Maggot Therapy

The flash clause is what separates this from a plain shrink aura, and it changes the math of how the +2/-2 gets used. A toughness-reduction effect that can only land at sorcery speed is a clumsy answer: the opponent sees it coming and plays around it. Granting flash turns the same statistical swing into a combat ambush. Drop it on an attacker mid-combat and a creature with two or fewer toughness dies before damage; used this way it is a clean one-for-one, the aura and its target leaving together. The +2/-2 spread is deliberately lopsided toward the negative: the power bump is a sweetener that occasionally matters, but the design is fundamentally a removal spell wearing an aura's clothes, trading the unconditional reach of a kill spell for instant-speed flexibility that pinpoint removal of its era rarely offered at the price. The two-for-one risk only surfaces when you point it at your own creature as a pump: there the aura is a sunk card, and a single removal spell in response erases both. The flavor and the mechanics rhyme cleanly: maggots eating away flesh, the body bloating before it collapses, swelling just as it fails. It is a small, honest piece of black's toolkit that rewards holding up mana rather than tapping out, and the flash keyword exists to enable exactly that posture: representing an answer without committing to one until combat forces the decision.