The tiger took a step towards him, its body lithe and low, a house cat about to pounce on a toy mouse, only this house cat was seven feet high and had fangs as long as hands, and the toy was, well...

Gulp.

Jacob tried to remember everything he'd learned about animal safety when you were out in the wilderness, but most of it had to do with bears.

If it's brown, stay down. If it's black, fight back. The saying went through his head over and over as if he'd kept hitting the replay button. He'd heard of how terrifying it was to come across a big animal, but the biggest thing he'd encountered had been a raccoon digging though their trash, which he had promptly run from.

He wanted to run, but for some reason he couldn't look away from the tiger. It crept closer to him, its eyes wide. Jacob's vision was drawn in, until all he could see were those creepy, crystal orb eyes. They absorbed his vision. His body went numb, the small aches in his knees and lower back fading to bliss. He didn't feel himself collapse to the ground. All he could see were those two crystal orbs, and then he was past them and flying through a flashing rainbow world like a room filled with a million multicoloured strobe lights.

Around him spread a lush jungle. Trees with trunks the girth of a room towered above, their layered canopies a world away. Each tree was its own ecosystem, a little contained world of buzzing insects, tiny mammals, and colourful birds. Jacob pushed through creepers thicker and heavier than cloaks, so brightly green they almost shone. His feet pressed into deep layers of soil and prickly leaf litter with each step. His feet were bare. A thought almost separated from himself, like a comet flitting past a planet, told him he was entirely naked. This was normal. A faint acrid scent came to him, drifting on the fecundity of the jungle. Smoke. He hurried through the trees, pausing at each, hand on the strong bark, sniffing the air. His legs ate up the ground, carrying him easily over fallen branches and moss-covered boulders. He came to a clearing at the edge of a cliff, where the jungle fell away and the rock was bare and warm. A valley rolled off into the distance, covered in a green carpet. A column of smoke as wide as a mountaintop drifted lazily up to join the streams of clouds on their journey. The smoke did not smell clean like a forest fire, nor did it have the earthy tang of a fire mountain's eruption. This was from a settlement. A city. A city of humans.

Jacob was rushing back up through the rainbow tunnel and then the world was the two crystal orbs and then they were receding too and he could feel his body, tingling all over as if every limb had fallen asleep.

He was staring up into the tiger's big, silver eyes. Its head was bent low over him, maybe a few feet off the ground. He froze, totally paralyzed. His heart pounded in his chest like a cannon. His mind was screaming at him to move but he couldn't. He couldn't think, he couldn't do anything.

Instead of biting his head off, the tiger's nostrils flared and it took a deep sniff of him, as if it were savouring his scent before devouring him. It growled low.

A backpack flew out of nowhere, bounced off the tiger's nose, and fell to the ground. The backpack was pink, with a Hello Kitty keychain attached to one of the zippers.

A moment later a girl dressed in black flew in and delivered a high flying kick to the tiger's face.

The tiger's head jerked back from the impact, but otherwise it appeared unfazed. Somehow, the girl leapt off where her kick had struck, flipped through the air, and landed in front of Jacob.

It was Camilla.

"Pick on someone your own size." Camilla hissed at the tiger. "Are you okay... uh, what's your name?"

Jacob's jaw hit his chest. He was too stunned to say anything. What the hell was happening?

"Oi! Moron! What's your name?" Camilla barked. She didn't take her eyes off the tiger.

Jacob fumbled for words. "Jacob, and yeah, I'm doing totally fine!" His voice was hysterical. What kind of question was that, anyway? There was a freaking massive blue tiger in front of him that was about to eat him! Of course he wasn't alright!

"Okay, Jacob. I'm Camilla." She said. "Stay behind me."

He decided to not mention that he already knew her name.

Camilla stretched out her hand. A flashing, fiery light appeared in her palm, swirling crimson red and burning orange. It expanded in a miniature explosion and lanced at the tiger. The tiger leapt away with the acrobatic grace saved solely for felines. Camilla's fireball splattered a thick tree trunk, leaving circular scorch marks on the bark.

"Shit." Camilla said.

Jacob blinked. His jaw hit his chest for the second time in as many minutes.

The tiger crouched, then launched forward. It landed and leapt again, zigging and zagging so quickly it left comet-tail streaks of silver and cyan in the air behind it. It leapt onto the trees around the path, crouched, impossibly defying gravity for a split second, then sprung away again, back onto the path, then back up onto the trees, over and over until Jacob could only see blue blurs.

"Don't let it lock gazes with you!" Camilla splayed her hands again and Jacob felt something appear in the air.

The tiger smashed through it and knocked into Camilla, snarling.

She flew back, skidded off the path, and landed in a heap on the grass by the wrought-iron fence surrounding the border of the garden. Bright blood trickled down her forehead, like thick raindrops running down a window.

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Jacob stumbled back. He thought he was screaming but he couldn't hear anything except for the drumbeat of his heart in his head. What the hell was going on? What the hell was going on?

The tiger approached Camilla carefully, its ears back, growling low in the back of its throat. Camilla stirred.

Jacob swallowed. He had to do something. It was going to eat her. But what could he do? He'd nearly died! He should run!

For a moment he stood there, frozen with fear and indecision. That same twitchy urge to do something rash that had made him take the macaroon at Bulk Barn was building up in him again. He picked up a stone and hurled it at the tiger.

It bounced off.

"Hey!" He cried. "Heyyy!" A little voice in the back of his head was telling him that he was clinically insane.

The tiger turned to him and snarled, then turned back towards Camilla.

Christ! His hand twitched. His head nearly exploded with panic.

Camilla pushed herself up.

The tiger hissed, then jerked forward violently, jaws outstretched. Camilla threw her hands up and a pale shimmer spread out and surrounded her. The tiger's jaws clamped into the shimmer, like it had bitten into a steel wall.

They struggled against each other, the tiger scrabbling forwards, Camilla slowly retreating.

With a cry, Camilla heaved her hands out. The pale shimmer exploded. The tiger fell back onto the path and scrabbled to its feet. It snarled and lunged at Camilla again, streaking across the garden. She ducked and leapt ten feet to the side, narrowly avoiding the tiger. It ploughed into the wrought iron fence and thrashed around, tearing the metal apart, sending strips and shafts of the fence flying.

Camilla landed near Jacob and blasted another fireball at the tiger. This one struck, singeing the blue fur and rocking the tiger's body back into the fence.

The tiger howled and turned on them. Its bushy brows drew down and its shark-like fangs bared in a feline rictus. Its orb eyes burned with utter, complete animal hatred.

"Uh-oh." Camilla grunted. "We need to run. I don't have much left."

Jacob barely registered what happened next. One moment he was there behind her, staring at the tiger, the next he was on the ground by the shattered fence, ears ringing. He lifted his head and his vision swam as if he were on a rollercoaster. He groaned and put a hand to his head.

Camilla stood a little ways away from him. She was on her feet, but wavering like drunk people did in movies.

The tiger advanced on her.

...cob!

Jacob frowned.

"...acob!"

Camilla was glancing at him out of the corner of her eye as she slowly backed away from the tiger.

"Jacob! The pole!"

What?

He looked around him, then saw what she meant. Pieces of the broken fence lay around him like kindling on the forest floor. A pole about three feet in length with a nasty, jagged end was at his feet.

He reached down and snatched it up.

The tiger lunged and Camilla boosted herself away in one of those impossible ten foot leaps. Jacob threw the pole to her. The tiger landed, whipped its body around, bunched muscles and corded tendons rippling beneath its fur, and leapt after her.

Camilla caught the pole, aimed it, and blasted it at the tiger with some invisible force.

At the last second the tiger torqued its body in the air, but it wasn't enough. The pole thudded into the tiger's flank.

The tiger yowled. A horrible, grating noise. The pole jutted out from its side, and around it poured silver fluid and the occasional spark as if someone had struck a flint. The silver fluid evaporated into smoke before it touched the ground.

The tiger's detail faded, its fur blurring together, its colour dimming. The air around it warped, twisting the flowers of the garden in impossible shapes. The tiger faded to an outline, then a golden glow, and then vanished altogether.

Before Jacob could even breathe out he was slammed roughly up against the trunk of a nearby tree. The back of his head smacked the bark.

Camilla held him by his collar, pinning him against the wall with inhuman strength.

"What is your name?" She growled.

"Jacob! I already told you!" Jacob struggled, but embarrassingly couldn't budge her arms.

"Last name, moron."

"Caibo!"

Camilla's eyes narrowed, then she let him drop. "Who's the mage in your family?"

"Mage? What the hell are you talking about?"

"I can tell when you're lying." Camilla said, baring her teeth.

Jacob swallowed. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about. No one in my family is a mage."

Camilla's eyes narrowed further. She seemed to consider this. She opened her mouth to say something then froze. She glanced down the garden path as if she'd seen something.

Jacob looked too but this area of the garden was empty save for the two of them.

"Something's not right." Camilla muttered.

Jacob hardly noticed. He was still piecing together what had just happened and what she had just said. Christ, it had all happened so fast he'd hardly had time to think, let alone plan out his actions. He'd just thrown himself at that tiger without a plan! What had he been thinking!

"Wait." He said, eyes searching the ground. "So that was magic you were using? You can use magic? You're a mage? Magic is real?"

Camilla slammed him back up against the tree.

"If you tell anyone about this: I. Will. Kill. You." She growled. "Do you understand me?"

"I- uh- what-"

"Do you understand me?" She shook him like a ragdoll.

"Yes. Yes! I won't tell anyone, I swear."

She narrowed her eyes, then let him go. "Remember, I know where you go to school." She dusted herself off.

"What the fuck just happened?" Jacob asked the moment her hands were off him. If his mother heard him use that word she would be vehemently displeased. "What the fuck was that? That tiger? And why the hell can you shoot fireballs out-"

Camilla held a finger up to her lips.

"No one."

"But..."

She strode over to her backpack and picked it up and dusted it off preciously, as if it were an antique. "It's probably best if you forget this."

"Whaaaattt?!" Jacob screamed. "Forget this?! Are you crazy? I was nearly eaten by a giant blue tiger. Forget this?"

"You still haven't thanked me for saving you."

"Thank you," he said. "But please, tell me what the hell just happened."

Camilla's confidence disappeared and she glanced down the garden path. "Look. I shouldn't. I'm not allowed to. Maybe later. I don't know. Bye."

She slung her backpack on as if she were just leaving class between periods and started down the garden path. Jacob watched her go in stunned silence. A thousand questions swirled in his head but he couldn't find the courage to voice them. Camilla turned down the path, into the Japanese garden, and disappeared from sight.

Jacob stood there, stunned. The tiger flashed through his head, coupled with that whacked out vision he'd had of himself in that jungle. And why the hell had he been naked while outside? Talk about embarrassing. Christ, it had been so real, so visceral he could still smell the stench of the jungle. Maybe he was losing it.

"That happened, right?" He whispered.

The shreds of the broken fence littering the path caught his eye. It had happened alright, but just what was it?

His phone beeped and he pulled it out of his pocket. It was his 5:00pm alarm, labelled: Get home idiot!

Jacob groaned, shoulders sagging. He was going to be late no matter what. His parents were going to kill him. He shrugged his backpack into a more comfortable position and took off for home at a dead sprint.