WHITE HOT AND VIOLENT, the final round was set to start.

The birds, the Trey, the Bristles—all parties involved had contentious feelings and agendas of their own. Survival, freedom, and pursuit of autonomous bodies topped their lists. Though for Trey in particular, he could also add significant helpings of soul. The boy was down to mosquito scale. He pressed against the edge of non-existence and wondered if there would be anything left of him to ferry into the hereafter. He feared that if anyone inhaled too hard, he’d vacuum into the esophageal void.

How would his family feel, knowing he was haphazardly breathed into a bird—or worse yet, Bristles? His grandpa Earth popped into his head then, You call this rising, boy? Find a way! Trey’s eyes cartoonishly widened: nobody was meant to be this vulnerable, and nobody was meant to get clowned by Earth Dimes upon their Cearthly departure.

Not to mention the [Zlide] realm appeared in a patchy, incomplete state. There was no shadowy current to drag him toward the exit. There was no full tunnel of shadow that blockaded the world. Within their alternate dimension, Trey could see through the darkness into the outside. The vague silhouettes of the [Straw Guardian] and the soaring wrathravens worried him. He obsessed over the floating voodoo intent but couldn’t detect its path. He glanced behind him and found the exit, pristine, a perfect circle of swirling shadow—he couldn’t have done better even at full strength.

Focus, Trey told himself. I’ll make it out there soon. Swishy is out there waiting…

His best chance at stopping Bristles was here, in his own domain—though the enclosed space with a maniac seemed less like a double-edged sword and more like a bomb strapped to his chest.

Trey drifted away from the birds—and away from Bristles—ready to run at any moment. He watched and waited and hopefully replenished. He could feel a new intent forming within his speck of self, first the “Z”, then the rest. DOZE coursed through his body in restorative molecules, slackening his posture, sapping his awareness.

Trey drew as much blackness as he could into his shadow-sprite of a body, growing himself like a houseplant.

If I have to fight, let me turn back into a toddler first. Come on, shadows, feed your boy!

Meanwhile, the steady vibrations of wrathful birds filled the air, their shackles shifting and clanging. Much like the original Bristles’ birds to enter the [Zlide] realm, the most recent arrivals were profoundly changed by their brief seconds away from their master. They acquired a sudden awareness of their shackles and bemoaned their bondage with guttural cries. As soon as Bristles tore through the portal, the drive for freedom surged in them. Chained and un-chained, they’d made the sudden decision to strike. Break the chains! They battle-cried. Break the chain-holder!

The flock descended upon Bristles in a storm of caws and clinking. They flew around and around and around him in an ever-tightening circle, enclosing Bristles in a hurricane of beaks and claws and feathers and rage—so much rage.

Bristles watched them in initial nonchalance that sharply soured into shock, indignation, wrath. He loved to fight but couldn’t believe that they, his property, were fighting him. His thoughts were clear by the morphing expression upon his face, his blackwheat consumption creasing his features into a profoundly evil entity. He calmly acted, accustomed to conflict as he was. Instead of reaching for a blackwheat arrow to eat, he reached into his satchel of wretched scarecrows.

The man pinched a screaming clump between his fingers and tossed it into his mouth. “Well? Are we fighting or will thou watch me picnic?” He insolently chewed a sobbing wad, knowing well what made the bird souls tick and their hearts hammer.

The sickened birds began their flurry of pecks and kicks and wing slaps.

“Thou art MINE!” Bristles cackled, red-eyed and maniacal. He spoke each word in open-mouthed fury, each address trailed by the accompanying whine of the scarecrow wheat. “ASK THEM. They are my food. While this flock are my wings. Tantrum thy souls to slivers! But when this fight is over, thy shall return to my possession…where the true meaning of pain awaits.”

Bristles spat a mist of blackwheat and scarecrow remnants into birds, filling their feathers with screaming crumbs. The birds quivered from their stained, weeping plumage. The birds paused in horror, allowing a brief hitch in their ferocity, and that’s when Bristles counterattacked.

Bristles unleashed punches and kicks and vicious headbutts. When they pecked at his face, he’d opened his mouth and bit their beaks. When some tried to fly away, he grabbed their feathers with his hand and squeezed, eliciting high-pitched screeches. As the man harmed the birds, he breathed deeply, a concentrated meditative inhale while facing the direction of the harmed party. The terror and agony that he’d inflicted was drawn from the victim and absorbed into himself.

As the madness drained the flock and Bristles suctioned it all in, boosting his strength and resiliency.

A murky aura emanated from Bristles’ skin like sweat, creating a border of mist around his person. He glowered with reddened eyes, his pupils gleaming like lasers. His aura swelled—and for a moment Trey could’ve sworn he saw the smoke sculpt itself into a wing.

The man hadn’t yet transformed into a wrathraven but he was getting there.

While some birds were knocked away, reinforcements filled their ranks. During these gaps, Bristles strategically chose to heal. He reached into his satchel and pulled out scarecrow wheat. The clumps of straw vibrated in his hand, spiking, nearly jumping away as they cried No! You can’t! My family! Who will lead them? Who will give them our desired lives in straw?

“Me!” Bristles contemptuously glared at the handful of wheat with his blood-colored eyes. “Now serve!” The soul-filled straw was shoved into his mouth before the shadowclaws returned with another barrage of attacks.

The birds tore at the man with the full brunt of their shared injustice. Bristles’ wounds healed from the scarecrow wheat, but those same wounds were torn open almost as soon as they’d closed. The flock mates had been stripped from each other, bird-napped, wronged, and though Trey considered this a taste of their own medicine, the revolt against Bristles was an encouraging, uplifting sight.

We will be free! The birds declared. These chains are going away!

“Silence, slavetalons! And submit!”

We’re shadowclaws, you idiot! Get it, right!

“Believe that, if thou must! Believe the sentiment with thy entire being—but remember these foolish hopes when they are CRUSHED! I will be here to absorb the tragic aura. Thy pain is mine…Thy everything…is MINE!” His cracked red eyes spread their broken aura across the wrinkles of his face, the wrath breaking through his skin in volcanic fissures.

Trey carefully observed and cultivated his shadows, suppressing the spikes of fear that Bristles inflicted. He focused on recreating his ghost body. The birds still appeared as giants—and Bristles as a titan—but Trey was confident that his recovery was working. The borders of his hands had smoothed into a more suitable shape. He DOZE’d on, clinging to whatever scraps of patience and composure he could find. Through his fatigue, the reconstruction process was slow-going but going, nonetheless.

Tears. Hitched sobs. Bristles.

Trey considered for a moment that Bristles was losing. The birds had vanished the man completely, circling and attacking and mauling him to oblivion. But the man’s aura was powerful and visible, Bristles’ blackness seeping beyond the frenzied birds, encasing them.

“Forgive me, Lord Swish…” Bristles choked through the statement. Tears streamed down his face. His soul sorrowed. The zealotry had Bristles riled with a crisis. “Wings, my lord. I must do this for wings! How can we be a flock while I am a wingless cretin? The more wingless I am, the farther I am from my dearest Lord! This cannot be…This WILL NOT BE. Lady Myst, broker of our altar, I know thou art present. Thou art a friend of Trey, a frequenter of his darkness. Rise now and grant me my wish! Wings, dear Myst, lush wrathraven wings! I wisheth this so!”

Bristles, Bristles, Bristles—Trey couldn’t stand the man’s copious blessings of craziness and competence.

“Wings, you say?” Myst coyly said, having conjured from nowhere. She formed right beside Trey, fairy-sized just like him. She glanced at him and laughed, mocking his stature.

“Indeed,” Bristles said, then smirked at the birds as he blocked their unceasing waves of attacks. “Take my slavetalons as payment.”

“Sure,” Myst shrugged. “That can be arranged.”

”Myst, can you not?” Trey asked but he knew that wasn’t the case.

“You know…you are my champion. But I belong to Cearth. Like I told you…”

“We’re all slavetalons to something.”

“Correct.”

“Ahem!” Bristles triumphantly said. “My wish. I don’t believe these slaves of mine will equate to a wrathraven. But they will get me close. Mutate me!”

“Sure…with displeasure.”

(…)

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Bristles kneeled.

Bristles clasped his hands together.

Bristles bowed his head and prayed.

A zealous show, certainly, for he’d already confirmed the conjuration of his prayers. But he wasn’t just speaking to the altar. He was speaking to [Straw Guardian], to Swishy. His God was outside while his means to serve said God was through the altar-less altar, the presently omnipresent Myst. “Yes, Myst, yes. I thanketh thee, I thanketh thee…These wings will save mine life. These wings will serve the Savior. I will show him the ways of a flock. I will guide him. I shall advise him in the ways of ruling and salvation!”

Trey heard all of his words echo loudly throughout the tattered darkness. The voice was earnest and tearful. Bristles was laid bare for Myst to evaluate. The broken glass shadows shifted in shards. Myst prepared to grant him his wish, Trey sensed the there-there energy in the shadowdeep. Bristles had petitioned to right the wrongs against him—evilly, manipulatively, but relatable enough.

Meanwhile, the shadowclaws dug at Bristles’ body as if trying to extract his soul. There was no effect, though, not with the way he thrived on pain.

And then a change overcame the shackled birds. Due to their master’s wish, the chains had responded.

The ends of their shackles had expanded in a smoky trail that morphed into additional chain links. These chains wrapped around Bristles’ arms and shoulders and chest. As the man slowly sank into a pit of shadow, the birds that belonged to him were also becoming dragged down with him. They cawed; they squeaked; they sweated tremendously under they were sopping, shadowy messes.

The unchained birds continued their attack against Bristles, but the wrathraven aura guarded him.

“NEVERMORE,” Bristles said with the dominance of an apex predator.

Bristles maintained his prayerful pose, the shadow space around his knees reverberating in ominous wavelets. The nearest shadows flowed in his direction—and the nearest slavetalons, too, vacuumed into the portal of energy surrounding him. The first casualties vanished into a shimmering black powder that collected around Bristles, hugging him, cloaking him, producing a mystic anatomy.

Bristles was simply a man, a man with six shadowy wings affixed to his back. And the shadows were still coming, intent on serving as his plumage, to grow his wings. The shadowclaws continued their attack but couldn’t overcome Bristles’ wings. The six wings were an organized brigade of their own: two wings shielding him, two wings engaged in melee combat, and two wings launching cursed sickles through their wingbeats. But it wasn’t Bristles, not completely. The wings fought back with a mind of their own.

“Rise, Nevermore,” Bristles prayed, his fingers violently interlocked. His knuckles paled; he seemed on the verge of breaking his hands.

The amorphous wings slapped at the attacking shadowclaws and released projectile blades of darkness. Bristles was mid-transformation, but his spirit materialized and wielded a wrathraven move pool.

“What in the foolishness…” Trey said, snapping from his DOZE. He was less mosquito and more woodland sprite now. Did that mean he could fight a wrathraven? He laughed on the inside—laughed and cried.

“Sorry, my champion,” Myst said. “It’s my job to serve Cearth—and yours to overcome.”

“I know, Myst.” Trey shook his head from side to side. “It’s up to me.” He searched inside his diminished self for a way out. The future, the hope in the outside world, in Swishy’s endless medicinal and food-producing magic stretched before him. The world could be saved. The salvation was right before them. The end of suffering was right there and yet Swishy was affixed within rotting, eaten-through wheat. Why must he hurt? Why must anybody when the miracle boy is already so giving?

The cruelty of it corkscrewed through the leftovers of Trey’s soul.

“Good luck.” Myst smiled and then faded into the shadows.

(…)

Claimed by abyss, Bristles sank into a transformation. The darkness fissured across his collarbones, his shoulders, his forearms, and both cheeks. He seethed in zealotry and pain, wearing his black scars like war paint. The shadows beneath his knees had fully opened, drawing him in.

The unchained birds burst from all angles toward Bristles, physically pulling him from the portal. They strained with all their might and slowed Bristles to come extent—but the man sank at a steady rate, pulled into the quicksand darkness. The proximate curses were also pooling toward him, having come under the influence of his dominion.

Meanwhile, the shackled birds were flying in the opposite direction, resisting the dark gravity of Bristles’ wish. But despite their struggle, some were siphoned into Bristles’ sacrifice portal. No! I won’t become you! You’ll never be my master!

Bristles grinned—because he was. He watched the individual smoke assimilate into his wings. “Mine,” he gloated.

Trey watched the slavetalons spin down the drain of Bristles’ portal, only to return as wrathraven feathers. He needed to rob Bristles of birds, to reduce his shadowy bank account in any way he could. Bristles would pay some birds but allowing him to pay everybody was the Game Over scenario.

The time for [Doze] was done. He’d healed—slightly—a gnat turned into a dragonfly. Tiny, pathetic, but Trey had at least gathered the energy for one last spell. Let’s make this count…

“HEART STRINGS…” Trey declared.

The blue string tethers shot from Trey’s chest and stretched outward for meters, webbing toward the different Bristles-bound birds. The aura curled around their black shackles and traveled up their ankles and torsos and finally into their chests. Trey then navigated the soulful twine around their plum-sized hearts.

As the spell acquired more length and volume, Trey’s diminutive remains shrank and shrank and shrank…But he used his time to speak against the scourge of shackles.

The sun. The moon. Everything you were born in, everything you gazed upon when you first hatched in your mother’s bird nests. It’s out there.

The birds’ hearts and actions were bolstered. They doubled their flight speed. They forgot their sense of fatigue. All they could do was deprive Bristles and save themselves.

Trey meant his words. But that wasn’t his purpose. De-regulating adrenaline was. He wasn’t a surgeon, but he trusted the cardiothoracic guide he’d drawn the power of, Swishy’s first gift to him. The [Heart Strings] unleashed the birds’ flight-or-flight response—and urged them to do both. He could feel the ethereal strings bulge from the quickening of their hearts. There was more to hold on to, more for Trey to spend himself over.

But the harder it became for Trey to bind their hearts, the more he knew that his spell was working. The world enlarged around him, meaning that his shrinkage was back at it again. And not only did his body shrink, but his realm suffered as well. The domain’s darkness crumbled like chipped paint. The black flakes fell in thick sprinkles. The real world remained opaque but had acquired its former color, a hint of the pink-tinged sky and the brownish wheat of [Straw Guardian]. A wind was summoned, the [Zlide] current returning, the realm preparing to boot them out upon its collapse.

But Trey kept feeding himself to the [Heart Strings], his soulful yarn unwinding him like a spool.

The shadowclaws strained harder, resolute in their tug of war. The birds flapped as fast as they could, desperate for ascension. They were no longer dragging toward the dark. They didn’t gain ground either. But they were depriving Bristles for the moment. They were their own wings. Becoming part of Bristles’ greater wrathraven was no proper life for them. We can do this! We can be free! Give us the sky! We’re for the wind!

A little more. Trey had yet one more contraction of the [Heart Strings] to go. Trey diminished by the second. His forearms were sacrificed to his strings, then his elbows, his shoulders. The spell costs were now coming for parts of his stomach, chunks of his neck. This was Trey’s last bet. His final spell of the fight. And instead of simply betting on himself, Trey, a novice utility mage, chose to bet on the birds.

Bristles raised his head and smirked—with the human side. Half of his face had transformed into wrathraven, beak and all. He was unmolested as well, kneeling in peace as his wings had done a number on every attacking bird. “Now Trey, thou art the little speck I always knew thee to be. But alas, Nevermore refuses deprivation. That is not how the altar works. Those with offerings will never be deprived.”

The shackled birds were already losing steam, drawing ever closer to Bristles’ claim. The [Heart Strings] snapped. Trey had released his spell, panting and panting.

“You’re right,” Trey gasped, little mayfly that he was. “The altar likes offerings. You make shrewd wishes. But I’ve seen inside the birds’ hearts. I know what they’re up to—and what you’ve taught them.”

Bristles arched his eyebrow.

Every bird within the domain ceased their progress, flapping softly, levitating as they considered their lives. They hung their heads. They glared at the shackles. They pecked at their chains. They indignantly cawed at their bindings. And then, they ceased movement, submitting to the Bristles-bound gravity.

Drifting, drifting, they’d accepted their fate.

“What’s inside?” Bristles demanded. “I have dominated this flock. I have dominated thee.”

Trey laughed, then activated [Doze]. “You’ll see,” he said, hoping that Bristles wouldn’t eat him as he replenished his stark nothingness.

Myst, the birds suddenly called. The chained and unchained were of one accord, one will, one desire to make the altar at last work for them.

“Yes?” Myst’s voice reverberated through the remains of the realm, its patchy, insufficient darkness.

Wishes, dear altar, the drifting birds said. The flock has wishes.

(…)

Bristles perked his head up in shock. “Property can’t wish. You’re no more soul than a table, a crate with which to lay my for-sale pumpkins. Art thou daft?”

You might control a lot of us. But we’re our own birds. We can still make wishes.

“Wrong! Wrong! I’m halfway transformed! Finish the job!”

“They’re not wrong,” Myst gleefully said. “If there’s a will and a wish, Cearth gladly listens.”

The realm brimmed with a variety of intents. The birds found RESOLVE which became several other things: DETERMINATION, DIRECTION, DIGNITY, REPOSE. The birds had their diverse array of wishes as well, different ways of losing Bristles’ chains.

I offer myself to the shadowdeep! I’ll trade my soul to break the shackle! I’ll give my body and become a curse! Whatever essence I have, use it to release me!

The shrewdest wishes were the ones targeted toward Bristles: I give the altar my body, my soul. Just please free my cousin, my sister, my nest mother, or any flock mate of your choosing. I’ll give myself for even one feather plucked from that greedy fucker Bristles.

Trey silently nodded at their addresses, their resolve. The birds reaffirmed something that Trey believed all along: that truth to oneself was a beautiful thing.

One by one, the shadowclaws dissolved—and Bristles’ feathers with it.

“NO! Give them back!”

“Sorry, bro,” Trey said. “They belong to Cearth now.”

“Damn you all!! Myst I want to make another wish!” Nevermore dissolved into a smoke, not a rising one, but a smoldering extinguished one. The feathers sloughed off his body, sludge-like and decayed. The wrathraven side of his face had reverted to a human one. But the obsidian scars that he’d acquired, his devastated visage that carried cracks and fault lines, remained. The man was in a daze—shocked, damaged, fatigued. All the attacks he’d sustained, all the spent adrenaline and spirit, and the sheer pain of body metamorphosis, had come upon him in a wave. “A wish, a wish, please Myst, a wish…” But his former ferocity had reduced to the nigh imperceptible din of a crevice-caged curse.

“Shut up, she’s busy. Besides, you don’t have any more birds to offer. You’re done, bro.”

The birds laughed and laughed. As a final gesture, they flew around the kneeling Bristles and aimed with their patented bird glue—before vanishing in a flare of dark flame.

“Goodbye!” Trey’s microbial self waved. “Take care and have a safe flight!”

The last shadowclaw had faded into a phantom trail of freedom.

“Cutting it close, aren’t you, my friend?” Myst appeared before Trey in proper human shape—which in Trey's current scale converted to a giantess cupping his firefly self within her tender palms. “DOZE is a good spell but you need something stronger, I’d say.”

“Right,” Trey yawned, fluttering and falling into his benefactor’s hands. “ZLUMBER…”

Trey passed out in the darkness and the [Zlide] deactivated, pushing all its unconscious inhabitants out.