NOTHINGNESS, EMPTINESS, BOTTOMLESSNESS, VOID.
The boy was an expert in these concepts but learned new aspects of them every second of his life.
Once more, in the face of [Black Blast] rays and the clutch of Ruby’s wind, these were the intents that tore through the shadows, scarring each soul. As Swishy waited for the end of Straw Village, he meditated on his relationship with pain. It seemed like there was something to reconsider with each experience. He often felt like worn wicker, but the fatigue was important to go through, even as that which he built—and the loved ones he pledged to protect—cowered behind him amid those dark wrathraven rays and the tenacious winds.
But the end wasn’t here.
Swishy was a god.
Lives were his business to save.
[Mist]…he put his all into it. Before the great destruction, he was stripping himself of body and home.
“Go back to the ether, please, go safe. You can come back later when it’s not so crazy but please don’t let yourself get destroyed.”
The boy felt a little embarrassed, talking to the land. The rocks and things.
But to his surprise, there was planetary feedback. The vibrations were in his palm, the contact point through which he pumped the [Mist] spell into the surface. Dark smoke pooled beneath him, rippling ever outwards in an exponentially growing radius. A puddle, a pond, and then a lake—and even beyond that. All at once, Swishy sensed the island listening to his wishes. The ground crumbled inward, softening like a milk-dampened cookie. The Straw Village’s solid parts melted into black particles—a dew, a floating humanity.
Mist, mist, mist—it was happening.
Swishy, to his utter surprise, was doing it.
The scarecrow marveled at how his surroundings shrank away. The wishwillows receded into saplings and sprouts and patches of soil. Roots that bulged through the ground retracted their girth and left flat plains in their wake. Flowers closed their petals before slinking downward in a coating of shadow. Rocks became sand. And the pebbles became unit-less, nameless—but even Swishy felt these waving to him, saying bye.
He radiated a smiling warmth—then shooed the pebble into the ether.
No time. Apocalypse was nigh.
When the shadows cleared, only seeds remained. He dutifully collected these into a thicker mist, a pocket of ether. Swishy knew the value of seed.
“That’s right, everyone. Put your toys away. Everything bright, everything you weaved, just tuck it in for now. I’ll hold it for you. I hold a lot of pain. And I can hold these charms too. You guys trust me, yeah?”
[Trust], a surprising ingredient of the fog.
Swishy’s spell was undoing the Straw-bound too. Abyss was their goal. Their prayer, their wish, the request that they fed into their straw-woven charms was to become nothing. Nothingness couldn’t be killed. And if they were successful in disabusing themselves of human logic, of the permanence and unchangeability of nothingness, then their souls would be preserved.
The Straw-bound activated [Pile], a spell they were already good at, and then [Mist]. They copied Swishy as best they could. Everyone squeezed their Swish charms, feeling the connection to their god, studying the nuances of his soul as he transitioned from straw to pile, from boyhood to abyss.
The adult scarecrows were the first to leave their bodies. And they were speaking in kind cadences, squeezing their voices of the fear that their souls were certainly steeped in.
Kids, kids, it’s okay, let it go. The night is dark so we must bed ourselves.
What if we don’t come back? The kid-crows protested.
Do you not believe?
I don’t know.
It’s okay to not know but let us do the knowing for you. That’s why we’re the adults.
The conversation went on, starting from Swish-speak but then transitioning to metaphysical telepathy as the adult scarecrows reverted with [Pile].
Through their urging, their reassurances, the kid-crows released their bodies.
They broke everything down, even unraveling their Swish charms one weave at a time.
Swishy was sorrowful when he felt this. For these moments of transition, his connection to the scarecrows wavered. His head filled with an inconsistent mess of dead air, clear telepathic, and static.
Piles of community straw formed all around Swishy as the souls floated over his shoulder, watching the blast eclipse.
One of the souls was particularly strong, Amie, who’d used her willpower to float her purple ribbon and tie it around Swishy’s stem. Keep this for me. Thank you, big brother. Thanks for everything.
Swishy didn’t know what to say. Because he was shy. Because he was earnest. Every moment of his life, Swishy wanted to dive into the world. Into food, into flower petals, into the open arms of his friends. Words came to him when they came. But they didn’t now.
You’re welcome and thank you are proper responses. And that’s just polite, impersonal, but completely acceptable.
He knew that voice anywhere.
“Sling!”
Yes, dear, I was here too, talisman-ing the village.
“Are you…dissolved yet?”
I am, yes. I’m safe. Or I’m what passes for safe around here.
The doom rays were seconds away.
“I’ll fix this.”
You say you shall, so you shall. I’m only grateful that you’re here, that you’re trying. I have no more sweets for you, but take these, a small return of what you’ve offered to me.
NURTURE, CARE, RECIPROCITY.
“What’s this last one? I haven’t seen it.”
I do for you. You do for me. We do for we.
“Whoa, that’s beautiful.”
Sling chuckled, then her soul signature went faint, settling into the abyss.
There was one last thing Swishy could offer his supporters.
Swishy T-posed before the Straw Guardian. This he left intact. Their straw totem was the village’s most important charm of all. He could’ve broken it down. But sometimes hope was impractical. Hope, when one didn’t desperately need it, often resembled nonsense. Stubbornness. And that was okay with Swishy.
T-posing with the giant just felt good.
Even as Swishy’s body subsumed into the fog, he kept the shape with his soul. Blue aura tattooed the air in the scarecrow form. The Straw-bound swam around his cross of soul, flowing with him. They were together. They were one. Each person had entrusted their soul to Swishy.
Then came the time to die.
A shower of blasts consumed the area, touching down, and phasing through the ghostly island.
I’m doing it! It went through, it went through! We’re air! We’re darkness!
Many were headed straight to the Straw Guardian, shooting through its head and neck and shoulders and chest. Each beam was filled with Ruby’s favorite intents, the DEATH-TYRANNY-ENVY that so sought to reduce everything joyous in Swishy’s life. But the souls of the Straw-bound were intact. And that massive spirit of Straw Guardian seemed undisturbed. The terrestrial shell, though, broke apart, scattering in chunks.
Straw Village had also disappeared in the right spots, fortunate holes in its constitution as it dissolved from Swishy’s [Mist] technique.
But amid the Straw-bound, he’d truly returned to the dark. A collection of souls. A unity in the dark. He flashed back to his pre-birth days, back when he didn’t know what a scarecrow was, back before he’d come into the world with a chasm in his chest and bloom at the tip of his fingers.
Mass dissolution. Safety.
The blasts were over. Evening returned, the dark ray moment returning the indigo sky. But the second part of the cataclysm was in motion. The regained their visibility, the gale chains that dragged the floating village down to the surface.
A crash-landing was imminent, Ruby’s [Agony of a Girl] drawing the island toward The Last Straw.
Swishy shut his eyes. No countdown. No freakout. With a T-pose and a daydream of their future wholeness, he continued Straw Village’s softening.
A haze, a fog, an unbreakable steam.
Anything but hardness, anything but harsh impact.
The boy opened his eyes—the impact was now.
His mind went boom, crush, whoosh—
But there was silence. Mushrooming gas that bloomed outward from his area. The sky island, that prospective meteor, was successfully softened into a cloud.
There was one casualty of the collision.
Straw Guardian had never fully misted. Half straw and half phantom, only the ghostly part survived. But even that too began to wither and flake away. The disparate mix of straw and soul floated along like wind-blasted driftwood.
Straw Village was gone, fading. The boy felt the scarecrows, each one a tickle against his soul. His spirit was shifting, folding, nudged by the presence of others. The Straw-bound had held themselves together well. Dissolved enough for cloudiness but together enough to inconvenience his floatation.
[Mist]—they’d done it.
And the [Pile] part was a given, weave-masters that they’d become. Their straw, the bodies they’d come to love were gone, though. The grains of themselves blew within Ruby’s winds, destroyed, unclaimable.
Silence, doubts, disease. Even Amie’s purple ribbon loosened from Swishy’s stem and flew into the wind, flapping away like an origami shadowclaw.
The ribbon went to where the sky island once lingered, then disappeared into the clouds.
No light, no lingering glow of the beauty he remembered.
One less star in the Straw City sky, and a ton more darkness.
(…)
A visit to the dark.
His dark.
Since Swishy’s scarecrow birth, he wished for the comforting abyss. Never in his wildest dreams did he expect to tour guide a host of loved ones through the blackness. Within the skies, they stared at the oppressive world. The Heavens were bound in wind, each island no better than The Stormcellar. Ruby, too, was encased in a tornado wall, the same impenetrable one that siphoned the shadows from Myst. She now did that work on the rubble of her home and garden, chasing down the curses. Wind wraiths scooped at the blackness with their hands and mouths, forcing them into Ruby’s domain.
The destruction swept around her. She was screeching, raging, and utterly lost as to what to do with the shattered pieces. Now that Swishy had apparently disappeared, she had nowhere to direct her anger. Upturned roots, stones, and fleeing curses.
[Agony of a Girl] was trickier to wrangle than before.
There was everyone’s anguish to contend with now.
Next to Ruby, looming over her personal barrier, was the scarecrow altar. Blackened, ancient, supreme—it watched the struggles mere meters from its stake. Nobody had anything to offer. Cearth had been squandered in its presence. The upturned roots grasped for grounding but there nothing to hold onto.
For as close to the brink as Swishy and the others were taken, he’d made progress. It was a worse world overall. But worse for Ruby, finally. The girl inside her was bewildered, reaching through Ruby’s stomach at the litter on the ground. Stones, flowers, mushrooms, leaves. But her hand phased through. She was locked from the world.
Caged and hungry, she cried.
The winds intensified. The storms of HEAVEN were merciless. And through the nourishment of Ruby’s outrage, they were unlimited.
“Horrible…” Swishy moaned as a dark cloud, lashed and separated by the errant winds. But the witch-brewed weather gave Swishy a brief timeout, one last check in with himself before taming these volatile conditions.
A return to the dark was the best he and Straw Village could currently hope for.
Even though Swishy was brought here under duress, it was important for him to make his village comfortable. It was the least he could do. They were a physical mist but Swishy sensed that they were transported elsewhere, that he belonged to another realm similar to the [Zlide] realm, the [Adieu] realm, his soul.
He’d become that home for Myst, an altar for her. Maybe she was back. Maybe she’d recovered enough for a brief warp into his spiritual realm. It was worth a try.
“Myst, Myst, Mysty,” he called.
His cosmos filled with expectancy—not of himself but of the village he ferried in that great fog.
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They were waiting for their tour guide.
Everyone in the darkness practically chanted for her, stretching their particles into scarecrow shapes. A summoning ritual even though they were sure that wasn’t how it worked. But making others feel them was their talent, something they learned.
A skittering presence through the mist, tiny feet, eight of them.
The arachnid was back.
She twirled around, releasing webs through the fogginess. The nervousness stabilized, everyone going at peace as they focused on the feeling of silk that Myst emitted.
“I’ve never been welcomed by a standing ovation before. This is quite new and welcome. Yes, yes, love me, love me more.”
The scarecrows turned up their spiritual frenzy.
“Yes, thank you. Now welcome to my—well—our altar. Our straw god is rich inside. Fear not the abyss, for our god is a kind one.”
It made Swishy feel better because he never assumed these things about himself.
“I’ll settle them in here, dear Swishy. The realm will be fine. Leave them with me, nothing will go wrong.” Her silk turned into wrappings—cocoons—that ensconced the souls.
COMFORT—that intent made its return once more.
He loved that his village was calmed, but mostly was impressed by Myst’s wielding of it. The boy knew that not everybody could change. But Myst, Myst, Myst…he was glad that, if anybody, she’d begun to lean into hearty enchantments.
“Thank you, Myst.”
“I have you—as you have me.”
“Always.”
“And you have, you know, that thing.”
“Boundless magic, coolness, and smarts.”
“Yes, work in progress, never.”
“Mean.”
“Now see, I have to spell everything out, don’t I?”
A poke through his ether, Myst gently tapping a specific zone of his soul.
Ba-bump.
“No way. Already?”
“When it comes to you, Swishy, always.”
A heart again—as designed, as promised—had returned. Its thump was small. He couldn’t even feel it. But the straw in his chest shuffled slightly, ever so slightly, a movement the nature boy wouldn’t misinterpret for anything. Heart business was his business. And in no time flat he was back.
Small, vulnerable, but all he needed. Everyone worked with what they had.
What you are is everything.
At Swishy’s thought, everyone’s erratic souls steadied. Even Myst hummed a calming singsong. Swishy’s mind state, his revelation, made him as a home a gratifying place.
The mist, the mist…it was a textured place, a secretive trove of riches.
Swishy dispelled the myth of emptiness then. No hollow lived in him. No ice age. Eternal autumn bloomed inside that blessed little scarecrow, a personal heaven. And perhaps a sanctuary for others too. He hoped so. But he was doing good. His magic touch was an act of love. I-love-you…he said it with very gaze. And then came the bloom. Cloud tappers. Sky piercers. Fields and fields and fields of straw. These were just the start.
A world was much more, and in him lived in the boundless IMAGINATION to see his visions flourish.
Colors sprawled across his psyche. Leaves. Trees. Red and orange and honey and-and-and-and…
“Stop it!”
The boy dragged himself from his inspiration. Daydream time was over.
His souls, his arachnid sister, emitted smiles.
“I have to finish up.”
His mind was a field of T-poses. He pictured scarecrows and sunflowers facing the horizon. Blue shadowclaws of soul. Myst weaving a scarecrow god—Timbs, wings, and enormous rake—from silky webs and ether.
The return to the dark—he needed that.
And the world, clutched and strangled, needed him.
[Scarecrow]…Swishy didn’t know where he’d get the straw for it. The village’s straw, its guardian too, had been blasted and blown apart. But he’d been through this before. His soul would always have a place to be. There were friends in him. There were friends, too, outside of him.
Blue dots. Blue fireflies.
No—
Blue fairies.
Trey was coming through with armfuls of wheat.
Three spells were at play. [Soul], [Zpread], and [Zzt].
Electric sparks bundled the straw together in his ghostly limbs. Even as the winds blew at the tiny Treys, his voltage kept the straw in check. Each fairy strained and strained, refusing to let Ruby destroy even a strand. When one needed help, the sprite glowed, an SOS of sorts.
Myst responded, shooting silk webbing through the mist, attaching to the sprite and pulling it along. She laughed as she executed her tow service while the Trey fairy grumbled from embarrassment.
Ultimately, the [Zpread] swarm made it through the gales and into Swishy’s cloudiness. Then it was smooth sailing. Despite the haze, Trey effortlessly found his mark.
[Zzt]—static popping against Swishy’s heart.
The electric touches were constant and overlapping. His heart sizzled from each addition of [Zzt]-charged straw, a scarecrow building from his core.
Swishy imagined it was like building a snowman, a snow-crow, a snow-Swish. He searched his reserves for the pittance of wheat he’d saved from Straw Village’s vanishing. Much of what he contributed was pure soul, his gloom converting into blackwheat. But there was enough of the reds and oranges from Trey’s harvesting give him a daybreak skin tone.
The boy especially liked the small touches, the tiny buds of sunflower petals mixed into the hodgepodge of wheat. Even his curses drew toward those miniature flowers, lounging in their warmth. Swishy was back, a full scarecrow, dark inside but bright for the world.
The hive of Trey fluttered before him.
“Does this mean you’re recovered?”
“No, not at all.” Trey undid the [Zpread] merging into one soul. Whole as he was, he was no larger than Swishy’s forearm.
“You’re like a plushie.”
“I’ll slap you when I’m big again.”
“I guess, but won’t you need Trey-less Trey for that? Where’d you put him?”
“Out in The High Chasm somewhere, snoozing.”
“That’s abandonment, Trey.”
“It is but I had no other choice. We have to finish this.”
“Right, get in!”
And so Trey flew into Swishy’s gourd, staring out the window.
Myst, too, recurred in Swishy’s head, descending upside-down from a web.
Trey in one eye, Myst in another, and a community of Straw-bound in the sky. Everyone that mattered was here. He carried his love in spades.
The boy soared toward the wind wall, watching Ruby struggle to keep the shadows in. Her suction was impressive, much like when Swishy used [Scarecrow] constantly to keep himself together.
“The tables…” Trey said. “They do be turning.”
Myst laughed. “Absolutely. I know this to be a human concept, but well, she’s bleeding—in shadow bitch terms, that is.”
“That’s a good thing, right Mysty?”
“Not only is it good. It’s the only chance we’ve got.”
“Wait here,” he told the village.
No response. Just drifting nebula. But after a moment a blue spark flickered. Then multiple. Then all. They were stars, the lot of them, and that’s when Swishy knew he had to get this done.
A hand to the sky, a pledge, a promise to his Straw-bound lights.
Znitchy burst through as a brand-new rake. Reds. Oranges. And exceptional stores of black.
The winds howled from the surface.
Ruby’s notice was upon him.
And Swishy’s willfulness was upon her.
(…)
Swishy dove from the sky. He tucked his wings in, diving past the levitating islands.
Chains of wind covered the satellites as they did to Ruby. Wraith clusters of gale. What Ruby asked for was Heaven and she got it. But the Ruby touch was The Stormcellar touch, a curse of famine, of trauma, one that she’d unknowingly built all over again.
It frightened Swishy—but encouraged him too.
Chains, cages, control—it was all fear to him, Ruby hanging onto the last of her security.
The islands roamed the skies in luminous glory, adorned with the brilliance of Ruby’s [Postcard] spell. Each of them was magnificent. It was Swishy’s favorite of her spells, though he’d never attain the circumstances to tell her so. But she was an artist, through and through, and as he jackknifed through her creations he regretted his inability to praise her.
Because she was evil. Because the [Midnight] was bound to the beauty of her spells with the oppressive winds. Once the curses had entered her domain, none left. Nobody had wanted to. But now they did—and found themselves jailed. Swishy sensed it all around, the frenetic pulse, the shadows behaving as a disjointed nervous system. As bountiful as nature had become, there was no heart.
She’d taken it from The High Chasm. And now the heavens themselves, privileged, but witness to the disturbance of the battle, had become antsy.
The witch had been marked for her negligence.
And the Cearth demanded Ruby’s return on investment. She’d paid, yes, but now the land was paying more—as the curses suffered the primary burden.
Swishy wanted to live in those worlds. He’d zoomed past them but was awed by the images that flashed by him. He pictured making snow angels on her beach island. Or watching the pink horizons of her sunset scenes cast vibrant hues upon his skin. One of his favorite postcards featured shadowclaws drinking from a coconut, one that he wished to join.
But her picturesque lands had gone awry. She carried others for so long yet had never learned to live with them. The sky islands were gorgeous but desolate, taken over by writhing wraiths and hurricanes.
The shadow hands bloomed on each island in multitudes, grasping at the wind bars, seeking escape.
As Swishy soared past the worlds—dodging the arms that stretched after him, edging from the windy jowls that snapped at his limbs—he had the intense urge to save these worlds.
“I can love you better, just watch…”
“What are you saying boy?” Ruby’s voice crackled from where she stood.
“Nothing you’d understand.”
“Try me.”
But every heart he’d ever lost to her flamed in his memory. He’d done enough. He’d shown her who he was. While she’d cheated him—cheated everybody.
The boy made a beeline toward her.
Ruby snapped her fingers and the nearest sky island came after him. And it was dark. Nothing but cursed hands lifted from its surface, elongating beyond the bounds of the tornado-ing winds that encased it.
His evasion saw him through. Yet Swishy couldn’t ignore the hands that waved after him. Vines stretched out. Scarecrow silhouettes pushed from the bubbling dark, birthing themselves to make their prayers heard. Swishy sensed the change of heart. He’d progressed from a harvest to a savior.
The appendages that gravitated toward him grasped at his rake glitter, celebrating upon a mere touch of his sparks.
“Where’d you put them?” Ruby asked. “Show me your loved ones. You’re only delaying their demise.”
“I didn’t put them anywhere. They’re free.”
Ruby eyed the descending boy. His shape, his aura, his determination. Swishy sparkled—and so too did the atmosphere in his wake.
The clouds…they rolled on suspiciously.
Swishy sensed Ruby’s perceptiveness and used his black wing for more propulsion, a series of air-dashes until he was at the edge of her wind barrier. Wraiths screamed in his face. Ruby’s shadowy visage projected through the tornado, too, laughing and laughing.
“Mine are wind…and yours are air! I see, I see, how clever, how incredible.”
Swishy plunged into the wind but several wraith hands shot out and grabbed the handle, tug-of-warring with Swishy. “You don’t see a thing!”
“But I do! I see it all. Now come, AGONY!”
A wind pillar shot into the sky, aiming to place the dispersed Straw-bound into a mixer. Divide and conquer. Separate and subdue. Simple and ingenious—that was Rubella Castor.
[Black Anchor].
A stake shot into the sky, Swishy’s darkness draining from his straw as his shadow extended into a tower. It chased after Ruby’s wind, soaring after it.
“Go, go!” Swishy chanted, snatching his rake from the phantom hands.
Ruby only laughed, flexing her hand at her attack on the stars.
Crash!
An explosion of splinters as the stake reached the tornado.
Swishy’s crew were passionate watchers. Myst gasped in exaggeration as if she were watching a movie. Blue Trey leaned out Swishy’s eye, his soul sweat dripping between his rind ridges.
“You can sweat on me less!”
“Just win the fight!”
The Straw-bound stars moved on—as fast as was possible for clouds—but made good progress. They ascended, they dimmed, they floated beyond Ruby’s range.
She frowned—at the stars and another distant event.
With the racket of collusion and its shard storm littering the mess of a land, the curses lost more faith. No heart in the actions. No heart in the land. And no (detectable) heart in the straw boy.
(…)
THE LAST STRAW was an eyesore among eyesores, a sheer disaster zone.
And The High Chasm itself, while healthy, shook all over from fear. The settlement missed the heart that Ruby repurposed and used from it. Dread unraveled her influence. The waves of [Midnight] that poured through the tree city and lent their essences to Ruby now fled from the ruin, rushing away from her home and leaping from the peak.
A black waterfall rushed from The High Chasm’s peak down to the surface.
“Cowardly, unsightly…”
“And fickle?” Swishy taunted, his jack-o-lantern smile stretching nearly to the back of his head.
Her wind pushed outward and the wraith hands sumo-slapped him across the clearing.
Ruby was alone—as alone as she’d now be. There were loyal wraiths combined with the curses that she’d forced into her body. Wind had destroyed her life but now it was all that kept her together.
A black smoke fled from her as if she were on fire.
Curses—they were leaving her, too, as they’d originally left Myst. Few could make it through the wind barrier she’d protected herself with. It kept Swishy out but the curses in. More hostages. Prisoners, really.
Swishy’s heartbeat grew faster. Was it time? Could I end this?
“You got this!” Trey leaned out the eye, his little window.
Ruby in her wind barrier rose to meet Swishy.
Both parties were within the gaze of the altar, Swishy beneath the left arm and Ruby at the right.
Swishy flew at her.
Ruby opened multitudes of portals. A hundred at least. Small ones, large ones, and tons in between. Everything was in a bid to end Swishy in one shot. The black energy welled in the gates—but there was a difference. Shadows snaked away from the entrances, abandoning her.
“Oh no you don’t!” Ruby cackled.
The phantom snitches and wrathraven heads stretched from the gates, plucking curses between their beaks or suctioning them with hurricane winds. Energy gathered. The ether bombs were loaded. The portals then angled at Swishy.
Swishy allowed his soul to lead him. He descended, feeling the rays graze his shoulders and the sides of his gourd. Each narrow miss was worrisome, raising his hackles. But he was more than blackwheat. When a blast hit him too directly, his body activated a partial [Mist] on its own. The formlessness of shadow was incredible, indeed.
But Swishy glided at Ruby, unafraid, twisting away from the next volley of blasts.
The rake tips gleamed.
Ruby smiled at the threat. The threat of violence was fun for her. More bird heads harvesting the shadows, their prey wriggling in their mouths like worms. More dissolution into weaponized gates. More blasts, the portals beginning to disappear, spending themselves from the intensified flurry.
Swishy twisted and twisted and twisted, creating a sidelong tornado, a drill. The wind around him emitted golden spirals as the rake itself deflected the blasts, splitting them apart, deflecting them.
A burst of speed came on the tail end of the maneuver.
Suddenly, he was in Ruby’s face, a hand-over-hand grip on the rake, ready to plunge it into the woman.
“And what are you going to do with that?” Ruby’s furrowed brow came from hell itself.
“Save the world.”
His forearms bulged from the latest sprouting of blackwheat.
He stabbed her through the wind barrier.
There was no feedback, only the howl of wind as the skewered afterimage of Ruby smirked and faded.
A wind double.
She tapped him on the shoulder with her true body.
Swishy slowly turned, bracing himself for what was to come.
Ruby held the broom, her trusty staff, and pounded the ground.
A tornado-ing geyser blasted below Swishy—but he dissolved in time, straw and shadow slinking away for a hurried reconstruction.
The wind shell intensified.
And the curses were drawn in with turbine efficiency. The shadows clawed into the ground, resisting her—and failing. Each entity was siphoned, snatched—and some even called for Swishy.
It happened in a slurping sound, Ruby consuming them as she’d done to the straw sprites.
Eating curses. That was a new one for Swishy. But it meant a last resort.
Consume as she might, her HUNGER remained. Ruby, courtesy of Myst’s altar spell, was saddled with that inner child forever. Swishy sensed that girl as clearly as he did his own heart. She was twisting and screaming. She was tearful. She pounded her bony fists against Ruby’s ribcage. Everything that the girl offered meant nothing. Ruby had gained so much but not a hint of joyous or even neutral intent was found in the wind.
Swishy slashed golden strokes across the shell with no effect. Some of the curses were pried away, screaming as they did, but there was no effect on Ruby’s impregnable fortress.
The light in Swishy’s rake began to dull.
“I’ll take it all,” Ruby said. “All light, all hearts!”
Swishy slashed and slashed. He couldn’t let up. But nothing worked.
A sparking thread shot from Swishy’s eye, wrapping around his rake. Trey with another [Heart String]. Swishy winced as his friend’s soul shrank in his head. He was keen to Trey’s augmented weightlessness. If Swishy’s head was a cup, Trey’s soul was now the last sips of water.
But he graciously accepted the gift of reinforced light. Znitchy hummed through the rake teeth, grateful for the meal.
“It’s okay, Swishy,” Trey encouraged. “I can tough it out. I’m a big boy!”
But Trey was smaller than ever—he just couldn’t see it. “You’re huge, Trey. And a huge help.”
Swishy felt Myst’s shadows pat-pat his soul. And then a crush of silk folded around him.
“But be warned. This is the last thing me and Trey can do for you.”
“I know.”
“Godspeed, dear straw.”
In a blink he was released—warped—inside the barrier.
Myst, Trey—their presences were gone, Trey through a [Zlide] while Myst faded out through the barrier, seeping into the feathers of a nearby shadowclaw.
Relief washed over Swishy as their souls were flown far, far, away.
Finally, he was face to face with Ruby.
The wind faltered as Ruby noted the boy’s appearance. Dark circles had set underneath Ruby’s eyes. Her breath issued frost on his rind.
But DETERMINATION braided through him as an ethereal spine. Now or never. Doom or daybreak.
He squeezed the rake, bolstered by its renewed gleam.
“Here again? That’s children for you.”
Swishy ran Ruby through.
Then he twisted.
He spun with his whole body, rotating with his rapid flight.
A spiral, a tornado, a glimmering and stunning vengeance.
[SUNBRIGHT DRILL].
Swishy’s rotation ground to a halt, his light searing the curses out of Ruby. Blackness leaked from her, surrendering. As the shadows melted off her, her skin returned. It was perfect. Supple. The woman was funeral-ready. Shadows had restored at least the shallow parts of her.
They stared each other in the eyes.
Swishy’s gaze was twin voids, perfect black saucers. Ruby’s pupils glazed over. Blood trickled over her lip. Down below, her abdomen spilled its gore over the rake tines. Swishy turned his brutality up, morphing those weapon teeth with barbs and ridges and multitudes of minuscule serrations.
The viscera was replaced by swirling shadows, feathers that came from Ruby’s portals and filled her body. The effects were twofold. First, the plumage pushed the rake out of Ruby’s body. And the second was that the bird parts transformed into Ruby’s flesh.
Caws came from Ruby’s wound, snitch souls offering their bodies to repair her.
Ruby’s eyes gained life once more.
“We’ve all come from nothing. We’ve all evolved from nothing. Wraiths were our first form, our forever form…”
The girl inside glowered at Swishy, stirring in turmoil.
“So why won’t you share? You’re everything! You’re everything! I admit that now. So be a good little god and BLESS US!”
She coughed up feathers, expelling the last of her darkness.
Without shadow, without speech, she was just a woman. A lady at rest. Even breaths came from her slightly opened mouth. Ruby passed out, her chest heaving with shallow, consistent breaths.
The girl inside was confused.
Swishy was too.
“Blessings? She wanted blessings? But look.”
The wind dispelled.
And the gold he’d used in his attack had spread all around. His glitter drifted among the ruined land, reversing the damage. Roots were led by the sparks into the ground. Petals found their stems. Split mushrooms put their caps back on.
Nature was a great clean-up crew.
The boy T-posed, dropping the rake, breathing in, breathing all the way out.
“See?” Swishy told the girl. “Please tell me you see this.”