THE DARK BOY WAS PREPARED TO DESCEND.

Swishy closed his eyes as his cursed energies swam through his extremities. The surge of soul was tremendous and empowering. Swishy performed inventory on his significant bounty of darkness—inspecting his cursed body and the voodoo serpent that orbited [Straw Guardian].

The boy had become the darkness, the enemy itself. The vile intents were his to use, but instead of DOOM he scaled that down to DIFFUSION. Rather than DESTRUCTION, he prayed instead for DIPLOMACY, DISCRETION, DISCIPLINE, DE-ESCALATION. He exerted his concentration upon achieving a reasonable control of the dark. The magic words materialized and sifted through his straw, finding a home in him. He was transformed now, Swishy-Black to the fullest, but maintained composure despite his internalized abundance of curses.

Myst traveled from his gourd into his straw body, a spider mistress riding along the boy’s pulsating currents of soul. She tapped the golden casing that held Swishy’s scant remains of heart, saying nothing, admiring the beating little acorn.

“Window-shopping?” Swishy joked.

“A little bit, yes. A girl has dreams.” She stretched her fangy smile.

The boy had anticipated hearing her voice like a second set of thoughts—but he hadn’t accounted for the physical echo of Myst’s presence. He tapped his gourd a couple of times, reorienting himself.

“You’re so trusting, you know that?” Myst said. “You really allowed me in here? I can’t complain, though. You have such wonderful darkness inside. This head of yours is a lovely little room, my brave child.”

“I’m brave…brave and stupid. But beggars can’t choose what becomes of their straw.”

“You’re right, you are a beggar.”

“Ugh.”

“And I shall teach you to become a god. Gourd up, young one, it’s time to fight.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Please, I’d prefer not to be a ma’am. I’m still young. I’m the coolest shadow, you’ve ever met.”

“Yes, aunty.”

Myst sent a psychic shock through Swishy’s mind—he grunted and toughed it out. Then he relaxed; he laughed. Myst did, too, relenting her harrowing but ultimately playful attack.

(…)

Swishy turned his attention back to the battle, to the chuffing thuds of kid-crows pounding the chest chamber. He pressed his palm to the blackwheat door he’d created between him and the kid-crows—and crumbled it. The wheat disintegrated into a powder from the DISPEL intent he’d copied from the wrathravens, sending the clinging children flying off of [Straw Guardian].

“That’s fast learning!” Myst said. “You’re a godlike talent, Swishy.”

“Thank you,” Swishy said, trying to get used to the idea of a Myst compliment.

The kids fell and fell, grabbing for clumps of wheat at the guardian’s stomach. They stopped their fall at various places, securing themselves upon lucky protrusion. They gazed upward, annoyed, and resumed their climb.

Now that the chest was unsealed, Swishy heard the full racket of the outer area. The wrathravens cackled, urging the children to harvest [Straw Guardian]’s entire chest, having glimpsed and coveted the gold-straw walls. Get them, get them! They screamed, arguing among themselves. Who do you think will be fastest? The little one with spiky hair! No, no, look, that purple-bow girl was made to climb. Look at her go!

The forest itself added to the noise. The unknown souls stopped at the edge of woodland shadows, concealing their identity, waiting their turn for Swishy. Swishy, Swishy, prayed the unseen souls, fervent and desperate. Swishy couldn’t tell who they were but only tallied them to his list of problems that never seemed to end.

Dreadful chills flowed through the boy. It was the Straw City way to want something from Swishy. And no matter how many times he was called upon, he could never get used to everyone’s desperate attention.

The scarecrow stood upon the chest chamber’s ledge, daring the children to ascend. “You won’t like what happens if you keep this up.”

The kid-crows with their cracked red eyes scaled the [Straw Guardian], scaling the stake, the torso, the arms—before walking carefully across the shoulders. They perched themselves on the inner elbow, the shoulders, the clavicles—any ledge they could find—before jumping off toward the chest chasm. They jumped one at a time, landing in the chest, one after the other. Without missing a beat, they scrambled to their feet in riotous, blackwheat-infused tenacity.

Swishy’s gaze landed upon the kid-crow leader, Amie, who regained her footing first. The girl let out a low growl, which the children copied. She then lunged for Swishy—and the kids joined in the rush as if puppeteered by their adoptive older sister. Amie jumped, drifting above her prey. The ribbons of Amie’s purple bow freely swayed, a cue that the other kid-crows followed. Each child soared in the air, waiting to capture their target.

The bright parts of Swishy felt concern, the sentiments of Oh no! Stop! I don’t want to hurt you! flooding into his mind. But the older brother in him, the mentor, the Swishy-black jerk thought: You stupid kids are going to learn today!

Swishy stepped onto the ledge of the open cockpit and morphed his default jack-o-lantern smile into the jagged mouth of a demon. His grin stretched high upon his cheeks. Twin fangs knifed downward in blood-letting villainy. Swishy declared his technique: “GRAIN MILL…”

A black flash spread blasted the kids, a direct attack to their psyches. The children envisioned their demise as Swishy threatened their straw with the proverbial [Grain Mill]. A mix of intents were contained in the technique, INTIMIDATION, DISQUIET, FEAR, ABYSS among other darker, more intense words. Swishy’s technique was derived from Myst’s threats to his soul, and he copied the way she’d polluted his own heart and soul in cursed sludge. The dark flash slackened the children in mid-air, numbing their bodies with fear. The blackwheat powers that so emboldened the horde had crumbled into ineffectual spice.

The children landed inside the chest chamber, unconscious. The blackwheat receded from their faces and necks and hands. Their knuckles were busted open and frayed. As their bodies lay prone, their eyes were peeled with fright. Swishy held his hands out and telepathically shifted the guardian’s straw. He enclosed the children into squared hay bales and moved them next to Trey’s cocoon.

“You got them all in one shot—nice!” Myst said. “And only at the price of trauma!”

“It’s honest work,” Swishy quipped, relieved that the children were more or less unharmed.

But Swishy doubled over from an aching chest, gasping for breath, his soul under siege. Drawing from his darkness contracted a surge of blackwheat toward his heart. As a spider, Myst spun a curse-warding web within Swishy’s chest, staving off the cardiac hexes. Myst could’ve absorbed the dark energy directly into her body but had fun playing around, making a home within her hay-bale friend.

That was part of their deal: Swishy asked Myst to protect his heart from his own spell cost. She’d dam off the darkness until the battle’s end.

Swishy recovered, stood up, and stepped toward the ledge of [Straw Guardian]’s torn-open chest once more. He glanced downward and saw his enemies flying toward him, three enraged wrathravens, gorged with blackwheat.

“Here we go…” Swishy said, flexing his fingers, the blackwheat tightening over his knuckles.

(…)

THE WRATHRAVENS SOARED TOWARD SWISHY—swiftly, urgently, and angrily too. Redness pooled within their eyes, brimming with rage. The domineering birds sensed a change to the situation. Their innate animal instincts told them that there was danger, a hidden ally in the scarecrow’s corner. They gnashed their teeth at the injustice of their three-on-one becoming a three-on-two.

Who is your backer? The trio cried out. Nobody is supposed to help you! You are grass and worthlessness. You are a harvest and nothing more!

“Yeah, yeah, you’re all trying to harvest me—whatever. One day you’ll grow your own crops. Water some flowers and leave me be!” Swishy activated a [Wing Jump], soaring high and fast, speeding away from the wrathravens with astonishing swiftness. The boy indulged in a blissful moment as the passing winds pressed through his one-winged plumage. A soothing pressure. A soulful massage. Flight—or a flight simulator in spirit. Even though Swishy’s body was all black, all cursed, his hopes had returned. He’d make it to proper ascension. He had to—this is what he’d lived for.

But as soon as he felt the blessings of the sky, he was confronted by its most significant curse: the dreadful sight of The High Chasm.

Ruby’s fortress sat upon the horizon, a hellish ornament atop her ancient and knotted sky-piercer tree. The ugliness of the ancient, curse-wracked tree marred the pink-sky paradise of Ruby’s [Postcard] domain. The hexes were animate, their souls sliding along the roots and the bark, but the skies—their pink hues, their charcoal tinge—hadn’t changed. Swishy gazed upon the cursed woods and with sobering clarity saw its true identity: anguish with no life.

The sun hadn’t moved an inch since the [Postcard] transformation. Time, life, and progression were halted in Ruby’s grasp. There was no night, no day, no meaningful change. Everything was inert here. Everything was a postcard, a travel brochure picture that Ruby intended to sell to the world. Jolts of fright spread through Swishy from his discovery. The world, at least Straw City, belonged to Ruby. Swishy wondered about the world beyond. He hoped with everything that he’d make it there. Acquire wings and escape Ruby’s clutches—that’s all the boy wanted. Wings, wings, wings…

And worthy spells, positive ones…

He remembered PRIDE; he remembered DETERMINATION; he remembered HEART. He remembered a time when he didn’t wield a dark serpent of intent, ready to raze the surroundings to nothingness.

If we could go back to the start, when we were all strangers in the dark…

And with that sentiment, he landed upon his enlarged V-o-O-d-o-O-o-o-o. He took a trick out of Trey’s [Zoom] playbook, and surfed upon the V. He lowered his hips to condense his center of gravity, then T’d his arms. The wind-riding scarecrow pose was an inspired moment, his most magnificent act of balance yet. The air pressure sifted through his bristly arms. Flurries of micro hearts and wings swirled in his eyeholes—some blue, others black.

“Enjoying yourself?” Myst laughed.

“I can’t help it. It’s like flying.”

“Some would call it actual flight.”

“I’d rather flap but this curse ride is like flight’s friendly cousin.”

“Ready for another spell?” Myst smiled, then telepathically pointed at the pursuing beasts.

Swishy glanced at the wrathravens chasing at the voodoo tail, inhaling the cast-off darkness. The creatures augmented their bodies from the spell’s aura. “Yes, Myst,” the boy said, annoyed by his enemies’ cleverness. “Show me a vision.”

Myst skittered across her ethereal web, traversing the gold-straw capsule that encased Swishy’s heart. “What do you do to wings?” She asked, encouraging the boy to form a mental image.

Stolen story; please report.

The black energy lifted off Swishy’s forearms and pooled around his hands. The gathered shadows extended into knives, then short swords, and finally into bladed halos that spun around his forearms. He drew his arm back and then swiped at the wrathravens, releasing an arc of darkness. “WING CLIPPER!”

The black halo was difficult for the trio to dodge as they tailed the voodoo close, too close, and they shielded themselves with their wings.

Swishy bent down and shoved his hands into the voodoo spell. The shadows pooled into his arms, restocking his aural reserves. He raised his body again and several more [Wing Clipper] halos conjured around his forearms. The wrathravens had recovered and were on the pursuit again, flapping their curse-seared and scarred wings. The scarecrow swung a barrage of halos at the beasts—who dodged the first ones but were hit by the next few. The wrathravens’ wings were damaged further, the curses scrapped from their bodies by the [Wing Clipper] blades. The beasts flailed their wings and lost altitude. As they sank toward the surface, their screeches—once mighty—decreased in volume.

The boy watched them fall, their mouths moving, yet no audible sound reached him. He laughed to himself—and Myst laughed with him, not at him.

But Swishy’s heart seized, and he doubled over upon his curse ride. The press of darkness converged upon Swishy’s cardiac shell of gold. Myst reinforced the defenses, absorbing the swell of curses for herself. Swishy conceived the image of Myst inside him, who now morphed into a tiny fairy. Myst, having blocked the latest heart assault, spun the cursed energy upon her finger like a basketball.

“Thanks, Myst,” Swishy said.

“It’s a pleasure. Now let’s continue.”

“Yeah!” The boy righted himself and assumed a riding pose.

Swishy voodoo-rode after the wrathravens, ready to finish them off. His arms outstretched, Swishy conjured set after set after set of [Wing Clipper] halos.

The birds sensed their enemy’s approach as they slowly landed on the ground. They frantically searched for shadows to supplement their lost wings with. They stared up at the curse-riding scarecrow and groaned in frustration.

The wrathravens opened their mouths and deeply inhaled. The vacuum suctioned in the nearby shadows, stripping the trees and grass and rocks. Everything became colorless, haunted. The trio doubled in height. Their chests broadened. Their shoulders appeared armored with swirling curses—the celebrations of the willing curses and the cries of the unwilling curses commingled in a grotesque cacophony. Even their wings became gigantic—though damaged and full of holes, gray smoke leaking from the wounds.

As the voodoo intent closed in upon them, they scooted to the side and leaned their face toward it, suctioning the shadows in its wake. The birds were kings of avarice. They wanted to take the whole intent head-on but knew better. Wrathravens were intelligent—they had a modicum of self-preservation in them. And it embarrassed and angered them to exercise caution.

Swishy was the last morsel for them to claim. Strip the darkness from him and reap his gold—or whatever of him was left.

Ultimatum isn’t all we have! The wrathravens bellowed. But you who refuse to serve, who refuse the natural order of us as the apex and you as the prey, will be cast into the dark. Come at us, you stupid child. Lose your heart, your darkness, everyone you love.

“THE NATURAL ORDER…” they said as one.

A dark flash radiated toward Swishy, the trio’s rendition of the boy’s [Grain Mill]. The fear-mongering of the psychological attack was similar—but in triplicate. As the brutal wave spread toward Swishy, he read the myriad intents laced within: SACRIFICE, OBEDIENCE, DEFERENCE, SUBMISSION. But Swishy faced the words head-on, allowing the attacks to envelop and seep into him.

Nothingness. Total darkness. A personal eclipse that stole all sight and sound. There wasn’t a world for him to exist in, only the overwhelming obsidian cultivated by the wrathravens. Swishy’s pulse quickened but he reminded himself to stay calm, to proceed onward. This is life, this is nothing new…He steadied himself with reminders that he was okay, he’d not yet been attacked or meaningfully damaged. In fact, it surprised him that the wrathravens hadn’t launched stakes at him, dark blades, a beam. Brute force could work—kill the straw, take the heart—but the wrathravens were animals in the end, beasts innately geared toward domination. Force wasn’t enough. Submission was just as important for their sustenance as the food itself.

The audio of life returned, the wrathravens shrieking a litany of Submit, submit, submit! But the closer Swishy listened to the words, the more he detected weakness in the tone. The self-assurance of their typical commands had given way to a desperation, a pleading, a…Prayer? Are they praying? The wrathravens are praying? No way…

The boy had rattled them. The boy shook their soul and shriveled their vaporous hearts. As Swishy drew closer, so too did the trio’s sense of collapse.

The scarecrow evilly smiled, leaning into his advantage.

But the attack persisted, blasting Swishy. As the DOCILITY and MEEKNESS absorbed into his crevices, as the SLAVERY and CAPITULATION flooded into the holes of his gourd, Swishy endured the psychic pain and swiftly recovered. He’d just suffered more from Myst—he’d suffered more from the snitchtalon bullying and his first heart harvest. The wrathravens couldn’t inflict anything upon him that he hadn’t already survived. The dreadful words filled him with worry and sorrow but nothing he wasn’t already used to. But as a buffer, a friendly hand per his contract, Myst absorbed any attack that drew too close to his heart. She reveled in the generous helpings of malice, growing her web, enjoying life as an arachnid queen.

Swishy was singed inside by arcane traumas but told himself it didn’t hurt, that pain was life, that shadows were air. The blackwheat-bodied boy continued his descent, doused by DESPONDENCE and DISPIRITEDNESS, laughing the spells off. These spells were reflections of the wrathravens, this he knew.

“You’re snitching on yourselves!” Swishy cried out. “Keep it up. Show me how small you really are!”

The weakening foes were within striking distance, likely located at the pinhole of light that now appeared. The eclipse had wavered, the wrathravens’ tremulous spirits collapsing under Swishy’s pressure.

“Myst, I need an attack…”

“I know, you’re getting close. Whatever will a scarecrow do?”

“Something big…something that could even hurt Ruby.” Swishy didn’t know where the thought came from. But he knew that wrathravens were a symptom, and Ruby was the problem.

“Oh my, our little boy has gotten bold…” Myst did a joyous eight-legged tap dance atop Swishy’s heart and fed him a powerful image through her spider webs.

The boy closed his eyes, shutting out the environment, and tuned into the powerful, bottomless chasm within. The darkness flowed both inside and out, mastered by him. He uttered four terrible words: “SCARECROW OF THE DAMNED…”

And the blackest intent flowered from [Straw Guardian]’s mouth.

“SCARECROW OF THE DAMNED…” the [Straw Guardian] echoed, Swishy’s puppet, partner, and current path to power.

The wrathraven’s eclipse crumbled from Swishy’s power. [Straw Guardian]’s utterance drew every eye to the sky. Black bolts of cursed energy rumbled over the guardian’s head, dimming the sky. The slugs and snakes and rodents stared at the colossus. The flying beetles and butterflies hovered curiously as well, before escaping the area as soon as the tips of their wings were singed from the energy. The wrathravens cast worried glances at the jagged crackles overhead.

And then the moment the observers didn’t know they were waiting for yet awaited all too eagerly: dark intent flowered from the [Straw Guardian]’s mouth. The smoke traveled outward in a mushroom cloud of DOOM, DECAY, DESTRUCTION, and most importantly of all, DOMINATION. Everything that Swishy had cultivated within him came out in that moment.

Behold, he thought—but didn’t say. He wanted to be godlike—but not a corny god.

The darkness took form then.

The obsidian letters bloomed into an unending stream of smoke, the s and c and a and subsequent letters traveled in a thin stream that gradually billowed and thickened as they expelled further from the Straw Guardian’s body. The r was thick, and the e was thicker still. Then came CROW in all block letters, and of the in a lower-case serpent. DAMNED dropped from Straw Guardian’s mouth like lead.

The words dropped from [Straw Guardian]’s mouth like a rushing waterfall. From the cardiac cockpit, Swishy watched the black liquid pour in a coursing deluge of curses. Every droplet of tar-like fluid came from the original [Voodoo] intent, siphoning and synthesizing the root of his pain.

The horrid descent of DAMNED meteor’d toward the three wrathravens.

The beast trio glimpsed the coming devastation, but there was nothing they could do. Before they’d even thought to flex their wings, the fast-moving DAMNED anvil slammed upon their bodies, crushing them into the ground. The explosion of dust and straw was tremendous. The black intent, the collateral debris, the screaming and shrapnel’d curses shot every which way like sparks.

The birds were dragged downward by the sheer number of pins, unable to fly or so much as flex their wings. Only their eyes were allowed to express, their red pupils flaring with rage.

A rage that waned, their ruby eyes dimming into dull, blood-colored beads.

The voodoo pins worked their magic against the wrathraven bodies, absorbing the darkness they’d thrived upon. The more needles had entered the wrathravens and the more time the hex touched them, the weaker their hold on the curses became. Their jutted feathers began to free themselves, drifting in the sky. Once the first feather came loose, several others followed, then entire patches, then all of them in their entirety.

The birds pushed themselves from the needles. They weren’t ones to die easily. They were damaged, though, and traversed the slog of wheat, seeking escape.

Swishy was running out of darkness—his voodoo ride diminished to the size of a trashcan lid—so he swooped down for the finish.

He emitted the black flash of [Grain Mill], capitalizing on the trio’s newfound fear of him—and their latent awareness of Myst. The birds were paralyzed under his glare, and the proximate shadows receded away from the area, abandoning the beasts. There were no shadows that’d join and heal the wrathravens now.

Go now! The curses screamed. It’s finally our chance! They hightailed it to the forest, to the [Straw Guardian] remains, to the underground hollows of ant colonies and slugs.

Swishy had crippled his enemies.

The trio screamed. They weren’t in pain—nothing Swishy had done hurt them. But they were embarrassed. Their shadows were running away from them, fleeing from the dreadful dark-wielder that Swishy had become. The wrathravens shrank to their original size, then snitchtalon size, and then became infantile in stature.

The dark chicks protested their fates, bunny-hopping after the receding shadows since they could no longer fly.

“HELL WEAVE,” Swishy declared, as strands of straw unwound from his forefingers and spread to the baby wrathravens, lasso-ing them. The birds chirped their displeasure as the magic straw looped around a nearby tree trunk, securing them. Their chick voices were so high and adorable. It warmed Swishy’s heart to transform his enemies so. He hoped Trey would be proud of the [Heart Strings] homage.

Then Swishy landed. The voodoo rider disintegrated. He was frayed and tired. He couldn’t stop panting even though he had no lungs to account for, no air to absorb. But the heart inside pounded away from the proximity of the blackwheat, the way it chose to quill and stab through the golden core. The needles scratched against his heart.

“Mysty…you were supposed to protect me.”

“I am, I did. I stopped most of it.”

“Then why does it hurt?”

“Because I want you to learn. Lift your gourd up, little one. You’ve won. And nobody got hurt.”

“I’m hurt.”

“So what? It’s battle! And even better, you used all your darkness. You’re…well, you’re a little boring looking now.”

Swishy looked down at his hands and forearms. All brown-orange, the most banal hay-bale pallor anyone ever saw. He sighed in relief. But he was tired, so tired.

Myst exited his body then, flowing out and restructuring as a dark genie. She assumed a complete upper body with a smoky taper of a lower body. Myst stared down at Swishy—but not with the smug contempt she usually had. The altar broker now awaited expectantly. There was something she wanted. Something she needed.

“Okay Mysty, hold out your hand.”

“Ah yes…” Myst startled but recovered. Swishy still caught the reaction. There was something more in her, something less like the Myst he’d come to know—or the Myst she wanted him to know.

Swishy reached inside his chest and grabbed his heart. The chest fibers stretched and cracked as he pulled. He gave one great tug and freed the heart from himself, the stray straw flying out in chips. He held the core toward Myst, a still-beating cluster of orange-wheat, yellow-straw, gold-straw, and blackwheat. The heart was a fourth of each. He’d gone through numerous feelings, a patchwork heart for a patchwork life. He offered it to the dark girl, hoping that his heart reflected what he hoped Myst also had inside.

“How artistic…” Myst said, a typical joke. But she flinched at the sight. Something had thrown her off even though she eagerly jumped at Swishy’s offer, the deal for shadow control in exchange for his heart. “You can put that back. I didn’t imagine something so…kaleidoscopic.”

“This was yours, wasn’t it?”

“Mine would likely be all blackwheat.”

“I know you like colors. Your jokes are colorful.”

Myst laughed. “I suppose you’re right, young scarecrow.” Swishy could tell that Myst was conflicted and maybe…nervous. She didn’t have a tip of her tongue or a physical tongue to speak of, but she had urgency, a semblance of nerves.

“Take it,” He held the heart in his palm. The kernel beat with valor, calling out. “Please, I know you want this. We made the deal, didn’t we? You control the darkness and I give you the rest of my heart. Better you than Ruby.”

Myst reached into Swishy’s hand and caressed the kernel with her delicate fingers. “You sure you don’t want to alter our deal? Get it? I know you get it! I could make an exception. Perhaps we can work something out when Trey awakens. There are flexible ways to go about things—”

“I’ll grow it back…I did it once at least. Just protect me and Trey, okay?”

“Asking me for another favor, are we?”

“I guess I am. But you still need an altar, right? I can help! Nobody will leave you alone without one, right?”

Myst held a shadowy hand over her lips, more hesitation. He expected her to take the heart and run, but he was confused and happy to see her like this. And then she burst out in laughter, less like a witch and more like a girl who’d just learned to fly.

“It’s impossible to argue with you, little straw god. Night, night, my new friend.”

“Night, night,” Swishy said, then powered down. The scarecrow fell asleep and dropped the heart—

Myst caught it. She was surprised that the heart didn’t faze through her. Hearts were not things that girls of shadow were supposed to have—only vessels, only Cearth.

The straw lay in her hands, beating and glowing. Each pulse infected Myst with a strange feeling.

Warm. The heart was warm.

Oh, how long it’d been since she’d felt such a thing.