to the terror and the screaming. Less room for misunderstanding that way.

In the meantime, Robin’s hand has inched up to rest beside Grima’s tail, and now the wretched boy is giving Grima the deadliest doe eyes he’s ever had the displeasure of witnessing. It’s horrible.

“What is he doing with his face?” Grima demands of Anila.

Anila peers up again. Her brows furrow from beneath her veil, and she frowns. “I believe he’s... bargaining with you?” she suggests hesitantly.

Grima turns back to face the child. Robin’s certainly doing... something with his stupid, soft baby features. He’s making grabbing gestures at Grima’s tail, which they’ve long since established is the one spot to touch if you want to exit the room holding your arm in the only hand you have left.

“You are strange and I struggle to comprehend your antics,” Grima tells Robin.

Robin makes a leading gurgling noise. “Abah,” he insists.

“The day you learn to speak is the day we are delivered from strife,” Grima says, then, purely out of professional curiosity, reaches up to meet the child’s hand with a wing.

The noise that Robin makes is somewhere in the realm of eldritch screech and delighted baby scream. It even startles Anila, who is the very picture of calm, except for her eyes, which are doing very confused and freaked out things.

Interestingly, Robin’s hands have now moved to Grima’s head, where his tiny fingers navigate rather impressively around the growing horns. Then he starts... patting. It’s definitely patting, or a related gesture. Grima doesn’t have much to work with considering he’s never had hands, but he’s fairly certain this is the newest punishment he’s been dealt.

“Ah,” Anila finally says after an extended, awkward silence. “He wants to pet you.”

“Thank you, Anila. Your observations are spectacular and much appreciated. I dare say they’re almost almost as impressive as your atrocious social awareness skills that got you demoted from dark mage to nursemaid.” Which says a lot about Plegian culture if those two occupations are in the same line of promotion, but Grima doesn’t judge.

“Pardon me, milord, but I’m having a bit of trouble focusing given that an infant has conquered the god my people have worshiped since time immemorial.”

Grima could choose to say a lot of things, like how he’s going to dismember Anila from the fingernails inward once he grows larger, or how two thousand years is hardly immemorial. He prioritizes and chooses to address the hand on his head.

“Once you learn more of your country’s customs and religious beliefs, you will dig a hole with your bare hands and hide your foolish face from me whenever we cross paths,” Grima says flatly.

“I didn’t know you were sticking around for so long,” Anila comments casually, because she’s a heathen and a terrible human being.

“Obviously I’m not sticking around for that long,” says Grima. “My current situation isn’t the most favourable, and it falls to me to ensure that my champion doesn’t die a horrendous death against those idiot Ylisseans, so obviously I’m sticking around. For now.”

Anila gives him a long, dubious look.

“Sure,” she says skeptically, then returns to her book and refuses to acknowledge anybody’s presence for the remainder of the day.

---

Grima quickly learns more about Plegia of the modern day between his attempts to communicate with his champion (which usually end in his being dragged into the brat’s lap and pet like... like a pet) and his attempts to communicate with Anila (which usually end in their pretending the other doesn’t exist).

“On a scale from one to ten, ten being I am extremely disturbed and offended, how strange is it that we built off of your skeletal remains?”

“Somewhere around a six,” Grima answers, scrutinizing what can only be his skull with mixed emotions.

Apparently his remains act as some sort of... desert attraction now, which falls in line with what Grima would’ve expected of his people. There’s no time to be picky out here in the sands, and his skull really does make for a spectacular and also mildly horrifying fortification against the winds. So obviously they’ve renovated the space beneath into a greenspace, then shoved a long market down his neck, residential space in his ribs, and a handful of other facilities trailing all the way down.

Did he mention the palace on top of his skull? Because there’s a castle on top of his skull. Humans are so weird.

Grima stares up from Anila’s shoulder for a moment longer. “I have enormous ribs.”

“And he’s modest, too,” Anila says flatly.

By the king’s suggestion, Grima’s sudden resurrection is being kept very much under the wraps, which demonstrates that their leader at least has a brain in his head. There’s a war raging some ways north. Meanwhile, Grima’s maybe the size of a small snake. Unacceptable. Embarrassing. He would die of humiliation of the Ylisseans caught word of the supposed fell dragon’s revival only to storm the Plegian capital and find him buried in blankets. He would die.

Thus, Grima’s finally found a use for Anila as something other than a waste of air: a ferry. She seems content wearing a snake on her shoulders, probably because she’s insane, and also because snake-Grima closely resembles a certain fell god.

“So,” Grima says one afternoon, “what’s Naga up to nowadays? Being dead, I hope?”

“Might as well be,” Anila answers, and oh, there’s the spite that every respectable dark mage churns up in reaction to the name Naga. “She’s got a speaker since apparently she can’t be bothered to speak for herself, and her bloodline’s awfully bloodthirsty for a hoard of headless monkeys that can’t tell senseless murder from blatant xenophobia.”

If that doesn’t sum things up, Grima’s not sure what will. “Well, the more things change...”

“Literally nothing does, ever, and it never will,” Anila declares unapologetically.

They both squint up at the sun peeking through what used to be a god’s skull. It’s a bright sun. It’s the same damn sun as a thousand years ago.

Whatever possessed Grima to shape his followers into hardened desert-dwellers with a penchant for going to absurd lengths to cling to life and cultivate dates, it’s come a long way from one insane sorceress and her unreasonable fondness for mountain vistas.

“We’ll see what Robin wants to do,” Grima declares, both to Anila and the world at large. The world at large mostly consists of a few passersby who now look very concerned at the curious but otherwise harmless serpent hanging off Anila’s shoulders.

Anila offers Grima a strange look. It’s one of those looks—one that Grima never bothered to decipher because he was the size of a mountain range and couldn’t care less. It’s a bit of a different story getting it while being twelve inches long.

“You’re the most unreasonable god I’ve ever met,” Anila tells him, and refuses to elaborate.

---

Somewhere in between this and that, Anila says: you know, I think of Robin as my child.

She says, I could’ve had a child myself. Aversa, I would’ve called her.

She says, but I didn’t. Because it was either my future or a hypothetical, and I don’t deal in hypotheticals.

She says, so we’d better do our damnedest to make sure Robin grows up making all the right choices. Do you hear me?

“I hear you,” Grima tells her.

---

Robin mellows out into a calm, albeit sometimes ridiculously stupid child. On most days, he’s a perfectly respectable prince and a studious dark mage who endears himself to anyone within a visible line of sight of his blinding smile. On other days, he insists on sneaking out in the dead of the freezing desert night with the pathetic excuse of finding ingredients that his father otherwise wouldn’t let him forage for because they literally lead him into the mouth of hell.

Or the edge of dizzying precipices. More than once does Grima wish he was the size of the mountain.

Fortunately, Robin has some common sense, as demonstrated by his willingness to obey his father and keep his head low as to not end up bleeding out into the sand when nobody’s looking. For all Ylisseans preach about peace and not maintaining an active army, their army sure does a lot of murdering and pillaging.

Filthy hypocrites. If Grima comes into his power before Robin does, the first thing he’s doing is stretching his wings by taking a day trip to Ylisstol and dropping the entire city into a ravine.

Regardless, Robin’s growing up to be nothing like the screeching brat that almost murdered the fell dragon with his stupid baby hands. Grima would sob in relief, except he’s the fell dragon, and fell dragons don’t sob. No. Absolutely not. He does, however, complain endlessly to Anila about all things inconsequential, from the strange texture of yesterday’s lentils to the flavour of today’s feteer to the halawa in tomorrow’s dinner, all in an attempt to shed at least some of his frustrations.

She picks him up by the tail and hurls him into Robin’s room without so much as responding. Grima has no idea why he hasn’t brutally murdered her yet.

At the very least, his champion has some sense of propriety and smiles brightly when the door slams behind the both of them.

“Hello,” Robin says pleasantly, which is just another reason why he’s leagues ahead of all of Grima’s ungrateful worshipers and colleagues. “Did Anila get sick of you again?”

“I would eat her eyes if not for the fact that she sometimes serves as a conversationalist and a vantage point,” Grima huffs, graciously allowing the boy to pick him up and drop him onto the desk. Speaking of the desk— “Are those battle plans? Your father’s drafting you into battle before you’re of age?”

“No no no,” Robin rushes to say, leaning an arm into terrain maps with a motion so awkward and blatant that it hurts to witness. “I’m just—Mother was a tactician, and I’ll be presented to the people as the next in line to the throne and the fell dragon’s second champion next week, and—”

“And what?” Grima presses, prodding Robin’s arm out of the way with his tail despite the boy’s protests. “Oh, be quiet. Let me see your plans.”

“These are—they’re the latest reports of the front lines,” Robin tries weakly, then proceeds to discover the secrets of the universe in his shoes.

Grima stares at the map. Ink marked in Robin’s distinctive messy scratch decorates the parchment.“I... have no idea what I’m looking at.”

“Beg pardon,” Robin says, trying to keep his tone down to its regular octave.

“In case it slipped your feeble, mortal mind, I’m a dragon,” Grima reminds him dryly. “Bringing a dragon to a swordfight is inadvisable and best and an instant apocalypse at worst. Strategy is a moot point when you lie down to take a nap and accidentally crush half the enemy’s field army. Besides, the days of death feuds between divine dragons are long gone. Mostly,” he quickly amends when Robin quirks up an eyebrow.

So now his genius spellcaster champion is invested in strategy. Validar practically has a sobbing breakdown over his son’s natural wit, the continuance of his mother’s legacy, etc, etc. Watching both Validar and Robin sniffle and hiccup makes Grima physically ill, so he quickly slithers away from the situation and goes to demand the attention of one of Anila’s demented apprentices.

“Milord,” Tharja greets politely, having adopted enough of her master’s awful personality to demote herself a few steps down from reverence.

“Your master is a writhing worm and your liege is a mewling infant,” Grima informs her.

“Of course,” Tharja says, which is Anila-speak for I am tolerating you only because of my faith and also because I value my life in the long run. It’s only flattering when it isn’t insulting, which is never.

Lingering in Tharja’s room is a health hazard by itself, what with the cloud cover of residual curses and the highly questionable spell parts. The inherent threat is only exacerbated when Henry, Anila’s other awful, objectively more demented apprentice, breaks in through the window and incites a short but furious hex battle that Grima silently admits in his heart of hearts he’s somewhat terrified by.

“Sorry, milord,” Henry apologizes brightly, completely and utterly insincere like the brat he is. “I didn’t see you come in! I guess the crows must really be underperforming today.”

“I will make it so your entire body underperforms for the rest of eternity should you attempt to hex me again,” Grima hisses, temper only reigned in by his dragonskin, which he has just discovered has the helpful trait of bouncing back curses of non-immediate effect. Being snake-sized is throwing many otherwise inconsequential things into an entirely new light, and Grima despises every single damn moment of it.

Grima orders them out of the room, having to glare longer and harder at Tharja before she hisses back, pulls her cloak over her head, and slinks out carrying her grimoire and an aura promising retribution. Henry laughs like he spends every night skinning criminals, which he very likely does, and scoots out maintaining a solid six feet between himself and Tharja.

It’s a miracle that nobody’s died yet. It’s a miracle that Grima hasn’t killed anyone yet.

It’s almost a relief when Robin’s coming-of-age ceremony arrives, since everyone’s too busy being competent to annoy Grima to an early grave.

“Well, don’t you look dapper,” Grima tells Robin. He’s only half joking. He doesn’t think he could be sincere if he tried.

Robin fidgets nervously in his formal robes, obviously very put out by the whole social aspect of being royalty. That’s a good sign: politics is maybe third in Grima’s list of reasons why destroying the world is a good idea. “I don’t know about this,” Robin mumbles. “Shouldn’t we be... I don’t know, focusing on the war effort?”

“Oh, let the silly humans have their fun. And move that cowl back—it’s itchy and I hate it.”

“Nobody asked you to be my self-defense scarf, Grima.”

“Of course not, because if they did, I would kill them, because I’m the fell dragon, and nobody tells me what to do.”

“Don’t mess up my collar.”

“Why don’t you be quiet and mull over your anxious little thoughts? I like you better when you mull over your anxious little thoughts. Then you can’t run your loud mouth in blatant disrespect to your god.”

“I think you’re messing up my collar,” Robin rudely informs Grima, then wrestles for domination over his neck.

And Grima would win if he tried, obviously, because he’s the embodiment of ruin and devastation. But he lets his stupid champion unravel him because if he tried any harder, Robin’s stupid human neck would snap like a toothpick, and that would probably traumatize maybe half the spectators. Or maybe a third. Or they might just nod and go back to cultivating dates, all oh no, another broken neck. That’s the third one this week. Plegians are kind of crazy, but in a fun way.

“Look at our boy, so stupid and young, pretending like he knows everything in the world,” Anila says warmly as Robin ascends the dragon-rib stairway carefully.

“And look at his idiot father, snotting into his handerkerchief,” says Grima.

They glance over to where Validar’s expelling a decade’s worth of fluids into his handkerchief. It’s disgusting.

“I think it’s sweet,” Henry pipes up, because nobody wants his opinion, ever, and he knows it full well and leverages it every waking moment. “Better joyous tears than maniacal manipulation! Imagine if King Validar was just a liiiitle bit more unhinged! Would Robin take after him? Would Robin run away? Would Robin kill him? The possibilities are endless! Wouldn’t that be neat?”

“I will sew your mouth shut,” Tharja informs him darkly. “Manually.”

“Aw, but then how am I supposed to curse people?”

“You’re a worm. You can squirm your way out of anything. It’s the pain that’s more entertaining.”

“Oh, boo. That’s so dull! But since we’re on the topic of sewing lips together, why not fashion up a curse that oh-so-slowly stitches them closed? One day it’ll be a single stitch, and the next it’ll be gone, but then the day after it’ll be two, and so on and so forth! Wouldn’t that be neat?”

Tharja takes a horrifying moment to contemplate Henry’s suggestion. Grima’s heard of trauma-bonding and of course the classic murder-bonding, but this variation of hex-torture bonding makes Grima break out in a cold sweat.

Snakes don’t sweat. These unhinged children are breaking reality.

“Your maniac apprentices are being ominous again,” Grima tells Anila, who is very much also listening and probably on the complete opposite end of the emotional spectrum.

“I’m aware,” Anila says lightly. Then she does nothing like the useless flesh bag she is. Whoever put her in charge of raising children must be more warped in the head than she is, and Grima never wants to meet them for the sake of his own safety and sanity.

Robin’s cowl is noticeably damper once he climbs down from the platform. Of course he’d be nervous, what with everyone in the country knowing his name and his lineage. Fortunately, helpful censorship has changed Grima’s champion to the voice of Grima, which is positively delightful.

Naga can go drown herself in a fountain.

So with that all sorted, Grima finally gets to sit back and let the people do some panicking for him. As cute as Robin’s human face is, the guards weigh it against their decent pay, generous benefits, and pension plans.

“Gods, you really are getting rusty,” Grima cackles.

The guard, as usual, is trying desperately not to laugh and as a result looks like he’s choking on a pickle. Robin gives Grima a sour glare from where he’s draped over the guard’s shoulder. “Well, if a certain someone would teach me how to manifest the—what was it? Right. ‘The wings that span a continent, usher in despair, and beat to the dying world’s thrum’, then maybe I’d have a better chance against these goons. No offense, Sabora.”

“No offense taken, your highness,” Disposable Goon Sabora says thinly, trying desperately not to bring dishonour upon his entire family line.

Robin doesn’t need to know that the head guard’s been tossing in bonuses for whoever has the highest count for prince-catching each month. Validar probably knows. Actually, Validar probably approved it. Is that weird? Maybe, but Grima’s not about to complain when his blood pressure’s the healthiest it’s been since he was in a death-induced coma.

In an attempt to give everyone a fair go at the fledgling prince’s antics, the palace started rotating guards between the day and night shifts a bit ago. Which is excellent, really, because now everyone knows just how insane their prince is and to what lengths they need to go to protect him. There’s also that little perk of fixing the chain of command, ensuring that communication travels smoothly between shifts, etc, etc, whatever. The point is that now the guards are really motivated to introduce assassins to the pointy ends of their blades by any means necessary.

“There’s something you should know, your highness,” says Disposable Goon Sabora, in an off-kilter sort of way. “Last night, a band of thieves attempted to raid the treasury.”

“What, really?” Robin says incredulously. “They know that the treasury’s full of cursed and-or haunted artefacts that have killed, are killing, and will kill people who can’t use them properly, don’t they?”

“Apparently not,” says Disposable Goon Sabora, his expression suggesting that the cursed items did most of the hacking-and-slashing for him.

“So they’re dead,” Grima aptly concludes.

“Er,” says Disposable Goon Sabora.

Robin does his best to demonstrate his surprise to his captor, which mostly ends in flailing his legs around. “Somebody lived?” he demands. “The hexes in that room split the last chief mage down the middle! The survivor must be an incredibly powerful spellcaster!”

Then Disposable Goon Sabora introduces them to said survivor.

There’s a human saying about the wind being blown out of sails or something. This is the equivalent of dropping a powder keg onto the sails.

“You look even more pathetic and miserable than I anticipated,” Grima informs the idiot captive.

The idiot captive stares back. “Snakes don’t talk,” he says cautiously.

“Grima does,” Robin interjects helpfully.

“You have awful taste in names,” says the idiot captive. He raises his chained wrists with a bargaining smile. “But hey! I don’t judge. Now let me go, please?”

Disposable Goon Sabora has to take a deep, calming breath. Grima dismisses him for fear of someone having a fatal cardiac event.

Speaking of having a fatal cardiac event, Robin has apparently taken it upon himself to pick the lock of the cell and kneel down to study the captive’s face with intense scrutiny because he values neither his own life nor his god’s mental wellbeing.

“You look like an idiot,” Robin states after a long moment.

The captive stares back. “I mean... I could be an idiot if you paid me,” he says evenly.

Grima can’t believe he has to be the voice of common sense. “Ah, yes, of course, taking the very thief who attempted to break into the treasury under our employ and expecting total loyalty is a wonderful idea,” he hisses, literally, pulling up the deadly python act as high as he can. “Perhaps I ought to eat you instead. Would that be a better use for your parts? Tharja would appreciate a skull to decorate her room.”

“She already has four, and I think I’d like to keep his head attached,” Robin says decisively.

Every single one of Grima’s worshipers is an idiot. “I’m beginning to question whether or not yours its still attached,” he snaps, purposely putting himself between Robin and the potentially mentally damaged thief. “Now, shall we cut this useless thing into pieces and gift them to your deranged vassals, or should I have myself a midnight meal?”

“Or you could not do any of that,” the idiot thief suggests.

“I’d like to hear how he evaded the hexes first,” Robin says. He turns his scrutinizing gaze back to the thief. “How did you survive, anyway?”

“Simple,” declares the thief, smiling like he wants to spend the night painting the walls with a major artery. “I said, hey guys! I found the door! And then I watched as they all piled in and, uh... got diced up.”

“You found Plegia’s largest vault and you didn’t go in,” Robin repeats incredulously.

“The door smelled like evil,” the thief says defensively.

“Evil doesn’t have a smell. The very concept of evil is an illusion created by humanity to judge that which is unknown and terrifying. Why didn’t you go in?”

“Listen, kid, I think you’re a little too hung up on the whole breaking and entering thing,” the thief says, baffled. “Long story short? I don’t ever make the first charge because I don’t want to be the one hurling myself off the cliff. Y’know?”

And despite the thief’s pitiful existence as a waste of space, Grima has to at least respect that. Anyone with half the mind to throw others into the fire first to test out the temperature should make for good entertainment.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Grima declares, to the surprise of the other two occupants of the cell. “I’ll shelf the option of eating you for a bad day. In the meantime, we’ll hire you as a bodyguard. You, of course, have no say in this matter. Now tell me your name so that I may forget it immediately.”

“Uh,” the thief says, about as eloquently as can be expected from a braindead sellsword, “Gaius.”

Robin’s wearing a look that Grima very much doesn’t appreciate, but there’s nothing to be done, because they’ve finally, finally found an adequate babysitter with decent enough fight-or-flight reflexes to babysit Anila’s horrid gremlins.

Besides, the last of Grima’s suspicions fade away when they unshackle the thief and walk him past the kitchen, where he more or less refuses to budge until he fits the entire contents of a jar of honey in his stomach. It’s horrifying. Even Robin seems concerned.

Grima considers how his life became a perpetually burning disaster so quickly. But that makes his head hurt, so he ignores it. At least he’s used to that.

---

To Grima’s disappointment, Gaius adapts to palace life with impressive speed. Whatever wolves raised him must’ve been sorcerer wolves, because he shrugs off Tharja’s hexes without even realizing it and doesn’t even feel the need to set up a personal space bubble with Henry.

“I’m glad Gaius is getting along with everyone,” Robin says one early spring afternoon. “I’d hate for Father to have put him to death.”

Which doesn’t say much, given Robin gets upset whenever Validar puts anyone to death. “As long as he keeps those demented children away from me, he lives,” Grima grudgingly agrees. “Now show me a Goetia that won’t disgust me and we can go for lunch.”

A Goetia that won’t disgust me roughly translates into blow up the training grounds for the second time this week, which is indeed what Robin does. The apprentice dark mages clap and cheer wildly at the destruction. Children are horrible, and Grima loves and hates them in equal measure.

(Technically speaking, if blowing things up was the ultimate goal, that handy tome that Robin carries in the pocket at the small of his back could level a city in one go. But best to save that for a rainy day, probably.)

The point is this: Robin’s of age, a genius in every manner of academia, and a respectable tactician. Whoever convinced Validar to let his son go galavanting off to the front lines deserves hazard pay.

So lunch, training, dinner, a restless night, and then they’re off.

“I’m well aware that the glory of war is a lie created by humans to give their pitiful lives meaning in a world that otherwise despises their very existence,” Grima says vehemently, “but I could never have imagined that marching would be so utterly boring.”

“Welcome to the infantry, milord,” Henry says cheerfully. “Isn’t it fun? I think it’s fun.”

“War is waiting, until it isn’t. Only then is it fun,” Tharja amends, glaring daggers and probably two seconds away from throwing literal daggers at Henry.

“I, for one, would like to avoid dying,” Gaius declares.

“They’ll be on us within the hour,” Anila informs Robin, who nods tersely. It’s a bad day when Anila’s of any help.

But Grima doesn’t have anything to worry about, considering Robin’s doing all the worrying for everyone in his entire damn unit. He’s a waddling little ball of anxiety and nerves until their forward scouts report in with head counts of the Ylissean army. Then Robin, the devious little thing, takes a spade to his anxiety and buries it alive.

“Keep formation,” he orders his soldiers. “We’ve got standard infantry and a wing of pegasus knights. They’re lagging behind to keep pace with the cavaliers, because they’ve apparently forgotten that this is the desert.” A dry smile, and a mean burn around the edges of the eyes. “How rude of us. We’ve forgotten to prepare travel pamphlets for the tourists.”

Which means the snipers are going to have a grand old time picking off the pegasus knights, and if their galloping sky horses should break formation, then the sorcerers and dark fliers would be more than happy to blast a few Elfire-shaped holes into the armored line. Then in go the assassins and tricksters to sweep up, and the wyverns to snack on whatever’s left.

Robin makes this very, very clear to his unit down to the individual soldier, which either demonstrates great maturity or even greater anxiety. Whatever. Can’t a boy have a bit of both?

The troops laugh, which is just excellent, really. Robin’s shaping up to be a champion who harbours no obsession toward mountain vistas. Grima could almost cry.

Then the Ylisseans climb into the horizon, and goodness, it’s been a while since Grima had some real fun, hasn’t it?

---

“Well,” says Grima, a little put out, “that was... anticlimactic.”

Now, Grima doesn’t want to say he feels useless, because a god deserves a bit of pride. However.

“We could’ve put Robin out there solo and we still could’ve gone home early,” Gaius adds in affirmation. He seems notably more wary observing his employer from afar, which is, at least, a promising development. “He really, uh... he’s kind of a fireball on his own.”

“I’m partial to his Katarina’s Bolt,” Henry says, “because of the screaming!”

“I prepared so many Celica’s Gale tomes in advance,” Tharja mutters darkly, “but why cast twice in a row when one spell is enough to fell a foe?”

“In other news, we’re now short on Thunder tomes due to the fact that one of our units alone tore through the entirety of the Ylissean Armored Guard’s Fourth Division,” Anila finishes cheerily.

Grima makes a mental note to give Robin a short stint as a Mercenary. Otherwise when the time comes to whip out Grima’s Truth, he’ll raze one city and the damn tome will just explode in his hands. And everyone knows you can’t just raze one city. That’s just dull.

---

In between things, Grima wonders why he hasn’t grown a tad larger. He’s maybe the size of a small python, and has been for a good few years. It’s the perfect size so that Robin can pick him up and give him a ride as a murderous, evil-god scarf, but not entirely ideal for striking fear into the hearts of mortals.

Then again, mortals are definitely kinder to serpents that they only have to feed a plate’s worth of honey dates to rather than a couple carriage-fulls. So.

Besides, Robin’s twenty, going on two thousand. He can handle a few pounds of snake on his shoulders.

---

Henry gifts Robin a Levin Sword for his birthday. Robin cries blubbering tears of joy. Consequently, Tharja promises Henry a slow and agonizing death. Gaius spends the next two weeks hiding in the rafters because he’s a coward.

Anila bestows upon Robin one of her finalized, unnamed tomes. Then she follows Plegia’s most elite dark mage squadron out into battle. The Exalt himself leads the opposing forces.

Anila dies that night, out in the open desert sands.

Grima stirs from his sleep with a profound and inexplicable sense of loss, and mourns for the first time in his long life.

“I hear you,” he says.

Whether anyone hears him is a mystery he’ll have to live with.

---

And really, is it that much of a surprise that Robin himself should march out to kill the Exalt with Anila’s Night?

Grima’s proud. Unspeakably so. Literally: he says nothing as they look over the Exalt’s pathetic, broken form.

“That’s one war done,” Grima eventually says once Robin’s made it clear he has no intention of breaking the silence.

“You know,” Robin says suddenly, “I’m so, so damn happy you’re not a god of equivalence.”

Grima snorts. “As if all lives are equal.”

Robin’s cloak is a smear of purple against the uncaring haze of the vast desert. “Vengeance isn’t as overrated as people make it seem,” he says quietly, when nobody else can hear him.

Of course it isn’t. Vengeance is a bandage that keeps the bleeding in until the wound heals. It’s the idiots who don’t know how to dress their wounds that spread such nonsense.

The easiest fix, then, is to prevent yourself from getting hurt in the first place.

Grima curls in a little closer to Robin.

The world of politics is a world that Grima has no interest in conquering, thank you very much. He makes this very clear to Validar, who keeps giving him desperate, sidelong stares, as if that’ll give Grima the patience to deal with humans who dress like they’re asking to get shanked and gutted in an alley.

Besides, Robin can hold his own just fine. Having a terrifyingly vast kill count, one of those ticks being the late Exalt himself, is quite influential at the discussion table.

Grima mostly sits outside for the sake of his own blood pressure. Also, he has zero confidence in Ylisseans and their ability to keep their hands to themselves, and Grima has a feeling discussions would end poorly if he ate someone’s face. Unfortunate.

“How are you today, Lord Grima?” asks the apparently not-so-disposable goon Sabora.

“Thinking that it would be easier if I burned all of Ylisse to the ground,” Grima answers flatly.

“I’m inclined to agree,” Sabora admits. He kind of just stands there for a second in deep contemplation, then gingerly picks Grima up and slings him over his neck.

Which is quite bold for a simple castle guard. Still, Sabora’s alive where his colleagues aren’t, so clearly that says something about him.

“Robin’s doing an impressive job traumatizing those stuck-up nobles,” Grima says instead, because emotions are horrible and he has no interest in ever dealing with them. “I’m eager to see how he sorts things out. Reparations? Land? Political power? So many options, so much leverage.”

“If it were me, I’d tell them all to fuck off and never bother us again,” grumbles Sabora.

Which is more or less what Robin ends up telling the Ylisseans to do.

Peace treaties are drawn up with very specific and very strict regulations. Trade agreements that directly impact Ylisse’s access to the Western seaboard are hashed out. Reparations are paid—everyone’s too damn tired to keep up the fight, and Robin smiles like a demon while making metaphorical grabby hands. It’s very effective.

Nobody mentions that Plegia has a fell dragon in reserve should things go sideways. Why would they? The entire conference is taking place on top of Grima’s skull. The art of reading between the lines is apparently a dying one, because nobody asks, and so nobody answers.

“I think that went quite well,” Robin says, keeping his chin high and pretending not to notice the murderous aura radiating off his vassals. They’ve got an audience, after all. “We’ve come to an agreement, I think. If all goes according to plan, we should all be on our merry way soon.”

Grima rolls all six of his eyes. “You scheming, devious boy,” he accuses, scaring the life out of probably all of the Ylisseans. “And they call me evil. Obviously your people have no idea what evil even is. I’m ashamed. You should be ashamed. We’ve a reputation to maintain, as I’m sure you’re aware. Perhaps your people ought to consult their own royalty for a case example, because you’re evil, and horrible, and I hate you.”

“I hate you too,” Robin says affectionately, pointedly ignoring all the foreign stares.

By some miracle, the next-in-line Exalt isn’t a pathetic excuse of a meat bag sans reason. She’s almost reasonable—Grima perks up when she says the war has done nothing for us and the previous Exalt was horribly misinformed—but also painfully idealistic. She’s the kind of person to make herself into a martyr because the situation calls for it, which would be hilarious if it wasn’t infuriating. When she isn’t calling for peace, she’s having an internal crisis about how much literally everyone hates her.

Grima isn’t used to not being the most despised entity in a room. It’s unnerving. Thus, he likes Exalt Emmeryn on principle.

In hindsight, catching the new Exalt in her guest chambers in the middle of the night wasn’t the smartest choice. Then again, Grima’s been called a lot of things, and smart isn’t one of them, which he doesn’t find particularly offensive.

A smart dragon. Wouldn’t that be a circus and a half.

“You’re rather subdued for the daughter of the late Exalt,” Grima tells Exalt Emmeryn, generously pretending that he can’t smell how scared she is. “For a woman of your standing, you hold yourself with an unbelievable amount of self-loathing. Did you know that?”

“Prince Robin calls you Grima,” Emmeryn contemplates aloud. She isn’t screaming for the guards, though, so that’s a win.

“What can I say? He was born with a terrible sense of humour, and his vassals only made it worse.” Which isn’t a lie, because Henry and Tharja are demons, and Grima doesn’t care for lying. “I don’t particularly care what you call me. Now sit down before you topple over the railing. We’re up awfully high.”

Emmeryn sits down. She looks just at ease as a ferret does mid-panic attack. It’s been a while since someone looked at Grima with the knowledge that they’re going to die a horrible and painful death. Grima... doesn’t like it as much as he used to. Gods, he’s getting old.

“Oh, calm down, I’m not about to murder you,” Grima chides. “You had your little chat with Robin, and as his guardian, I’m obligated to follow up.”

“His guardian,” Emmeryn repeats, somehow making vacant shock look elegant.

“It’s a miracle you were able to navigate the court before this,” Grima says flatly.

Emmeryn shakes her dumb head. “Forgive me. I... we’ve not serpents that speak human language in Ylisse. I am, in all honesty, reaching the extent of my knowledge.”

It’s not her fault. Ylisseans probably farm ignorance as their staple crop. “It’s fine,” Grima allows, because he’s merciful like that. “Do tell me you aren’t planning to start another war. I would be deeply displeased.”

“I’d rather die than do such a thing,” Emmeryn says, the most calm she’s been since the beginning of the discussions. How fortunate it is that Grima’s surrounded by people so crazy they out-crazy the god of destruction himself.

The rest of their conversation mostly consists of Emmeryn trying to subtly ask if Grima’s the actual Grima, as in evil dragon god Grima. Nothing comes from it because it’s fun watching her common sense battle her caution for supremacy, and really, who is Grima to give answers so readily?

But Emmeryn certainly doesn’t seem like the type to decide to go to war. Manipulative advisors notwithstanding, she’s got a spine of... not steel. Maybe sticks? Particularly strong sticks. Anyway, Grima’s satisfied in labelling her as very much not a threat.

Her court is another matter entirely. They’re not threatening, simply because Plegia’s dark mages have them drenched in surveillance hexes, and also because Robin’s very image gives them nightmares. Grima suspects the hexes will wear off in six months once they all start losing their minds over a balding hex that doesn’t exist and finally call in a respectable hex-breaker.

“You know,” Emmeryn says just as Grima’s preparing to leave, “Plegia is very fortunate to have you.”

And what’s Grima supposed to say to that?

He settles for staring suspiciously at Ylisse’s new Exalt. She smiles back serenely and refuses to elaborate.

“Yes, well,” Grima tries, “let’s hope that Ylisse is fortunate to have you as well.”

Naga’s blood she might be, but at least Emmeryn isn’t fond of religious persecution. And no, Grima isn’t going to give Naga the benefit of the doubt, because he hates her.

---

“I’ve been thinking of going to Ylisstol,” Robin declares one morning at breakfast, effectively strangling Grima’s blood pressure against the ceiling.

“You want to what.”

“Go to Ylisstol,” Robin repeats unhelpfully.

Henry, bless his black heart, bursts into mad cackling. Tharja eyes Robin with the silent querrey of whether or not his food has been poisoned. Gaius lets out a clap of hysterical laughter, then claps his hands over his mouth and looks around carefully to see whether or not he’ll be executed for disrespecting the prince.

“Hear me out,” Robin says, once he’s realized that all of his friends are traitors. “Our surveillance is reporting back a high level of tension in the Ylissean royal court, right?”

“Yes,” Tharja, one of the surveillers, says slowly.

“So it’s clear that they don’t understand anything about Plegia. I tried my best to hint that we want nothing to do with their convoluted justice, and even less to do with their wars, but clearly they’re more thick-headed than I anticipated.”

“I vote to kill all of them and come home early,” Grima declares.

“Vetoed,” Robin says dismissively, the awful brat. “Besides, I’ve always wanted to visit Ylisstol.”

That’s easy for Robin to say. Validar, as expected, almost has a heart attack. The conversation fires back and forth until Grima’s convinced that one of them is going to leave the room on a stretcher, but also as expected, Validar eventually folds, drops his face in his hands, and practically begs, “Lord Grima, please, please extend your protection to my foolish son.”

“Of course,” Grima says smoothly, ignoring Robin’s sounds of protest. “I’ve been protecting the damn fool his entire life.”

As a good guardian should, Grima has Henry pen up a letter to Emmeryn, mostly because Tharja would find a way to curse it, Gaius is an idiot, and Robin’s already writing his own. Not to say that Henry wouldn’t curse letters, isn’t an idiot, or doesn’t write prank mail, but at least he’s willing to go along with Grima’s ideas no matter how awful they are.

“This sure is fun,” Henry tells him cheerfully, sealing the envelope off with a seal carrying a distinctive fell brand. “I hope the Exalt has a good sense of humour!”

She does. Grima knows this because her response is also sealed off with a fell brand. Why is everyone around Grima more insane than he is? This is stupid. It’s making him feel insecure about himself.

Lord Grima, the letter begins, which, well, look at that, the Exalt’s come to a decent conclusion, I would be honoured to host your entourage for the remainder of the year, etc, etc. It’s essentially a bare-bones version of the letter Robin received in response, but with all of the distinctive, unprofessional snark a ruler is bound to keep suppressed.

Given the doghouse that is the Ylissean court, Grima’s surprised Emmeryn hasn’t made anyone cry yet. Curious. Well, everything in its own time.

Their entourage is small, just ten people including Robin, Grima, Tharja, Henry, and Gaius. Sabora’s somehow tagged along, the freaky stalker, and the four others are quiet and professional and definitely extremely deadly. They kind of loom over every conversation, giving the distinct impression that they would be more than willing to string a few fingers around their necks if anyone should react poorly to their Plegian presence.

And for all that Grima likes to complain about Ylisse, he has to admit that their scenery... isn’t half bad. If he was a thousand years younger and also insane, he might even sympathize with a certain past champion of his. Alas.

Maybe Grima’s been banking on Emmeryn’s excellent facade of calm a bit too much, because the party that greets them essentially takes a wrecking ball to that glass house.

“Prince Robin,” says the stupidly toned, stupidly awkward, stupidly branded Falchion-toting idiot before them. “It’s an honour to finally meet you.”

Robin smiles brightly. He’s always been good at weaseling his way into and out of people’s favour. “Prince Chrom,” he greets in response. “The Exalt told me she’d be sending someone she trusted to meet us.”

“Well, I certainly hope she trusts her own brother, otherwise Lissa will be getting all the good presents at Yule, and I won’t stand for that.” Clearly the idiot prince is justifiably an idiot, what with the way he’s almost entirely warmed up to Robin and is now smiling brightly. Like an idiot.

Then Robin, the brat, shifts his gaze imperceptibly down to Falchion, then more obviously up to where Grima’s lounging around his neck. To his credit, the idiot prince Chrom is also staring with unabashed curiosity. So.

“Please, don’t break the moment for me,” Grima says flatly. “I’m just a talking snake.”

Henry apparently finds this unbelievably hilarious, because he immediately starts cackling. Good impressions were always a myth in Grima’s eyes anyway.

The Ylissean prince’s party is decently large. They introduce themselves as the Shepherds, which makes Tharja laugh, which makes Henry laugh, and that makes Grima laugh. Robin slaps Grima on the tail and tells them to all be polite and stop acting unhinged. But even he’s smiling, because clearly this militia recognizes that their silly people are sheep, and said sheep will fling themselves into some panicked frenzy if someone doesn’t come along and herd them into a pen.

Ah, humanity. What a gem to work with.

All the so-called Shepherds are interchangeable idiots, but at least they have some personality, which is more than Grima can say about the rest of this sad country’s forces.

“Oh wow,” the idiot prince’s supposed sister says, apparently attempting to hold a staring competition with all of Grima’s eyes. “I didn’t know snakes could talk!”

“I didn’t know snakes had wings,” mumbles one of the bumbling cavaliers. Stale? Stahl? Probably Stale. It’s a sad name for a sad man.

“For the most part, snakes neither talk nor have wings,” explains the idiot prince’s right-hand-idiot. He then glares suspiciously at Grima. Apparently one of them has a brain, which is a pleasant surprise.

“What can I say? I take after my namesake,” Grima says pleasantly, enjoying the warm feeling he gets when the Ylisseans avert their gaze in discomfort.

“Ignore him,” Robin tells the newcomers. “I dropped him on his head when I was a baby and now he insists on always being like this.”

“Oh, so now it’s my fault you nearly bashed my brains out against your crib?”

“Which self-respecting serpent crawls into a newborn’s crib? A stupid one, apparently.”

“Excuse you! There’s literally a myth in your culture about the prophesized king of calamity and devastation who’s born alongside a snake, and they get along swell until the mewling king turns out to be an annoying excuse of blood and meat and bone and the snake eats him.”

“Good thing I’m not a king and you’re not a snake, then,” Robin says lightly.

They both share a glance. Grima laughs because he enjoys the Ylisseans’ confusion and Robin laughs because he’s crazy.

Unfortunately, idiocy is hereditary, and soon enough, the Ylissean princess is asking excitedly if she can “take a turn wearing the murder scarf!” Her brother gives her a very targeted I am related to a madwoman kind of look, but remains wisely silent as Robin transfers Grima over to his new ferry. The idiot prince probably isn’t sure if this is a Plegian custom and doesn’t want to make a show out of his ignorance, which would almost be cute if it wasn’t stupid.

“You do look a bit strange for a snake,” the idiot princess, the aforementioned Lissa, points out. “Like, you really do look like the fell dragon. Is that bad?”

That has to be the weirdest question Grima’s ever received, and he’s been alive for a couple millenia. “I don’t know,” he says sourly. “It depends if you believe in the prophecy of the fell dragon resurrecting and destroying the world. Which he wasn’t even trying to do in the first place. I don’t know how your blasted ancestors came up with that little yarn.”

To Grima’s horror, Lissa looks delighted. He really doesn’t want to bond over being mentally unsound, but apparently this is happening. “So what was he trying to do?”

“Help his champion in her perhaps inadvisable quest for anarchy,” he says, wary of Lissa’s rising excitement. “You’re a bold little human. Most mortals would come at me with an axe. I would, of course, fry their brains out through their nostrils. You want to wear me as a scarf. You’re insane,” he finally declares.

“I mean, I’ve just started practicing with axes, if that makes you happy,” says the insane princess.

That absolutely does not make Grima happy. It makes him extremely nervous. He tolerates hanging around Lissa’s neck because he has a point to prove, and that point is that he isn’t scared of some... maniac war cleric and her tendency to say horrible, terrifying things.

Meanwhile, Gaius is trying and failing to strike up a conversation with the noblewomen, who in turn are plotting his bloody demise. One parasol-wielding woman seems to have already reached her limit and is actively restraining herself from spreading the contents of his skull against the ground, which is fun to witness. Tharja, as per usual, is brooding and muttering curses as one particularly young and witless child ruthlessly interrogates her on the wonders of dark magic. Henry is being disturbing, which is about as much as can be said about him. Sabora’s the most normal one by a respectable margin, holding polite conversation with some of the pegasus knights.

And Robin, of course, is chatting it up with their lovely Prince Chrom.

They seem to be exchanging pointless information about geographical information and cultural customs, occasionally sharing a laugh.

Grima is immediately suspicious. Robin’s a smart, cunning boy, good with his wit as he is a knife, but this Ylissean prince is, admittedly, easy on the eyes, and Robin knows a catch when he sees one.

So obviously Grima’s very concerned. But Robin’s a tricky boy. Politics are also ridiculous. All those elements and more combined should ensure that nothing disastrous results from this friendly expedition.

“You’re really giving Chrom and Prince Robin some serious targeting eyes,” Lissa says, too damn curious for her own good. “Is there something you’d like to share?”

“Your brother doesn’t know a single thing about politics, does he,” Grima says dryly.

Lissa brightens, which says everything about the Ylisse’s royal family, right there. “Wow, you’re good! But you’re totally right—he’s got no filter between his mouth and his brain, so everything comes out, no matter how unadvisable or inappropriate it is.”

“That’s... incredibly disadvantageous for a prince. How on earth is your country still standing?”

“Probably because Emm’s a lot better at the filtering thing,” Lissa reminds him, and right, they’re all related, this whole clownery of a family.

“On a scale from one to ten,” Grima asks, watching Robin’s microexpressions carefully, “how painfully would you allow your brother to die if he were to hypothetically break someone’s heart?”

“I mean, I’d probably jump on Maribelle’s horse and drag him by the foot around the castle,” Lissa says casually, officially solidifying her place as Grima’s favourite Ylissean. “But I wouldn’t worry about it too much! Chrom’s a sappy kind of guy. Also, he can’t parse through his own emotions for the life of him, so the concept of love is probably stuck in there waaay deep with camaraderie. Fun,” she finishes gracefully, turning the full force of her dazzling smile to Grima.

Which essentially means that Robin’s going to have to be the emotionally competent one if this hypothetical scenario they’re building. That... should be possible, given his wit. Right? Of course. Robin’s a very capable champion. Of course he understands emotions.

Both Grima and Lissa stare a little longer at their stupid charges.

“This is a disaster,” Grima grumbles.

“Oh, don’t be like that,” Lissa tells him, because nobody in this world is sane.

---

It is incredibly, unbelievably, unspeakably rude of Robin to abandon Grima to this band of screaming monkeys and make off with his idiot prince.

Grima’s going to eat someone. He really is! Except he’s not, because then people would start asking him uncomfortable questions like why do you eat people and why are you like this, and even worse is the prospect of dealing with Robin’s horrible disappointed face. It’s the face that makes passing bystanders think that Grima’s just emptied out someone’s abdominal cavity and is now nesting in it, which he has never done, because ew, but apparently that’s a rumour now.

“Where did you even hear that?” Grima demands of a cackling Lissa. “Which brainless heathen do I have to kill now?”

“I mean, I believe it,” mutters Stale, whose name is apparently Stahl. His parents missed out on the opportunity to be prophets with that one.

“That’s disgusting. You’re disgusting,” Grima accuses of all the jovial spectators. “You clearly know nothing about snakes. Or this snake. I’m not even a snake! This is unbearable. You’re all going to die and I won’t even be sorry about it.”

“If you’re not a snake, then what are you?” Lissa asks cheerily, further suggesting that she was born without a sense of reason or empathy.

“I’m the god of destruction and ruin,” Grima replies flatly.

The Shepherds burst into wild, uncontrollable laughter. That’ll teach Grima to be honest.

Apparently the Ylisseans are taking the whole not-snake thing to heart, because they’ve eased up on the discussions of what they’re supposed to be feeding Grima. He didn’t even know they were having discussions before, and he’s furious to have missed the opportunity to scream in their faces about very much not being a pet, maybe even throw in some accusations of cultural insensitivity with his technical position as divine familiar to the voice of Grima. But nooo, life is always out to get him.

Everyone here is horrible. Tharja and Henry have also helpfully taken off with Robin to who knows where, which means that the only human who holds even a smidge of respect for Grima’s extensive reputation is Sabora.

It could be worse. Grima isn’t about to jinx it. It’s only fun when he’s the one making things worse. Anything else is illegal and unacceptable because he hates when bad things happen to him.

“You’re my favourite human,” Grima tells Sabora sadly. “Did you know that?”

Sabora laughs, which Grima tolerates only because of his title as favourite human. “That’s great, but it feels kind of lousy.”

“Says the disposable castle guard who was promoted to captain because everyone else was dead.”

“And we thank them every day for their sacrifice. Also their vacancies. And their very generous benefits.”

“You thank them every day. I can’t be bothered to remember half their names.”

“Half,” Sabora says proudly.

“Shut up,” Grima hisses, whacking the insufferable man over the head with his tail.

No matter how hard Lissa pokes and jabs, Grima refuses to travel around her neck. He makes a point of settling in comfortably around Sabora’s cowl instead, feeling justified in his petulance.

---

Ylisstol is, admittedly, more scenic than Grima anticipated. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that none of the architects had any taste, because nothing’s built on top of the corpse of a legendary dragon.

Grima voices this to Lissa, who responds with a strange look. “Is Plegia Castle...”

“Built on top of the skeleton of Grima himself? Yes,” Sabora confirms brightly.

“And, like, the fell dragon isn’t offended by it or anything?”

“He’s too busy being angry at other things,” Grima says, in a tone apparently too sarcastic, because Lissa smiles like he’s just told a good joke instead of. You know. The damn truth. This is just one more thing he’s angry about.

Fortunately, a good deal of the nobles in the court are faces Grima vaguely remembers being twisted in fear at his very existence, which soothes his nerves somewhat. Even Emmeryn’s dumb, naive face lifts his spirits a little.

Pleasantries are exchanged, information is shared, etc, etc. Apparently Robin and his stupid prince took a detour to the supposedly cursed fields where Grima’s iconic, insane first champion fell. Hilariously enough, they were immediately accosted by bandits. So obviously those bandits are strewn about the place in pieces atop the sorceress’ decomposed remains.

It would be just like that crazy sorceress to hang onto her spite so hard that she’s smearing her awful luck all over her descendant a thousand years into the future.

Grima laughs. And he laughs. He laughs until Robin walks in through a side door. Then he laughs harder.

Somewhere in between all that, the idiot prince tries to apologize all formal and proper to Grima. Sorry for stealing your prophet away, he says. We ran into a spot of trouble, he says. Prince Robin is a terrifyingly competent ally, he says. All of which is peak comedy and serves to make every noble witnessing this tirade extremely uncomfortable.

Oh no. Does Grima need to reconsider his stance on Ylisse’s stupid crown prince? He hates reconsidering things. It takes too much mental effort. But watching the honourable wielder of the Falchion stumble over every other sentence is giving Grima fits, so maybe this is something that has to be tolerated for the sake of entertainment? Or something like that.

“Don’t apologize,” Robin tells Chrom cheekily, apparently having discarded his last shred of formalcy for... camaraderie? It better be camaraderie. “Grima’s an arse half the time and a whiny baby the other. He’s just messing with you.”

“See if I come save you the next time you go headfirst down a ravine,” Grima tells his ungrateful charge. Then he turns to the idiot prince and says, “Apology accepted. I’m fond of anyone who disrespects the last champion, given that she was crazy and drank me under the table the one time I indulged her. Do you know how terrible that feels?”

“Uh,” the idiot prince says eloquently, casting a wayward glance over to Robin, who shrugs like the bastard he is. “No?”

“It feels bad, is how it feels,” Grima helpfully informs him. Sabora’s sporting a wide grin, so clearly Grima needs to stop being friendly immediately. “Do keep in mind that Robin is my charge, no matter how much of a brat he is. Next time you want to kidnap him, at least tell me. Unless you want to start a political firestorm. Or a war. That conversation is going to be a whole lot longer. But tell me.”

Now everyone except the Plegians who are all very used to Grima’s being an entity of destruction looks uncomfortable. Except Emmeryn, of course, since she’s too busy trying to look serene and not amused.

“Er, yes, I’ll keep that in mind,” the idiot Chrom says, not so much sheepish as completely and utterly baffled.

Consequently, the next time Chrom ducks out saying something about bandits and whatnot, Grima refuses to unravel from Robin’s neck and fixes his human with an unimpressed glare.

“You don’t have to babysit me,” Robin complains, then pauses to smite some goon with his Levin Sword. “This is my diplomatic duty, not some suicide mission.”

“Uh-huh,” Grima says dubiously.

“With Valm sending more and more belligerents to Ylisse, it’s almost certain that they’re intent on starting a major conflict, and as Ylisse’s southern neighbours who really, really would like to avoid another war, the best course of action is to become as friendly as possible with the court as quickly as possible, and of course with Regna Ferox as well if time allows—”

“Oh, look, a bandit,” Grima says casually, spewing out a little Arcfire into an oncoming bandit’s face. The screaming worm goes down and presumably burns to death, or will soon be coming to terms with a horribly disfigured body. Either one makes Grima warm and fuzzy inside.

Chrom, for one, is giving Grima some mixed looks. It’s almost impressive in between all the general hacking and slashing. A thousand gold says it’s because of Grima’s stellar performance as a self-defense scarf: spell-spitting, completely invulnerable, merciless on most days, all in a snake-sized package. And with a sense of humour to boot, too.

“So, how long have you known Robin?” Chrom asks one sunny afternoon, having made sure that Robin’s too busy obsessing his little nerd mind in the library to worry about shoving two powder kegs in the same room.

Grima gazes up flatly from his sunny spot. The prince doesn’t look particularly suspicious. Still.

“Why?” Grima asks carefully.

“There’s a lot I don’t understand about Plegian culture and the Grimleal belief,” admits the idiot prince, kudos to his humility, “and I’m ashamed to say that I know even less about the customs surrounding... uh... divine vessels.”

“You can say ‘talking snakes’. I won’t be offended. I’ll just be angry, which is my constant state of existence.”

The idiot prince expels a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank Naga. I wasn’t sure if it was proper, with your position as Robin’s familiar.”

“I’ve given up entirely on convincing people to treat me with the respect I deserve,” Grima informs him, then crawls up onto a table because the difference in height is really getting annoying.

So there they are: the fell dragon himself and Naga’s spawn, chatting away about absolutely nothing.

Well. Not exactly.

“I’ve been with Robin since he was an infant,” Grima tells Chrom because he’s feeling generous. “The little brat almost brained me against his crib! Then he wouldn’t stop sneezing Elfire everywhere. And then he would sneak out into the literal freezing cold desert for the sake of rare grass. He’s insane,” Grima tries to emphasize.

Chrom laughs all lovey-dovey and unaware of his emotions, because of course he does. Grima hates it here. “I suppose he was a very high-maintenance ward.”

“He makes me go grey. I don’t have hair. He’s a horrid gremlin who tries to die every time I take my eyes off him. Which is why you have to watch him and make sure he doesn’t, I don’t know, trip walking down the stairs and break his neck.”

“Of course,” Chrom agrees, worryingly quickly. That brings into question how many inadvisable choices Robin has already made when Grima’s busy being somebody else’s scarf. The very thought almost gives Grima a conniption, so he decides not to think about it.

Etc, etc, filler discussion about food and weather and whatnot. Then Chrom starts down the very uncomfortable topic of family, which is a serious buzzkill. Not like an idiot like him would know, so Grima lets it slide.

“I won’t become my father,” Chrom says resolutely, though the way he’s deeply freaked out around the eyes suggests that his honest thoughts are phrased something like I’m terrified of becoming my father.

“A wise decision,” Grima agrees, on account that he’s trying to be amiable. He is, however, confused why he’s now the court therapist. “Your father wasn’t a particularly nice person. I’d say he was completely insufferable. I mean, that’s me with most humans, but he did end up killing one of my prefered humans. But Robin handled him well, so all’s well that ends well, right?”

“That’s... actually kind of a problem,” Chrom mutters.

Humans are idiots. This should not surprise Grima as much as it does. “Your terrible father is dead and the war has ended. What is it now?”

Like a true fool, Chrom then proceeds to lay out the contents of his unimpressive childhood and dysfunctional family life. He has the audacity to be sad about it, as if there’s something to be done out of moping about a life he’s better off without.

“He wasn’t always so terrible,” Chrom explains for maybe the third time.

“To you,” Grima rebuts for the third time. “To Plegia especially, he was a festering pile of maggots. Your silly human mind is indulging itself in nostalgia due to his absence and thereby crippling your higher cognitive functions of rationality and sense. If you have them,” Grima adds pointedly.

Chrom, for one, does not look impressed. At all. In fact, the face he’s wearing now is one Grima gets often from his heathen believers and unappreciative colleagues. And now from politically incompetent foreign dragonblood princes. Joy.

“I don’t like that look,” Grima warns the mewling idiot, rustling his wings in what he hopes comes off as an intimidating gesture.

“I think you lack empathy,” says the idiot prince, very much not intimidated.

“Lies and slander! A thousand years ago, yes, I’ll admit, but I’m doing quite well in that department nowadays. I was properly devastated when Anila died, thank you very much. Growth, as Robin would call it. Unlike you! I think you’re a hardhead, stubborn, overgrown infant whose defining feature is that shiny mollar on your hip.”

Chrom stares at him for a long second. For an emotional wreck of a human being, that’s quite an empty, unimpressed look he’s managed. Grima doesn’t appreciate it.

“Anila was also Robin’s nursemaid, confidant, and assistant for literally his entire life only second to me, so don’t expect much sympathy from him,” Grima says, a whole lot more irritated than he was at the beginning of their little chat.

It’s convenient that Grima’s reputation and general hatred for things that waste his time calls for him to be an arse, because Chrom doesn’t even get properly offended. For some ridiculous reason, this new revelation is making him all panicky about dealing with Robin. Again.

“I wasn’t aware that—gods, I don’t even know where to begin,” Chrom babbles, wide-eyed and worried. “I didn’t mean to insinuate—if I had thought over my words more clearly—”

“Literally you didn’t even kill her,” Grima informs him, feeling a headache come on with impressive speed. “I don’t know what sweet words you’re whispering into my charge’s ear, but unless you told him that you were glad your horrible father murdered someone he considered family, it’s fine. And sit down before you pass out! Gods, you’re embarrassing.”

“That’s what Lissa always says,” Chrom mumbles.

“That’s why she’s my favourite,” Grima informs him. Then he whacks the idiot prince’s hand with his tail. “Now get up and look princely! If you’re to make lovey-dovey eyes at my charge, at least do it while looking impressive and attractive. Or you could take off your shirt,” he suggests, because Chrom’s now pink up to the ears and has lost the ability to form coherent thoughts. “Go forth, my stupid beefcake minion, and make yourself useful.”

Chrom exits the room muttering under his breath. Whether or not they’re intelligible words isn’t Grima’s problem.

Besides, if these idiot princes really want to work something out, they sure aren’t doing it without Grima’s supervision. Something or another will happen and they’ll end up accidentally killing each other.

---

Grima didn’t have high hopes for the Shepherds to begin with. But this? This is a new low. He’s almost impressed.

“A... Second Seal?” Lissa says, scrutinizing the silver medallion with deep suspicion. “Why would I want to change my class?”

“In order to diversify your combat techniques and acquire new, valuable skills,” Robin explains patiently. He’s a damn saint, with or without the whole voice of Grima thing. “Tharja, Henry, and Gaius can attest to its benefits. Isn’t that right?”

“I spent four months in heavy armour toting around a lance,” Tharja grumbles darkly.

“I mean, I got to learn Sol, so that’s nice,” Gaius says delicately.

“I got an axe!” Henry finishes gleefully.

Everyone takes a horrified glance at Henry. Henry’s smile stays ramrod perfect. Then Chrom, as the de facto head of the pathetic pity party, asks, “What did you train as, Robin?”

Robin opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again.

“All of them,” Grima offers helpfully.

Chrom stares uncomprehendingly at where Grima’s dangling off Lissa’s neck. “All of them,” he repeats slowly.

“Just in case the situation called for it,” Robin tries explaining, as if that’ll help at all. “I had help, of course, otherwise I would’ve never been able to learn Galeforce and Shadowgift. Ani—my nursemaids were intent on getting me started early!”

Technically, Grima didn’t teach Robin Shadowgift. The horrid boy was born with it, because of course he was, and now he’s a walking, talking, emotionally stunted war machine.

And Anila served Plegia well as a Dark Flier before literally being grounded as a Sorcerer. Not that either would have saved her, but it’s a nice thought.

Sometimes Grima has nightmares about what would happen if Robin woke up one day with dragonskin. The resulting experiments would make Grima cry out of stress, which would be embarrassing and can therefore never happen for as long as Grima lives. And he’s lived a long life.

Honestly, Grima doesn’t know what possessed Robin to suggest Second Sealing everyone to high heaven. But it’s just that: a suggestion. Stacked the Plegian treasury might be, but the Ylissean court is scattered and stupid and generally useless. So Robin kindly gives up one of his spare seals and suggests that Lissa spend a few months as a Dark Flier once she feels comfortable with War Cleric techniques.

Of course Lissa’s elated, because “I get to throw fire at people!” Gods, her priorities are so skewed. She slings Grima onto Sabora’s neck and goes off skipping to Miriel singing something about raining down lightning upon her enemies, which... wow. Alright.

So now Chrom and Robin are going around discussing class paths because the Shepherds don’t know how to train effectively for the life of them. Peripherally, Grima notices Tharja and Henry holding a fairly normal discussion with Ricken. And apparently Maribelle doesn’t want to murder Gaius anymore, which is boring.

Sabora gets to hear all of Grima’s thoughts since nobody else is close enough to be convenient. “You remembered their names,” he says proudly in response.

Grima ignores him for the rest of the day.

---

For a fell vessel and a foreign prince from a country which Ylisse was recently at war with, Robin is suspiciously good at organizing Ylisse’s finances.

He shouldn’t be. There is absolutely no reason for him to do so. Grima’s... actually kind of confused how the court let Robin weasel his way into Ylisse’s trash fire of a government. That’s just one more reason why Grima needs to keep an eye out for his charge: someone’s going to assassinate him any day now. Any day. And it’ll be fun!

“Elect a minister of finance before your entire country implodes due to some economic crisis,” Robin finally says after a five hour debate, having run entirely out of patience. He’s still got his evil smile on, but now there’s an obvious twitch at the corners of his lips, so he looks categorically insane.

The nobles seem to be realizing this. It’s about damn time.

So now the headless monkeys are screaming at each other about lineage and whatever, which makes Grima’s head hurt. Robin seems to be trying to play ringmaster by instilling the fear of torture and death with his eyes.

“Any squealing worm that tries to pull the lineage card is terrible and should be publicly executed,” Grima informs Emmeryn. “What’s wrong with choosing based on merit? I think you should choose based on merit. And any vote limited to the noble circle might as well be a bidding war, which I’ll admit I would consider buying tickets to, the same way I’d maybe watch feral dogs maul each other. Either use your own big brain and appoint someone decent or figure out a way to get a public vote. Gods, I’m so happy I don’t have to run a country.”

“Perhaps we’re all better for it,” Emmeryn tells him, ungrateful whelp she is.

But she listens, which is why Grima tolerates her. The minister she appoints isn’t even in the court, which comes as a pleasant surprise. Given how Robin’s given everyone nightmares about him, it’s probably for the best.

So now the minister is the head of some merchant caravan who’s been loitering in Ylisstol for a few years. She’s got a library of merits under her belt, probably right there beside the knives. She’s also terrifying, which doesn’t even come as a surprise anymore.

“You look like you’ve killed people,” Grima informs the newly appointed Anna.

“And you remind me of a murderer I knew once,” Anna says brightly. She smiles like a demon. Or a businessperson. They’re synonyms.

“I’m... pretty sure we’re talking about the same thing.” Unless Ylisse has some weird customs involving murder. Grima wouldn’t put it past them.

“Then that makes two of us,” Anna concludes, then proceeds to debate Robin into the ground. Even with the whole tactician-not-politician thing going, it’s been a while since Robin’s looked so flustered, which for some disgusting reason is making Chrom flustered. Emmeryn’s trying not to laugh. Grima’s been laughing for a solid five minutes.

Is Anna now Grima’s favourite human? Gods, his standards are so messed up.

So now that Ylisse has been averted from a fiery economic crisis, Chrom finally manages to get his hands on a couple of Second Seals. Which is actually kind of ridiculous? Master Seals are literally the same price, but nobody in this gallivanting circus even considered learning Galeforce?

Cordelia and Sumia are officially the two most reasonable Shepherds because of that. Which doesn’t say much about their general competence.

Most everyone’s alright with their class changes. Panne looks equal parts awkward and homicidally enraged on a wyvern, while Sully somehow manages to match a horse on foot through sheer force of rage, but all in all, it feels like it could be worse.

Lissa still hasn’t gotten a grip on Renewal yet is probably why.

Grima’s spirits are lifted somewhat when Stahl pitches a minor fit over having his horse confiscated. That by itself wouldn’t be terrible, but restructuring is a headache and Virion ends up with both the horse and a few basic tomes, which is hilarious. Obviously Virion won’t shut up about how being a Dark Knight is going to make him look elegant and handsome, probably too busy admiring himself in a mirror to notice his abysmal magical potential. Robin’s shoving a Second Seal down his throat the moment he learns Lifetaker.

At least Stahl knows how to use a sword. He’d end up getting himself gutted otherwise.

---

Now that Robin’s sure Ylisse won’t slip down the economic drain while he’s looking the other direction, he asks if Chrom’s considering talking to Regna Ferox anytime soon. Chrom kind of puts on a blank look, which prompts Emmeryn to slap up a go team and shovel them all over to the Longfort.

Grima hangs around Lissa’s neck because he doesn’t want to renew his nightmares eavesdropping on the lovebird princes. Lissa, for one, is delighted. Fredrick is not, so that’s excellent.

“Why is it so damn cold,” Grima demands of the universe at large.

The universe is silent. Being the more proactive of the two, Lissa grins and pulls out a hideous scarf from the depths of her skirt and goes to work fixing it around both her neck and Grima’s freezing body.

“How in the seven hells did humans turn a desert into a tundra wasteland? I hate this. This is awful. I’m going to fall into another coma and I won’t even have the excuse of being stabbed. I hate everyone,” Grima declares.

Lissa takes a moment to unpack all that. “I didn’t know Regna Ferox used to be a desert,” she says, obviously building up to the bigger questions.

“I have no idea why your geography is so terrible and convoluted,” Grima fires back. He settles down, though, since it’s too damn cold to keep up an argument. “That was two thousand years ago, anyway. I can’t remember all the little details because they’re not important, clearly, and as long as we all remember to keep our goat milk and oats away from our evil concoctions, everything should turn out just dandy.”

“In ancient times, the continent of Ylisse was unified under the name Archanea,” Fredrick chimes in, trivia brain apparently clocking too hard to be angry. “Thabes,” he continues, and there’s the suspicious glare, “is said to be the birthplace of the fell dragon.”

“And what a horrible place it was,” Grima barrels on. “So much sand! So many disagreeable colours! I don’t even feel a little bit bad for killing that idiot alchemist. He had it coming, anyway. Why are you looking at me like that? Wouldn’t you kill someone who was trying to kill you? Yes? Yes, of course you would. So much sand.”

“Plegia is sandy,” Lissa counters.

“Yes, but I like Plegia.”

“Thabes cannot possibly be in Regna Ferox,” Frederick says firmly, like he has any idea what he’s talking about.

“It’s not. It’s in Plegia. Obviously,” Grima says pointedly. “I’ve got no idea what happened, but up there became down here, a good bit of sand became snow, and your god makes no sense. This makes no sense! We should all just stop thinking about it, because it’s old dusty news anyway, and I’m freezing.”

Lissa’s wearing a look that hints she might be reconsidering how much Grima’s joking, which is not at all. “You sure know an awful lot about this kind of stuff,” she notes.

“I’m a well of knowledge and ancient gossip. Can you believe they tried to seal me in? Well, not me, obviously, they didn’t know I existed and seriously went overboard trying to keep the chemical terrorist underground, but they did it anyway! I can’t even imagine how boring it would’ve been. What a mess!”

“Maybe it’s because you... started a war?” Lissa tries. She’s really testing the waters by throwing herself in, which Grima can respect.

“If you want to get technical, it wasn’t me,” Grima points out. “It was that insane sorceress. Also, Ylisse was probably a thousand years behind on the social side, since Naga’s an off-hands kind of parent, which is the worst kind. So basically if your country wasn’t so messed up, everything would’ve been fine, and your terrible god wouldn’t have had to freak out.”

“You know, there's a thing called an enabler,” Lissa reminds him unhelpfully. “And I think your opinion is kind of biased.”

“Sure, but it’s true,” Grima insists.

Fredrick is studying him with the same deep suspicion, but now it’s mixed with the kind of look one would level at a screaming five year-old. So that’s horrible, and Grima needs to find a way to make his useless colleagues scream instead to protect his pride and dignity.

He can say that, but he refuses to so much as budge when Robin circles around and raises a brow at him expectantly.

“Shut up,” Grima snaps resentfully. “Do you have a scarf? No? Then I don’t want anything to do with you.”

“Sorry, Robin,” Lissa says. “What can I say? I’m a knitting fiend!”

Lissa is not, in fact, a knitting fiend. She’s horrible at it. She’s efficient and quick, which means whatever manages to stay together in her hands ends up a travesty. What she’s not horrible at is throwing a bunch of warm fleece everywhere and connecting it into something resembling a scarf. Or a noose. But really, who’s looking?

Chrom, her unappreciative brother, is throwing furtive glances at the scarf like it’s going to spontaneously combust. “It has character,” he says hesitantly.

“See if I knit you a sweater for Yule this year,” Lissa sniffs indignantly. “Grima appreciates it. Doesn’t he?”

“Yeah, Chrom,” Grima agrees, smiling with all his very pointy teeth. “Grima appreciates it.”

A headache appears to be creeping up on their stupid prince, weak little worm he is. “Well, I’m glad someone does,” he says distantly, effectively magnetizing all of Lissa’s petulant energy onto himself. His fault, really. Half of everything he says paints a target onto his back, and the other half people pretend not to hear out of pity.

What a disaster Robin’s picked. Bad taste isn’t contagious, though, so whatever.

Their arrival at the Longfort does wonders to fix Grima’s mood. The commander immediately accuses Chrom and co. of being bandits sent from Valm, which is fun, and then her soldiers start hurling spears, which is even better.

Grima unfortunately doesn’t get his usual premium seat a la Robin neck, but it turns out that Lissa is just as entertaining and absolutely devastating.

Turns out the princess has a swing like an executioner with both an axe and a staff. Maybe not the most effective way to use a staff, but hey, Wrathful Staff goes a long way. Grima purposely doesn’t ask where she learned it, because he kind of wants to live.

So there she goes, little Princess Lissa of Ylisse, breaking Kneaders and Balmwood Staves over the heads of anyone foolish enough to look her way. A few Glass Axes go flying every now and then, bringing into question how much the Shepherds have been hoarding for a rainy day. But hey! It’s all in good fun, and Grima likes fun.

Watching that Bolt Axe fry itself is giving him heart palpitations, though. Every human should just choose to be born with Armsthrift.

Meanwhile, Chrom and Robin double-team the commander and impress her so much she practically skips off to fetch her Khan. The Khan walks into the room just as Chrom’s in the middle of rambling on about what a big, beefy man their leader must be, which a big, beefy woman is sure to appreciate.

If Robin ends up kidnapping the poor idiot and dragging him back to Plegia, the first thing Grima’s doing is tossing him to a court tutor. Actually—probably a therapist first? Yes. Yes, that sounds good.

The Shepherds are all upset when the Khan pulls a fast one and tells them to go make themselves into useful political pawns or hightail it home. Grima’s apparently the only one who finds it hilarious. Even Robin’s a little peeved, useless thing he is. On the other side of the spectrum, Chrom’s pretty clueless, but then he learns that all he has to do is beat up some people in a tournament. Then he perks right up like a particularly mercurial and stupid puppy.

Humans are so weird.

So one tournament down, one mentally disturbed swordsman and his dancer plus one recruited, one Khan pissed, one Khan downright gleeful. This doesn’t even rank among the weirdest days Grima’s ever had.

“Regna Ferox stands with you,” Khan Flavia informs Chrom and Robin. She’s probably posing with her greatsword on purpose. “Give us a holler if you want to bring the fight to Valm. Should make for a good workout, at least.”

So that’s nice and all. Everyone’s about to shuffle off when the Khan makes direct eye contact with Grima.

“And you,” she says, bringing Robin to a halt as well. Then she splits into an unacceptably cheeky grin. “Stick around and do some sightseeing if you’ve got the time. There’s a nice place to the northwest—the Ruins of Time or something like that.”

“Okay,” Grima says suspiciously. “And how old are we talking, exactly?”

“Two, three thousand years? It’s a total labyrinth. Fun to get lost in, I’m sure.”

How far has Grima fallen in stature that random humans he barely knows are telling him to go visit home once in a while? Way too damn far, apparently.

---

Grima makes a point of declaring to everyone that he has no interest in heeding the words of some braindead Khan and her braindead nation. Everyone has a good laugh over Grima’s awful personality and turns in for the night.

To nobody’s surprise, Grima and Robin run into each other halfway down the hallway in the dead of night.

“Ruins of Time,” says Robin.

“Hop on,” Grima tells him.

Most humans are fully aware that the fell dragon is normally the size of a mountain range. That very fact is the number one reason why everyone who meets Grima chooses to discard reason for humour and decide that snake-Grima and dragon-Grima have no connection to each other. The giant, evil dragon thing would be fun to pull out as a party trick, but also extremely inconvenient and potentially lethal.

So Grima adapts. Settles. He goes for a big, black dragon instead of a really big, black, evil dragon.

And it works! Also, everyone’s asleep and they’re travelling at a time convenient enough for most people to chalk up weird sky serpents to their imagination. But you work with what you have.

“These colours really are disagreeable,” Robin says with surprise, in between fireball three and four.

“And you didn’t believe me,” Grima grumbles. “The decor alone drops this place down a tax bracket. I’m going to drop this place down a tax bracket. The land value’s about to drop into the negatives and I will laugh.”

“Are you sure?” Robin asks, with a powerful undercurrent of maybe we shouldn’t raze legendary ruins to the ground.

Which would be a fair argument in any other scenario. However. “I don’t want to deal with the Risen. You don’t want to deal with the Risen. We certainly don’t want some maniacal sorcerer to deal with the Risen. Nobody wants to deal with the Risen, because they are horrible and will end up causing the end of the world via corpse-related pandemic. This place is the embodiment of human hubris and fallacy. I’m burning it to the ground.”

“You’re just saying that out of spite,” Robin points out, but before Grima can fire back with the very astute observation that Robin himself thrives off spite, a new horde of Risen crawls out from somewhere within the labyrinth.

Except these ones are clearly the rejects, what with the way they’re visibly decomposing into parasites. There goes Grima’s appetite.

Robin takes a moment to process the potential immensity of the situation. “You know what? Nevermind. Razing sounds good.”

“That’s more like it,” Grima says pleasantly as Robin bolts for the exit.

---

Khan Flavia makes a point of greeting Robin and Grima in front of everyone at breakfast because she’s an awful person with a terrible personality.

“You’re a lot more fond of fireworks than I anticipated,” she informs Grima, cheeky grin all prim and perfect.

“If you have a more effective way to dispose of a hive-mind corpse legion, then please, state your argument,” Grima snaps back. He makes a point to snatch the egg off the Khan’s tray and swallow it whole. “And I only did so because I hate a bad palette as much as I hate nostalgia. The next time you want me to play exterminator, pay me.”

Whichever part of Grima’s spiel sends the Khan into hysterics is a mystery. Robin’s defaulted to a pleasant smile now that he doesn’t have to defend firebombing a site of cultural importance. Lissa’s downright gleeful about the whole destruction thing, completely unhinged as she is, and Chrom has no idea what to say about it all.

It’s a bad day when Chrom’s the most normal out of the bunch.

Grima’s about to make his irritation clear to everyone in audible range, but then Henry and Tharja walk in, one more frazzled than the other. Robin pales, pushes off Chrom’s brick of a chest like a springboard, and makes a valiant attempt to escape out the window. In a few moments his vassals are upon him and threatening to hex him into his bedsheets, so that’s fun.

Also, Chrom has stopped functioning. Again.

Sabora settles down beside Grima with a satisfied sigh. “What a vacation this has been,” he says cheerily.

Grima hates it here.

---

What Grima doesn’t hate is watching the Shepherds trip over themselves trying to train.

It really is funny when the Ylisseans try to claim they don’t have an organized military. Which—okay, fair, but only because it’s not organized. At all. It very much is a military. They have divisions. They just fought a war. None of this should come as a surprise.

But nooo, the Shepherds are all insistent that they train according to their own judgement because they all know themselves best, etc, etc, as if they know anything at all. It’s irritating beyond belief, but it’s also Robin’s problem. So now Grima gets to watch as their de facto tactician drives himself up a wall trying to deal with Chrom’s puppy eyes and everybody else’s general incompetence.

Ah. Good times.

Even better is when Mustafa writes about some duo of mercenary-dragon that’s being sent their way for “moral support”. Grima thinks Mustafa just likes to fuck with Robin. It’s probably a fair assessment, Grima thinks, as he watches a Manakete tackle Robin out a window, thereby giving every guard in the castle a heart attack.

Gods, the guards. They must be so traumatized. They’re the closest thing to innocent bystanders, really. Anyone who lasts a day dealing with this disaster of a militia deserves a medal.

The mercenary who trails after the Manakete brat is almost normal in comparison. “Gregor come for moral support,” he says brightly, then proceeds to give a guard nightmares by the simple act of initiating a conversation.

What colourful additions. Depending on how things go, Grima’s either going to thank Mustafa or skin him alive when they get back.

The Manakete, though. Not a very welcome surprise.

She’s kind of horrifying to watch in action, what with her I’m a tiny baby, no talk mean to me act going on. It doesn’t work as much as it worries everyone into accepting it, which Grima’s also happy to do, because she’s giving him some really strange looks.

“Wow! You don’t look like a dragon!” is how Nowi greets him, so that’s terrifying.

Grima tries not to bury his head under his blankets too obviously. “Yes, I’m aware. I’ve frequently been told that I resemble a snake.”

“That’s no fun,” Nowi says, putting on a pout because it’s convenient. At least she isn’t grabbing Grima and slinging him over her head, which is the best thing he can say about this situation. “Aren’t you supposed to be big? Like, really, really big? Mountain range big?”

“I’m also aware of that fact,” Grima says miserably. “But then I would roll over in my sleep and accidentally crush all of Ylisstol, and Robin would never let me hear the end of it.”

Nowi, for one, looks downright elated. At least that makes one of them.

Somehow everybody thinks Nowi’s new interactions with him signify some sort of deep friendship, and honestly, Grima has way too much pride to tell them otherwise. Why does he always attract crazy, tiny, murderous humans? Is this a curse? Did someone curse him? Nothing would come as a surprise at this rate. Nowi could pull off her face and reveal she was Naga all along and Grima would only be mildly annoyed. Or maybe a lot. But not murderously annoyed.

Regardless, Nowi ends up beating face with almost everyone, hello, Manakete incoming. With half the Shepherds nursing injured bodies and injured pride, Robin pounces on the opportunity, Second Seals in hand, and starts on his long pitch about the Outrealms and all their neat perks.

For the low price of your certainty in your place in this universe, you can access unlimited training facilities and test your mettle against totally fake and not real at all heroes of the past, says Robin. It’ll be great, says Robin. We’ll head off to Valm in the morning and be home for dinner, says Robin. I won’t even need Nosferatu, says Robin.

Which would be great if he hadn’t lost them around the whole universe-hopping thing. Clearly Grima and Robin aren’t operating under the same standards.

It takes maybe a week for Robin to convince their jolly party to make a day trip to the Outrealms with the dumbed-down excuse of “an excellent opportunity to bond as a team and analyze each other’s strengths and weaknesses!” And of course he says this all with a stunning smile because he’s an evil, manipulative thing.

Lissa complains about having to kill potato-molesting fiends for the entirety of the month that Robin makes them camp in the ruins. Grima’s convinced the experience has traumatized a fair portion of the Shepherds.

But therapy is for losers, and none of them want to admit that they’re losers. Off to murder some Deadlords they go, which is absolutely brutal and prime entertainment.

Maybe it would be funnier if Grima pulled off the bandage real quick and told them all how he could’ve been infinitely more evil and devastating and that he probably would’ve ended up murdering them all horribly and thrusting their world into ruin. But for real.

It’s not often Grima’s thankful for goat milk and oats, but hey! Everyone gets an epiphany once in a while.

Plus, it’s not like anyone would believe him. So Deadlords and potato zombies it is, and then they’re back in Ylisstol, significantly more competent than before and rearing to kick Valm down a few notches.

Convenient how Plegia happens to have a whole fleet in reserve. It’s definitely going to go up in flames by the time Robin’s done with it.

---

Half the fleet goes up in flames.

Grima can’t even muster up the energy to be annoyed.

Validar is going to have a conniption, the poor man. Somebody needs to monitor his blood pressure before he dies of stress.

Of course Grima would get himself entangled in family drama, because why not? It’s been a while since that’s happened.

Apparently Say’ri is the kind of person who jumps between being totally and utterly pissed to totally and utterly depressed. This would be disadvantageous if not for the fact that she’s currently riding the pissed wave, and she’s riding it hard.

The possibility that she would make for good entertainment dies a fiery death when she insists everybody visit the Mila Tree.

Great. Just the kind of twist Grima needed.

Cervantes is officially Grima’s favourite human solely because he’s insistent on delaying their trip. Too bad he practically breaks in half when Say’ri looks at him. This world is so unfair.

So now Tiki and Grima are trying really, really hard not to look at each other, because there are things that only beings their age need to know, and death feuds are so overrated these days.

“Nice seeing you here,” Grima says to Tiki once everyone’s shuffled off to the side to discuss tactics and strategies and other miscellaneous nonsense.

Tiki nods. “Your presence surprised me somewhat. I am... not entirely used to this version of you.”

There’s a good chance she’s talking about all the timelines that Grima has definitely destroyed. “Yes, well, we all have our vices,” he grumbles. “A freak accident involving breakfast and a chemistry lab, and poof. Here I am, a god of destruction who’s more intent of preserving. The irony isn’t lost on me.”

The look Tiki gives him lands somewhere between Robin’s unimpressed stare and Anila’s faint surprise. It’s a shot of nostalgia that hits unacceptably hard. “I didn’t expect you to be so humble.”

“I’ve never been accused of being humble before, I’ll give you that.”

“Ah. Denial, then?”

“I really don’t like the direction this conversation is going,” Grima says slowly.

“While the benefits of goat milk and oats are plenty, transforming a god of indiscriminate destruction into a god of timely end is unlikely to be among them,” Tiki points out, practically smiling. “Perhaps you put in more effort than you remember.”

Severely uncomfortable with this revelation and entirely out of intelligible vocabulary, Grima flees to Lissa and refuses to make eye contact with anyone. Robin notably doesn’t call him out for it. He’s even worried, all crinkled around the brow and cutting his sentences short, which is awful, because now Grima’s going to have to do something nice for his freakishly observant charge.

Tiki has the audacity to wave a cheerful goodbye. “Mull over it for a little,” she says pointedly, effectively turning everyone’s eyes to Grima.

All these screaming maggots need to drop dead. That would make him feel a little better.

---

Say’ri isn’t having a great day. Grima almost feels bad for her, but at the same time, she’s seriously overreacting, and they don’t have time for that.

Oh well. She can have a little betrayal, as a treat.

---

While Basilio and Flavia are busy making a mess of things, Robin tosses everybody into a volcano and tells them to fight good or die otherwise.

Well, that’s not exactly what he says, but reading between the lines is a skill that comes in handy when dealing with tacticians, apparently. There is a worm that Grima spots some ways away that really irritates him, so that’s a welcome bonus. He’s no broken alchemist, but those are in short supply anyway—good old fashioned murder it is.

Oh, and Say’ri pitches a fit over her dead brother in the corner. Grima feels a little bad, but emotions are things that happen to other people. So.

---

“Which respectable warlord dresses like a lobster?” Grima demands of said lobster’s sad minions. “He ought to at least dress the part of some... big, intimidating warrior. He’s a seafood platter. He’s asking to get cooked. This metaphor is very apt!”

“Snakes don’t talk,” some faceless grunt screeches back.

“Nobody appreciates me around here,” Grima says sadly, then kills the man.

---

Something good happens, which is so surprising that Grima suspects the interference of a higher power, but he’s so satisfied that he can’t bring himself to care. The good thing is this: Grima gets to kill Excellus! Isn’t that wonderful? Of course it’s wonderful, because the worm dies a screaming, slow, horrible death via fire.

“That’s graphic,” Lissa says, eyeing the charred remains of a very stupid man with deep caution.

“He was annoying and I didn’t like him,” Nowi offers, as if that helps matters. “But he really had a pair of lungs on him! Wow, the screaming!”

“Stop freaking everybody out,” Grima’s unappreciative champion commands. “They’ll start to figure out that you can live up to your threats, and they’ll never sleep again.”

“That’s the point,” Grima says resentfully.

“Bad point,” Robin concludes, and then they have to deal with a dead warlord and a boiling mire of political nonsense.

Grima’s so happy he’s a snake sometimes. Nobody with half a mind thinks to ask a snake for its political opinion, and the world is better for it.

---

It turns out that Tiki... isn’t so bad. Not that she isn’t bad at all, but she actually takes a day trip out of her tree and promises to fix things up in Valm, make sure nobody starts another war, etc.

Grima at least feels comfortable enough to give her some advice.

“You could try turning into a snake,” he tells her seriously.

Tiki is trying very hard not to smile and failing miserably. “To appear as a friend instead of an oracle, you mean?”

“To live a life among humans instead of above them,” Grima corrects. Tiki’s face does a very weird thing. He ignores it. “You know how I could’ve been infinitely worse and incredibly cruel and evil? I’ve been thinking over it, as you recommended. Maybe I put in some effort, and maybe all any criminal needs is a decent breakfast. But living with people I’d otherwise be ruling over like some insane god hasn’t been making me more evil, so. I guess it’s worked somewhat.”

Tiki appears to contemplate this. “I always knew you had it in you,” she says, and before Grima can loudly disagree, she barrels on. “I’ll keep your advice in mind. Perhaps not a snake, but metaphors are meant to be abused, aren’t they?”

This is exactly why Grima doesn’t give any advice to anyone, ever.

---

Chrom must think he’s being so sneaky, carrying that ring around everywhere.

He’s not. He couldn’t be more obvious. It’s so sad. He’s so sad.

Well, at least it’s progress. Hopefully his emotions will start functioning regularly sometime soon and Grima won’t have to witness the weird courting dance the poor bastard’s trying to choreograph with Robin.

Humans and their internal conflicts. What a nightmare.

---

Now that there’s a lull of peace, Grima can finally relax a bit. Destress, vibe the good vibes, all that calming goodness.

But of course he doesn’t get to, because three months in, some idiot actually tries to kill Robin, the whole dark-of-the-night with a knife plus one kind of scenario, and it makes Grima so damn angry everyone shuffles to the opposite wall whenever he slithers into a room.

Someone tried to kill Robin on his watch. He should be impressed! He is kind of impressed. It takes serious moxie and a worrying amount of ignorance to try something like that and actually pull it off.

So now he’s sure there’s a rat in the Ylissean court that needs to be skinned. These humans love making extra work for him, but Grima’s a generous god. He’ll make do.

Sabora’s gone all stone-faced and threatening in an attempt to keep his composure, whereas Gaius is trying another tactic entirely and plastering on the same exact smile all the time. So that’s worrying everybody who walks past them, fun, not to mention the four shadowy guards who’ve straight up vanished.

One of these days, a noble’s going to be found bloodless and headless on top of a spire, and it’ll be their own fault. Who walks into a snake den with a stick and an ego like a tumour? A dead man, obviously.

Henry and Tharja are fuming in their own creepy ways, bless their warped hearts, and Robin’s very much still alive. The problem is that he’s alive in a barely alive kind of way.

There’s also apparently another problem, which is that Robin and Chrom are supposed to lead some kind of victory parade to demonstrate the cooperation and future peace of Ylisse and Plegia, and it would seriously kill the mood if everyone over in Plegia found out that some shriveled Ylissean noble almost killed their prince.

Chrom’s face is kind of mesmerizing to watch. Fury going one way, panic going another, and he really has no idea what to do with himself.

“Oh, calm down,” Grima snaps.

Chrom gives him an incredulous look, fury-panic warping into indignant rage. Grima shuts him up before he goes on an unrelated tangent about how he’s depressed or whatever.

“Prioritize,” Grima reminds the idiot prince. “Robin’s stable. He’s not just going to croak, since Henry and Tharja can work a thousand ways to keep someone from dying between them. They’re terrifying like that. Anyway, we don’t want the citizens to freak, right? Right. So I’ll play Robin, you play Chrom, we hold hands or something, and everyone’s happy.”

Now Chrom’s poor face is squeezing itself into unhappy surprise like it’s playing a morbid game of connect the dots. “You want to... become Robin,” he says slowly.

“It’s a fell blood thing, don’t panic your pretty little head off,” Grima says. “So? Let’s practice.”

---

Maybe this would’ve been easier if Grima made it clear that he’s the go-to whenever Robin needs a body double.

It doesn’t matter, though. Grima feels like punching himself in the mouth reading out what Robin’s scripted, and Chrom’s reciting it like he’s already punched himself in the mouth a couple of times.

They’ll be fine. Now all Chrom needs to do is stop looking at Grima like he’s just murdered the Exalt. Gods only know what his civilian-sheep would make from that.

---

“Is anybody else freaked out by this? Because I sure am,” Lissa states to the room at large.

Grima scowls. This, of course, translates into a Robin-scowl, which is by itself alarming, and given the context of the situation, foreboding.

“I’m trying my best here, give me a break,” Grima snaps, with maybe ten times the murder Robin would usually speak with. Or at least ten times the murder he lets his friends hear—that boy is so messed up. “Do you know how long it took for me to figure out what to do with my wings? Or my eyes?”

“You’ve still got the wings?” Lissa asks gleefully, on account of her being a lunatic.

“Why else would I wear this stupid baggy cloak instead of those nice formal robes? And Chrom’s doing his one-sleeve getup, so hey! That makes two of us who look terrible.”

Chrom makes a strangled sound of protest, which is mostly drowned up by Nowi popping out of nowhere and throwing herself onto Grima’s back.

“Feathers!” she declares cheerfully, tugging the entire damn cloak off with one tiny hand and grabbing a clawful of evil dragon wing in the other.

Welp. There goes the remnants of his dignity.

“Let go, you tiny wretch,” Grima shrieks, all six feathered wings batting and flapping and generally being very upset. “Are all Manaketes so disrespectful and traitorous toward their progenitors? Are they? Because you are, and it’s making me very annoyed. Don’t touch my wings!” Grima snaps when he sees Chrom of all people eyeing them.

“Tiki’s older than you,” Nowi points out unhelpfully.

And what good has her age done for her? Absolutely nothing, is what. “Tiki is too observant for her own good and I hate her. And the next person to touch my damn face is dying by Mire!”

“Who was the first?” Lissa asks, speaking of people who are too observant for their own good.

Grima levels a flat glare at Lissa. Flicks his gaze toward a fidgeting Chrom. “Guess,” he says sourly.

At least that gets everyone off Grima’s back, literally, because now they’re cross-examining Chrom on every facet of his relationship with Robin. They’ve worked out enough to notice the lovey-dovey eyes and other miscellaneous displays of affection, and past that point, Grima’s too tired to care.

Lissa is once again Grima’s favourite human because she’s the only one who helps him tuck his wings back under the robe. “Man, this is a chore,” she complains, flipping the cowl up once she’s done. She circles around and squints hard at Grima’s face. “The extra eyes can probably stay, I think. They look kind of like ritual tattoos, and Robin did say he wanted Ylisseans to be more familiar with Grimeal customs.”

Why can’t everybody be as cool as Lissa? If everybody was as cool as Lissa, Grima wouldn’t need to fantasize about death and torture all the time.

The eyes stay, the wings stay more inconspicuously, and the parade happens. People are too distracted by the fact that Valm is down for the count to care too much about the extra eyes, which is nice.

By the time Grima and Chrom circle back to the castle, there’s a wrinkled bonesack of a noble tied up and sprawled in the middle of the throne room, four annoyed Plegian agents looming ominously over him, and a very disappointed and slightly heartbroken Exalt staring down at all this.

“Thank the gods,” Grima says, striding right up to the throne and past the whimpering idiot. He’s had a long day and Emmeryn half-likes him, so he figures it’s fine. “So this is our man? Fits my exact expectations, low as they were to begin with.”

“The hierarch,” Emmeryn states simply, which explains why she looks as if someone’s served up her heart on a plate.

“Hmm.” The thing on the ground doesn’t look particularly royal. “Well, I’ve seen worse. What will you do, Exalt? As this crime has occurred on your land, we’ll cede the immediate response to you. But he did make an attempt on the crown prince’s life, let’s not forget. The same crown prince who happens to be Grima’s chosen prophet, champion, whatever flowery terms you want to work with.”

“He will, of course, face the full scrutiny and punishment of the court. We will then allow Plegia to decide his ultimate fate,” Emmeryn calmly informs everyone. That’s good and all, but Grima’s too busy savouring the hierarch's utterly freaked out reaction to everything.

Grima has no real interest in what happens afterward, you know, bedridden charge and all. He doesn’t drop the Robin act even as Henry and Tharja step outside to murmur in a corner. In the dark. Like gremlins. Freaky.

“Don’t you look dapper,” Grima says, grinning wide when Robin cracks an eye open, sees what the situation is, and immediately turns to face the wall.

“Why are you like this,” he demands. “How long have you been wearing my face? Did you go out in public with six eyes?”

“Lissa said it was a good idea.”

“You listened to Lissa? The very same Lissa who scored a higher kill streak than me with a Bolt Axe?”

“That makes her more credible, not less, you paranoid little creature.”

“I told her the axe was going to break and she used it as fuel for an Arcthunder. Why did she do that? I didn’t teach her. Ylisseans don’t use spell fuel.”

“Sure, but she doesn’t go to you for ritual advice, does she?”

Robin turns back with a look of horror. “You didn’t.”

“Lissa is a very good student,” Grima says proudly.

Robin’s almost upset enough about the thought of Lissa learning ancient rites that he forgets about the part where he’s been stabbed. But then he doesn’t, because Maribelle more or less breaks into the room with a Mend staff and murder in her eyes. That’s horrifying on its own, but then Lissa appears out of nowhere babbling something about a lucky find and some shiny rod with a—yes, that is, in fact, a Goddess Staff in her hands.

Basically every human in the room is a giant embarrassing disaster with a proclivity for violence. It could be worse.

One heart attack later and Robin’s limping out with a new kind of fear in his eyes. It’s a fear that stems from tiny, horrible humans with a disproportionate amount of crazy for their body size who have access to lethal weapons. It’s a justified fear.

So now that Robin isn’t dying or anything, something or another happens to the hierarch. Grima would love to be more specific, but he can’t, because one day the bag of bones straight up disappears.

The four creepy agents look a lot happier that morning. Not to imply anything.

Robin, for one, doesn’t seem to care all that much. “They’re really good at disappearing people,” he tells Grima over lunch. “I went and tried to get some leads, and turns out they’ve all disappeared as well! It’s kind of reassuring.”

Grima decides not to point out that’s the exact personality one should be equipped with to disappear people themselves.

Fortunately, Chrom comes around all worried and way more anxious than he has any right to be. Robin informs him of this, making soothing sounds like he’s talking to a distressed puppy, and it’s such a pathetic sight that Grima loudly excuses himself and escapes to some normal people.

“This place is a nightmare and I want out,” Grima informs Sabora, curling around his shoulders like a vice.

“What are you upset about now?” Sabora asks cheekily, magnificent bastard he is.

“Robin and Chrom aren’t tiptoeing around each other!”

“Weren’t you just complaining about how they had to propose to each other before you—what was it? ‘Before I lose my patience and turn this entire blasted castle into a furnace and roast their sorry little bodies as an appetizer’?”

“Yes!”

“Okay,” Sabora says, completely lost.

“They’re not tiptoeing around each other but they haven’t said a damn word about... feelings to each other!”

Sabora contemplates this for a moment. “I think the process of love is more of a spectrum than a two-step recipe.”

“Sabora,” Grima says flatly, “the idiot prince has been carrying around a ring since he skewered Walhart.”

Realization dawns upon Sabora’s dumb face. “Oh,” he says distantly. “So that was... three months ago?”

“Three!” Grima practically explodes, because everyone in his life is an embarrassing trash fire and he didn’t sign up for any of this. “Three months! I’ve had to live with that knowledge for three whole months, Sabora. If the sad, stupid human doesn’t propose today, I’m going to possess him and make him propose!”

“Well, don’t jinx it,” Sabora tells Grima, patting him placatingly between the horns.

---

Grima’s out on a midnight stroll, taking a longer route past the gazebo in the gardens.

It’s a nice night out. He’s also extremely stressed because of everything and everyone and desperately needs fresh air or he’ll end up murdering everything and everyone. He’s minding his own business, which means of course he happens upon the idiot prince down on one knee and his idiot prince shiny-eyed and all happy or something.

Grima turns around and very much pretends he saw nothing.

It’s not his job to process emotions. The idiots can do it for themselves, Naga save them.

---

Impulsive and brainless Chrom might be, but at least he has the sense to awkwardly ask Grima if he has time to chat somewhere private before doing anything spectacularly stupid. Which one would be right in saying he already has, but Grima’s nice like that.

“What,” demands Grima.

Fidget, fidget. “I understand that, other than Plegia’s current king, you’re Robin’s closest guardian,” Chrom says hesitantly.

Those words should never be put in that order ever again given that they’re embarrassing and directly accuse Grima of caring. “I—so what?”

“I might have proposed to Robin last night,” Chrom blurts out, then lights up to the ears.

What, is that it? “Oh, I know that. I thought you wanted to, I don’t know, discuss moving arrangements. Or wedding seating. Anything but politics, really.”

“You... know,” Chrom repeats faintly.

“I see and know everything whether I want to or not, because the universe hates me,” Grima explains. “Okay, so you two are finally getting married, thank the gods. That’s me! I’m a god. You’re welcome. So what kind of theme do you want to go for? And where are you going to live? Plegia’s pretty nice once you get used to the sand, the sand, and also the sand. Obviously I won’t complain about the occasional vacation to Ylisstol, since your... mountain vistas... aren’t half bad. Are you listening? Are you alive? Did I just break you?”

“I’m listening,” Chrom says weakly, his poor little brain struggling to keep up. “I’m just... you’re alright with this?”

“Robin can handle himself and I trust him,” Grima admits, even though it’s like pulling every one of his blasted teeth out. Now he’s fidgeting. How awful is that? “Gods have nothing to do with the decisions you make. You stupid humans insist on carving out your own fate, anyway, and power to you. I sure don’t want to greet you on either end of your measly lives. I have better things to do. Places to be. All that.”

Now Chrom’s glassy eyed for an entirely different reason that Grima refuses to elaborate upon. They drop the conversation there because they’re both unintelligible by that point, and maybe ten minutes later, Lissa’s shrieking down the hall. Gaius might be screaming as well. It’s surprisingly difficult to differentiate between the two.

Sabora picks Grima up because everybody else is too busy crying or screeching. Sabora is the best. “There you go,” he says, deeply satisfied.

Grima huffs. “And what a way to go.”

---

Turns out that Robin’s been expecting a proposal for a while now, but not really? It’s weird.

Validar doesn’t even seem surprised. His letters are all congratulations and I’m trying really hard not to cry right now so sorry if this is completely illegible, which implies that Robin’s been keeping everyone back home up to date on all the hot castle gossip.

So obviously Robin was prepared and waiting. But he also wasn’t, because his self-esteem is so messed up. He probably made all those political arrangements while quietly convincing himself that it was just a fallback, or a hypothetical, or an outline for any Plegia-Ylisse royal marriage, or something else equally as ridiculous.

Good on Chrom for sitting him down and methodically crushing every one of his insecurities. Chrom is frighteningly good at doing that, naive and stupid he might be.

Prince Chrom of Ylisse. What a spectacularly weird person.

Grima obviously knows Chrom isn’t stupid stupid. He’s stupid in that he’s trusting to a fault, ripping his heart out of his chest for every damn person that comes into his life. Good? Bad? It doesn’t matter, because as long as they’re people, they have the potential to be good. And if they turn out bad—well, dragonslaying relic or not, a sword is a sword, and Chrom probably sleeps with Falchion like normal people would a teddy bear. Freaky.

Living life one day at a time. What a privilege.

Even with a sensible vassal and an overbearing sister, Chrom probably would’ve ended up getting himself killed. So now Robin’s here to pick up the slack, which should hopefully not get anyone killed.

Somewhere between here and there, a wedding happens. Two weddings, actually, since Ylisse gets one that’s nice and temperate and Plegia gets one that ends up with everybody plastered and unconscious.

Grima absolutely does not want to know what happens that night. There’s so much sexual tension between the Shepherds, not to mention the newlyweds, and he doesn’t want any part to do with it. They can go keep everyone else awake. Sabora and Nowi are being sensible as well, so all three of them escape to a bar and proceed to drink each other under the table.

“Marriage is so weird,” Nowi complains loudly. “Why’s a ring make things different? Love is so weird. Humans are so weird ‘n squishy ‘n mushy.”

“What a wonderful thought,” Sabora, somehow the most sober of them all.

“No, no, she’s got a point,” Grima agrees unsteadily, lurching forward and sending himself tumbling off the counter. Nowi lets out an unhappy grunt as he makes contact with her face. “Marriage is weird. Love is weird. Humans are weird. You know what’s not weird? Dragons!”

“Yeah!” Nowi cheers.

“Scales and wings and dragonskin! Incredible combatants! Legendary and iconic in all human civilizations!”

“Yeah!”

“Revered as gods and oracles! Would wipe the floor with everybody if some other stupid dragon didn’t make dragonslaying weapons! A great eye for shiny, valuable things!”

“Yeah!”

“No dumb emotional quagmires! No unadvisable mental breakdowns! No meaningful connections to anyone or anything! No allies because every ancient creature thinks every other ancient creature is out to smother them in their sleep!”

“Yeah...”

“No more alcohol for you two,” Sabora interrupts, the rude bastard of a human, as he heaves Nowi onto one shoulder and drapes Grima over the other.

Yeah. A wedding happens. Grima just doesn’t remember most of it, either because he was blackout drunk or is actively suppressing those memories.

---

Navigating the whole living situation is annoying. Like, what are the Shepherds going to do now? Their commander’s been hitched to a Plegian prince, and they’re a Ylissean militia. Politics are the reason why everybody is miserable, basically.

But then Sabora marches into the discussion and says, “Plegia has its fair share of veterans who want to help with the reconciliation effort, and Henry and Tharja are already involved. Why don’t we split the force, half Ylissean, half Plegian, and go from there?”

So that happens. The Shepherds needed it, honestly, since every sensible person knows that magic is the way to go when you need to level a small town. Or kill bandits!

Now every season, a parade of sixty-something people, every second one armed with forged Celica’s Gales, makes their way from Ylisse to Plegia and vice versa.

Not bad.

Speaking of clown parades, Chrom and Robin live mostly in Plegia, hello, only heir to the Plegian throne here, and Emmeryn’s handling matters in Ylisse with such competence that even Robin’s disturbed. But it doesn’t matter what he thinks, because suddenly there's another royal marriage and they all have to haul themselves over to Ylisstol. And then a little later: surprise! Emmeryn’s expecting! So that solves the heir issue if Lissa decides being a ruler is overrated.

Which it is! She should just move to Plegia permanently. Crazy Princess Lissa and her Bolt Axe. She’s so cool.

Honestly, though. Human life is so strange. The very existence of the Shepherds means that the next few years are dotted with weddings every other month, not to mention the ones on the Plegian side. Grima gets to get plastered at half of them, which Nowi is all in for, so that’s all that matters.

Oh, and foreign relations are starting to smooth out too. That’s a thing. Flavia and Basilio are probably laughing it up in Ferox and Tiki’s working overtime getting treaties and agreements hashed out in Valm. But major kudos to Emmeryn and her genuine love for peace. Every country could use an Emmeryn.

All in all, things are... surprisingly alright.

Sabora has the audacity to die from cancer of all things, that smartass. Of course only his own body would be able to take him out. He was practically invincible on anybody else’s terms.

Hopefully he and Anila are up somewhere in the sky laughing it up at all of Grima’s suffering. Gods, what a duo they would make.

Anyway.

The years sure don’t pass quietly, but they pass all the same. Whether they pass quickly is a totally different can of worms.

“I never expected to come so far,” Robin tells him one night maybe ten years later. It’s just them, no Chrom, no Lucina, no Morgan. Just the king of Plegia and the god of destruction. What a duo they make.

“You’re going to have to be a bit more specific.”

“I mean—look!” Robin gestures helplessly out toward the desert. “Who would’ve known we would’ve made it here? Not me! If you went back in time twenty years and asked, ‘Robin, do you think this war will ever end?’ And I would’ve said, ‘Yes, no doubt, but I don’t expect it to go well afterward.’ It’s gone well, Grima. It’s gone so well. It’s insane.”

“You’re a little late coming to that realization,” Grima informs him, slightly alarmed as to why Robin’s feeling so sentimental now, a good decade later. “So... are you dying, or something?”

Robin quirks up a brow. “Why would I be dying?”

“That’s my first assumption whenever you get cheesy.”

“So I’m always dying.”

“Oh, please. Don’t flatter yourself. Ever since you got married, I’ve dropped my standards so you’re only dying whenever Chrom’s around. Or the kids. I figure you need the rest of the time to be useful.”

Robin laughs, full and hearty and healthy. Three out of three, Grima silently—and victoriously—thinks to himself.

“You're going to die someday, no doubt,” Grima continues, and even that’s not enough to put a damper on the mood, “since your little human bodies are like that. Here’s what’s going to happen: I’m going to stick around, immortal dragon and all, and being the patient and benevolent god I am, I’m going to make sure the world doesn’t explode until you idiots make the full trip around and learn to walk and talk and cast magic again. But let’s hurry that process up next time! No more accidental Elfires or I’ll really die of stress.”

Embarrassingly, this is exactly when Robin starts getting sniffling and teary-eyed. Grima determinedly does not notice for both their sakes.

“I’ll try not to brain you on my crib next time,” Robin says, all choked up and emotional.

Grima curls in a little closer. “Yeah, well. You’d better try real hard.”

---

To nobody’s surprise, Chrom goes first.

Why isn’t it surprising? Easy. The idiot practically vibrated in place when he was alive. When he wasn’t finding ways to put his life in danger, he was planning for future ways to put his life in danger. It’s honestly a miracle he lived as long as he did.

So yeah. Chrom goes first.

It’s like Anila, but not. It’s weird and Grima doesn’t like it. It’s like... it’s kind of like the same punch to the gut pain, but without the surprise. It’s basically a hit that Grima’s been eyeing suspiciously since Chrom sprouted his first grey hair. It hurts, but it’ll work out.

Chrom’s always been an overachiever. Honestly! Grima’s going to take a nap one day and the idiot will end up popping out of nowhere, because that is the way of overachieving heart-bleeding idiots.

When Robin goes, though.

Ouch. That one hurts.

Part of it is because, yes, Grima’s been with him since infancy, and they practically figured out how to navigate this confusing human world together. But it hurts mostly because Robin had the audacity to leave without so much giving a heads-up or even a goodbye.

How dare he. Grima’s never letting Robin hear the end of it the next time he comes around.

So slumping around the castle it is, trying to be as furious as possible and not even a little sad. And it works! Everyone leaves him well alone, except Lucina and Morgan and their kids, who insist on bothering him endlessly.

But human life is short. Soon enough they’re gone too, and their kids follow, and on, and on, and so forth.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, Tiki comes to visit.

“I took your advice,” she says, which explains why she no longer looks like she has to carry the entire world on her shoulders.

“Of course you did,” Grima snaps. “The stress would’ve killed you long ago if you hadn’t.”

They kind of stare at each other in silence. Either they say a lot or nothing at all. Grima isn’t sure because Tiki isn’t hinting at anything, and he’s not going to ask.

“It’ll be a long wait,” Tiki finally says, all sad again. “I’ve been waiting for... well. I’ve been waiting, too.”

“And no dice,” Grima guesses.

“A flat zero roll.”

That’s not exactly the news Grima wanted to hear, but it doesn’t surprise him. He knew he was in for a wait. He just didn’t know how long it was going to be.

“Well, that makes two of us,” Grima tells Tiki, uncomfortable with this new bond they’re now sharing.

Tiki just smiles. “I’ll tell Nowi and Nah to come visit. That should cheer you up a little.”

Nobody in the castle asks why Grima’s howling loud denials about not being sad and depressed because they’re used to it. This is how stupid life has become.

---

Sometimes, on particularly bad nights, Grima wonders if Robin might just... not come back.

The fell dragon was a lot crueler in other worlds. Maybe Robin was born into one of those worlds, where two people became one person, and the world ended from there on out.

It’s not a fun prospect.

So Grima gets some scientists and oracles to slap up a timeline telescope of sorts. Just for fun, obviously. If every other world went downhill, then maybe Grima needs to turn waiting into something more productive. Like... maybe jumping into another timeline and borrowing a baby Robin, or punching a superbly evil version of himself in the face. It’s the most efficient plan of action! Really!

Ruined world here, ruined world there, it’s all looking very bad and unfortunate until—there.

Well. Would you look at that! Chrom and his funny amnesiac ally managed to end the fell dragon once and for all. They even get a happy ending, those crazy kids.

Now Robin has absolutely no reason to be so late. He’s a determined little brat to the end of the line and even past that. One win means another, and another, and whatever.

So obviously he’s coming back. He’s just taking his damn time doing it.

Oh, Grima is going to be so mad.

But for now... ugh. Waiting it is.

---

(Grima scrutinizes that timeline closely.

He’s nowhere and everywhere. It’s kind of a mess, with all the time travel nonsense.

So he goes back. All the way back, to Thabes and the demented alchemist and that one fateful breakfast.

Forneus does, in fact, spill his evil concoction into his goat milk and oats.

Huh.

Grima has no idea what to make of that. Eventually, he chooses to ignore it, because he’s way too old for moral quandaries.)

---

“You’re late, you terrible, horrible boy. Unacceptably late, I’ll have you know. I’m going to eat you, because you’re insufferable, and I hate you.”

“Grima. He’s a baby. He can’t understand you.”

“That’s your main concern? Not how I’m yelling about eating a baby in the middle of the damn hospital?”

“Why be concerned? Clearly you have enough self-awareness to be concerned about yourself.”

“Wh—you are so rude, Tiki, I don’t even know why I tolerate you. You’re lucky I consider you a friend—why are you laughing? Stop laughing! That means you too, Nowi!”

Robin pauses the video there, right when everything starts to get too shaky to make anything out because Nowi’s too busy losing it.

“So basically these are my relatives,” he tells Chrom proudly.

Chrom, for one, looks slightly traumatized. “And... you’re okay with the whole eating babies thing?”

“It’s just an Uncle Grima thing. Apparently it’s a really old inside joke? He’s definitely the cool uncle. He lets me stay up late watching the latest episodes of Chronicles of the Crownless Prince. He lets me ride his motorcycle and set things on fire! He’s really cool. Also, we look super alike! So that’s cool as well.”

“Mom doesn’t let me ride motorcycles,” Chrom mumbles petulantly. “And she definitely doesn’t let me set stuff on fire. Says I need to be at least thirteen or something. Can I see that again?”

The video’s blurry on the frame that Robin stopped it, but Chrom leans in to scrutinize it anyway. “You two really do look alike,” he says, something like shock in his voice. “Wow. You would look exactly alike, if you were an adult. Is that weird?”

It’s definitely weird, but on the list of all the weird things Robin’s relatives are known for, it doesn’t even rank. “I don’t think so. But he’s super cool, I promise!”

“He’s also late,” Chrom points out, gesturing to his clock that demonstrates it’s about ten minutes before the movie starts.

Robin smiles brightly. “I wouldn’t worry about that.”

“Wh—”

“Brat,” greets the door, and there’s Uncle Grima in all his glory, black leather biker gear and face tattoos and all. He’s got his amused grin on, the one Aunt Nowi and Aunt Tiki like to sport as well, and he barely looks at Chrom before declaring, “Alright! Helmets on, hang on tight, and we’ll be good.”

“Those are some crazy tattoos,” Chrom says distantly, barely catching the helmet and probably not processing any external input whatsoever.

Uncle Grima grins wider. “Glad you like them. Chrom, right? I’m Grima. I’ve got a crazy bike as well. Want a ride?”

“Hell yeah,” Chrom says, this time a joyful distant instead of a terrified distant. Robin knew he’d come around quick. Robin’s so proud of all his friends.

It’s sort of a miracle that Uncle Grima’s allowed to drive them at all, given how his general appearance makes people shuffle down the bus in an attempt to avoid associating with him. But Emmeryn is the coolest big sister Robin knows, so of course she and Uncle Grima have a quick chat about going for boba next week and... brands? Or something.

So now Robin and Chrom are both on the bike, Uncle Grima’s on the bike, and he’s smiling like a god who enjoys toying with the lives in his hands.

But also like a nice god. It’s kind of hard to explain. It’s a gut feeling, really. Like Robin could get lost somewhere nobody could go and Uncle Grima would still find a way to pull him back and yell at him for being stupid.

He’s a really cool uncle.

“Alright,” Uncle Grima says cheerfully. “Might want to hang on. Seven minutes, right? Better than four thousand years.”

Before Chrom can so much as ask about the odd choice of wording, Uncle Grima’s evil bike takes off into the street a good margin over the speed limit, because the laws of reality are things that apply to other people.

Chrom screams all the way. So does Robin. Uncle Grima might be laughing at them.

---

Neither Robin nor Chrom are born with any kind of brand this time around.

Grima takes this to be a good sign. He’s discussed this with Emmeryn: hopefully that’ll dilute the oncoming chaos, because if it doesn’t, he might just roll over and nap for a thousand years. Either that or he’ll die from stress.

These humans are so lucky Grima’s around to make sure they live proper lives and get to the movies on time. He is a generous god, after all.

“Be home by eight or I’ll sic Nowi on you,” Grima tells the windswept, grinning children. Hell, he might be grinning as well. The world’s weird like that.

“It’d be scarier if you sent Aunt Tiki,” Robin fires back.

This damn kid. “Who said I need to send Tiki anywhere? She knows and sees everything. Now hurry up and go eat your smuggled snacks before the ads end.”

Chrom, somehow the more reasonable of the two, tugs Robin into the theater. “Thanks for the ride,” says the not-idiot, not-prince. The look he’s leveling toward Grima is one of deep amusement, so that’s nice. “Maybe Robin can give me your number later? I heard you let him ride bikes.”

Nevermind. Chrom’s just as insane as Grima remembers him being. “Yeah, do that,” he allows. “I love being a good influence.”

Robin says something excitedly to Chrom about bike tricks and a blatant disregard for the law, and then the kids are turning their backs to him and sprinting off.

Grima allows himself a little smile. What a life, honestly. He’s more patient than any of these idiots deserve.

But hey: here they are, living one day at a time. It could be worse, but it isn’t.

Humanity. What a gem to work with.