by Grimm
"You will not escape so easily, Animal Man!" Ma Kalunga howled contemptuously through the pain of Danny Hearn's cobra venom in her face. "Soon, you will join your friends..."
Danny turned to see a possessed Lance Lorenzo and Tobias Christopher staring him down. "Oh, crap, I'm dead..."
"Don't worry, Daniel. I'll take care of this!"
Kristofer Schanz stood majestically in front of the injured Danny, while the now-ghostly and partially transparent Pete Glover hovered just above and behind him.
Danny's eyes rolled back up inside his head as he passed out again.
Slowly, Grimm began to stir and pull himself up from the rubble. He looked down at the hole in his chest where Red Scorpion's tail had impaled him. The hole was already closing up, but there was still a slight discoloration in the skin resulting from leftover traces of scorpion venom.
Grimm glanced over to his left and saw a slim form laying in the rubble just a few feet away. "S-Sam?"
The sounds of battle that echoed throughout this part of the Castle of Crossed Destinies finally began to register in Grimm's mind. He recognized Dirk Bell's voice swearing loudly at the inhuman creatures he battled against alone: Dr. Zachary Knell and the Scorpion brothers. "That idiot's going to get himself killed..."
Grimm looked around for his axe. He felt it more than saw it, being drawn to it as if they were bonded. And, in fact, they were. Grimm struggled up to his feet. He made his way over to where Sam lay unconscious amongst the rubble. He looked down at the boy's face. "Oh, my God," he said as he noticed Sam's facial skin completely gone, apparently ripped away to show the white bone of a skull. His newfound friend was dead.
Grimm turned and began silently walking toward the area where Dirk still struggled for his life against the inhuman beings. The axe in Grimm's hand began to hum and glow with pure blue energy.
By the time Grimm made his way back to the impromptu battlefield, the entire room was bathed in the incandescent blue light. The combatants stopped and peered toward the source of the light.
The Scorpion brothers looked at each other and chattered syllables of fear in their new arachnoid tongue.
Knell hissed evilly, "At lassst, a worthy opponent..."
And as for Dirk, he could swear that just for a moment, Grimm was different. That he was all skeleton, covered in flowing black, tattered robe, with large wings outstretched behind him. In that moment, throughout the Castle and various realities, a chill passed through all living beings.
A king fell dead of a heart attack in battle, several corpses pulled themselves up out of their graves in a cemetary in a small Pennsylvania town, a sun flared up and went nova, and Turkish Stringfellow sat up with a start from where he had lain after his defeat at the hands of Smith. The monk cried out as if in the throes of a nightmare, then collapsed back into oblivion.
Dirk rubbed his eyes, blinked, and looked again. Grimm was back to his usual self.
"Now," Grimm said, stepping forward, completely healed, "someone's gonna pay."