"This is beautifully atmospheric," I pulled my jacket tighter against the damp chill.
"Isn't it great?" Milo beamed, completely in his element. "The veil between dimensions is super thin here. Sometimes you can hear music from other realities!"
As if on cue, a distant melody drifted through the mist, haunting and strangely familiar.
"Is that... 'Memory' from Cats?" I screwed up my face incredulously.
Milo's eyes widened. "It's here! Come on!"
He grabbed my hand and pulled me onto the walkway, his excitement infectious. We followed the wooden path deeper into the swamp, the mist swirling around our ankles and the strange music growing louder.
"So what exactly is a manticore?" I looked around as we navigated around a particularly large, bubbling pool of something I didn't want to identify.
"Inter-dimensional beings from the spaces between realities," Milo hopped over a broken plank. "They exist outside normal physics, which is why they tend to drive people insane just by looking at them, plus they are dangerous physically. Too many angles, you know?"
"And we're trying to find a baby one because why again?"
"Well, adults are the size of skyscrapers and have tails that can crush cities," he was too cheerful. "Babies are more like, hmm, like big dogs? With adorable fur. And sometimes jazz hands."
"Jazz hands," I repeated flatly.
"You'll see!" Milo assured me. "They're actually kind of cute, in a cosmic horror sort of way."
The path ended at a circular wooden platform built around an enormous, hollow tree stump. The inside of the stump had been converted into what looked like a makeshift shelter, with odd trinkets and shiny objects arranged in careful patterns.
"Someone lives here," I suddenly felt like we were intruding.
"Or something," Milo crouched to examine the collection. "Look at these. Cat Collars."
The singing had stopped, replaced by an expectant silence that seemed to press against my ears. The mist thickened around us, and I felt the markings on my arm begin to tingle.
"Milo," I kept my voice low, "I think we're being watched."
He nodded, slowly standing up. "Hello? We're not here to hurt you. We just want to talk."
A rustling came from the shadows beneath the platform. Something moved in the murky water, displacing it in rhythmic pulses.
"Is it swimming?" I whispered.
"I think it's dancing," Milo whispered back.
The water parted, and a creature emerged onto the platform. It was about the size of a pug, with a body that defied rational description. Its fur, if you could call it that, shimmered with iridescent colors that seemed to shift between liquid and solid. The creature had a lion-like torso, but where a normal lion would have a head, this being had a swirling mass of tentacles surrounding at least twelve eyes of various sizes. A scorpion tail curved over its back, tipped with a stinger.
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
"Oh my god," I breathed.
The creature tilted its head, studying us with several of its eyes while the others darted around, watching for threats. It made a sound somewhere between a purr and a hum, the beginning notes of "Dancing Queen."
"It's beautiful," Milo whispered reverently.
The creature preened at the compliment, its form shimmering with iridescent colors that shouldn't exist in our reality.
"Can you understand us?" I swallowed.
In response, it did a perfect pirouette, tentacles extended gracefully, and finished with jazz hands.
"I'll take that as a yes," I couldn't help smiling. "We're here because of a prophecy. It says we need to bring you home."
