RUBY’S GUARDIAN WINGS SPREAD, revealing her in full.

There was no shielding now. She was purely on the offense.

Especially now that Ruby breathed upon Myst’s heart, its aura glowing against her face. There was innocence in Ruby’s fascination. But devilry in the cursed entourage that she commanded.

The disembodied wings finished their wind-up.

Swishy gazed at the massive, heart-fed wings, bracing himself to be smacked out of Myst’s body.

Whoosh! The wings struck at Swishy.

[Zlide]—Trey dragged Swishy away, a close call, feathers brushing against the boy’s gourd. Even in the warp realm, the aura of the wing strikes left an impression.

They exited out of range but were both frightened by the loose feathers they found themselves within. The boys were out of strike range but the booming wingbeats and cast-off feathers reached them. Their fury and ambition were broadcasted through their flapping. The wings, fueled by the promise of a heart, were enraptured by receiving Ruby’s samples.

“She’s so hard to hit…” Swishy complained, shooing away the feathers with his rake.

“But we’ve done it before.”

“And we’ll do it again.”

“That’s the spirit.”

Swishy held his dimmed rake, rejecting the disappointment. He felt up and down its handle, seeking its remaining soul. He wouldn’t give up on it.

“Light, light,” he whispered. “We’re not done yet.”

“I have another job for Znitchy, don’t you worry.” Trey grabbed the rake, dragging his finger over it.

[Heart String].

That glowing soul thread wrapped around the rake’s length. The weave was nearly endless, binding the weapon’s entire length. As the light seeped into the rake, the straw took it for its own. Blackwheat dominated the tool’s construction but the gold-straw returned at the tines, sporadic embers feeding into the tips.

“That’s amazing, thank you Trey.” Swishy stared and stared, losing himself in the soul light.

Even the wrathraven feathers around them slowed their drift, attracted to the gold. Swishy became a campfire, a lantern light. Souls never knew they needed rest until the pleasing chance for it came about.

“Don’t mention it. Besides, I didn’t do it alone.”

“I watched you do it.”

“Yeah, sure, but you’re the one who told me to use the birds.”

A throat-clearing noise came from the rake. It trembled in Swishy’s hands, a bubbling familiar and righteous wrath.

“Znitchy, is that you?”

That’s right! And not just any bird. THE BIRD. The one destined to kill a witch!

“Thanks for the light.”

And with that, Trey pulled Swishy into another [Zlide]. They were of one accord, knowing that they needed to go on the offensive.

Their exit let out right above Ruby.

Swishy dropped from the portal with a double-handed rake grip, one atop the other, striking hard and fast.

Got you now! The gleaming Znitchy-rake proclaimed.

But Ruby’s defensive wings closed over her, a guardian ceiling. But the strikes were continuous, Swishy deftly aiming between potential gaps while Trey warped him in various angles. Ruby’s protection remained strong. Her keenness for Trey’s portals was on point. Everywhere the boys went, a thick wall of feathers met them.

The scarecrow’s anxiety spiked the longer Ruby went next to Myst’s heart.

As the [Zlide] barrage kept going, Myst provided her contribution to the assault. It was her body, after all, her heart and joy at stake.

“Now, Ruby, I know you’re greedy but my body isn’t the place for it.”

“This place? A body? But it’s…so inconsequential. You’re no more than air, the way we move through you.”

“Oh, that’s such a human view.”

With that, thousands of malice bombs filled the area. Black orbs were suddenly born, tumors of darkness containing the meanness curses Swishy had ever seen. Myst had changed, she really had. Kind, playful, and giving in her own special way. That’s how Swishy knew that Myst treated this as an urgent threat. Her nonchalance was over.

Boom! The first bomb crashed against the wings, an intent of ROT crackling between the feathers in a steaming purple poison.

As the next bombs came, Trey yanked Swishy by the collar into a [Zlide].

“Wait, Trey!”

“No, it’s dangerous!”

Into the warp they went, flumes of purple pouring toward them.

When the space jump finished, they were many meters above, somewhere in Myst’s neckline. It was thicker there, a true collarbone of shadow that the boys landed upon. The Sling-ravens hovered nearby, wary but resting. They sat at the edge of the neckline and gazed at the purple mushroom cloud grow and grow.

Toxins, nothing but toxins.

“Do you think she’s hurting herself?” Swishy asked.

“I don’t know. But if something like that is in the soul, it hurts the soul.”

“I think you’re right.”

“I’m only guessing. This just doesn’t seem like a way to be.”

But the corrosive state of being continued, the cursed agents now representing its true name.

[NIGHTMARE]—a Myst favorite. It’d claimed Ruby once and Myst was set to do it again. Purple aura drowned Ruby and the feathers. The wrathraven plumage was no match for the weaponized hurt in Myst’s body. The effect on Ruby was clear, too, the woman sweating, gritting her teeth. The witch’s soul hadn’t taken a liking to the nightmare fuel, to the haze that triggered the worst in her: a rumbling stomach, a spiritual core that warbled in a horrific distortion.

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Ruby’s aura was shaped around her body, perfectly fitting her frame, but the belly portal rippled and wavered. It was an active, visible pain. The silhouette of the Ruby’s inner girl thrashed about, banging her head against the ground, her mouth gaping in vicious but muted shrieks.

Only Ruby could feel the pain and hear the outcry.

The witch’s face went red with anguish and embarrassment.

And then she collected herself. The sweat and flushed skin were mere bodily symptoms. Ruby straightened her posture, composing herself in the purple drowning. The girl inside was anything but graceful, dying over and over in Ruby’s body. But that was the curse. Swishy remembered Myst’s altar wish, for the HUNGER to be nursed forever, to be remembered and cared for as a child.

As long as Ruby was alive, so too would the girl.

But it’d be a horrible time.

Swishy’s chasm ached with knowing. He was one with his emptiness. Ruby, it seemed, was fused with hers—and resentful of each moment of it.

She frowned, then spoke: “I’ve suffered before. I won’t say it’s nothing. It hurts, how you’re treating me. You should know I wouldn’t be that girl forever, Myst. I’m a lady now, I’ve grown. I’ve changed far faster and far more dramatically than you, dear shade. Because I’m human. It’s a horrible thing, truly, to live so long, to consume so much of my limited, limited time, and still hurt.

“I was born cursed. And you’ve shackled me to that curse forever. How dare you make a wraith of me. You’ll rue it well, though, the day you crossed a woman so capable of change. I feel every cramp, every contraction, every offense against what I want for myself. I’ll always feel it and think of you, a sister who rejected me. I’ll compress you, Myst. In the not-so-distant future, you’ll become a marble within my fingertips. Heartless. Enslaved. Perhaps then you’ll cherish the longevity you’ve taken for granted and wish to have used your time better. When you suffer in my hands and start to feel the length of time, then maybe we can be sisters again. Twins, we’ll be twins. My HUNGER, and your infinite longing.”

Myst trembled—either from the words or the self-inflicted curse bombing. Swishy couldn’t decide why. But the purple thickened. She proved faithful to her task and poured her complicated feelings into her Ruby assault. “I only long for a world without you. I’ve moved on to another family now.”

“Do you believe that? That you’ve moved past me? Nobody here has, let’s be honest. I never sought to be everything. But I am. Cearth chose me, suffice it to say.”

“I’ve moved past you. I’ve moved farther beyond you than it’d ever be possible for you to see.”

Dawn light filtered through the veil of Myst’s body. As Myst angled her giant body toward the sky, her bodily movements directed the gaze of the boys on her collarbone. The woman had made herself into a cosmos-themed observatory as she spoke of moving forward in life.

The scarecrow knew this was his sister, then, the way his straw changed from his emotions as her shadows morphed from hers.

As a family, they watched an exodus of shadowclaws flee from the scene. Myst’s gaze traveled to the butterflies, the moths, the beetles. Her attention then went to the Straw-bound scarecrows. Swishy and Trey looked at each other, their stares confirming the sensation that Myst sent them both: the closing of shadows, a warm embrace.

The scarecrow grasped at the proximate shadows, a visual emptiness but he had faith that Myst would feel the squeeze.

From his peripherals, though, Myst’s purple chamber toxified further. She watched the world she wanted while self-destructing within, hoping to melt Ruby from existence. NIGHTMARE, LACK, DOOM, and DIMINISHMENT. All were hunger-adjacent, that which Myst knew would harm a Shugarrian the most.

“Hurt me all you like,” Ruby said. “But your heart is right here. Enjoy your final moments with it. Feel the fright through your only organ before I snatch it from you.”

“It’s not working…” Swishy gasped to Trey.

“We may have to go back down there.”

“It’s poisoned.”

“Obviously but—”

Trey gritted his teeth, at a loss for what to do for Myst.

Wrathraven feathers gathered around Ruby’s mouth and neck, saving her from the fumes.

“Now then…that heart. Where in all this nothing did you move it to?”

Ruby piano’d her empty hand, slight wind currents shooting from each movement. With her other hand she reached into her skirt, her pocket, and gripped The High Chasm heart.

“Get ready,” Trey said.

Swishy nodded and grabbed onto Trey, ready to warp.

(…)

[Adieu].

But the boys didn’t need to warp after Ruby. From the collarbone, they saw Myst’s heart beyond the veil of her body.

Myst had a set system for this, too, using the spider webs that she’d established around The High Chasm. Swishy was keen on the movements of his second heart and its path through Myst’s silk-webbed architecture.

“It’s outside, look!” Swishy pointed with the rake. The Znitchy binding glowed, and that’s how Swishy knew he was right.

“Cool, let’s go!”

Trey jumped off the collarbone and two of the Sling-ravens landed underneath him, allowing Trey to wear them like a pair of flight boots. Swishy flew himself alongside the third bird, his security guard.

Ruby finished her warp—within arm’s reach of the heart.

Swishy swiftly interrupted with mid-flight rake thrusts, Znitchy yelling die in time with each one.

But Ruby was agile, fast, and when Swishy finally thought he’d had her—she vanished.

Upward they all went. Ruby, the boys, and the Sling-ravens flew toward The High Chasm peak. The battle was returning to The Last Straw once more where Myst was web-pulleying the heart. She, too, flew along as a smoke, half human and half gas, trying to not be too far from the heart. Swishy read her fatigue. And the purple corrosion bloomed like a disease in Myst’s ether.

“Don’t worry about me!” Myst gasped out. “I’m no baby.”

Swishy turned his gaze from Myst and held fast to Znitchy.

That’s right, the rake said. Murder first and are-you-okay platitudes second.

The boy was both happy for an ally and relieved that he didn’t need to carry the burden of rage for himself.

Ruby warped again. And this time Swishy pointed to where he wanted to go, and his Sling-raven companion threw him upward. The scarecrow launched through the sky, rake-first, anticipating Ruby’s endpoint.

The woman reappeared—but twisted away, talented broom-rider that she was, and grasped at the web-rising heart. A wind extended her reach with a vacuum force that grabbed the heart, successfully slowing it down.

Still, Myst’s shadows instantly subsumed the core, disappearing it into another part of herself.

“Fine, then,” Ruby said. “Patience wins the day.” And then she angled her flight at Swishy.

They locked eyes, Swishy a point-blank wind blast, something explosive and fast.

But Ruby only smirked. “Don’t flinch, my boy. I don’t bite. I’m just hungry.” She snapped her fingers in Swishy’s face and portals surrounded them—one through which Ruby vanished through, and others that bubbled with threats.

[Pile].

His rake, head, wings, and heart all split apart—while the heart was disguised in a grouping of straw, a countermeasure against a sudden theft.

Phoosh! Black energy burst forth, shadowclaw-shaped flames. The spirits viciously cawed at their birth, aiming at Swishy first—and when they missed, they went straight toward the most important target: Myst’s heart.

[Scarecrow]—Swishy reformed in a hurry, but this slowed him down. He knew he was in for a tricky set-up.

Ruby snapped her fingers again and several more portals opened between the gaps in Myst’s webbing. They appeared in ascending order, chasing after the upward progression of The High Chasm heart.

Each portal released several shadowclaw-shaped ghosts—and thankfully, the Sling-ravens were around to impede the attacks.

Impatience crept into Ruby’s brow but she took a look at the ascending heart and found calm. Swishy knew why. There was only so much farther to go. Myst’s webs were almost near The High Chasm’s peak, and Ruby’s territory was unexplored terrain for her. The crew would have no choice but to make a stand.

[Zlide].

Trey took over, scooping Swishy up. And when the scarecrow was ejected from the portals, the Sling-raven boy toss commenced again.

He scaled through Ruby’s traps with confidence, knowing things would work out if he reached her. He had to know. He had to believe. Along the way he slashed away the portal phantoms ahead of him—while the Sling-ravens handled the ones at his rear. With ease, he arrived near the settlement’s peak, watching Myst’s heart rise through the last of the web pulley.

When he and Ruby exchanged looks, fright sizzled through him.

The curl of blackwheat in him was only a precursor of the Ruby terror to come.

Myst was below them, a giant arachnid, her gaze focused on the webbing. She held her slender hands up like an orchestral conductor. She seemed unfazed for now, managing her silk lines. But she was bothered. Her shaky webs told Swishy everything.

The heart hung upon its trembling, uncertain string, ripe for the taking.

“Delicious…” Ruby’s seated posture on her broom was relaxed as ever. Darkness loved her. Darkness came easily to her. And Ruby now engorged with it as she concocted her next violence. “A delicious fruit indeed.”