Sienna waited for us back by the food booths, with several plates of tacos. That was, if taco shells were made of chewy pita bread, and the meat was some sort of dragon. Everything was made of dragon types around here. A whole ecology of dragons.

She must have heard the commotion back at the black tent because she handed over the plates with a sardonic, "Bonding gone wrong?"

"You have no idea," I said, juggling the plate in one hand and a sleeping Tiberius in my other arm. Tiberius had fallen asleep the moment we stepped away from the tent, clearly exhausted.

Jane gave him an amused look. "He's going to be hungry when he wakes up – I'll just pop on over and get a plate for him. As a thank you," she added to my quick look. "For the show." Then, with a saucy smile, she walked over to the booths again.

"What was that about?" Sienna asked.

I sighed and filled her in on the details as we found an empty picnic bench to sit at. She listened, looking mildly surprised, but not in the way that would suggest that a rampaging dragon was completely outrageous.

This world was more dangerous than I thought.

Finally, Sienna nodded and gave the sleeping Tiberius a hard look. "You were either really lucky, or the Mimic was injured or exhausted. We learned about them in school — they get a new form for every tier."

"Jane said something about it being a tier four?" I asked, hoping that she would fill me in on what that meant.

Sienna just nodded. Then she pointed at me with a fork. Yes, she used a fork to eat all the ingredients out of her pita taco. I used my hands like a normal person. "Just because you won this duel, don't get it in your head that your Fennec can stand up against a real Winter dragon. Those are nasty. Mimics… Well, only mimic a portion of their power."

I nodded. Tiberius had cracked his eyes open, so I fed him little crumbles of meat that had fallen out of the taco. He turned up his nose at the bread and veggies. I just had so many questions, and I wasn't sure where to start. How did you begin to assimilate to a new world?

Start with the basics.

"So, you learn about dragons in school?"

"Sure," Sienna said, looking surprised that I asked. "Dragons are a big part of life. Why? What are your schools like?"

I shrugged. "Normal? I don't know. We have math, biology, those sorts of things. English classes."

Sienna stared for a moment, then shook her head and fed her Bobber, Ferdinand, some lettuce off her plate.

The waterfowl-like dragon gulped it down and let out a pleased little noise that sounded like a quack.

Jane returned that moment with two full plates of reddish cubed meat. In fact, they were the same size of cubes that I had bought off the skewer a few hours ago. Had I accidentally eaten this world’s equivalent of canned dog food? Huh. That would explain why there hadn’t been a lot of seasoning.

Either way, Tiberius perked up at the sight of the plates, and I spent the next few minutes feeding him cubes by hand. He refused to eat directly from the plate. Well, he had done good today. He deserved a little pampering.

As I fed him, another question out of the millions I had, swam up into my mind. "Todd said that the Mimic showed as a Phoenix dragon in his system when he bonded it. Do you think that's true, or was he full of shit?"

"Probably true," Jane said.

"True, but it’s really him being lazy," Sienna corrected. I liked the way that she cut through any politeness or feelings for the other person. "There are ways you can tell if it's a Mimic or not — the easiest is if you don't use quartz to bond, but he wouldn't want to waste a good crystal on a dragon he meant to sell. So, he took the chance and got burned."

"What other ways are there? Like, a scanning device or something?"

"If he had another dragon, it would be able to tell its tamer that something wasn't right," Jane said, "but Todd sells his dragons almost as soon as he catches them."

That meant she had lost her duel to an asshole who had used a temporary dragon to fight. That had to sting.

Suddenly, Sienna asked, "What crystal did you use on Tiberius? I thought it was a weird sapphire at first, but there are other colors in his eyes, too."

"Opal."

Both girls stared.

"It was a quest reward," I said, "for defeating an enemy very heroically."

I was not going to mention all the screaming and pepper spray and swatting at the egg-sucking dragon with a leafy branch. This was a new world, and I was going to reinvent myself.

But Jane didn't seem to care about that. She looked excited. "Did you get a dragon characteristic?"

I nodded, then my brain caught up and I said, "Didn't you get one when you bonded Commodore?" I glanced at Sienna. "Or Ferdinand?"

Both shook their heads. "Just an attribute," Jane explained. "I chose speed from Commodore. It’s the common choice from his breed."

"Basic crystals don't allow dragon characteristics — unless you get very lucky," Sienna said. "The struck by lightning kind of lucky."

She slid her gaze to Jane who shrugged. "My dad got a characteristic from his bond. Sapphire crystal," she said. "He can see heat which is useful in the hunt and his current job."

"He's the mayor," Sienna explained, blunt as usual. "And he can see when people are lying to him. Something to do with the heat in their head."

"Oh."

There was a beat. Both the girls clearly wanted to know what characteristic and attribute I had chosen from Tiberius, but I wasn't going to spill that easily.

Jane being the daughter of a politician made sense. She was crafty but also a mediator. She proved this out a moment later when she didn't allow the awkward silence to stretch on too long. "And if I'm not mistaken, Tiberius learned a special attack during his duel. Congratulations," she said with a smile.

I nodded, happy to move onto a new topic. I stroked Tiberius between his giant ears. "Yeah, he gained a level, too."

"Not a surprise," Sienna said. “They often do during important duels.”

"Break this down for me," I said. "What are the differences between levels and tiers?"

Sienna snorted. "Basically everything."

Jane casts an annoyed glance at her friend, but clarified, "There are usually ten levels per tier, but it's possible for your dragon to skip one or two levels at a time – especially with the lower tiers. What level and tier is Tiberius?"

Not for the first time, I realized these two hadn’t wrapped their head around the fact that I literally just got to this world. I was brand new, here. "Tier zero, level one,"

Once again, they stared at me. "And he already learned a special attack?" Sienna asked.

"That's… unusual?"

Jane seemed to shake herself. "Yes, and no." She laced her fingers together on the table in front of her, looking like a prim schoolmarm. "Each breed is different, and the type of bonding crystal you use comes in play as well."

"Crystals outside the basic range get a little weird," Sienna told me.

Jane gestured to her own little dragon who was lying flat on his belly, wings spread as he sunned himself on the other end of the table. "Let's start with Commodore as an example. He's about as average as you can get.” There was a bare hint of regret in her voice. In the next moment, it was gone. "House-dragons like him are known as a Tier 3 breed, so the top you see is from them is third tier."

"With some exceptions." Sienna seemed to be having fun throwing wrenches into her friend's explanation.

"Very few exceptions," Jane said, "and vanishingly rare with basic crystals."

"Tell that to your father," Sienna said in a singsong voice.

Jane scowled.

"What level and tier is Commodore?" I asked before the two could start bickering in earnest.

"Tier one, level five. Generally, most breeds learn one special attack per tier."

"Okay, what's Commodore's special attack?"

"That's… sort of a rude question to ask," Sienna said, after an awkward pause.

"Oh, sorry.”

"It's okay," Jane said. "A lady has to have her secrets."

I thought over what they said for a few moments. “So, then what determines them leveling up?"

Jane nodded, pleased with my question. "Lots of things. Experience, mostly — by which I mean dueling experience. That includes hunting, too. And sometimes you can level up a dragon while training him. The changes between levels are slight. They get a little smarter, a little… I don't know, mature at every level. It's not something that you can put your finger on, but if I were to put Commodore side-by-side with a tier one, level one House-Dragon, you would see it."

My finely-honed genre-savvy senses said that something you could not see or quantify, but feel, suggested an aura upgrade.

Jane suddenly looked at her wristwatch – yes, an actual wristwatch. Nothing in this old Western looking town suggested high-technology.

"The circuit duels are supposed to restart in an hour… If you really want to see what Commodore is made of, we have time to do it properly."

"How?" I asked.

Jane beamed at me. “Commodore and I challenge you to a duel!"