I’d never been hunting with a tiger. I couldn’t imagine many people had, but who knew what this crazy new world would bring. Maybe this would become a regular occurrence, where humans and non-rabid animals could work together.

The tiger, for her part, seemed increasingly agitated as we continued, but found no prey. Finally, she turned her attention to me. I was immediately on guard, and I’d had my sword out the entire time we were traveling together. For a moment, I was concerned that she would turn her hungry attention on me. She didn’t attack though. Instead, her eyes flicked down to my feet. I looked down – only briefly – but couldn’t see anything wrong. I just had my standard military boots.

She let out a huff of exasperation and took a step toward me.

I took a step back.

Again, she looked down at my feet.

“Is it my boots?” I asked. “You don’t like my boots?” I touched one of my booted feet with my free hand.

Her ear twitched in response.

“It’s too loud?” I asked, this time touching my ear.

Another ear twitch.

“Okay.” I took several more steps back, knelt, and began taking my boots off. It looked like I was going to be getting new kinds of callouses on my feet. I stowed my boots in my backpack.

The tiger chuffed then turned and continued on her way. I, of course, followed.

I quickly realized that it wasn’t just my boots that were too loud. My breathing itself was too loud as well. Compared to the majestic creature in front of me, I was basically shouting my presence. The only thing I would be attracting was other predators.

It didn’t take long for one of those predators to appear.

The centipede was identical to the one the previous night. Eight legs on a spider were bad enough. But the far more numerous legs on this thing gave me the willies.

The tiger, for her part, paid no attention to the centipede. Instead, she took several steps back, so that she was behind me.

“Oh, so I have to deal with it?” I asked, incredulously.

She snorted in response.

“Fine.” I stepped forward to meet the skittering creature.

Given its size, and the fact that it was daylight now, I could see it coming from farther away than my previous encounter. Its head was up, antennae waving madly, and its mandibles clacked as if already trying to stuff food into its salivating mouth.

I did the same thing as the day before, sidestepping the monster as it charged toward me, and bringing my sword around to decapitate it. This time I was prepared for the geyser of blood that sprayed. I also anticipated the body continuing on its direct line, and I brought the sword down on the body two more times before it passed me. The tiger likewise avoided the luminescent blood pooling out on the ground.

I could see the core shining in a still-wriggling part of the body of the thing, and I began cutting until I could pull the core free. I wiped the bright green blood off my hands and onto my pant leg.

I looked over to the tiger.

“Is that what you wanted to see?”

She just snorted, as if unimpressed by what I’d just done. I mean, I thought I’d handled it quite well. There wasn’t even blood on my bare feet.

We moved on, the tiger clearly not interested in eating anything that was part of the centipede.

The hunt continued like that, with me trying to be as quiet behind the tiger as possible. Any time we came across a new predator, I would be the one to challenge it. If it was something we’d encountered before, she took it down.

When we ran into our second centipede, I made my way forward to kill it, but she swished her tail and blocked me with a shoulder. It was a new world, and I certainly had more strength than I knew what to do with, but I was stupid enough to challenge a tiger to a pushing contest. I took a step back and let her do her thing.

The centipede came in, just as it had against me, with its head up, ready to lunge and strike. The tiger leaped so her front legs were in the air, and she stood on her hind legs. Her massive paws waved in the air in front of her, but she didn’t swipe at the creature to tear it to pieces. Instead, she hooked one paw on the back of its head and brought the whole front of the body down. She didn’t bite into the creature but held it down with one hand while she tore at the core in the thing’s body. Once the core was free, the centipede stopped moving.

Then, she lowered her head to the core on the ground and sniffed it. I could hear the pull of air into her lungs from where I stood about ten feet away. As she breathed in, the light from the core left the body of the centipede and flowed into the tiger, in through her mouth, then down to the core in her chest. When the energy was gone from the core, the orb dissolved into a fine powder on the ground.

“Huh.” Yup. Eloquent in moments of confusion. That’s me.

We continued this way, the tiger and me. I showed her how I killed. She showed me how she killed.

Eventually, we found something the tiger would eat. We stumbled on a group of small hogs. Peculiar little things, they each had a ring of gray hair around their thick necks. There were a little over twenty in the group, and there were both adult and child pigs in the small group.

Immediately sensing our presence, the group began to move away. My companion, however, was not inclined to let the feast go so easily. She bounded forward, her loping grace allowing her to match pace with the group easily, even as they wound their way down the streets. As one, the pigs each turned as one, the largest of them facing off directly against the tiger. As they circled, they kept their heads down, brandishing long, tusks.

The tiger batted at the largest pig, claws raking toward it. Immediately, the pigs on either side of the potential victim surged forward, tusks swiping. The tiger slipped away from the attack, but she stepped to the side, aiming for a weaker member of the herd. As one, the herd moved back from the tiger, rotating so once again the largest member – do pigs have alphas in a herd? – faced off against the tiger.

I took the lull in combat to be my turn to step up. I wasn’t as fast as the tiger, but my reach was greater. Immediately, when I approached the side of the pack, there was a great deal of squealing. The pack pulled back from me, splitting into two groups. Suddenly, I was faced with my own large pig, blocking any way to wade into the group. Apparently, the tiger was still considered a greater threat, since my pig was noticeably smaller than the ones facing the large cat.

Well, that was fine by me.

My sword flicked out. Just like with the other group, the two pigs on either side moved forward. Which was how I caught one of them along the face with my blade, even as I darted back. This time, the squeal was one of pain, instead of a warning. The injured pig moved back, switching places with a different, slightly smaller pig.

This is going to take a while, I thought.

I maintained the same process, thinning out the herd and cycling through the wounded pigs in rotation. As I kept the pressure up, I could feel the gradual rise of the terror in the pigs. The fear pressed against my mind, threatening to break my concentration. I could taste the stink of it, the combination of blood, piss, and shit. I’d only encountered this level of dread on mission in Uganda. People in the street were starved and many brutally beaten by the barbarians that passed for military under a despotic regime. Three weeks after that mission, the people rebelled, rising against their tyrant.

In hindsight, I should have seen it coming. I’d had direct knowledge of events like it in the past, but sometimes that doesn’t prepare you for how a herd of wild pigs is going to behave when their backs are against the proverbial wall. All that experience and training didn’t make it any less of a shock when they charged me, the peasants overthrowing their tyrant.

When fifteen or so pigs that weigh a hundred fifty pounds each rush you, it doesn’t matter if you outweigh each of them. What matters is the momentum behind that group charge, hitting you below your center of balance, which means your ass is going down. Which is how I found myself underfoot. I felt like a kid in church again. Not the boring part where we had to sit through the singing and the sermon where the pastor may or may not have read the passage before getting up to speak. But at the end of church, if I was very good, I could have a donut. Yeah, I felt like I was a kid going against the flow of the bigger kids also fighting for the donuts. Except these pigs were less vicious and not as well dressed. Also, I wasn’t allowed to carry a sword to church, which in hindsight was a shame. Not that a sword did me much good, under the close press of bodies.

The tiger saved me. It tore through the frenzied herd with ruthless efficiency, heedless of the wounds it took in return. Massive paws tossed bodies aside, shredding the tough hides of the pigs. They fled under the fierce onslaught. Three of the pigs lay on the ground, unmoving. A half-dozen more limped away with a varying degree of severe wounds. The herd as a whole moved away from us.

It was a bizarre feeling. I went into the fight, thinking I was the predator, but even the predator can become the prey if it doesn’t properly understand its limits.

For a minute, I lay on the pavement, questioning whether I would continue to exist. The pain in my sides promised several broken ribs, and I couldn’t feel the right side of my face, or even see out of that eye. I lifted a shaking hand, fighting the screaming in my side at the movement, and touched trembling fingers to my face.

Well, that explains it, I thought. I could feel a long gash along my face, from my forehead down to my right cheek. The tusk had cut deeply, and the skin beneath my eye hung loose.

I’m not freaking out about this. Adrenaline? Maybe just shock. I had to find a core. There should be one around here that I could get to easily enough.

My vision swam as I moved my head from side to side, looking for the corpses and cores that I knew were there.

Concussion? Blood loss? No, my head isn’t bleeding that badly, though it won’t take long.

There, not ten steps from me, was a shining core, and the body of the largest pig from my group. I tried to stand, but my legs wouldn’t move. I forced my chest up, placing my weight onto my elbows. If my drill sergeant had seen my pitiful excuse for an army crawl, he would have dragged me off the field and put me on cleaning duty for my entire time in boot. My legs dragged uselessly behind me, and I more fell forward than crawled.

I looked up at my destination again, just that little movement of my head causing the world to spin again.

Is the body getting farther away?

I took a shallow breath, the only breath I could manage, and I pulled myself forward once again. The world turned black as I pulled myself forward, and the spinning never fully stopped. I put my head down, trying to catch my breath, even as the edges of my world began to darken. I could still see my destination, and I could see the tiger standing over the carcass, looking between me and its kill.

Slowly, the tiger lowered her head to the body. I saw the energy in the core flow into the tiger and its core. My hope disappeared with the mana.

The tiger’s eyes turned on me. It paced toward me. I tried to move, but even moving my arms at this point was a futile gesture. I’d lost feeling in my hands, and the rest of my body had gone numb, like during my cold-weather training for special forces when I didn’t get my arctic tent set up quickly enough.

I guess I did lose more blood than I thought.

The tiger stood over me now, though I couldn’t even lift my head to look up. I could only see her massive paws, the extended claws still bloody from her last kills.

I felt her breath on the back of my neck, and I imagined her mouth opening to clamp down. I didn’t feel anything though, except a warmth spread through me.

This must be what dying is like. I chuckled at the thought. Or I thought I chuckled. There was no pain. Of course, there would be pain, if I’d laughed because I had broken ribs.

The world also didn’t go black, as I’d expected. I could still see the tiger’s paws in front of my face, and I almost exclaimed in shock as the tiger stepped back over to the carcass of the pig and began tearing into the animal.

Slowly, feeling returned to my extremities, but that didn’t mean I was any less numb from the shock of what had just happened.

“Y-you…” I stammered, trying to make my mouth and tongue work. “You h-healed me?”

The tiger didn’t even look up as it continued its feast.