//------------------------------//
// Enunciate 
// Story: Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot 
// by Equimorto 
//------------------------------//

"Got a plan?" Shining asked as the creature stumbled towards them. In the meantime he looked around to make sure everypony else was safe, and nothing else was coming.
"Neck looks like it could be easy to break," Cadence suggested while studying the creature from afar. "That or its spine first, it looks even less stable."
Shining grimaced.
Even from slightly behind him, Cadence noticed that. "You feel bad about it?"
"It's... It was a pony," Shining said. "I never particularly enjoyed killing things, either way. I was pretty happy when Twilight decided we should prioritise incapacitating."
Cadence took a slight step forward, and placed a wing on Shining's back. She didn't say anything, knowing she didn't need to. After a moment Shining nodded. Then she spoke. "Do you think you can distract it long enough?"
Shining looked at the creature getting closer. "Probably." He then looked around again. "Do you think you can pick things properly?" he asked, guessing Cadence's plan.
"Probably," she replied. "That's what I need time to figure out." Said that, she teleported away. Neither of them had noticed it the previous time, caught up in trying to save themselves from the creature, but the air crackled in ways it shouldn't have as she did that. Both took note of it that time, and quietly decided to keep teleportation to a minimum in case things suddenly decided to be less stable than they had been that far.
The creature was growing closer. Not yet close enough to strike, but closer. Shining began to back away. Slowly at first, letting it close more distance, then faster, trotting up to a paced run that eventually kept him at a constant distance from the creature as he began to circle widely around it. He deliberately went on the side where its eye was, so it could keep track of him. He wanted to be followed, after all.
The scene probably looked kind of pathetic from outside, he figured. He was only moving around, staying out of the thing's reach as it followed after him at its mediocre pace. Neither did anything more than move at less than running speed. And yet he couldn't really do anything else, magic would have been useless against the creature and most of what he might have thrown its way wouldn't do much more.
Running around to buy time for Cadence to deliver on something more substantial was his only real option, and that involved being consistently the pony closest to the creature, but never too close. It was a blessing that it only seemed capable of attacking with its limbs.
Or so it had seemed at least. After about a minute of running around, however, as Shining looked back to the creature, something caught his attention. Something at the tip of its horn. A small but growing sphere of darkness held there swirling. He had barely the time and reflexes to roll to his side and get out of the way, and a blast from the mutated pony's horn left a small charred crater where he'd been.