ZNITCHES VANISHED BY THE SECOND.
The ingredients they left behind were powerful.
Blue souls exploded with RESOLVE, DETERMINATION, FAITH, SACRIFICE—and poof they were gone. A vibrant death, an almost joyous one.
Swishy had a good feeling about this.
The znitches flamed out like dying stars, a constellation that spread the blessing of flight to the Straw Guardian—the giant’s black wing, its gold wing, both bleeding blue spirit all around. When Swishy was referred to as a god this must’ve been what the Straw-bound envisioned. To Swishy, it was the guardian—and not the boy—who was worthy of prayer, worthy of the znitches sacrificing their lives.
As the birds faded into vapors, flowing strings of resolve into Straw Guardian’s conjured wings. And while the scarecrow absorbed the magic, the spirit of flight compelled the rest of Swishy’s entourage.
The tides turning was something that all creatures intrinsically understood.
All around, the miracle of flight was catching.
(…)
Flight was for everybody—Swishy wanted that quote on a poster.
It was just something he believed. Every time Swishy saw something fly it gave him shudders. Nothing was truer than flight being a blessing for all the world to enjoy, especially now that his allies all indulged his favorite thing, his dream.
Swishy’s attention turned to Bristles, who, once pulled into the depths of the realm, now fought his way to the upper reaches. It was never long before the next wrathravens always boxed him in—but his black claw always freed him. Over and over again, the Nevermore drilled through the monsters, tearing their shroud apart.
The curses leaked from the wrathravens, and all the dispelled souls flowed into the Nevermore wings, bolstering them. The curses happily screamed, knowing that the victor accepted them, that they had an even more secure place to live.
Bristles pointed his claw toward the wrathravens’ chasm. Mine, mine, the gesturing seemed to say. The chasm’s birth now triggered a renewed strength in Bristles, his aspirations, his power cravings, his flight.
Then Bristles jetted onward, his six wings were in perfect rhythm. Each wingbeat shot him forward like a cannon.
The Cham was the goal, the chasm was what made the Nevermore wished to feed upon.
Swishy didn’t want to admit that the murderous Bristles was cool—but he was. Six wings was six times the fun that Swishy had access to.
It was something to aspire to—without the violence.
The flight inspiration also reached Trey, one of the first kidnap victims of the snitchtalons. Except this time he was piloted around the guardian by one bird and one bird only, the teeny tiny Znitchy. The diminutive feet carried Trey all by themselves, coating him in an aura that glued the body to him. Was Trey being carried by the small feet or the Trey-shaped aura? Swishy had fun with that coin flip of a thought.
The wrathravens eyes feasted upon their easy targets, a small fry and a flightless man.
Swishy saw that Trey’s [Doze] had restored most of his soul. Trey still appeared like a not-quite-full container, a quarter empty, but those three-quarters were now surging toward Trey’s hands, prepared to defend—or rather, preemptively strike.
The Clayborne reached into the dark.
A flurry of [Zap] beams and [Zzt]-fused grips were plunged into the abyssal clouds. Each time Trey grabbed for a pool of darkness, the blackness swirled around his hands and released watery sounds.
There didn’t appear to be any solid creature around him, the wrathravens camouflaged as they were.
Znitchy aimed for the dark nodes and Trey targeted them, bare-handed fishing. A barbaric system but one that the pair was confident in. Between both runt and man, Swishy saw a [Trust] intent form within the aura that conjoined them.
But there was also ANXIETY, the moment of spirit-spiking, of a quickened pulse as Trey to lose his hands to savage beaks.
Swishy tuned into Trey’s heartbeats. Together, they waited and waited and waited…
An eruption of sparks shot from within Trey’s grip, his attacks finding their mark. Each confirmation of contact with the enemy created friction, a sharp voltage rushing into whatever he grabbed—feathers, wings, beaks, chicken breasts (hehe, Swishy laughed).
The wrathraven parts revealed themselves in vulnerable and blastable solidity.
Gotcha bitch! Znitchy yelled as he carried Trey from enemy to enemy, turning their nearest surrounds into a deep fryer.
Trey’s fright didn’t lower by any means, though, and each reach into the darkness gave Trey a renewed panic. Yet with a trembling soul, Trey offered his hands into the dark. Blasts came from his hands and a black smoke rose. Pained gasps came from the wrathravens’ exaggerated heads.
As the expressive anguish reached the wrathraven’s faces, Znitchy opted for point-blank taunting. You’re a bitch. You’re a bitch. You’re a bitch. And YOU’RE a bitch.
“I…” Trey wasn’t sure what to make of it. He didn’t like staring into the open mouth of a wrath-beast. “You know what…I agree, I guess. Get bolted, bitch.”
The heartbeats hammered like deep piano chords. Swishy laughed at the bravado—and the truth hidden beneath it.
Swishy, while tempted to keep monitoring his friend’s soul, didn’t. He stood back and enjoyed the show, the flashy flight-by electrocutions as Znitchy and Trey ascended through the sky cemetery. Each wrathraven defeated left its share of video game loot behind, magical harvest—groupings of souls that flowed toward the chasm along with the body parts that joined the orbit.
“Fly action is the only action for me…” Swishy said to himself.
Zone-Zeuce-Zhird responded anyway. Then enjoy the show. There’s more to see. Something amazing, something…big.
The boy knew what that something big was.
It trembled beneath his feet.
Straw Guardian’s grasped Swishy’s feet with its wheat-woven roots, the [Trust] link, the soul-link reaffirmed.
Together they T-posed in euphoric debut of the guardian’s wings.
(…)
Swishy knew the rule, his fate: that everyone came first and he came second.
No jealousy, no bothersome matter about that this time. He was a fan of the Straw Guardian. This was something he really, really had to see.
He and the guardian were getting their wings together. He thought of this like people in the city getting matching T-shirts, matching ice cream scoops, matching tattoos. Shared activities was good for bonding—and supreme for magic.
Together they T’d and together they’d gain.
[Trust] was the prerequisite to the guardian’s autonomy. And that spell only got larger, more powerful, farther away from Swishy’s direct control and influence. Though rooted into the guardian, Swishy wasn’t even sure he could forcibly pilot it like he’d done earlier. Was that even allowed? Was such a thing even right?
Either way, the guardian did its own thing—and the znitches gave it its individual gift.
The lights of their vanished souls flickered like a sanctum of bird-themed lanterns, blue wings lighting the skies. The sky cemetery became more like a temple. Solemn and sacrificial energy flowed from the znitch flock into the Straw Guardian.
As of now, only Zone-Zeuce-Zhird and Znitchy remained, keeping their energy for themselves.
The rest of the znitches were in the straw giant and everyone—the Swish-crew, the wrathravens, the chasm—waited to see what the metamorphosis would change. But Swishy was feeling positive about his curse-purged friend. With each contribution of bird soul, the [Trust] strengthened, and the Straw Guardian’s posture and body language became more certain, more decisive.
Both black wing and gold wing worked in tandem. When the black made a movement, the gold then reacted, balancing its energy.
The wings flexed. There were no feathery, drapery, cloth-like sounds. No resistance, no sonic boom. Just shimmers, just a tingling sensation in everyone’s ears.
Swishy thought it sounded like wind chimes, a high and lovely melody.
But he still said “Whoosh” in a low Swish-speak tone—because that’s how flight was supposed to sound.
The Straw Guardian angled its head toward Swishy, the stitched mouth moving slightly, a chuckle struggling out of it.
“Whoosh, I say!” Swishy flapped with his arms. “Whoosh, friend, whoosh!”
The scarecrows were at play.
The wrathravens, issuing guttural groans, were not.
But the wingbeats drowned them out.
(…)
The wrathravens grew more panicked, more envious.
Swishy’s inner child was compelled to rile them up. “Nervous? No [Trust] in daddy chasm? If you’re not good at magic, just say so.”
The flock's red eyes narrowed into blades, revealing their positions in the clouds, in the orbital murkiness. They’d already succeeded once, having torn apart the Straw Guardian’s stake and yet, rather than being cast down into the [Hush] hell they’d enforced on the surface, the effigy had returned stronger than ever, enchanted, flighted.
They inhaled their shares of the purged guardian corruption and grew, their wild auras resembling that of Bristles’ Nevermore. The wings were tapered with devilry. Horns burst from their heads. Fangs protruded from the top sides of their beaks. For all the darkness they took in, they tried to give it shape, some anatomical placement for it. But they couldn’t readily contain all that they’d siphoned, and the majority of their bodies remained an amorphous flame.
The wrathravens engorged themselves into their own versions of the chasm they’d created. They grew, and the chasm did too, the black hole widening until one could see nothing more of the skies above.
All evidence of the domain exit was eclipsed.
But the more darkness the beasts had drawn away, the more the skies below and around them cleared. The golden tinge of the atmosphere started to come into view again, revealing themselves in patches.
Swishy pivoted around and in every corner of the realm, he could see the distant glow of wishwillows. He held out hope that his gold-escorting birds had succeeded in their straw-spreading mission. He was in an obsidian ocean, breathing in the cursed air, but the cleansing he’d performed through the realm hadn’t been undone. The fruits of his labor gleamed. They were up for grabs. He could clearly see that which he and his friends were fighting for.
The world he wanted was just one step away from truly surfacing.
He only had to undo the wrathravens and their chasm…somehow.
And then the beasts pounced.
Several neck-extending beak shots came straight for Swishy—and a rising wall blurred before Swishy in browns and intermittent gold. The Straw Guardian instantly threw up thick growths of straw. Gloom from the wrathraven attacks crawled over the straw, but the guardian instantly repaired the decay, suffocating the invading curses with fresh straw.
Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
A chuffing cacophony issued as the wrathravens released their spells against the straw guardian’s protection.
Swishy reacted quickly and merged into the shoulder, diving through the guardian’s wheaty structure. He swam downward and soon reached a section of branch-like tendrils, a location he recognized as the arm. Occasionally he revealed his head to the outside while the rest of his body remained in the straw. The wrathravens chased after him but he felt safer this way, merged into the powerful, weaponized arm.
The beasts were not the only ones primed for aggression.
One giant wingbeat and the Straw Guardian was off. It’d been given a new lease on life, on light, and instead of drifting into the chasm’s orbit it now flew, soaring straight toward the assailing wrathravens.
The wrathravens were shocked, no longer emboldened, but it was too late now. Their crash course with a gliding giant was set.
The Straw Guardian tore through the clouds with its renewed physique and confidence. Its posture was certain. Its shoulders were broader and rounder. Overall, the colossus’ battle armor had evolved, its cape of wrathraven feathers shining with slickness.
It balled its gold into a fist, something of a wrecking ball—but with luminous barbs, murderous spikes.
[Flail] read the intent as the guardian smashed its ancient weapon through the wrathravens.
SHREEEEEE! SHRRAWWKK!
The screeches were stifled, shrills cries of defeat. The flail swung and the beasts were smashed, the cursed darkness staining the woven spikes. And then those same spikes undid themselves, loosening the threads and re-coiling into rope. Soon, the damaged wrathravens were lassoed in those free-floating tendrils. The beasts tried to squeeze out of its grasp by escaping into vapors but there was no leaving. No spirits, no magic, were beyond the tactile sense of the Straw Guardian.
The giant caught the birds in his many-vined, many-branched arms and held firm. It didn’t squeeze. It didn’t bend or break or distort.
It drained.
An intent became visible throughout the rope-like structures, flowing like blood platelets, a magical circulation of SUSTENANCE. Everything it touched, it drained, feeding and feeding. The act of creation had a cost. And Swishy, in his creation of his ecosystem of a friend, had indirectly volunteered the wrathravens to pay it.
Swishy’s exposed jack-O-lantern was inches from a wrathraven’s face. He stared into the beast as its eyes went from tearful pleading to murderous rage and then back again to begging.
The beasts tried everything to free themselves from the Straw Guardian’s grasp. They shrieked; they conjured wing blades; they bit and thrashed and clawed—but the colossus maintained its mystic fortifications. The straw, once damaged, grew back by using the wrathravens’ life force.
The wrathravens gradually shrank. Their shadows went into the broken stake, shaping its jagged end into a round, healed nub.
Now reduced to the size of Sling’s wrathraven chicks, the tendrils released them. They flew away and complained the whole time, speaking about their souls, their power, their girth. Freed from Straw Guardian’s grip, the beasts sailed to the depths like wind-blasted paper planes. They lost control. They simply were lost.
Znitchy flew around the atrophied wrathravens. You’re starting to look like me! Not bad—but you’re still ugly!
Trey just [Zap] blasted them. “Yes kick them while they’re down. Now the next ones Znitchy!” And that’s what the pair did, taunt and toast, taunt and toast. The birds squawked at Trey but his quick bursts of [Zap] silenced them.
Trey and Swishy ascended the guardian. Trey flew beside the guardian—with Znitchy pulling him up—while Swishy moved his gourd along the arm, a swimming head through currents of straw. When they reached the top of Straw Guardian’s head, Swishy pushed himself from the colossus, rebuilding his full body, Timbs and all.
The guardian made its own adjustments as well. There were tangled masses all around, absorbing the feathers and debris. Despite the znitches disappearing into his body, he maintained their nests. Straw Guardian was full of holes, full of lovingly crafted homes, and he liked it that way. Even the straw on his arms and torso became a tapestry of scars and knots, mimicking the texture of bark.
Half tree and all scarecrow, the [Straw Guardian] flapped, progressing toward the chasm.
The chasm’s great hands opened, waiting to take them in.
(…)
Swishy knew that something was odd about the posture of the black hole.
It was the greatest, most destructive mass of energy that he’d ever seen, yet instead of a grasping or threatening flex of the fingers, the hands were held up in something of a defensive pose, a please-don’t-touch-me-please-get-away motion. The chasm laughed, a show of strength, but it couldn’t hold back the nervousness. There was pretending. There was fraud.
There chasm held a secret that Swishy had mistakenly uncovered. Once he figured it out, he felt like he should've seen it all along.
“Get it!” Swishy told the guardian. “There’s weakness!”
Weakness? Not here. No, no, no!
But that posture was weak.
The wrathravens also cowered near the chasm, their bodies drained away, feeding it. Both chasm and giant crows were all scared. The fretful energy revealed itself in their physiques. They were afraid to die.
The chasm trembled.
“If I’m for sharing,” Swishy said. “Then so are you. Then so is every resource there is. The wrathravens can’t have this world to themselves.”
I am for power, for strength, for Ruby!
“Is that why you’re here? To be a sacrifice for Ruby? I thought you were the biggest predator. So much animal kingdom talk just to bow down to a lady with banana earrings.”
Swishy knew this was an understatement. Trey knew. Bristles knew. He felt them all go rigid in the soulscape. But not only out of fear, just as a reminder of what came next for them.
They knew now that the wrathravens were giving this as a gift to Ruby, one that she couldn’t under any circumstances acquire.
“We can’t let her have that…” Swishy said to himself.
But Trey heard him. “No way.”
“It’s mine!” Bristles said, clawing his way through legions of wrathravens, ravaging the darkness on his way to the chasm, to that which he sought to absorb for himself.
The chasm shivered. It trembled. All of a sudden, it didn’t want to become food. Human body language began to find itself in the black hole, the behaviors of prey. Those gigantic phantom hands began to shrink. Those strong fists then caressed the backs of the hands. Occasionally, the chasm twiddled its thumbs, soothing itself.
Yet it still grew. The wrathravens fed into it. Their ritual continued because that’s all they knew what to do with themselves.
Everybody had a chasm in them. No one was immune to bottomlessness. Emptiness chased everyone. The voids inside, the crevices, the outright holes—Swishy found that in every entity he’d ever met. Back in the dark, he’d never anticipated that life was such a hard and sorrowful affair.
“It’s okay,” Swishy said to the chasm. “Let go a little, accept that sometimes you can’t have what you want. Have you tried contentment?”
But Swishy couldn’t summon the CONTENTMENT intent that he’d absorbed days and days ago. That was only a lesson one could learn over time. And never in overwhelming darkness, only in the times of peace that everyone in Straw City seemed so adverse to.
“So that’s just energy?” Trey asked, flying above Swishy.
“I think so. It’s a lot. It could be dangerous. But not when controlled by that weak thing. Look at it.” Swishy pointed his rake.
The chasm flinched.
Swishy felt bad for the black hole. All things about the dark were uncertain, even to its denizens. When the Straw Guardian acquired its light, bringing it close to the flock, its luminousness made them feel small. Everything shrank within its reach, its outstretched vines, its many-many-many tendrils, dozens of them per arm.
The wrathravens had it right when they destroyed the guardian early in its ascent.
It’d survived, though, and what didn’t kill it made it stronger, made it a god.
“Rise of the Mourning Straw!” Swishy cried—and the guardian embodied.
The guardian soared upward while Swishy T-posed on its head. The giant’s wingbeats were Swishy’s own. Every flap was felt through Swishy’s spirit. As they broke through the lair, the sky cemetery platforms moved aside on their own, and those parts that were stubborn were tilted and toppled and pushed aside.
Everything the wrathravens had constructed began to fall from the sky, the guardian undoing the chasm’s draw, working against it. The orbital influence weakened from the dominion of the colossal scarecrow.
In this moment, brightness won.
The darkness receded, brought under control, a reality that was confirmed by the guardian stretching out the thick tendrils of its arms, its hands of countless ropes fingers, and clutching the chasm. The giant couldn’t encompass it all. It was a baby scale-wise to the chasm. But as its fingers pressed into the black hole, the abyssal integrity collapsed, condensed, and molded into the giant scarecrow’s grasp.
Upon the guardian’s touch, the chasm’s hands disappeared without protest. Those curses, who had the most fighting words, were the first to flee.
Swishy was appalled.
Trey’s mouth hung open too.
Bristles, noticing this, chased after those curses, a hungry and vindictive pursuit.
Meanwhile, the abyss made itself became smaller, the lion’s share of its curses fleeing from the guardian. There was power in numbers, but none of those individual numbers actually wanted to chance being the sacrifice.
As the curses streamed away from the chasm, reducing it like a popped balloon, Swishy was relieved. His rake grip relaxed. Fighting was kind of his forte but just not his thing.
D-O-M-I-N-I-O-N, those letters that stifled the realm’s air began to thin.
There was a new boss now.
Straw Guardian darkened, accepting the rounds and rounds of fleeing curses, but Swishy used his spirit to wall against the spirits. Since the giant controlled the flow of the curses, Swishy got to meet them all, to vet them all. He threatened each new arrival with the straw-refuge rulebook, a [Grain Mill] technique. Once the curses met the wheat, Swishy let them know the exact price of defiance.
The curses were given an up close and personal introduction to the golden rake, its darkness-reducing tines. Each spirit felt themselves molded and smushed the closer they were to Swishy’s light.
“No corruption,” Swishy sternly demanded.
When the curses whimpered in just the right tenor, they slunk away to find a home in the guardian.
“Don’t forget this talk!” Swishy yelled after them.
Straw Guardian continued to reduce the chasm within its glowing tendrils. It was a long process but consistent and steady. Swishy had the feeling that this was too easy. There was a catch somewhere. He knew that all this dark absorption would catch them on the backend for sure.
As mighty as the guardian became, it couldn’t control the chasm completely. Much of those curses flowed from out of the mass, plunging down toward the surface. There was so much world for the darkness to inhabit—which sounded scary, but also felt right. Swishy wanted the darkness to have a place, just spread apart. Some entities couldn’t handle teamwork, not responsibly at least.
The chasm had by now shrunken into the guardian’s handful, a holdable ball.
Which was a relief of sorts—because the guardian was already going dark. But it was a controllable darkness. Instead of turning the straw into blackwheat, the curses that it successfully captured were organized and flowed through into the cape of wrathraven feathers. The amount of feathers even grew, elongating, softening, hanging like a crop top over the pair of wings. The curses bounced from one location to the other, actively nesting, participants in in the hive.
The gold wing simply glowed, its straw immune to the curses yet not harming the darkness either. It was the right amount of light.
The boy was proud. He’d created something of an altar. He wanted the curses to be comfortable, that way they’d never harm others again. Dark feelings had a place in this world, an undeniable place in everyone’s soul, and Swishy aimed to make that manageable.
The sky cleared. No more eclipse.
Gold skies—and even more golden clouds. Swishy had yet to figure out how the wrathravens had stuck the light there. Some talents were just beyond him, he guessed.
Still, he sighed. He was a little jealous. He quite liked what he saw, though.
The front of Swishy’s vision was blinding while his periphery held a fantastic shimmer.
It was too bad the znitches weren’t here to see this.
Swishy tried to read their souls in the guardian’s wings but there was no trace of them. From the soulful plumage, he did feel one thing, though: relief.
It was like Trey’s passenger all over again, just in a good way.
Znitchy flew Trey over the guardian’s head, gliding gently, drifting downward. As it lowered, the blue runt gradually faded, its deep cyan running transparent in the realm’s rays.
“So long, homeboy,” Trey said.
Give a bird a good send-off. I want my second death to be a party!
“You got it.” Trey pointed a [Zap] up above.
Znitchy dropped him.
As Trey fell, he released the blast.
Znitchy chased it, soaring and soaring until it caught the bolt.
Both bolt and bird ignited like a firework.
Trey landed on the Straw Guardian shoulder, a soft landing, like a feather dropped onto a pillow.
“You miss them?” Swishy asked.
“A little bit, yeah. I guess I had snitch in my soul.”
“Mhm, turned out to be a pretty good thing, though.”
“They were decent company, I guess.” Trey glanced at the remaining three, hoping they’d get mad.
Zone-Zeuce-Zhird protested. Jeez, thanks. Only decent, huh? You know we’re actually going to help, we’re going to pay you back—with interest.
“What’s interest?” Swishy asked.
Think of it as getting more than you gave.
The scarecrow started to get excited.
Now do your thing. Be a bird. You know, the pose.
The boy closed his eyes, T’d himself, and waited.
Swishy’s spirit started to vibrate through his center, through what, in human terms, would be a spine—and in scarecrow terms would be a stake. But it wasn’t an anchor or root of any kind, nothing that’d keep him captive. The znitches were going to make him fly for real.
His expectations were large. The Straw Guardian’s wings had come in and now it was his turn.
You’re really excited about this, huh? You could stand to hesitate a little bit. It’s us who’re paying the costs, after all.
“It’s also the least you can do. Don’t mess this up for me!”
Selfish, selfish, selfish!
“I’m joking. I swear I’m joking.”
Okay…the birds tilted their heads in doubt. But they kept feeding themselves to Swishy’s spine, perched upon him, shrinking and shrinking.
“Are you guys going to come back?”
Three shrugs. Tell your friend to summon us again.
“Will it be that easy?” Trey really wanted to know. His eyes got big, and his tone was nicer than he’d ever heard him talk to a bird.
It never is…Zone said, the other two regally nodding.
“Well, if I figure it out, I’ll summon Znitchy first.”
Whatever, we figured. That’s fair enough. So long!
The birds perched upon Swishy’s shoulders and head.
First faded Zone, then Zeuce, and in third went Zhird.
Swishy started to feel something—something new.
As the process happened, the wing in his mental vision was the same wing that now came to life. Magic was that which he could imagine and the znitches helped him gain that understanding. Everything they knew about flight, about wings, about the aerodynamics of nature was something that he now understood.
His memory was returning.
He saw himself as a bird on a branch. Swishy’s small beak grabbed at a worm from a branch hole. The creature wriggled within his beak, a soundless struggle. And then Swishy swallowed, flew to another branch, and excavated another hollow. The memory was so visceral and so…pleasant.
What could he say? The boy loved to eat.
That was his routine, food then flight, a worm appetizer with a main course of wind.
By the time Swishy returned to his true consciousness, he noticed a gold-straw materials floating around in a nebula. The strands swirled and swirled as the levitating craftsmanship commenced. Gold-straw stretched into threads and wrapped around each other. Intricate feathers were lovingly weaved, controlled and bound by Swishy’s spirit, until a wing shape was formed.
His luminous wing was full of spirit. He knew this was something that a simple [Weave] spell wouldn’t have achieved. Try as he did, his body never allowed him to access the shape, the memories, the basic knowledge required to create it. Despite all the magic in his body, flight was impossible. Being a bird was secret knowledge. The “T” was as close as he could get. The “T” was his magic. The “T” was his prayer. His hope and dream had at last arrived.
Wings flexed outward—both the black and the gold—Swishy had it all.
“Up!” he cried.
A wingbeat.
A pause.
And then the boy soared.