Chapter 5: Pleased to Meet You

The creature lumbers forward, rushing toward Willitan, but encountering Swan first along the way.

Now that it's closer, you can get a slightly better look at it, though the darkness still shrouds the fine details. It has the body of a mountain lion, though much larger than any mountain lion you're familiar with. From its shoulders sprout two massive, leathery, reptilian wings, though they don't look particularly strong -- like they've been placed there by accident. The worst part is the head: a misshapen humanoid woman's head, enlarged beyond reason, jaws protruding with needle sharp teeth, stringy grey hair hanging limply about its face. The long tail continues to lash and twitch, spikes still visible on it.

It rears up on its back legs and lunges with front paws, gnashing at the bard with its yellowing teeth.

Elora recognizes this as a strange type of magical beast sometimes referred to as a manticore. The first recorded sighting of a manticore was early in the Great Advancement, an unfortunate collaboration between an unscrupulous Alcaven researcher and Rhamian military minds. Strangely enough, despite being created entirely by magic, they proved to breed true in the wild once they escaped their handlers. They are certainly rare, but a few things are known about them:

They will eat anything, even carrion, but prefer human flesh.
While intelligent and (obviously) capable of speech, most are cruel and devious at best, utterly mad at worst.
They can fly, but are clumsy. There are tales of them taking off and hovering above the ground, creating a cloud of dust and debris beneath their wings that reduces sight and provides concealment.
Their tails are capable of flinging spikes up to 180 feet away, but only up to 24 spikes in a 24 hour period.

Ember's meteors sizzle the manticore's fur, but seem to do it little damage of note. With no other immediate danger to react to, it continues its assault on Swan, misshapen jaws producing a crackling, high-pitched yowl of anger and frustration as it rakes at the bard once more.