SWISHY HAD ARRIVED AT THE END OF EVERYTHING.
There was no going back to the dark nor was there a rewind to the start.
Swishy thought about everybody that brought him this far. The Straw-bound, the kid-crows, Sling, Myst, Trey. When Swishy first arrived to Straw City, setting his journey into motion, he didn’t always know what he was fighting for. His heart was abstract then. His chasm was too. Within his chest was a mix of confusion and hurt. There was also joy. But none of it was sustained. The gains he’d claimed were without fail taken by others. So much accomplishment marred by theft. And the scourge of entitlement, a cornucopia of it.
Yet they claimed he was nothing—with his abilities, his magic, his kindness.
The curses were wrong.
Ruby, too, was wrong.
The Last Straw…Swishy was back. Alone, this time.
He’d traveled far. There were changes that he’d undergone that he wouldn’t trade for anything. In such a short time on Cearth, he’d acquired attachments, accessories, and items that solidified his sense of self. A black wing and a chasm. A gold wing and a gold-woven Timbs. His rake. The words of knowledge and power that he’d thus far collected. And a heart—multiple, in fact.
His torch of a rake was tattered, revealing inner frays of blackness within its split hairs. Like the silvered hairs of the oldest humans, Swishy regarded his blackwheat as the result of aging. The responsibilities that he’d carried inside were heavier than any weapon—or enchanted gardening implement. Worlds in miniatures floated across the sky, adding to his immense duties. The skies were peppered with the satellite worlds that Ruby summoned from the ether.
It was the chasm now that roiled and roiled.
It roared.
It screamed.
And it urged him forward.
There was no going back when there were lives to save and lands to secure.
He only had to go through a new Myst to achieve it…
It was terrifying, knowing what he could lose, and acknowledging how easily Ruby could undo him.
Swishy was 90 percent chasm and 10 percent heart. Inside, he could tell that his cardiac nub was protected in a cocoon of Trey’s [Heart Armor] or Swishy’s rendition of it. The spiritual casing was a technique he’d co-opted to keep himself steady as he embraced the darkness within.
Riding through the dark was something he’d done since birth. Now, though, he finally acquired techniques to see him through, to keep sufficient contact to—if not others—then who he was a person, or aspiring person, or whatever his mind fancied that he was.
A bird, a boy, a god. It all depended on his needs and the needs of others.
Meanwhile another technique that ran through him, one from the pain and the shadows that far outweighed the protective [Heart Armor].
The letters, the curses, and the serpentine form of agony that it burst forth…
V-o-O-d-o-O-o-o-o.
It was contained, a lizard-y presence poking from one gourd eye or the other. Swishy had learned from the best how to keep gloom at a simmer.
“I see you brought a plus one,” Ruby said. “I have friends too.”
Ruby’s trinity words had reappeared. DEATH-TYRANNY-ENVY snaked around her body as floating eels, their smoke clouding her face in a suffocating cloud. HUNGER had come as her human inheritance, as a stomach sick child within. But the other words were earned. She’d won them through life. Cearth had a sense of humor, telling all its jokes through mirrors.
“Perhaps we’re twins,” Ruby joked.
The notion made the boy stomach-sick, his soul’s rendition of nausea.
“I’m a boy trying to have heart, and this…thing is what happens sometimes.”
“You. It’s you.”
“It hurts is what it is.”
“I know, I know all too well.”
Swishy wanted to say No. Even Znitchy braced in his hands, the wheat coils tightening. But he knew that Ruby had a point.
Pain floats—it just did.
And the slightest trigger had made Ruby’s agony rise to the surface of her attention. The woman’s body and soul throbbed from the condensed ache of HUNGER in her belly. Like a doll-in-a-doll toy that Swishy had seen in a Straw City gift shop, Ruby contained the small girl inside and that girl held onto the ache. The child was thin, shaky, crumpled-over. The starved intent was a continuously exploding bomb that reverberated through every inch of Ruby.
But her inner darkness propped that girl up for the moment. Still, she was uncertain. Now that her pain was assuaged, she worried and fussed over her belly. Was it still empty? When would it constrict again? Hurt was gone but it would return, it had to. When, though? When, when, when?
In Swishy’s world, as in Ruby’s, joy became worry.
She’d just become Myst. But now…she was hurting again.
The scarecrow mourned for her curse.
“Agony…” Swishy stared into his palm, watching the voodoo vapors glide across his tiny hand. “It’s strong stuff.”
“See? We have so much in common. And such a handle on the darkness. Perhaps you should’ve helped me all along. What’s so bad about loss of heart anyway? It only leads you to a familiar dusk—and then you’ll be better. And once you’re better, you’ll enjoy the heart you’ve spent. The returns, the gains, the beauty. There’s a world for us to make to our liking. Create worlds with me. It’s a fun game. See how the islands twirl around us? These worlds dance for me. And they’ll dance for you, too. Please, Swishy, set down that rake…and lift your heart.”
“No, no, you’re getting the prongs.”
“How vicious of you. Are you sure there’s a heart in there?”
“Who knows? But if I didn’t. If I was all chasm, all abyss…then that’s better for what I have to do to you, yeah?”
Ruby’s grin slashed from one ear to the other.
“We’re so alike,” she cackled, her fist clenching around that wide-wide broom of black bristles and world-bending ambition. “Wow, wow, wow, what a disgusting world this is for me to have a son like you.”
Ruby made a sweeping motion with her broom.
The wind rustled around each of their feet, the debris looping around them both in immense arcs, a fighting arena almost, a ring.
Swishy versus Ruby. Bird versus woman. Scarecrow versus wraith.
“Are you ready for these?” Swishy raised Znitchy, its wild darkness flaming over its sunbright tips.
The winds intensified, a grayed dome encasing the two in a diorama of the red-orange-honey garden.
“Boy, focus. You’re dying now. And I want you to know every moment of it.”
Her ample broom enlarged, shadowy bristles growing among the blackwheat.
[Clean Sweep].
Ruby swept fast, winds guiding her hands to unnatural speed. Her hands blurred, more black flame than skin.
Swishy, dark boy that he was, had already felt the blackwheat of his skin—and the curse-filled chasm inside—stretch and stretch and stretch.
(…)
INFILTRATION—thorough and terrifying.
The gales were swift and unavoidable, blasting Swishy head-on.
Swishy braced himself, knowing there was nowhere to run. The wind dome had sealed him in. Boom! His gourd reeled back. He hurriedly jammed his rake into the ground as an anchor. Straw sprouts shot up around his ankles and tied him down. He lowered his stance and set himself firmly upon his gold-straw Timbs.
“Hold steady, boy. This is just the start!”
Ruby swept and swept and swept.
The blasts landed flush against Swishy.
Winds found their way inside Swishy and loosened his weaves from the inside out. The troublesome part of Ruby’s attack came from its cleansing, its targeting of shadows. Swishy heard his chasm screeched from the inside, their outcries melding together in an atrocious static. His straw and shadowed anatomy were pulled apart as easily as an oven-fresh cookie.
[Scarecrow].
He pushed the technique through his body, his mind holding to the form. Winds drove through him, undoing his insides, but the boy’s straw continuously weaved and crisscrossed and strengthened. He nullified the damage by using [Scarecrow] at a constant clip. Every few seconds, Swishy activated it again. He kept at it, maintaining the spell as a heartbeat.
Don’t think, just do it and keep doing it. Hearts already do this and so will I…
He coached himself through the stress—while Ruby taunted him.
“You’re breaking. I can hear it. Every crack, every split, every tear. Let’s see how long you can keep this up.”
Then she disappeared in a trail of dark smoke.
No adieu spell, no warp of any sort.
Swishy glanced at her silhouette in the wind dome, merged into the air.
Now that Swishy was alone in the dome without the enemy before him, Ruby’s figure flickered in and out of his vision as she spun through the wind. The wind dome ceased seeming like an arena. Now that Ruby was gone, Swishy felt caged.
The winds howled with its natural sounds—and then spiritual ones too. Wraiths. Gasping faces were seen in the wind walls, a strobe of predation whose leery eyes picked Swishy apart.
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“Now, my dears, let us eat.”
The wind cage constricted.
And the closer the boundaries got to Swishy, the stronger the winds became. He was pulled and pulled. And he was locked in place, concentrating on maintaining the [Scarecrow] spell. He wasn’t having the hardest time keeping himself together but found that as his weaves were destroyed, they were remade in darkness.
Without a full heart, staving off the blackwheat was harder.
And it didn’t help that the autumnal garden was steamrolled by Ruby’s wind. The wood-chipper crush of the trees was horrendous. The sounds of broken bark intermingled with the soul deaths of the tree spirits, of the animals inside, of the curses that’d taken residence in the once gorgeous but now broken nature.
The wind mouths lunged from the closing walls at Swishy.
Swishy ducked and side-stepped and held his rake up. The wraiths managed stray bites of his shoulders, legs, and arms. They aimed for his wings, too, but he pressed them flush against his back, protecting his most precious lifeline.
The boy executed a lowered stance, tucked-in wings, and condensing soul.
He waited, building power.
Ruby was at the top of the dome, gazing at the HEAVEN above. Her arms were held open in a hug as she broom-rode through her world-killing wind.
The walls closed. The wraiths leaped out.
[Swish Cyclone]—but an upgraded version.
The boy fluttered his wings, beginning with a hover.
And then he swung the rake in tandem with a circling flight. Golden force shot from all around him, the flight-boosted attack smashing the wraiths.
As the wraiths were cut through or blasted backward, the winds weakened, revealing patches in the grayed-out cage.
“Don’t give up now,” Ruby instructed, now flying far above. “Hunger doesn’t stop when the prey runs.”
The patchy wind arena split apart into several separate tornados, small and dense, with more spin speed than before. Each form released buzzsaw screams, confirming Ruby’s insight, that hunger required food, and that capturing Swishy was the most important thing there was.
Swishy launched himself to the skies, thrusting his rake at Ruby.
But a curtain of wrathraven feathers impeded his path, a wing-shaped shield protecting Ruby.
“Now, Swishy, we’ve been through this before.”
And then the plumage relinquished its shape. Feathers fell upon Swishy, drowning him in the soft crush of darkness.
A personal night, a blind hell.
Swishy’s anxiety ramped up as he sensed the wind tornados rising in pillars. Their howling fury telegraphed their attack paths but that made the boy’s worries worse. The unsophisticated savagery introduced the strongest notes of FEAR into his chasm.
His chest swelled, shriveled, and then exploded in force once more.
Winds—the tornadoes broke through the plumage. Blind in their progress, Swishy was lucky to avoid a full blow.
But several more wraith-nados that locked onto Swishy. One came from below, careening and swaying toward him.
The eye of the storm…there was no other choice.
Swishy dove head-on into the tornado’s barrel. Loud. So loud. And it was murky inside, a harsh mix of slate and blackness. But he navigated the curving path as best he could, avoiding the spiraling inner wall. Stray wraiths still lashed out from the inner wall, chomping at Swishy as he flew down toward the tornado’s end.
[Gold Spiral]—the boy twisted with his rake, aided by his wings and the tornado itself.
The wraiths, once more, were kept from a full bite.
Swishy escaped through the tornado’s bottom, ceasing his spiral.
He tucked his wings and arms, rocketing onward.
Ruby flew above him, tracing him closely. She flew over a wind current, allowing the tornados to toss her. She gained strides of momentum with push after push after push. Each gale played volleyball with her. Flying upon the wraith-nados’ power, she held the broom in her hands and prepared a soft wind-up.
Swishy knew what was coming but his mind had no instant solution to the attack.
[Clean Sweep]—that darkness-killing game came in a single thick current.
Meanwhile, the other tornados positioned themselves at Swishy’s side, turned horizontally, aiming their inner barrels at the boy.
Chaos filled Swishy’s vision—the grays of the tornados, the clear blunt death of Ruby’s sweep attack, and the irregular smear of autumn colors from the city’s colonized nature.
Stress, stress, stress. The combined assault pulled at his straw, forcing him to proc the [Scarecrow] spell with more frequency. Instead of every three-and-a-half seconds, it was every two.
The attacks grazed him, and in seconds they’d completely reach him. The next moments were lived in slow motion as Swishy sought safe passage.
Swishy’s hands blackened, a dark aura crawling over his fingers. The serpent of his gloom then snaked around his rake handle, spiraling upward, infecting the gleaming tines. His gold-straw—even on his wing and rake—began to acquire a blackwheat sheath.
Just be, he reminded himself. And what he was was dark. Blackwheat consumed him, adorning him in a shell of pain. And there was a spell he’d learned as part of his shadowed acceptance.
It was time to reactivate [Scarecrow].
He didn’t.
Swishy was driven by the chasm, by the V-o-O-d-o-O-o-o-o that collected in him, toward another method.
[Mist]…
A further release…
Both the tornados and Ruby’s [Clean Sweep] clashed at Swishy’s location.
But Swishy was a mist, as close to nothing as he could become, and his particles spread around as a cursed pollen. The memory he replicated came not from his constant exposure to Myst, but from their heart exchange, those first moments where she flew across the sky as a graceful, childish smoke.
Loosen, loosen, he told himself.
And he succeeded, even navigating the trickiness of rendering down his gourd and wings and heart.
Thankfully, the curses, while volatile, were fans of wholeness. While apart, the curses eagerly clung to Swishy’s soul, anxious for him to call them back.
His fog landed upon the ground, blown everywhere by wind.
[Scarecrow].
He spoke it; he screamed it; he prayed it.
Return me, return ALL of me!
His blasted smoke traveled in reverse, taking the exact path the Ruby gales had sent them.
Swishy gathered into a dark cloud, molding himself back to form. His particles were shaky, each one riddled with stress from his brush against Ruby’s aura. Though Swishy had avoided direct damage, the psychic stress wouldn’t leave him. He felt Ruby’s laughter throughout his soul.
He pulled himself together, though, collecting his dark parts and all his earned pain.
Ruby levitated above.
“See his wholeness? See that which you could have for yourselves? Now harvest.”
She snapped her fingers.
And the black gates broadened around him, predators responding to the dinner call.
(…)
Portals opened everywhere. Snitchtalon and wrathraven heads burst out to snap at Swishy. The chomping and clicking of beaks joined the cawing cacophony as Swishy proceeded. He kept his flight low, skimming the surface.
The birds whooshed over him, sealing the skies.
Within seconds, the clouds, the treetops, and the peripheral view of the garden disappeared. Eclipse was enforced all around. He found himself in a pitch strobe of wind and feathers.
Swishy read the paths of the souls and determined their form, that of a birdcage. The shape was flowing and consistent, and the gaps through the ‘bars’ revealed squared-off patches of night. Ruby settled around the bars, grazing her hand around the perimeter. The birds cooed as their queen’s hand passed over them, quivering in delight. After she touched them, their eyes reddened from the blackwheat, from their desire to please Ruby.
The boy imagined a weapon—and his body provided it: blackwheat elongated from his forearm into a rake.
A few straw sprites had answered the call, returning their light to the weapon. Short on gold, Swishy still found bravery in the soft flares of his tips.
We lost some soldiers, that’s for sure. Znitchy was a little detached about it for Swishy’s liking.
Memories of each death zoomed through Swishy’s gourd. He shook his head.
That many? Damn. We gotta stop getting that ass kicked!
Swishy held his rake in defense. His wings went taut, ready to propel him out of danger.
“Good birds, good little darlings.” Ruby raised a hand in the air, summoning portals in the birdcage gaps. Black particles charged through the air, gathering in the gateways. The energy remained equally distributed in the portals, revealing no tell as to where the attack would come from.
[Black Blast], Ruby said.
Swishy twirled his rake over his head from the golds and blacks that radiated from its arcs, straw forming throughout the colored paths. The boy kept the rake spinning overhead, creating layers and layers and straw. His [Straw Shield] had evolved. The glimmering straw provided protection and light, which temporarily steadied Swishy’s nerves.
Several blasts released, impacting the dome. Then a crinkling sound of burning straw continued thereafter.
But Swishy kept the shield sustained, repairing it, never letting up on the defense.
Ruby was outside, laughing, and the snitchtalon cage laughed with her, glorifying their queen, cannibalizing her perceived enjoyment.
More blasts charged.
Swishy found that the blackwheat of his newest layers of straw far outweighed the gold. His rake was losing light within the tangled mess of darkness that projected from it.
He was the poster boy for going through hell. But nobody knew what that really looked like. Because its base was solitude. And that aloneness was protected within his darkening dome, casting him within a self-made abyss.
This is it, this is it, this is it…
His mantra, his coaching of self.
It meant a lot of things to him and saying it seemed to make him feel better.
This is it, this is it, this is it…
“It is it!” Ruby laughed. Her tone was maniacal. “All together now!”
The birdcage formation intensified their flight to a tornado rush. And the portals brimmed with bomb-like energy. The leash to this orchestra of pain was bound to the tip of Ruby’s tongue.
“Now die.”
A commingling of birds and blasts stormed upon Swishy and his dome.
The boy undid the shield, the straw taking a reverse course of its weaves. All straw used was bound to be recycled. And that security hut then joined the rake, enlarging it. Most of it was blackwheat, but it condensed within the rake handle, pushing the scant remains of gold to the topmost layer.
It was a gilded rake, terror within, but brightness on its surface that took the several tines, condensing them into three mains ones. A trident. Gold. Impure. But gold nonetheless.
The weapon’s immense aura staved off the snitchtalons, blinding them.
And the blasts, too, were melting away before they reached Swishy.
With the cage gone, the golden trident freely emitted its energy, bathing the area in light.
The tremendous glow gleamed against Ruby’s skin. She arched an eyebrow, considering the scene. A hand traveled to her chin as she was deep in thought.
“I haven’t changed my mind. You will die. Allow me a moment to better engineer your end.”
“No.”
Swishy, in this moment of utter violence, recalled a happy memory. A triumph in gold. He reminisced about his first solo battle with a wrathraven. Znitchy took in the feed and crafted it to specifications, fine-tuning the immaterial into the deadly. Soul to soul, Swishy and Znitchy aligned, pooling their light together into divine refinement.
The boy threw his trident at Ruby, and in its momentum extended into a spear of light.
“GOLDEN SCARECROW RETURNS TO HELL!”
As the prongs extended toward Ruby, she smiled. She lifted her hand, summoning a geyser of feathers. Wrathraven wings conjured from the ground and blocked the trident. But the rake pressed against the plumage shield with unnatural drive.
[Goldie]—a couple of Swish-minis split from the rake handle and pressed it forward. By the second, more and more minis grew from the end of the handle to add force. Together, they joined in the trident press. They were buddies in murder, so much so that the prongs poked through the feather wall.
Ruby casually tapped her finger on the sharp tines.
A drop of blood ran over her hand.
“So it’s like that, huh? Crush them.”
The feather wall relented, allowing the thrown trident through.
Ruby’s plumage crashed downward as a massive waterfall, the feathers pouring toward Swishy and his gold fairies as a leaden wave.
Together, the scarecrow and his parts were carried away, losing each other within the plumage. The density of feathers made it impossible to move. Swishy was lost, unable to tell where he was. During his tumble, he concentrated on the trident—his weapon, his torch, his flag.
But he careened onward, catching a glimpse of it, losing view of it, and then catching it again. Each fleeting sight only made his panic worse, especially as the trident reverted to its unpowered state. It was once more a rake, the gold-straw binding unfurling, allowing the packed-in blackwheat to lengthened into additional teeth.
The feathers are harvesting me!
“What, how?”
It’s wrathraven feathers, they absorb everything!
“Do the thing!”
I’m going to need you to be clearer!
Swishy firmed his grip on the rake handle, clarifying the mental image.
I got it, I got it, I got it!
And then Znitchy said it countless times, dispersing the rake form into dozens of Swish-minis. Instantly, the sprites glided from the dark drowning to come.
“Znitchy, where are you?”
In all of them, just like you.
“Okay good, drive them please.”
That’s the idea!
But now Swishy was point blank with Ruby, her wrathraven plumage—and with no weapon in hand.
“Cute fairies,” Ruby sucked at her bleeding finger.
“Wait til I tell you where they got their looks from.”
Swishy laughed. Ruby laughed. But one was uncomfortable while the other imagined a future of the other party dead.
And that image was being called forth through the oceanic feathers. Near instantly, the ruffled texture then glossed over, smoothing into black lacquer. The drowning of fluff became a wall of hands.
The hands were giant and smooth. Their nails were in perfect arches, the natural light slashing across them. Ruby’s nails were done similarly, too, in gleaming red polish.
“Well, boy? Run.”
Swishy took off as the hands swatted after him, slamming repeatedly onto the ground. As he ran from the smash attempts, he found himself far from the straw sprites.
“Oh no!”
“Yes, ” Ruby said as her shadow hands, ceasing pursuit of Swishy, went after the vulnerable.
Groups of straw sprites were snatched from the sky.
Throughout the land, the miniature Swish-lights were snuffed.
Visions of each crushed fairy fed into the boy’s mind.
“I see, I see,” Ruby said from atop her broom, staring down at her cascade of black hands. “So you can die this way, too. Just like me. Every bird, every scarecrow, everything you’ve taken from me…I’ve seen it all. I’ve died thousands of times. I’ve been eaten, crushed, and run through. But you…who knew that such a curse would run in the family.”
A shadow hand lobbed a Swish-mini to Ruby.
And the witch, urged by her belly’s HUNGER, caught it in her mouth and swallowed him whole. Her inner girl mimicked the gesture, too, hopping on her tippy-toes, seeking those blessed crumbs.
Swishy, submerged within the feathers and hands, writhed from the image fed into his psyche. Red lips. Teeth and tongue. And the crush of her gullet. He found himself—his fairy self—in pieces, falling into Ruby’s curse-filled body.
The hall of wraiths along her esophagus laughed at his descent.
His Swish-mini fell downward—endlessly, endlessly, endlessly…