Fáfnir

Fáfnir is the dragon at the dark center of the Volsung legend — and a study in what greed does to a soul. He was not born a monster: he was Regin's brother, a man, until the cursed gold of Andvari came into his family. He murdered his own father for the hoard, drove his brothers away, and withdrew alone onto Gnitaheath to brood over it — and his lust for the treasure slowly turned him into a venom-spouting serpent, vast and terrible, the very shape of avarice. When Sigurd, goaded by Regin, digs a pit and stabs the dragon from beneath, the dying Fáfnir speaks — warning the young hero that the gold is cursed and will be his death too, that everyone who holds it is doomed. Sigurd takes it anyway. Fáfnir is the legend's great emblem: the man who loved gold so much he became a monster guarding it, and whose dying breath is the curse the hero refuses to heed.