Aww... It’s a cute baby dragon. It is very dark in color, but its eyes glow brightly.

And look! It has grown wings! 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.

The discovery (and subsequent hatching) of this young dragon's egg caused no small amount of confusion. His appearance was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before, leading to the conclusion that he must be an entirely new species--which, of course, led to even more excitement and hysteria than had existed before!

Oddly enough, about the only one who wasn't ecstatic was the dragon himself, who had long ago figured out what breed he belonged to. Dark in color, bright eyed, and totally awesome all suggested he was one thing and one thing only...

A black dragon!

His firm belief in this conclusion went through a short lived period of doubt when someone pointed out black dragons don't have blue spines or wings, but this was swiftly dismissed with the new belief that he was not only a black dragon, he was an exceptionally rare and awesome looking one!