WITHIN THE BLACKWHEAT RAIN of the now deceased [Possessed Guardian], the E-squad plotted on their next meal.
It stood to reason why the E-squad was so taken by Sling’s food bandage, reading from her clothing like a takeout menu.
Each time the E-squad read another recipe that Sling had hidden in her wraps, or combed her blackwheat with their swift gusts, or echoed their quadrupled voices through the air, Swishy knew that the hunger was the root cause. Swishy was an expert at detecting emptiness—he’d been born with it, after all. A hollow in the chest and a cavernous stomach were more similar than Swishy had anticipated.
Through the taunts and jeers and unwelcome touches, Emi-Emilio-Eren-Emily exuded hunger. If they had bodies, they would’ve sweat, bled, and cried it.
Everybody eats—the town’s motto, motivation, and madness.
Yet since the dawn of The Stormcellar, food was its great lack.
And even now in Straw City, the E-squad were bodiless beings, obsessed with food and yet going decades without it.
“Leave her alone!” Swishy yelled, waving his rake in Sling’s direction, chasing away the E-squad vapors with the glowing tines, shrinking the shadows in the area with porch light dependability.
The E-squad giggled-chortled-bellowed-cackled, each of the four shades expressing a rare moment of individuality. Needless to say, they were unfazed by Swishy’s rake teeth. They floated around with ease, holding Sling’s bandages with their smokiness, dodging all the shoo-fly swings.
Splitting into four ghostly specters, the E-squad used the vague shape of hands to grip Sling’s gauze. The Swish-attacks kept coming but the phantoms dodged, all the while reading the handwritten secrets of the Sling baking school.
The mummy-crow grabbed her at bandages but the ghost forms simply found another strip to grab, the next page to read.
When at first they’d done it just to menace her, their tones became distracted, inward, focused. Sling tried to smack the shadows away to no avail. The shadow kin spoke amongst themselves, one voice at a time, casually discussing a certain COOKIES N CREAM BISCUIT recipe. They pulled the bandage strip from Sling’s shoulder blade and raised it straight into the air, its inky script gleaming with a soulful aura.
Wow, there’s not even Swish-straw in this recipe…
Because magic straw is too rich. That’s the same reason she reduced the sugar.
Oh, right, there’s butter instead! Loads of it. Yum.
But straw is life. The local palette WANTS the straw. Does she want to feed us cookies with REGULAR flour?
And around and around and around and around they went, the four menaces taking a brief bakery school interlude as Sling gradually devolved into a panic. She looked to Swishy with her help-me eyes.
Swishy felt sad. And angry—always angry—because how dare they inflict their woes upon the undeserving.
He was going back to a dark place again. Cloudy thoughts filled his head as he struggled to find ways to attack the curses without harming Sling and her huge, hard-to-avoid body. The blackwheat inside pushed through his un-cursed straw. And this time he didn’t dread it. He didn’t necessarily welcome it either. But the fact of life was that his curses were gathering.
V-o-o-d-o-o crossed his mind—without Myst's assistance this time. There was no one to keep him sane should be unleash its fury, no one but him.
Besides, he didn’t want to pay his third heart, a small, budding thing.
But he acknowledged the [Voodoo] presence, filing that option away rather than recoil into immediate crisis about it.
He then imagined himself strolling within his pumpkin head, grabbing the [Voodoo] word, shrinking it into a flashcard, and then pocketing it.
An option, a last resort, but he didn’t want to be a Dark Lord.
The tips of his glowing tines made him think of fireflies, of [Zzt] sparks, of the heart he wanted to possess.
He sighed and refocused on the battle. The cursed quartet continued to menace Sling, trespassing within her library of recipes.
Sling. The E-squad phantoms. Recipes flying in the air as unreachable talismans. A sheer mess for Swishy to clean up.
Swishy swung the rake at the E-squad smoke. All the while Sling swayed out of the way, slipping from side to side, guarding her head with her hands. The boy’s rake gleamed, the arcs of light painting the darkness for a fleeting moment before fading away. And in those brief moments of illumination, the E-squad’s bandages of choice were readable for all to see: SYRUP, BANANA CLUSTER, SWISH-STRAW MOCHI.
I bet she pounds the mochi with her giant body. She’s a natural, this woman. The quartet spoke as one as they tore the bandages from Sling’s and rose into the treetops. Now hidden, they continued to speak about her recipes.
The boy read the direction of their souls—upwards—and used [Wing Jump], enacting a stabbing thrust at a promising patch of foliage.
But the souls vanished, again loosening their cohesive selves into atomic nothingness. As Swishy landed on a branch, the E-squad gathered upon the ground again, speeding around Sling’s knees. They flowed all over her body as her confused gaze struggled to keep up. She awkwardly stepped this way and that, moving from the ghosts that swerved under her armpits and around her neck and across her eyes. To the E-squad, Sling was nothing more than a theme park ride, the tracks of which were constructed by her terror and anxiety.
The blackwheat sprigged in Swishy’s forearms as he closed his fist, waiting for his interminable hang time to end. “I’ll get you, I’ll get you, I’ll get you,” he whispered, the V in his mind condensing into a brick.
As the specters tugged at Sling’ bandages, staining the ÉCLAIR and CAKE-POP and CREPE inscriptions, they incessantly laughed, contaminating the air with their discordant tones.
Ooooh, Pecan Crumble…this is a truly special woman.
She is, isn’t she?
Forgot that, look at this slip. There are 3 kinds of cobbler. THREE!
Have you seen her ribs? Pound cake supremacy!
Swishy landed, then used [Wing Jump]—horizontally, shooting himself as a dart toward Sling.
The boy was attacking her—he told her so through the Swish-straw emblem on her chest. He telepathized the path of the coming strikes through his straw god hotline, detailing the choreography of his attack pattern: the high swings, the low swings, the stabs, the pokes, and the weapon twirls.
Sling dodged each attack with grace and style, a dance with Swishy as she eyed the E-squad dodging as well, an agile and perceptive smoke.
I like your thinking, little Swishy. But I can read her emblem too. We can see your link. We can see everything. Don’t act like we haven’t seen this trick before, just minutes ago in the skies.
The mummy-crow kept the pattern of her evasions going, but her expression tinged with worry. She held a hand over her heart, protecting her little god’s sigil.
But the E-squad declared Swishy’s projected attacks anyway. Left! Right! Two pokes here. Twirl, twirl, twirl, and then stab!
And the shadows were correct. The boy did all of those attacks, perfectly in time with the shouts. Sling dodged—and the E-squad did too.
The boy fed the rake energy, stoking its light, before lowering his stance and then swinging in a hopping 360 motion: [Swish Cyclone].
Sling instantly used [Split] to dodge, disintegrating—but not all the way. She broke apart in levels, separating her head from the neck, and the neck from the torso, and the torso from the other parts. She’d sectioned off her joints as well, her shoulders and elbows, her forearms and hands, and the digits of her fingers all free-floating amid the aura-levitated bandages.
As Sling remained in floating pieces, Swishy swung his rake, sending golden energy between her body parts.
The glowing cyclone emitted from the rake, surrounding the pair in a brief wind tunnel, the flashing light diminishing all the proximate shadows. The E-squad shrank—but instead of being blasted away as Swishy had expected of his get-off-me move, the curses remained in the area, reducing to thin slivers that rose along the inner edges of Sling’s floating bandages. They rode a loose strip around her elbows and forearm, affixing their laughing mouths to the gauze.
Your [Swish Cyclone] is just a reading light to us. You’re such a thoughtful scarecrow! We like that in Straw City.
Swishy shut his soul connection to Sling’s emblem, declining to telegraph his next move—and lunged at the shadow-tinged strips with an open mouth.
“Hey!” Sling said, raising her floating parts. “Don’t eat me!”
But Swishy did exactly that—in a way. His open gourd consumed the bandages that E-squad rode along, breaking them down through his mysterious digestion.
Unfortunately, the shadows that were taken into Swishy’s mouth had escaped from his carved eyeholes, four streams of smoke hightailing it with haste and appreciation.
That was close! Nice try you little cannibal!
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“Sorry!” Swishy said to Sling.
Sling shrugged, still disembodied, and then un-did her [Split] to bring her body back to normal, a blue aura sealing the disparate parts together.
“Very cool. That’s a good solution to breaking down completely all the time.”
“Yes, a full [Pile] isn’t the way to go with me. [Split] is my compromise.” Sling glared at the smoke, scanning from back to forth, confused.
A ball of darkness gathered before them. It was the size of a crystal ball, and it contained all four of the E-squad souls. They murmured; they convened; they game-planned—in silence this time—considering their next move. When the ball vibrated from a peal of low laughter, Swishy and Sling knew that they’d decided upon a scheme.
They split into four again, merging into the night, broadcasting a quadruple-voiced announcement to their wary enemies.
Sling’s recipes…and Swishy’s heart—we’ll now take them both! Isn’t that good news? You two have contributed. You both have been deemed as worthy…
Swishy tightened his grip over his rake, conscious of the dark influence that now populated his body. Knots of blackwheat sprouted within his bulbous palms. The letter V flared within his mind, its flaming dark aura difficult to control. Stop it, he told himself before resuming his offensive.
Stop what? The E-squad said, reading his mind. Progress is the motto, don’t you know? These recipes are all fine and dandy but this isn’t what we want. Perhaps we’ll open a bakery later. But you can’t open a bakery without a foundation.
“You mean I’m the foundation?”
If you want to be self-important, sure, say it that way. You’re the culmination of what Ruby has worked for. That heart inside…that’s something Ruby made. Her effort went into everything you are. In a way, her heart is yours—and your heart is ours.
“That’s twisted and dumb.”
“And un-motherly…” Sling slumped her posture and shook her head.
There’s nothing twisted about the way things are. The way things have always been. You are a boy. Your heart is fuel. Where is the twist? What is the basis for your judgment? Everybody eats…only if everyone contributes. We’ve paid our dues through our service, now pay yours.
“No, you can’t have me—and you can’t have anything that came from me.”
I’m only here to do my duty. To harvest. Like any farmer does. Let us just cut to the chase then. You belong to us—your next heart anyway.
“What I have isn’t for you.”
You say that, but it’s already settled with Ruby. She overrules you—and she overrules us—plain and simple. You see, the four of us would love to have a heart again. Now of course we’d have to split your heart amongst ourselves, 4 parts us, and 1 for Ruby. But that’s more than fair! She wants us to feel whole. She wants us to have firmer magic. Isn’t that great? That we, without organs, can at least have the most important one?
“You don’t even know what you’re doing. You obsess over Sling’s recipes—but you have no bodies. You obsess over my heart…but you’re unfeeling. If I’m just a harvest, then you’re just a sugar wraith, a breath of abyss.”
Are you not of abyss as well?
“I know I’m more. I’ve eaten good. I’ve eaten feathers. I’ve eaten food. I’ve lived a lot more than you. If you want from me, then that must mean I have more than you—that I am more, and you’ll never convince me otherwise, not like before.”
So you won’t share? No straw? No light? No reasonable kindness?
“No to everything. Starve.”
Even Sling flinched from that last comment.
That’s not an option…And that’s not in our future. No, no, no—not when Ruby has promised us all a piece of the Swish pie, so to speak. A bounty. Every heart we extract from you, she gets half.
V-o-….The spell form progressed in Swishy, floating within his pumpkin like goldfishes. He pictured Ruby’s red-manicured nails reaching into his chest, exploring the weaves, touching without apology. And then
Swishy wanted Myst back—hated her but needed her at this moment. His mind called to Myst and the phantom of her image ghosted across his mind, fufufu-ing, covering a smirk with her delicate hand.
The woman’s gestures were so full of I-told-you-so, I-knew-you’d-need-me.
“Never mind,” Swishy muttered, frustrated.
No, I’m here. Myst said. I’d love to watch this fight. I even have popcorn…
She didn’t—but Swishy sensed her in the clouds, picking crumbs from her heart and tossing them into her mouth. The girl’s popcorn was homemade, so to speak.
E-squad’s darkness flickered. The shadows were talented at communicating irritation. Why are you calling Myst when you could be calling us? Their quadrupled voices hit different chords of disgust.
Swishy hated how shadow-kind loved to trove through his psyche. Even if he shoved volumes upon volumes of dictionaries into the altar, the shadows would refuse to produce the word PRIVACY. A myth, a figment, a legend like the sword in the stone.
“At least Myst tells jokes,” Swishy said. “At least she has a personality. You guys just cling to each other like losers.”
You tell them, my little straw. I’m quite funny. A riot as the humans like to say…
But the E-squad had nothing more to say. Their next word was a technique.
Four souls, four shifting shapes, four letters.
CHOP…
(…)
E-squad shaped their four clouds of smoke into blades of ostentatious scale, swords the size of people, truth be told. [Chop] was an understatement, and Swishy got the feeling that the quartet just liked to say it as they glided through the air. Cockiness? Check. Arrogance? Double check.
[Chop], they said, the first sword swinging at Sling’s eyes.
[Split]—Sling divided her head in two, floating everything from the eyes upward as the [Chop] passed between.
The other swords joined in the barrage, the [Chops] driving the rush of wind with their immense strokes. Each blade aimed at different parts of Sling's body, forcing her to [Split] in rapid succession. She dodged one slash but was attacked before having a chance to un-split. Thankfully, she dodged with ease and grace, but Swishy grew concerned as her parts now spread into smaller and smaller pieces—diced, almost.
Chop-chop-chop-chop, they chanted with every swing, inflicting annoyance being just as important to them as landing attacks.
Emi-Emilio-Eren-Emily went after Sling, reading from her bandages. They pulled them apart in spots. And in other portions that they read aloud, they hadn’t unwound at all, viewing them through mysterious means.
Sling hugged herself with her massive arms, less out of embarrassment and more as a shield from the violence.
The shadows, such as they were, always flexed their talent for seeing inside you. They read souls. They communed with everyone’s spirits as if they were any passerby on the busy streets.
Swishy launched himself for an attack—but was slashed across his stomach and cut in half. He reformed himself, the cut straw instantly growing toward where it was severed, but another blade cut off his hand. The boy regenerated it quickly but a third blade then launched at him. And then a fourth.
He kept getting sliced, then healed, sliced, and then healed some more, until he parried enough to make himself whole.
The onslaught kept him pinned down.
Suddenly, all four blades—controlled by one soul a piece—were swinging at the boy.
Don’t worry, Swishy. Your turn here. We’ll carve that heart out in no time.
He blocked some attacks with the rake. The moments when the blades floated around him, four blades surrounding him, he used a [Swish Cyclone] to keep them away, pushing the shadows away with the bright light.
During the assault, Sling reformed from the [Split] and fixed her bandages. She shook in fear, packing and wrapping her bindings tightly, double-checking, triple-checking, hating that the enemy could see inside her, could access her soul, and could likely be hidden within her abundant weaves of straw.
Swishy was used to the Sling who was in repose, a calm lady, her spirit flowing with a stream-like quality as if she were any naturally running water in the world. The woman was meditation itself.
But the E-squad was a new level of pressure. The sweetness Sling held to herself was being leered at by these shadow demons.
Meanwhile, the [Chop] speed overwhelmed the boy. They were fast-fast-fast, and Swishy couldn’t dodge all the wind-breaking assaults.
He ducked one blade—but then got stabbed in the chest by another.
The shadow knife then thinned out into a needle, quickly disappearing into Swishy’s body. He felt the intruder crawl toward the [Heart Armor], exploring around it like Myst recently had.
Hey guys, do you see this? He’s got a neat barrier. Let’s break it.
V-o-o…
As the stress stacked, Swishy’s letters did, too. As concentrated within, stifling the blackwheat growth, he thought about Sling. Had she always been a black-crow? Or was the progression steady? He aspired to control his curses on her level, awed by the fact that she didn’t have a Trey or Myst to help her through, only the ills of her curses, trial by shadow.
[Harvest]—Swishy reached inside his chest and extracted his [Heart Armor]-encased core. A few threads of gold-straw poked through the barrier and wrapped around Swishy’s hand. He eyed the insolent E-squad shadow, which had taken the form of a leech that slugged across the barrier, seeking ingress. Swishy closed both hands over his heart, spreading the golden thread over them.
The leech, feeling the heat of the bright magic, dissolved into smoke and flew away—another hasty escape. Whew, it said.
Swishy pivoted all around in search of the other enemies. He hovered over his heart, holding it close.
Sling stared at the boy’s core, its glow unlike anything she’d ever seen.
Embarrassed, Swishy shoved it back into his body, his straw immediately sealing.
“Here,” Sling pressed two fingers to his chest, and two [Nurture] bandages stuck onto the closing wound in an X formation.
V-o-o-d…
There was almost another “o” but the [Nurture] halted the curses.
Above. The E-squad revealed themselves as four spiked balls, raining downward upon the pair. Swishy swung at them, an arcing [Swish Cyclone] to dispel the blackness with its gold barrier. But the ball-forms preemptively disappeared.
A feint.
A sudden wind encompassed Swishy’s hips and legs, the E-squad hiding within his shadows. They had him now and relished their moment to strike.
And then it came, they soared upward. Swishy snapped his neck to the side, anticipating a gourd strike, but felt the shadows slip into his hands. The outer skin of gold-straw and brown wheat decayed into darkness. All of the hidden blackwheat was now pushed upward by the E-squad’s presence. The enemy was getting closer to dredging up his [Voodoo], far too close.
There’s so much darkness in here. I wonder what kind of heart you’re producing in this…environment. That magic casing is concealing the truth. You’re darker inside, you know that right? You’re rotten, we sense it…
He didn’t know it—he refused to accept their words. What he possessed was what he possessed, either dark or light or anything in between.
His hands, though, were black, too black.
Swishy disintegrated his hands, the straw flying away. The rake fell to the ground but the E-squad was exposed, a small orb no larger than a candle flame. The boy then reconstructed his hands around the fallen rake and then floated his hands back onto his wrist. The joints twisted into the place, the wheat interlocking like any well-crafted basket.
You’re like a lizard, the way you rebuild.
“How could something so tiny be so horrible?”
Where is the horror in us? We’re just people. Don’t be hurtful. Kindness. Practice kindness. You know what they say…go forth with heart!”
Before Swishy’s eyes, G-U-I-L-L-O-T-I-N-E appeared. The letters were the size of people. And the moonlight glinted against the word’s black edges, sharp as sharp could be. But the attack was nowhere to be found…
“Above you!” Sling called.
Swishy jumped away from a tremendous flat blade crashing downward. E-squad reverted from their cleaver form into smoke, revealing the straight-line indentation carved into the ground.
[Guillotine] again.
And again.
And again.
The 1-2-3-4 rhythm of the blades chased Swishy in his mad dash. The most recent death edge would dissolve while the one on the tail end would surge toward the front, maintaining the pursuit momentum. Swishy glanced back at the Sling-sized [Guillotine] attacks, their respective phantom’s name labeled upon the side of the blade.
He wasn’t fooled by the stature and density of their shape-shifting. After dodging an attack, he stabbed the glowing rake at the blade, forcing their smoky evasion. When one specter dissolved, the path cleared for Swishy to attack the next blade. Instantly, he’d reversed the momentum with his own offensive as the E-squad dispersed in a four-direction spray.
For now, the guillotine technique ceased as the quartet merged into the air, regrouping.
“Here, Swishy.” Sling took hovered her hands over the boy, her bent digits feeding an aura toward him. Bandage wraps spread from her fingertips and reached for Swishy’s hands. The bandages constricted around his palms, layers of NURTURE energy forcing the blackwheat to recede from view. He felt the cursed straw shrink. And even the V-o-o-d and now “o” of his mind’s eye calmed its flame, only slightly, but noticeably enough.
“Thank you, Slingy. What would I do without you?”
“Find another way to fight, of course.”
“Is there any dessert in these wraps?” Swishy examined his hands, wanting to peek beneath the gauze for his fortune-cookie message.
“Peach fritter on the left. Lime tart on the right.”
“That’s delicious.”
“How would you know?”
“I just know by feel.” He kneaded his palms with his fingers, savoring her aura.
“You’re too kind,” Sling said, before facing the darkness before them. Changes. Bad ones.
“Not good,” Swishy said.
“Is it ever?”
Emi-Emilio-Eren-Emily were shifting, solidifying, transforming…