The mimic charged. It was like watching a semi-truck barrel down at you. Lightning fear jolted down my spine. My brain screamed to run, but my body, as usual, failed me. My legs – both the good and the bum leg – locked up. Jane had better instincts. Grabbing my arm, she tugged me to the side. Unfortunately, my turned-in foot took a short step. I stumbled and almost fell. All this happened in a second, and the mimic was almost on us. Still in my arms, Tiberius made a ferocious growl I had never heard from him before. It was pure aggression, like the sound of a Tasmanian devil — the real ones you see on the nature shows. Not Looney Tunes version. If I had any room in my mind for anything other than pure white fear, I would have been shocked. Then, Tiberius leaped from my arms to land between me and the mimic. He stood tall, braced forward, all teeth bared and the little wisps of maned fur around his neck up on end. And the mimic… it stopped. Then it opened its cruel snapping-turtle-like jaws and roared. Ding! Alert! Your dragon “Tiberius” has entered into a wild duel. "No, Tiber!" I tried to step forward. Jane, who still had a grip on my arm, held me back. The mimic dragon regarded Tiberius with derision in its eyes. Considering it was as big as a tank and he the size of a house cat… I couldn’t blame it. Immediately, the mimic’s head snapped forward on elongated neck. Tiberius leaped out of the way, a moment before the beak closed over the place where he had stood. Tiberius leaped again to land on the warty, outstretched neck. He bit down on one of the warty protrusions and fire flashed between his jaws. The mimic roared. Meanwhile, the men who had been in the tent had followed us outside and circled the two dragons warily but were doing nothing to stop the fight. "Help him!" I screamed. Tiberius was doing great, but he was just annoying the mimic. One snap, and that terrible beak could break him in half. I tried to shake Jane off my arm. She firmly held on, Wide-eyed and stricken. Her little house-dragon, Commodore, circled our heads in frantic loops. "You can't interfere in a duel, Harmony! Even a wild one!" "Circle around," Trapper Lennox called to the men. "We’ll get the mimic once he's done with the little one." I opened my mouth to yell at him, outraged. Suddenly, an ominous deep gurgle came from the mimic. He had stopped trying to turn and bite Tiberius off his back. Instead, it braced stumpy legs to the soil and concentrated. Jets of water burst out of every wart, spraying in a hundred directions. Tiberius was caught full-on and sent tumbling through the air before he hit the ground, hard, a good twenty feet away. Had that been a special attack? I would have run to him if Jane wasn't holding me down like an anchor. If it had been a special attack, it had been a costly one. The mimic's great bulk rapidly shrank as the water blasted out of the warts. Within moments, it was a large, skeletal-like creature with massive folds of skin hanging off each side. Then, another soap-bubble “pop” and abruptly, the skeleton-like form, replaced with a blue and white beast about the size of a cart-horse. Icicles hung off its jaw, chiming like bells as they hit each other, and a wave of bitter cold rolled over the area, turning into fog further out past the tent. "A Winter dragon," Jane said, awed. “Oh no… That has to be at least a tier four…” The mimic, now adapted for cold temperatures, turned its head to Tiberius who was just climbing back onto his feet. My little fennec shook his head as if coming back from being stunned. The mimic opened up blue-white jaws and roared out a cloud of snowflakes that melted in the pleasantly warm air. More than enough survived to engulf Tiberius. That wasn't fair! How could the mimic use so many special attacks at once? Wasn’t there some sort of limit? Could he use a special attack every time he changed forms? Frustrated tears gathered at the corners of my eyes. “Tiber! Look out!” Fennec dragons, as Tiberius’s description had said, were able to withstand cold desert nights. Tiberius lowered his head, braced himself against the snow-flake breath. After the cloud rolled over him, he shook himself and ice sloughed off his sandy scales without any visible damage. His lips peeled back from his teeth and something within him changed. The colors in his eyes shifted, going from the typical opal green blue, green, purple configuration, to the other side of the opal. The orange, peach, red of fire. Ding! Fennec "Tiberius" has discovered a special attack: Fire Tornado! The message flashed before my eyes the second that Tiberius rushed forward, straight at the mimic. The mimic snapped down icy-jaws, which again, Tiberius avoided by a hair. I had been wrong when I had thought his dex might be low. It had to be fantastic. In a blink, Tiberius began to circle the white and blue dragon. As he did, the green grass lit into flame under his paws, leaving a streak of fire behind. My jaw dropped. The mimic wasn't a slouch and struck at him again and again, but Tiberius moved nimbly to avoid each downward claw, bite, and sweep of the dragon's tail. His effortless dodging reminded me of the last battle I'd had against the Iron and Earth Golem with the Dearie. Tiberius made one full circuit around the mimic, and the fire began to grow. The flames licked straight up, then twisted and turned as Tiberius made a second pass through his own line of fire again, unhurt, and growing them further. The flames twisted around the mimic, caging him in a whirling tornado that reached higher and higher to the sky. I was so engrossed in watching that I didn’t register the man standing next to me. It was Lennox the trapper. "You’re the Fennec’s tamer, right?" He didn’t wait for me to answer. "Quick, make the bond!” “What?" I asked blankly. "Your Fennec has it contained, girl. Now is your chance." He shoved a milky quartz crystal into my hand. "If he's your Fennec, his fire won't hurt you. Do it now!" Then he all but shoved me a step forward. I almost tripped over my own feet, then looked down at the crystal in my hand. He wanted me to tame the mimic using this crystal. I could have that powerful dragon all to myself? I was tempted. Three of the four forms I'd seen were incredibly powerful with special attacks… all their own. But then again, quartz crystals were the most basic, weren’t they? They had no special attacks. Lennox wasn't telling me to bond the dragon to keep him to myself. He wanted me to do as he had done — sell the mimic to the highest bidder. Someone, like Terry the duelist, who would bond the mimic with a ruby crystal. I remembered how certain I’d been that the mimic deserved to be bonded with something more special than a mere basic ruby. And that had been before it had shown its forms. The mimic screamed, flames melting it where it stood. I don't know why it didn't change shapes again. Maybe there was a limit, or it was too panicked by the tornado fire rising around it. Either way, the fight was done. I threw down the quartz crystal to my feet and said, "Let him go, Tiberius. You won.” Tiberius broke off his circling immediately, and backed away, head down and growling at the other dragon. The flames lowered and died. The mimic took one look at Tiberius and wailed as if he faced something truly frightening. A final soap bubble pop and the mimic, now a house-dragon again, shrieked and fluttered up into the air. Battle Update: Fennec “Tiberius” vs Mimic Mimic concedes. Tiberius wins! The mimic turned to the forest and kept flying to the groans of the men watching around us. "That was stupid," Terry the duelist spat from where he stood, safely out of the mimic’s range. "You should have let one of us bond it. I would have paid you a finder’s fee!” "You? Bond that dragon?” I told him, incredulous. “You couldn’t do it when it had been served up on a silver plate.” He bristled and yelled some slur at me, but I already turned my back to hobble over to Tiberius. The opalescent fire in his eyes had dimmed. He was panting but looked unhurt. Not even singed from all the fire. It had the added benefit of drying him off from the water blast, too. He looked up at me and jumped into my arms, and I gripped him close despite the heat radiating off his little body. "You were amazing!" Tiberius cheaped and nuzzled the top of his head against my cheeks. Ding! Fennec "Tiberius” has reached level two. Ding! Quest complete! Stranger in a Strange Land (Part 2) Reward: 1 Gold Crystal Air shimmered in front of us and I snatched a heavy golden crystal out of the air the moment it arrived. Thankfully, people had given me a moment’s privacy as I cuddled Tiberius. No one saw a thing. I palmed the crystal and slid it in my pocket with decidedly mixed feelings. Tiberius had done all the work during the duel. I hadn't done anything but stand there and whimper like a female protagonist in a shounen anime. And now I had been rewarded with gold crystal… right after I had just sent a valuable dragon away. Did I want that mimic? Yes, but not under those circumstances. Not when it had been dragged out of his home by someone else and tied up for me to bond. I barely knew what I was doing, or what the rules of this world were, but it still felt unsportsmanlike. My thoughts were interrupted as Jane walked over to join us. "Harmony, that was… How did you train him to do that?" "I didn't," I laughed, scrubbing Tiberius between his giant ears. He peeped again and closed his eyes, and I swear I felt radiant contentment flow from him. He knew he had done a good job. Jane wasn't the only one who had followed me over to the star of the show. Lennox did, too. He wore a scuffed leather jacket and an Indiana Jones hat. Up close, he looked like a mix of Harrison Ford and Chris Pratt. "I've never seen a fennec in action before," he admitted. Then he held out his hand. “Todd Lennox." Wait. That Todd? The guy who had been spreading dirty rumors about Jane? Sure enough, Jane looked uncomfortable. What were the chances I’d meet up with the same guy in this small town? Then again this was a small town. The chances were probably good. But seriously, yuck, he was a grown man and Jane was a teenager. I shook his hand out of habit but then quickly dropped it again, resisting the urge to wipe my hand on the side of my jeans. Todd didn’t seem to notice. He was looking at Tiberius with the air of a used car salesman. "Jane, why don’t you introduce me to your friend? Where did you say you got this little guy?" "I didn't," I said, then turned to Jane. "Let's go. I've seen enough." Luckily, our salvation arrived in the form of the SharpWing’s trainer, Terry, who stomped up to Lennox, looking pissed. "You told me that was a Phoenix, not a mimic! It could've killed us all!" "The stat screen said it was a Phoenix because it was currently mimicking a Phoenix," Todd Lennox said unworriedly. "It's a hazard of the occupation. High-level mimics absorb and reflect high-level dragons. But no worries, let's talk about your deposit." He shot me a glance I couldn't quite read, but then gestured for Terry to follow him back to the tent. Meanwhile, the workmen had dispersed and were cleaning up the detritus left over from the dragon’s escape — chains and a couple of bent poles. I turned to Jane. "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse," I muttered and realized even as I said that my hunger wasn't on my own. “People eat horse-fly dragons where you come from?” “Never mind,” I said quickly. Jane grinned. "Well, I’m hungry too. Sienna said that she'll buy, but I'll chip in to help feed your dragon, as well.” She looked at Tiberius admiringly. "He deserves it." “Great," I said, "then you and I need to talk, away from creepy-Todd over there." She cocked her head. "What about? “What else,?" I said. “Dragon dueling.” Because as terrified as I had been when the mimic had been barreling down at us, I had been equally as thrilled and excited when Tiberius had turned the tables. Just hatched and without any training, he had beaten a tier four dragon… whatever that meant. One thing was for sure. This sort of thing was what I had been brought to this planet to do. And I wanted to learn all about it.