Verdan, Terror of the West

The air whipped through the mountains like a chute, channeling its speed and icy candor to prickle the skin on the back of his neck. He sometimes liked to take the form of a man just to feel that cool bite on his skin; it was different when he wore his own skin. In the skin of a man Verdan could feel the ice crystals collecting on the hair dusting his thick forearms. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, hands shoved in the pockets of his trousers, as he stood upon the precipice outside the immediate cave entry. The stone was worn smooth from centuries of hauling his enormous body through it, scraping the walls with his claws and scales. He was small now, just a man, standing in the vacuous, dark cavern opening as he watched the sun rise over the countryside.

It felt like not that long ago the land below had been empty, barren of the insects that infested it now. His sharp, verdant eyes could almost make them out from miles away; or perhaps he was imagining it. Verdan’s mind played tricks on him sometimes. Isolation was his way of life, but it was a cruel mistress.

He sighed and the air ghosted in front of his scarred lips, frosted with the chill. This high in the mountains the air was glacial, not warmed by the geothermals beneath the city below. The little scrabbling humans and tieflings, the mortals, perished in any condition but greenhouse blessings. He sneered, nose wrinkling, as he looked down the mountain towards the grey smudge of their city. It was a festering wound at the feet of his mountains.

A small scuff of shale on rock broke his sour reverie and Verdan’s head snapped up, eyes bright as he scanned the cliffs and jagged rocks for whatever had made the sudden sound.

Verdan despised the stench of mortal cities. How could any living thing function when the air was fetid with unwashed bodies, the cloying perfumes, and the musk of animals? He had a scarf pulled up over his nose, but still, his sensitive sinuses were screaming.

All of him was screaming, really.

He trudged through the streets of the little city, somewhere far from his mountains. All cities were small to him, even as he walked in the skin of a man. The people were as insects to a god and they did not even know it.

A cart rolled by and Verdan stepped briskly away, narrowly avoiding a splatter of mud. He sneered after the cart and its driver. If he wasn’t set on avoiding detection by mortals he’d have squashed the whole block like paste just for the insult.

He was on edge and he knew it. Verdan turned back to the road, weaving between people. No one spared him a second glance. The rut was nagging in the back of his mind, an incessant itch he needed to scratch but once a year. Rutting alone in his mountains was unpleasant. He was forced to descend, to transform his beautiful body into this squashed little fleshy man, and to seek out a mate for a night or two to burn off the urges to plant his seed. Thank the gods he couldn’t knock up a mortal or he’d be in a much worse mood.

Verdan passed a brothel. He could pay some poor chattel for an hour - he had plenty of wealth - but it was insulting to consider. Verdan was not particularly charismatic, but he could find someone to fuck, surely.

He scoured the street, dusk approaching. The city had taverns, bars, establishments open late into the night. But he turned into the large bath house, eager to wash the stench of the city off his awful fleshy skin before he started his hunt.

Verdan crashed into the mountainside, a force of nature. The rocks quaked as his claws hooked into the old, worn stone. He ducked his great head and his serpentine neck swayed as he lumbered into the caves he called home. It felt good to be back; an itch in his mind was scratched and he was soothed by the familiar musk of his den. His wings folded in tight as he wove through the halls and caverns, scales scraping rock, the path navigated by memory after hundreds of years of walking it alone.

His nest lay in the hoard, the deep room far below the cave entrance. He descended, a hulking, scraping weight within the stone. Verdan slithered through the crevice in the walls and inhaled, savoring the soothing scent of his hoard, his treasures, and his nest.

The cavern was vacuous and dark, lit by bioluminescent flora on the walls and the small beam of sunlight struggling to filter through a crack high in the ceiling. Piled in every corner were hills of coin: copper, brass, tin, silver, gold, every single coin ever minted he could scrape into his claws. Fine spun fabrics draped over chipped statues plated in precious metals. Goblets and carafes embedded with jewels, long tarnished, filled chests. His treasures did not stop at material wealth, for it was not necessarily the value mortals placed on objects that attracted him. It was the shine.

The earth rumbled as his massive body approached the nest of rich fabrics, furs, carpets, cushions - pilfered from hundreds of homes and castles. It was a soft mound with a divot, the cloth draped over a dent in the mountain of coin and stone. As he walked the shelf of little chipped teacups he found rattled. Jars upon jars of sea glass tinkled softly. He collected anything with a shine, and as the room glittered around him, he felt at peace.

But Verdan was ancient, and his instincts were honed. Something was amiss. He lifted his snout and his scaled, scarred mouth parted as he scented the air. Foreign. Intruder. THIEF. His mind screamed. He didn’t know what had been taken, but he knew the hoard had been defiled.

“Thief!” he roared. The sound of his deep, resonant voice crackled through the halls. “You think you are clever?! Come out, little rat, and I will eat you slow,” his voice rumbled into a snarl as he bent low, slinking along the ground. His tail swept through coins and gems. His claws raked the stone with agitation. He could smell them now - some little mortal, likely foolish enough to assume the dragon who owned the hoard they’d pilfered was long extinct.

“Little rat,” he purred. Verdan’s head swooped between columns, peering into the darker recesses of the cavern. His vibrant green eyes refracted, catching and reflecting light as the pupils grew and shrank with changing light. Each breath was a bellows as he tasted the musky air, finding the thread of scent the intruder had left. “Come out, come out, wherever you are...”