"Take a good look at the manticore, my son," said my father. "Is there a being more beautiful and terrible than it? No. How could there be one? What other creature on this earth could eclipse the scourge of the silent sands, it who is most majestic when it kills?"
Anatomy
The manticore is the ultimate man-eater. Its body – covered in furious reddish fur – resembles that of a lion, but it is much larger: a man standing upright could barely touch the abundant mane that crowns the neck and head of a male specimen. Thick muscles lie beneath the manticore's skin, providing it with such vast strength that it can split a horse or camel in two with a single swipe of its paw. Its claws are as long as a human hand, so sharp that they can pierce metal and so hard that they will shatter any sword.
As if its brute strength were not enough, the manticore's tail is that of a gigantic scorpion. This perverse extremity culminates in a main stinger with which it injects a venom that kills instantly, in addition to two rows of surrounding spikes that the monster can shoot at great distances as if they were arrows from a crossbow.
The manticore's most atrocious feature, however, is one other than its beastly body: with delicate and elegant features – almost beautiful – the manticore is a monster with a human face. Its eyes are almost always blue, twin sapphires embedded in copper-colored skin. Its nose is sharp, as are its cheekbones and jaw, giving it an entirely androgynous appearance. Its full lips are always parted, as if about to give a shy smile. It is no surprise that men and women of all ages, races and creeds have found the manticore's face to be almost irresistible in its beauty.
However, the manticore's angelic features are nothing but a cruel trap. Beneath the illusion of beauty lies a mouth wide enough to fit a whole man by the shoulders, although the manticore almost always chooses to start with the feet. Three rows of teeth cut, pierce and crush flesh and bone, reducing the victim to an unrecognizable paste that the manticore swallows without leaving a single drop of blood. This makes it difficult to determine when someone has been devoured by a manticore, and it is only when the monster is sighted that the fate of the recently disappeared can finally be presumed.
"It is said that the birds, taking pity on the sadness that nested in man's heart, taught him to sing. Thus was born music, and man promised to always honor the gift that the feathered beings had given him. But no one knows who taught the manticore to sing – and if they do know, they prefer not to speak out of shame, for a melody is always bitter when sung with a mouth full of death."
Behavior
Few have faced a manticore and lived to tell the tale. Those who have managed to escape have done so only because the beast has caught some other unfortunate soul and ceased pursuit. Thus, information on the beast's habits is scant. No one knows how long they live, how and when they mate, whether they are of natural origin or the product of the most profane black magic, or even whether they lay eggs or give live birth. All that is known is that they are diurnal and that – after satisfying their appetite – they retreat to a burrow they have dug in the arid desert floor, or to a rocky cavern where they can placidly digest their prey.
Fortunately for the world, the manticore appears to be a solitary monster; no two manticores have ever been seen together, and the monster's invariably aggressive and territorial behavior would undoubtedly make coexistence or cooperation between its kind completely impossible. Recently, however, there have been reports of sightings of manticores with wings resembling those of a bat or dragon; if this is true, it could be a subspecies or aberrant mutation, even more dangerous than its terrestrial relative. I pray that these are just the exaggerations of weary travelers.
Although it undoubtedly hunts other prey, the manticore's predilection for human flesh is notable. So great is this craving that the beast has somehow learned to imitate the voices of people in order to lure them into its hiding place and ambush them. Those who have heard a manticore speak – or rather, sing – report that its voice is melodious, whistling like a flute and deeply seductive. It even speaks words, almost always asking for help from those who pass by its lair. This is how it manages to lure the unwary into its trap to devour them.
It is unknown1 whether, like the sphinx, the manticore is endowed with intelligence or if its voice is merely an imitation of words whose meaning it does not know. For obvious reasons, no one has ever engaged in a conversation with a manticore, and its violent character does not seem that of a thinking being.
However, the manticore is known to enjoy feeding, especially if its prey is still alive. It therefore makes an almost musical purring sound, as if lulling its victim as it devours them. No one believes for a moment that this is meant to comfort the poor soul who is experiencing a hideous death; rather it seems like a cruel mockery, a sign of a perverse intelligence hidden beneath the beastly appearance of the monster. The face, it seems, is not the only human thing about the manticore.
"The gods, horrified and ashamed of the atrocities their creation had committed, spat their venom upon the sands where man had sought to build his empire. From the cursed soil was then born the manticore, bearing behind its beautiful face a monstrous form devoid of all lies, a deformed body that serves as a mirror for those who it was meant to punish – a naked reflection of humanity."
My First-Hand Account
I have only once attempted to hunt a manticore, and the scars I bear are a perpetual reminder of the cost of my victory.
As night fell, we set out in a caravan toward the spot where the monster had been seen devouring a woman a few days earlier. The manticore was no doubt in the final stages of digestion, about to once again feel the hunger that burns through the insides of all its kind. Our plan was to take the beast by surprise, quickly amputate its stinger, and drown it in molten lead when it retreated back to its underground lair. If that were not enough, I carried on my belt five small amphorae filled with liquid fire to burn away what remained of the creature.
As we reached the burrow where the monster lived, we were greeted by a voice like gold that offered to let us go if in exchange we sacrificed one of us. Otherwise, the voice said, we would all die. The men who accompanied me, frightened, decided to pour the molten lead immediately to kill the creature to whom those evil and melodious words belonged.
There was nothing I could do to stop them.
As soon as they poured the large cauldron we were carrying into the burrow, we heard a roar that made several of us cover our ears. The manticore emerged from the shadows and began to annihilate us with its claws, its jaws, and the atrocious venom from its tail. I hid behind the corpse of one of our horses to avoid being pierced by the monster's venomous projectiles, and I witnessed how my companions tried in vain to pierce the manticore's skin with spears and swords. Quickly, we went from being twenty-five men to only eight as screams of pain and anguish echoed through the sands.
One of my companions, overcome by despair, put a knife to my neck and pushed me towards the manticore. He screamed in terror that I would be the tribute that the beast demanded and begged for mercy for himself and the remaining six hunters. The manticore smiled a hideous smile with its three rows of teeth and prepared to accept my flesh and the submission of the frightened hunters.
It was then that, quickly tying my belt to the other man's body, I managed to push him into the manticore's open maw. It didn't seem to care whether its meal was me or the coward who had offered me as a sacrifice: in a couple of mouthfuls, ululating its cruel song, the manticore devoured the traitor, and my belt alongside him.
As soon as it finished eating, the monster's face twisted in anguish, and in an instant, it was enveloped in flames that rose from within, cooking it from its entrails to its fur. The manticore, knowing it had been deceived, let loose an agonizing swipe and managed to open my side so deeply that it almost touched the bone. Maddened, it ran amok, desperately trying to put out the flames or at least take one last victim before it died. The last thing I remember before I lost consciousness is the burning form of the manticore writhing against the black fabric of the night and those screams that sounded like the bellowing of an out-of-tune flute.