Hunger is like the inversion of fire, a grey chill that creeps down the throat and smothers the heart's hearth in ashes. Beasts with thin blood and thinner skin fear it as a harbinger of death, a butcher carving their bodies with unseen knives. Not so among the mighty. Not so among destroyers and devourers and the winds of devastation itself, the dragons, though hunger is known to them very well. Even Glaurung knew hunger; and after Glaurung, Ancalagon; and after Ancalagon, Smaug; and it is no accident that this should run through them like a trembling thread, generations long.
Out of flame they were conjured. Through the cold spaces between Morgoth's fingers they rose: cold-drakes, long-worms, great serpents of every sort. So it began for their kind. The first shadow upon the world wove them by hand — and he murmured at their making that all things must understand what it is to burn.
Smaug goes to gold as rivers go to oceans. It is not his master (for he has no such thing in all the world), only a great weight upon his mind. Where is it, who claims it, why does it coil through the hollows of the earth like a mother's bones? Those dragons who hoard silver and iron, tablets and tales, coral and pearls, they line little nests with little value, content to escape the wrath of greater rivals. Not so among the mighty; and, Smaug, covered with might, finds no pleasure in cold grey stones or complacency. Insatiable, he raids bright cities whispering with wealth and takes what delight he can in their ruin. For cruelty and greed he becomes known, a great scourge of the north. Men reach with forged weapons to hook him from the cold apex of the sky — but Men and their weapons are weak.
All for gold, he hunts in the north as gatherers of jewels and precious metals flee in terror from his jagged shadow. He burns fields and strongholds until they shine like treasure. He burns earth and stone to red smoke, and he burns the flesh of children and livestock that he shall not eat. And he burns, a captured flame in fuel that cannot be consumed; and he burns.
Youth is a bed of coals and power is the flame that rises from it. Smaug rises cobalt and crimson into his years, unguided by elders. Instead there is a memory in him that leads him forth: of waking in a deep chasm veined warm with yellow metal; of fathomless joy in the gleaming tides of war.
Strange, when the vast wars of the many races had been done for hundreds of years before his infancy. Cold, when the glitter of refined gold in his claws is not enough to satisfy. The armoured Men who come to seek and slay him say that dragons were made to be mastered, that they can find true peace only in servitude to the dark ones who now lie dead — or in death itself. With the lightest touch of a talon, Smaug parts their iron gorgets like smooth water and gives them their own peace, but the poison words of mortals have longer lives. He hears them as echoes below the icy mountain peaks, as whispers rising from the dark, alpine forests.
Throat full of ashes, Smaug lifts his wings to unknown lands. He tells himself he is weary of being lord over paupers and he strikes south, toward word of thrones and riches.
Though great serpents are suspicious by nature, Smaug trusts the sound of covetousness in the voices of Men.
Rumor and groveling captives lead him to Dale and the proud Lonely Mountain looming above it. The city burns as so many other cities have done, no brighter or rarer, though the Mountain is a stiffer knot to loosen. His efforts are rewarded with the horror and shame of routed warriors, the cacophony of weapons falling hard to stone in winding halls, the smoking stench of hair and eyes and whole Dwarven lives caught in the nets of an inferno.
Later he streams through the silent catacombs, a silken sibilance of smoke and scarlet, pleased that if nothing else he had won for himself a worthy lair; but still he searches for the treasure of legends. There is a sweet echo sourced somewhere below, its resonance glowing on the soot-stained walls, and he goes to it.
Smaug assembles the entirety of his precious hoard in the deep vaults intended for further digging, burying fingers of untouched ore beneath shining coins and bars and trinkets. The heat of his presence fogs burnished surfaces but still he sees the reflection of his great bulk cast across the heaps of metals and gems, mantled like a fiery phantom over its own beloved flesh.
He sleeps as he did long ago, the deep sleep of one who does not wait for a calling. He is the mountain's volcanic heart reborn, seething with heat and ringed by soft veins of gold yet to be discovered. Hunger does not visit him as he coils in shadow, only treasure and tribute. He is no one's slave. Dragon fire melts all chains and collars, and all the crowns and all the rings in the world will come to him in time. It is in the nature of servants to submit to kings. And it shall be well-known that Smaug is king-under-the-mountain, master over all.