The King of Animals

Beneath a vast, uninterrupted sky, a profusion of life pulsed across a rolling expanse of jade-green grass that met the far-off horizon. The raw, untamed vitality of the landscape was almost too much for Cera, whose senses were conditioned to the somber, washed-out vistas of her own world. For what seemed like an age, the sun had been their steadfast, overbearing companion on the journey across this prairie, its intense heat a physical weight upon her shoulders. An unwelcome, somber thought materialized in her mind, casting a cold shadow across the brilliant scenery: How many millennia would pass before this flourishing earth succumbed to the slow, insidious decay she knew so intimately?

Her musings were violently shattered by a flash of brilliant orange against the sea of green, a swift movement in the distance that drew her eye. The quarry. An instinct she was still learning to command surged within her, sharp and primal. Her field of vision constricted, her concentration honing in on the remote figure as she reduced her stride to a near standstill. To better imitate the predator she was supposed to become, she lifted an arm and bent her fingers into a rigid, claw-like shape, a motion that felt simultaneously foreign and unnervingly innate.

Then, a vivid memory yanked her from the present moment, pulling her back across the gulf of time and space. She saw it with perfect clarity: a slide from a meticulously crafted high school biology presentation, the title glowing in her mind’s eye—Endangered Species of Terra. The irony landed with the force of a physical blow, heavy and suffocating. Having once argued with great fervor for the tiger’s protection, mourning its dire situation, she was now tasked with hunting one. She had been so absolutely certain, so unshakably convinced, that tigers were on the verge of vanishing from her home world, a piece of knowledge she could recall more easily than the periodic table. How could she now be a party to this sickening inversion of roles?

“I can’t do this!” The exclamation, a genuine cry of torment, was torn from her throat, sounding raw and desperate in the open air.

Perla, who was walking several feet ahead, stopped dead and whirled around, her expression a mask of severe irritation. “What are you talking about, you can’t?”

“Those tigers are precious!” Cera gestured frantically, her arm trembling, toward the speck of orange that was gradually taking the majestic shape of a large feline. “They’re on the brink of extinction!”

“Watch out!” A sudden, sharp note of alarm cracked Perla’s voice. The tiger, now significantly nearer, had lowered itself into a predatory crouch, its powerful body hugging the earth. In a motion too quick for Cera’s eyes to track, Perla sprang back, seizing Cera by the collar of her black tunic and violently yanking her backward. She released Cera a dozen yards away, safely out of the immediate danger zone, the landing so hard it rattled Cera’s teeth.

“And you decide to inform me of this now?” Perla’s voice was a quiet, venomous hiss, her features contorted into a snarl of fury Cera had never seen. In that instant, Cy's caution about Perla's tribe, whom he had casually labeled a capricious people, returned to her with terrifying clarity. “After all the resources I squandered to bring you to this place? After all the time I’ve poured into you? Cera, you need to take your feelings, put them in a box, and lock it. You are going to kill a tiger today. If you don’t, you will fall so hopelessly behind in this line of work that you’ll never recover.”

“I—I just, the environment… the balance of nature,” Cera stammered, acutely conscious that her words were having no effect. The utterly blank expression in Perla’s eyes told her she was failing to communicate. “Where I come from, so few of them remain. Men with powerful weapons have hunted them to the very edge of oblivion.”

A strange light, something other than rage—perhaps puzzlement—flickered deep within Perla’s narrowed gaze. “Do the tigers not simply produce more young?”

“It isn’t enough to sustain their population!” Cera insisted, feeling her command of complex ecological principles slipping under the intense pressure. “In my world, men have firearms. They kill them for their coats, for recreation. They hunt them the same way your people hunt deer for food.”

Perla's anger began to subside, giving way to a profound, weary sense of resignation. When she finally spoke, her voice was flat, stripped of its earlier intensity. “There are hundreds of thousands of tigers in this world, Cera,” she stated, her eyes sweeping over the immense plains, the only trace of the recent storm a lingering impatience in her stare. “And that’s just accounting for the two major grasslands I’m aware of. Their rate of reproduction is faster than our ability to count them. This entire territory has been designated a red-risk zone on their account. No villager would ever risk coming here, because doing so is a death sentence. Cera, there are far too many. They aren’t the prize; they are the pestilence.”

“...Wow.” The revelation was staggering, a total inversion of her own reality. The reproductive ferocity of these tigers was astounding. There was something deeply, fundamentally wrong with the tigers of Terra.

“So, get on with it.” Perla let out a harsh, scornful snort. “I’ll be amazed if you manage to take down even one. I’m certain the ecosystem will reel from such a catastrophic blow, don’t you think?”

Wounded by her mentor's biting sarcasm, Cera decided she had to try. She shifted her attention back to the tiger, which had halted its approach and was now watching them with an unsettling stillness. She started to move forward, each step a measured, deliberate, and fully conscious act.

“...You will save me if this goes wrong, won’t you?” she called over her shoulder, her voice a fragile whisper on the breeze.

“Who can say?” Perla answered, tucking a loose strand of dark hair behind her ear with infuriating nonchalance. “Perhaps with you gone, I might finally get some peace and quiet. I could gather my next meal in blissful solitude.”

Cera tightened her jaw, her resolve solidifying into a cold, hard knot of will. She turned to confront her challenge. Focusing her energy inward, she started to channel the arcane lesson. The ancient syllables felt coarse and alien in her mouth as she hissed the forbidden tongue into the air. “Heart, soul, mind. Heart, soul, mind. Bind and implode.” She focused her will, struggling to believe in her own budding power, pouring every ounce of her intent into the final, guttural word.

The tiger, entirely unaffected, charged.

A terrified whimper escaped her. It was pure reflex. She threw her hands out in front of her, and a sphere of crackling fire erupted from her palms, slamming into the charging beast. The tiger was hurled backward, landing with a heavy thud that sent up a cloud of dust. It looked at her now not with aggression, but with a startling new emotion—fear.

A sharp, electric current of pleasure shot through her. She had terrified the king of the beasts.

The feeling of triumph was short-lived. The killing spell had been a failure, which made the small victory feel hollow. The tiger was already scrambling to its feet, its tail whipping back and forth in agitation as it started to back away. A tight knot of disbelief and frustration formed in Cera’s stomach as she watched it retreat. She had willed it to simply collapse and die.

“Hmm,” Perla’s voice sounded from behind. “Your little light show is attracting others. I can keep them occupied, but I can’t promise you’ll survive your encounter with this one.”

“Any advice would be helpful!” Cera shot back, her voice tight with strain. She funneled her mounting frustration and rage into a third attempt. This anger, she was starting to see, was a permanent fixture within her, a smoldering ember deep inside her soul that was always ready for fuel. In her state of fury, the delicate equilibrium of a fragile ecosystem felt like a distant, inconsequential problem.

“Heart, soul, mind. Heart, soul, mind,” she chanted, while her mind bellowed in silent, frantic capital letters, “JUST DIE, WILL YOU?” “Bind and implode.”

The tiger continued its deliberate withdrawal, pacing away from her.

Cera screamed, a sound of pure, unadulterated frustration. The roar, primal and untamed, echoed across the plains. The tiger spun back around, its attention once again fixed on her. It locked her in its hungry, luminous gaze. Deep within its eyes, she saw not a soul, but a tiny, black point of pure animal instinct. It was a brutal reminder that this was not a person. Why was she hesitating?

She understood the problem. Her murderous intent was a sham. Having been raised to revere life and to empathize with others, Cera found it nearly impossible to suppress her own compassion. No matter how much she tried to summon feelings of hatred, a fundamental part of her did not want to see the tiger harmed.

And now it was advancing on her again, its eyes terrifyingly empty. You don’t have it in you, its silent, predatory advance seemed to mock.

“Yaaaa!” Cera shrieked, a wild cry that lacked any trace of style or training. It was fast becoming her signature sound, and she found she couldn’t care less. She tried again, clawing at the air, desperately attempting to conjure a lethal will.

She was a piece in a game whose rules she didn't know, fighting for a purpose that wasn't hers. A desperate, unanalyzed desire for self-preservation had led her to this point. Her life had never been unbearable, though neither of her two worlds had ever truly felt like home. She was skilled at staying alive; that was one thing she did well.

But killing demanded an entirely different mindset.

“How do you even do this?” Cera cried out, her desperate question aimed at Perla. The tiger launched itself through the air. For one terrifying second, all she could do was admire the stunning arc of its leap, a perfect, deadly expression of raw power.

“Eeek!” she squealed, her eyes flying wide at the descending mass of muscle and fur that was about to annihilate her.

In that suspended moment, she saw it all. The gaping maw of its jaw, filled with teeth like daggers. The powerful, rippling muscles of its shoulders. The cold calculation that shone in its soulless eyes. The magnificent, beautiful fur she would have adored stroking under any other circumstances.

Her head was going to be torn from her body in one savage motion.

Her own head shook violently in denial, her eyes wide with terror. No. Not this way. She would not die like this. She refused to be touched by this creature. She would not permit it!

As her will flared with a final, desperate power, a small flicker of orange light, much to her astonishment, sparked to life on the tiger's underbelly. The roar it unleashed was deep and guttural, like the sound of a diesel engine turning over. Then it was upon her, a flaming comet descending with claws extended.

She screamed again as those searing claws ripped into the arm she had thrown up in a desperate, final attempt to shield herself. The tiger was now completely wreathed in fire, and the searing agony told her that she was burning as well.

Seconds later, Perla stood over her, casually kicking a smoldering piece of the tiger out of her way. “You’ve been scratched. Let me see.” Perla’s gaze was clinical as she bent closer. She winced. “That’s a nasty one.”

“...D-did you rescue me?” Cera asked, despising the shake in her voice. Her nerves felt shredded and exposed.

“Hardly. This was your test, girl. You either live or die here based on your own skill. If you had failed at this, you would certainly die on the battlefield.”

“So you were just going to watch me die?!” Cera gasped, the shock of it slicing through her pain. “Some hero you turned out to be!”

Perla shot her a look of complete indifference. “I’ve been training on these plains since I was twelve. To be honest, I didn’t think you would be killed so easily. And if you had been, you had no right to be leading anyone into a fight.”

The cold logic of her statement was hard to dispute, but it offered no comfort for the profound sense of betrayal that washed over Cera. She screwed up her face, fighting the hot tears that threatened to stream down her cheeks.

Then, Perla’s entire attitude changed. Her face split into a broad, sincere smile, and her voice became light and warm. “But congratulations,” she said, her tone brimming with genuine warmth. “You did it. Entirely on your own. You incinerated a tiger using a forbidden, secret, and almost unheard-of technique. It took me a solid week of training under very peculiar circumstances to master that move, and I’m the only other person I know who can perform it. You ought to be proud, Cera.”

Cera’s head swam. She glanced from her bleeding arm to the smoldering carcass of the tiger. “A week? What would have happened if I hadn’t pulled it off?”