Art Pact 53

As I looked into the smoldering eyes of the monster my throat seemed to tighten and my heart to rush. The tendrils around its face writhed in waves, seeming to draw the gaze in to the sinister aspect of the nostril holes that ran in two short lines up from the scaly lips between the two lower eyes and up to the single greater one in the centre of its forehead. I took an involuntary step back and stared. It too a long breath in and out, jets of steam from its lungs shooting out in white plumes like a row of moustaches, then almost in sync six flaps shut off the nostrils.

"You're amazing," I breathed. "The perfect monster."

It blinked - first the top eye, then the left, then the right, and parted its mouth to show two rows of gigantic cone-shaped teeth. They were not sharp, but they looked solid enough to crush bone and they were covered in a sort of fetid red slime that could have been the remains of some past encounter or a manner of naturally secreted venom. I remembered the old priest's warning about the danger of the creature's bite, and involuntarily let my free hand wander down to the pack of healing vials in the bag hanging at my side.

The creature's perfection was not just in its face, though. It moved to emerge from the little cave, and I stepped back to allow it out. The first thing to appear was a huge three-fingered paw, covered in what at first glance appeared to be shaggy hair but which resolved itself in better light into a mass of smaller tendrils of the type bedecking its neck and face. The tendrils were mostly passive, but occasionally one would whip up like a snake about to strike. I could see that the behemoth would be well defended against attack by smaller creatures - they might be diminutive and nimble enough to avoid the powerful but doubtless slow blows of the paws, but should they get near enough to attack they would be grasped instantly by the tentacles, immobilising them as helpless fodder for the great jaws. The tendrils were not the only noteworthy feature of the paw, however, since emerging from them were three huge claws, each with the aspect of obsidian and no doubt just as hard and sharp. They were the length of my own sword, making the paw alone as well armed as a lance of soldiers - and I did not think for an instant that there might not be at least one other such limb.

In fact, when I had retreated sufficiently to allow the entire creature to emerge, I could see that it was one of six, arrayed along a powerful torso. The tendrils on the paws were a continuation of a theme - those around the face were the largest, diminishing in size until they were little more than the length and width of a small snake where they covered the ends of the limbs. The torso itself seemed to just end in a blocky stump at first glance, but as I circled around the monster (and it in turn circled around me), I could see that in fact it had a tail almost as long as the rest of the creature, who had concealed it from me by tucking it underneath its belly. The tail, like the face at the other end, was only wreathed with tendrils at its base, the main length of it scaly and in marked segments. It was tipped with a sort of fin, held parallel to the ground, which the creature fluttered up and down beneath itself ominously. The fin was spread out between five spines that supported it, each of the spines the length of a dagger and looking just as sharp. The flapping noise the thing made was the only sound that came from the monster apart from its deep breathing.

"So you've a whip tail, poison, huge teeth, tentacles, eyes a plenty, and paws the size of a horse. But are you smart?" I asked.

"Clever enough," the monster growled. My heart pounded like a drum. I imagined the two of us fighting in a field of corn, the creature's powerful claws crushing the crops flat and its tail scything ears in a wide arc. I would dance past the blow, leaping across the tail to swipe at the monster's rear-left leg with my sword, only to be thwarted by the leviathan's uncanny agility.

I was in love.