ONCE THE CREW HOPPED INTO THE MYST-WARP, everything happened all at once.

That included Swishy living multiple lives, splitting parts of his consciousness between the Possessed Guardian and the straw sprites. He knew that he’d grabbed Ruby. It was an experiment, yes, but he’d done it. And now that he’d gone and disturbed her, Swishy didn’t know what to do.

Sneakily, he shifted most of his spirit into the straw sprites, leaving the shadow giant to emptily hold their enemy.

All around, the shadows pulsed horizontally, a forward-moving current indicative of a warp realm, of Myst teleporting them. As before, she was drawing them through different parts of his giant’s form, tending to the disturbances caused by Ruby’s magic and Swishy’s troubled emotions.

The shadows that strobed around them depicted lips, Myst-like fangs, and dimpled, roguish smiles. As it turned out, they were all her faces. Even her beauty mark conjured in parts, a hall of Myst clones, Myst sisters, and Swishy had the thought that this was like her straw sprites—but bigger, more powerful.

Through his collective of straw sprites, Swishy felt overwhelmed by the unique blackness that Myst released.

Even Trey, who’d grown close to Myst, had shuddered from the active shroud that enveloped them. Swishy’s gold fairies hovered before Trey’s eyes, the best friends communing in silence and understanding.

“I’m too tired for this,” Trey yawned, his [Doze] still massaging the restfulness into him, stretching his baby-sized soul to large enough to fill his body.

“But I’m just getting started,” the Myst legion giggled.

“So you’re healthy-healthy again.”

“I am!” Her echoed voice was delectable and menacing all at once.

“And you won’t turn on us and just side with Ruby now?” The Swish-minis said, cowering from the miasma all around.

“Do you want to know my plan?”

“It worries me that you didn’t answer his question,” Trey said.

“Here, I’ll show you.

Much like her spreading her memories in vapors and smoke, Myst now animated her game plan with smoke puppets and ghosts. It was a puppet theater, silhouettes interacting, trees building, but nothing specific. Silhouettes executed the plan all around them, the Myst version of cave drawings. She then formed simple phrases before their eyes, the only plainspoken explanation.

She intended to progress the battle on three fronts: managing shadows, collecting straw, and planting.

Myst didn’t explain what either of these entailed. She just divvied out the assignments as the potent shadow mistress she was. She, of course, was the mistress of shadows. Trey and the Sling-ravens were on straw duty. Swishy was told to plant.

“What’s with the planting?” Swishy asked.

“It’s important but we’re not there yet.”

“When are you going to tell me to do it?”

“When it’s time.”

“That’s not helpful, Mysty.”

“It is, it will be. Just follow my lead.”

The Swish sprites angled their heads. A couple of them buzzed angrily.

Myst’s many, many faces frowned.

Swishy tuned into his emotional intelligence, sifting through what he’d learned, and what his supporters needed from him. The needs of Myst, though…they were complex. They changed all the time, or so it seemed. He took a shot in the dark.

[Trust]—the intent bloomed through the [Possessed Guardian] as they swam through Myst’s portal.

Throughout the [Possessed Guardian], he sent an aura of [Trust]. He’d given it to the Straw Guardian, and he’d do the same to this one. Giving the shadows access to him seemed like a start, a direct investment in Myst.

“See? Now was that so hard.”

“It wasn’t but you can say things clearer.”

“I can, yes, but is that any fun?”

“Fun for me.”

But Myst flicked a group of the straw sprites with her finger, sending them tumbling across her watery warp realm.

“Bully!” Swishy tried to yell but his straw sprites were too separated for intelligible swishing.

Myst went on and declared the first part of her scheme.

“I’m dropping you all off.”

“Off where?” Trey snapped. Even though he was tired, his pittance of soul sloshing around his long limbs, he found the energy to express shock and resistance to Myst.

“To wherever I need you, duh.”

“I’m for sure going to get a dangerous one,” Trey groaned.

“We all are, my dear. That’s what makes you boys my champions.”

“Should I know now, or is it better for me to be surprised?”

“Surprise, of course. Live a little—for you may have little time left.”

“Ha. Ha.” Trey clapped on both Ha’s.

“It’s no laughing matter. Even a shadow girly knows that. But I’m laughing too.”

Trey’s frown faltered like cheap plaster. Myst’s antics demanded his smile and Trey, because he was prone to giving it, gave it.

“Good,” Myst said, her multitudes of faces sharing the same grin.

The dark current swirled beneath Trey, ejecting him back into the world.

“Ah!” Trey screamed.

The Sling-ravens, actually concerned, dove after him.

When the portal closed, it was only Myst and Swishy alone.

His sprites stared at her wall of faces.

“Maybe we should…” Swishy stammered.

Myst’s faces vaporized and then formed her half-human, half-spider body. “I take it you can’t turn all this gold into one?”

“My body won’t do that. It wants my pumpkin, my wings, even the blackwheat. My soul wants everything.”

“That’s an admirable way to be.”

“I guess.”

“Well, like I said. I will manage the shadows.”

“Okay.”

Myst scooped the straw sprites in her hand. Her dark fog flew around the dolls in the shape of shadowclaw silhouettes. “You’re no good in a fight but I have a job for you.”

The straw sprites did eager up-downs.

And then the first of the shadowclaw silhouettes changed course, crashing into the straw sprites.

“What are you doing?” The sprites protested, trembling, shrinking, losing straw.

Myst only smiled.

[Pile] was forced upon the dolls, taking their bodies first, and their wings last. When the last of the sprites reverted to gold-straw strands, Myst peered at them, their hues glowing within her pupils.

“Just trust me, okay.”

The inert straw wanted to nod. Instead, they lay in her palm, occasionally lifting from her wind.

(…)

The giant. It was the only choice. The one that held Ruby.

Swishy committed his consciousness fully. The last moments of his straw sprites were spent lounging in Myst’s hands, looking up at his friends. As the lights went out of the eyes of his Swish-mini hive, the sleepy Trey and the Sling-ravens waved at him. Myst stared down at him, too, her luscious lips puckering and then blowing. A dark wind summoned in her hands brought up a wave that landed over him with the soft crush of silk. The fairies then went dormant, curling in their luxurious blankets.

To his giant hood, to Ruby, to the world outside. Though the Possessed Guardian lacked traditional eyes, Swishy understood his awakening as his eyes opening, allowing the world into him and him into the world.

And what a world it was.

It was a stunner. Reds, oranges, honey-and-gold patches in the trees.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

From the winds of their spells and the gusts kicked up by the Possessed Guardian’s steps, the surface-level debris rose into the skies. Swishy was up to his chest in his autumnal leafage. Every part of the nature he’d influenced shimmered, leaving its dust colors in the air.

He took this to mean that Straw Village was thriving and that its influence was expanding outward.

They were taking the city, making it more beautiful along the way.

He couldn’t wait to get his true body back. Swishy saw himself flying through the tornado-ing leaves, catching twigs in his weaves and bird feathers in his face. He wanted the Cearth’s glitter to coat his smile. The boy wanted to be a bird and a scarecrow and a diamond all in one.

He remembered Trey’s mission then: collecting straw. His body was coming. Swishy just needed to be patient. He had to hold out.

But he was a giant now—and a cool one at that. Swishy thought he’d have more complaints about being a flaring colossus of pain, and it wasn’t like that at all.

Myst had gone through the trouble of solidifying the [Possessed Guardian]. There were straw textures that bristled along its surface now, fine hairs and matted tufts and the occasional out-of-place protrusion that made him look like he’d rolled around in the mud. Could he move? He could. Not smoothly—his soul was too small to manage that—but he triggered one meaningful gesture at a time. He took one step. He took a second step. He nodded his phantom of a head—which Myst was mindful enough to shape into a jack-o-lantern.

He was curious about being a stable giant. Before he was a wildfire blooming with his collected pain, but Myst had worked hard on creating a true structure for the darkness to breathe. Through Myst, he’d become closer to an altar, a true shelter of shadows.

His gaze traveled to his closed fist. It trembled with power—his own combined with the resistance of his witchy captive.

Recursion, inception, mirroring—the giant Swishy held Ruby while Ruby held his heart.

And the standoff of it all sent his mind into chaos.

To the untrained eye, they were at one another’s mercy. One wrong twitch from either party could lead their enemy into a world of pain. But Swishy knew better. And Ruby did, too, as her facial expressions contorted with disgust. She was out of Swishy’s view but he’d long learned Ruby’s manners and moods.

It was a stand-off—though Swishy felt as if he were holding a murder hornet.

As Ruby was held in his grip, a rush of shadows poured over her body, holding her adrift. Ruby wasn’t pained. She was comfortable, unharmed for the moment. Yet the sudden capture brushed the hair-trigger of her wrath. She screamed; she raged; she protested with all her soul. But that was more vindictiveness than anything. Her words confirmed this: “How compromising and embarrassing. Do you think I’m a plushie? Are you taking me lightly? Is that what this is?”

With every question she poked at the heart in her hand, stabbing with her manicured red nail. She forcibly punctuated each word with a poke, a jab, which sent pinching shockwaves through Swishy’s soul. His giant hand trembled. But his grip only tightened, reflexively cramping from the injury.

“Let. Me. Go.”

Poke. Poke. Poke.

But the shadow hand tightened every time, locking her in place.

“Fuck. You.”

Two pokes, which activated nodes of ACHE and ACRIMONY in his shoulders.

“Die. Die.”

Another pair of pokes, the impacts mapping to his soul’s DISCONTENT and DOLEFULNESS.

He didn’t want his feelings hurt. And knew that Ruby shouldn’t be able to hurt him. But she did. She’d birthed him. It was just a thing he’d always struggle to accept.

A series of pokes, of insults, of un-love.

“I won’t stand for this,” Ruby said. She spoke with the flatness of a cemetery slab. She attempted to fly through the shadows, leaving the hand by force, but the shadows around her were gelatinous.

“Do I have blood?” Swishy asked Myst in his head.

“No, I wouldn’t call it that. I just haven’t converted all these curse slimes into straw.”

“I see, good. I don’t think I want the goop.”

“Me neither, but it’s serving a purpose, yes?”

“Yes, it’s stopping her from leaving. But not for long. And who knows what she’ll do with my heart then.”

“Right. Now let me give you an idea.”

A word popped into Swishy’s mind.

“Are you listening?” Ruby went on. “Cute trick but has your rebellion gone the way you think it should?” She relaxed as she sat on her broom, and jabbed a finger into the empty torso she’d stolen from Swishy.

Then she squeezed the heart with her other hand—the psychic pain throbbed in his mind.

“You’ve seen how your stubbornness has turned out. Now release me.”

The boy fed his energy into the palm of his hand. His command of shadows squeezed Ruby’s body and aura. But his shadows weren’t firm. His palm was more like a black ocean and the flexion of his form triggered a strengthening of its currents, a release of hexed waves.

Swishy the Giant spoke the Myst-suggested word: DROWN.

The curses in his hand started to cackle. A violent command? Say-no-more was their attitude about it. And so they congealed, thickening upon her mouth and nose. Die, they told her. Breath is for the worthy!

Swishy flinched; Myst laughed; and the shadows hardened and glazed like days-old candy.

Pain, he coached himself. Give her pain!

Yet his hand squeeze did not affect the ensnared woman. There was no thrashing or struggling. He felt her eyes shifting, her brow forming into a glare. Ruby’s aura had the repulsion effect that strong auras normally did. But it was a strong barrier, having kept out the immensity of Swishy’s black hand. Ruby’s power pushed outward against the [Possessed Guardian]’s shadows and kept Swishy at bay even though she was within his grip.

Then there was the invitation, the subtle drawing of his curses into her body.

“I don’t deserve breath?” Ruby said.

The curses screeched in her face, faithfully executing the drowning directive.

But she opened her mouth. There was no tongue inside from what Swishy felt in his shadows. Only an abyss, a powerful entity. A childish one. It wailed loudly as any sugar wraith, perfectly fused in her belly with the intent of HUNGER.

The taffy-textured curses from the [Drown] technique were suctioned into Ruby’s mouth, becoming tic marks in her endless tally of shadows.

A girl? Was that a little girl inside her? Who is she…

“You won’t get my secrets that easily anymore. You don’t even like me so what gives you the right to know me, huh?” Her energy formed into a purple bubble. She maneuvered in it with ease, walking within its surface.

But Swishy’s mind was stuck on the personified hunger in her belly.

Another sidebar to Myst. “Who is that?”

“It’s Ruby.”

“Another her?”

“Just her. A small one.”

“Same evil?”

“Try not to think about it. Focus on the win.”

“I can’t not think about it.”

“That consideration should be saved for us, young straw.”

“But—”

Pain. Shock. Spiritual disorder.

The focus, the words, and the thoughts were vanished.

Swishy the Giant was numb from pain, his soul feeling scrapped with a sandpaper brush.

Ruby poked the heart. Clawed at it. And then she took a bite.

Her teeth marks gnashed through his soul.

She brimmed with power and currents of sorrow pulsed through the Possessed Guardian.

“I see…a heart-healthy snack.”

Ruby was placated for the moment, nibbling and nibbling, occasionally glancing at the darkness for changes in its behavior, for signs of weakness in her scarecrowing son.

“Thank you for the meal,” Ruby said, lightly biting at the heart.

Then she laid its remains on a plate of sorts—Swishy’s empty torso that she kept on her broom.

Swishy felt his discarded anatomy then, the movements of Ruby dragging the heart over his body, then fitting into the chest slot where his heart once belonged. “Do you feel that? The heart inside you—the old you, I should say. This is a good lesson for you, actually. Even though it’s in you, it’s for sharing. It’s for us. We can be better together.”

Swishy tried to tune her out and failed. She was in his palm. They were touching; thus, they couldn’t deny each other.

Ruby laughed as her aura created a defensive bubble around her. She flew on her broom, testing out her mobility in her closed-fist of a jail.

“Hmm…” she said, plotting her escape.

Ruby was protected by her aura. Her bubble of energy lined her body and the heart that she kept in her hand. Even though Swishy’s guardian was over Ruby—the heart included—he couldn’t feel it. Ruby was protecting it with her energy and smirked at the darkness, gloating about what she did.

“It’s not yours anymore, that’s how this works, I’m afraid.”

Swishy squeezed harder but Ruby’s aura wouldn’t relent.

“Tsk, tsk, I suppose you’ll just have to make another.”

With a contemptuous flare, Ruby triggered an [Adieu] and left Swishy’s grip.

(…)

The woman was down on the forest surface, having landed in the front yard of a tree-hollow home. As soon as she landed, her followers keyed into her presence immediately. Every scarecrow turned toward her, twisting on their coiled stakes, stretching toward their leader. The snitchtalons in the trees also faced Ruby—even the ones that’d sacrificed their eyes and entire faces to the altar for the scarecrow hearts.

Ruby’s presence was undeniable. To her followers, it was food.

She held the heart in the air and shook it, dropping crumbs but little else. Still, her followers lunged for the crumbs of Swishy’s heart.

“Get her,” Myst suggested.

“I can still reach?”

“Of course, you can.”

Swishy concentrated, then reacted to the next word Myst fed into his mind: WILDFIRE.

His arm vaporized and gathered over Ruby’s head, casting a tremendous shadow over herself and the nearby scarecrows. His fingers returned as flickering gouts of dark flame, spreading through the clearing. While the initial attack was held off by Ruby’s aura, she slid into an [Adieu] gate avoiding the confrontation.

She reappeared over halfway up The High Chasm, broom-riding out of the gate in her ascension.

Meanwhile, Swishy walked after her. Each step took his full focus but he scaled the uphill progression, an awkward but swift tower. For each Ruby warp, Swishy caught up in two bounding steps.

As he went onward, there was much for him to see.

Most of the darkness had followed Ruby up The High Chasm, crawling along its roots and bark and branches. It moved along as a single slithering organism, wrapping around as a serpent. Most of it was prominent on the outside while portions of it pooled into the tree hollows, shooting through tunnels and leaf veins. Any abutment was grabbed upon for leverage, and any crack served as an ingress point for it to slug along.

The scarecrows who’d seen Ruby had stretched their coiled stakes upward, pushing themselves from the ground.

But everywhere behind Swishy, the parts he’d once traveled, revealed to him change, hope.

As the boy chased Ruby through the land, none of what had been grown had escaped his notice. There were homes set into the trees, and there were scarecrows that tended those homes, tiny hearts within the scarecrow mouths.

Everywhere Swishy looked was someplace he’d left his mark. He wouldn’t view himself as only seed. His investment was far more active than the passive designation of thoughtless growth. Within him, a word bloomed through his every action, his own form of IMAGINATION with golden lettering, far different than the shadowed version that grew around Ruby’s body when the scarecrows were born.

His red-orange-honeys were everywhere. The trademark colors of the Straw Village had radiated outward, and the Straw Guardian successfully spread those seeds to the woods. The coloration had progressed so far that the settlements from Ruby’s bird hearts were brightened as well. The little towns and bazaars that were erected were aflame in proper autumn, the black everytrees gaining sections stripes of warm colors.

Their worlds, both Swishy’s and Ruby’s, were merging.

But Swishy’s, it seemed, was winning.

There was nothing that could happen to him that’d diminish his pride.

It’s all mine. Everything is mine!

And he didn’t mean this in any diabolical way. But it was all his—everything—and Ruby couldn’t convince him of this anymore.

“How bold…” Ruby whispered to herself.

A banshee screamed from her gut, though, that second presence that spiked from her HUNGER.

From afar, Swishy noticed that Ruby’s gaze wavered before the heart. Her lips quivered, almost touching it. She wanted another bite. It was so obvious. But something told her to refrain.

“No, no, this fuel isn’t for me.”

Her stomach darkness flared.

“Now I won’t hear any more from you.”

Her HUNGER was stomach, a real back-talker.

“The things I can do to myself to make you hurt. Do you want to find out what they are? I haven’t found my threshold for pain but what about you? Now shut it, you starving wretch.”

The HUNGER coiled, becoming dense and small and afraid. It quaked with the same viciousness but worked hard to remain inside Ruby’s body.

“Now stay like that. I’ll feed us later.”

Ruby flew on. She ascended her High Chasm, shedding the crumbs of his heart, riling every entity that noticed the golden glitter falling from the sky. She had a plan for the heart and Swishy feared where it’d end up. But for the moment, he could feel every particle of crumb slide through the gullets of curses and birds and scarecrows.

He wanted to share, just not like this.

Well, like that exactly—but not through Ruby’s hand.

“Ick,” Swishy said.

“Comes with the territory,” Myst laughed “Now pay attention to the next word.”

“Okay—oh wow, that’s weird.”

“What’s weird about it?”

“That it’s not dark…”

“So…?”

“Are you sure this is right?”

“I am.”

GLITTER…Swishy was mystified. But as he opened himself to the word, his hands filled with grains. As he rolled his fingers and palms over the textures, the identity was unmistakable.

“I don’t have to explain what you’re doing to do, now do I?”

The boy nodded.

With a handful of ground straw sprites, Swishy the giant lumbered after Ruby.