Cankerous Thirst

The hybrid pip here is not the usual "pay either color" shortcut. Instead of letting one mana stand in for another, the spell checks which colors actually paid for it and hands out effects to match. Spend black somewhere in the cost and a creature shrinks by three; spend green and one grows by three; spend both and you get both clauses on the same instant, pointable at two different creatures in the same combat step. That dual mode is what justifies the card, and it hinges on a quiet manabase wrinkle: the cost is a single hybrid pip plus three generic, so unlocking both halves means feeding one color to the hybrid pip and the other to the generic remainder. A player on a single B/G land in a pinch still gets one usable mode; a player with both colors open gets a removal spell and a combat trick folded into one card, with the function chosen at the moment of casting based on what is untapped. The design comes from a run of Golgari instants that treated the color of your payment as a modal switch rather than a fixed price, asking you to literally pay in two colors to earn the full effect. Casting it for both modes rarely reads as four mana well spent until the swing it creates lands on the table.