"Of course I'm good enough for a name! I earned it too! ...Dumb!" he added, as an insult, for good measure. "Dumb" was not a noun, but Nidhogg decided that today it would be.

He was, despite his element, a being of pure chaos, after all.

And he didn't seem all that offended; if anything, Opal-One's jab appeared to make him puff up in pride. "I earned it by doing war! Against a big snake, bigger than me. Bigger than anything! I bit it!"

Storytime over--no elaboration required--he turned and looked around. Like a shot he was off into the voidlit shadows, sniffing for prey. "There's never anything big here. But there's bats! AND I can climb! We can kill them and EAT them!" he decided, snuffling across the rock loudly.

Of course, they could always go hunt in Pegasus--usually everyone was allowed to do that, at least, for food. He didn't think of it as kidnapping; he thought of it as... creative babysitting.

"Okay--this way," he hissed, voice quieter now, lurching into a low and quiet scramble. "They'll be up high, probably!"

Nidhogg hadn't ever heard that word, so all 'bootlicker' earned was a blank glance back. "Why would I lick boots?" he asked, in a low hiss.

Apparently, he had heard of boots, before. Somehow.

"Yes! Bats! -Don't be so loud," he added, also quietly. "I can't scare them toward you they'd FLY AWAY." Then he was off like a shot toward the bats, scrambling along the wall. A moment later there was a loud shriek--and a Dragonbat, wing torn and broken, was lobbed haphazardly in Opal-One's direction.

From the hissing, snarling and shrieking that ensued, Nidhogg was too busy fighting off the rest of them to bother supervising the child's kill.

All was a tangle of black hide and flapping wings, and in that chaos Nidhogg attempted to make good his escape. He could have fought them, maybe even killed them all, but even he didn't think that was smart. They were food. And it wasn't what he was here for. Just the one--that would be enough, he thought, to feed them both. At least for now.

He led them on a brief and winding chase around some boulders, and bounded off in one direction as the screeching bats chased the wrong way. He was back at V-Opal-One's side in a flash, jaws gaping and eyes gleaming. "IS IT DEAD? DID YOU KILL IT?" he demanded.

Nidhogg then saw that it was not, in fact, yet dead. "You have to KILL IT," he protested helpfully.

Nidhogg shot back to Opal-One's side, snapping for the dragonbat. Unfamiliar magic bubbled up--like vomitting--and he coughed out a brief splash of what looked like... fire? It burped and then was gone, a harmless spiral of smoke.

"No, no-" he instructed, twisting this way and that to try and see. "YOU GOTTA--there!--the face-bit--bite it! BITE BITE BITE! Bite it! BITE THE FACE!"

He was backseat-driving. Or coaching. Whatever you wanted to call it. Whatever it was, it was not directly useful--but he seemed to be on Opal's side, at least.

As in--not trying to take advantage of the situation and just eat them, instead.

For once, he wasn't predatory. He didn't look at Opal and consider that now was a great time to bite their face. Or--faces, rather. Instead he shared in some sense of victory, puffing up his quills and crowing: "YOU BIT THE FACE!" in overly cheerful confirmation.

Then, with casual and utterly dishonest bragging, he nodded over his shoulder. "I chased all the rest of 'em away. You can eat this, now! Have you ever eaten before? You can eat the face!" he added, grinning at Opal-One expectantly.

He then skittered to the dragonbat, prodding it once or twice quite roughly to ensure that it was dead. At the sight of leaking brain he nodded his approval. "You did bite the face." It sounded more like praise than confirmation: it had been one hell of a crushing bite.