Unease.
Every sense within Naegan's reptilian head was practically screaming with unease. Something was watching him out there in the blinding storm that surrounded him. Something he could not identify, and he could feel it within his very soul. His claws clutched the primitive spear of wood, stone and bone all that much tighter with anxiety. The loose ends of the bear hide he wore over his back fluttered like a flag in the blizzard, and still he ventured forth, back to his lair.
Even for a male viper of mutant descent, Naegan was an unnaturally large creature to behold. The offspring of the viper king originally experimented on and brought into existence by the reckless works of humans years before, he was cast out a very short time after he was born. His father was a highly paranoid and controlling individual by instinct, and with the unwanted birth of another male viper in the nest, he wished for no competition to stick around and risk challenging his power. As such, Naegan left his birthplace; crossing countries and a small portion of an ocean as a neonate, and then as an adult when he matured enough. He wanted to discover a place of his own, and he had only a few cares as to what he wanted it to be like. A place devoid of the touch of human, viper or otherwise. What he found was this place of ice and near-barren tundra.
The viper king continued to move forth; the coarse fur of the bear pelt he wore over his body fluttering in the wind and accumulating brittle frost upon its surface. He was as calm as the landscape was frozen, but the unease gripped him constantly like a leech on his scaly skin. Someone was watching him, yet he could not see just who it was, and neither could his forked tongue detect their scent every time it flickered out from his mouth.
He had every right to worry about a potential threat intruding upon his territory. It wasn't just the deep, vertical scar stretching from the corner of his left nostril, over his milky white left eye and just past it, but covering much his scaly body and under the bear pelt he wore were markings from much more horrid gashes and other assorted past injuries. He had won them like trophies in fights for food and survival with more than just the massive brown bears that called this region their home. The great boars he commonly hunted, with their thick hides and goring tusks, were deadly opponents in their own right.
Eventually he reached his cave. It was a small rock formation that jutted up from the ground, surrounded by a small cluster of trees. It once belonged to the great bear he had since skinned and now wore; the same creature that blinded his left eye in their first and final scuffle. He had lived in the cave by himself for quite a time, and it was a safe haven from the dangers and weather lurking outside. He quickly vanished inside, hopefully before any prying gazes could spot him, and put his spear away before heading off to the back of the cavern to retrieve his most favored possession.
After approaching a nearby rock and sifting a hand behind it, he pulled out a small, metal, pad-like device. He had snatched the device from the ragged remains of a coat pocket, once belonging to one of many humans who were devoured by the vipers in the original nest before his flight from it. The trinket was perhaps his only valuable item of comfort in this entire uncaring world, and he cherished it like a golden treasure. He tapped upon its partially-cracked and dirt-encrusted screen with a black claw, and its surface soon lit up. He pressed several buttons and shifted through its applications for a second before pressing one of them a final time, and was met with a song that sounded softly from its loudspeakers.
The slow tune of the music was always something that relaxed his nerves. Being that he only knew (most of) his own kind's language, he had no earthly idea what the words of the song meant, but the tune itself, and the pitch of the tone used, was an indiscriminate and soul-lifting combination. He let the noise of it overcome the sound of the storm outside and relax his mind.
When it inevitably came to an end a little while later, he shut the device off and put it away, back where he had hidden it previously. He went to the center of his home and began to curl and coil his body into a pile. He lowered his head to the floor and let his mind wander; intending on falling asleep in preparation for the day tomorrow.
But that night, Naegan slept with his good eye open.
The storm continued as two hours passed. Naegan's head eventually lifted with a small start and he shook his head into full awareness with an alertness in his movement. He had been awakened by the distinct sound of crunching snow coming from outside his abode. It wasn't uncommon to hear it, as the powerful winds had more than the capacity to knock down a branch or two, but every time it happened he would stay on guard for a while, just in case.
Getting to his coils and moving to the entrance of his abode, Naegan stared unblinkingly into the darkness outside. Everything seemed normal. This illusion, however, was shattered like a pane of glass to a thrown rock when he felt a sharp sting suddenly impact against his chest. Sending his hand to feel it immediately, what he sensed was an alien object stuck into his skin. Ducking away in startled reaction, he pulled it out of his chest instantly.
Looking at the object now in his hand from behind cover, he recognized it as a dart-like projectile; it's long, pointed tip coated with a grimy black substance that had mixed with his own, murky green blood. As he tossed it away to the ground and prepared for the fight he was about to truly receive, a sudden, but light wooziness overtook his mind. It was an off-balancing feeling, but he quickly shook it off as a wave of adrenaline washed over him.
Hissing angrily and throwing away the dart, he grabbed his spear laying on the nearby floor of the cavern and poked his good eye from just out of his cover. Instantly he could see a shape - the silhouette of a human - running from the blizzard to the open in front of his lair. Something long and thin he could not truly make out was in their hands, and it was not unlike his own spear. With purpose in his stride Naegan abandoned his cover and charged at it.
Lunging when he was close enough, he took a single, downwards swipe at his opponent. The smaller figure, clad in black armor and wearing a helmet of matching color, saw the oncoming attack and sidestepped to the left with amazing reflexes. Raising its own hands, in which was held a long, metal pole, it stabbed it forward, intent on using the momentum of the viper against him.
The human successfully landed its blow, stabbing Naegan in the left shoulder with its device. Hissing in pain the second the weapon was pulled away, Naegan leapt back and looked to his shoulder, only to see that what was embedded in his hide was a cylandric object that had purposefully broken off from the human's weapon; not unlike the dart in making and surely function. He tore it from his flesh with a savage pull, now all numb in sensation, and when he tried to move the limb it failed to do anything. Ignoring the disability he had accrued, he looked back at his foe with his mouth wide and fangs showing, just as it was attacking again.
It swung the weapon thrice with expert skill, but each swing was avoided by the viper. Baring his fangs, Naegan used his working arm to slash his spear at his enemy, but with one, downward swipe, the attacker intercepted and broke his spear completely at its tip with the metal shaft of its own weapon. The viper didn't despair, and with a final jab from the jagged, broken tip of his spear to draw away his attacker's own device, he tossed it away and tackled the figure fully, forcing them to drop their item with his.
They fell into the powdery snow with a clatter and a hiss amidst the sudden sound of shouts going around them. Naegan's more powerful arm and coils wrestled about the character, and while they fought back quite fiercely, he quickly wrapped his serpentine body about the person's midsection and one of their arm in a crushing hold. Thinking that he had the upper hand, the viper bared his fangs once more as he stared into the person's helmeted face, preparing to end their life. This plot was stopped when he felt the sting of another dart pierce the back of his hooded neck, causing him to grunt and halt in his progress, deeply startled.
Defiant and seeing an opening, the attacker's one, free, gauntleted fist slammed against the viper's chin with a powerful punch, breaking off one of the spikes lining it with its force. Naegan's head reeled back from the blow, surprised by its sheer power and pain that came with it. He drew it back to what he thought was his prey, only to be clocked by another uppercut using the same magnitude of strength as the attack before it.
Stunned, Naegan's grip on the human faltered, and his coils became loose enough for his prey to escape them. Shouting something in its language using a tone Naegan faintly recognized was female in his daze, the human pointed a hand at the viper as she leapt back several feet. Wiping some green blood from where the lip of his mouth had been torn slightly by the last blow he received, Naegan was prepared to lunge again, when the feeling of three more of the projectiles from before struck him in the right arm and shoulder simultaneously. Looking to the darts sticking out of his white flesh he tried to pull them out, but what was his only moving arm wouldn't respond, like the other.
With both of his limbs now sagging uselessly by his side, Naegan began to feel much peril at being unable to remove these darts. He bellowed upon the realization that he was outnumbered and outmatched by these creatures, however many of them there were laying in the denseness of the blizzard. With his instincts screaming at him to escape, he reacted accordingly. As another dart pierced his lower side, he spun about in the direction opposite of the only human in his sight and tried to slither off; his tiring mind working frivolously to form a psionic gateway that would take him far from here.
Not soon after, a swirling, dark void of psionic energy formed roughly a dozen feet in front of him. Tranquilizer darts continued to pelt his back as he rushed for it. His movements became slower and more sluggish as it went on, his mind becoming equally muddled. Just before he was within two feet of the portal that would escort him from his predicament, the gateway suddenly began to sputter with a sizzling noise, and then it vanished entirely as his mind lost focus on keeping it up.
Only dull thoughts consumed Naegan's mind now. The viper king made it one more foot forward before collapsing to the brittle and icy ground. When a whirring daze began to overcome his mind like the densest of fogs, he could only hear the sound of footsteps approaching him. Summing up the last of his energy in a burst of rage, Naegan tried one last, desperate time to fight back, pouncing up from the ground in a savage lunge and aiming at the figure right beside him. His mouth grabbed at her raised and defensive pole and they dropped once more into the snow.
His assault was instantly met with him getting pelted with five more darts in his side, and these ones were the final pieces that did him in. His good eye growing as unseeing as the other, the viper king could no longer keep his awareness, in spite of his efforts to endure the tranquilizer syrum running in his veins. With a final, gurgled hiss, he lost all strength and faded into unconsciousness in that instant, falling limply upon the human he fought below him like a great weight.
Aside from the howling wind, silence was all that drifted through the area. Knowing she was unable to push the viper off of herself after three tries, the human tossed away her metal pole and laid where she was, waiting for the sound of several sets of boots crunching over snow to get picked up by her ears, which happened around thirty seconds later. When the figures of her team were within her sight, she went ahead and pulled her helmet off to reveal her face, allowing the frigid air to wash over her and brush through her brown hair and the silver streak it had running through it, as well as her exhausted, pale, sweat-soaked, grinning face.
"We've got him, fellas," the XCOM agent, Anais was her name, smiled in unbridled triumph to her accomplices as she looked their way, patting the head of the immobile viper king sitting upon her chest twice as though it were a pet dog. "We've got him."