Aww... It’s a cute baby dragon. It has brightly colored fins on its back.

And look! It has grown larger fins! It must be close to maturing.

Young dragons are relatively defenseless. They are born with relatively soft scales, which are shed and replaced with harder ones as the hatchling matures. Once a hatchling’s wings grow in, it typically marks the beginning of maturation. At this point they are often capable of hunting on their own and are usually left alone by their mother.

This dragon is highly territorial, violent, and powerful to the point where he can bully the adults of small dragon species such as mints and pygmies into giving him their treasure. And yet he's only a hatchling! Many, many souls were worried about what would happen when he reached full size, and perhaps the most worried was the vain and sadistic dorsal known as Death's Blessing. While he was confident he could crush the pipsqueak even when he was bigger, he hates taking needless risks with his opponents or having anyone steal attention from him--and so he convinced (with convinced here meaning forced) an old magi dragon to cast a spell on Firefins, so that the monstrous runt would never grow up.