Swishy stood upon the Straw Guardian’s head and watched the rain of death.

The beast parts flew down like burning cinders. Smokiness came from the ends of the falling wings and talons and beaks. Even the unrecognizable debris descended in bricks of black flame.

Bristles was active. Bristles was putting in work—though to what end Swishy couldn’t tell.

It just meant that him and Trey had to catch up and follow the man’s coattails out of there.

The most astonishing thing about the wrathraven destruction was that they weren’t becoming a full creature again. What was destroyed wouldn’t just heal like the boy was normally accustomed to.

Swishy looked closely at the violence above and saw the wrathravens getting torn through by Bristles—and they were only the ones with human souls. The fakers, the former birdcages that were promoted. These were the smaller beasts, the ones who’d just transformed and had only accumulated souls in the wrathraven way. Their bodies were at the beginning of their apex predator lives. And Bristles made sure that their beginning and their end were essentially the same moment. While the native flock decided that these humans were deserving of a chance, a metamorphosis, Bristles rejected them.

Up above, he raged through the charcoal patches of sky, doing what he did best—inflicting violence.

“Thou art an impurity!” Bristles yelled as he tore his claw through the abdomen of another wrathraven. “Do not dare grow. Simply die. Die, die, die!”

While the Bristles assault went on, the [Straw Guardian] continued to draw the resident darkness into its stake. The curses whirlpooled around the stake from the whole environment. Even the nearest human souls vacated their birdcages to give life in the monument a try.

The true colors of the domain began to reveal itself in patches, in the sections that the curses have left. The nearest trees appeared with the shiny slickness of everytrees. The ground had soil, grass, bushes, and flowers. Rocks were visible. And ant trails too. And while the number of cages hadn’t reduced, there were dozens of open ones whose bars were like polished iron, no longer corrupted from dark magic and terror.

Swishy was encouraged. He was doing good. He focused his energy on the guardian. This was all a part of the world but that didn’t mean he didn’t have his preferences. Light. He wanted everyone to just give luminousness a shot. An honest one.

But there were distractions all around. Some souls ran counter to his goals. From the hanging yurts that functioned as nests, the smallest wrathravens were practicing how to become their better, darker selves. Now that Swishy was up close, he could see the human souls contained within the beastly bodies. The newest wrathravens were not much different in behavior than the sugar-wraiths-turned-snitchtalons.

All fresh bodies required practice. These birds couldn’t fly—not really.

Controlling the six wings, body parts they’d never imagined having, was a chore. Some could only flap one or two wings at a time. Others could move all six, but just vibrating them, unable to get the most useful, expressive motions. Some only managed one at a time—but the wrong wing. They couldn’t hit the right parts of their nervous system to find the desired appendage.

Practice makes perfect—and Swishy didn’t want to give them the opportunity. The Bristles tact, for now, worked in his favor.

Trey beat Swishy to the punch, though, his blue soul charging up a [Zap] beam, blasting through the branches from which the nests hung. The domes—and the wrathravens in them—fell to the ground while they screamed with confusion and indignation.

“At least this part is easy!” Trey blasted away like it was a carnival game. He kept a playful Zap-Zap, Zap-Zap rhythm. A shot from one hand, a shot from the other, dancing upon the guardian.

“Bang, bang,” Swishy said.

“That’s too violent!”

“Pew-pew.”

“There you go.” Trey even accompanied his next shots with verbal pew-pews, making sure the wrathravens saw his insolent face on the way down. A cartoonish smoke rose from his finger guns, which Trey blew away.

While Trey did the combat work, Swishy grew the [Straw Guardian], treating the stake as both an anchor and an ever-growing root. The better things went for them and the more the spirits gave the giant scarecrow their residence, the more energy it could draw in. The boy took a page from The High Chasm’s book. Those living in the giant scarecrow were paying rent—ethereal rent anyway.

So up the pair went, riding the ever-growing colossus like an elevator. They rose past one layer of tree branches, then the next, and then the next after that.

Trees in the wrathraven domain were slightly different from the outside world’s everytrees. Rather than thick and shorter, they were sky-piercing willows of the highest order, fluffed with foliage and height to house the massive beasts.

But the next level up presented challenges. More developed wrathravens, ones that’d practiced for more than a day. They flew around and grazed their bodies against their homes, the contact lifting the shadows off the surface. The air huts were clean and shiny since the wrathravens had absorbed in all the stray shadows for themselves. Aside from their dark absorption, they worked on the next part of their siphoning: the souls.

They pecked into the tree trunk hollows and scanned the corners for hidden entities. Swishy used his vision to observe huddled souls, the fleeing curses.

Come out, the wrathravens said, We’re family, aren’t we?

Trey arched an eyebrow. “Is this how they treat family? Menacing them?”

“I guess so.”

“Wild.”

“And wrathful too!”

Trey flicked at Swishy’s gourd—the index finger phasing through while the released [Zzt] popped his soul, causing the boy to jump. Trey snickered at his pun punishment, which unbeknownst to him, sparked a gold rush within Swishy’s torso. Fun and games made Swishy’s world go around—and his goldwheat too.

“Again, again!” Swishy swished.

“Whatever weirdo, eyes on the enemy.”

“Yeah, I’m looking. With my soul too.”

Swishy and Trey looked around and heard the wrathravens having the same manipulative conversation with different words. The assertion that the spirits were family, that they were blood, came from each thicket. The come-on-we’re-family-we’re-friends-we’re-lovers talk sent a pleading buzz through the air. DESPERATION and BEGGING were everywhere. They were wrathraven in body but the human souls hadn’t changed their ways.

“I think they just want to get bigger,” Trey said.

“I see. They want to impress the real ones.”

Trey shot his beams at them—and they were able to dodge. They were enraged by the interruption. While the beasts dodged, their kindred souls flew into the hollows and shot down upward through the trunk, ascending without their bird family.

Leave us alone!

Wrathravens charged in from everywhere—with species-specific maneuvers. A dozen wrathravens yelled out their attack: Wing Blade! They released arcing darkness from their flapping wings, crescent blades of their absorbed souls.

Trey ducked from the whooshing blades while Swishy erected a [Straw Shield], the wheat growing in a dome radius from the guardian’s head, enclosing the pair.

The wing blades kept going and crashed against the wheat wall with thunderous impacts.

One blasted a hole through the shield and the boys bent low and covered their heads. But that’s when they saw an opportunity, something about these beast bodies that worked in their favor. Each of their wing blade attacks cost the neo-ravens shadows, shrinking their bodies noticeably. They lost speed and altitude and started to reduce from flighted beasts into ugly air goblins. Even they were appalled at their reduction. They tried to fly away into their nests. Some called on their soul relatives to integrate into their bodies.

Lend us a helping hand! We can do this—together. Do you all hear me? Together! Please?

The soul frequency showed Swishy the truth: the relatives sped up and down the trunks, long, long gone.

Trey saw the same thing judging from his smirk. He charged his finger guns.

“Pew-pew,” Swishy said.

“You know it.”

A barrage of [Zap] beams blasted through the atrophied birds.

The atmosphere lost its dark tinge around this level of sky, too, revealing the hidden golds. There were trails of blue as well, the spirits that—without their wrathraven bodies—were demoted to human souls, bodiless and anguished. They were fleeing, licking their wounds as they headed into the [Straw Guardian]. Ever the opportunists, if-you-can’t-beat-them-join-them applied to their defeat by Swishy and Trey’s hands. Luckily for them, they’d pegged the scarecrow as the forgiving type.

Swishy was happy with their contribution. The [Straw Guardian] grew more. He imagined the stake had turned into a spire by now but he couldn’t see it at all. The scarecrow felt that the energy from the bottom was traveling a long way to feed the colossal scarecrow itself.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“I think we’ve hit our limit, Trey. I can’t make this any bigger.”

“Are you sure? Maybe if we make more progress?”

“Through straw, all is possible.”

“Spoken like a cult leader.”

“I kind of am one, I think?”

“I’d say so. But for now there’s more tree to scale. We can come back to the guardian if we need to.”

“I like that idea. This can be our home base.”

“Great. Want to teleport us?”

“I like that idea too. Come on Trey, do the thing.”

“One thing, coming right up.”

[Zlide].

Blue soul Trey flew into the portal and the Swishy jumped right on in—catching a glimpse of something portentous before the door closed behind him. There were discarded wrathraven parts that rushing downward. And there were begging neo-ravens telling their cursed kin to give them a boost—while those shadows, too, fled from the absorption. They may have joined them any day but Swishy saw the truth for what it was: they were afraid to have to fight Bristles themselves.

And the newest wrathravens stared upward in worry, especially as they failed to procure soul fuel. The black debris rained upon them, some parts dusting their faces, while the souls that were released from those bodies, vessel-less and defeated, strained to fly toward the [Straw Guardian]. The losers wanted refuge. But they wouldn’t reach the giant scarecrow.

Asylum came in the form of dozens of conjured birdcages, obsidian bars and open doors.

A dark wind vacuumed the human souls into the cages, their prize for their untimely wrathraven deaths. It was refuge for some and terror for others. The existing neo-ravens took them without permission. Desperate for power, those talented souls who’d still failed as beasts were the perfect food.

The birdcages floated amid the woods while the wrathravens approached them with slanted eyes and gaping beaks.

As Swishy flowed into Trey’s portal, he braced himself for the powered-up wrathravens that would be waiting at the exit. He couldn’t decide if this were cannibalism or fusion. But the end result was the same when it came to him: bad, bad news.

(…)

While Trey and Swishy went through his [Zlide] portal, the Clayborne’s mind kept turning over the old advice Swishy had given him. Use the Birds—he wanted to ask about it but didn’t have the time and knew that Swishy wasn’t sure what he’d seen in Trey either. But his thoughts turned to the Swishy adage when upon seeing the human souls repossessed by the wrathravens above—by the thick of madness that they were heading right into.

The [Zlide] exit released them into the air once again.

Surrounded. Their hang-time proved treacherous—Trey levitating while Swishy’s physical self dropped onto a massive branch—and the wrathravens were everywhere. The creature shapes couldn’t be seen but the sudden pitch was undeniable. Everything was dark and windy. Air moved in unnatural motions. A cacophony of throaty voices was heard all around, and those war cries combined with the ruffling of plumage.

The invisible birds attacked. Even the darkness made a suctioning sound when it gathered, an audio cue that triggered the boys’ reflexes.

The [Wing Blade] projectiles sliced through the closest branches and leafage, revealing their white outlines once they became close. Swishy defended the coming strikes with his rake, blocking attacks, spinning the rake in a baton spin. Cast off light settled Trey’s nerves while he floated beside Swishy, deciding his next move.

More wing blades—Trey heard double the amount this time.

He activated another [Zlide], falling into it while grabbing Swishy by his collar.

They watched the portal close behind them, sealing against the projectile barrage.

Into the darkness they went, drawn by the current while he watched pursuers flow in after them, two wrathravens with the fastest of reflexes. While the portal had taken the boys and the boys alone, the human wrathravens had keen enough senses to follow the path of the [Zlide]. They knew the route, sensing the trail of magic from entrance to exit. They mocked the pair as they travelled.

Come serve as you were meant to! You’re flightless and weak!

“These people could stand to be more talentless, like for real.”

“The wrathravens picked them, though,” Swishy said.

“Good point. They saw something in them they liked.”

“Yeah, everything but kindness.”

“It’s okay, don’t be sad.”

“I think I’m just annoyed.”

“Me too, Swish, me too.”

When the boys burst out of the portal again, they were caught in another eclipse of wrathraven bodies. The heads were visible and facing their direction, opened mouths, black flames flaring within the back of their throats.

“Shit, that’s new.”

BLACK BLAST!

[Zap] and [Straw Shield].

While Swishy grew a straw orb from the tip of his rake that covered them both, Trey used the phantom benefit of his soul to phase his finger through the shield, aiming the [Zap] into the wrathraven’s mouths. The boy did a [Zix-shooter] barrage, canceling out the dark flamethrowers that were launched at them.

The other saving grace was that the newborns’ [Black Blast] move had varying efficacy. Who knew if it was a real wrathraven move or something these humans had wanted to try from a movie? But they’d just learned flight. They’d learned their [Wing Blade]. This move was a bit much for them.

Thank goodness. Trey sighed as he shot out the weaker blasts.

But some of the wrathraven attacks won out over Trey’s beams—but the straw shield handled the rest of the attack.

Trey went for a hit-and-run strategy, or rather a gun-and-run. After releasing several beams at the recently transformed wrathravens, shooting holes through their wings, compromising their flight, he’d run from the onslaught of gathering beasts. He’d used his soul to dive back into the [Straw Guardian] or hide with Swishy’s shield.

The flexibility of being a soul and only a soul was quite nice.

Still, he was anxious about being away from his body. His soul trembled whenever the separation anxiety kicked in. But he focused on the fight. He knew he could still be eaten in his ghost form. The young man shot many of the wrathravens, defeating some—or so he thought—until they flew up to the birdcages and opened them.

The harmed beasts plugged the cage openings with their mouths and siphoned out the souls. This was part of their learning, too, since they couldn’t draw shadows straight into their body parts. The human-turned-wrathravens defaulted to eating with their mouths like every other creature.

Fakers. Pretenders. And most of all they were just plain cruel.

Trey couldn’t wait to go back home. When he first came to Straw City, soul-eating was not on his bingo card of things he’d likely encounter. He bargained on food, miracle straw, and just people from all walks of life. What he got instead was true diversity in the commercial parts of the city—but a Shugarrian cult within the former Curseworks.

More of the wrathravens were upon them. Trey kept blasting. Swishy kept swinging.

They stemmed the tide of that wave.

The wrathravens glared at their targets but hesitated. They waited. They were using their heads, plotting on something stronger to bring to the party. While others had gone after the birdcages to reap, some tried another tact: becoming more monstrous. Now that they’d given up their bodies, they sought other things to shed. How else could they become less human and more monstrous?

Strange words populated around the wrathraven bodies. For once, they weren’t using an outright attack but chose to inflict types of statuses on themselves, what Trey assumed came from the pooled knowledge of wrathraven-approved fledglings.

INSTINCT was the first to appear. The letters worked their way through the feathers, glowing in purple auras. Their movements began to change. They stood upon their perches less like humans and hunched into a real creature. They preened. They pranced. They pecked experimentally at their surroundings. Wrathravens were more conscious and composed than this. These transformed people acted like pigeons more than anything. But their instincts were closer to bird-kind, and that made them scarier.

That made them fly better.

Several beasts surrounded them again. They flew around in a tornado. Swishy and Trey stood back-to-back, watching for attacks. The flurry began then. Dark blades came without rhyme or reason. There was no rhythm to the air slashes. The boys shot and deflected them as best as they could, but the pressure was getting to them. Their parry timings began to falter.

Swishy was nicked twice across the thighs and stayed composed. From down below, straw instantly flew up to patch the wounds—a gift from the [Straw Guardian]. But the healing occurred over blackwheat bruises, a [Wing Blade] corruption that festered beneath the wheat repair, bubbling up like a cursed pus.

Trey considered himself lucky. He’d dodged all the attacks but they skimmed his face. Black particles floated through the air like ash. They couldn’t damage him but Trey felt the immediate weakening of his resolve.

There was no straw that’d patch him up. He was raw soul, his one and only.

A blade came from his blind side, whizzing by his ear.

And a trio of slashes flew horizontally, far too wide for him and Swishy to sidestep.

[Pile]—and Swishy deconstructed his midsection to avoid the blow.

But what was Trey to do? He couldn’t dodge. He couldn’t let himself die. He’d left his body to avoid the vulnerability of his vessel and now he’d need to embrace his next vulnerability.

[Zpread]—Trey’s abdomen dissolved into atoms. The blades phased through his would-be stomach, catching nothing but air.

Unlike the scarecrow, Trey didn’t have the benefit of selectively dissolving himself and then reconstructing as a whole. Upon his reintegration, he’d lost a third of his size. A third of his age as well, not in the literal sense but in the form his body had chosen.

“Cute,” Swishy said.

Trey knew he was small, a soul version of his thirteen-year-old self.

The wrathravens closed their orb even more.

SNARE read the word that conjured in black flames along those compressing walls. The wing blades started up again. But this time Swishy and Trey clung to opposite walls, pressing against the feathers, feeling their ruffles. They hoped to not get taken by a sudden claw. Or for a smoke to wrap around their bodies. The wrathravens felt like rushing water, a river traveling beneath Trey’s shrunken back.

His soul read all the malice then. REND, SUPPRESS, SILENCE, DENY.

The words pricked his soul. He would’ve hated to take the full brunt of their release.

From behind, he sensed the energy cohering into a substantial node—the shape of a blade forming upon his back. He side-stepped along the wall, avoiding the blow that came.

“Swishy did you feel that?”

“I think so.”

“We can feel their attacks if we’re touching them.”

“This is scary.”

“Yeah…”

“I can’t let these people do this for free.”

Before Trey could ask his what’s-the-move question, Swishy held his rake in a ham-fisted grip and plunged it behind him. He aimed at any evidence of texture—a feather, a claw, a darkness that stuck out. The cage of beasts closed in, sealing their exit—and in equal measure that meant they made themselves vulnerable. Exposure went both ways. The boys just had to go forward instead of retreating. Attack, attack, attack.

There’s nowhere to hide—so don’t hide. Trey respected the boldness but Swishy’s voracity was intense and worrisome.

“Stab-stab-stab” Swishy said as the birds screamed from his assault. Trey heard it as kill-kill-kill, the blackwheat malice in the scarecrow’s arms driving the rake forcefully—but also twisting it subtly.

“Watch the malice!” Trey called. “I know you can be a dark god but that won’t win you the long game.”

“Okay, thank you.” The Swish-speak didn’t match the behavior, though. His stabbing strengthened. Darkness ebbed from Swishy’s hands through the length of the rake. Trey nervously watched as shadows approached the golden tips.

“I know you acknowledged what I said but really, calm down.”

“Stab-stab-stab…” Swishy’s arms deepened in darkness. As the curses flowed out of him, smoky little banshees that gleefully tittered from the violence, wrathraven corruption misted from the wounds he’d inflicted. Swishy was lost in the sauce, drowning in hexes.

Trey grabbed his wrist—the shock of darkness made his whole body numb.

But he doubled-up, using a two-handed grip. He infused his hands with [Zzt], using his binding touch as a high-voltage tourniquet to block the spread of curses. Tiny shrieks echoed from the affected area as the blackness backed away, receding into the straw or dispersing through the air. The blue soul of Swishy’s gourd brightened. Darkness still swirled within, though. Darkness was possessive. And darkness, he’d come to know, was highly competitive.

Trey upped the voltage as Swishy, boy in conflict, stabbed and stabbed and stabbed.

Within the nebulas above, Trey heard a familiar sound: Bristles’ faint but distinct laughter.