Lying, replete, upon his island, Dathrax raised his head. There was a strange smell upon the air. He was having trouble placing it.
He had been thinking about Mattrax, about what had happened to him. Dathrax had never liked Mattrax. He wouldn’t have called him a rival exactly—that would have acknowledged that he and Mattrax existed in the same league as each other—but of the other members of the Consortium, Mattrax was the one with whom he had interacted the most often, and the most acrimoniously.
In many ways he should be celebrating Mattrax’s death. They had had a number of competing trade agreements with Vinland and Batarra. And Dathrax’s highly profitable grape trade route had been consistently, even suspiciously, plagued with bandits where it had run through Mattrax’s territory.
The problem was the manner of Mattrax’s death. If he had choked on an ox bone, or found some particularly inventive way to die of gout, if he had been crushed by the weight of his own stash of gold… well the merchant guilds of Vinland and Batarra could have understood that, respected it even. Death by indulgence was something they all secretly wished for as an epitaph. But Mattrax had not had the decency to die that way. As he had been in life, Mattrax was an insolent son of an iguana slut lizard.
A popular uprising. It was almost enough to make Dathrax spit fire.
Almost…
This prophet. This popular fucking hero. They kept raising the price on his head. By the Hallows it was almost so high that he would consider hunting down the human stain himself…
Dathrax snorted at his own joke. Two pathetic wisps of smoke rose from his nostrils, withered in the evening breeze.
Smoke…
That was what he could smell.
And smoke meant…
But he couldn’t… Well… he could. He just… He had a sore throat, probably. He would be breathing fire in no time.
Dathrax was up on his feet. Sniffing the air, trying to trace the scent. Had one of the others in the Consortium found out about his temporary problem? Were they all holed up in the Hallows’ Mouth volcano mocking him?
He scrabbled up one slope of the earthen bowl that contained his hoard. Coins and crowns shifted beneath his feet, making the going hard. He spread his wings, beat once, rose up into the air, scanned the horizon.
And there, a red smudge on the horizon, in opposition to the setting of the sun: Athril itself. His stronghold. The seat of his power, his garrison, the home of all his gods-fucking-cursed taxes.
His town burned. Its smoke drifting to him across the water.
Curling his lip, Dathrax beat his wings, and went to rain down hell on whoever dared to disturb his evening’s repose.