Kurt enjoyed his weekly visits to the miracle man's cottage, partly because the miracle man himself was dead. The old man had been a nasty piece of work, tolerated only for his cures. He'd never liked Kurt.

The miracle man's assistant, on the other hand, was quite lovely.

He tucked the bag of medicine more firmly under his arm as he entered the village. Kurt had been planning on visiting Brittany, the tailor's daughter, to see if his cloak had been hemmed yet, but as he passed by he saw that the pretty dark haired girl was back.

Santana showed up every so often, slinking back towards the woods as sunset approached. She'd taken a liking to Brittany, in a way that made the old ladies mutter behind their hands.

Kurt continued on his way home, deciding to save the cloak question for another day.

As he was placing the jar into its spot in the cabinet, there was a scratching at the door. "Kurt! Kurt lemme in!"

That was Mortimer, Blaine's dragoncat. What on earth he'd be doing there, Kurt didn't know, but the beast was panting when Kurt opened the door.

"Two...things..." Mort wheezed. "One...Blaine forgot...to give you the...mint leaves you wanted," he nodded towards the small bag he'd apparently been carrying in his mouth. "Two, there's a manticore near the cottage. I could smell it on my way here."

Kurt's blood ran cold. He threw the little bag inside, not paying attention to where it landed, and made sure his scabbard was firmly attached to his belt before he sprinted through the town.

He could hear Mortimer exclaiming behind him, probably as he ran into villagers. There was the beating of wings and Mort was suddenly even with him, having given up on the use of his legs alone. "It didn't smell very big, but still. Blaine doesn't have anything to defend himself, and he can't leave the clearing."

Kurt briefly wondered why Blaine couldn't leave, but filed it away for later pondering as he pushed himself to run faster into the woods.

Mortimer sniffed as he flew, seeming to freeze as he picked up the scent. "It's that way," he said, pointing a paw to an area off the left of the path. Kurt swallowed and darted through the trees. He bit back a gasp when he saw it.

The human face was an evil sort of ugly, but Kurt wasn't scared by the teeth, no.

He was more worried about the tail.

More precisely, the spines on the tail.

The highly poisonous, very sharp, very shootable spines.

He gripped the handle of his sword tightly and shifted to get a better view. Above, Mortimer perched himself in a tree limb, ready to dive in as a distraction.

The manticore heard the minute crackling of bark and whipped around, spines shooting into the air like arrows. Kurt ducked behind the tree, but not fast enough. One grazed his arm, ripping through his shirtsleeve. He grit his teeth and looked up at Mort.

Mort seemed to understand and swooped in from the treetops to circle the beast's head. The manticore, distracted by the dragoncat, began to swipe at the air so as to kill him.

Kurt, who would later tell people he had no idea how he managed, crept up and sliced off the beast's tail at the base with one heavy swing of the sword.

The manticore roared in both pain and outrage, whirling and leaping at him. Kurt, anticipating this, rammed his sword deep into its belly, dividing it stem to stern.

The manticore fell on top of him in a mess of guts. Kurt managed to crawl out, wiping his sword on the grass. There was a choking sound and he looked up to see Blaine, staring at him from the cottage garden.

Kurt managed a weak smile before he passed out.