5 Nidhogg the Devourer of Worlds

[NIDHOGG. Unknown time. Unknown place.]

Nidhogg the divine dragon, opened his cavernous mouth. A maw filled with teeth the size of small mountains, sucked in air with enough strength to create a strong wind.

"Oh great Devourer of Worlds," a miniscule speck prayed to him. "Please accept our sacrifice and spare us from your wrath."

Nidhogg focused his left eye on the speck. As he expected, it was a green skinned orc. These creatures were one of the most prolifically spread throughout the universe. Nearly ten percent of all worlds had these orcs. The only sentient races more widespread, where goblins, humans and those adorable lizard-folk.

Besides their wide-spread population, another defining trait of the orcs was that they really loved sacrificing other sentient beings. They'd sacrifice to gods, dragons, demons, angles, fey, giants and even occasionally funny shaped rocks that sort of resembled members one of the above races.

"Oh, great Devourer of Worlds," the orc repeated her chant, before she placed a bound gnome on the sacrificial alter and started to gut him. "Please accept our sacrifice and spare us from your wrath."

Nidhogg frowned. He hated it when gnomes were sacrificed to him.

"Aaargh!" screamed the gnome. "You stabbed me in the left lung! Now you're cutting into my diaphragm! I'll get hiccups! No, my poor spleen! Hic! I told you I'd get hiccups. Aargh my stomach! All that quality ale is just pouring out now! Hic! You monstrous orc! That's my transverse colon or my duodenum… I'm in too much pain to tell… but either way, I need that bit to digest!"

"I accept your sacrifice," Nidhogg sent a telepathic signal to the orc. "Just kill that gnome already. A quick bash to the head with a rock."

"Of course, oh great Devourer of Worlds!" the orc obeyed, silencing the gnome's annoying verbiage with a round, jagged rock.

Afterwards the orc ran off, no doubt to spread the good news.

Nidhogg looked at the messy gnome carcass the orc had left behind. He wondered why so many cultures preferred these elaborate sacrifices. Keeping a sentient alive as you carved up their organs sounded impressive. But Nidhogg felt it was a pointless time waster, and in the case of certain sacrifices, such as gnomes, it was simply annoying.

"Oh, great Devourer of Worlds!" the orc had suddenly returned with a second gnome. "I beseech you to defeat our great enemy; Tiamat the Mother of All Dragons."

Nidhogg internally groaned as the orc placed the second gnome on the sacrificial alter.

"Stop!" Nidhogg telepathically ordered the orc. "Don't worry with the gnome sacrifice. Just let the little thing go. It's not like I'm going to eat it anyway."

"So, you'll defeat Tiamat the Mother of All Dragons?" the orc hesitantly asked.

Nidhogg didn't know who Tiamat was. But he did know that she wasn't his mother. So, her title of Mother of All Dragons quite offended him.

"Sure," Nidhogg agreed.

He was getting bored anyway. Might as well go a few rounds with this Tiamat character. He doubted a girl could beat him anyway. Maybe if she was a cute enough dragon, he might even get some loving. Odin only knew how long it had been since the last time he'd had similar fun.

"Praise to you Great Devourer of Worlds," the orc chanted.

Nidhogg pulled his hundred kilometre long body from the ground. Then with one beat of his massive wings, he launched himself into the air.

"Yay!" celebrated the recently freed gnome as Nidhogg took to the skies. "Your divine winds just destroyed the orc city. This land will definitely belong to the gnomes know."

Oops, thought Nidhogg. However, there was no way he'd admit to making a mistake.

So instead he sent the gnome a telepathic message. "Yes… I have liberated the gnomes. Now go spread word of my glory. The greatness that is Nidhogg the Devourer of Worlds!"