Swishy cast [Bale], conjuring a hand around his golden rake, squeezing it with RESOLVE and PURPOSE.

He blocked the [BOLT CUTTER] spells with his rake, conjuring a hand from some of Sling’s hay pile to hold his weapon up. Even the bandage wraps were still around her hand, the strips reading LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE (WITH CAUTION).

The boy’s disembodied hand strained against the force of four bolt cutters, and he was glad that they’d targeted the same area, otherwise he would’ve been harmed. The E-squad exerted more force on their magical armaments, pressing savagely into Swishy’s face, intent on rubbing in the fact of his demise. As the E-squad and Swishy pushed their weapons against each other, the bolt cutters—while steely and metallic in force and heft—released paper-crumpling sounds during the struggle.

“What kind of origami does this?”

Ours. Enjoy the experience before your death.

“You ridiculous flat-flats should be able to do this…this can’t be real.” Swishy put all his power into his borrowed hand as he and Sling resisted the pressure together.

E-squad responded in a scorned, annoyed chorus.

Are you really one to talk, animate scarecrow?

Magic crops with a magic weapon is saying that we, of all beings, can’t be real?

Surely, this is a jest.

No, this isn’t a joke. I think we snipped the sense out of his little straw brain.

The four [Bolt Cutter] spells surged forward, breaking Swishy’s guard. The defense was successful to a point, though, as the E-squad only delivered glancing blows against the side of the pumpkin head. A trickling bleed of liquid soul ran from his forehead along the side of his rind.

Swishy grew stressed again, the panic building. He watched his straw and feathers fly in separate clumps. His [Heart Armor] encased heart now glowed amongst the blue marbles of stolen souls, drifting further away with each moment. His Timbs, too, were lifted within the E-squad’s suction, the dirty heels displaying how far he’d traveled, caked in sand and feather and pink snow and everyfruit juice.

Heartless, vessel-less, and far closer to becoming a nothing than he’d been since his rebirth in Cearth, the final o of [Voodoo] flamed to life.

His gourd blues tinged toward indigo, the Voodoo darkness loosely leashed—yet stretching and stretching, worming from beyond the boy’s head until it was all that he could see.

Darkness. A sudden blindness.

The dark knowledge returned to him. The curses in the environment seemed to like him better, regarding him with an awakened curiosity. Bodiless as he was, the dark dwellers sensed the promise in him, a trend that wasn’t lost on Swishy since his most recent pact with Myst.

Trey wasn’t the only friend of darkness—Swishy was too. But the darkness came with its entrapments, its harms, its blackwheat brand of ENNUI and DISGUST. He hated that his existence always felt like this. When, he wondered, would he grow accustomed to the horrors of life? Could he? Was it, in fact, possible? DOUBT bubbled within his mind like boiling tar, gunking his mindset and hopes.

His heart. His Timbs. Would he reach them again?

He pointed the rake toward his lost treasures, the tine tips glowing. The boy didn’t know where he got the hope to produce that light but was grateful that it was there.

A strange sensation filtered through Swishy’s mind, the V-o-O-d-o-O-o-o-o serpent swam within the hallowed territory of his gourd, but there was no body or blackwheat for the curses to corrupt. The hex lived in his head and his head alone, and a place that Swishy had primed for acceptance. His mind was tempered by the constant negativity and challenges of his life. The attacks, the insults, the attempts at imprisoning him for harvest—the moments just like this where he was broken apart like a pistachio and taken for his heart—everything he’d gone through prepared him.

The external darkness of the world, of the Cearth’s ills, allowed his insides to fortify themselves against the blackness. The psychic damage became psychic strength. He could be broken and crushed—but not all the way. In that way, he was exactly like a shadow. But the boy had a heart. He had exactly what it took to refill with honed and renewed purpose.

Accepting the darkness, the [Voodoo] streamed out of his eyeholes and gathered beneath his pumpkin.

Mimicking Trey’s [Zoom], the [Voodoo] palette circled underneath Swishy’s gourd and hardened to support him.

[Bolt Cutter] times four.

And the [Voodoo] rider took off, flying away from the crush of the cutters. He hadn’t dreamed of flying this way—and didn’t count this as a flying feat. But he was happy to put this to good use.

Wheeeee, the curses propelling the shadow transport said.

“If you guys like it, I’ll tolerate it.” This was the best response Swishy could manage through his mythical depression—pretty good for a boy with a thousand kinds of pain, he decided.

But anything he said to the curses turned out to be of minimal importance. Their exuberant Wheeeee cheers were the best the dark dwellers felt in a long time—much to the ire of Emi-Emilio-Eren-Emily.

What do you think you can do by rising? Their four overlapping voices scrapped against Swishy’s psyche like sandpaper. You’re closer to our mouths, closer to death. Putting yourself on a saucer won’t save you from us. The arrogance dripped from their words. They’d as good as won, after all, their hunt successful as the souls, the straw, and the bandages floated upward amidst of the cavalcade of blue marbles.

The boy focused on the overhead glow of his [Heart Armor], holding fast to his goal. Swishy, a mere head on a shadow platter, dialed up his speed.

[Bolt Cutters] conjured around him, crunching at him—but he weaved around the aggressive white auras, never faltering in his upward progress. He steered the [Voodoo] well, his grip solid upon his cultivated darkness, always a moment ahead of the chasing spree of [Bolt Cutter] attacks.

Resolve. Self-control. Patience.

He wasn’t okay but he was okay. It was only hell—he just had to go through it. Like many times before, he’d collect his missing pieces and return to a semblance of wholeness.

But for now, the [Voodoo], useful as it was, warped the edges of his mind with the clamp-like concepts of INCOMPLETE, INFERIOR, INANE, and LACKING.

Empty, empty, empty, yet he chased the light of his purpose, soaring around the cutters, enraging the now-flustered E-squad.

As the boy went upward, so too did his feathers, his rake—his soul-bound connection to his belongings remaining strong.

“Wait for me!” Sling’s wheat pile rose upward, too, compelled by the vacuuming draw of the E-squad’s mouths. Her remains began to separate from each other, but she remembered the technique Swishy taught the village and activated [Scarecrow].

“That’s right!” Swishy called through the chaos of the [Bolt Cutter] barrage. “Focus! Keep yourself together as best as you can! See yourself whole and you’ll make it!”

“Thank you, Swishy. You truly are a dear.” Sling ascended in a cloud, large and wide-reaching, but gathered into the loosest form of her former body. Her bandages spread around her contents in an undulating and unrestrained state, holding nothing together but keeping her straw within the relative shape of her torso, head, and limbs.

The opinionated E-squad held an impromptu meeting, commenting upon Sling as if she were a street performer in the public square, a meaningless talent.

The strong girl is resisting, wow!

Ah, what hopeful futility—poor thing thinks there’s value in fighting back.

Doesn’t she remember what it was like in The Stormcellar? To be carried in the wind and unable to escape?

Who could forget? She just doesn’t care. She’s been spoiled stupid!

Swishy frustrated them but Sling, somehow calmed them—perhaps in their confidence in dealing with her. Two [Bolt Cutter] spells were aimed at Swishy while the girls targeted Sling, returning to double-handed [Snips].

Swishy dodged the dual cutters but Sling had no option for dodging, her boneless form vulnerable to the white energy scissors. Her bandages were sliced to shreds, reducing BANANA BREAD and MILK BUN and GOOD VIBES ONLY into tiny, illegible triangles.

“Sling! Hold on tight!”

“I’m trying but I don’t know if I can!”

“You have to!”

“I know, Swishy, I know!”

As the bandages were destroyed, Sling’s form became more diffuse—she had difficulty changing into the [Scarecrow] shape. And she had trouble controlling the blackwheat, too, the way it frizzed and barbed and sharpened.

Sling’s eyes, floating within her formless wreckage of self, gleamed in red corruption.

“Sling, are you there? Sling, Sling!”

“Shut up! I’m trying to not get eaten you stupid fucking straw!”

Swishy balked from the lash-out moment, the curses overtaking the gentlest energy he’d known in his too-short, too-busy life. He searched for himself somewhere in her, combing the soul frequency for his emblem’s location. He wanted to feel her. He hoped that her true self was somewhere within her mind, calling, praying, clamoring for help.

“We’re a team, Slingy, keep yourself together!”

“I hope they mash you into pumpkin pie!” Sling said with all the ugliness Swishy never knew she had. Yet there was an undercurrent to her words, the suppressed soul of the real Sling, speaking in a mesmeric litany of Save me. Help me. Take me with you. She cycled through these pleas, a PRAYER and FAITH intent emitting from her spirit. Amid the debris field of snipped bandage and frayed blackwheat known as Sling, her aura-infused words reached the detached Swish emblem, activating its glow.

The boy heard her, felt her, and knew exactly how he could help. There was nothing more inspiring than desperation, a realization that struck Swishy as both saddening and encouraging, souring and empowering.

“Come with me then!”

[Scarecrow]—Swishy used the spell himself, claiming more of Sling’s blackwheat for himself, reconstructing his body from her copious amounts of straw. And in much the way that the E-squad’s absorption increased with the scale of their bodies, so too did Swishy’s dominion over his own scarecrow self. By borrowing Sling’s straw, he was next able to draw his feathers back into himself, reconstructing his precious wing.

The boy, in spite of his [Voodoo], finally smiled, pleased that his augmented power won a tug-of-war against the E-squad’s suctioning hunger.

Now no longer a head on a shadow plate, he placed his bare feet upon the [Voodoo] rider and posed like a proper skateboarder.

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“I’m back!” Swishy cried out. “Thank you, Slingy!”

She couldn’t respond anymore, though, her energy spent for now.

“Just rest, then,” Swishy whispered, a little sad. “I’ll get us out of this…”

NO! The E-squad echoed in a soul-rending banshee shriek. The storm of blue orbs and straw vibrated from the anguished force. Shadows deepened within the hands of the massive paper dolls, a more violent round of spells charging up.

Meanwhile, the excess remains of Sling were pulled around Swishy’s vicinity, flying around his orbit in a tornado, ready for him to use at any given moment.

Between the [Voodoo] and the blackwheat body, the dark god had risen again.

(…)

E-squad felt a type of way about Swishy claiming straw from their suction: enraged.

Is he taking from our plate?

I believe he is.

Why would he do something so cruel?

I can’t believe he would do this.

And then the Emi-Emilio-Eren-Emily calmed themselves down, their paper forms producing scratching sounds as they fidgeted from discomfort. They adjusted their peacoat collars and fluffed the texture in their skirts.

They had the upper hand, but the Swishy reconstruction and the food competition made them nervous, triggering a specific trauma.

Swishy recognized HUNGER in them, the letters darkening, the E-squad revealing their own form of blackwheat, their own curse.

The scarecrow related to them but he had a lot on his mind, all negative. He thought he was ready to use the darkness again. He went through with the fight knowing that this was a possibility, to be turned and hexed and undesirably transformed. But now that the moment of change was upon him, the dark intents spread through him.

With the onset of [Voodoo], his own doubts rotted through every inch of his gourd, but now that he used the straw of another, he took on those feelings. Sling’s blackwheat introduced the boy to a plethora of cursed intents she harbored—multitudes that she in her zen could handle, but Swishy in his youth and immaturity was ill-equipped for.

FAILURE was the only word that spread through his newfound blackwheat—a feeling he had in moderate amounts, that Sling contained in droves. DUTY and RESPONSIBILITY flowed into him as well, and so too did LEADERSHIP and THOUGHTFULNESS—all soured by triple the amount in COLLAPSE, DISASTER, NEGLECT. Swishy took his future defeat into account. The nicks in his gourd now soul-bled again—a little blue, and a little black as well.

His floating Timbs drifted into view, ascending past the E-squad’s chests, then breaching into neck height.

The boy steered in that direction, attempting to do so with HEART—

But DEATH, DEFEAT, DEBACLE, DOWNFALL dogpiled atop that intent.

He tried DETERMINATION—which got snuffed out by further DECLINE, DETERIORATE, and DISAPPOINTMENT.

DEMON, too, came in for good measure, its proliferation multiplying inside him, burning through his straw with a cursed smoke.

He tried to comfort himself with self-talk about how this wasn’t him. How he was using a last resort. How the darkness was done to him and wasn’t something he was responsible for.

But the curses held him accountable to the worst visions of his doom. Voodoo wanted sorrow—the more irreparable, the better.

With no Trey, no Sling, no heart—for the moment at least—he reached for his favorite but not-so-favorite shadow.

“Myst,” he said to himself, making sure E-squad couldn’t hear. “Myst, where are you?”

“I am here.” Myst conjured upon the outer rim of his eyehole, a skittering spider enjoying the chaotic view. “I see my time to help has come!”

“Please…I need the company.”

“Ah, we’re here again! In the dark—being dark. This looks like a hobby of yours, but alas, I don’t do anything for free.”

“Not even for a friend?”

“You know I’ve been giving you discounts for my services. I’m going back to sleep. All my celebrating has me tired—and so did your last stubborn bout with me.”

“Whatever then, go away!”

The E-squad stared, trying to read Swishy, but he sturdied his mood and body language.

Myst smiled, laughing low, and hid within his eyes. Surprisingly, she stuck around in some capacity, staring beyond Swishy’s gourd as he ascended.

It was a good view, rich with souls.

Everything revolved around Swishy in one way or another. The floating curses reached out as Swishy passed them by. Sling, now lacking a solid vessel, served as Swishy’s while the rest of her straw spun around him in a standby-like situation. And the attacks were ceaseless, the white X patterns of [Snip] aiming at the [Voodoo] rider—which thankfully split the distance between the letters to dodge.

Myst raised two of her arms while proudly perching on her six remaining limbs. Being the center of attention was a blessed state for her. Swishy noticed her basking euphorically while he, himself, did all the work.

The [Bolt Cutter] flurry returned.

The further up Swishy went, the darker the blue marbles became, a corruption cracking through the orbs. And the curses cried out for Swishy then, the smoky souls pressing their faces against their glassy prisons, staring longingly at the boy.

Release us! Let us come with you! Let us join you! Is this the boy famous for the Straw Guardian? Oh man, that was good darkness. No absorption, no rent, just a place to live. It was like a chasm…but not…

And as the rumors spread about the soaring Swishy, the orbs strained against the E-squad gravity and attempted to fly into him. They wanted to join him so badly—and some were successful, too, melding into the cursed platform.

The blue marbles now blackened under Swishy’s influence, [Voodoo]-infused as he was—and not the E-squad’s, which infuriated them.

You’re taking our food! The E-squad said.

As he passed the cinched waists of the dresses and the shining belts, everything grew louder. The deafening growls of the stomach encased him, the abdominal shadows roaring at Swishy, demanding that he return their curses, their food.

Emi-Emilio-Eren-Emily revealed their individual selves through their impulsive attacks. Their base game plan was to assault Swishy with [Bolt Cutters].

The boy dodged, growing used to the attack rhythm.

E-squad switched to [Snip]. They attacked him simultaneously at times, 8 sudden white X’s caging Swishy, forcing him to halt and retreat and take a longer, winding route in his ascent.

Other times, a [Snip] round would take different timings and positioning, hoping to catch the boy off guard.

Faint white X’s formed in the dark—then receded. But Swishy no longer fell for these feints. He’d drive right through the X’s, keen on the concentration of magic. The boy was in their minds, accustomed to their rhythm and logic and fear, mostly their fear. His blackwheat combined with the curses he collected from the blue marbles offered advice and direction, smoothly gliding around his wrists and shoulders and ankles, gently tugging him when he needed to stop, and circling his limbs in smooth halos when he needed to proceed onward.

The tables were turned with the way he mastered the dark.

But the E-squad were still four enemies, experienced, wise, and endlessly tenacious.

[Bolt Cutter], [Guillotine], [Axe], and [Needle] were all summoned but not yet released. They watched Swishy, aiming, silently coordinating for the right moment.

Swishy dodged the [Bolt Cutter].

He lost an arm to the dropped [Guillotine], which he responded to by using [Crumble] on the detached limb, releasing the grains into his orbit of Sling straw. He then drew less damaged straw into himself, regenerating that arm.

[Axe] flew at him in flipping arcs, prompting Swishy to throw up a [Straw Shield] with Sling again. The defense was small and dense as Swishy easily pinpointed the strike’s path. But the shield exploded to dust upon impact.

[Needle] rained down, a deluge of cursed spirits that were molded into crying pinpricks. The needles encompassed the full width of Sling, an impossible-to-miss attack.

The boy used [Bale] and pressed onward, the paper needles crunching into flat dots against his hardened body.

The papercrafts only grew larger in scale, whatever came to mind for the desperate E-squad.

[Plane]—a huge one, swirling in the air, looping and lost. A concerning sight as the vehicle was released from the conjurer’s control, making it difficult to predict the arcs. After several seconds, Swishy didn’t seem like he would be attacked—yet the plane stayed in the air, boomeranging around.

[Plane], a second time—followed by the sound of folded paper between the four E-squad members. And then they released another [Plane]. And then they worked on another.

The boy used [Swish Darts], shooting his fingertips at the plane's wings, killing its arcs, its altitude, and its overall threat.

[Looseleaf]—no origami this time. Only a lobbed sheet of paper, larger than several clouds. There was no avoiding such a large-scale attack. What concerned Swishy was the active souls of the E-squad, who, hidden by the [Looseleaf] cover, were plotting on more vicious spell.

Swishy broke through with a single-armed rake thrust—only to find another deployed [Looseleaf].

He was comfortable now, empowered by his successive victories. FAILURE lived in his straw but his mind kept thinking: what failure? Where is the failure when I keep winning?

The curses twisted in their casual halos around his limbs, a trusting and worthy snake for Swishy to draw power from.

Confident he could unleash his techniques without losing himself, he did:

[Grain Mill]…a threatening aura spread from his eyes in a wide-ranging net, inflicting visions of demise unto the proximate curses. Those shadows now did his bidding by gathering around him, rejecting any debris—which included disintegrating the arcane stationery of [Looseleaf].

Beyond the torn-apart paper, were Swishy’s black Timbs, which he reached out for with a [Hell Weave]. But this time, the straw didn’t extend from his body—it’d come from the cloud of Sling’s excess that surrounded him, forming a rapid lasso that secured the boots in one swoop.

He slowed the [Voodoo] rider to a listless drift and dropped the boots into his hands. The darkness of his gourd gave way to a flume of heart-shaped blue bubbles.

As an unexpected side effect, Sling also relaxed and softened her thorny straw, Swishy’s mood change having the same effect on her curse-control as her bandages did.

Together, their auras calmed down, becoming more controlled, and more confident.

E-squad stared at Swishy, their white eyes and mouths twisted with offense and disgust. They watched the scarecrow float before their faces, uncaring. Their rage was so great that they stopped eating, even as their harvested blue marbles hit against their cheeks and foreheads, corrupting into ashen orbs upon contact.

Their hunger wasn’t the priority now—only the killing.

“Are you sure you can afford to stop now?”

“But it feels good.”

“They’re going to attack.”

“Let them.”

Swishy set the rake upon the [Voodoo], then knelt down, putting on one shoe and then the other. He tied both laces, before double-knotting them, checking each with strong tugs.

The [Heart Armor] came next, floating along, leaving a trail of [Zzt]-popping glitter across the E-squad’s evil faces.

Emi, Emilio, Eren, and Emily puckered their lips toward the heart encasement and suctioned. The static cracked under the stress of the pulling tension—until the heart broke in four directions.

One of them reached for it with their hand—which was promptly smacked away by the other three.

And then a sudden flurry of hands were in the mix, reaching and grasping and knocking the others away. The siblings were going at it in petty competition.

Hey, hey, hey, weren't we sharing?

I was only going to break it apart for us…

That’s a lie!

And what about you? That reach was hasty!

Now, now, now, now, They said as one, once more harmonized by their finger-pointing energy.

Swishy was tired of their pursuit of his heart. The way Swishy achieved heart was magic, no doubt, but to his knowledge he hadn’t done anything different from any hard-working human. He learned what was set before him to learn. He absorbed spells. He had fun. Yet he didn’t understand the full value of a heart—why people wanted it the way they did, and why people couldn’t be content with their own.

The science of making a heart was the most unclear thing there was.

He just knew that some actions helped it, and others hurt it. And he was surprised, so gleeful and so surprised, by how the cardiac core bloomed inside him. The touching. The affirmations. The gifts and kindnesses and overall love. He wondered if a flashcard for LOVE existed. It had to, didn’t it? But people were shockingly good at sending it. Love was hard to find. Hard to pinpoint. But it was there. He wouldn’t be going on his third heart without it.

But watching the siblings fight was a final straw for him. MAD and SAD bloomed darkly through his body. TIRED streamed along as well, slowly progressing through him, taking extra care to corrupt his insides fully.

Swishy’s straw crumbled from the inside of his body, his clothing held upward by a wireframe of straw, empty and curse-stained wicker as his entire insides were flushed out. The shed droppings floated away toward the E-squad’s desperate mouths. Swishy’s empty chest presented itself, unfilled, skeletal.

Inside, there was only a swirling nebula of pain.

No one had ever seen Swishy’s dark innards with such clarity before. The pain was spelled out in familiar terms. The words were short and ruinous, six-lettered words packed tight into a pressurized ball. MISERY and HOLLOW and CAVERN and FROZEN speeding around, bouncing off each other, clashing in bundles of slight friction to create a dark heat.

As the orb packed tighter, crunching inward, the six-letter words became four-letter ones, RUIN and DOOM, COLD and GALE, and countless instances of LOSS.

An energy shifted, a silence, a judgment clouding the air. The E-squad hmm’d and hawed and released low laughter.

“I’m tired of them,” Swishy and Sling said, their shared straw in an E-squad-like manner.

Me, too, Myst said, suddenly appearing within Swishy’s gourd, a spider skittering along the edge of the eyehole. Would you like to make a wish? Let’s go get our heart.

“Mysty,” the boy whispered. “What’s all this? Why do they want heart if this is how they act when it’s in their face? Couldn’t they have put this effort into themselves? Don’t they know that anything I have is wasted on them?”

Waste? The E-squad’s interest was piqued. We’re all people. We all need and crave. No matter how much we take we’re flat! We’re not greedy—we haven’t eaten our fill! We will share…we first have to figure out how…

Myst’s energy changed locations, burrowed now within Swishy’s straw. She was hiding from the E-squad—for some reason wary about facing them. The woman walked with six legs while shrugging with two. They were aligned. Swishy had hit on something that was true and baffling, and Myst had nothing for him except for her spidery presence.

“What are you doing with my heart, Myst? How has it been?”

More wonderful than I could ever imagine. Apologies for my heart-drunkenness. A girl’s got to have joy, you know.

“I know.”

So what is your move now? I told you you’ll need me. Will it be your next heart? Have you realized now that being a farm is your power, your best option?

“If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s to get creative.”

And by creative, you mean using that thing inside you…As a connoisseur of the dark, I must say that it’s impressive…

Swishy reached inside his chest, fiddled around, and pulled the turbulent mass out. Heart-sized—but not his heart. An object—but immaterial. The orb of swirling black danced in his palm.

E-squad arched their brows.

“Gorgeous…” Myst exposed herself in her humanoid form, phasing halfway from his shoulder, drawing her ghostly face into the tight doomed spirals.

Use me, use me, the swirling darkness yelled.

“CHASM,” the boy said.