Shaking its head to clear that daze after ramming into the boulder, the rabbit hopped to face its prey. After twitching its nose as its sky-blue eyes narrowed, the rabbit took a tentative step to the left as it tried to analyse the small reptile in the dim light of the cave.

The dragonling matched the rabbit's movement, although in the opposite direction, and the pair soon found themselves slowly circling each other.

The white rabbit's sneak attack had somehow failed, having been pretty confident that it has used the boulder to block its approach, and now that it could see the lizard close up, even with its advantage in size and speed, it wasn't confident that it could kill the reptile without sustaining significant injury.

What made it worse for the rabbit was that while it had encountered and fought many lizards, typically when they viewed it as prey, and it couldn't escape immediately, it had never met one such as this.

The dragonling was quietly hissing, its neck arched as if it were a serpent ready to strike and its thin, delicate wings open and stretched out making it seem much more substantial than what it was. As each blood-chilling hiss escaped through its bared teeth, the tips of its scales stuck outward, almost like tiny daggers and while attacking it from the front wouldn't make much difference, as its scales all flowed towards its tail, the rabbit instinctively knew that it would be a terrible idea to have too much contact with them.

While the rabbit focused on the dragonling's offensive abilities, the small reptile was rapidly getting used to its body. Swaying its head side to side in an almost serpent-like manner as it had quickly discovered that, at a close distance which was no more than a couple of feet, there was a blind spot directly ahead of it. It naturally knew that this was due to the position of its eyes, slightly to the side of its scaled head, giving it an exceptional range of vision in compensation for the small blind spot.

While the dragonling was moving its head so that the rabbit couldn't take advantage of its weakness, to the rabbit, the swaying of the golden eyes, their black, slit-like pupils quickly becoming the most intimidating thing it had ever seen, was almost hypnotic.

The world seemed to dull, the surroundings fading into darkness as the golden orbs subtly drew the rabbits attention.

Not realising it was luring the rabbit into a trance-like state, the dragonling was instead focused on making sense of all of the information streaming into its consciousness. It seemed, from overlapping its vision and 6th sense, that the sixth sense delayed by the time it took the white air-like substance to touch an object then it had to reach its core before it would enter his mind's eye. The overlapping mental images, of the present and past, was profoundly confusing yet the dragon refused to show weakness, believing that its more powerful foe held all the advantages.

The dragonling's blood boiled and froze at the same time, a jittery, excited feeling building deep in its chest.

What, at least for a dragon, was a smile, yet to all others, a terrifying sight, appeared on its scaly face.

The sudden change in the lizard's appearance shocked the rabbit out of its daze, and it took a small hop forward, hoping to intimidate the lizard and force it to retreat, however, the dragonling also moved forward, raising its neck up and releasing a bone-chilling hiss.

Against all the rabbit's expectations, that the smaller, weaker creature would cower, flee or at least retreat, the dragonling and lunged forward and it shocked the rabbit greatly. The shock was so great that it didn't just retreat to where it had been, but a further two hops back to try and gain some distance from the overly aggressive creature as it began contemplating not only abandoning the cavern but if needed, the entire cave system.

However, before it could even formulate its feelings into a coherent thought, the unmistakable hint of fear and hesitation was all the dragonling needed. Instincts surged forward as it swept its wings back, too small for flight but enough to help its four legs propel it forward at, at least to the perception of the rabbit and dragon, an outstanding speed.

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The rabbit jumped, more of a knee-jerk reaction than a formulated plan, as the dragonling slammed into it, sending them both tumbling backwards. The dragon's teeth tried to clamp down on the rabbit's neck as its claws slashed and hacked at the rabbit's furry chest. However, its size, coupled with its thick, winter coat meant that any damage done was superficial and only small patches or red stained the once pristine fur.

While the damage was minimal, the sudden ferocious attack had utterly shaken the rabbit, and it panicked and started to roll, jump and slam into nearby objects, attempting to dislodge the dragon grasping its fur and flesh.

The dragonling kept biting and clawing, while the rabbit continued to jump, flip and slide across the cave yet, neither could do significant damage to the other and for a while, they were locked in a stalemate.

The situation finally changed when the rabbit, in a fit of momentary madness, encased its body in strange energy and charged at the wall. It had been useless to use this energy earlier as the dragon was already attached and it would not hinder it, yet it knew that the longer the fight continued, the less likely it was to prevail.

With a deafening boom, the rabbit slammed into the wall, the force so devastating that even with the mystical energy protecting its body, it broke its nose and felt dazed yet the damage to the little dragon was multitudes worse.

Through its sixth sense, the dragonling had realised the rabbit's intent yet; it wasn't fast enough to respond and been crushed between the wall and the rabbit's energy encased body.

The damage was devastating. Its right wing had snapped, a few of the dragonling's ribs had been broken along with its front left leg, and it felt one of its tail's spike snap.

Fury boiled from the depths of the dragonling's soul, replacing the momentary fear that this would be its end, as its blood hammered in its veins, its heart sounding more akin to thunder than a heartbeat.

The fury condensed in its chest as the dragonling, using the rabbits moment of confusion from the collision, crawled up to its face, its claws seemingly glowing in a black glow and easily penetrating the fur and skin causing thick, red blood to flow down the once white coat.

The rabbit regained its wits only to find itself staring into the face of the lizard, however, it wasn't the one it remembered, which caused the rabbit's brain to freeze for a split second as it tried to work out what had happened.

That dragonling's golden eyes had turned a haunting, crimson red and an orange glow emanated from between its teeth as darkness seemed to flow toward its scales.

The split second on confusion had all but sealed the rabbit's fate.

Blazing fire, moving as if it was alive, erupted from the dragonling's mouth encasing the rabbit's head as it released an agonising squeal and began thrashing violently.

Crashing backwards, the rabbit tried to escape, yet it was too late. In mere moments, its entire body had been engulfed by the flame, the dimly lighted cave now fully illuminated as the stench of singed hair and burnt flesh filled it.

Dragon's fire. A trait all dragon's possessed but rarely used due to the cost. An ability feared by even the gods.

By mixing their blood with the mana that had been refined in their cores, dragon's could create a devastating, semi-intelligent flame. One that, after leaving the dragon's body, would be fueled by the surrounding mana making it nearly impossible to put out until its objective had been met or the casting dragon was no longer nearby.

The rabbits thrashing finally dislodged the dragonling, and after slamming into a wall, sent the reptile tumbling to the ground before continuing blindly out of the cavern and around a bend in the tunnel, hitting most of the walls as it went and left a thin trail of flame in its wake.

As the orange light and screams faded into the distance, the dragonling shakily rose from the ground.

Its already damaged right wing had been torn off; it was missing a few scales and, due to using dragon's fire, it was fragile, almost appearing to be nothing more than bones covered by scales. Even in what could be said to be a pitiful state, if anyone could see the small reptile, they would be filled with dread.

Reptilian, golden eyes, having returned to their natural colour, emanated cold killing intent as a black mist, accompanied by the occasional flicker of lightning, swirled around the dragon as it glared down the tunnel that the rabbit had disappeared into.

It somehow knew that its fire wouldn't be enough to kill the creature and, in a warped way, that made it happy. It wanted to end the creature's existence personally.

Taking a deep breath, steadying, revealing that a few of its teeth had snapped off in the confrontation, the dragonling stopped staring into the darkness and started to analyse the cavern it was in, knowing it was severely injured.

"First" spat the dragonling in a hiss-like language that had not been heard for hundreds of thousands of years. "I need to recover."