Nidhogg was an incredibly dangerous thing to leave around small children, in general. Thankfully, V-Opal-One was not that small--not by Nidhogg's standards, anyway. But still, he'd probably have tried to snatch it up and make his way off and eat it if not for one serious issue: it had too many faces.

He was, at this very moment, clinging high up on Draco's cave wall, fitting himself perfectly into a crevice that mostly hid his toxic glow. He'd been drawn by the sound of rushing feet and loud... noises, the sort he couldn't immediately identify. But as he watched, he couldn't figure out where the hell V-Opal-One was looking. He was an ambush predator, and the scream of prey would draw attention and then Vargas would beat him up and that would suck, and if he couldn't tell where Opal was looking he couldn't tell when to safely attack. Like the eyes on a butterfly's wings, the double face held Nidhogg firmly at bay.

At length, his perplexity grew so great that he gave up on any idea of ambush, instead scurrying down the wall and rushing toward V-Opal-One to question it with loud abruptness: "WHICH ONE'S YOUR REAL FACE?!"

It was an exasperated demand, as much as rapt curiosity. He didn't know who this one belonged to (if anyone), what they were doing here, or even truly if they were part of the Forge but.

...Which one was the real face??

"It can't be BOTH and NEITHER. It can't be both of those. It has to be one! Or the other!" he protested, and then--jaws gaping threateningly--hissed. It wasn't clear why he was hissing, or even what, exactly, he was hissing at. Maybe he was just confused and frustrated. "I only HAVE ONE MOUTH. Yes, I can see out of all my eyes." He was about to insult this stranger, maybe call it names, hiss again or something, but--family?

He paused, studying it briefly. He himself had rarely used the word--Dragon had, though, and that brought back to the forefront of Nidhogg's mind all the little lessons the fat alligator had so studiously tried to teach him. Some had stuck--some had not. But they were inclined to make him less aggressive, at the very least.

"Maybe," he answered slowly, all his eyes narrowing. "Who's asking..?" And while it was said in a low, sinister hiss, Nidhogg immediately broke any illusion of threatening menace by carrying on in a much louder voice. "I am Nidhogg!"

Truth be told, he didn't really know how he and Labradorite were related. He did have a vague grasp that it must be, that a bunch of the Forge were interrelated, somehow, but Nidhogg's mindset consisted almost entirely of the here-and-now and right here and now was this funny thing with its funny faces.

He craned his head upward, arching his neck to peer down at the upper face--then crouched, scrutinizing the lower one. "...Can that one bite?" he asked, at length, reluctantly admiring it. It was, all else aside, creepy.

"BUT BOTH AND NEITHER ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS," Nidhogg pointed out--quite reasonably, he thought, though he'd entirely wrecked the concept in his attempt to put it into words. Then he was craning his neck up and his head tipped down, in order to better see the black opal at Opal-One's hip. It looked very pretty, actually. "It has colors," Nidhogg said, in the tone of one begrudgingly admitting that yes, it was pretty and cool.

Nobody'd ever called Nidhogg's name nice, before, and he puffed up, so abruptly that it almost looked like a threat display: jerking into a high-standing position, neck arched like a stallion's, quills rattling out from his skin. "I named me! -I found the name!" he answered, proudly. "It's mine!" -and it wasn't a possessive statement, not really. Just very pleased with himself, indeed.

And he'd earned it, too. "I was V-Chaos-One but that's stupid! It was stupid!"

The sudden snap took him by surprise; he didn't realize, at first, that it was a mischievous answer to his question. Instead he jerked back, suddenly not preening, and hissed threateningly. -Then realized. "...DON'T TRY TO BITE ME. If you BITE at me I will BITE BACK!"

Threatening a child? Yeah, that was about on-brand.

He listened to this stream of babbling, deemed it nonsense, and snorted. "That's stupid. That's all stupid. You're stupid," he declared. Again: insulting a child; on-brand. He tipped his head back--but not a lot, eyes keeping close watch on Opal-One in deep suspicion. If there were any sign it might go for his now-very-slightly-exposed-throat, he'd bite it! ...But he was showing off the Oilstone, for now, at his chin. "Here. It's on my FACE."

He lowered his head a moment later, shaking himself so his quills rattled--not a deliberate thing, but more like a dog shaking off dirt. "What-? I GAVE MYSELF A NEW NAME. I didn't like mine so I MADE A NEW ONE. It was stupid! -The old one! I always had the new one," he added, immediately contradicting himself. Truth be told he'd had the name 'Nidhogg' in mind from hatching, but explaining literally anything in a coherent fashion was a little beyond him. (The irony.) "I was named for it. CHAOS is CHAOS. This is CHAOS," he added, clawing briefly at his chin-stone to indicate it.

He listened very studiously to Opal-One's questionably grammatical threat-retort, and thought about it deeply for a moment. Time for a truce, then-? "OKAY. HERE'S WHAT WE DO. WE SAY--WE AGREE! NOT TO BITE EACH OTHER. Okay!?" he demanded.

That made sense to him. Then neither of them had to worry about that shit.

"You're stupid," Nidhogg answered, but after the complementing of his stone it'd lost some of its venom. "I didn't lose my name! I just found a new one. You don't have a new one yet. You have to earn it or Master Vargas punishes you," except the name and title were spoken with thick, disdainful mockery. "MaStEr vArGaS" might have been a more accurate transliteration.

"And YES I'd catch you. That's what I DO. I CATCH and I KILL things. -After I BITE them," he clarified. "Anyway, your faces are dumb." Devastating retort delivered, he found himself growing bored. Oh-!

IDEA!

"What if we bite something TOGETHER?!" he demanded. Well--it was a suggestion, but it sounded like a demand. "We can find something and chase it and kill it and eat it!"

That sounded like a solid plan. And then he could PROVE he was faster. And better at biting. And had a better face!