Philea coughs, trips, and lands harshly in the dirt of the road. She pulls herself up a branch of a nearby tree and stumbles forward. Her destination lies down the road, the light of torches just barely visible from where she falters.

“Thebes…” she barely groans out, before a heavy and oppressive weight pins her to the tree. A massive lion’s paw pressing on her throat and ribs, threatening her last breath.

A woman’s head inches closer to Philea’s face. Her long black hair frames Philea’s face as she stretches open a long, toothy grin. The head was the size of Philea’s torso, and the mouth was mostly canines and fangs.

A heavy breath escapes the creature’s lungs, smelling of sickly sweet rot and copper. “What speaks with one voice, walks on four legs…are you…are you paying attention?” The creature lets up the pressure of her lion’s paw. Even if the woman escapes from the beast’s grasp, she still could have pounced on her, ripped from nape to flank…but the Sphinx was curious.

“Woman…why do you burn so much? Your skin feels like fire upon my paws. Your eyes are glassing over…”

Philea’s fear gives way to a bloody cough upon the Sphinx’s paw and then she passes out. Instinctively the beast catches her, more gently than she knew she could be.

“In a way…I guess that is an answer of sorts.” The Sphinx goes to bite the neck of the unconscious woman in front of her and drag her back to the cave, but then she remembers that mortals don’t have that soft patch of excess skin to grab onto. So instead she wrapped the stranger in her front right paw and walked on three legs toward her cave.

(more…)