“Happy birthday.”
The abomination loomed over Thorax, pebbles dribbling like blood from a pseudopodic cord of vine and sandstone. For all the Changeling King’s last attack had done, he might as well have pricked the demigod with a needle. It was a far cry from what leaving himself open had cost him.
Thorax tried not to look at the oozing, pulpy mass that used to be his right hind leg. His forelegs shook as he held the cameo up to his face.
“Happy birthday. Please, don’t let me die! I’m begging you!”
Nothing. The beast’s corded limb thickened, then swung down.
“Happy birthday! H-happy-”
Time froze.
Thorax blinked.
No - it hadn’t frozen, not exactly. Flecks of dirt trickled off of the creature into the air, but fell as if the air was made of molasses. The creature’s limb still swung for him, but moved as if on an overcranked film, its descent almost imperceptible.
It gave Thorax enough time to let the pain catch up to him.
The changeling gagged as agony throttled a scream before it had time to properly escape his throat. The world tilted, righting itself as time snapped back to normal for a centisecond. It was enough that, in the space of an eyeblink, the abomination’s limb had swung visibly closer to him.
He needed to stay focused. He needed to stay focused, to keep his mind clear, to not give a single second to thinking about anything but trying to survive. Thorax scrabbled back against the craggy earth, ichors dribbling off of his useless leg as he tried to pull himself away from the titanic limb.
“Get out of here,” Thorax mumbled. “I need to get out of here. I need to get-”
Time snapped back into place, and the abomination’s tentacle smashed into the earth.
Thorax was no longer on it.
Instead, the Changeling King gasped as he watched the creature strike where he had just been, over a hundred feet from where he was now.
The craggy titan was quick to raise its tentacle, but slow to realize that its prey had gone missing. Choking back pain, Thorax pulled himself over dusty rock and soil, hoping that the creature wouldn’t look in his direction.
He didn’t even cross five meters before an earth-trembling roar of rage told Thorax that it had. Turning, the Changeling King saw it surge for him in a tidal wave of botanic frenzy-
-and watched it crash again into the spot where he had just been, two hundred feet away.
A high-pitched scream filled Thorax’s ears as he scrabbled backwards, coughing, dust billowing up in front of his eyes and fear seizing his lungs and the scream filling his ears-
The creature roared again, and the ground shifted two feet below Thorax.
The Changeling King fell, bouncing over pebbles and grit before coming to a shuddering halt-
-And the ground shifted yet again, the screaming growing louder, a clod of dirt tumbling into Thorax’s mouth-
-And the ground shifted again, and the screaming grew louder as Thorax spat out the dirt clod-
-And the ground shifted again-
-And the ground shifted-
“Stop it!” Thorax yelled.
The screaming stopped. The air grew still. The ground stayed still, not shifting. Thorax gulped for air, shivering, the pain in his leg ratcheting up through his body once more.
“I’m sorry.”
The voice echoed in his head. Not his voice. His voice didn’t sound plaintive, not like…
“I’m just...I’m just scared.”
“It’s okay. I’m scared, too.” Thorax tried to keep his voice neutral as he scanned over the ground, looking for the source of the voice.
“And...and my leg really hurts, and I don’t know how it happened…”
Thorax paused.
“...Wait. Your leg?”
“Y-yes. Um. I-I didn’t mean to bother you, um…”
Thorax froze. “Which...which leg?”
“Um. My...my right hind leg.”
Thorax’s heart dropped into his stomach. Slowly, he turned his head to stare at the pasty remnants of his leg. “Am...am I looking at it now?”
“Y-yes.”
“Are...are you inside my body?”
The voice fell silent. Groaning, Thorax looked over at the horizon. The abomination was there, a faint blip of forest green. As Thorax watched, the beast began to grow larger, millimeter by millimeter.
“Um. Aren’t...aren’t you inside mine?”
“I...okay.” Thorax shivered. “Okay, I really, really want to get freaked out by this. I really do. But we don’t have much time before we need to move again. Was that you doing that?”
“Doing what?”
“The teleporting.”
“I...I don’t know. I don’t think I was doing it.”
Thorax sighed. “Okay, this...This is manageable. Don’t worry. I’ll think of how to escape, okay?”
“I...can I help?”
“If you have any ideas, yes. Please.” The blip on the horizon grew larger. “I think I’ve got some magic left in me, but not as much as...as the whole teleporting-thing. Which you apparently can’t do.”
The voice whimpered.
“Which is fine! That’s fine! Listen. What do you think you could do to help us get out of here?”
“Um...I can f-fly...I’m just not, um, not that good at it.”
“No, you’re not. I mean, I’m not. I’m not a bad flier. I can fly just fine. Okay, this is getting...this isn’t getting any less confusing.” Thorax reached over and dug his hoof into the earth, scraping a straight line across its surface. “Okay. What did you just do?”
“I just, um...I scratched out a line on the ground.”
“Okay, good. So don’t...it’s...ugh.” Thorax sighed. “I don’t know how it happened and I don’t think I have a lot of time to think about it, so can you take it for granted that we’re sharing the same body?”
“...Yes. I, um. Th-that makes sense.”
“Good.” Thorax paused. “Okay, one more thing. I swear your voice sounds familiar, but I don’t know who you are. So if we’re going to be working together, you can call me-”
“Thorax. R-right?”
Thorax paused.
“I-I mean, um, I-I’m sorry if i’m misremembering. But you sort of sounded like him, um. F-from what I heard him say, anyway.”
“When did...when did you hear him speak?” Thorax groped around at his neck, hoof sliding over the intricate links of a silver chain.
“There was this time, um...back when I was kidnapped by Queen Chrysalis…”
“Yes. Yes, I was there. I rescued everyone. That’s...so you were there, then?”
Thorax brought the opal at the end of the chain up to his face. As he stared at the carving at its center, the last tumblers of the puzzle that had been bugging him for weeks slid into place.
“They, um...they kidnapped me, too. I’m...my name is Fluttershy.”