SWISHY WAS BACK IN THE WORLD: fresh air, clear skies, and a beaming sun. He flew around, turning, flipping, taking advantage of his full acrobatics now that he was freed from the confines of the portal. Most of all, he was relieved that those eyes and mouths were gone. Making them submit was something that deserved brief celebration.
Myst, too, joined him in a round of stylized flight—now that she achieved a true body again.
Win-win, in a vacuum that is. But now that their flourish had come to a close, they resumed their individual devices. Myst shrank herself to invisibly rest within and siphon from Swishy’s shadow body. Swishy, himself, knew that investigation was in order, of, well, himself.
A barrel roll, a flip, a quick air-dash. With these maneuvers he confirmed something novel: the ability to feel.
The boy’s shadowed body, could, surprisingly, feel everything—the wind, the warmth, the moisture in the air.
He found it odd that being immaterial made the world touch him more. Every stimulus left something of a ripple on his person, a subtle or dramatic wavering depending on the strength of the impact. Swishy studied his forearms and hands, their constant smokiness. His boundaries shifted, receded, endured sudden gaps and holes that filled back up.
While his aura had grown large, his soul remained the same size, that 5-foot-nothing boy. He made it easy for the entities to traverse him. His moment-to-moment changes still averaged out to the same scarecrow-shaped mass. When a true body finally emerged, the flames then calmed into a subtle flicker.
The outside left nothing to worry over. Swishy turned his attention to his depths.
What were these shadows? How was he made? Could this be sustained?
His body made it easy. Shadows were always the most transparent thing, altars especially, and so a word instantly appeared as soon as his mind sought it out.
VENGEANCE—for which he was thankful. It wasn’t such a dirty word, after all. It poured through every corner of him, his turmoil flaming outward. Swishy felt this with his whole body.
It was a deep feeling, a bottomless one. As a dark phantom, he'd deny it no further.
Besides, he had a vague feeling of Myst drinking the intent was there. It was a good meal for his sibling, one she wordlessly but bemusedly consumed. Symbiosis was often a strange, strange thing.
There was one other word, too, another ingredient that kept the flames in check, that allowed Swishy to remain as Swishy.
COMPASSION—the other side of the coin. It didn’t scream. It didn’t writhe and make a production of its needs. He sensed in where his heart once was. The feeling was light and helpful. Swishy loved that he didn’t need straw or a physical core to hold it. He found it encouraging that no matter what, Ruby couldn’t take all of him away. That was the hope.
Naturally, though, the woman herself was present to put that to the test.
Ruby occupied the skies above him, broom-riding in surfboard style.
“Hello, hello!” She called out, waving with one hand—while with the other she plunged it into Swishy’s empty vessel. Her whole wrist disappeared into the husk of a torso, rustling and rustling.
Ruby reclaimed her ice with a reverse [Blizzard] that siphoned into her body. The ice chips shifted from Swishy's empty vessel to Ruby, causing her forearms to go pale, then blue. She shuddered from the returned frost. She breathed ice, her foggy breaths sparkling with frozen crystals. And then her freezing of Swishy's body had finished, a mannequin now thawed, its weaves damp and wet and vulnerable. Nothing impeded her from the scarecrow’s heart.
"I’ve done you a favor!" Ruby grinned. “If I allow you to come back to this body, you won’t be cold anymore—if you even feel such a thing.”
The boy nodded in a curt, “I do” motion.
“You’re kidding!”
Another nod.
“You’ve gotta be lying!” Ruby was pleasant-pleasant-pleasant as she maintained her exploration of his body. "Lovely day we're having."
The boy stared.
"I see you've tanned," A scoffing laughter came from the woman.
Swishy shrugged, then angled his head.
The former scarecrow was still coming to terms with his shadowed reality. The borders of his body jumped and flickered without rhythm or pulse—he couldn't make sense of himself in the normal ways.
Meanwhile Ruby laughed over him with circling flight, skateboarding on her broom. By now she'd laid his husk flat on the stick surface. Chains of darkness tied the straw body to it, wrapping around him in bulky coils. Somehow, she'd knotted the final loop with a jangling bow.
Swishy hated that she could get like this, completely unaware of the presence of evil, or rather, her commissioning of it.
Instead, he chose not to speak on it. There were words for him to say and darkness through which he could express it, but his lack of straw made him not want to speak.
And with no straw with which to collect his emotions, his thoughts instantly flowed through his body. Any momentary flash of a feeling meant that it'd already integrated into him. There was no dodge, no buffer, no functional avoidance. His mind was keen to changes in him and around him, but his control was limited, perhaps null. As the DOUBT and DISORIENTATION sparked in his mind, he had to accept that he embodied those concepts. These notions lived in his body, speaking to him, urging him toward one violence or another.
VIOLENCE…how familiar.
That word swam through him like human blood.
"Don't just stare at me,” Ruby said. “It's rude. It's uncomfortable. And, as you can see, I'm kind of in the middle of something." She fished through his straw until her eyes peeled open the moment she touched it, his heart. "Yes, this is an important moment for me. Please pardon my indulgence. I've worked so hard to achieve this."
And then she gave him another pointed gaze.
"For the second time."
The blackness in Swishy's gourd smoothed into saucers, into a glossy emptiness that committed everything Ruby was doing into an unforgettable memory.
Ruby's hand explored the chest cavity.
At that moment, the rustling sound was the only thing that existed.
He wouldn't stop her. Wouldn't try. His loss of heart was a done deal and he knew it. Swishy was set on moving forward. COMPASSION, he’d confirmed it, that it existed in him, for him.
Ruby pulled the heart from his body and raised it in the air.
To everyone's surprise, the heart bled. Black fluid oozed over its surface like molten lava. There were hardened and raised surfaces, scars and cracks, and mini-geysers that spewed curses from the inside. He knew he’d gone through much refused to believe that his heart was so black. That wasn’t how this was supposed to work. He’d been good. He’d done good.
“It’s bleeding…” Swishy telepathized.
"It is…” Myst said from somewhere on the outskirts of his aura. She’d melded into his shadows, breathing life freely for the first time since her recovery.
“Do you think she’s going to drink the blood?”
“I think she’ll use it, somehow.”
“There’s so much of me to consume. Is that really all I’m good for.”
“We knew that this was the outcome before we came back here. Don’t act surprised about it now. Suffering without dignity will only beget more suffering. Now that you’re here, things have simplified. Your heart isn’t lost. It’s there, right before your eyes. All you have to do is rip it from her hands."
Swishy nodded.
Ruby, seeking attention, called out. “I do know you to be quite the bleeding heart, my dear! See how your sensitivity flows! I could fill a wine glass with it. We could toast if that’s something you’d be open to.”
“I’m not claiming that blood. That ugliness is yours.”
“What?”
“That blackness can’t be mine. You’re blemished, soul and all. That’s your evil oozing over my light. Anyone can see that.”
It was ridiculous, Swishy knew, because he was a darkling now, a pumpkin atop raging shadows. But he knew how to make Ruby insecure, if not dead, so this was his way of settling.
Ruby turned the heart in her hands, inspecting its nooks and crannies and undersides and textures. A light sparked in her eyes, a hint of the Swish-heart’s brilliance-infused straw.
“It could be your blackness, too. You’ve produced so much of it.” Ruby gestured above to clusters of gliding snitchtalons. Most of them were red-eyed demons, blackwheat clenched between their beaks.
Now was Swishy’s turn to scoff. Ruby may have had a point. But disregarding her felt good anyway. Even the shadows laughed with Swishy—though when Ruby cut her eyes they stopped.
While Ruby appraised the heart, its fluid leaking over her hands, Swishy took the chance to reckon with his actual darkness. The sum of it was immense, a full-bodied one that he hoped to get more comfortable with. His head just floated within his growing body, the celestial evil greeting his enemy. He'd made the atmosphere so dark, and the sun started to fade as his shadows flickered higher and higher.
It was impressive to him, the potency, but it just wasn’t him. It was him—but it wasn’t—not the way he’d wanted to be seen anyway.
[Scarecrow]—he’d activated the spell, one that normally took surrounding straw and gathered it into a body. But there was no straw around for him to target. Instead, he aimed at his body, coaxing them to rearrange their oily slickness into a roughness. The curses had achieved the shape of a scarecrow but Swishy wanted the feel, the texture, and so his shadows splintered and frayed and repacked.
Ruby stared at the production. “Ah…”
“I’m back,” Swishy said, swish-speaking, as now he’d turned his flames of shadow into a type of blackwheat, solid and strand-woven. Swish-speak was his chosen language and it felt good to return to it. It was a part of himself he didn’t know he loved until he’d lost it.
The boy held out his hand. Aura collected in his tiny palm, surging toward a point. His arm trembled. He felt as if his limb were on the verge of exploding as the dark particles gathered and gathered.
Myst flew around him, rapt at the soul bomb in his hand. "Gorgeous, gorgeous, it's such a gem!"
The scarecrow focused on packing gloom into his hand.
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Ruby had had enough of the show: "[Sieve]."
A cold utterance. Swishy was angered as he thought of Trey.
"Where's my friend?"
"He's dead."
"That's a lie."
"Dead—dead man walking. Whatever, it's all semantics."
The purple box formed around Swishy. Its magnetic aura slowly compressed. The energy was underground as well, rising to meet its above-ground ends. The sieve absorbed a curse-filled steam that merged into its structure.
It packed smaller and smaller, the bladed grid closing upon Swishy.
But from the energetic nugget in Swishy's hand, a black rake burst forth.
"And you tried doing this to Trey?"
"I did it to you too."
"You won't do it again."
Ruby made a swift fist and the sieve pressed toward Swishy, its edges trembling as it met resistance from the rake. Swishy's shadows radiated as his abilities tended to do, behaving just like his gold-straw. The primary difference was that the blackness was greedy. He couldn't help how much these powers wanted to eat. The sieve quivers calmed as that spell began to reduce. The spell aura flowed into the rake, lighting it as a dark flame while it shrank to nothing.
"Look at it go!" Swishy said in awe to Myst—before turning a mocking gaze at Ruby. "This rake is a hungry boy."
"Indeed, it is. How very kind of Ruby to feed it snacks."
The witch glowered, then disappeared beneath a sudden veil of shadow. But Swishy's keenness had returned to him now that he possessed something of a body again.
[Adieu]—Ruby was gone again.
He pivoted around, seeking Ruby's exit gate.
But several seconds passed without the witch's reappearance. Clouds rotated around him, drifting ominously. Birds soared all about but hadn’t closed in for an attack. Ruby’s orchestra of anxiety persisted without its conductor.
And then it reached the next movement.
A wave of Ruby’s emissaries showed themselves in her stead, silhouettes rising from the ground.
New batches of flowering scarecrows were born, rising from their stakes of twisted roots. They were on the ground. Within the trees. Some had even sprouted from the clouds around him. Ruby was getting creative about her scarecrow-planting now.
The boy sensed the second half of the [Adieu].
Ruby's portal let out above him, a dark feminine figure rushing from it. Swishy caught intermittent glimpses of Ruby broom-riding between the canopies. She sat on her broom while pinching pieces of his heart away.
"He loves me…he loves me not…"
The pieces floated downward but never made it to the true surface. The ground-level miasma had risen to catch every piece of straw. Ruby had kneaded the strands into crushed nuggets, tiny heart-shaped cores for the curses to organize around. She'd given rise to structure and heart. The curses knew what was responsible for their transformations, their sudden onset of agency.
Two things happened.
One: the curses were reborn. Two: they turned their bodies toward Swishy, knowing that their hearts came from him. At the sight of Swishy, the tiny hearts pulsed faster. They wanted to be bigger. Hearts that wanted more heart. Each core was a drug unto itself, a stimulation machine.
Everyone rushed toward him in various ways.
Swishy hated that he was shadow-touched in this moment. His darkness wasn't for those he didn't want to hurt, but it always had a way of forcing his hand.
"Determined, aren't we?" Ruby said, summoning another [Sieve].
But Swishy vanished.
Ruby glared at her empty box, then searched around for the boy. She seemed like she'd been underestimating him but that turned out to not be true. Preemptively, she'd gathered a cloud, heavy with nails and other curse-crafting hardware.
Swishy appeared behind, only his head.
Before Ruby could extend her hand and cast nails upon him, an ominous fog poured from the jack-o-lantern's eyes and mouth. PARALYSIS—it was Myst attempting yet another invasion of Ruby's mind.
[Scarf]—Ruby said. A ring of small portals opened around her mouth and neck through which snitchtalons shot forth, then turning their plumage into clothing. The scarf clung to Ruby's lower mouth, blocking Myst's gas. But the birds suffered. They bore the brunt of the paralysis demon, trembling against Ruby, cooing softly.
"It's okay, my dears," Ruby said, patting the scarf, smoothing down their jolt-spiked feathers.
The vanished Swishy now undid his disappearance, coming back one piece at a time.
[Scarecrow]—Swishy started his return to constitution with his right hand, a shadowed punch to Ruby's rib. His hurt crunched against her like a sack of bricks.
She doubled over—right into the uppercut of the second phantom hand.
The woman head-slipped it, though, avoiding flush contact with the attack.
Ruby then flew away on her broom—only for Swishy's extremities to chase her down. His body parts vanished and emerged, punching at her, grabbing at the broom, trying to snatch the scarf from her neck. Ruby deftly anticipated and dodged the pursuit. She sharply dropped her altitude, seeking cover in the woods—and among her scarecrows.
The sky continuously opened in her wake, the conjurations of Swishy’s feet. The sole of a giant foot, Swishy's ghostly Timb bore down upon Ruby in Straw Guardian's would-be shoe-size.
Ruby leaned forward on her ride and propelled herself faster.
Stomp after stomp after stomp. Yet the massive shadow attacks disappeared upon impact, leaving no damage to the environment. Swishy was mindful—every time he missed, he dispersed his Timb, then reintegrated it for the next attack. Collateral damage would only exist when he confirmed the hit, his successful stomping out of his witchy enemy.
The thing was that Ruby was never fighting alone.
In Swishy's refusal to topple The High Chasm with his size 98 Timbs, Ruby's reinforcements had watched everything happen. The form of her omniscience was present in the snitchtalons, in the trees, in the burrowing shadows—and in the newly flowered scarecrows.
As Ruby flew away, she ripped off pieces of Swishy's heart and dropped them into the scarecrows down below. With each chunk that she dropped from the sky, a scarecrow sprung upward to catch it in its gaping mouth. Their root-twisted stakes compressed like a spring and then shot upward with jack-in-a-box velocity.
The scarecrows bounced upward to capture their rations of heart, using their rubbery everytree constitutions for support.
Swishy kept stomping.
The scarecrows then shot after his feet, getting in the way.
The boy had no choice but to crush them underfoot, feeling GUILT, but bracing himself against its mental damage. In fact, it only made his shadows stronger, increasing his next shoe size.
Ruby dodged while her scarecrows were smashed down like aluminum cans—only for them to spring upward post-impact, behaving as the rubber-textured spring coils they were.
The chase continued, stomps galore, while the birds got in on the action too, chasing Swishy’s gourd. They launched at him, trying to grab him with their feet, anything to stop the attacks at the source.
But Myst was Swishy’s casual protector, releasing mild versions of her fog, scaling NIGHTMARE and PARALYSIS down to her basic GLOOM and DECAY techniques—the minimum strength for the maximum result: stealing the propulsion from the snitchtalons. For the decay-stricken ones, their feathers sloughed from their bodies, staggering their flight, forcing them to land before they lost their wings completely.
"Thank you, Myst," Swishy said.
"No problem, just clearing the way for that head of yours."
For fun, Swishy used his next giant Timb to kick a grouping of snitches out of his path. They tumbled in a forever-long arc before vanishing within the blinding sun.
[Sieve]—several of them in different locations. This was Ruby's attempt at isolating his limbs. She missed them, of course, being immaterial as they were, but she almost captured Swishy's head.
Myst took over, though, drawing him into a portal and warping several paces away.
It was such a fast teleport, smooth, silky, the first darkness since his birth that resembled his time in the altar.
"You have to teach me how to do that."
"I know what you're thinking. You like it. But no hidey-hole for you. That'll wait until after we win."
Swishy nodded, then resumed his attack.
Hands, feet, and even a phantom jack-o-lantern conjured around Ruby. But she was ready. Her next batch of sieve spells were placed all around her body. She'd prepared them beforehand with trace amounts of magic, setting a trap. Now she fed her sieves fully, capturing the hands.
[Pile]—Swishy wanted to take his shadows back but they were trapped in Ruby's boxes. He dissolved his solids into smoke, yet it only served to fill the purple borders of Ruby's technique.
"Got you," Ruby gloated, stretching her hand out into an open palm gesture—then squeezing into a fist.
The sieves compressed, processing the shadows as if they were real straw. The smoke dispersed into minuscule grains, blackened rice that fell from the skies.
Swishy's head flared with power, attempting to bring his curses back to him.
But they were constricted in their petrified states. The grains wouldn't fly or even slide along the ground. They simply quivered in place from his influence.
"It'll be a second," Myst advised. "You've been hit. Be patient and recover."
Swishy sighed and soared down to his deadened grains, aiming to guard them. Time wasn't his friend, though, and the surface dwellers now achieved a fresh relevancy.
The scarecrows stretched their roots toward Swishy's sieve-processed shadows, his dark, rice-textured jewels. Their rubbery anchors flexed past their limits and when the grains were still beyond their reach, they grabbed for anything to pull them forward—trees, bushes, boulders. Some clawed at handfuls of Cearth, refusing to snap back to their original lengths. They stretched and stretched and stretched, an obstinate pursuit of Swishy's shadowborne remains.
When they did reach the grains, they smashed their faces into them and gobbled them straight from the ground. These scarecrows knew no pride, only tenacity. They were Ruby's army of famished dogs.
These developments, naturally, signaled the reemergence of another special guest.
[Adieu].
Of course…
Swishy glared at the warp gate behind him. He knew she wouldn't make it easy.
Ruby broom-rode from the ovoid and kept pace with the retreating jack-o-lantern. Other portals opened in her proximity—ones that released snitchtalons from over her shoulder. And above her head, a humongous cloud formed, growing and growing. The mass was so glutted that a couple of nails involuntarily dropped from it.
The purple particles gathered around Swishy, its edges solidifying into borders. He flew as fast as possible but Ruby's spellcasting was faster.
The sieve—it was here.
Every unit of progress made didn't matter b/c the sieve followed him as if it were a part of his body. He felt its unrelenting wire pressed onto his aura. His soul itched from the steely friction.
ENDURE, ENDURE, it was all he could do, all his mind could hold to with everything. When one fights, one gets hit.
It is what it is—
But Ruby intercepted that thought, waving her index finger at him. The ah-ah-ah in the gesture was strong. "This is a kill shot, you stupid pumpkin. With this, you'll be ground into pumpkin seed. You're food now and you'll be food forever. Be grateful for your usefulness. You've achieved honor. Now submit."
As her hand gripped the heart, its blackened pulp running over her joint, she shook that blackwheat molasses onto the sieve. It splatted onto the violet grates, deepening its color, causing it to quake from its strength. Finally, more layers had grown in the grid. The amount of crisscrossing wire had multiplied. Parts of Swishy's rind received cuts, injuries from which parts of his soul leaked.
Swishy slowly landed, shackled by the spiritual weight. He was at eye level with his petrified shadows. Those grains were his future.
"Now," Ruby declared.
The sieve compressed.
And Myst appeared. She was in her genie form, holding the shrinking sieve in her hands, straining to keep its boundaries pried apart.
Ruby landed as well, a graceful hop to the ground as her broom levitated into her free hand. She marched up to Myst, nonchalant yet imperious. "Fine, you too can struggle, traitor."
The woman squeezed the heart pulp over that sieve, feeding it strength. The spell first conjured as the size of a vegetable crate. Now it reduced to a handheld kennel. Swishy’s eyes vibrated as the pulp splattered wires drew closer and closer to him. The end was imminent. Myst reserves drained like open faucet, her constitution flowing from her. Swishy’s negativity, from which Myst had copiously fed, was no match for the boy’s misused heart.
The shadow mistress strained—but the sieve kept closing.
"Let's see how long you can hold out, Mysty. Use your reserves. I'd love to see you become nothing. You'll be more like family that way. A proper sugar wraith."
Myst worked her influence over the sieve framework. As the pulp infused the spell, Myst's hands violently shook. Her weakness, her struggle, portrayed themselves as human anatomy, veins now protruding from her forearms. Now wasn't the time for admiration, this Swishy knew, but he found it beautiful that Myst suffered in a way he understood.
Even when she was fighting, she was honest. She'd never told a lie. He was proud to be her altar.
There was another point of pride. His heart, the one that Ruby was squeezing for all its worth. Through the pulp, the mysterious black blood, he could hear its voice too. That heart didn’t speak like the aggressive High Chasm one. But it whimpered. It shook in Ruby’s grasp. It leaned toward Swishy, wanting out, wanting him.
He should’ve been sad. He should’ve mourned. His understanding of human logic told that story to himself anyway. But what happened was that he started to feel like himself again. When confronted with himself, with what he wanted, he was convinced that the liquid blackness wasn’t all his. Swishy, truly, divorced himself from at least that portion of the corruption.
It was Ruby’s, it had to be.
Her heart of straw was one of black magma, untouchable, unreachable, and the most volatile organ that existed in all the land.
“It’s not you,” he telepathized to his heart.
“What?” Ruby sneered. “Are you making friends again? Stop that. Be processed in piece.”
She squeezed that heart with both hands, the pulp pouring onto the [Sieve] like a spilled drink.
Yet the grains on the ground were responding to Swishy’s [Scarecrow] technique, flowing into the sieve, finding ingress. His shadow body reformed, his aura enlarging against Ruby's spell, fighting back. He was a young sprite with a massive head. As he collected shadow and size, his proportions corrected themselves little by little. The larger he grew, the more the [Sieve] expanded to accommodate his aura.
Then first heart, the High Chasm engine, beat rapidly. A slight Cearthquake triggered. Everything it now said was the war cry that Swishy expected. Get her! I don't want another heart down here! This isn't the life for me and this isn't the life for any other heart. Take that woman out! Bury her and let me finish the rest!
Ruby's expression faltered, miffed at the resistance she felt. Her eyes blackened, becoming glossy and wet—the sugar wraiths pouring from her as steam to aid her spell. The souls screeched as they integrated into the sieve wires, reinforcing them with their being.
There was only one word that moved them: HUNGER.
Swishy, the budding dark god that he was, only had one answer for them. The firm one. The antithesis of he who opened his heart, offered his body, and found himself in unimaginably dire ennui: STARVE.
The curses demanded his body, nonetheless—but Swishy demanded their everything, drawing all dark winds into him. As the curses attempted to eat him, they failed—and in turn became his fuel. Starve, Swishy commanded, and starve they did.
Swishy grew and grew and grew and grew.
The spectacle drew Ruby's gaze, her eyes bubbling with kin and curses alike. She'd achieved a new clothing item now, her ENVY conjuring its smoky likeness before draping itself over Ruby like a shawl.
"You're stealing from me? How could you…" was all she said.
The sieve dissolved as the five-foot boy became nothing short of a totem, a tower, an obelisk. Swishy enlarged, engorged, as he took on the shape of his greatest failure.
“[Possessed Guardian],” he said.