EVERYONE WAS COMING—Swishy couldn’t stop them now.

The wrathraven trio was only the start of the madness. And the initial birth of Swishy’s voodoo was the very next step. Then came the insanity down at the base of [Straw Guardian], the devastating conflict between Trey and Bristles and the slaved and non-slaved birds. He’d seen it all: the [Zpread], the [Zlide], and the swelling darkness of battle vanishing into Trey’s portal. Once they’d disappeared, Swishy couldn’t keep track of the territory beyond, including the health and location of Trey’s soul.

Swishy worried over the stalking wrathravens; he worried over Trey’s fractal of a soul; he worried about the mysterious surge of oncoming souls. Hundreds of unknown travelers were hiking through the woods at a steady clip. Who were they? What did they want? Swishy’s mind was plagued with questions, but he’d grown used to the Straw City way. The second question practically answered itself. Everything. The legion wanted everything.

No wonder the Cearth is cursing them. They’re awful…

Swishy resided within the cockpit and nuzzled against Trey-less Trey, deriving whatever dregs of comfort he could—but his inner shadows swelled. They spoke back to him. They reassured him. And then they now were his chief preoccupation. The darkness laid firmly in Swishy’s control, and he sank into the surprisingly easy life of shadow manipulation. Swishy was shocked by the potency and brainless puppeteering of his inner shadows.

Voodoo intent populated within his chest and nothing as of yet had felt more natural to him.

Swishy didn’t know the word. The boy hadn’t heard it or seen it anywhere. But he related to the intent as its letters swam through the veins of his soul. Anything that had to do with pain, his straw had taken to like water.

The black energy coursed through his straw body, the blackwheat populating throughout every inch of him. He’d had so much hurt inside himself, so much inflicted upon him, a kingdom inside of a shadowed ore to mine and use and turn against his enemies. Black energies curled within Swishy’s mouth and eyes and skin, halos of hurt swimming in and out of his straw-weaves as if he were an obstacle course.

Voodoo…he considered. A word that means hurt. A word meant for enemies. He turned and inspected [voodoo] in every possible way and found only evil.

The hurt streamed from Swishy’s gourd in a noxious waterfall, amorphous at first, before tightening into those six arcane letters. The voodoo intent circled with its infinite amount of “o” letters. The “O” shapes were of every size and shape, smoky and deadly, collecting darkness within the letters’ rings and ridges. The intent multiplied its amount of o’s by the second, forming V-o-O-d-o-O-o-o-o, setting a decay upon any surface it so much as grazed.

The poisonous word stretched and weaved its serpentine form around the neck and chest and lower taper of [Straw Guardian] with its cursed energy. The giant guardian’s wounds burned with shadow; the cursed spirits of the voodoo’s touch corroded the straw with sin. The black spell choked the life out of everything. The wheat wilted. The bark of the trees crumbled at their base. Flower petals exploded into soot, carried by the winds of nearby wrathraven flight.

The boy easily steered the darkness around the [Straw Guardian], and for a moment he wondered if that was because he was a wrathraven, if wielding darkness was his true talent and destiny.

Shadows…you work for me now, hehe.

Swishy didn’t go all dark, though. He refused to. His mind held fast to his main connection to this harsh, harsh life: Trey. He’d fight with everything to make sure that his friend would return to his body. They’d be together again, boy and crow, the best duo that Cearth had ever seen.

Swishy reached for his friend’s vessel and squeezed its hand. A faint pulse of soul, of [Heart Strings] intent coursed beneath the Clayborne’s skin.

A moment of reassurance, a moment of hope amid [Postcard] pink skies and lush forestry—

Until his eyes were drawn by a trio of vicious pollutants, the wrathravens that casually dined upon [Straw Guardian]’s base.

Swishy’s shadows screamed inside him as he piloted the flume of voodoo and toward the wrathravens. He thickened the “v” and stretched and snaked the dancing o’s. The three wrathravens curiously flew alongside the V-o-O-d-o-O-o-o-o, alarmed and intrigued. But the attack mattered little to the curious beasts. The birds watched the undulating onslaught, playfully looping around the letters—until one wrathraven had carelessly grazed its wing against the spell—rending the feathers to ash. The beast wobbled mid-air and crashed into another few O’s, the voodoo serpent passing against the wrathraven’s skin, stripping it of curses.

[https://i.imgur.com/IM8KsSY.jpeg]

Aaah! The beast screamed, a horrifying shriek that traveled across the woodsy acreage. It burns, it burns, it buuurns! Birds, bees, and beetles flew away from the treetops, fleeing from the reverberating cries. Even through the screams, the creature’s skin audibly sizzled, every attached curse ruthlessly seared away in thick fogs of anguish.

The wrathraven was stripped of its wings, torso, and curses. All that remained of the beast was bones and mild fogginess. It could move. It, relatively speaking, was unharmed, the screams ceasing once the voodoo had claimed its due.

Overhead, the voodoo intent patrolled in halos over [Straw Guardian]’s head.

Panting and weakened, the creature reached toward the shadows for reconstruction, but the healing failed. The shadows strictly abided by natural laws, stubbornly refusing to form a wrathraven spell.

Idiot! The other two wrathravens screamed but the bony giant shrugged its now-wingless anatomy and floated to the ground.

There was plenty of wheat for the beast to consume, cast-off straw from the guardian. The wrathraven went away to have a meal, gradually recovering its magic with every bite. With every bite of gold-straw, the creature’s shadows naturally drew toward it, accepting it as a proper master once more. The bones were covered with a slick sheen of shadowed skin. And that skin had grown a moderate helping of feathers. But the creature’s muscles were still embarrassingly atrophied—which the other two beasts scoffed at.

Look how small and weak you are! Dumb runt!

Tuh! The recovered beast dismissed them and glared at Swishy. You’ll slave for us. Just like that. We need gold and you provide it. You’ve healed me. You can heal us, always. We’d pray to you if you didn’t already belong to us, hehe. Watch us prove it…

The wrathravens levitated together, two full-bodied and muscled as they cut eyes at their smug runt. But they widened their ruby-colored eyes, showcasing their sadistic gleam. Dark winds began to flow toward the monstrous trio, swirling around their bodies and recollecting around the smallest raven. His muscles reformed gradually, first his arms, his shoulders, his face and wings. The three wrathravens were at full strength again.

The darkness had come from somewhere but Swishy gazed around unsure of the source. It didn’t come from his body, nor did it come from his voodoo. Swishy was possessive of his cultivated curses, the hurt that he now weaponized. So where did the wrathravens draw their shadows from?

Their own spell. The [Ultimatum] stake upon which the [Straw Guardian] leaned against flaked away. The irony of the weapon formed against it had now become its greatest support after suffering its grievous wrathraven injuries.

DISPEL, they said. And the stake, in full, had crumbled into peppery curse powder, removing the guardian’s sole support, its very spine.

(…)

[Straw Guardian] wobbled. It leaned to the side, creaking toward a cluster of trees. Swishy moved fast and fused into the guardian’s straw once more, swimming down along the path of the crumbled stake. The curses that were once trapped within the wrathravens’ spell now laid about. The dark dwellers had come alive—only for a moment—before Swishy piloted his open-mouthed gourd over them, inhaling as many of them as he could. Much like him consuming feathers to acquire wings, he now consumed darkness to acquire…more darkness.

Meanwhile, the guardian crumbled, falling to the side as the wrathravens bellowed.

Swishy now swam up and down the spine of [Straw Guardian] and released darkness from his opened mouth. The boy filled the giant scarecrow—from base to abdomen to chest cavity to neck and head—with a stream of curses, narrowing it, condensing it, hardening its obsidian form into a stake.

As the cursed fog began to harden, Swishy focused on Trey’s body that he’d left within the cockpit. Miss him, miss him, don’t stab my friend!

The dark mist had hit Trey in places, singing his cheek, burning through his parka sleeve. But once the beam had cohered, Swishy found that it was a couple of inches beside his friend.

Thank goodness…

Swishy closed his eyes and conjured the familiar image of the wrathraven’s own stakes, molding the shadows along the base, beaming the blackness down-down-down until—crack!—his shadows drilled into the ground. [Straw Guardian] remained standing—at a diagonal, nearly toppled—but Swishy’s battle fortress was intact.

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“BLACK ANCHOR…” Swishy gasped out. [Straw Guardian] was impaled, its descent prevented for the moment. A horrid state—and this time Swishy had done it to himself.

Clever…the wrathravens mirthfully said, appreciative of the boy’s tribute to their technique.

Swishy hated the compliment. He closed his eyes and cultivated more darkness, willfully accepting the curses.

And the darkness responded—the curses clamored for Swishy.

The dark dwellers re-awakened in the guardian, in the shadows on the ground, and within the feathers of the wrathravens themselves.

They spread through the [Straw Guardian], turning its once edible wheat into a full black effigy. The curses crawled upon its surface, exploring the boundaries, quizzically evaluating its possible new home. The Curseworks had seemingly acquired a freshly built apartment complex, a condo. They cared not for the fighting that happened all around them.

The wrathraven feathers wanted out—they’d decided upon another apartment manager: Swishy.

These whimpers reminded Swishy of the bird souls forced into human bodies, the city’s vendors who ran kiosks and stalls, counting on their fingers to 10 while barely restraining their caws. Everybody eats did not apply to wrathravens. The curses didn’t benefit from the victory of their bird host. They were worse off, in fact, starved and longing and afraid.

The collective desires reached out from the wrathraven feathers in thin tendrils. A faint intent spread through the area, weakly ghosting the air—but Swishy nonetheless detected it.

HABITAT, HOME, HOST…the feathers were calling for Swishy, pledging allegiance to him. They clamored for the destroyed [Straw Guardian], its beautiful hollows, ruinous yet welcoming crevices for the curses to nest. They wanted to move in, desperate to leave their winged masters.

Save us! The feathers asked. Give us a new home! Yours…

Swishy studied the prickly cursed souls in the feathers, entities that his own sentient wing responded to. His wing trembled, reaching for the others like toddlers reaching for food. Wingy didn’t have words for that moment, but it jittered from the strong desire for their kin join him.

The beast trio glared at Swishy from the corner of their eyes as they continued their vile crunching. So emotional, the wrathravens said. What a foolish way to exist. Setting yourself up for disappointment is the most human thing you do. Have you realized this, young scarecrow?

Swishy was too tired, too dark inside to care about one more insult. He’d heard it all, his worth diminished by every word, every scheme to use him. The most human thing he knew himself to do was fight, and the least human thing of actions was his habit of selfless giving—one he continued into the next moment.

“Come with me,” Swishy said to the cursed feathers, reaching out with his hand. “There’s room inside. The shadows here are friendly.” For as blinding as the gold-straw tended to be, when clustered together the shadows were plentiful. Within the Straw Guardian, there were crevices and knots and crushed gaps for the curses to live within. It was the perfect nest with its healing gold but compressed, shadow-creating layout.

The wrathravens laughed with opened mouths, spewing out a mist of straw crumbs. Giving away our gold? The nerve…They’ll never use it. They’ll never leave us, bonded to our bodies as they are.

But Swishy sensed the feathers trying. They spiked and bristled. Entire sections of wing started to change in texture, going from matted to protruding. Through the force of their remaining, beaten down wills, they gave their best effort to rip themselves from the wrathraven bodies.

There were no words out of them. Only grunts and groans, a harmony of true grit.

Fools, the wrathravens simultaneously said.

As the dark smoke of desperation lifted off the feathers, their sorrows and terrors solidifying as they failed to remove themselves from the wrathraven whole, the monstrous birds vacuumed the negativity toward their mouths.

“Oh no you don’t!” Swishy yelled, now fully emerging from the guardian, his torso and limbs and black wing attached to him. He jumped into the pessimistic smoke with an open mouth. He’d absorbed birds before; he’d absorbed wings before; and on this day he’d absorbed the shadows itself too.

Greedy! The wrathravens said in unison—but in discord. One bird was curiously bemused, another was livid and slighted, and the last expressed a wide-eyed awe at the efficient technique.

Some of the darkness flowed into the wrathraven but the lion’s share went inside Swishy. A wrathraven swiped at him in mid-air—but the straw guardian shot out wheat vines to grab and draw Swishy back inside. As the boy’s pumpkin head receded into the guardian as a fish submerged into the water, his mouth curved into a wicked smirk.

Cursed—the boy was undeniably cursed. And as Swishy lay within the cardiac cockpit, he served as the guardian’s core, radiating black energy throughout the entire tower of wheat.

(…)

The wrathravens’ eyes widened to saucers. They were petrified as [Straw Guardian] accepted further decay, a total, full-bodied one.

Hey! The birds threatened. You’re killing our gold! STOP! Brighten up, straw kid! Don’t be so sensitive! FUCK!

The beast trio blew frustrated air through their nostrils as darkness spread in bolts toward the monument’s extremities, spoiling the gold within. From top to bottom, the structure had transformed into blackwheat. The wrathravens gazed upon their squandered meal, fuming and panicking.

With incredible haste, the birds went into salvage mode.

The wrathravens flew around the guardian’s torso, nibbling, eating around the blackwheat for the now-scarce spots of gold. These creatures were about their luxury, their favorite morsels to harvest and own. Their insides needed to shine and Swishy’s standard, nutritious wheat was no longer good enough for the wrathraven trio.

ULTIMATUM, they declared, HELP US OR DIE! The three birds gathered darkness into an orb around their bodies, then pushed the spell outward in a ballooning dome. The spherical intent spread at least 50 meters around them. While a small amount of shadowclaws flew away from the spell, a host of smaller, grounded minions had come out of hiding. The grubs and moths and squirrels emerged from the tree hollows. Cearthworms and snails and snakes drew upward from their underground burrows. A tortoise—once disguised as a rock—came out of its shell slumber to join the mob.

Everyone flew and ran and slithered toward the [Straw Guardian] to aid in the wheat harvest. They infiltrated the mounds of straw, pulling out gold wheat. Every strand they held up to the wrathravens, offerings to their masters. For their commissioned help, they now begged for life—

The wrathravens knifed through the air and ate the critters whole.

The beast trio savored the golds while gulping down the game animals. Technically, the spell didn’t kill them—but the wrathravens did.

If you die, you die! The wrathravens bellowed, using laughter to force the prey down their gullets.

And then several small beings emerged from the woods. The kid-crows. Their pupils were deadened by the wrathravens’ influence and they rushed toward [Straw Guardian]. The [Ultimatum] intent had hit them, too, and Swishy watched in horror as the kids still contained Trey’s [Zip] spell. They sped out into the open and scaled [Straw Guardian] before Swishy knew what was happening.

They were all there: Amie with her purple bow, Jimena—AKA Jimmy Jr—, Butterscotch, Roland, and dozens of others. There were also other kids that Swishy didn’t recognize, more that no doubt wandered away from the city’s riots and destruction.

What concerned Swishy most was the gold-straw fortifications to their joints and limbs. Swishy stared at their gleaming joints and warily watched the wrathravens. The beast trio hungrily observed the children. They slowly clacked their beaks together. Their black tongues hung from the side of their mouths. But they waited—they had some semblance of control.

Wait, one wrathraven told the other two. They’re under our control. Let’s see what our little friends can do. We can eat them later…

“NO!” Swishy yelled, an outburst that reverberated throughout the mire of blackwheat and reached the structure’s head. “NO”, [Straw Guardian] repeated in a raspy, crackling voice.

The wrathravens stared up at the gasping giant and evilly smiled. They were unafraid. They’d damaged the guardian to such an extent already. Pain was its capital. The more Swishy spoke through the guardian, the more confident the wrathravens became in the success of their attacks.

We’re going to eat these kids! They mocked. In fact, after they tear Trey from your arms, they’re going to fly into our mouths themselves. They’ll rip their joints off and hand-feed us. We’re their masters, after all. Does that please you, Swishy? Or are you upset? Go dark, then. Go darker since you refuse to give us gold.

“I’m going to melt you!” Swishy felt—and [Straw Guardian] said. Dark needles fell from its open mouth, slack-jawed and suffering. The voodoo serpent that crowned the structure’s head now cycled lower, orbiting around the neck, the shoulders, gradually lowering toward Swishy and Trey’s location in the chest.

The kid-crows jumped against the towering scarecrow, straw to straw, climbing. They tore out clumps of blackwheat with their hands, some accidentally ingesting it within their carelessly opened mouths. Their eyes went red, their straw darkened, and their movements became even more assertive.

Amethyst Amie, too, their leader, purple bow and all—but red eyes, tragically red and wrathraven-enslaved eyes.

We didn’t expect little scarecrows. What useful little dolls. The perfect minions. See Swishy? Why don’t you be more like them. They’re the shining example of what we want you to be. They aren’t magic but they’re fast, decisive, obedient. Perhaps it’s time to give them another [Ultimatum], mwahahaha….

Swishy had nothing to say. He steered the voodoo serpent toward the gloating beasts. V-o-O-d-o-O-o-o-o chased them all around but the wrathravens flew fast and cut tight corners around the guardian—grabbing the children on the go.

“No!”

YES! YES! YES!

The wrathravens released the kids into the air—and then wing-slapped them toward [Straw Guardian]’s chest cavity. Their hard launches stuck the kids firmly into the monument’s surface. The children struggled to remove themselves from the indentations, wiggling and pushing themselves up. Some, wisening up to the empowered straw that encased them, grabbed at clumps of blackwheat and rubbed it into their hands and arms and shoulders. They couldn’t ignore the power. The corruption so easily captured their young souls.

“Yes!” The children yelled. “Tear it up! Take the Swish!” The wrathravens hadn’t even ordered them to attack Swishy but their natural child-like imaginations figured it out. The raid game was too entertaining for them. The kid-crows clawed at the chest cavity like rabid beasts.

Swishy could only watch on in horror. “No kids,” Swishy pleaded with his own mouth, no guardian-control this time. “Please don’t do this. We’re your friends. Look out for us, yeah?”

“You? Who cares about you? What about us? Who looked out for US? We were KIDS—not scarecrows!”

Swishy gasped. The truth stabbed through Swishy like the [Ultimatum] stakes. Maybe he had to fight the kids, too. Maybe this was the point where the corrupted children metamorphosed into their adult forms. The voodoo was close at hand—he’d steered the darkness in tight coils around the chest cavity, grazing the child’s backs, shaving off imperceptible layers of straw. He could vanquish them. It’d be so easy.

The kids tore through the guardian’s chest, puncturing the surface, grasping their grubby gold fingers at Swishy. The straw god had a choice to make—an urgent one as the list of dangers ceaselessly stacked.

Beyond the kids at the chest and climbing up the [Black Anchor], beyond the wrathraven’s taunts, beyond the curious and needy curses that begged from Swishy to accept them into his care—were other souls progressing through the woods. The strangers were nearby, rustling in the nearest clearing. They loudly shoved brushes aside, crushed leaves, and snapped twigs. They groaned, they uttered, they—like everyone else—coveted.

Swishy feared the kids, feared the wrathravens, feared the unknown.

Voices in the dark called the boy’s name, “SWISHY!”, as if the forest itself spoke to him.

“Swishy…” Trey-less Trey also said, curling against Swishy. Within the cockpit, the Clayborne felt bliss, safety, and sanctuary.