A WRATHRAVEN, A COLOSSAL ONE, GUARDING THE ENTRANCE TO A PORTAL.

The scarecrow was stricken with horror by the sight, especially of the Trey riding upon Bristles, speeding headlong like a missile into that doorway.

On the outside Swishy was tough. Inside, he crumbled from the worry of Trey down within Bristles’ awakened power. He didn’t know whether to be encouraged or terrified by the swelling blackness that chased after him. Despite his toying with the birds, Bristles’ unbridled madness reset his mind. War bled through every aspect of the night.

Swishy mushed the birds, infusing them with the darkest parts of his aura. The order was loud and direct: go faster. And the birds did. They sped through the night but Bristles’ progress outpaced them. And the closer he got to their altitude in the sky, the more he saw the condition of his wildest and scariest devotee.

The shadow-crafted hand, the ever-enlarging wings, and the dark globe that contained Trey.

Yet as imposing a sight the renewed Bristles was, a wrathraven many times their height and width emerged from a portal before them. It spread out its wings, its arms, its cloudy body. The beast was its own sky, a fluffy mass of malice. Such a thing would stop anybody in their tracks, even the talented and exceptional.

But not the crazy. Not the shadow-touched.

Bristles flew between the wrathraven’s ethereal ribs—Trey in tow—and blasted past it into the portal. Even Trey was in on the arc, holding a crackling light in his hands, a ball that whorled with the letters Z-T-O-R-M. Bristles was psychotic but Swishy had never known Trey to shy away from the curses and banes either. Trey’s common sense and his words said one thing while his body did the exact opposite.

So into the darkness the unlikely pair went.

And the monstrous wrathraven snapped its head back and diffused itself into a vapor, into a serpentine trail that poured into that black gate in pursue of its invaders.

Swishy knew what he saw but couldn’t believe it. Bristles had acted so quickly, going from transformation to ravaging the flock to phasing into a wrathraven’s portal. The recklessness was expected and unstoppable, and it forced Swishy’s hand.

Go into the portal? Or fly up to Myst?

But Trey…it was the only choice. Swishy had to help his friend-brother-parent. He trusted in Trey but nobody could trust Bristles. And nobody could trust the mysteries of the portal. If a wrathraven had come from it, then that couldn’t have been good news.

Swishy did a tap-tap with one of his Timbs, his method of mushing the birds he rode upon.

You could be nicer! The bird complained.

“You could be faster, now go.”

Are you going to make us go there? The birds were nervous. Hostage life was new to them, the shoe on the other talon.

“You came from there, didn’t you? You were brave when you came here to cause trouble! Think of it as you guys going home.”

This is different. The situation changed! It’s dangerous now!

“Everything we do in Straw City is dangerous. Stop complaining!”

You’re not going to do more for us than Ruby.

“That’s a lie. Isn’t that why you took my trees?”

They were Ruby’s first! You just…did a thing.

“Look, I’m going to lead you now. You just wait. I’ll get rid of Ruby and you’ll see the truth. Go against me or go against her. But if you go against me, consider the consequences.”

It wasn’t like him to speak this way. So he eavesdropped on his inner chasm and borrowed their words.

The birds flew away, breaking apart the aerial path—but Swishy cleared the gaps between them and steered them with his body back into place. Every bird was right where the scarecrow wanted them to be. The snitches cut their eyes at Swishy but kept their insults to themselves. Swishy was beyond their comprehension now. But Swishy wouldn’t let them off that easy. Especially that Wingy seemed to be enjoying itself, releasing a pleased sigh at the savagery.

You’ll die. The birds warned, their bodies shaking beneath him as his own personal Cearthquake.

“You’ll die. Now do take me there.”

“Faster,” Swishy said. “Get on with it, you body-stealers.

You’re so bossy.

“I’ve never had fried bird before. I eat my shadowclaws raw.” Swishy smiled evilly, brightening the blue-soul glow of his mouth.

I know you saw that monster. You really want to go?

The tap-tap became a kick-kick.

He felt the birds gulping—followed by the rush of their flight.

And so the birds formed a round path, a substantial disc of plumage, and soared toward the portal. Swishy twisted his hands around his trident, finally allowing himself to feel the anxiety. He sank into the worry, feeling it without surrendering control of himself to it. Negative feelings without the hexed words. All caps would happen less. He needed to keep this up, especially as the night got darker, and as the air filled with the POLLUTION of Ruby’s and Myst’s attacks.

Other words leaked from the wishwillow zone. A chain of L-O-N-G-I-N-G, the familiar Ruby-bound intents of D-E-A-T-H and T-Y-R-A-N-N-Y, and then a short sentence that was refreshingly like Swishy’s shadow sibling, a slammed-together lament of tired-of-you, tired-of-this, punctuated by a BEGONE.

Swishy resolved to hurry. Clear the portal, then save the wishwilows. He couldn’t allow the witch and the shadow mistress to be unattended for too long. The atmosphere was worse for the ware already, the night darkening, the animals growing nauseous inside their hollows.

The scarecrow’s soul was moderately off-kilter, too, the closest to sickness he’d ever felt.

His flight path was a fair distance away from the aerial wishwillows. While the birds ferried him away, Swishy wistfully watched the progress of the golden trees.

Within the Cearth, there was goodness to be found—but only in nuggets, in people, in unreliable and fleeting instances. The wishwillows, for the few minutes they lasted upon the ground, were an example of that. And he now caught intermittent glimpses of them through the encasement of Myst’s and Ruby’s auras. Black weather had taken over but there was loveliness to be mined from this world. He saw it; he believed it; he contributed to the great cause—even as he stood upon the flying bodies of his enemies.

Myst and Ruby were fighting it out on the rising wishwillow cluster and the boy wanted to make it there—with help at least. But a part of him wanted to flee from the craziness that surged in that golden zone. The blackness of the women’s energy throbbed like an ache. The Cearth was full of blood and longing. Snitchtalons near the surface had flown away, darting in every direction throughout the woods. Swishy sensed the insects—they’d all gone downward, skittering into the dirt. One ladybug, not too far off, was frozen stiff in fear, as the cursed energy enclosed it within four walls of psychosis. An oppressiveness was born, another addition to his mental stack.

A metamorphosis was happening. And when It came to Straw City, nothing was scarier than the act of becoming. What came from the abyss almost always presented a complexity to deal with.

Then the rumination ended—Swishy and his snitch-carriers arrived at the portal.

From afar, it didn’t seem so large, but up close Swishy could tell that the wrathraven could physically fit its un-morphed form through it. Swishy felt like a Goldie before the grand darkness, steadily drawn in by the gravity, the force. Loose straw and feathers were pulled from the boy and birds, vacuumed into the void like spare change.

He knew it was Bristles in there, a wrathraven reborn. Even from outside the realm, Swishy detected the chainsaw quality of the aura of his follower’s aura. But the wildness was accompanied by a steadiness too. The fanged edges of the black energy pulsated with a regular rhythm. The toothiness didn’t spike unpredictably as Swishy was used to. Bristles had his shadows under control and was returning to his time as a legitimate wrathraven with smooth control of the dark.

The boy found that thinking of Bristles with grace—and even compliments—made him feel better about Trey’s confinement to him.

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The boy decided it was time to get going. He pointed his trident toward the portal through which Trey and Bristles disappeared. Black energy loudly sparked across the door. It was a welcome mat in a way, the shadowdeep message suggesting that death lay within. Straw gods weren’t allowed to fear death, though, especially with their friends at stake.

The snitches were hesitant about proceeding into the portal but Swishy was an unforgiving master.

While the birds had consumed their fair share of blackwheat, Swishy was the originator of it, someone who could wield its blessings and banes best. He pushed the worst parts of him to the surface, manifesting the feelings of ANGER, CRIME, and FORCE. There was nothing less ambiguous than violence. He gathered the malicious intents around the tips of his trident, pointing a [Grain Mill] spell at his commandeered birds.

Please, don’t do that. Anything but that!

Swishy kept charging his spell. The blackness formed the wicked face of a sharp-toothed pumpkins, phantom hands that decorated the trident prongs like candlelight. Swishy matched that harsh look as best he could, and, judging by the birds’ reactions, he did a very convincing job of it.

The flock whimpered. Some were crying even through their blackwheat-tinged eyes.

Swishy and the usefulness of domination continued on, guiding the birds toward the portal. “Good job, guys,” he said. “That wasn’t so hard.”

The hard part is what comes next.

“You don’t have to tell me.”

Any last words? The birds asked in different ways, in different tones of voice. A variety of whimpers and pigeon-y coos came up, the flock commiserating with each other about their fates.

Swishy took the question seriously, though. He gazed into the great darkness, drawn closer and closer, accepting the gate’s desire to eat him.

FAITH, FAITH, FAITH. He stoked that intent through his body, knowing well these five letters were what kept his supporters together. Gold sparked across the parts of himself that were normal wheat. He remembered the ethereal birds; he remembered his connection to the straw-bound through the tokens he’d given them; he remembered what it was like to feel that everything would work out.

“Last words? No. We’re going to be just fine.”

I was afraid you’d say that.

“Fear is fine! Action is better.”

Tap-tap.

Kick-kick.

Stomp-stomp.

After the snitches’ petulant rebellion, they closed their eyes and ushered Swishy toward the portal.

As they came close and passed the point of no return, the range where they were drawn in automatically by the gate’s power, Swishy shot one last glance to the wishwillows in the sky. The lighthouse loveliness of the trees were encased in black tornados.

“Please be okay, Mysty. I’ll be there soon. I’ll help you too.”

A moment of silence, of tense drifting.

Swishy allowed this, accepted this, welcomed this. He wanted Myst to respond. The moments passed, adding a stack of WORRY and CONCERN and LONELINESS with each second. His forearms gained a spike of blackwheat for each hexed word, the letters spiraling around his conjured thorns.

“Good luck, Myst,” Swishy said, waving out to her.

Thank you, Swishy, said the shadow mistress’s voice in his head.

He loosened his handle on the trident, soothed by the shot of relief. Even the thorns receded, submerging beneath the coarse brown straw.

The scarecrow entered the portal, standing upon his pallet of birds.

(…)

Swishy didn’t expect to find what he did.

The boy followed Trey and Bristles into the cracked portal and was transported to a different world altogether.

Evening prevailed on the outside. But a shimmering roost existed within the portal. The blackness of the passageway was a stark departure from the luminosity within. He was released high-high-high into the air, dumped from the sky. The scarecrow spread his arms out and dove into a strange abyss, a pit of sheer gold.

Golden skies and metallically glossy clouds.

There was nothing like a sun in that realm. But the gleam was more radiant and industrial than that. He hadn’t thought that he’d dive into a portal of cracked shadow and find a secret prize, a treasure trove of light. It was the exact opposite of what Swishy expected to find while at the same time being the obvious choice for a hoarding pack of wrathravens. That’s how he knew that this was a wrathraven lair, the sheer richness of the skies, the density of yellowed rays. Only the wrathravens would find a way to steal pigment for themselves, dying the very air they breathed.

It was gorgeous, though, so much so that even the snitchtalons that carried Swishy into the realm had forgotten their initial fears of it.

Swishy was bathed in light, a warmth closing around his being. He felt like he was being shoved into the softness of a pillowcase. A world that hugged him, a world that did nothing but shove him love. Where was this place? And why did it not exist on the outside? Straw City had much potential and it wasn’t using it at all—it was hoarding it. Ruby had her way of being a self-serving woman. The wrathravens had their own, this one. Only they could paint the air itself. Swishy marveled as he plunged by patterns of cinnamon swirls of dust. He reached out and grabbed at them. The powdery gold wrapped around his arms caught between his weaves of straw and the folds of his clothing.

The boy’s face was glistening. His spirit tingled from face to hand to foot. The nervous feelings then radiated from the bottom back up to him, a ping-ponging of pleasure that almost made him forget the danger zone he’d dived into.

Almost.

The birds remembered first. They squawked in shock from the sky’s sudden static.

Z-T-O-R-M. Trey was charging his spell down there for a reason. But the voltage effects were camouflaged by the golden clouds. The sun-tinged marshmallow puffs were thicker in number, the weather of the realm seeming to respond to Trey’s storm call. Denser weather, brilliant skies, and bolts crackling invisibly down below. A thunder crack rang out like cannon fire, its sound reverberating through the loose strands of Swishy’s straw.

Swishy listened hard, searching for evidence of the wrathraven-giant’s demise—a threat, a squawk of pain, a turn of shadow to indicate its location. But nothing. The boy flew down into the bottomless gold, out of range with his friend.

The snitchtalons let out low grunts, seething through their beaks, sucking in the pain. They wanted to complain but it was too late now.

The scarecrow was their only hope, and Swishy, as it turned out, was glad enough to be that.

But for now they descended as the oddest flock into successive thickets of charged clouds. Soon enough, they passed through a weather cluster that contained Trey’s “Z” from his [Ztorm]. The bolt-shaped letter grew in activity, the electrons ricocheting against each other with faster and faster frequency, the static starting as an occasional pop but then progressing into a sound like the shaking of a chain-link fence. Swishy passed through that “Z” cloud and a forceful bolt beamed downward in a tower adjacent to Swishy’s path. The scarecrow was no longer in his T-pose then, tensing up, knowing he’d fallen into the middle of a battle, into a fight for his best friend’s life.

Next came a “T” cloud, charged, volatile, and suddenly beaming.

He kept the same momentum downward, clutching his trident as he sought the enemy that Trey was attacking. The next cluster of clouds was the densest yet, “O” and “R” and “M” had commandeered the golden clouds and were preparing a triplicate beam of storm-bound terror. Swishy was attuned to his friend’s rhythm and spirit and began to count down the moments to the coming attack.

“3…”

Swishy saw evidence of ground for the first time, an array of treetops shaped like massive broccoli heads of gold and black. The rubbery texture of the wood signaled that these were everytrees. The contrast with the shadowy leafage augmented the mustard gleam even more.

“2…”

The trees were large; the trees were tall; and these everytrees were not carrying the gaseous nodes black nodes that turned into the everyfruits of one’s desires—but they held up physical structures, humongous nests of gold-straw. They were everywhere, all with spherical shapes. Some of the nests appeared like beehives. Others were like huts. There was a cluster that resembled hanging yurts. Reddened eyes shined from the insides of the elliptical entranceways, the gaze of wrathravens at rest. Despite the world-blur of Swishy’s fall, these details were impressed upon him with startling clarity.

Wrathravens clearly weren’t immune to the charms of coziness. They were just as good as any other creature at cultivating their homes, their specific and preferred states of leisure.

“1…”

The final three of Trey’s bolts crashed through the surrounding clearings. The voltage became visible then as they blasted through the midnight tones of the everytrees. Several of the trees were razed to the ground, flattening into ashen flakes, before those same particles swirled and restructured into place. Much like the [Scarecrow] technique, the everytrees built themselves back from the ground up. Only the golden nests that were held by the trees found themselves erased, the branch arms carrying the unfulfilled nodes.

As Swishy landed upon the ground, Trey’s [Ztorm] had eviscerated many of the golden nests, the likes of which served as lanterns that cast light from the everytrees.

“Trey? Trey? Say something! Come here!”

Nothing, of course.

“I’m here for you then! I can help!”

No feedback but Swishy was heartened by the evidence of magic, of active life. Fighting for one’s life wasn’t fun. But even in times of ruin, Swishy found encouragement in it.

That was just a compromise, though, a near-meaningless consolation once the evil reasserted its presence.

In the thick of the everytree canopies, the golden skies were eclipsed, and a proper evening stole everything once again. The domain’s goldenness had a bottom, after all, because once Swishy and the snitchtalons reached the surface the brilliance vanished.

A black and purple realm was all around, the atmosphere warbling with DOMINATION. He wasn’t prepared for how loud it was in there. Wrathraven cries—oh how he wished to have never heard these again. He could go eternities without hearing another one of these. But there were multiple beasts. A new kind of flock. And somewhere out there, the big wrathraven, possibly their leader. Or possibly not—which was the scarier possibility.

As Swishy peered straight ahead, he saw several sets of reddened eyes. The gleaming evil summoned the blackwheat sprouts of his body, a pressure that wormed inside him and pushed up a thorny turmoil. He endured. The enemy wasn’t here yet. Swishy refused to preemptively succumb to the hexed intents. Everything was bad here. Everything was dangerous. Accept it, he told himself, Accept it, accept it, accept it.

With both hands, Swishy fed energy into the trident, widening it, unraveling the triple spires and splitting them back into nine prongs. His rake form was back, each of the nine tips coated in a knot of gold. With a rake he could have more gold—but more defense as well. Its wide form gave him confidence in its shielding. He didn’t know if that were a real thing but he’d take all comfort, any placebo or non-placebo of a favor.

In the darkness, the red slits widened into bloodshot ovals. A wetness glossed across those greedy optics. The reflection of himself shining in the pupils. He, his gold, created a target of himself, a willing but petrified decoy.

SHRRAWWKK!

Their cries violated the night. Many times over. He didn’t know how many enemies there were. But the winds of surging darkness careened toward him. The multiple bodies were visible, then invisible, then merging and melding. The only thing that remained clear and identifiable were the hundreds of immense wings sticking out of the wrathraven bodies.

See! The snitchtalons complained. They’re going to kill us too! Is this what you wanted? To die horribly? Do something then, miracle boy. Save yourself, save us, but please don’t let us wasted like this!

“Just keep flying.”

They did. Nobody was trying to die here.

Swishy was just relieved that the birds didn’t try to ditch him. I guess threats do work! He pivoted to watch their back.

Naturally, the shadows shifted; they shuffled; they formed an all-encompassing cage of pursuit.