Perched high above the floor of the Kondorra valley, encased by the protective walls of his mountain, atop a pile of gold so vast that a thief had actually drowned in it once, the dragon Mattrax was possessed of a powerful urge to shit on all he surveyed.
The arse-end of the Kondorra valley. The field-strewn, forest-clogged, scraggly arse-end of it. That was what they had seen fit to give him. Him. Mattrax. He who had melted the faces of a thousand foes. Who had carved the guts from ten thousand more with his gilded claws. He who sat upon the wealth of ten kings. That was what the Dragon Consortium had given him. The northern tip of the valley. A region so remote, so sparely populated, that the single most important human settlement was known as… The Village.
It wasn’t even “The Town.” You couldn’t even pretend that it might get round to calling itself The Town sometime soon. To be honest “The Hamlet that Had Rather an Inflated Opinion of Itself” might be a more accurate name. And then there were the farmsteads, scattered like warts on a whore’s arse. And populated with human pus. And what was worse, far, far worse… poor human pus.
That was what was so galling about it all. If the hills here had been shot through with valuable ore. If gold or diamonds had glittered in deep mines. If perhaps instead of farmsteads there were the mansions of a wealthy elite scattered among the hills, then perhaps that would relieve some of his frustration. But, no. It was peasants, illiterates, and the mentally disturbed. That was who he oversaw. Them and not another soul.
Mattrax shifted on his pile of gold. A crown and several ruby-studded necklaces tumbled down, clattering against silver platters, tiaras, and loose gemstones. The massive coils of his body twisted, leathery wings stretching slightly as he settled into a new position.
His thoughts turned with his body, headed toward darker territory.
Dathrax. The bloated, fat, lazy, son-of-an-iguana Dathrax. Sitting fat and happy one province to the south, lauding his dominion of Athril’s Lake. Fishing towns. Not just one town. But towns. A plurality of towns. All the citizens with pockets stuffed fat from the profit of their stinking hauls.
The taxes. Mattrax almost groaned at the thought of them. He stroked his own belly with a single gilded claw, imagining the carts coming in, axles creaking under their loads. Great sagging chests, overstuffed, coins positively bursting out of them, begging to be raked by his talons.
And none of it his. All Dathrax’s.
He could take Dathrax, of course. Would take Athril’s Lake from him in time. But that required an army. And an army required coin. And coin required something fucking more than an arse-load of squelching, stinking peasants to tax.
But that was all he had.
And so all that he could truly do was stretch his wings, take to the air, and shit on it all.