ALL BLACK EVERYTHING—black nebula, black smokiness, and a black boy floating on by.

Trey dumbly tumbled throughout the cursed realm as a soul-deep fear bonded to his spine, melting away his fortitude. But he didn't feel the rush of wind or a stomach-turning G-force or the bone chill of high altitude. He was in a realm of nothingness, gradually sinking into what he considered a cotton candy darkness, a nimbus of soul-stirring bullshit.

He was helpless, immobile, and overcome by the urge to cry, but tears in this case were another way of giving in. It angered him to be bossed, to be bullied. He only wanted his body. The young man yearned for solid ground. The call to the dark was the only way to take him there, yet here he was, blue yet again, a soul unwittingly divorced from his body.

Where oh where was his Clayborne vessel? Nowhere in sight.

He clicked his tongue and took a deep, ethereal breath—no air, no lung expansion to be had, but the familiar habit momentarily steadied his soul.

Am I...dead?

No way—not with how the altar answered him, vacuuming the birds, the boy, the cards. The cards...Those were the first things he saw in his reawakening of blue boy consciousness. The enchantments gently turned in the ether, golden outlines, golden words, as if affixed to the shadows by strings. The spells swirled in a harmonious choreography. Trey grasped for the delightful words, reaching for SUN, CHEER, JUBILATION, JOY but his hand phased right through them, unable to activate them—let alone feel them.

A searing brightness, the stark visual burn of card-bound distress hunted him down. DAMNATION, DOWNFALL, RUINATION, JUDGMENT. Trey's soul, once light and porous, morphed into a gargantuan albatross, a megaton burden of the most harmful and perturbing kind.

As the cards closed in, Trey swam away—and he was a pretty good swimmer at that. He was prepared to at least run from danger, a researcher's life uncertain and harrowing. He just so happened to think he'd one day swim in jungle waters, not abyss, and that moderate preparedness propelled him away from the horrendous spells.

He gained speed and courage until realizing that more spells were upon him. The positive cards receded to the furthest reaches of the domain while a legion of horror crowded his immediate vicinity. For the first time, he identified multiple versions of the same cards, a sea of DOOM, a cresting wave of TRAUMA, and the ever-gathering foam of BANE and MISFORTUNE and SCOURGE. The ether's deck was stacked with cheats, loaded with the unfairness inherent to life.

Trey swam and swam and swam and swam, his sole recourse, his responsibility as a young man who by some miracle persisted in the gift of life. He hadn't reached the end, not yet, but his state of soul steeped him in doubts. Blue form, blue limbo, blue uncertainty...

I have to make it back to Swishy. I have to make it back to Clayhearth.

He wanted to think about his mom and dad and grandfather, his friends, his cousins, his not-yet-acquired love interests, his future endeavors—but he stoically extinguished those thoughts, smothering his old-life visions with mental shadows. Flashes of the past life meant an end of it. But he still had fight. He had life. He had all this proximate darkness—powerful, powerful darkness—from which he was determined to carve out a path.

The malicious cards hastened and enlarged.

Trey shifted from their savage path, dodging a bullet hell of wicked concepts. He couldn't let the banes touch his bare soul. He'd never recover from the corruption.

But the card flurry continued as he ducked and dodged and spun away. And with every card he dodged, those same cards pivoted around and returned for a second, a third, and several more passes. As commonly occurred with all the world's ills, they boomeranged, never resting, never calling it quits.

Amid Trey's desperate maneuvers, swimming and dodging and somersaulting, he called out to the altar once more: "I came to trade! I can't do this forever! You took my cards, now where's my contract?"

The young man stopped moving. He stubbornly stayed in the path of several attacking cards, the curses shooting for his soul. Closer and faster, closer and faster—that was the pattern, the rhythm, the cadence toward their prey. Trey went cold as he scanned the card faces, all of them reading BREAK. He stayed firm, though, because the end was the end. He'd done what he could. The BREAK(age) caged him, constricting him from all sides, shrinking and shrinking, until one card-edge reached the tip of Trey's nose. With a wide-open gaze, he accepted his fate.

The cards stopped, shrank into an ochre powder, and vanished.

Trey, for now, was spared.

He closed his eyes in a moment of soul-soothing. A calm rushed through him, the world falling away, and the darkness blooming.

(...)

Moments later, that same darkness also spoke. "Hello," a friendly voice, an earnest female frequency, too high-pitched and bubbly from what he'd expected of the altar.

Trey meekly but politely waved. The uncertainty restricted him to stiff, shallow motions. He figured this was his attacker and latest captor, so playing nice was the best move, the only move.

The darkness' indeterminate form shifted in rhythm with its words, representing a mouth although it was anything but. "Everyone calls me Oh Altar, Dear Altar, Dark God, Shadow God, Curse Superior...but you may call me Myst."

Myst, not Mist—he hated that her presence was so assertive he knew the quirky spelling. Myst. Myst! MYST! The dark spoke in a litany, intensifying, growing louder until the letters materialized into a familiar gold flashcard glimmer: MYST. The individual letters scattered into dust and laid upon Trey's consciousness. He tried to pick the dark grains out but to no avail. He couldn't find them all. He couldn't even feel them. Myst's shadowy form settled within Trey's head, his soul, and Trey as a fledgling sorcerer possessed no recourse against it.

The young man was wide open, his whole being accessible and vulnerable. In him, the darkness dwelled. What this meant? What the ramifications were? Again, he was stumped. His soul was one gigantic shrug accompanied by countless amounts of tremors.

The dark arts could really do with some clarity, jeez.

He chose silence. Maybe she'd go away if he withheld acknowledgment. He closed his eyes, tightened his lips, and held his arms outward as he kept himself afloat.

But Trey felt the nudge of Myst's spiritual power. The pressure of his shoulder. A soft push, a slightly harder and playful push—and then a punch on the shoulder.

"Sir! Sir! You can't ignore me. You need me. Actually, you belong to me."

"I'm more of a boy than I am property, sad to say."

"Now I got your attention! You humans are so simple. Everyone, everything is a possession—except for humans supposedly." Two smoky globes turned in dryer-cycle circles. Eyerolls. Like Swishy. The visible spirits had attitude it seemed.

"Where am I?" Trey asked.

"The altar, silly—or I guess just the dark."

"I didn't know there was a difference."

"You know now. You've seen what Ruby did to my home. She's made a mess of me truly. What do I look like being an all-powerful vagrant? Why am I, shadow itself, homeless?" She cut her imprecise optics, giant ones. The entire space before Trey was commandeered for Myst's form. He felt as if he stood before a tremendous screen, dozens of meters high, projecting the expressions of the shadows. Trey was small, so small. But he knew that. Still, the scale shocked him. Humans were prey animals, through and through.

"This world is a wonder," Myst said in a lushly dramatic tone. "Too much of one in this case."

Trey then remembered how applicable that statement was. He, too, hadn't expected to be Hot-Potato'd across the skies, a rag doll in the clutches of his bird-brain masters. "You‘re right, you’re right..."

"Of course, I'm right. You wouldn't be here otherwise. Now do me the kindness of offering your name."

"Don't you know it?"

"But friend, I'd rather hear it from you."

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"Trey," he said hurriedly, a knee-jerk reaction from having been called her 'friend'.

"Trey Dimes! I love it."

A shudder followed by an icy wave of tremors. His soul itched from the invasion. "If you knew my full name, then what was the point?"

"Silly Trey, introductions are how friendships start!"

There was that word again, that "F" word. "I don't know about that friend business. I'm here for a transaction."

"Ouch. Your sense of delicacy could use a pruning of its thorns..."

"I apologize...ish. I don't have time, though. I gave you my cards. I saw you absorb them. Cards for a taxi ride to the zeppelin?"

"Cards? But you still have them." A black smile slashed across the dark, a glimmering constellation of other-worldly roguishness. And Trey detected a heat against his thigh, the familiar pants-pocket warmth against his soul. The flashcard deck and not a card out of place.

"Wait! These aren't good enough?"

"They're not, unfortunately."

"These are all I have."

"Now Trey, you know that can't be true. There's more in you yet." The leery darkness stunned Trey. His soul spasmodically pulsed from the implication. Inside, he grimaced under a toothy pressure, his heart being bitten and tasted. The sampling of his inner strength was a violating, exposing feeling. He didn't have a heart of straw, but he had a heart that Myst wanted.

No, never. This is all I have...

His hand drifted toward his chest. He couldn't reach inside like Swishy but the gesture stabilized him. His heart pounded with resistance. "I won't be the cost. Try again."

"You're so bold for someone about to get dropped by the birds."

"Hey, wait--!"

"No, no, no, let's watch."

The darkness cleared beyond Trey like fogged glasses cleaned by a microfiber wipe. The snitchtalons were playing catch, absently tossing Trey's body back and forth, slowing down, considering their next move now that the altar intervened. They didn't know for sure that it was the altar, but they had that feeling. They'd been at the soul-play for long enough to know a cursed intervention when they saw one. They cawed softly, debating whether to bring Trey to Ruby or not. One even said to drop Trey and force him to pay the cost to be saved—and if you hurt him bad enough, he'd need to pay even MORE for the body repairs. Yeah! Drop him! We've gotta go anyway.

"Okay, wait, wait! Please, are you sure the cards aren't enough for a cosmic ride to the zeppelin?"

"Cards? You know I have libraries in here, right?"

"Libraries? Oh Lord, don't tell me..."

Myst chuckled, then cackled. Her actions all the more intensified once the worries crashed through Trey. "Do you know how many Bibles Ruby has thrown in here? Religious texts. Old scrolls. Mysteriously etched stone tablets. I'm loaded with words of power. I attacked you with them, didn't I? You were so valiant and tough—but you lost, naturally."

There was a lot to process and so little time. Of course, Ruby had thrown stacks of Bibles into the darkness. Once she'd done it the first time without incurring repercussions, there was no way she wouldn't do it hundreds of more times. She'd become a cursed military all on her own. But Trey remained obstinate about his payment. Cards—and only cards. He still held out hope that he'd make it through this transaction whole. "I can figure that out, afterwards. Please, take the cards."

"Oh my poor little rag doll. Just know that it was your choice to die, not mine."

Trey gawked at the window in the darkness as one snitchtalon tossed his human body to another, and the other bird, after measured consideration, flew out the way.

The young man's limp body descended from the sky, his arms and legs stretched in star position, falling and falling.

Myst kept cracking jokes, making light of Trey's peril. For a thrill seeker, you sure fly calmly. It's an eternal rest type of calmness. Like a dead boy flying except you're not actually dead—yet. Trey? Trey? You're about to hit the ground. Wake up, do something. You were supposed to open your parachute meters ago! Knock-knock, Trey! Are you home? Are you asleep? Are you even...alive?

But her goading was mere background noise to Trey. He focused on his fall, and even that took a backseat to what he next saw.

Trey gasped at the insanity on the surface: Bristles versus the snitchtalons, the humans versus each other, violent cards floating amid the uproar, and Swishy with a blackwheat-tipped rake bent over what appeared to be a limp scarecrow, the standard kind with a potato sack head, noose-tied neck, and a stick propping it up. And inside that scarecrow(?): a soul.

Swishy held out his small, wheat-woven hands and bloomed gold-straw appendages. The scarecrow then began to walk—poorly—but achieved movement nonetheless.

Then Swishy swiveled around to the surrounding chaos, the dozens of other souls immobilized within their useless lumps of scarecrows. His hands emitted a golden glow as he ran off to the next casualty.

Through Trey's new soul vision, he realized a profound wrongness. "Did you do this?" Trey passionately accused—to which Myst stared back in fake hurt, and perhaps a bit of genuine hurt, too. "I'm sorry, Myst. I'll rephrase. The straw-heads did that to themselves."

"Ding, ding, ding! I can't believe you needed two tries for that one."

"Horrible..." But that was the world he'd always lived in. It was never the darkness and always the people. The Cearth of yesterday was the Cearth of today—people people-ing. The citizens themselves enabled the destruction of the altar, the uncontained darkness, the altar completely open for everyone's continuous and immediate usage.

Myst, the altar's representative, was homeless—and therefore widely available for service.

"Give me your heart, Trey," Myst said. "I'll make great use of it! I'll fix everything."

"I need my heart and you know it."

And so his descent continued. He broke through a shadowy layer of clouds, then a slate gray clouds, and finally the lightest layer. The sky levels were done—next were trees, roofs, the ground. His death was upon him, and no amount of gold-straw would fix him.

"Relinquish control! I'll make you the strongest, heart-healthiest boy there ever was. And, for bonus points, you'll have a body to return to. I win. You win. We win together." A tremendous fog broke open into a smile, the insides of which gleamed in soulful blues, tracing the form of sharp teeth.

"I'll never deal with the devil. I guess it's a wrap for me then." Trey crossed his arms and waited to die. Stubbornness was his only option, especially because something wasn't right.

"Oh friend, I'm no devil. Can't you tell?"

Trey knew that Myst was being more instigator than bully, and with the all-encompassing power of the altar, he wondered why he was being asked instead of forced, why the shadows simply say take-it-or-leave-it. There was an angle, a reason. Trey sensed that Myst needed him—and needed him alive.

"Myst, I'll be honest. I'm scared of you. I can't just let you ride along. I want to live, I want to win against Ruby, but I can't be cursed forever. I'll keep my heart. I'll die with it."

His body plunged and plunged, an empty vessel breaking through the wind—twenty meters from death, ten meters and dead, nine, eight. The ground closed in, violently inert.

Myst sighed and threw up her cloud-sized hands. "Have it your way then."

Trey took in his final sights: Swishy, his gold-straw hands, growing limbs on a scarecrow containing a child's soul. The kid-scarecrow rose to its small feet and hugged Swishy, wrapping itself around its savior's waist.

Swish-God got it covered. I'm dead but Swish is forever.

As his body met the ground, a dark portal opened, allowing Trey's body to continue its fall, a bottomless and terrifying abyss—and a life-saving one too. The physical body in its descent now joined the same realm, floating by blue boy Trey. He then dolphin-kicked his blue self into his body, ending the astral projection.

Trey was one again.

He instantly awakened, body and soul properly rejoined, and wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. "Wow, that sure was close!"

"You're so annoying, my new friend."

"Here you go again with that F word."

"Of course, Trey. Friendship is the string that attaches us."

"Thank you," Trey said, even though he didn't want to, but regardless of Myst's intentions she'd saved him.

"You're welcome! You're so sweet! So, how should we settle this?"

Trey felt the pause, the darkness' expectant waiting. The moment was now—for Trey to declare his payment, the value of his life to Myst. "We'll rid the city of Ruby and rebuild your altar."

"Such a big promise! I knew you were sweet!"

"No promise—payment. That's what I'm paying. I don't have it on me now but...what do you have to lose?"

"You'd be surprised." Her blunted tone jabbed at Trey's essence, awakening his fears. Suddenly, the young man thrummed with worries. He'd always thought that dying was the worst that could happen. But the further he progressed into Straw City's madness, into the nature of darkness and altars, the more he learned that he couldn't identify the ends of life, the ends of loss. As long as there were humans, there were two things up for grabs: the now and the forever.

"Okay, you have much to lose. And so do I."

"You do, especially if you fail."

"If I fail..."

"Swishy's entire being—which was mine anyway. Oh, don't look at me like that(!)—that heart farm was mine anyway. With his next couple hearts, us curses can rebuild the altar ourselves."

Trey feared rolling the dice on his friend. He wished he could consult Swishy. He wanted to explain, to tell him both of them could die—die in different, unpredictable ways. But the scarecrow had likely learned that on his own by now. Gold-straw, black-straw, Swishy had seen it all—or enough at least.

I'm sorry Swish...I'm only doing this because I know we'll win.

"Sure. If Ruby wins—take Swishy. And take my heart, too."

"I knew talking to you was the right move. You're so sharp and valiant!"

The darkness blinked—what Trey recognized as a wink. Oh God, this bitch is shadow Ruby.

"My friend, my friend, that's not very nice. Bitch? How rude and base. I actually prefer Shadow Bitch."

Trey laughed—comfortably in a guard-lowering moment, and then uncomfortably when he realized Myst read his mind.

"Because we're friends, here's what I'll do. Give me your cards."

Trey tossed them—he couldn't get rid of the Ruby deck fast enough—and Myst absorbed them into a swirling hole. And a glittery effect sizzled through the space between them, carving out the shape of a square. The border thickened into a cube, filling with new cards. None of the cards were black—they materialized in Clayhearth gold.

"Here Trey, something that'll suit you more. Less powerful, but more useful! I can support you. I can be a good friend—if you let me." That last comment made Trey cringe—it was slathered in Ruby's oppressive insistence.

Trey reached for the cards, and though he was in soul form, the deck was tangible and tactile. The deck then dissolved inside him—he, himself, was a pocket. "Thank you..." he said.

"Sure, Trey. Anything for a friend. To the zeppelin we go!"

And with that, the pair zoomed through the darkness. Trey once more felt the pressure of movement—the nausea and chest knots of too-fast, too-turbulent motion. The ride soon ended, thank goodness...as the umbral realm dispersed and revealed the wooden blimp interior. Trey even landed on his feet, staggering and nauseous.

Myst clung to Trey's shoulder as a slick blob, a shadow-bitch squid ink, and rubbed his back in a gesture of taunting support. "My poor little human. Your weakness is so delicious! And charming, of course. So unbelievably charming!"

Rub-rub. Rub-rub.

Trey wanted to smack away her hand? Her tentacle? Her appendage? He couldn’t decide the label, not with the dizziness that pressed upon his head. He'd achieved his goal, though, freedom from the snitchtalons and boarding of the zeppelin. He closed his eyes, managed his breath, and allowed Myst's condescending mirth.

It was a new life from here on out: he was a sorcerer. The cards were in him—his own cards—which didn't burn in his pocket, but now singed his inner chest.

The world drags you in...Trey reflected, The darkness especially.