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// Bringer of Pain - Part 5 
// Story: Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot 
// by Equimorto 
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Firecracker looked up at the stallion, but could not muster the strength to get up again. They felt like they were suffering from a high fever, and their vision was starting to wane from side to side.
The stallion lowered his head, so he could talk to the pegasus more easily. "You're not supposed to be here. You were never supposed to be here. I'm sure that if you haven't tried to get too close to the Behemoth, you've at least heard stories about those who have. You know how it goes." The stallion sat down at that point. "The nausea, the aches, everything else. The few that make it past that pass out before they get far. If you've ever felt that almost imperceptible unease that for some comes from being near a scale, that's a drop of water compared to the river you're in now."
Panting heavily, Firecracker struggled to open their mouth, first spreading their lips as droplets of spit fell off their gums. Their tongue and throat felt dry, yet they expected their nose to start pouring any second, and an acid aftertaste lingered in the back of their mouth. Finally they managed to force their teeth to open, and were almost surprised blood didn't start to pour out. "Why now?" they asked, their tone raspy.
The Charioteer nodded. "You're a smart pony, like I've said before. If you'd just appeared here, this is what you would have felt like from the beginning. But that's not quite how it went." He looked around for a moment, an amused expression on his face, then focused back on the pegasus. "You weren't really here, per say. Not fully. It turns out a bit of you was still outside, slowly getting back to you. Oh, you'll be fine, don't worry about it, nothing broke down inside you. But it did mean you took a bit to reappear fully. Tell your friend that when she asks how things went, I'm sure she'll appreciate the information."
Firecracker had to force their eyes to stay open at that point. The sound inside their head was only growing louder, and there didn't seem to be a muscle in their body that didn't hurt when they tried to use it. They looked at the stallion's hooves, still holding the reins, then managed to push their neck high enough to look at their face again. They leaned forward as far as they could manage to, and with one last push put a wing forward and pressed it against the other's face.
A directionless burst of electricity fired off from the inner side of the pegasus' wing, a dozen of different arches of miniature lightning shooting off of it and coursing through the air, all hitting the stallion's head in the span of less than half a second.
"That was actually kind of adorable," said the pony. While Firecracker's vision clouded further, he picked up the pegasus with a hoof on their back, and casually tossed them far enough to a side.
Firecracker didn't land back on the Behemoth, and instead began to fall at its side towards the ground far down below, still only half conscious.