Marten felt the pit of his stomach drop when he pushed Sera’s chestnut hair from her face revealing several swollen knots of purple bruises. She collapsed into his massive chest gasping for breath while hot tears rolled painfully down her cheeks.

Marten and Sera had fallen in love long before her marriage to Nathaniel. They had met in the markets where Marten sold his breads. He was a strong man with untamed hair and smelled of wood and earth. Sera dreamed of a wilder life than her formal upbringing had provided and she saw that freedom in Marten. They were infatuated with each other and met often in the Aspen Wood where Marten showed her how to hunt, till the earth, and live on the land.

However, Sera’s parents did not approve of her interest with a common farmer. They urged her to marry the son of a prosperous merchant’s family but she scorned Nathaniel’s advances. She despised the notion that she must give herself up like an object for the sake of her family’s greed. Eventually, Sera was forbidden from seeing Marten when her parents arranged for her marriage to Nathaniel. Marten was powerless against the higher caste families and had no choice but to watch Sera, red eyed and teary, marry a man she didn’t love.

Nathaniel was a possessive man and immediately grew suspicious of Sera’s outings into town. He aggressively questioned her loyalty and accused her of continuing feelings for Marten. He became more controlling and physically violent with her over the next few months until Sera could not bear the abuse any longer and pleaded to Marten in a letter to rescue her.

Now here she was, in his arms as they felt helpless against their situation. Just as they resolved to flee the village, Nathaniel returned home. The jilted husband’s eyes bulged and lips curled at the site of their embrace and he raised his arm threateningly. There was a flash of a dagger’s blade and Marten threw Sera aside. It was over as quickly as it had started. Nathaniel lay in a growing pool of his own blood with the dagger between his ribs and into his dying heart. The city guard entered as Marten stood slowly unable to speak watching Nathaniel take his last breaths.

Marten was arrested and Nathaniel’s well connected family was eager for justice and uninterested with Sera’s pleas for Marten’s innocence. The verdict was delivered swiftly and Marten was brought to the town square for punishment. The court magician led him into a white ashen circle where his clothes were ripped from his body so that he could be humiliated and lashed. When a sufficient amount of Marten’s blood stained the ashes, the court magician raised his hands to silence the crowd.

As he began his spell, the ash whirled around Marten and his body began to contort disgustingly. He appeared momentarily boneless and his skin translucent. He continued to twist and bulge abnormally until the magician spoke the last words of his incantation and a burst of ash and light obscured Marten’s figure.

In his place, now stood a monster roughly the size of a horse. Its muscled body and head of a great lion adorned with horns and a tail ending like that of a scorpion. The jaw dripped with venomous acid and its pale white eyes scanned the retreating crowd. The judge announced that Marten, now with the body to match his beastly deeds, was to be hunted and slain like a common monster for sport by the city’s guards.

The next words were cut short for there was a quick explosive thud of an arrow burying itself into the judge’s neck. As his body fell backward into the terrified gathering, Sera ran toward Marten’s monstrous body with a bow in hand. She set upon his back and the two of them charged the villagers in a hail of arrows, snapping jaw, and flailing venomous tail. They were last seen fleeing across Marten’s field into the Aspen Wood.

Endeavors to capture the mad woman Sera and the beast Marten proved futile. Campaigns returned with many guardsmen slain, lost, or wounded until the city council decided to give up the pursuit of the fugitives.

Many years have passed since that day and as with many things, time has a way of sculpting reality into myth. The story of Sera and Marten have become merely a fable to caution children from the woods. Still, travelers and adventurers have often proclaimed to have seen a deadly wild woman in the woods accompanied by a fearsome manticore.