Enchanted tiger? Well, that was novel. Granted, Travis had heard of magical creatures before, but that was of the case of the phoenix, the dragon, and so on. He hadn't heard of ordinary animals being magical, so this was new to him. Of course, Ira always seemed to have personality, so maybe there was something to that. The thing of it was...he wondered something. How long had Keona had Ira, exactly? She had said that everyone of Yoreiqi had their own special animal. Most had birds, but not Keona. This bond with an animal... There may have been more to it than he initially realized.
So, for now, everything continued normal. They moved themselves along, gradually towards the actual city of Essyrn, every now and again seeing animals. A fox, a jackal, elephants at the river's edge, gazelle, lions... Lions. The Kaadir stopped as it, and everyone in the caravan, saw a herd of gazelle and what they were pretty sure were a few lionesses in the tall grass. They'd come across a scene right out of the nature books itself: The herd and the hunt. Going around would probably be the best move, though waiting for the kill would mean not having to make as wide a berth or having to figure out where the gazelle would stampede to.
Before anyone had the chance to decide, the Kaadir let out a loud snarl, audible to all the animals on the approach. The gazelle, seeing a large and dangerous reptile, decided to go be somewhere else now. The lionesses looked up from their now-disrupted hunt, growling back at it. The Kaadir was a heavy scaley beast, and it knew no feline predator could handle it. It stomped the ground, growling its own challenge.
"Oh hell! He wants to charge! Unhook the cart, quick!"
They could charge like rhinos, and were effective thus back in the days when Essyrn used them in war. The instinct to stomp an enemy flat - assuming it didn't ram it head-on - was very strong.