Waiting was perhaps one of Damascus' strong suits and after his challenge was ushered, his hallali sent to the fray, there was naught left to do but exercise his great talent for patience; one that to any warrior's disbelief involved flower picking and humming. A tune fell from behind the stag's lips as his hooves took him romping over the grasses, nose pressed curiously into the shrubs with the plot to pick the brightest daisies.
Dohv, on the other hand, was taking a far more militant approach. Standing upon the coal colts whither, a scowl firmly etched upon his face, the creature of no more than an inch or so tall was preparing his own self in the prospect of battle. The jerboa's beady eyes scoured the horizon, acting as eyes for them both given Damascus' pair of sight givers hung well below the hight of the grass. Damascus had by now found a rabbit's burrow and his nose was half way inside, the prospect of it ever coming out in one piece lowering with every second more he spent in there, wondering why he couldn't breathe.
"Ahh, Dohv" the creature came to whisper telepathically to his bonded. "Breathe I not."

If aligators could yawn, surely jerboas could groan - perhaps that was the disgruntled, somewhat beastly noise that escaped the colt's bonded as he clambered from his post at the boy's whither and sprung into place beside his eye  - which was now the only piece of Damascus' face above ground. Without much question of how to get him out (Jerboas were experts on all matters involving warrens and burrows) Dohv waited a few moments with a scowl on his face, purely to scold the boy for his idiocy before he got to work on furiously digging at the edges of the nose-trap.

Just when Damascus' eyes began to droop, the effect of having no oxygen for half a minute taking it's effect, the thunder spoke.
"You wanna fight, huh?"  

The burrow-diver and his digger froze solid, the realisation setting in after a short few moments that, as requested, a rival had actually appeared. "MMMMM!" the trapped one came to hoot into the trumpet of rabbit warrens, flushing one or two rabbits from their happy homes (Happy until today that is). Stomping urgently upon the earth, buckling his hind legs, Damascus attempted pull his snout from the grips of the hollow with all his might as the approaching music of galloping hoofbeats filled the atmosphere with a dark urgency. 'Stops!' he wished to bellow as his force waned and strength depleted (no oxygen tended to do that), though it was through Dohv's digging and one final pull that the colt managed to pluck his nose from the depths of the burrow all in time to face perhaps an even greater rival.

Gasping, Damascus' shoulders shifted under the threat of the beast storming toward him.Purely out of instinct, Damascus crouched low as he continued his gasping for breath, praying as he slunk under the wake of the monster that dizziness and the grips of syncope would pass over him. The colt soon began to fumble, tearing his feet across the earth as he pondered what in Tempus's name he ought to do. He wished to learn to fight, not to actually fight! Damascus had next to no notion of how he was to survive an attack, nor present an effective one to his opponent. Should he flee?
Dohv had by now taken refuge in the hole that had until moments ago swallowed his friend's nose, watching with concern through the small window the gap in the earth provided. The battlefield was certainly no place for a mouse, though it certainly was not fitting for Damascus either.

She approached. A woman of wings and goose-coloured fur, her horns lowered like daggers in his direction. There was no way in Novus that Damascus would rise to attack that, so as he cowered in the shrubbery with the rogue approaching he set the smallest of plans into motion. His block was, for the most part, ninety-nine percent instinct and one percent tactics.
A swoop to the shieldmaiden's left was how he was to begin, hind legs cocked and striking without much aim toward those piercing horns, instinctually seeking to fumble out of her way with wings forgotten and flared - and, Though his stamina already waned greatly from his previous encounter with the warren, the oxygen filling his lungs was slowly pulling him out of dizziness. Were she to fall for his plot and aim her horns at his former location, Damascus was soon to flick his rear hooves over the forehand of his left front, aiming his chest high with gangly strength as he aimed his shoulder toward her back-left stifle, all with the plot to send it out from under her.