Tethered Skirge

The drawback here is the rare kind that turns into a feature when you read it from the other side. Most creatures that punish targeting do so to discourage your opponent from removing them; this one charges you a life whenever any spell or ability points at it, including your own. That inversion is the design seed. Pump it with an aura, untap it, give it a counter, redirect a spell through it, and each interaction skims a point off your total, which is exactly what you want if the life is feeding something hungrier. The flying body was built to carry equipment and enchantments long before either was a deep theme, and the targeting tax was the cost of letting black have an evasive buildaround attacker at this rate. Read straight, it is a liability: every removal spell costs you an extra point on the way to the graveyard, every combat trick the opponent casts on it bleeds you while it dies anyway. Read as an engine piece, it is a repeatable, opponent-independent life-loss outlet that asks only one thing of the deck around it: keep a steady supply of cheap targeting effects on the battlefield to point at it, since the trigger only works while the Skirge is in play. The whole card is a wager that you will be the one doing most of the targeting, and that you have a reason to want the life leaving your pool.