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Chapter Text

“Thank you for your service!”

Dark Enchantress Cookie hovered in the air, a triumphant smile on her face. Red light crackled from the twin horns of her staff, lightning-like bursts of energy striking the ground.

Floating above her outstretched hand, encased in red lightning, were two gems. They bore a striking blue, as vibrant as the sky yet as fathomless as the ocean. One upright, the other upside down. The Soul Jams of Truth and Deceit, reunited in the hands of a single wielder. And yet, that wielder was neither the original, nor the replacement.

Shadow Milk Cookie snarled. It was the biggest movement he could make at the moment. His body was frozen in place, limbs locked up in the half standing half kneeling position he’d been in when she showed up.

Dark Enchantress Cookie! He wanted to scream at her, but that woman’s paralysis spell, one that had been apparently kneaded into the dough making up his current body, didn’t let him do that either. Traitorous gnat!

“Ah, to think even the Beast of Deceit could be deceived,” Dark Enchantress sneered. “Did you really think I wouldn't have countermeasures for you all? Too arrogant to consider that there would be Dark Moon Magic not even you knew of? How do you like it, by the way? It's one of the witches’.”

“Shadow milk…” a soft voice wheezed. “Let go…”

Shadow Milk’s eyes darted downwards. Pure Vanilla was pulling desperately at the claws locked around his neck. His unseeing pair of eyes fluttered, each pained blink lasting longer than the last.

“Please… I can… help…”

Fool! Does it look like I can let go? Shadow Milk glared at the slowly suffocating cookie trapped between his frozen hands. Not that Pure Vanilla could actually see him. The creepy staff the blind healer used as a substitute for his vision had fallen to the ground a ways away. There it lay facing the sky, wide eyed and shivering.

How ironic. It wasn’t supposed to go this way. The two of them had clashed once again, on yet another stage that Shadow Milk had specifically designed for Pure Vanilla. It wasn’t all that hard to goad Pure Vanilla into another game. The cookie had very obvious weaknesses, after all. Most notably being his little friends. With how wonderfully fragile Gingerbrave and his crew were, establishing a threat was of no big issue.

What was supposed to happen, was that Pure Vanilla would fall into another wonderful bout of self-inflicted despair, and Shadow Milk would have a grand old time laughing at how the high and mighty Hero of Truth had fallen into doubt not once, but twice. And with or without the other half of his soul jam, he’d retreat feeling absolutely peachy.

And yet that hadn’t happened. Pure Vanilla ( Liar! Traitor! ) had brought up that absurd, slanderous claim that Shadow Milk was lonely! That he , that self-righteous fool, was the only one that understood him? That as long as Shadow Milk turned back on his ways, he was willing to be his friend?

Pathetic!

As a result… Shadow Milk may or may not have let his temper get the better of him. They may or may not have devolved into a disgraceful fight off a cliff that would put Burning Spice to shame. He may or may not have initiated a fistfight once his magic reserves had run dry.

Not his most glamorous moment. Moving on.

And right at this moment, when Shadow Milk, completely drained of both magical and physical strength. Right when he put his hands on Pure Vanilla’s scrawny little neck, did Dark Enchantress Cookie appear.

The timing was impeccable! It was like she’d been watching. Waiting for this very moment. Shadow Milk might have been impressed if he weren’t so angry .

To face two traitorous gnats in one day, hah! What a travesty! He’d have thought he’d be allowed the kindness of a one-day grace period at the least. (What was she thinking? This was the worst timing for her inevitable betrayal. Her ultimate cookie wasn’t even close to done yet! He was supposed to have more time !)

And just like that, Dark Enchantress Cookie had swooped in to claim the fruits of his labour. Two birds with one stone. Or rather, two Soul Jams with one spell. 

A chuckle from Dark Enchantress swept his attention back.

“Truly, thank you both,” Dark Enchantress pointed her staff at them. The lightning crackled more fiercely. “With this, my plans for Earthbread’s rebirth take another step towards fruition. And now…”

With a flourish, she brought her staff arcing down. In its path came a tear in space. It looked out onto a dark abyss, a bottomless void, and it grew wider and wider with each second.

“I believe you may find the other realm much less welcoming without your Soul Jam, Beast of Deceit,” Dark Enchantress’s face was illuminated in crimson. “And with that… farewell. For good this time.”

In a whirl of crackling lightning, Shadow Milk found himself tossed in through the gaping portal with Pure Vanilla in tow. Just as he passed through the portal, he felt the paralysis spell over his dough loosen.

His claws released Pure Vanilla, turning to grip the edges of the portal with all his strength. To tear it open. Pull the space back apart just as he had done so many times in the past. Yet his strength failed him. The edges of the portal pushed back even more strongly. The distortion of spacetime tore into his palms. Trails of jam flowed from the open wound and into the abyss, but he couldn’t feel the pain beyond the mind numbing rage that had consumed him ever since Dark Enchantress crashed his finale. The other realm glowed red and black. It refused to heed his command.

As the opening narrowed to a sliver, Shadow Milk finally lost his nerve.

“Curse you, Dark Enchantress Cookie!” he shrieked through the rapidly closing portal. “Filthy cheating witch! I’ll be back to finish you! Mark my words! Run while you still can. There is not a single place on Earthbread where you can hide from me once I’m back!”

Dark Enchantress Cookie’s nasty laugh cut off as the portal fully closed. All of a sudden, there was silence. The other realm, that had once felt like home to him, pressed in like roiling chains. He tried to open a portal, but the essence of the other realm slipped through his fingers like water. Out of his grasp. Out of his control. The horsehair crack he had managed to spell up sparked with volatile instability, before collapsing on itself.

He could still sense Earthbread. But the connection was growing fainter. Each second he spent in this other realm that was no longer his, his perception of the reality he belonged to faded in chunks. Oh how wonderfully ironic! To be doomed to wander his own other realm forever lost! Together with his Soul Jam thief! ( He absolutely hated it. )

“Oh…” a bitter chuckle came bursting out of him. “Oh, Vanilly, I hate to break it to you, but we are crumbled!”

He glanced to his side. Pure Vanilla Cookie had, at the most inconvenient moment, passed out. His limp body was drifting, very slowly, off into the abyss.

No. This wouldn’t do. He scowled. Him? The great Shadow Milk Cookie? Losing to a cookie just fresh out of the oven? Impossible. Nobody could shackle him forever. Not Dark Enchantress Cookie, not Pure Vanilla Cookie, not even the witches themselves!

He still had an ace up his sleeve. Many aces ( he only had one left ). The likes of Dark Enchantress Cookie weren’t enough to bring him to his knees. He would return to teach her a lesson.

But the window of opportunity was rapidly closing. His ace wouldn’t be an ace for much longer. He had to act quickly.

Reaching out, he grabbed Pure Vanilla’s ankle and pulled him back towards him. 

“Yoink! You’re my battery now!” with one hand, he held Pure Vanilla’s wrist, with the other wrapped around his waist to prevent him from drifting off mid-spell. Despite the theft of their Soul Jams, their magic still resonated with each other, having shared a source for longer than they had lacked it. Like threading the needle, he pulled the magic out of Pure Vanilla’s dough and up into the point of his index finger, before sending his own meagre reserves to join it.

Holding him by the wrist, Shadow Milk directed Pure Vanilla’s finger in a series of complex gestures. Their magic flowed, taking shape around them. It tugged on the other world and tugged on that quickly fading presence of Earthbread. Distorting it, shaping it.

Shadow Milk opened his mouth, mumbling the finishing chant to the spell as fast as he could.

“Double double toil and trouble, Earthbread burn and dark moon bubble. Draw the dark and shape the light, bridge the world beyond the psyche.”

Space shattered. Reality flickered with each blink of the glyphs in the other realm. One moment it showed the other realm, the other, the real world. Varying, speeding renditions of it, glimpses of reality that would quickly be blown away like grains of sand and replaced by another scene. The storm of spaces whirled around them, shaping, twisting the space in the other realm.

Shadow Milk watched the flickering images, all the while closely monitoring the quickly fading connection to reality.

It wasn’t stable enough. ( Vanilly’s reserves were even worse than his. ) He wouldn’t be able to control the space (The connection was fading .) He had to wait a bit longer. ( There was no more time left. )

Whatever!

“Break!” he shrieked.

And the abyss imploded.

Shadow Milk Cookie collapsed onto solid ground. The sugar bricks felt cold at his back. He raised his head, watching as familiar sets of staircases wound nonsensically upon each other, doors slamming themselves shut into the walls. The Spire of Deceit manifested itself inside a bubble of space, anchoring their position in the other realm and preventing them from drifting off.

“Ugh!” he exclaimed and flopped over. His magic was completely drained. He didn’t even have the strength to support floating anymore. Far above him, the endlessly turning stairs spiralled up into the heavens. Dark Moon Magic hummed throughout the walls, pulsing and throbbing with an unnatural air.

This particular spell borrowed power from the other world itself, only requiring enough magic from the caster to form a scaffolding for reference. And even then, the dregs of his and Vanilly’s power had barely been enough. This bubble would pop eventually, sending them both careening back into the abyss, the lingering connection vanishing for good. But for now, it was safe. Enough to buy him time to return.

“Ha… haha… hahaha!” his giggles came bursting out of his chest, tainted with gleeful exhaustion. He jabbed a pointed finger upwards, imagining it was Dark Enchantress Cookie’s shocked expression staring down at him.

“You…!” he jeered. “Are not… the only one… who knows… witch spells!”

And with that declaration, Shadow Milk Cookie passed out.

Chapter Text

“Ohhh, it turned out wonderfully!”

“Your intuition is superb, High Witch!”

A sharp cackle broke through the cookie’s senses. It stirred. Sat up. There were voices coming from up above. Loud, booming voices. These voices had a nasally quality to them. Voices that, as the cookie would come to know in the future, could not be heard anywhere else in the world.

“The Ultimate Dough truly does make all the difference. Look at that lustre!”

“I had my doubts about the blue, but I have to say, it came out wonderfully!”

The cookie blinked. It looked down at its blue dough.

“Oh my, it understands already! What a clever little darling.”

“It does have quite the scholarly air to it, don't you think? Reminds me of those prissy wizards.”

The cookie looked back up at the tall figures surrounding it. They loomed towering over him, robes the size of cliffs cascading down their figures like waterfalls. Yet they were too tall, and the cookie couldn't catch the slightest glimpse of their faces. Only occasional flashes of a nose under the wide brim of their pointy hats. 

“A fine start to the baking of the Virtues,” cackled one of the figures. “Truth be told, I don't think I could make the next ones any better!”

The figure reached out. One long, crooked finger came into view. It was nearly twice as long as the cookie’s height, and made of a material that was much softer, yet much more durable than dough. The tip of a long nail poked at the cookie’s chest.

“Welcome to the world,” said the High Witch. “From now on, your name will be…”

***

When Shadow Milk awoke, he was lying on the floor. His head throbbed. His dough was sore. His surroundings were dim, yet in a way that was familiar to him. He recognised the room he was in to be that of his Spire of Deceit, the main one on the ground floor with the paintings of all his favourite personas.

He blinked up at the ever stretching empty space up above him.

Hah! He’d just had the most absurd dream! Something about being given the slip by Dark Enchantress Cookie and being stranded in his other world with Pure Vanilla Cookie. And somehow, he couldn’t just portal out. Hilarious! As if that could even happen.

He reflexively reached for his magic to float upright. Only to find… nothing. His magic reserves were but a trickle. And his Soul Jam… It was gone.

Oh.

The events of the day before came rushing back to him. The standoff, Dark Enchantress Cookie, the portal. And the spell that had barely spared them the fate of being lost forever in the other world.

His anger, having been momentarily quelled by his time asleep, came bubbling up again.

“Dark Enchantress Cookie…” he growled. “That cursed–”

“You’ve awoken.”

The soft call of a familiar voice cut him off. His head snapped up.

Pure Vanilla Cookie was standing in the doorway of one of the rooms. His attire was dishevelled, clothing torn in some places. His hair, now so long that it swept against the floor, was mussed and untidy. A far cry from the noble Hero of Truth he usually looked like. In the hand that usually held his vanilla orchid staff was a deformed hat stand covered in blinking, blue eyes.

Shadow Milk blinked back. Right. Vanilly was here too. Oh joy, stuck in the other realm with his stick in the mud other half, who was only ever interesting when being provoked. Shadow Milk was positively thrilled ( he wasn’t ).

Somehow the healer had awoken sooner than he had. With enough latency in between for Pure Vanilla to gain his bearings, navigate himself out of the room despite the lack of his staff-eye thing, and come back with a new walking stick. And Shadow Milk somehow hadn’t woken up through any of it? Ugh, who knew how much Pure Vanilla had poked around? The lack of information infuriated him.

One hand tracing the wall while the other held the ridiculous hat stand as if it were his actual staff, Pure Vanilla walked over to him.

“Shadow Milk Cookie,” Pure Vanilla’s tone was soft as he tilted his head down to gaze unseeingly at him. “What have you done?”

“Wow, not even a good morning first? Rude,” Shadow Milk scoffed. Being unable to float up like he wanted, he scrambled to his feet (Ugh! how undignified). Pure Vanilla showed no sign of reacting to the sight, though.

Huh , Shadow Milk thought as he studied Pure Vanilla’s mismatched eyes. From his brief stints into Pure Vanilla’s memories, he knew that those eyes weren’t completely blind. The vision was blurry, but could still sense light and movement in the form of large splotches of color. This hadn’t had much impact on the healer ever since he’d cast a spell on his vanilla orchid staff to let him see out the flower’s eye, but now that he was without it… perhaps Shadow Milk could take advantage of this.

“Good morning, Shadow Milk Cookie,” Pure Vanilla replied calmly, despite the lighting in the Spire making it impossible to know whether it was actually morning. “I hope you had a good rest. Could you please enlighten me as to where we are, and what you have done to get us here?”

Oh he could practically feel the accusatory intent oozing out behind that calm facade! Such an ungrateful little Nilly! After all, Shadow Milk had oh so kindly let him tag along to safety while Pure Vanilla remained so blissfully asleep! ( Admittedly, they would not have been in this predicament if not for him. Pure Vanilla would not have been passed out if not for him either. )

“Oh Nilly,” Shadow Milk sang. “Don’t you remember? Dark Enchantress Cookie decided we weren’t fun to play with anymore and tossed us into the other realm! Really, why do you assume I’ve done anything? Or have you just forgotten? Growing senile?”

“The other realm does not have gravity,” Pure Vanilla frowned. “Nor does it have rooms.”

“Ooh, learning to use our brain, are we? Why don’t you tell me , you smart cookie? Where are we?”

Pure Vanilla pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head.

“Shadow Milk Cookie,” he said, giving Shadow Milk a wry smile. “I’m afraid I don’t have the patience to play games with you right now. I would like a straight answer. Please.”

Oh what a coinkidink! Shadow Milk also wanted answers! Answers to questions that were far more important than Pure Vanilla’s! ( Answers that he probably should have collected while Pure Vanilla was not awake to get in his way.)

Such as the stability of the Spire, the estimated time he had before they got ejected into the other realm, the actual state of the spatial distortion beyond this room… 

And of course, his mysterious lack of magic. Shadow Milk had rarely ever reached the point of being fully drained, but even in those select few moments it hadn’t taken too long before his strength had replenished by a quarter. Faster even, if he took a nap.

And yet he’d had a nap! And was still drained! He should be flying by now! It was an anomaly.

Of course, Pure Vanilla didn't have to know that.

“Hmm, let me think…” Shadow Milk tapped his chin in fake thoughtfulness. “Mmm… ahhhh… No.”

“Shadow Milk,” said Pure Vanilla sternly.

“Oh!” Shadow Milk gasped dramatically. “Talking back to the teacher now? Tsk tsk. However will you learn anything new? You're so lucky I’m such a gracious educator. Very well, I shall give you a hint!”

Pure Vanilla had the gall to sigh softly.

“We are nowhere and everywhere; yesterday and tomorrow; in both this world and the other,” Shadow Milk crooned. “Guess a three word location~”

“The Spire of Deceit?” the blind healer answered surprisingly quickly. Tilting his head upwards, he seemed to gaze up at the towering space above them. “I see…” he mumbled under his breath. “No wonder the air felt familiar.”

“Ding ding ding! Correct answer!” Shadow Milk sang. “Looks like our Vanilly isn’t so silly after all!”

“How did we get here?” Pure Vanilla turned back to him. “Did you retain control over the other realm? I thought Dark Enchantress Cookie said that you wouldn’t be able to anymore without your Soul Jam.”

Ah there it was. The elephant in the room. There was no way he was about to admit his powerlessness to Pure Vanilla, even if it was highly likely that the same was happening to the other right this moment. So forward, Vanilly! Directly asking his archnemesis if they were weakened and helpless? Hah! If anyone was going to get the jump on anyone else, it would be Shadow Milk.

“Oh, of course I do, silly Nilly,” Shadow Milk lied, his tone easing into a practiced drawl. “It’s practically a part of me! Not even you, my other half, could take all my power from me. So what makes you think Dark Enchantress Cookie could?”

“I see,” said Pure Vanilla, trailing off expectantly, as if waiting for him to continue. Shadow Milk resisted the urge to squirm. His gaze felt piercing, even though Shadow Milk logically knew that Pure Vanilla couldn’t even see his face clearly. He’d always hated that about Vanilly. A blind healer having a gaze that felt like it could strip away all lies and pierce through to the truth.

But that was just a feeling. Pure Vanilla was as gullible as they come, after all! ( That incident was just a lucky fluke. ) He was so easily manipulated, so easily made to doubt his own recollection. He’d believe any hare-brained lie as long as it made sense~

And Shadow Milk was nothing if not a fantastic liar!

“But…” Shadow Milk said. The gears in his mind spun. “She did manage to get a hold of both our Soul Jams. That gives her the itty bitty advantage of opening her own portals, and also knowing when I open a portal.”

Naturally, Shadow Milk didn’t know that. But Pure Vanilla didn’t know what he knew. The key to a good lie was to be confident and consistent. Wrapped in the most easily provable truth to hide the deceit lying within.

“And?” Pure Vanilla tilted his head.

“Think with your silly little dough brain, Vanilly!” Shadow Milk continued. “I may be perfectly fine, but just take a look at your own magic reserves! What do you think will happen if we just run outside?”

“Oh…” 

Shadow Milk took joy in the sight of Pure Vanilla’s infuriating calm fading as his eyes widened in realization. “She’ll realize we’ve returned. If she has the power of one complete Soul Jam… She’ll teleport over to finish the job while we’re still weakened.”

“Ding ding! You’re on a roll, Vanilly!” the lies kept flowing, smooth as milk. “And what’s more? The other realm portal lets one teleport anywhere. Not just to us! Remind me Vanilly, what’s your worst weakness?”

And then a prompt. A nudge in a plausible but completely false direction. Get them to think they’d come up with the conclusion themselves.

“My friends…” Pure Vanilla’s voice trembled. “She now has the means to ambush my friends and use them to threaten me!”

“Exactly,” Shadow Milk purred. He leaned in close to Pure Vanilla’s face. To his satisfaction, Pure Vanilla flinched backwards. “But why go rushing in when the enemy thinks we’re already dead? Might as well take our time to plan, mmm?”

“But what if she went after my friends?” Those blue and gold eyes stared hesitantly up at him. “You know I cannot sit by and allow that to happen.”

“Which ones? The other Soul Jam thieves or the gnats?” Shadow Milk scoffed.

“Gingerbrave, Strawberry Cookie, and Wizard Cookie,” Pure Vanilla corrected him.

“Ugh, whatevs. Your little friends are nothing more than pesky gnats to Dark Enchantress Cookie. She’s a very busy cookie, you see, and she has nothing to gain from attacking the little nuisances. And as for the Ancients…” Shadow Milk tapped his chin, pretending to be in thought. “Don’t you always like to say you believe in them? If you really believed, you would trust in their strength. Soul Jam of Truth or not, they wouldn’t go down that easily right?”

“That’s… true,” the healer sighed.

“So rest your pretty little head and wait a while!” Shadow Milk concluded. “Consider it a momentary truce. Same boat and all. Once the time is right, we’ll get out of here and deal with Dark Enchantress. And then we’ll settle the score between us.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Pure Vanilla lowered his staff. “Truth be told, my magic is recovering much more slowly than I expected. I believe that a few days are indeed required for me to recover my strength, especially now that my Soul Jam is out of my hands.”

( It’s not your Soul Jam!)

“An unfortunate side effect of the other realm,” Shadow Milk sang. “Nothing I can do, Nilly. So why don’t you sit back, relax, and meditate or whatever you boring cookies like to do for fun. I’m ever the gracious host, I’ll have you know! Since you hate the other realm so much, I even cozied it up for you by putting the Spire out here!”

“That’s… surprisingly considerate of you,” Pure Vanilla said slowly. Then he smiled. It was a wry but sweet smile, one of those kind, soft ones that Shadow Milk had often seen Pure Vanilla directing at any one of his friends. It carried a hint of hesitation, but it was radiant anyway. “Thank you, Shadow Milk Cookie. I’m happy to accept your truce.”

“Likewise,” it was getting hard to stifle the giggles. “Likewise.”

The conversation ended, Pure Vanilla directed his attention elsewhere. As his back was turned, a wide grin broke out on Shadow Milk’s face.

Hah! Hahaha! Really, this was too easy! Pure Vanilla was practically serving up the best outcome on a silver platter! Hopefully he’d actually go meditate, so Shadow Milk could sort out the real problem without worrying about any nosy cookies poking their noses where they didn’t belong. A little more time for him to round off that lie.

Suddenly, Pure Vanilla turned. Shadow Milk quickly stifled the grin, even though he knew Pure Vanilla couldn’t see it.

“Ah yes, I almost forgot,” Pure Vanilla’s expression was peaceful again. Very reminiscent of an innocent cream sheep. “I seem to have lost my staff in the scuffle. Do you happen to have it?”

“Nope!” that was the first truthful thing Shadow Milk had said so far. “It’s probably still out there in the real world, on the floor.”

“Ah… that’s a pity,” came the reply. “I suppose I’ll make do with this branch I found for the time being.”

Pure Vanilla gestured to the hat rack in his hand. The eyes along the side of the rack blinked.

Shadow Milk snickered. “Yeah. You do that.”

Chapter Text

“Sit, dear.”

The cookie raised its head. The High Witch patted the spot in front of it, where the flow of her robes met the table edge. Each pat cast a tremor through the very surface that the cookie stood on, sending it stumbling.

The cookie inched towards the indicated spot. Slowly, hesitantly, it sat down. Its new robes billowed with its movement, sending blinking sigils drifting through the air.

“Knowledge. History. Truth. Those are your domains,” the High Witch told it. “Remember everything that you witness here. It's for record keeping.”

So am I Knowledge, History or Truth? The cookie wanted to ask. But the question got stuck halfway up his throat, refusing to make itself known. So it just nodded.

“You will? Really?” another High Witch cackled. It poked the cookie with her nail. The force of it sent it toppling over to the sound of raucous laughter. “Its dough is so flimsy. Sister, are you sure it's a good idea to let such a fragile head keep all the knowledge the cookies need? At this rate, even a slight breeze could crack it!”

Shame coursed through the cookie’s jam. It flushed, clambering unsteadily back to its feet.

“Are you questioning my recipes, Sister?” a third witch said, her voice scornful. “Now stop teasing our little scribe. It has much to do.”

All the witches turned back to the cookie. It could feel the weight of their gazes bearing down on him, stifling it with an expectation that it could not refuse. Not that it had a choice in the matter anyway.

“Your job is to record and disseminate knowledge,” said the first witch. Her tone was flat, businesslike. “The recording part should be simple for you. Attend our gatherings when we summon you, and remember everything that happens.”

And the disseminating part? The cookie still didn't dare speak, instead tilting its head. Its long, dark locks fell over its shoulders in silky waves.

“As for disseminating information…” the witch thought for a moment. “Well, we’ll give you that knowledge later, after we finish baking your fellow Virtues. We still need to come to a decision on what kind of setting we want you little cookies to follow.”

“But don't worry, you’re not going to be backstage all the time,” said the second witch. “You won’t ever be the main character, but you’ll still have a big part to play.”

“And remember. You must differentiate the Truth from the truth,” cackled a fourth witch. “Can't have you leaking the script to the extras.”

The cookie looked up, confusion rampant in its mismatched eyes.

“What’s the difference?” It was finally able to speak.

The five witches looked at one another.

Then, they began to laugh.

***

Pure Vanilla strode back into the room he’d emerged from, the thud of his new stick echoing alongside his footsteps. The thud was grating on his senses, much duller than the usual crisp tap of his vanilla orchid staff.

Calm. Collected. Light.

He closed the door behind him. Shadow Milk’s quiet snickering was cut off as the door softly swung shut.

Light. Gentle.

He stood facing the door. Waiting. Listening.

There was no swoosh of wind. No patter of light footsteps. He couldn't hear any close movements behind the barrier. No hint of Shadow Milk following him. He faintly heard the jester grumble in the other room, still at approximately the same position as he had left him, before fading into the distance.

He backed away from the door. One step, two. His hand pressed against the edge of the table, and he allowed himself to slump down against it. His knees buckled beneath him, losing their strength. He lowered the stick to the floor.

The heaviness weighed down on his chest as he finally allowed himself to drop the guise of nonchalance.

Heavy. Dizzy.

He clutched his head. At some point he’d forgotten to breathe, so he let out a shaky sigh. Then inhaled slowly. He counted his breaths, holding each inhale for a few seconds, before releasing it in a slow, shuddering exhale.

The heaviness abated somewhat. And yet it didn't fully leave. It likely would never leave, for as long as he was still in this Spire. In Shadow Milk’s company.

A strained chuckle made its way out of his throat. Somehow, keeping up his image was much harder in front of Shadow Milk than it had been with Dark Enchantress. He supposed that his time as the Recluse had been ingrained into him, even after his epiphany and awakening. That oppressing heaviness… the darkness and despair that weighed heavy on his soul, that made the truth feel like a burden. That made caring about anything feel like a shackle. That made him doubt his choice to remain kind.

His epiphany and dispelling of the lies that Shadow Milk had seeded in his memories – they had helped to soothe the heaviness, to reassure him that his journey towards the truth remained worthwhile, no matter how dark the path. His friends, the lights in his life, had shown him the way. And yet the heaviness could not be purged entirely. There they remained in the back of his mind. They would creep up in the dark hours of the night, when there was nothing standing between himself and his thoughts. They would creep up at every important decision he would have to make. They would creep up every time he looked at White Lily Cookie, her radiant, familiar face reminding him of his past failures.

And they crept up now, in the presence of the very cookie who had made him face these questions. Who had, rather ironically for a cookie of deceit, brought those uncomfortable truths to light.

His chuckles pattered out into a deep sigh. Shadow Milk was right. He was a liar. Truly, he didn't want to be Shadow Milk’s friend. The memories of his torment in the Spire were too recent, too dark. They dredged up thoughts that he’d buried deep in the back of his mind, thoughts that he hadn't even known he possessed. He didn't want to forgive. It would be so easy to lie to himself like he had when Dark Enchantress Cookie first appeared on Earthbread. That Shadow Milk was a demon and a threat that needed to be sealed away to restore peace to Earthbread. Nothing more, nothing less. 

But Pure Vanilla had offered anyway. He'd felt it when they were momentarily one, the first thing that had jumped out at him amongst the mess of hatred, delusions and anger-tinted memories. That pushed aside argumentative logic, that ignored whispers of disbelief.

Fragile, hopeful joy. Shattered seconds later by Pure Vanilla himself.

It did not bring him any semblance of catharsis, even if the joy he was snuffing out had belonged to the one who had tormented him. He knew that if he were Shadow Milk, if he were the one who had strayed for millenia, locked up in the dark by the very gods he worshiped, fallen from grace and lost his mind somewhere along the way… he’d want to be offered a way out too. 

Do unto others as you wish to be done unto you, after all. Pure Vanilla craved forgiveness for his mistakes, and so he offered his own freely. Regardless of what he felt about the other cookie.

But forgiveness was one thing, responsibility was another. He took the stick in his hand once more and hoisted himself upright. Shadow Milk had clearly been lying about the situation. But his lies did remind Pure Vanilla that time was of the essence. His friends were at risk now that Dark Enchantress possessed the whole Soul Jam of Knowledge, and he had to figure things out fast. 

He’d passed out from lack of air shortly after Dark Enchantress Cookie opened the portal, so he didn't know how they’d gone from the other world to the Spire of Deceit. Shadow Milk clearly knew what was going on, but was unwilling to tell him. Not about what happened after Pure Vanilla passed out, not about his magic reserves being so drained that he couldn't even float (this was the first time he'd heard Shadow Milk’s footsteps), not about his true intentions and why he wanted to stall. In terms of information, Pure Vanilla was at a disadvantage. Which made understanding the current situation all the more important.

He’d awoken several hours before Shadow Milk had. Naturally he’d been in great shock when he found himself in this then unknown space teeming with dark magic. Even more so when he realised that something had knocked Shadow Milk of all cookies unconscious. So deeply unconscious that no amount of shaking had been able to rouse him.

He’d gone off exploring after that, since Shadow Milk had shown no signs of waking up. Mostly to find his staff. So far he’d explored most of the rooms directly connected to the main atrium he’d left Shadow Milk in. There were corridors behind some of the doors, but he hadn't dared venture down those yet, for fear of getting lost. There was also a stairway that led upwards, one which he’d felt his way up slowly. Without his staff, stairs felt much less safe than usual, especially since this particular staircase had no guardrails to stop him from plummeting off the side. He’d only gotten to the first landing before a gaping hole stopped him. Blurrily, he’d been able to see the stairs continuing on beyond the chasm.

An attempt for later, he’d supposed. Ideally after the endless corridors.

The room he had been exploring when Shadow Milk awoke seemed to be a small pantry. One permeated with the heavy scent of something burnt. There was a table and chairs in the center.

He lifted his arm. The stick in his hand extended his reach, feeling snug in his hand similar to that of his staff.

He’d found this… candelabra, he presumed, on the landing, and had taken it along to supplement for the lack of his staff in this unfamiliar place. There were eyes on it, which was slightly off putting. But from his time in the Spire, Pure Vanilla knew that things that were openly disturbing were often the most harmless. They blinked, squirmed in your hand, sometimes cackled when you were least expecting it… but that was it. Rather, it was the things that appeared normal that could hold the biggest dangers.

It had been a great help so far, despite the countless eyes blinking oddly under his fingers. He lightly tapped it against the blurry patches of brown that lined the upper part of the walls. The hollow thunk of wood echoed back at him.

Hmm… cupboards perhaps?

He brushed the stick lightly over the surface, and, finding the handle, took hold of it and pulled. The cupboard doors opened with a creak, expelling a cloud of dust that sent Pure Vanilla into a coughing fit.

Tapping the inside of the cupboard yielded the clinking of many round, glass jars. Pure Vanilla took one down and studied it. It seemed to be filled with some sort of round, spherical object. Jellies, he concluded, upon shaking the jar. The round objects bounced off each other and the walls, making no sound.

Pure Vanilla heaved a sigh of relief as he replaced the jar in the cupboard. That was clean water and edibles ticked off on his mental list of essentials to locate. He wasn't sure how long Shadow Milk was planning on stalling, and whether he was ever going to tell Pure Vanilla what was truly going on. But until then, he would have to make his own preparations to explore and eventually leave this place. Which of course included supplies.

Next… those corridors he’d been putting off.

Chapter Text

“Oh Reverend Father!”

In the chapel of the St Pastry Order, nuns and priests knelt before the cookie. They prostrated on their hands and knees, their fragile, mortal heads knocking against the dark tiles of the cathedral.

“Reverend Father! Great Oracle! The Voice of the Witches above! Please bestow upon us the 53rd revelation!”

The cookie clad in black robes sighed. He raised his hand. The chapel fell silent. The audience maintained their kneeling position. Waiting. Listening.

The cookie spread his arms. His voice echoed through the air like a tolling church bell. The mortal cookies trembled in awe. Yet it was nothing but a faint reflection of the witches’ might.

“On the 3rd day of baking,” the oracle said. “The witches separated dirt from flour. The flour was pure and holy, filled with light and life. The dirt was filth incarnate, its nature to corrode and corrupt. The Witches thus drew a line in the flour, defining the difference between good and evil.”

The cookies stared up at him in devotion. It was the same everywhere, be it the lecture hall or the chapel. Their eyes shone. They drank up every word he uttered like it was their lifeline.

Faithful. Trusting.

Gullible .

“In the next 50 years, the witches will bestow cookies with divine magic. Purify yourself with the light, and sully not your dough with the dark, and you will be blessed,” the cookie closed his eyes. Mismatched eyes, one blue one gold, disappeared beneath his black and white lashes. “Thus concludes the 53rd revelation.”

“Oracle!” A nun cried out. “How may we distinguish white from dark magic? Have the witches given any guidance?”

“Fear not. All will be revealed in due time,” the oracle replied. “This wisdom will be disseminated to all of cookiekind, regardless of status, faith or flavour. I will personally pen a Guide of Magic, to deliver the teachings of the Witches to the common folk.”

For a moment, the chapel was silent. Then the audience roared.

“Praise the grace of the Witches above! Praise the Great Revelation!” They chorused.

The oracle sighed softly.

“Praise the all-seeing Fount of Knowledge!”

***

Shadow Milk perched at the edge of the stairs, watching as Pure Vanilla wandered around the ground floor Spire. His expression was infuriatingly peaceful. Relaxed. All calm and collected, as if a stroll around the Spire without his beloved staff was nothing more than a walk in the park.

He was also poking around quite a lot for someone who’d agreed to stay put and plan. Compared to Truthless Recluse, Pure Vanilla seemed to have a lot more drive for exploring. Nosy nosy Nilly!

But as long as he stayed on the ground floor, he likely wouldn’t find anything. Spatial stability wasn’t a consistent thing, after all. It was stronger closer to the initial point of casting, while growing more unstable further away. From the last few times he’d cast this spell to run his other realm experiments ( in order to pass off all the boring math onto his helpful minions, he’d given Black Sapphire a crash course on statistics and quantum physics ), the ground floor was usually littered with identical storerooms and other useless spaces. The incidence of spatial instabilities grew higher further up the tower, with significant changes showing up from the fourth or fifth floor. ( Significance. P-values. Ugh what a bore that had been! He’d only stolen that knowledge from the wizards out of spite, for the witches hated math and precision just as much as he did. )

Pure Vanilla could explore all he wanted down there. His chances of finding anything were pitifully slim.

But, eventually, Pure Vanilla would run out of rooms to go through and brave the broken stairs. And Shadow Milk had to sort things out before that happened.

Shadow Milk scooted backwards from the edge, before bracing against the wall to stand up. His legs ached from the sudden increase in walking over the past couple hours, but eh, nothing he couldn’t handle. Then he turned to face the first obstacle in his endeavors.

There was a gaping chasm in the middle of the stairs leading to the second floor. The hole itself wasn’t particularly wide, but the crumbling, cracked stairs that preceded it didn’t leave any room for confidence.

Shadow Milk checked his magic reserves again. Tiptoed over to the edge of the crumbling stairs.

Then he jumped.

Oh, the unfairness of it all! The floating spell that had once been as easy as breathing almost instantaneously emptied what little reserves he’d recovered over the last couple hours of waiting. It was an affront to his status as the greatest magic user among cookies! An insult! A travesty!

The edge of the stairs on the other side slamming into his gut nearly knocked the wind out of him. He pressed his hands on the bottommost step and strained. But what would you know? A cookie who used magic to do everything was not good at pull-ups. With one last irritable push, he directed the floating spell upwards, hoisting himself onto solid ground before it dissipated completely.

On the other side of the chasm, Shadow Milk struggled to his feet. His steps wobbled like jelly. That was close. And exhausting. Of course, it wasn’t like anything would have really happened if he’d actually missed the jump. He was a Beast, he couldn’t crumble from a little fall!

Still, he’d have wasted hours of waiting for his magic to recover a little bit all for nothing. And put himself in a prime position to have his humiliating failure witnessed by Pure Vanilla. Again. He could practically imagine it. Pure Vanilla hobbling over. Looking down at him with that stupid look on his face.

“Oh dear. What happened, Shadow Milk Cookie? Do you need my help?” he’d say in that annoyingly patronizing tone of his. Pretending to be all concerned like the “ saint” he was! ( He would be proving them right again. That even without his staff, even without his magic, even without knowing anything, Pure Vanilla was still better than him, and was still doing better than him. The perfect replacement, huh? )

Ugh! 

He’d decided. Fixing the magic situation was a top priority.

Leaning against the wall, he took a moment to catch his breath. He looked down absentmindedly. Pure Vanilla was still wandering around the corridors.

Good. Keep being busy. ( And don’t look up.)

The second floor was as much of a labyrinth like the first. The stairs opened onto a long corridor, filled with hundreds of doors. As much as it irked him, he checked them one by one. Many opened onto blank walls. Some onto sudden drops. Others onto a pitch black void filled with blinking, blue eyes.

Shadow Milk hummed. Second floor was mostly spatially stable, it seemed. After all, this degree of tomfoolery was just standard Spire of Deceit.

Of course, not all the doors were jokes. He managed to find the rumor weaver’s room, though it had been deserted. Rumor looms standing still and empty, the room void of the chaos it usually contained.

There was also Candy Apple’s room… somehow.

Shadow Milk stared out in rare dismay at the mess of frocks, plushies and ingredients for making explosives strewn everywhere except where they were supposed to be. This wasn’t part of the script. With the spatial instability around, there was no way of telling whether this room was a replica of the Spire’s blueprint, or if it was actually Candy Apple’s room. He hoped it was the former. Because if it wasn’t, well, Candy Apple Cookie was going to be locked out of all her favorite toys for the foreseeable future. 

He shut the door gently and scratched a mark on its surface with his nail, before moving on.

It took a while before he’d scoured the second floor and was on to the third. The stairs were still broken in places, but nothing as troublesome as the hold separating the first and second floors.

The third floor consisted of a series of nonsensical corridors. Ones that were fixed to each other at impossible angles or were optical illusions made manifest, or looped around till you were walking back the way you came on the ceiling. He was starting to see traces of spatial distortion. Spots on the floor that were not the stone of the Spire, but patches of grass. Hallways that became giant silver branches halfway through before melting back into hallways. Self contained pockets of water with the seabed as the floor.

He tested the nature of these pockets of alternate space with limited success. Although he was still, undeniably, the smartest and most intuitive cookie around, there was little substantial information he could glean based on his observations alone.

Oh, he could tell where these spaces came from. Grass from the Garden of Happiness, a bough from that blasted silver tree, the seabed along the west coast of the Licorice Sea… But not how they got here.

There was no subconscious shudder of passing from one space to another. There was no sign of continuous connection to the place it had come from. Sometimes, there wasn’t even an edge of where one space ended and the other began. It was as if spacetime had gotten so drastically unstable that it had paradoxically looped right around and become stable again. These different locations on Earthbread merged seamlessly with the Spire, as if they’d actually belonged here in the other realm, and hadn’t been ripped out from a different spacetime.

He’d have to run tests, Shadow Milk thought with a twinge of annoyance as he made a mental note to draw data collection spell circles once his magic had recovered enough to power them. Calculate the actual spacetime instability and test for patterns. Ugh, math!

The fourth, and last floor he reached before deciding to turn back, was a library. High, gilded ceilings stretched up far above him. Coloured light streamed in through stained glass windows. Rows upon rows of towering bookshelves adorned in blue and white, forming a maze throughout the vast library.

Shadow Milk scowled. Despite the comparative air of normalcy, spacetime was indeed twisted here. This library should have been destroyed long ago.

Walking forwards on unstable legs, he headed towards the nearest bookshelf. Yanked the closest tome off the shelf. From the age of this place, a cloud of dust should have been kicked up by the disturbance. And yet the book slid out easily, in as pristine condition as the day it had been written.

“ The Official Guide to White Magic Volume 10 12th Edition: Advanced Healing Spells ”

Shadow Milk rolled his eyes. He had half a mind to toss the book to the floor, but something unspeakable stopped him. He stared at the gold lettering on the leather tome. The saintly, holy look of it put a sour taste in his mouth.

He opened the cover. On the first page, elegant words jumped out at him in curling, flowery handwriting.

“ By decree of the Witches, I now sow the seeds of wisdom among all cookiekind with this 12th Edition to the Guide to Magic. By their grace, may cookiekind ever bask in the light of divine knowledge, and never to fall to the destructive lure of dark magics.”

The sourness in his mouth only strengthened, morphing into the bitter tang of disgust. This uppity, holier-than-thou facade of absolute truth. So disingenuine. So pretentious. It was disgusting. Repulsive.

( How long had it been? Since he’d destroyed this place? )

He put the book back where he found it, and fled down the stairs.

Chapter Text

“And that's the end of today’s lecture,” the Fount of Knowledge concluded with a snap of his fingers. The illusory screen he’d been using as a projector rolled closed like a piece of parchment. One hand closing the heavy, leather bound cover of his textbook, he looked around.

His students looked up at him from below the podium, scribbling away at their own pieces of parchment. Some of them were packing their bags, others were staring over their notes with a furrowed brow.

“Any questions?”

A hand raised. Knowledge waved at it with a flourish.

“Yes, Chrysanthemum Cookie, dear?” Knowledge sang.

“Professor Blueberry Yoghurt Cookie,” the student said. “You mentioned how White Magic summoning arts can sometimes tip dangerously towards crossing into forbidden Dark Magic if you’re not careful. I’m a bit confused about how that can happen when what you can summon is fixed by preexisting White Magic summoning rules.”

“Oh?” Knowledge perked up. “Why, I’m glad you asked! It's actually very interesting–”

A collective groan rang out quietly through the lecture hall as the students braced themselves for the upcoming 2 hour extension to their lesson. The Fount of Knowledge ignored it, raising his hand to unfurl his projection spell, when–

All of a sudden, his ears were filled with the jingling of bells.

Discordant, out of tune jingling, that had a rough scraping quality to it akin to the creeping rust on metal. They rang so loud that his head spun. And yet nobody in the hall reacted, as if they couldn't hear the bells at all. The mark on his forehead burned. A new thought, one that was not his own, was dropped into his mind like a letter sliding into the mailbox.

10 minutes , said the thought.

What followed the thought was a deep seated sense of dread. This feeling was his own this time, an instinctual response to the message. Yet it was not any more welcome than the latter. The fear crept through his veins like ice, settled in his heart in a freezing chill that sent goosebumps rising along his dough. His breaths began to stutter, only to be quickly suppressed. Forced to a rhythm that kept his true sentiments locked safely behind an impenetrable mask of whimsy.

10 minutes.

“On second thought,” Knowledge’s expression never changed, his tone still light and nonchalant even as his jam was flooded with panic. Performatively, he tapped his chin, his eyes turning upwards. “Why don't you try to find the answer for yourselves this time? That’ll be your homework for today. An essay on the topic ‘Opposition and Interdependence Between White and Dark Summoning Magic’. Due in two weeks.”

His students didn't notice anything amiss as they groaned a second time. They never did. Nobody ever did.

“Any more questions? No?” Knowledge sped through his closing words without waiting for a reply. “Then class dismissed!”

He stepped off the podium and left the room at a deceptively leisurely pace. His hair trailed stars behind him. His expression was one of serenity. Same as always, nothing to give away his inner thoughts. He strolled down the hallway. Greeted students that passed. Briefly joked with the cookie staff. Invited other professors, all his summoned shadow constructs, to walk with him.

Entering the library, Knowledge ducked into a room in the restricted area. His constructs followed, shutting the door quietly behind him.

His shoulders slumped. Knowledge clutched his chest as he took a gulping breath.

“How much longer do I have?” He panted at his Dream Archivist.

The Dream Archivist’s singular eye twitched. They tapped their pen against the roll of parchment they always held in their hand.

“2 minutes, my Master,” they said.

“Crumbs,” Knowledge sighed, and straightened himself. “Keep cookies out of the restricted section. Nobody is allowed in this room until I return.”

“Yes, sir.”

Knowledge raked his fingers through his hair. Then he dropped.

His star spangled robes flowed out behind him as he flowed into the shadows. The view of the library and his constructs melted away, replaced by an endless abyss of sigils and darkness. His other realm welcomed his presence with twinkling gazes and winking lights, but he had no time to dally. Quickly, he located the required spatial parameters that he’d kept for these occasions.

His heart was still pounding. His head light. Knowledge ran his fingers through his hair and took a deep breath. Steeled his nerves.

And tore a portal open.

The darkness of the other realm was abruptly flooded with ghostly green light. He stepped forwards, marching into the Witches’ Banquet.

The wood under his feet was rough and covered in splinters, each the size of his arm. The walls stretched up infinitely high, up into the darkness of rafters as tall as the mountains of the cookie world. The contours of a table leg stood a way away. Its diameter rivalled that of the Spire of All Knowledge, with three other identical siblings looming over him silently, each standing tall against flowing waterfalls of black silk. Miles away, a giant oven stood blazing like a sunset, its fires a hundred times as hot.

“Oh, here it is!” a nasally voice boomed from above.

The waterfalls shifted, for they weren't waterfalls, but the fabric of the witches’ skirts. A giant hand reached down from the heavens. Closer, closer, its gnarly, wrinkled fingers spreading wide like a cage.

Knowledge couldn't help the wheeze that escaped his throat as the fingers the size of tree trunks clamped down around his face. His dough was squeezed. His legs and robes dangled in the air as he was lifted by the head effortlessly by fingers that could crush him with barely a thought.

He was dropped above the table. Knowledge landed lightly on his feet, his robes drifting down around him. The five witches towered over him like giants. Their sharp eyes crinkled up into leers, toothy grins stretched across their faces.

“Right on time as always, dearie,” one of the witches cackled.

Knowledge adjusted his robes. Cleared his throat. Pressed a perfect smile onto his face. Well practiced and frequently worn. The smile stretched naturally across his face, the same as the day it had been baked into him.

Timid. Obedient. And filled with fawning adoration. A right “dearie”.

“Why, of course!” He chirped, to the chittering croons of the witches. “How could I ever be late to a summons from my favourite ladies?”

***

2 days. It had been 2 whole days since Shadow Milk had begun scouring the Spire for clues, and yet he’d still netted a grand total of 0 results. His magic was still stunted, what was supposed to be a roaring river gone down to a tiny drip.

But today! Today, that was going to change.

Shadow Milk gripped the chalk between his claws, the long piece having been worn down to nothing more than a nub. He scratched one last stroke to the rune, finishing off the spell circle he was working on.

He tossed the chalk nib to the side with a grand flourish. He was nothing if not an innovator. The previous attempts were merely the warmup, the rehearsal for the premiere. This time. This time it would work. ( He’d been telling himself that each time he made an attempt. )

He pressed his open palms to the chalk circle, channeling magic power into the lines. His magic squeezed out in tiny drops. Little by little…

The outer circle glowed a bright blue. Shadow Milk closed his eyes, attempting to track the magic flow through the spell. Whatever had stunted his magic recovery had also stunted his magic sensitivity, somehow, to the point where he could only really feel his own magic. The tiny drops of mana swirled. The droplets shattered, before glooping together, then shattering again. The magic dispersed and condensed over and over, growing in size with each time.

Shadow Milk observed in growing excitement as the drops grew larger, till they reached the scope of a bucketful. The amplified magic then pushed open the gating rune, funneling into the inner circle, lighting up each stroke of the innermost runes, until…

Poof!

A blazing, azure flame burst into being above the circle. The turquoise light glanced off the walls and the floors, sending shadows dancing. It roared, burned brightly for a few moments, before disappearing as suddenly as it had come.

Shadow Milk grinned in triumph. An innovator, as he’d said! He bowed gleefully to an imaginary audience. Applause, applause!

Oh, but it was so simple, now that he’d worked out all the kinks. Even if his magic reserves were perpetually drained, there was still some there. All he had to do was send his magic rolling through an amplification circle that pulled from the Spire, colouring the other realm’s masterless magic with his own signature and bending it to his purpose. Power output problem resolved.

The presence of his own magic in the other realm’s gave it structure, a certain direction to flow along to. Yet at the same time, diluting his magic like that reduced his control over the whole thing. His addition served to be nothing more than a switch, that turned the magic flow, and by extension the spell, on and off. Which led to the addition of an inner circle. The inner circle was just a regular old spell circle, any one of the many many spells he used on the daily. Once the power output generated by the outer circle was sufficient, it would be directed to flow into the inner spell circle. The spell would be activated, effectively allowing him to use magic even if he didn't have a lick of direct control.

With this, even a cookie with the magic affinity of a cake hound could cast high level magic spells. Genius!

Of course, there were still some flaws in the design he’d have to work out. The amplification process took a couple seconds, longer if he wanted to do a big spell with demanding requirements. There was also that he could only cast spells through a spell circle instead of on a whim like he usually did. Spell circles were complicated, and drawing one took a minute or two, even for him. He could prep some in advance, keep a few scraps of paper on him, but still. It was a stiff, inflexible solution. But it was the best he could do for now.

He braced against the wall and pushed himself up from the floor, brushing the chalk dust off his knees. All around him, spell circles had been scribbled everywhere in stark white chalk. The floor, the walls... if Shadow Milk could still float as effortly as he used to, they’d probably be on the ceiling too. There were more in the other rooms here on the second floor, as Shadow Milk had moved from room to room to continue his experimentation when he ran out of space to write on. The fruits of his two days of labour.

His legs were half asleep from all the kneeling. He leaned against the wall and stumbled to the door, tripping over his own coattails for the nth time since he’d lost his ability to float.

Much like his real Spire, time was easy to lose track of in this place. Normally, he’d ignore it. Even back in the day ( the good, obedient, foolish days ), he’d never been the type to leave his projects halfway just because of how long he’d been working. Having cleared his schedule, he’d shut himself away to work for days, weeks, sometimes months on end. Only two things could bring him out of it. A real emergency, and… well either way, he didn't have either of those to deal with anymore.

But now, he had a certain nosy cookie poking around downstairs whose activity he had to keep track of. Even if Nilly was obviously lying with the whole friend spiel of his, if Shadow Milk left him alone for too long, he’d inevitably get suspicious and attempt a journey upstairs. Which could only end two ways. The first being a nice little Pure Vanilla shaped splat on the floor. ( Which was not ideal ) Which was very ideal.

The second being that Pure Vanilla somehow made it past the gaping hole and found the spell circles. And the state of the Spire. And the fact that getting back to Earthbread was very out of Shadow Milk’s control at the present. Shadow Milk blanched.

He still remembered Pure Vanilla’s patronizing look all too clearly. All holy and uppity. His mismatched, half blind eyes filled with an unreadable emotion that, from Shadow Milk’s fathomless experience, could be nothing other than the arrogance-stained disdain of someone who considered themself above him. Someone who thought themself so generous, so magnanimous, to be gracing the filth on the bottom of their shoe with the right to be something more.

Lonely? Friend? Hah! Did he really think that 30 seconds of being the same cookie would actually let him retain anything substantial? That a gnat experiencing an instant of godhood would make it anything more than a gnat afterwards? ( Truthless understood. He’d followed in Shadow Milk’s footsteps, after all. Despite having an abridged script, he’d still wound up playing the same role as Shadow Milk had .)

In the end, Pure Vanilla didn't understand anything!

Shadow Milk made his way back to the first floor. The trek downstairs was much easier than upstairs, since the gap between the second and first floor was narrow enough to be crossed by jumping down. Much less eventful than casting the floating spell.

He then proceeded to spectacularly fail the jump.

His ankle crumpled under him as he tried to land on his feet. An embarrassing noise came from his throat. Shadow Milk tumbled painfully down the stairs, only rolling to a stop when he reached the landing. ( Ow, he bit his tongue. )

Okay, maybe the jump needed a bit of work. Big deal. He wasn't exactly the pinnacle of physical performance, now was he? And now that he had a means of using magic, he’d remedy that soon. Still, Shadow Milk was relieved that Vanilly couldn't see far without his staff. If he’d witnessed all the disastrous crash landings…

Shadow Milk would rather lose his head.

He made his way down, grumbling all the way. There was no sign of the walking light show anywhere in the stairway. Where was he snooping off to now?

“Vanilly~” Shadow Milk called out in a sing-song as he dramatically threw open the doors of the rooms connected to the main room one by one. “Where areeee you~”

It was when he’d thrown open the third door, the one that led to an old potions workshop, when he finally spotted Pure Vanilla.

The healer was currently perched on one of the stools lined up along the bench in the middle of the room. His appearance had neatened up since their first day here. His hair was glossy and smooth, not a rumple to be seen on his robes. Somehow, he’d managed to make the rickety wooden stool look like a throne, all poised and graceful as he perched atop it. His hat rack staff, that looked more in place with the room than with Pure Vanilla, was propped up against the table.

Shadow Milk wandered over.

“There you are, Vanilly~” he leaned into Pure Vanilla’s personal space, gleefully noting the uncomfortable jitter from the other. “Whatcha doing?”

“Oh, hello there Shadow Milk,” Pure Vanilla said, turning as he managed to pop the lid off a jar in front of him. His expression was as infuriatingly serene as always. “I was just about to have lunch.”

Shadow Milk paused. He did a quick calculation.

“It's midnight.”

“It is?” Pure Vanilla’s eyelids flew open, revealing his ( pretty ) blue and gold eyes. “Oh my, I had no idea… Thank you for correcting me. In that case… I am about to have a late dinner.”

“Aww Nilly, you really forgot the time?” Shadow Milk crooned. Pointedly ignoring the fact that he probably wouldn't have known the time if he weren't actively keeping track of it either. “Tsk tsk, that won’t do. At this rate you're going to go senile. No, not even senility, dementia! You have dementia, Vanilly! We’re going to have to send you to the nursing home!”

“Haha…” Pure Vanilla’s laugh was polite, strained, tired.

“Ohhh poor poor Pure Vanilla Cookie, lost and abandoned by all his precious friends. Growing senile, hair falling out by the bundle. Doesn't even know what time of day it is as he’s about to eat a sad, pathetic dinner of…” Shadow Milk paused to look at the jar.

He stared.

Pure Vanilla seemed to take his silence as a prompt to finish the sentence.

“Jellies…” the healer supplied softly, lightly shaking the jar of what was very clearly not jellies.

There was a moment of awkward silence.

“Shadow Milk?” Pure Vanilla tilted his head.

Shadow Milk looked at the jar of raw snake eyes in Pure Vanilla’s hands.

He opened his mouth.

Shut it.

Then, a wide grin stretched across his face.

“Oh my, Vanilly,” he purred. “You’re more resourceful than I thought. A whole jar of jelly rations? I didn't even know I had any more of those lying around.”

Nilly was just full of surprises, wasn’t he? What an unexpected but thoroughly welcome break from the dull problem solving!

“I just found them in one of the cupboards here in the pantry,” Pure Vanilla said slowly.

Pantry? Pantry ? Shadow Milk couldn't help but grin even wider, glee bubbling up in his gut. Ha! Hahaha! His potions workshop was a pantry! The ingredients were food! Oh Vanilly, this is a new low, even for you! Hahahahahahaha!

“To think that a legendary hero, the king of the Vanilla Kingdom himself, would lower himself to dining on this kind of garbage!” he jeered, attempting to misdirect Pure Vanilla as to the true reason for his snickering. “How the mighty have fallen!”

Pure Vanilla shook his head with a light huff, turning back to his jar. Shadow Milk watched in gleeful anticipation as he took one of the eyeballs with dainty fingers. Lifted it to his mouth.

Do it, do it.

Pure Vanilla’s eyebrows furrowed.

“Hmm…”

“What?” Shadow Milk asked, a twinge of annoyance making its way into his voice.

“This… smells off,” Pure Vanilla frowned.

No! No! The only spot of entertainment Shadow Milk had had ever since Dark Enchantress Cookie pulled that stupid stunt!

“No way, let me see,” Shadow Milk swiped the eyeball out of Pure Vanilla’s hands. “Mmm… I don’t know, Pure Vanilla. Smells the same as always to me. Maybe you’re just a picky eater.”

To be even more convincing, he raised the eyeball to his own lips. In a quick sleight of hand, he hid it in his sleeve as he feigned popping it in his mouth.

“Mmm… perfectly fine, see,” he said, faking his tone to take on the muffled quality of someone talking while eating. Then a convincing gulp. “Tastes great.”

Pure Vanilla looked at him suspiciously for a few moments. His fingers felt at the eyeball slowly, evaluating it. Shadow Milk almost thought the gig was up when finally, finally, Pure Vanilla took a nibble.

The reaction was priceless.

The eyeball exploded as Pure Vanilla bit into it, aqueous humor spilling all over the healer’s fingers like… well, rotten jelly. Pure Vanilla’s lethargic movements abruptly sharpened as he gagged, immediately spitting out his tiny bite. Shadow Milk cackled loudly as the Pure Vanilla continued to spit, attempting to cleanse his mouth of the rancid flavor.

“You actually did it!” Shadow Milk leaned against the wall and clutched his stomach as he laughed. “Ahaha! Oh Nilly, you are so so so silly! So gullible! So stupid!”

“What was that?” even Pure Vanilla, the saintliest cookie on all of Earthbread, couldn’t keep the disgust out of his voice.

“Take a guess!” Shadow Milk smirked. “Choice A: Jellies. Choice B: Raw snake eyes!”

“ Raw eyes?” Pure Vanilla gagged again. “Oh, witches… I suppose that explains the smell.”

“Really, Nilly, how could you mistake potion ingredients for jellies?” Shadow Milk taunted. “What’s next? Frog toes are pencils? Bat wings are paper?”

And yet Pure Vanilla’s grief was short lived. After the initial shock, Pure Vanilla once more picked up the jar.

“Do you think it would more palatable if I boiled it?” Pure Vanilla mused.

Shadow Milk’s laughter came to a screeching halt.

“What.” he said blankly.

“You said these are raw eyes, correct?” Pure Vanilla gestured at the jar, as if there could be anything else he was talking about. “Eyes may be the less appetising parts one could eat, but it’s jelly all the same.”

“You… you–”

“If I cook it properly,” Pure Vanilla continued. “The chances of food poisoning would be lowered.”

“You’re actually considering it,” Shadow Milk said incredulously. In his shock, all the theatrics had slipped from his voice. “You actually want to eat snake eyes.”

“Well, it’s not like… I have a lot of options,” Pure Vanilla said with a sigh. “I’d only been able to find food in this room. And from your tone, I suppose this isn’t actually a pantry, is it?”

“It’s a potions workshop.”

“Oh…” it was at that moment that Pure Vanilla began to chuckle. It was a weak laugh, with a hint of desperation. “Silly me… To think I’d make a mistake like this.”

The healer swayed in place. His eyes fluttered open and shut.

Then, he fell backwards off the stool.

Before he could realise what he was doing, Shadow Milk was reaching out to steady him. But attempting to catch a grown cookie with one arm when you weren’t exactly fit yourself was not a good idea, and ended up with both of them sprawling to the floor. Shadow Milk’s head crashed against the tiles painfully, sending stars spinning before his eyes. He hurriedly looked to the side. Luckily, Pure Vanilla had fallen on top of him, having been spared a concussion.

“Nilly, hey,” Shadow Milk grabbed the healer by the shoulders and shook him. “What the fuck, Nilly, hey!”

“My apologies… Shadow Milk… Cookie…” Pure Vanilla’s eyelids fluttered open to reveal a heterochromatic gaze that seemed blanker than usual. “I may… forgotten to eat since… dizzy today… thought I could the… the hypoglycemia if I…”

“Are you stupid?” Shadow Milk snarled, shaking Pure Vanilla more. “You’re a mortal cookie. How do you forget you’re hungry?”

“Sorry…” Pure Vanilla’s voice was a breathy whisper. “Can you…”

Then his eyes closed.

“Nilly? Nilly?” Shadow Milk yelled, shaking the healer even harder. “Pure Vanilla! Hey!”

And yet Pure Vanilla’s eyes remained closed. No amount of shaking could awaken him.

Shadow Milk scrambled backwards, laying Pure Vanilla flat on the floor as he heaved himself up into a kneeling position. That fool! Who the hell let themselves starve for so long that they actually passed out from low blood sugar? How was it possible for any cookie to be so stupid ?

He tugged the collar of Pure Vanilla’s turtleneck down to press his fingers against his neck. His pulse was rapid. It fluttered shallowly under the healer’s dough, cold and clammy against Shadow Milk’s hand.

Fool!

He scrambled to his feet and stumbled to the cupboards. Throwing them open only revealed more unsavory potion ingredients, each less edible than the last.

His head whirled as he ran through the potential options. But he hadn’t actually explored any of the ground floor himself, and although he knew what rooms tended to spawn here, he didn’t actually know where the kitchen was. Or even if one existed. The real Spire hadn’t had a kitchen either, after all.

Shit! Fuck!

His eyes darted around the potions workshop. Cauldron, knife, jar of snake eyes, bunsen burner, ladle, jar of toad tongues…

He grabbed his hair and pulled in frustration. There was nothing! There was nothing to eat here! No berries, no jelly beans, not even sugar cubes! Why did Pure Vanilla not mention anything? How did Shadow Milk not anticipate the possibility of a food problem?

Nilly couldn’t go out like this. Shadow Milk’s other half dying of starvation? It was too stupid. Too anticlimactic. Crumbs! Why was there nothing here? Nothing sweet?

A giant room filled with green light. The rattling of the oven. The nasally laughter of giants as they crunched down on something crispy, sweet…

All of a sudden, the solution came to him. Shadow Milk’s eyes widened. His speeding heartbeat slowed. He released his grip on his hair, letting it flutter down.

Slowly, shakily, he laughed.

Oh. Oh .

He went over to the counter. Placed the cauldron in front of him. Picked up the knife.

The knife’s edge was sharp, even after the potions workshop had been abandoned for so long. Wiping the dust off the surface, Shadow Milk saw his reflection in the blade. Light and dark blue eyes blown wide in excitement. A maniacal grin stretched wide from ear to ear. The face of a beast.

How absurd! He’d spent way too long among cookiekind. Spent too long amongst lowly, pathetic beings, to the point that he was even starting to think like them. How ironic it was! He was the Fount of Knowledge! He had sat at the table with the High Witches for centuries! He was higher than cookies! He was above their stupid, silly woes. He had wisdom beyond their ken, beyond anything they would ever be allowed to know!

The solution to the food problem? It was obvious! So painfully, stupidly obvious that he had no idea why he hadn’t immediately thought of it!

He pulled back his sleeve. Lifted his arm over the cauldron. The edge of the knife pressed into his dough, followed by a sharp pain as he pushed it in. Warm jam trickled down from the wound to fall into the cauldron with a hollow drip.

Drip.

Drip.

All he had to do was think like a witch.

Chapter Text

Crunch. Crunch.

The Fount of Knowledge sat cross legged at the witch’s table. His staff was laid flat across his knees. His hair pooled around him like a lake filled with stars. Across the wide stretch of splinter littered wood before him, a feast was piled as high as the tallest mountains of Earthbread. Chocolate cakes, berry tarts, pudding slathered with crystal syrup.

And mountains upon mountains of plates heavily laden with smiling, rigid, freshly baked cookies.

Crunch crunch. 

Crumbs were falling from the sky. Bits of cookies’ dough, hardened into something aromatic and crispy in their death. They fell in short bursts, like transient spring showers. The crumbs rained down on Knowledge in staccato intervals, bouncing off his hair, getting caught in the folds of his robes. The plink as they hit the wooden surface was like rain, musical in its chaos. The wide plains of the table surface was littered with crumbs, the edges of each one tinged red with jam.

Crunch crunch crunch.

Amidst the plates stacked high with sweets, was a series of winding paths. Paths made of alternating dark and white chocolate squares, sized perfectly for a cookie. The paths wound around and about the feast like a railroad, or an interconnected highway. Floating above each chocolate square was a flickering, glowing rift in space. Through the windows in spacetime, scenes from the cookie world could be seen. In one, the distant view of a mountain village covered in snow. In another, the throne room of a new kingdom under the sea. In a third, a young shepherd laughed as his crook was knocked out of his hand by an overenthusiastic lamb.

CRUNCH.

Knowledge looked down. Lying by his foot was a crumb, a larger one than the others falling around him. A piece of a face. Only half the mouth was left. The rest of it had been shattered to pieces, or disappeared forever within the gaping maw of its creators. Viscous strawberry jam oozed from the edges, the colour a glistening, beautiful scarlet. The crumbled cookie beamed up at him accusingly, its icing frozen forever in a blissful smile.

“A 12!”

Distantly, Knowledge heard a nasally voice crow in triumph. One of the high witches was standing, crumbs spewing out her open mouth as she laughed and laughed.

The witch pointed one bony finger. A massive chess piece appeared on the levitating chocolate path with a thundering crash. It hopped 12 chocolate tiles, to finally land on a tile showing a peaceful valley shrine. A priestess sat on the steps with a cat in her lap, her face framed in the dappled shadows of swaying leaves.

The witch pulled out a card from the deck in her other hand, flicking it towards the board. “Volcanic eruption.”

Gold rarity [Destruction] card . Knowledge thought instinctively. Turns the tile into a [Barren Land] with the [Burning] debuff for 10 cycles.

The card shot towards the tile. The glowing volcano on the card surface burst into flames, lava cascading down the sides and seeping out of the card. The priestess cookie looked up, her face illuminated in bright orange as her eyes widened in horror.

Then, the illusion froze. Like a preserved moment in time, the tile and its scenery turned grey.

“No!” Another witch shrieked. “My ‘draw 3 each turn’!”

The witch who had played the devastating hand sneered. “You’ve exploited that one for far too long, Mattie dear. Time to wipe the slate clean.”

“I spent 5 whole cycles stacking the attributes on that tile!” High Witch Matilda wailed.

“Serves you right for hogging it all to yourself!”

As the witches squabbled over their board game, Knowledge made a mental note.

In the second month of Year 396 of the New Astral Calendar… a dormant volcano awakened and razed the land of the Lower Malt Valley, including a 500 year old shrine to the Saint of Volition.

The High Witch took a cookie from the platter and bit into it. Another shower of crumbs fell down onto Knowledge.

This time, however, the witch seemed to notice him.

“Did you see my play, dearie?” She asked with her mouth full. “You’d better mark it down. ‘Agnes finally gets rid of Matilda’s annoying exploit and wins the game for the night’.”

“You haven't won yet!”

Knowledge bit back his bitter expression, plastering a demure smile on his face as he looked up. “An excellent move indeed, my lady! I’ve recorded the events.”

“What a lovely dearie you are,” crooned the High Witch. She waved her hand. The topmost cookie from the platter floated towards her. The face of a middle aged cookie in pleated skirts smiled as it passed overhead.

Knowledge recognised the woman. Key Lime Cookie, a scholar from a peaceful seaside village. She was one that he’d “disqualified” a few months ago. The scholar had made it her lifelong mission to discover the origins of cookie life. A rather fruitless endeavor for most of her cookie life, but in the end, she’d found a lead that led her to witness a Witch’s Banquet.

There were three types of cookies that Knowledge had been instructed to disqualify as the recordkeeper of both truths. The first, cookies that came too close to discovering the “ Truth ”. The second, cookies that were too dangerous, either physically or heretically. What constituted a “dangerous cookie” was arbitrary for the witches, but Knowledge usually interpreted it as “a cookie whose influence managed to disrupt the witches’ board game in a way that clearly annoyed them”.

As for the third type, it was “any cookie that the witches wanted to taste”.

The High Witch snapped an arm off from the frozen creature. Key Lime Cookie, who had only ever broken her scowl 10 years ago on her wedding day, was now smiling more brightly than she’d ever had in life. Frozen in a smile that wasn't hers, consigned to a fate beyond her choosing.

Knowledge knew what was coming. He reinforced his false grin as the witch brought the severed limb before him in between pinched fingers.

“Good boy. Here’s a treat,” crooned the witch. The piece of Key Lime Cookie’s arm was wafted in front of him. “Come on. Have a bite. Pspspspsps.”

The game had ground to a halt. All the witches were watching now. He could feel their expectant gazes boring through him. Pressuring. Stifling. Spotlights dragging him up onto the stage from the audience row.

The smell of jam roused a growing sense of nausea. An empty hollowness gnawed at his gut. But even then, the sensation wasn’t as bad as it had been the first few times.

Daintily, he took it in both hands. The limb was heavy, causing his arms to drop slightly as he plucked it from the witch's fingers. Jam oozed from the snapped end. Thick and honey-like.

Knowledge lifted the limb to his mouth. The manicured fingers at the end of the arm were splayed out, rigid and crispy in death. Just a few months ago, those same fingers, soft and filled with life, had gripped at the hem of his robes.

“Please! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to!” Key Lime Cookie had been on her knees begging, her voice going shrill in a rare moment of extreme emotion. Her tears splotched his sleeve, her pale fingers trembling as they gripped his clothes tightly. “I’ll destroy all my notes! I’ll leave and never come back! I won’t tell anyone, I swear! Please have mercy, sir! I’ll do anything, anything!”

“I don’t want to die!”

Knowledge bit down on a finger.

A sickening crunch. Then another. The sound of it was so loud, now that it was coming from himself and not the witches. Knowledge hated that sound. The sensation of eating crumbled dough was like chewing on sand. Rocky bits broke off in his mouth, lodged in the gaps in his teeth and got stuck, refusing to go down. Like a cookie’s final attempt to resist fate from beyond the grave.

Key Lime Cookie’s dough was tart, citrus and sour in a way that accentuated the sweetness. Sweeter than anything you could find in the mortal world, candied with the syrup in a cookie’s jam, permeated with the inherent sugary taste of Life Powder. Too sweet. Too much.

“I don't want to die!”

Knowledge’s eyes watered. He ignored the bile rising in the back of his throat. Under the eager gazes of the witches, he took another bite. His second bite took him to the jam at the hollow core of the cookie anatomy. Scarlet strawberry jam, contradictory to its appearance, took on the rich flavors of its owner rather than strawberry alone.

The sickeningly sweet jam oozed into his mouth. Concentrated sugar with an overwhelming tartness characteristic of Key Lime Cookie’s flavor. At least the dough had its flavors muted. The jam was much stronger. After all, it was the essence of a cookie. The place that housed their soul. Strong flavors, strong emotions. Every cookie was a unique experience.

Knowledge witnessed it. The fresh smell of the sea breeze near his home. A frenzied passionate search through ancient tomes. Quiet joy as a cookie knelt before him, slipping a ring on his hand.

The horror at the sight of the Witches’ Banquet. The despair as he knelt on throbbing knees, his throat gone hoarse from begging. Looking up, his own pristine, porcelain, emotionless face stared back heartlessly as he was killed far far away from that village near the sea. 

The unfair ending of a cookie long gone. Her life taken away, her body desecrated, her private memories defiled and intruded upon like it was nothing more than a night’s entertainment. Just like the thousands of others before her.

Knowledge felt dizzy. The world was too big. The smell of jam was overwhelming, nauseating. Key Lime Cookie’s jam glued his teeth like molasses, making each chew harder than the last.

The stickiness of jam on his hands. The cloying, choking sweetness that stuck to his throat. Yet he had only gotten through a finger. And so he pushed on.

“Ooh, look at him go! I think we found dearie’s new favorite!”

Cruel .

Slowly, painfully, Knowledge finished the whole limb and licked the jam off his fingers. The witches that had made him were cruel in their innocence. He hated this life. He hated this miserable, immortal existence. To sit at the witches’ table as a pet, to watch them play with the fates of unknowing cookies in a frivolous game spanning millenium, to be fed the dough of those same cookies that had been disqualified from the game.

But what else could he do? Say no to the gods themselves?

The Fount of Knowledge existed only to enforce their will. To write the knowledge cookies should know. To enjoy their games like they did. To witness. To obey. To lie. To kill. To exploit. To regret. To remember.

He wanted it to end.

Would it ever end?

The answer, of course, was that it would. But that would be much further into the future.

Much much further. After hundreds more Banquets. After hundreds more centennial board games. After hundreds more crumblings.

After hundreds more sermons to thousands more worshippers. After thousands more lectures to hundreds more cohorts. After thousands more years of hoping for someone to notice, someone to come release him from all this. But really, who would even try?

The Fount of Knowledge was a god among cookies, and gods did not need to be saved.

It would end, but only after Knowledge had gotten so good at his role that he could eat cookies without batting an eye. That lies came more easily to him than honesty. That he no longer cried in his other realm after the banquets and instead laughed and laughed and laughed because by then, there were no more tears left to cry.

Only then, would he put his broken heart back together piece by piece and bind it with the sweet lies of retribution. Would stick it back together all lopsided and wrong. But as wrong as it was, it would be more like himself than he had ever been.

Perfectly, completely, Shadow Milk.

Chapter Text

The blade of the knife cut into Shadow Milk’s flesh. It tore through the dough smooth like butter. Like it belonged there. Like it was designed to.

Jam trickled out from the wound. All cookies, regardless of flavor, bled red, and he was no exception. Drops of jam fell from his arm and into the cauldron. As they hit the bottom, they bloomed into countless little splatters of scarlet.

He turned the knife at an angle. Like peeling a potato, he began to cut bits of his dough into the cauldron in slivers. Like clay, they were still soft as they gave way before the knife, the insides of the blue stained purple by jam. And yet as the sliver of dough separated from his body, it began to harden in the air. Shadow Milk watched as the piece fell, turning over on itself purple side to blue, then back to purple, until it hit the bottom.

And shattered. No longer a soft, malleable dough, but hard, brittle crumbs.

“Crumbled” and “dead”. Those were two words that cookies often used synonymously with each other. And indeed, they often came hand in hand. But unknown to most, Shadow Milk had coined the term “crumbled” all those centuries ago to describe a phenomenon slightly different from death.

Death was the severance of the soul from the flesh, the ultimate curtain call for anyone that walked this earth, cookie or not. Crumbling, however, was a state of existence.

Cookies were made in the image of the witches. Unlike the sugar gnomes, unlike the jelly bears, unlike the various cake monsters. Jam to flow through veins like blood, soft dough to mimic muscle, flesh and skin. Internal organs for the various bodily functions. Built by yeast spores and held together in perfect harmony with Life Powder. This was the usual state upon which cookies were allowed to roam Earthbread and build their kingdoms.

Crumbling happened when one’s dough lost its Life Powder. Usually when the dough was severed from the rest of the body, or when the soul was on the verge of severing itself from the dough. In other words, death. Dough would harden, internal structures would melt and mix, until all that was left was a crispy corpse with a core of red jam.

Though here was the kicker. There was a secret third way for a cookie to crumble. With its soul still chained to its dough, with all its squishy parts intact.

And that was if it made contact with the salivary enzymes of a human.

Ah! Cookies truly were designed to be eaten!

Shadow Milk cut off another sliver of dough, and it crumbled just as fast as the first. Then another. And another.

Soon, the bottom of the cauldron was completely littered in his own cookie crumbs. He put down the knife, before reaching out to grab the ladle. With the round bottom, he quickly ground the crumbs even smaller, till they resembled a coarse, blue powder.

His left arm smarted, but he barely registered it. His head had gone into some sort of distant, autopilot state the moment the solution to Pure Vanilla’s situation had reached him. Lightly, he reached into the cauldron with his good hand to test the texture. Took a pinch of crumbs between his fingers and rubbed it. The grains felt like sand between his fingers.

Dry. It would taste awful. But oh well, beggars couldn’t be choosers.

The lid from the snake eyes jar was still on the table. He snatched it up and dipped it into the cauldron, using it like a bowl to scoop up some crumbs.

Carefully holding the lid of blue crumbs, he lowered into a crouch next to Pure Vanilla.

Somehow, even after fainting from the dumbest reason ever, Pure Vanilla still managed to look graceful and serene. His hair fanned out on the floor around him to frame his face in delicate, golden locks. His eyes were shut, but they usually were, long lashes still. Picture perfect, like a mural come to life. (No wonder the witches chose him as his replacement, Shadow Milk found himself thinking absentmindedly. Witches were the artistic sort. They liked perfect, pretty, delicate little things. All features Shadow Milk had pointedly rid himself of when he fell.)

Lying there on the floor, Pure Vanilla looked like some fairytale maiden that had fallen asleep from some horribly tacky curse. Waiting for a prince charming to creepily kiss him in his sleep and break the spell. Or a princess charming in this case. Shadow Milk frowned through the haze of calm. He recalled the first thing he saw upon breaking free from the Silver Tree: the abhorrent sight of Pure Vanilla and that innocent, half a cookie version of Dark Enchantress clinging to each other like their lives depended on it (well, the little kids were the ones doing the clinging. But to may to to mah to same thing). Bleh, gross.

Too bad for Vanilly though. This time, there was no princess charming and no romantic kiss to wake him up. Just a mouthful of raw cookie crumbs, fresh from the source!

He set the lid down next to him. It took a bit of maneuvering, but he managed to prop Pure Vanilla up against his knee with one hand. He considered feeding him right now, before deciding otherwise. It would be a waste if Shadow Milk tore his arm to shreds to keep Vanilly alive, only for him to die shortly after due to aspirating crumbs. Better to be safe than sorry.

This was, all things considered, too much care and consideration for any singular cookie than he was comfortable with admitting. If not for the circumstances, Shadow Milk might have just left the fool and the consequences of his poor decisions to his precious friends to puzzle over. But unfortunately for the both of them, Pure Vanilla had no friends here. There was only Shadow Milk.

He patted his pockets over for his stick of chalk, but found none. So he settled for the next best writing implement.

Looking down, his left arm was a gnarly sight. The entire inner surface of his arm had been stripped of a layer of dough. Jam was bleeding viscously, covering the entire wound in a sticky, bloody mess. It looked like one of those fleshy ink pads he’d used back in the day for his rubber stamps. Would function just as well as one too.

He jabbed his fingers into the wound. The sensation of pain deep inside his dough was like a brief ray of piercing light through the fog clouding his mind, but he just shrugged it off. His finger came out red, glistening with jam.

With the drenched tip of his claw, he scratched one of his newly invented concentric spell circles onto Pure Vanilla’s weakly pulsing throat in jam. It showed up red against the healer’s tanned dough. The essential amplification spell, and then on the inside, a spell that enhanced involuntary reflexes. If he was right, and Shadow Milk liked to think that he was often right, this should restore Vanilly’s normal swallowing reflex long enough to get the food into his stomach without taking a wrong turn down his windpipe.

Shadow Milk shifted his knee to set Pure Vanilla’s head in a more favorable position. Shifted his left arm to curl around the healer’s neck and touch the spell circle he’d drawn in his own jam. Sent his magic through the spell circle, waiting as it quickly grew in magnitude, activating the inner spell. With his other hand, he carefully lifted the lid full of crumbs to the healer’s lips. 

And dumped the contents straight down his throat.

What, did anyone really expect him to go the rest of the way with this care and consideration nonsense? Maybe, if he were one of Vanilly’s precious, innocent, crumblable friends. Maybe if he were silly little Gingerbrave, or considerate Strawberry Cookie, or even White Lily, he’d have taken the time to painstakingly dampen the crumbs enough to be rolled up into a nice, compact little bolus and delivered it into the back of his throat. But Shadow Milk was the Beast of Deceit. He had an image to keep up, even if the only one who’d know all this happened was himself.

He’d done quite enough. More than enough. In fact, too much. Just thinking back on his initial distress over his silly other half made him want to barf. Bleh, almost as gross as the princess charming imagery.

It would have been entertaining if Pure Vanilla immediately woke up, spluttering over the crumbs in a way that entirely served him right for being a moron, but alas. The unconscious cookie just gulped in his sleep, before turning still once more.

Now for the wait.

Despite Shadow Milk’s initial resolve to stop fussing like a pathetic idiot, he couldn’t help but feel antsy as the seconds ticked by. But really, who wouldn’t? Waiting was so boring. So instead, he busied himself with getting the apparatus in the potions lab working again. The bunsen burner, the fume cupboard, the faucet... With an acceptable alternative to a stovetop, he began turning the leftover crumbs in the cauldron into something more conventionally foodlike.

It was about 5 minutes after Shadow Milk turned down the heat on the Bunsen burner to allow his concoction to simmer, when Pure Vanilla finally opened his eyes.

“Congratulations,” Shadow Milk called out from across the room. “Your surgery was successful.”

Pure Vanilla squinted blearily up at the ceiling. He made a soft, confused little noise.

Tch. No fun. Shadow Milk rolled his eyes.

“Just kidding, you can't escape hell that easily,” he scoffed, shutting off the little blue flame with a click. Inside the cauldron, a thin, purplish gruel popped and bubbled like some ominous, cursed cuisine. But hey, at least it didn’t look suspiciously like crumbled cookie dough anymore.

Taking the ladle, he dumped a portion into the bowl he’d set on the side and wandered back over to Nilly’s side.

Pure Vanilla uttered a disoriented hum as Shadow Milk heaved him up into a sitting position. The bowl of gruel was thrust into his outstretched hands.

“Drink,” Shadow Milk ordered.

Pure Vanilla’s eyebrows furrowed. He tilted the bowl, watching the contents swirl ominously.

“What…” gold and blue eyes blinked up at Shadow Milk in confusion.

 “Your dinner?” Shadow Milk huffed. “Bottoms up, Nilly. If you waste my efforts and faint again I actually will crumble you.”

Pure Vanilla stared blurrily at him for a few moments. A myriad of emotions flickered through his mismatched eyes. Some parts confused, others conflicted, but the major emotion Shadow Milk could see was distress.

“What is this?”

“Gruel,” said Shadow Milk unhelpfully.

“It’s purple.”

“A perfectly normal color.”

“It smells strange.”

“Smells just like gruel to me.”

“But I don’t…” Pure Vanilla protested weakly.

“Shall I remind you that I am not obligated to help you dodge the consequences of your own stupidity?” Shadow Milk snapped. “Drink. The fucking. Slush.”

Maybe that was a more crudely direct way of phrasing than Shadow Milk usually preferred, and probably an indicator of how he wasn’t as put together as he thought he was. But it got the message across. Pure Vanilla’s hands fumbled as he lifted the edge to his mouth. Seemed to take a deep breath. Squeezed his eyes shut as he tilted the bowl.

Shadow Milk scowled. Oh come on! Surely this wasn’t worse than eating snake eyes raw? (Then again, considering his dough’s major ingredient… it probably was worse.)

The first sip had Pure Vanilla’s eyes snapping back open, wide with surprise. He tilted the bowl higher and took another sip with much less hesitation than the first.

“Mmm!” Pure Vanilla hummed. He lowered the bowl, his head tilting upwards as he seemed to process the flavor. He licked his lips.

“I told you it was gruel,” Shadow Milk huffed.

“What an interesting flavor!” Pure Vanilla hummed, taking another sip. His tone had gone warm, the warmest it had been since they’d gotten stuck here, Shadow Milk realised with a start. “A creamy sweetness balanced by a hint of warm bitter… but there's also a pleasant tingle to it as it goes down. I’ve never tasted anything like it! What did you add to get this effect?”

“Chef’s secret,” Shadow Milk felt the tension in his shoulders ease, tension that he hadn't even been aware of having. He allowed himself a snicker. “This is the result of my blood, sweat and tears, after all! How could I just spill the beans that easily?”

Little did Vanilly know, that expression was the closest to the truth that he would be getting.

Pure Vanilla took another deep sip. Still elegant as ever, despite sitting on the grimy floor, despite having been passed out barely seconds ago. He drank from the crude bowl like it was a chalice, like what he was eating wasn't a cursed cannibalistic dish disguised as rancid looking gruel, but instead some fine soup. Shadow Milk stared at the remains of the swallowing spell on Pure Vanilla’s neck, lingering smears of red that bobbed up and down with the movement of his throat as he swallowed.

“Still,” Pure Vanilla said, wiping his mouth. “Where did you find such high quality ingredients? I’ve scoured the ground floor top to bottom these past few days. But those snake eyes were the only thing even close to edible.”

Before Shadow Milk could open his mouth to make a retort, Pure Vanilla added hurriedly, “Please don’t misunderstand, I do not intend to accuse you of anything, Shadow Milk Cookie. In fact, I am very grateful that you decided to help me today. It’s just that I was hoping to be able to stock up some of it myself to avoid a similar incident while we’re still here in the Spire.”

It was a valid concern. While Shadow Milk had made a breakthrough on the magic end, he was still far from figuring out an actual solution to their problem. Shadow Milk could subsist without eating, the witches had baked him and the other beasts to be immortal powerhouses rivalling the Elemental Cookies, after all. But aside from their lifespans, the ancients were very much not immortal. Without food, Vanilly was still at risk of crumbling from the most anticlimactic reason on Earthbread. 

But then again, Pure Vanilla was a stern follower of morality, even more so than regular cookies. Shadow Milk doubted he would be asking for more if he knew what exactly it was that he was holding in his hands.

Scraping his dough off was not a long term solution. Shadow Milk would have to think on the problem a bit longer. Ugh, mortal cookies really were such a hassle to keep alive! For that offence, Nilly would be getting a grand total of 0 answers.

“Oh wow, is our silly Vanilly asking little old me for help?” Shadow Milk crooned. “Ooh… getting desperate are we?”

“To be honest,” admitted Pure Vanilla. “I may be a bit desperate. Food is a very compelling necessity.”

“Normally, I’d charge you a processing fee for that information. Such as… the need to embrace deceit. Join the club to get its benefits and all. But since I’m oh so so so very kind, I’ll give it to you for free.”

Shadow Milk made a beckoning gesture. Pure Vanilla leaned in, tilting his head.

“There’s a door on the second floor” Shadow Milk whispered seriously in his ear. “If you cluck like a chicken, strike a pose, and say ‘I will not falter’ before opening, it’ll give you a pile of berries.”

“What?” Pure Vanilla stared at him in bafflement. “Is that really…?” 

“Of course not!” Shadow Milk rolled back, bursting into raucous laughter.

“Ha ha…” Pure Vanilla laughed flatly. “And the truth?”

“Why, that is the truth!” Shadow Milk was practically cracking up at Vanilly’s rapidly falling face. “It’s just that it’s not a door, but a set of stairs. Very sheer stairs, practically a vertical climb, really. They call it the Leap of Faith. And what you have to do is not cluck like a chicken, but instead stand at the edge and spin 5 times clockwise, then another 3 times counterclockwise, and then jump forwards…”

“Shadow Milk…” Pure Vanilla said disapprovingly.

”Oka—okay wait, I’ll tell you the real one this time,” Shadow Milk wheezed. “So there’s a forest on the third floor. Absolutely teeming with monsters. Ferocious ones. Big teeth. And one of them, the one I got the gruel from, is actually a Gruelnilla King of a Gruel Kingdom filled with little Gruelilians…”

Pure Vanilla sighed heavily.

“I’d forgotten how hard it is to get an answer out of you,” he shook his head.

“Then maybe don’t try,” Shadow Milk snickered. “It’ll be easier.”

To his surprise (and slight disappointment), Pure Vanilla actually gave up asking, opting to turn his attention back to the bowl. Shadow Milk watched as he finished off the rest of the gruel. He sat there with the empty bowl in his lap, licking his lips thoughtfully. He was looking much better already, the color having returned to his cheeks.

“Well, if you aren’t going to tell me where you got the ingredients—” he said slowly.

”Nope!”

”—if you aren’t going to tell me, then could you at least help me up?” Pure Vanilla turned to him, his expression returning to its usual infuriatingly peaceful look. He held his hand out imploringly.

“Can’t you do it yourself?” Shadow Milk rolled his eyes. “You got weak knees, gramps?”

“They are a little weak,” Pure Vanilla admitted. “If you please, Shadow Milk.”

The outstretched hand flapped at him.

Shadow Milk considered walking away, but seeing as how Nilly actually managed to pass out from lack of food this time, he might slip and hit his head on the floor in his attempt to get up and pass out again. A good to honest frail old man. Groaning, he got to his feet. Turning, he grabbed Pure Vanilla’s wrist with both hands, walking backwards as he pulled.

Pure Vanilla’s gaze lowered, then abruptly sharpened.

“What’s that?” 

Suddenly, Shadow Milk found himself being yanked with surprising force. He crashed back down onto his knees, then further forwards until his face was just inches away from Pure Vanilla’s. Shadow Milk blinked at sudden closeup of Nilly’s lovely eyes.

“Woah, what’s what, Vanilly?” Shadow Milk tried to sound nonchalant. Pure Vanilla’s gaze was still piercing, even if it wasn't currently directed at him. He averted his eyes. “Changed your mind about the floor? Feel like hanging out here all day?”

Pure Vanilla ignored him as he lowered his head to peer at Shadow Milk’s left arm.

Oh. He was sure that jam stain wasn't there when he pulled his sleeve back up.

“Why is your sleeve red?” Pure Vanilla’s eyes turned to him, expression unreadable. “Why does it smell like jam?”

“Didn't I tell you there were monsters?” Good thing Shadow Milk was a smooth liar, even while startled. He tugged impatiently, trying to get Pure Vanilla to loosen his grip. “Guess I got some of their jam on me. What, you scared of jam?” He provoked, attempting to take his attention somewhere else. “A healer, scared of jam? Say it isn't so! You sure are full of medical accidents aren't you, Nilly? Are you even fit to heal the sick and wounded?”

With a loud ripping sound, Pure Vanilla tore his sleeve open.

“Hey!” Okay, Shadow Milk was actually mad now. After everything he’d done, Pure Vanilla now goes and ruins his clothes? What, did ungratefulness run in souljams? “Watch the seams, damn it!”

Pure Vanilla gasped, his eyes flying wide in horror. All of a sudden, Shadow Milk was aware of a more pressing issue than the destruction of his outfit.

“Shadow Milk…” Pure Vanilla’s voice trembled. His grip on Shadow Milk’s wrist tightened. His blank eyes were fixed on the gnarly, jam-soaked wound spanning the length of the jester’s forearm.

He reached out with his other hand, as if to touch the wound, only to pull back. His eyebrows were furrowed, his eyes pitying as he raised his head to direct his discerning stare at Shadow Milk. “What happened here? How did you get hurt this badly?”

Nosy! Shadow Milk complained in his head.

“Monsters,” he said instead, squirming internally under Pure Vanilla’s piercing gaze. “It's a scratch. Don’t be a drama queen about it.”

“This is not a scratch,” Pure Vanilla’s gaze was steely. “The dough on the inside of your arm is torn to pieces. You need medical attention immediately.”

“No I don't,” Shadow Milk growled. “You just think that it's worse than it is because you can't actually see.”

“I may not see clearly,” Pure Vanilla said sternly. “But I have witnessed and treated many injuries in my lifetime. I know what I’m faced with.”

“And my lifetime is longer than yours, and I say that it's nothing !” Shadow Milk tugged in earnest. But Pure Vanilla’s grip was like the silver chains from the tree. Absolutely unrelenting. “Drop it, Nills!”

“No.”

An unseen gust of wind rose from nowhere. It billowed through Pure Vanilla’s robes, through his hair, sending them fluttering. Through the physical contact, Shadow Milk could feel the healer’s magic stir, welling up as he summoned all his strength. He knew what he was trying to do. 

Healing a wound of this magnitude may have been nothing to Pure Vanilla in the past. But here in this twisted version of the Spire, their magic was stunted. Simple spells took immense effort. Hours of waiting accumulated meagre recoveries in magic reserves. Pure Vanilla didn't know this. He couldn't have known. Why else would he even attempt a healing spell in this condition? Why else would he even waste his effort trying to heal someone that wanted to hurt him? 

“I said drop it, Pure Vanilla!” Shadow Milk screeched, his voice bordering on hysteria. “You’ll regret this!”

Pure Vanilla reached out his hand again, but did not pull back this time. Lightly, gently, he ran his fingers over the wound, coloring the tips with red. Shadow Milk barely bit back his hiss of pain.

“Poor thing. You’ve been hurt so badly. I cannot leave you like this,” Pure Vanilla closed his eyes. Sitting there, he was the picture of radiant holiness. Peaceful, serene, pure. Perfect. “I will heal your wounds.”

“Pure Vanilla, stop,” Shadow Milk said a word that he hadn't said in a very, very long time. “Please!”

His vision was flooded with light.

Chapter Text

“Welcome, my dearest friends! Welcome!”

The Fount of Knowledge stood in the middle of the parlour, his arms outstretched in jubilation. Behind him, a quaint checker themed tea table had been set up, five chairs placed at regularly spaced intervals from one another.

Above the setup, a wide banner had been hung.

Happy 632.0025th Bakeday Reunion!

The four Virtues gawked at him. They didn't seem very happy. Instead, they were guarded, wary. Change’s hands gripped his battleaxe, his eyes darting back and forth in bafflement as he tried to find any sign of an enemy. Volition’s perpetually shut eyes had sprung open, looking around puzzled as her entourage of battle-ready dimsum servants muttered behind her. Sugar’s (for Happiness didn't like being called Happiness. Said it was too tacky, and that Sugar was a sweeter thing to be called by) wings fluttered erratically as she turned this way and that in the air. And Solidarity… well, Solidarity didn't visibly react to anything ever, really.

“Fount, what is the meaning of this?” Volition asked, her dark eyes like pits of darkness as they peered curiously at him.

A lopsided rabbit pulled the string on a party popper. A weak shower of blue and gold confetti exploded a few inches into the air, before wilting to the ground.

Knowledge rolled his eyes at the useless thing. Then, he turned back to his friends, beaming.

“Why, it’s a tea party, of course!” Knowledge declared. “I’ve missed you all so much–”

“We had the annual reunion yesterday,” Change sighed. He finally lowered his battleaxe to the ground, sighing as he rubbed his forehead with one broad hand.

“And that's why the sign says 632.0025th!” Knowledge said proudly.

“Knowledge, dear, this is all very nice…” Sugar said hesitantly. “But we came here thinking you were in trouble. You did activate the emergency SOS spell, after all.”

He did do that. But he wasn't actually in trouble, no. Not yet. This was just a drill! A test! He needed to be sure that if he was actually in trouble, they’d come running to save him like they’d all promised each other.

It was for reassurance. He wanted that reassurance.

He needed it.

After all, it was around the time for the Witches’ Banquet.

“Oh pshh. Come on, you really think I could ever be in trouble? Haha, I can hardly imagine it!” Knowledge flapped his hand at them, feigning nonchalance. “But since you came all the way here, why not stay for tea? Take a seat! Take a seat.”

Knowledge snapped his fingers. The chairs that were sitting still around the table burst to life. They zoomed around the room, sweeping the startled cookies off their feet. Knowledge sat down elegantly as his chair scooped him into its plush cushions, and whizzed him over to his spot at the head of the table.

“Sooo,” Knowledge laid his hand on the lid of a gilded teapot as he poured freshly steeped tea into the cups marching along the edge of the table as they passed. “How have you been doing~?”

“If there's nothing wrong, I must return,” Change harrumphed, his massive figure pressed into a plush armchair twice the size of the others. “I was in the middle of a new year’s parade when you called.”

“Oh come now, Change,” Knowledge placed his chin on his hands and blinked demurely at him. “Parades and festivals are a dime a dozen! Those cookies won't crumble just because they didn't get to see their dazzling hero for one day. Unless you mean to tell me you no longer want to see us anymore?”

“Once again, we met up yesterday ,” Change shook his head, but the edges of his mouth quirked upwards.

“I must agree with Change,” Volition raised her cup to her lips and took a sip. “Our venerable and benevolent masters commanded me to be present in the audience chamber of the Ivory Pagoda 24 hours a day, 364 days a year, 100 years a century. I would hate to disappoint them by taking an unplanned extra day off.” Then, after a pause, added. “Is this silver needle tea?”

“Yep! Only the best for my favorite cookies!” Knowledge sang. “But don't worry your little head, Volition, it’ll work out. You deserve more days off anyway, what with all the nonstop wish granting!”

Volition nodded, her expression tranquil and refined she drank her tea with a divine air. Her entourage quickly hustled to her side. From the depths of their bottomless sleeves, they produced rock fountains, incense, ornate folding screens and even a guzheng. In an instant, one fifth of the table had taken on a much different aesthetic from the rest.

“What about a break for me? I work tirelessly too,” Change grumbled, but even he finally downed his tea, the teacup looking far too small in his hands. “And why is it a mild tea again? We’ve been having mild teas for the past century. Let's drink chai next time. Bring a bit of spice to the table.”

“Volition prefers delicate flavors,” supplied Solidarity.

“But she handled chai just fine before! You’re just spoiling her,” Change scoffed. “You should spoil me instead. I’m the youngest. I have baby privileges!”

‘I have baby privileges’ coming from a 7 foot tall cookie with muscles the size of Knowledge’s head was, all things considered, not a very compelling argument.

“Well I think we could take a break from tea altogether. I hear juice has gotten a lot more heart-fluttering combinations these days. Cocktails, were they called?” Sugar said. An ornate spoon swirled the tea as dainty sugar cubes spawned overhead, dropping into her cup with light plinks.

“Wonderful propositions! I’ll take note of them for next year,” Knowledge grinned.

“But,” added Sugar. “Back on the topic of Volition’s witch sanctioned vacation time. Will you really be okay, my darling sister? My witch never gave me clear working days, so I don't know how strict yours is.”

“I only know what I was told on my baking day, and what has been relayed to me through Knowledge. There have been no mentions of margins for leniency regarding my duties,” Volition said smoothly, before giving Sugar a small smile. “But do not worry, if anything happens, I can always pass blame to our eldest brother.”

Knowledge gasped, raising his hand to his head in a melodramatic swoon. “I painstakingly procure your favorite obscure tea leaves and this is how I’m repaid? You wound me, Volition! That's it! We’re having chai next time.”

“Excellent!” Change grinned.

“But jokes aside,” Knowledge waved his hand dismissively. “You really don't have to worry. The witches won't crumble you for a measly extra day off.”

He peered carefully at his reflection in the tea, before nodding, reaffirming his statement.

“And how would you know what the witches would and wouldn't do, my dearest elder brother?” Sugar leaned across the table.

“Ah, see, Sugar, that's the wrong question. The right question is: what don't I know?” Knowledge sipped his tea.

“Mm hmmm…” Sugar hummed, looking up at him through half lidded eyes. “Because you speak for the witches?”

Knowledge opened his mouth. Shut it. Opened it again.

“ No ,” he coughed, bit back the sharpness that had crept into his tone, and tried again. “Ahem. Now Sugar, that’s an inaccurate way of wording it. I am their scribe. It's just that I sometimes pass on their words and teachings to you all when they ask me to. The only thing I speak for is the knowledge of all cookiekind.”

“Whatever you say, brother dear,” Sugar hummed.

***

Magic.

It had been eluding Pure Vanilla for days. Ever since he’d entered the Spire, ever since he’d become trapped in this place alongside Shadow Milk Cookie once again. Where once it responded as easily as breathing, now it slumbered, refusing stubbornly to rise to his call. Like how one can only ever watch the water slipping through his fingers when he tries to catch his reflection in his hands. It took all his strength to return only dregs.

His magic eluded him. And yet it had not been much of an issue so far. The touch that guided him along the walls, the sound when he rapped his stick against things that indicated their position, distance and texture, the shifts in the air flow when there was an object nearby… His ways of navigating by his other senses from his youth were quick to return to him, leaving him to wander about the place as easily as if he still had his enchanted staff. With a few more days to get used to where everything was, and so long as Shadow Milk didn't move anything, he’d likely be able to walk around freely even without his stick. (Though admittedly, that was a tall order for Shadow Milk. Knowing him, he’d probably move all the furniture a few centimeters to the left every day until Pure Vanilla tripped over it. Hmm… he’d better keep using the stick for the time being then.)

But yes, his lack of magic had not been much of an issue. He’d done well without relying on it as Healer Cookie, and he was doing well without it now. Or at least, he had been.

The pained tremor in the wrist he held in his grip. The telltale sound of short, shallow breaths painted over by the usual quips and deflections. The minute differences in the way the air was displaced during movement. The sickly sweet scent of jam permeating the air, barely discernable under the heavy, burnt smell of the gruel.

Shadow Milk lied as glibly as a fish to water. But without his power (and Pure Vanilla was by now certain that the jester was in the same situation as himself), he couldn't hide the truth as easily as he used to.

As Pure Vanilla looked down at the blurry splotch of red, a horrific, mangled wound that marked the entire length of Shadow Milk’s arm, a familiar feeling crept up his throat. It wrapped its tendrils around his neck, squeezed till his breathing grew strained. His thoughts whirled, but still danced and circled around that same, core notion.

Again. Someone had gotten hurt because of him again.

Perhaps if his staff were still with him and he could see properly the person before him, he would have hesitated. Perhaps if he were more clear headed, he would have paused to think about why or how this happened. Perhaps, if he had looked with clear vision and seen those slanted, off-color blue eyes that haunted his dreams, he would have stopped. Reassessed himself. And perhaps, against his will, the resentment that he’d buried would have come resurfacing again, in spite of all his attempts to hide it deep inside with the rest his unwelcome selfishness.

Resentment for the wolf that had harmed his flock.

But Pure Vanilla didn’t see. He could only feel, touch, hear. And in that moment, sitting on the cold stone floor of the potions workshop, all he could hear was the sound of someone in pain.

I must heal him, thought Pure Vanilla Cookie.

And so he did.

What resulted was some of Pure Vanilla’s worst spellwork. His thoughts were still a little jumbled from his brief lapse into unconsciousness, leaving him to cast a rather slapdash healing spell that instantly sapped what little magic he’d had left. 

He felt his patient flinch.

Pure Vanilla raised his fingers to the place where the wound was, and felt it over once again. A smooth, soft surface met his fingers. No sticky jam. No rough edges of damaged dough. As sloppy as he had been, it seemed the spell had worked. He breathed a sigh of relief, and released his grip.

Shadow Milk’s arm retracted like it had been burned. Through his blurry vision, he watched the blue splotch scuttle backwards the moment he was released. There was a thud, then a muffled grunt. The splotch shifted, as if rubbing the back of his head.

Perhaps it was the ironic imagery of an all-powerful, godlike figure hitting his head against the edge of the table like a regular cookie, or perhaps Pure Vanilla had actually been gone a bit silly from the hunger. He raised his hand to his mouth and began to laugh.

If Pure Vanilla had been able to see at the moment, he might have appreciated the indignant, wet cat look on Shadow Milk’s face. Alas, he hadn’t.

“Are you alright, Shadow Milk?” he asked, unable to keep the giggles out of his voice even as he held his hand out.

Shadow Milk said nothing. There was a swoosh of fabric. The blue blot was gone. Then a thud from somewhere near the door, a bitten back swear. And finally, the bang of the door slamming shut.

Pure Vanilla sat for a moment, his head tilted in the direction of the door. The pattering footsteps only grew further away. Likely fleeing back upstairs, where Pure Vanilla could not follow him.

He took a few moments to sit recovering on the floor of the potions workshop. The overexertion of his magic had left him feeling a little drowsy, but nothing as drastic as the fainting. The dizziness from before was gone, the hunger pangs too, leaving him buzzing with the pleasant warmth of a full meal. Reaching out, he took the empty bowl he’d left on the floor in both hands.

He could still taste the gruel on his lips.

He absentmindedly ran his fingers along the edge of the bowl, tracing the rim over and over again. The warmth cradling and supporting him as he woke up. The urgency in the usually nonchalant jester’s voice as the bowl was pushed into his hands. The creamy sweetness of the gruel. The sight of all that red, all to save him from a problem he had caused himself.

A moment of kindness.

Pure Vanilla then raised his hand to his chest. His fingers closed over air. The place where his soul jam used to be, now gone.

A moment of cruelty.

His vision blurred even further, and in a blink, he was transported back to that scene from not so long ago. The same cookies, the same setting, a different dynamic.

He stood at the edge of the tallest tower, his then dark robes swaying around him. Far in the distance, the forests of Beast Yeast sprawled out before him. Swaying evergreens closely knit together, odd patches of clearings through which quaint dirt paths wound, a treeline dipped in the velvety shadow of night. And closer, the twisted, nonsensical white bricks of the Spire’s smaller towers, the winding staircases that led to nowhere. And glimpsed between the spires, in a garden that had no path to reach, the pale halo from a field covered in nothing but milk crowns. Up above, the stars twinkled in the great abyss, watching over the world as it slumbered.

It was beautiful. But at the time, Pure Vanilla… no, the Truthless Recluse, felt nothing but bleakness. He could not pretend to marvel at its beauty, for by then, there was nothing to marvel at.

It was all so small. Unimportant. Meaningless.

There was a slight shift in the wind.

The eyes of his corrupted staff turned, even as Truthless Recluse himself kept staring blankly forwards.

Shadow Milk.

The beast hovered behind him. His bony, crooked figure stood out against the silent backdrop of the Spire. His hair rippled like a living shadow. His coattails curled and writhed. The thousands of eyes, in his hair, in his clothes, they were all watching. Always watching.

Through his staff, he could see Shadow Milk’s sneering face in full clarity. His voice was like a broken music box that played discordant notes from a song long forgotten. Crude yet eloquent, melodic yet out of tune, whimsical yet grand and sombre. Facades and truths mingled together in a cacophony of contradictions. As he gazed down at Truthless recluse from above, the edges of his mouth curled into a knowing smile. His mismatched eyes crinkled.

Oh those eyes. The eyes that haunted his dreams and memories, chasing him through the past up till the present. Though they shifted and twitched and never stayed in one place, they looked at him more directly than anyone else ever had.

They looked. They saw. They laughed.

The eyes of Fate, that made who he had been, who he was, and who he would become.

“Oh silly Vanilly. Such a dreary little dearie,” Shadow Milk grinned, his chilling smile stretching from ear to ear. “You are just the biggest liar in the world!”

Even after he had escaped the lies, even after he saw his past as it was and realized how Shadow Milk had manipulated his insecurities into something that consumed him… that statement still held true.

Pure Vanilla was the biggest liar in the world. 

***

It would be a couple hours later that Shadow Milk would come prancing back down to the ground floor as if he hadn’t been the one to flee from Pure Vanilla. That he would deny fleeing, and insist confidently that Pure Vanilla had been hallucinating the whole thing (Pure Vanilla agreed readily, if only to let the beast keep his dignity.) That after a bit more beating around the bush, Shadow Milk would produce a jar of more mysteriously sourced gruel, and declare that it was lunch time. Would force the jar into his hands and glare at him until he ate it. Would then display a wound before him, demanding payment in healing.

(“Is this not a scam tactic?” Pure Vanilla had once asked jokingly. Luckily, none of the wounds were as big as the first time, and didn’t take as much out of him to heal.

“And yet you fall for it every time!” Shadow Milk had jeered in reply.)

After that incident, Pure Vanilla would have his three meals a day. And at every meal, he would ask Shadow Milk where he had procured the food. And every time, the jester would laugh hysterically, as if Pure Vanilla had said something incredibly funny. Each time, with enough prodding, he would only say the same three words.

Infinite food glitch.

Chapter Text

Far in the desert, a new kingdom had been born. It glittered like gold in the sun. The clay houses making up its cityscape were simple, but they stood proud amidst the dunes. The air wavered with the aroma of blended spices.

In the plaza of the new kingdom, a parade was taking place. The maharaja, dressed in a simple kurta, strode amidst the market square. Despite his lack of finery, he exuded an air of nobility and responsibility fitting of a king. With his entourage of royal guards, he spoke his thanks for the people’s support for his rule, and pledged to serve them dutifully, keeping them safe in war and famine.

The crowd, small but tight knit, cheered at his words, clapping and whistling. The maharaja raised his head, his eyes filled with joy.

Suddenly, a spice storm swept over the plaza. It whirled with fiery ferocity, the winds sweeping it over the heads of the cookies. It coalesced in the center of the plaza, a burning tornado of chili and spice. And yet the crowd only covered their noses with handkerchiefs and cheered even louder.

And to the cheers of the people, the Herald of Change arrived.

From the depths of the storm, a massive, flaming stallion appeared. Its coat was sleek and black as coal, its mane burning with the hottest spices. Its hooves struck cinders with each step as it trotted into the plaza. Mounted atop the stallion was the Herald himself. Dressed in a silken dhoti, adorned with bangles of gold and with a ring of flame dancing behind him, he was the very picture of divinity. His dark hair fanned out behind him, dancing to the rhythm of the flames. He had taken on his six armed form, with one twisted in the reins of the horse, one held poised in the protection symbol, and the other four holding all manner of sacred objects. Bare chested, the red of his dough shone, battle scars displayed proudly like medals of honor.

“Oh blessed Herald of Change!” the maharaja came forward to kneel at the hooves of the stallion. “Such an honor it is that you descend upon our kingdom!”

“Rise,” the Herald spoke, but scarlet eyes drifted, scanning the crowd searchingly. They drifted back and forth amidst the pushing, clamoring wall of cookies, before falling upon a lady in the crowd. She was a young woman with white hair, with a long, trailing cape draped elegantly over an azure saree. This cookie did not clamor like the others. She simply gazed at the Herald from afar. Her eyes glinted blue and gold.

The herald raised a hand in greeting. The crowd roared.

The lady in azure dipped her head.

As the Herald gave his divine blessings, Knowledge watched in disguise. Every moment, every smile, every cheer, was recorded to memory. Just as he had been baked to do.

Year 968 of the New Astral Callendar. The Herald of Change descended upon the newly formed Cucurmin Kingdom to bless the people. As decreed by the witches, they will enjoy a prosperous 8 years.

His musings were interrupted by a quick, hopping movement. Knowledge looked.

A young cookie, a little girl of around 8, was pushing fervently against the crowd. She was short, barely reaching the height of Knowledge’s waist. At the very back of the crowd, she jumped and strained on her tiptoes, trying desperately to catch a glimpse of the deity that had descended upon the kingdom.

Ah, a young devotee.

Knowledge smiled, before worming his way through the crowd.

Reaching the girl, he grabbed her under the arms. There was a shriek, then a delighted giggle as he lifted her up, placing her atop his shoulders.

“Can you see now?” he whispered to her. His hands remained above his head to hold her steady, even as she wobbled and grabbed at his hair.

“Yeah,” the little girl giggled. She leaned down to hug the top of his head, kicking her feet lightly against his dough. “Thank you, miss.”

“You’re welcome,” said Knowledge fondly. He didn’t often have the chance to walk among them, having his time confined either to the front of a class. but he did enjoy more personal interactions like this. Cookies were endearing in their innocence, in their curiosity to learn more.

That’s why he remembered each and every encounter, each cookie that he’d met, each flavor that he’d parted with. Even if history had no room for them, even if witches had never told him to.

If he was destined to be a cruel record keeper, then at the very least, he could keep the memories of those who once existed alive. To give their short, futile lives meaning.

Having already recorded the historic moment, he was under no further obligation to stay. But still he did, with the little girl atop his shoulders, continuing to watch the festival as the Herald blew fire and danced and showered the new kingdom with blessings and protection.

***

Once upon a time, Shadow Milk had considered Pure Vanilla boring. His hobbies were the dull, inactive pastimes of a senile loony. He talked to the sheep. He talked to the birds. He tended to the flowers and then talked to them too.

But that was once upon a time. Now, Shadow Milk knew he had been mistaken. Pure Vanilla was actually pretty active. Too active.

The moment the food issue had been resolved, Vanilly was on the move. If he was secretly nosing around before, now he wasn't even trying to hide it. He studied the walls. He tapped every surface with his new favorite hatstand. He’d found a stack of paper from somewhere and was taking notes about everything. In braille of course. Littered each page with holes instead of indents because even the ever resourceful Pure Vanilla couldn't find card paper in a place like this.

At one point, Shadow Milk had snuck downstairs to snoop through them while Vanilly was asleep. Most of it featured locations and items of note. Some of it was meaningless, like some inane, half-asleep rambling about his latest dreams (“I dreamt of becoming a teacher last night! How wonderful it was to see the joy of learning on younger cookies’ faces, even if they did get a little grumpy near the end. It brings to mind my own little class that I taught back in the Vanilla Kingdom! My students were all so bright and eager…” blah blah blah more mushy garbage). Others were more informative, such as stock records of Pure Vanilla’s stash of water and bandages he’d looted from the rooms on the ground floor, as well as the number of jars of “gruel” Shadow Milk had supplied him. A list of the ingredients and apparatus in the old potions workshop. Several amateurish attempts to transcribe the other realm’s Dark Moon Magic in different parts of the spire. All very boring stuff, but still. The amount of information Pure Vanilla had been collecting was… concerning. It was far from anything that was critical enough to expose the truth of their situation (and by extension, the fact that Shadow Milk was so powerless that Pure Vanilla could probably send him sprawling with a push), but it was concerning anyway.

It had been doubly concerning when he realised that half the contents featured mentions of either the stairs or the upper floors.

Shadow Milk wasn't stupid. He knew what this meant.

He’d left the notes back where he found them, but not before turning half the pages upside down and shuffling the stack. Just as a warning (a bluff of a warning).

Even worse, his progress on the Spire had reached a stalemate.

Up on the third floor, where spaces intersected and cobbled together in a patchwork of blue, silver and gold, Shadow Milk knelt in the dark corridor. Dim light streamed in from everywhere and nowhere, illuminating his face in a chiaroscuro of contours and sharp edges. Beneath his knees lay a magic circle etched in chalk, the white lines faded from the days they’d stayed stationed here.

He pressed his hand against the cold stone floor. The chalk sigils glowed with a bright blue beneath his fingers, the data collection spell circle humming with power. Data poured into his head in a wave of information. Numbers, stability indexes, spatial coordinates.

Useless.

Shadow Milk’s eyebrows furrowed. It was not making sense. None of it was making sense.

The upper floors were spatially and temporally unstable. That was a fact. Different locations collided within one another in a patchwork of spatial abomination, and places that were supposed to be long gone were still here. He’d seen the instability. It was there.

And yet… all his sigils had returned stable values.

Shadow Milk threw his chalk across the room in frustration. The broken piece impacted the side of a silver bough with a soft thud, before clattering to the ground.

This suggested that either his sigils were wrong, or his understanding of spacetime stability was wrong. Both possibilities meant that Shadow Milk had been wrong in some way. And Shadow Milk was never wrong. Not when it came to knowledge.

There were some sigils that returned numbers reflecting slightly less stability than the others, but it was still far from the values one could expect from spacetime crossing over into one another. The one at his feet had even returned a value that exceeded the natural upper limit for stability. Shadow Milk gnawed on a pointed nail. With his other hand, he traced the chalk lines over and over again. Round and round the spell circle. Reviewing it all over and over again.

There was no way he was wrong. It was impossible! There had to be something he was overlooking. Some external variable that was influencing the outcome.

Something he wasn't factoring in… his other realm itself? No, the spell circles had worked just fine the last time he’d run experiments here. His lack of magic? No, he’d designed these spell circles to be powered by the magic of his other realm, not him.

Lack of a soul jam? Pure Vanilla’s presence? The witches’ tampering no that couldn't be right, they didn't even know he was back yet. Dark Enchantress’ activity in the real world? His other realm being out of his con–

The realization hit him.

His other realm… His other realm…

It was no longer his.

His head snapped back down towards the data spell circle at his feet. Scrabbling to open the last box of chalk he had on him, he pulled out one long, white stick. The chalk clicked against the floor, leaving behind lines in white powder as Shadow Milk made slapdash adjustments to the spell circle. Changing a rune here, adding another there.

Magic detection. Perceptual expansion. Expulsion…

He pressed his hand to the circle again. His magic flooded into the magic circle, tinting the other realm’s power with his own as it pulled.

And then, was dispersed back.

His senses expanded. His perception stretched beyond the five senses. Magic bloomed before his mind’s eye, the flowing shapes of the other realm’s dark moon magic beheld before him.

Now he could sense it. The other realm’s magic had been invisible to him, with his stunted magic sensitivity. But having cast an all-seeing spell and mixed his own magic in with it as a marker, he could now faintly see the flowing, drifting contours of magic in this place.

Magic somewhat followed the laws of energy conservation. One could not produce magic, but instead converted or borrowed it from somewhere. A cookie’s life powder pulled magic from nature, allowing them to use magic; and when they died nature pulled magic from the life powder making up their souls. It was a cycle. The one that elemental cookies insisted was sacred. The only exception to this rule, the only wellspring where all magic originated, was the moon.

And so magic on Earthbread was always flowing in some direction. But since his other realm was the dark side of the moon, magic here should be stagnant. Ambient. Saturated. Like a pool of still water.

And yet, now as he looked clearly:

Magic was flowing in the other realm. 

It flowed into his array, not from the air itself, but from somewhere beneath him.

And at the same time, that somewhere was also pulling his magic out of him.

Shadow Milk’s fist clenched. Magic did not flow in his other realm. The only time it had was when Pure Vanilla (with that lie of his) wrested the control out of his hands. The conclusion was clear. Dark Enchantress must have done something. But what?

And why did the flow of magic here make all his spell circles return positive spatial stability?

Shadow Milk lifted his head, tracing a strand of flowing, iridescent magic with his eyes. It curled and rippled through the air like a ribbon in the water. Countless strands joined it, flowing in a river of power. Towards him, over him.

He turned. 

The flow was coming from the wall behind him.

He clambered to his feet. His shoes clicked across the tiles as he stepped towards the blank wall. It was a pretty unremarkable wall, laid with sugar blocks like the rest of the place, without so much as a painting or a door to adorn it. He considered it twice over. Nope. Looked like a wall, felt like a wall.

If it wasn't the wall…

Pulling out his chalk once more, he drew a dual spell circle on its surface and pressed his magic into it.

For a brief few moments, it merely hummed, gathering power within itself. Then…

Boom .

Shadow Milk was thrown backwards. A thunderous explosion shook the room. Clouds of dust bloomed before his eyes. The back of his head slammed against the floor, knocking his perception off kilter. He raised his arm with a pained hiss, shielding himself from the hail of sugar granules pelting his face.

Ears still ringing, he picked himself up off the floor and dusted the powder off his clothes. He then walked over to the crumbled wall on wobbly legs (not without stumbling over his coattails first. It had happened so often that he was actually starting to anticipate it).

His spell had blown a hole in the wall, revealing a dark space beyond. The flow of magic swirled through the yawning opening.

Even without needing to check, he could feel it distinctly in his dough.

Something was off.

Bracing one hand against the loose, crumbling edge, Shadow Milk peered through.

What lay beyond the broken wall of the corridor was not the other realm. It wasn't even some other room or corridor of the spire.

What lay beyond the wall was the entrance to a cylindrical room. But to call it a room would be a disgrace to the sheer magnitude of its depths. Rather, it resembled more the inside of a well, the curved walls stretching vertically in opposite directions. Looking down, the walls stretched on and on, till they were swallowed up by the darkness where the light from the corridor opening could not reach. Looking up yielded a similar view. If he weren't standing on solid ground, he might not even be able to tell up from down if he was to step fully into the room.

But there was something off about the walls too. They weren't stationary. Not entirely. They shivered and rippled in the periphery of his vision, but the moment he turned his head to look straight at them, the sugar bricks would stand solid and unmoving once more.

As he stood teetering on the edge of the bottomless shaft, the back of his neck prickled uncomfortably.

Ah yes, he knew this feeling. It was one he was well acquainted with, and one he liked to induce in others.

The feeling of being watched.

The flow of magic was palpable here. He could sense it flowing up through the shaft and into his various spell circles. Could also sense his own magic flowing out of him, swirling down into the depths like it were a drain.

The dark was all consuming, absolute. It was even darker than his own shadows, and oppressive in a way that only the witches had been. In a rare moment of smallness, Shadow Milk found himself intimidated by this dense darkness. He didn't know what was down there. He hated that he didn't know.

He half expected to see the telltale glint of gaunt skin flickering through the curtain of darkness, half expected a giant, gnarly, bony hand to come reaching out of the depths. For crooked fingers to cage in around his head and pinch him out like a candle.

But the darkness remained silent. There was nothing.

He lifted one foot. Kicked some rubble off the edge with the side of his shoe.

The shower of sugar granules plummeted into the gaping hole. For a brief moment, the light from the corridor bounced off their rough edges, illuminating each corner in powdery white. Then, they passed the boundary of where the light reached, and disappeared.

Shadow Milk strained his ears. But there was no sound.

He tried throwing other things down the hole. A bigger rock. A flaming scrap of paper. Another scrap of paper with a tracking spell scribbled on it.

All of them fell, were swallowed up by the darkness, and vanished. Well, the tracked slip of paper was still falling.

And falling.

Shadow Milk waited for what had to be five more minutes, and yet… it was still falling. Still below him.

He took a step back, away from the edge. So this was it… the cause of the anomaly. Hah… of course there was something behind his magic issues. How did he not consider it? The possibility that his other realm, the place that once felt like an extension of himself, that felt most like home, had turned hostile. Had changed while Dark Enchantress had a hold over the entire soul jam of knowledge.

He’d only ever had half of his soul jam taken from him, with the other half still tucked safely under his collar. Of course things would be different now that both of them were gone.

He took a second step back, and, barely avoiding another encounter with the floor from tripping on his coattails, backed away cautiously from the hole in the wall.

Evidently, the source of his problems with the Spire was down there. Maybe even the solution. The way out of this long, lengthy interlude and back onto the centerstage of the show.

But before that, he needed to prepare.

***

Five hours later, the tracking spell was still falling.

Until suddenly, it stopped.

Hovered.

And was destroyed.

Chapter Text

Another century, another witches’ banquet. 

Knowledge stumbled out of his other realm, his appearance looking less dishevelled than he felt. His constructs still faithfully guarded the room he’d been using, ensuring no one would witness his departure and return.

Seeing his arrival, an Obscure Plane Mirror drifted before him, allowing him to further fix his attire before he went back into the world.

“Master,” said his Dream Archivist from the side. “There is a letter for you.”

“Ugh, I’m not in the mood for mail,” Knowledge groaned. “Can’t you leave it on my desk? I’ll get to it tomorrow.”

“But the Saint of Volition is expecting a prompt answer. Her servant is waiting outside, and will not leave until you answer.”

“What?” Knowledge perked up. Ah! Now that was new. Did Volition miss him? Aww, so at least one of them did appreciate his company. “Okay, hand it over.”

The Dream Archivist passed him a bamboo scroll. Unfolding it, there was a crackle of magic.

A dense cloud of flour swirled out in a lazy spiral, coalescing into the air to take the form of the Saint of Volition. Her eyes were closed, her hair neatly tied, not a wrinkle to be seen on her robes. Like a statue, her expression was firm and serene. But there was a slight furrow in her brow.

“My wise elder brother,” said the apparition, her voice like the sound of a tolling bell. “You are the keeper of all knowledge, and messenger of the witches. You know everything, past, present and future.”

“Yeah?” said Knowledge, even though he knew Volition wouldn’t hear him. This was just a message, after all, not her actual self.

“Over the past one thousand, seven hundred and eighty-three years, I have stayed faithfully in my ivory pagoda. As of this letter to you, I have granted one million, sixty-nine thousand, eight hundred and forty-six wishes.”

Knowledge’s eye twitched. Ah, Volition was just as he remembered her. Took ten thousand years to get to the point. He really didn’t have the patience for this, not after that horrific banquet.

“And yet,” the apparition continued. “My own wish remains out of reach. It is an answer, an answer to a question I have had for a very, very long time. An answer that has eluded even the depths of my meditations.”

“Is there a speed up on this thing?” Knowledge asked his Dream Archivist, despite knowing very well that there wasn’t. The Archivist shrugged.

“And so I turn to you, my wisest brother. I was baked of the purest dough, made to grant the wishes of cookiekind by my benevolent creator, Clotho. I have lived here for millennia, never setting foot out of my audience chamber beyond our annual meetings. I have seen the joys and sorrows of cookiekind, I have granted joys and sorrows in equal measure. I know my purpose. I can be everything, I am everything. But still, I’ve always felt like something was missing. Something… essential.”

Her eyes opened, revealing dark pupils marred with sorrow and loss.

“My dearest elder brother. I beseech you to answer me. Who am I?”

***

“How did this happen?”

Shadow Milk rolled his eyes at the question. He sat leaning against the table, his chin propped up by his palm. One clawed finger tapped impatiently against his cheek. His legs swung in time to the tapping, barely brushing the tiled floor.

His other hand was held captive in the clutches of a pair of warm, gentle ones. Contrary to his soft nature, Pure Vanilla’s hands were calloused, speaking of the hardships over the long years. The hands ran their way over the back of Shadow Milk’s forearm, lightly tracing the edges of the jagged wounds there.

“Oh who knows, Nilly, who knows?” Shadow Milk sang, kicking his legs back and forth. “Maybe you should take a guess!”

The answer he was waiting for was a wolf. A sesame wolf to be exact, distant relative of the cream wolf. (This species left very distinct claw marks due to the presence of barbs on the end of their pinky. To snag prey, making up for their smaller size when compared to their hulkier relatives.) It was an easy question, one Pure Vanilla was sure to get. Especially considering how sesame wolves were native to the woods in his friend, Dark Cacao’s, kingdom.

But of course, there weren't actually any sesame wolves roaming around the Spire, not on any of the floors he’d explored anyway. It was just another fun little lie. One he’d prepared to convince Silly Vanilly that his dinner had been procured with dire stakes. With great daring and close calls. To drive home the idea that this food supplied by his greatest enemy was a debt heavier than Nilly’s self, soul jam and kingdom.

And definitely not just the dough off Shadow Milk’s arm.

He watched through slitted eyes as Pure Vanilla lowered his head to squint futilely at the wound.

After the first time he'd fed his dough to the wretched fool in front of him, he’d started to be a lot more crafty with his knifework. Pure Vanilla may be gullible and naive, but he was still a healer. Given enough time, he’d likely start to question why Shadow Milk’s injury seemed more like it had been skinned than inflicted by an attacking beast. Now that Nilly had been forced to follow his three meals a day schedule, Shadow Milk had the time to give his new excuse of the day plenty of thought.

This time, he’d sliced out four jagged lines of dough from his outer arm, in a direction that suggested he’d been snagged by the beast’s wicked claws while fleeing. Shadow Milk had spent a lot of effort getting the end result right. It had been a bit awkward to angle the knife over his shoulder while trying to make the cut look natural. By the end of it, he’d lost a lot more jam than usual, and his arm felt like he’d set it on fire, no longer responding to any of his efforts to move it. But otherwise? It was very convincing, down to the iconic crooked trajectory produced by that barbed pinky claw.

Another flawless lie pulled off as always!

(The stripping of dough in the quiet stillness of an empty room. His breaths a metronome that set a pace to the blade. The welling jam forming beads of red, more viscous than water, more fluid than honey. Slow. Indulgent. It was a pain that he could control, pain that he had the power to start and stop whenever. The power was intoxicating. Cathartic. Reminiscent of habits in days long gone. But just reminiscent. Everything was different now. Back then, the action had been a coward’s pathetic excuse of a rebellion, a wretched attempt to mar their porcelain perfection. Now, he was perfection.)

“A claw mark?” Pure Vanilla asked, finally giving up on his useless squinting.

“But the claw of what? A bird? A beast?”

“A beast. Bird talons don't leave cuts like this.”

“Mhmm, warmer, warmer,” Shadow Milk said eagerly. “Now guess. What beast?”

“That's the issue, it–” Pure Vanilla stopped abruptly.

Then frowned.

“Why are you so excited about this? You’re injured.”

Shadow Milk groaned, throwing his head back dramatically. (There was a bitterness on his tongue.) “Oh, have a little joy and whimsy in your life, Vanilly!”

“Every time you come downstairs to see me, you’re badly injured. How could I take joy in that?” Pure Vanilla blue and gold eyes raised to stare piercingly at him.

“ I’m not you ” went unsaid. But it didn't have to be said. Shadow Milk knew very well what he looked like in the eyes of lower cookies. It was what Pure Vanilla should have ended up looking like. But of course he didn't. Pure Vanilla was just better than that, apparently.

“Tsk,” Shadow Milk clicked his tongue. “Goody-two-shoes.”

Pure Vanilla sighed, before pressing both hands to his dough again. There was a gentle flare of light. The jagged red slashes slowly stitched themselves back together. 

With the number of “accidents” Shadow Milk had been having, Pure Vanilla had taken to using weaker healing spells that were less immediate than the first time. Ones that healed completely all the same, but took longer and expended significantly less magic. Shadow Milk knew for a fact that if it were Truthless Recluse, he would have done the more taxing spell in spite of his present condition, just so he could get away from Shadow Milk sooner. (So did this mean Pure Vanilla actually didn't mind his company? Or was Shadow Milk just not worth the effort of the big spell? Absent-mindedly, he weighed the odds of the first possibility being true.)

…

(Nah. It was probably the latter. Truthless Recluse was still Pure Vanilla, after all, just depressed and paradoxically more honest. A new outfit didn't exactly change who you were.)

Shadow Milk shook his head to reorient himself. Ugh, just thinking about that depressed codger was depressing him too. He was the Master of Deceit! He had no reason to care about what lesser cookies thought of him, let alone Pure Vanilla.

“I’ve been trying to create a new spell,” Pure Vanilla said after a moment of silence, as they sat waiting for the wound to mend itself. “It's not quite going the way I was hoping. Would you be willing to share some insights?”

“Creating spells?” Shadow Milk wasn’t about to pass up on the free chance to change the topic. “I thought you said you’d never be like me. Changed your mind about Deceit?”

“This has nothing to do with that decision,” Pure Vanilla said firmly.

“Sure,” Shadow Milk said dismissively. “Well? What pointless little thing were you trying to do this time? Talk to animals? Make flowers grow?”

“I’ve been trying to apply the scrying spell I had on my old staff to this new one.” Pure Vanilla gestured at the hat stand propped up against the table. The blue eyes along its side blinked. “It doesn't seem to be taking hold though.”

“Psh, you call that creating?” Shadow Milk scoffed. 

“Since the original spell I used didn’t work, I’ve been attempting some alterations,” Pure Vanilla continued, as if he hadn’t heard Shadow Milk’s comment. “The current theory is that since my original spell uses White Magic, the staff rejects it due to its Dark Magic nature. While I may not be a master in Dark Moon Magic, I do know a thing or two. So I’ve been attempting to modify the spell to carry Dark traits.”

“That’s stupid,” Shadow Milk said almost immediately.

“And yet it– huh?” Pure Vanilla blinked.

“ Huh ?” Shadow Milk mimicked him. “Do you even hear what you’re saying? ‘I think my spell doesn’t work because clearly objects are sentient and have preferences, so I’m trying to trick this definitely sentient hat stand into thinking what I’m trying to force upon it is something it likes.’” he made a buzzer noise. “That’s such a stupid theory. F for foolish! How did you even graduate second best in class back then?”

“Then what would you suggest is the problem?” Pure Vanilla challenged. “If not White and Dark magic.”

Okay, now Shadow Milk was riled up. Challenging his understanding of magic? Hah! Pure Vanilla was still too young to be doing that!

“Show me the original.” Shadow Milk turned his injured arm slightly so that the palm was fully facing up. He crooked his fingers at Pure Vanilla. “Draw. Now.”

Pure Vanilla blinked owlishly.

“Really? Now? But the heal–”

“Now. While I’m feeling generous.”

Hesitantly, Pure Vanilla took his hands off the wound, settling them to cup his palm instead. With one slender finger, he drew little lines across Shadow Milk’s palm. His touch tingled. Shadow Milk tilted his head, focusing on piecing together the full picture of the spell from what he was given.

“Oh, that one,” he scoffed. “The Conduit Scrying Array. See through the eye of a bound object within 2 meters distance. Broken upon destruction of the eye of either the caster or the object.”

The “harmless to teach to cookies” version of the witches’ own scrying spell. He remembered penning that one in the Summonings and Bindings volume of his Guides to Magic.

“Yes! That's the one!” Pure Vanilla exclaimed. “I was wondering whether the rejection of White Magic led to the inability for me to bind this stick to me.”

Shadow Milk’s first thought was to tell him that that was stupid, because the only difference between White and Dark magic was what the witches wanted and didn't want cookies to know. Then he remembered that he wasn't supposed to tell anyone that.

And then he remembered that he didn't care about what he was or wasn't supposed to do anymore.

“There is no rejection reaction, silly Vanilly. You’re thinking of it like a math problem. Don't.”

“A math problem?”

“Yes,” Shadow Milk said patronizingly, as if explaining to a particularly stupid baby. “You think White magic is positive and Dark magic is negative, and if you stick them together, they cancel out. That's not how it works.”

“I know it doesn't usually work that way! But I’ve tried everything else,” Pure Vanilla objected. “This was the only possibility left.”

“Oh yeah? Then show me what you tried.”

Pure Vanilla wordlessly scribbled on his palm again.

There was a moment of silence.

Then Shadow Milk snarled. 

“You,” he lifted his free hand off his chin, and jabbed at the table in erratic figure drawing. “Directly copied a spell binding specifically the eye of a vanilla orchid onto your new stick! Fool! Does that look like a vanilla orchid to you?”

“I… I did?” Pure Vanilla shrunk back.

“Yeah, you did! Your base spell was wrong from the getgo! Scrying is a magic of precision! You need to get the scryer and the target exactly right to bind the spell properly. This is the most basic of basic binding magics! You should have been taught this at the Academy.”

“Oh,” said Pure Vanilla faltered, muttering to himself. “So that's why Headmaster Bachalomoth said this spell only worked on vanilla orchids.”

“Your base is wrong. But instead of fixing it, what do you do?” Shadow Milk jabbed his finger into the table. “You add pointless flourishes and embellishments that mean nothing beyond a sense of aesthetics! Like a doddering fool that only sees the finger when someone points at the moon!”

“But I’m not familiar with Dark Moon Magic,” the healer protested weakly. “I didn't know they were just embellishments!”

“Excuses! White Magic, Dark Magic, none of it matters, the principle is the same! Cookies nowadays! You don't think! You just regurgitate what I tell you and when you don't get far with that you demand me to spoon feed another answer to you in exactly the way you want it! You don't ask the right questions, you don't want the right answers, all you do is buzz around like annoying little gnats! What's the point of teaching when all it does is make you lot more gullible and stupid!”

“Ack, I’m sorry professor! I’ll do better next time!”

Professor .

Shadow Milk paused mid rant, his mouth gaping, his jabbing finger now frozen in the air. Pure Vanilla didn't seem to have snapped out of it, still carrying the cowering grimace of a child who was getting lectured by his teacher.

Slowly, he lowered his finger. Right. Hah… What were they doing? What was he doing? Shadow Milk wasn't a teacher. Not anymore. He was the Master of Deceit! He dispensed lies, rumors, theatrics! Not knowledge.

Why was he even trying to teach Pure Vanilla to fix his spellwork anyway? Allowing the healer to regain his sight only enabled him to venture upstairs and poke a hole in Shadow Milk’s lies. It only worked against him!

Curse that fool! If not for him, Shadow Milk wouldn't have gotten carried away and forgotten himself!

“Enough of this! I’m bored,” He retracted his arm out of Pure Vanilla’s grasp, roughly yanking the sleeve back up. The spots where the healer had touched tingled with lingering warmth.

“Wait! I haven't finished healing you yet!” 

“Whatever. You take so long I might as well just do it myself!” He turned to slide off the chair.

“Alright, alright, just… hold still for a moment,” his arm was yanked back by an iron grip. There was a bright flash of light. In an instant, the residual pain in his arm receded.

Shadow Milk turned. Pure Vanilla’s expression was a mix of conflicted emotions. Some parts forlorn, others exasperated. But above all those was an air of commiseration. Of shallow, principalistic pity.

(The bitterness on his tongue only grew.)

“Really, Nilly,” Shadow Milk said mockingly. “If you could just do that the whole time, why would you torment yourself in dragging all this out, hmm?”

“...It's not torment,” Pure Vanilla said disingenuously.

“Whatever. We’re done here,” He hopped off the chair, collecting the empty bowl that had held Pure Vanilla’s lunch just a while earlier on his way. This interlude had dragged on far too long. He still had to complete his preparations for the investigation of the spatial anomaly.

“What about the spell?” Pure Vanilla hastened to his feet, grabbing the hat rack as he plodded lightly after Shadow Milk.

“Why don't you figure that out yourself, oh noble seeker of truth?” Shadow Milk sneered over his shoulder. “I’m not your tutor.”

Pure Vanilla fell silent. But his footsteps kept tapping behind Shadow Milk, even as he arrived at the base of the stairs.

“I understand…” came the small, piteous reply.

Shadow Milk continued making his way angrily up the stairs. All the way, the sound of Pure Vanilla’s light footsteps shadowed him. One step, another. The footsteps always followed at the same rhythmic pace, maintaining a gap of distance between them. Not close enough to be amiable, but not distant enough to be indifferent.

For a while, the only sound that filled the Spire was the echo of their footsteps. One set, the sharp click of heels. The other, the light tap of cloth shoes and a staff.

Then, Pure Vanilla asked, “Are you going upstairs again?”

Shadow Milk scoffed loudly, “Oh I don’t know, what do you think?”

The healer said nothing in reply.

Reaching the top, Shadow Milk stood at the edge of the gap between the first and second floors. With a huff, he activated the dual spell circle cards he’d hidden in his sleeves. The magic coursed through his dough. Lighter. Lighter. His feet lifted off the floor.

He stepped off the edge, allowing the spell to take him up towards the staircase on the other side. His landing was dignified, as it had been ever since he’d begun using the dual spell circles to supplement his magic deficits. Instead of a tumble, the click of his heels on rough stone was the only indication marking his ascent.

Far behind him, the light tap of Pure Vanilla’s footsteps came to a halt. Shadow Milk turned. The healer stood watching on the other side of the chasm, his heavy robes swaying gently to and fro. The look in his gentle eyes was something sad and noble, as if he weren’t simply failing to follow Shadow Milk upstairs, and was instead a bereaved widow sending his children off to war. Always saintly, always pure. Always perfect. (And still that fool couldn’t understand why they couldn’t be friends.)

Pure Vanilla lifted head. His eyes, blue and gold, gazed at him blurrily.

“Am I still not permitted to come with you?” Pure Vanilla said sadly.

”No,” Shadow Milk scowled.

“If you ever change your mind, I can h—”

“I won’t.”

Pure Vanilla’s eyes lowered.

The chasm between them stretched. Shadow Milk turned, resuming his ascent to the higher floors.

“Very well…” said Pure Vanilla softly. “Good night, Shadow Milk.”

Shadow Milk did not reply.

Chapter 8: Bonus illustration

A moment of kindness. And a moment of cruelty.

Chapter Text

The Fount of Knowledge’s steps rustled as he stepped through the flowering berry bushes. The Garden of Happiness was as lovely as ever, covered in vibrant berry trees and intricate candy flowers of the sweetest spun sugar.

“Sugar!” he called out to the mistress of the garden. “Sugar?”

“Ah, Knowledge!” came the familiar, airy voice. “What brings you to my garden?”

He turned. There, the Bringer of Happiness, Sugar, was lounging on a cotton candy cloud, her feathery wings fluttering lightly.

Lifting his staff, he summoned a piece of parchment from his other realm. The rolled up sheet drifted in Sugar’s direction. Lazily, she rolled over on her back as she took it in one hand, delicately unfurling it.

“A new order from the witches,” Knowledge summarized as she scanned the page through half lidded eyes. “A hero will rise from the Marshmallow Mountains. They’ll need a fruit of ambition.”

“Preferably of the altruistic kind,” Sugar finished for him, her eyes still fixed on the missive. “You’re in luck. The cookie that Volition sent to me last decade just so happened to be of the altruistic sort. The fruit his ambition bore was so beautiful! Altruistic, with a hope for a brighter future and the daring wit to do it.”

“That sounds perfect,” Knowledge approved. “Once you’ve sorted it out, please send a cherub to deliver it to the Spire within the week. Once I receive the fruit, I’ll locate Change and…”

“And he’ll do his thing and gift it to the hero. Yes, yes, I know how it goes,” Sugar interrupted with a hum. “Knowledge, dear, I may not be as clever as you, but I’m not that forgetful. You don’t have to repeat the process every time.”

“I know,” Knowledge chuckled wryly. “It’s just that some things still have to be said, even if you and I are familiar with all the details. After all, if anything goes wrong, I’m the one who’ll have to explain to the witches.”

He suppressed a shudder. Luckily, Sugar didn’t seem to notice, simply rolling back over on her cloud.

“Speaking of the witches…” she looked up at him. “Has my witch said anything? About me, that is. Does she… have anything to say about how I’m doing?”

“Lady Lachesis?” Knowledge frowned. “No, I don’t believe so.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Other than her anger at falling behind in the past few rounds of the board game, that is, but that was a bit of Knowledge he’d rather not burden Sugar, or any of his fellow Virtues, with.

Sugar sighed. Her feathers drooped.

“You speak to them regularly, don’t you, Knowledge?” she gazed at him sadly. “The Witches. Can’t you put in a good word for me? Tell her that the Garden of Happiness is heavily laden with beautiful Fruits of Ambition, and her Sugar of Happiness misses her very, very much.”

Knowledge chuckled, his eyes soft.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he lied. “No promises though.”

Sugar closed her eyes and hummed.

“That’s alright. As long as she answers one day, I can wait however long it takes.”

A mysterious, magic draining hole was far from the most dangerous thing Shadow Milk had encountered. Even if the hole was bottomless, unprecedented, and quite possibly sentient, it likely still wouldn't make his top 10. Not when its competitors were the exciting options of (A) trying to kill gods (B) trying to escape timeout after failing to kill said gods, and the absolute, most dangerous: (C) striking deals with his very sheltered, very ungrateful siblings. What could he say? When you had eternity, you were bound to run into things like this sometime or another. 

Though admittedly, all those times he’d been in the prime of his power, or at least, the prime of persuasive prowess. Now, with stunted magic and the athleticism of a potato, there was a lot more he had to prepare before jumping down the hole.

First and foremost: an emergency escape. Working around the limited flexibility of magic circles, he’d managed to cobble together a fairly standard one way recall teleport. One convoluted magic circle array up by the entrance, and the essential activation sigil in his pocket (with two additional backups. You could never be too careful.) With just a slight push of magic into that sigil, he'd be teleported straight back up to the array.

Second: A way to collect and transmit data. He had his trusty sticks of chalk up his sleeve and the optimized version of his data collection sigils for this purpose in his head. Spatial stability, magic flow and concentration, coordinates… just anything that might be useful, really. And, in case there weren’t any solid walls to draw on down there, a stack of paper, some with the corresponding spell circles already drawn in advance.

And last but not least: utility spells. Just anything he thought he’d need, that he’s usually handle by casting spells on the spot. Drawn on little slips of paper and hidden in the depths of his puffy sleeves, he had enough for a whole arsenal. There was a simple light orb, his new favorite spell circles that let him float and accelerate in different directions like how he usually liked to move, and a few flashbangs and illusions. Not that he was anticipating finding any hostile creatures down the hole, but just in case he did, he was equipped with enough flashy tricks to scare them off. (Nothing other than himself lived in his other realm. Nothing! It didn't matter if it belonged to Dark Enchantress now).

All his preparations for Shadow Milk’s first “down the rabbit hole” expedition were complete. All except for one.

Arguably the most troublesome one.

With an irritated grumble, Shadow Milk slammed the lid on the saucepan in front of him. Through the sugar-glass of the lid, his own crumbs could be seen burbling merrily in a pool of soda water. Up above, fractured light streamed down on him through stained glass windows, coloring the surrounding bookshelves in gemlike fractals of blue and gold.

Candy Apple Cookie’s red and black cooking set, one that she often used for simmering the syrups she put in her hair, looked very out of place in the library. So did Black Sapphire’s fancy bejeweled fountain pen, which Shadow Milk had spelled into an auto-brailler. The repurposed stylus was now punching little dots into some cream colored card paper, tirelessly transcribing shelf after shelf of the Fount’s literary garbage.

Shadow Milk scowled at the setup. How insulting! Him, the ex-Fount of Knowledge, the one of a kind genius, the Master of Deceit, the soon-to-be first witch slayer – stuck babysitting an overgrown doormat that would sooner cast an archmage tier healing spell than feed himself! 

On the left, exhibit A: lunchboxes for the ancient baby. On the right, exhibit B: metaphorical pacifiers for the ancient baby.

And yet it had to be done, if his expedition was to be truly successful. With how his tracking spell had fallen for 5 whole hours only to be destroyed, Shadow Milk anticipated being down in the hole for at least a day. Multiple days, if there were any unprecedented findings. That meant multiple days that Pure Vanilla would be left to his own devices.

Who knew what kind of nonsense Pure Vanilla could get up to on his own! Shadow Milk now knew fully why the fool’s little friends fussed over him so much. For a healer, Pure Vanilla was not very conscientious of his own mortality. Shadow Milk was beginning to suspect that “forgetting to eat” was not a one time occurrence. He was already delivering three meals a day, at the same time each day, and still, Pure Vanilla managed to be surprised 2 of those three times.

(“Oh my,” he’d said demurely. “Is it lunch time already?”

“Uh, yeah?” Shadow Milk replied. “Not sure if you got the memo, but normal cookies usually start feeling hungry 4 hours after breakfast.”

“Hmm…” mused Pure Vanilla, looking down at his own stomach and patting it. “I suppose I am a little hungry.”

“You suppose?” Shadow Milk echoed incredulously.

Pure Vanilla laughed sheepishly.)

No doubt if Shadow Milk just left without at least supplying the healer with a few days of rations, he’d come back to find a starved, dehydrated corpse on the floor. And what a travesty of a hero that would be! If Pure Vanilla was destined to crumble, it would be in a grand battle of magic at the hands of Shadow Milk. As his stepping stone to greater heights, his first nemesis on his path to defy Fate. And not due to stupid, preventable reasons like forgetting to eat.

And for that purpose, Shadow Milk had practically skinned both his arms and his calves in order to get enough dough for three day’s worth of breakfast, lunch and dinner. Even now, after he’d cast his own low level healing spell just so he could actually move and get things done, it was still hurting! Really, Vanilly ought to be grateful he was putting himself through all this! (From past experience, though, Shadow Milk knew better than to hope for any gratitude. Sacrifices weren’t sacrifices when it’s what’s expected of you, after all. Like how a servant was expected to bend over backwards to see his master’s will done, or how an elder brother was expected to protect his younger sibling. The bare minimum was not entitled to gratitude. Buuuut on the plus side, it would make a good insult. “The great Hero of Truth, as ungrateful as the Beasts themselves! We aren’t so different after all!” Ah, Shadow Milk could just picture the look on Vanilly’s face as he falls for the guilt tripping yet again!)

Though Pure Vanilla still was conscientious in another way. Most concerningly, in prodding Shadow Milk for information about upstairs in various different wordings.

Which was what the auto brailler was for.

He left the saucepan to simmer and wandered over to the transcribing table. There, a complicated array of spells and magic circles had been drawn on the surface of the table in chalk, dictating the entire transcription process. To pick a book from the shelf, to open it, to pick a card paper, to transcribe the contents of the page in braille, to flip the page, to pick another card paper…

All this work. All this – ugh! – proper witch-approved knowledge. All of it was to occupy Pure Vanilla with something he could sit still and do while Shadow Milk wasn’t around to keep an eye on his meddling. Hopefully, if Shadow Milk showed up with a stack of books written in braille and said that maybe there were clues inside, but oh he couldn’t read braille, what a crying shame~. Hopefully, Pure Vanilla, in all his philanthropistic nature, would fall for the bait and stay put reading while he was gone.

And hopefully, having something to do would pacify his growing interest in going upstairs. It usually was with aging cookies that had too much free time on their hands after retirement. They wanted to feel useful, wanted to work, even though not working was the whole point of retirement. Shadow Milk had found that keeping them busy was the best remedy for that senile depression. Give them any meaningless task, smile sweetly and tell them that it would be oh so helpful if they could do this for him. And instantly, sense of purpose restored, perfectly happy again!

(Ugh, lower beings really were so simple and dull.)

What a chore. It was insulting how mortal and needy his supposed replacement was. He could be investigating by now. He could be out of here by now. But noo, he had to make sure Vanilly didn’t do anything that would ruin all his plans. Again.

The stack of completed transcriptions had been left piled up on a side table. In order to look the part, each stack had been bound neatly with thread and given a nice, clothbound hard cover. Having needed card paper for the pages, each book was egregiously thick, resembling a slab of concrete more than a book. And since the Fount had been a yapper already, that made the transcribed books doubly thick.

He looked them over, picking out a stack of the thickest, most obscure textbooks. An “Advanced Guide to Potions and Alchemy”, an outdated “2000-Years of Cookie Civilization”, a Beast Yeast pharmacopoeia, and a few folklore collections, y'know just in case Vanilly decided encyclopedias weren’t worth his effort. Ah, and how could he forget the Summonings and Bindings volume of his Guide to Magic? A nice, passive aggressive insult, Shadow Milk snickered to himself as he added it to the pile, to remind Pure Vanilla just how horribly wrong he’d gotten his scrying spell!

Turning the topmost book over, he quickly scribbled a levitation spell on the cover and reassigned it to the bottom of the pile. Activating the spell, he was able to easily slide the books off the table to hover lightly in the air.

By then, the cauldron of gruel was ready. Shadow Milk left the chosen books to float and hurried back over to turn the heat off. He thanked his past self for gifting Candy Apple a cooking set sturdy enough to last till today, and pretty enough for her to keep in her room like a prized possession. It was much safer to prepare the gruel upstairs rather than down in the potions workshop like before, where Pure Vanilla could just walk in any time and discover the truth of what Shadow Milk had been feeding him.

The same applied to Sapphy’s fountain pen. Of course, the pen’s nib wasn’t designed to take the abuse of stabbing card over and over again like a normal stylus was, but unfortunately Shadow Milk didn’t have any styluses just lying around. If it broke, too bad. It might be Black Sapphire’s pen, but Black Sapphire was Shadow Milk’s minion (And he was! Regardless of how it ended!). Shadow Milk’s stuff belonged to Shadow Milk, and his minions’ stuff belonged to him too. That was just how being a minion worked. Privacy, freedom and possessions were a grace that he was not obligated to honor. If you didn’t want that, then maybe think twice before selling your soul!

He ladled the gruel into nine jars he’d picked up from one of the storerooms earlier. Then, on second thought, grabbed the fountain pen and some excess card paper to label the jars by time of day Pure Vanilla was supposed to eat them. He made a mental note to put them in the main atrium in the most inconvenient place. Preferably right in the doorway, so Pure Vanilla would trip over them if he even dared to forget.

Satisfied with his preparations, he added the jars on top of the stack of books and began making his way down the stairs, pushing the levitating stack in front of him like a tea tray.

Shadow Milk’s suspicions always proved themselves true eventually, and this time was no exception.  For when he reached the gap between the first and the second floor, a certain unwelcome someone was nosing around.

Pure Vanilla was kneeling at the edge of the precipice. His hair rippled down over his back in a cascade of gold. His eyes were shut, lashes fluttering with thought. His posture was the same as the one he’d taken when he was crowned all those centuries ago. Kneeling on one knee, with his head bowed towards the floor. Except instead of a brightly lit chapel, it was at the edge of a dark, crumbling staircase. And instead of a vanilla scented sceptre, he had a hat stand covered in eyes. With one hand pressed against the wall and the other on the farthest end of his stick, he was engrossed in tapping away probingly at the bumps and cracks in the unstable ground before him.

Shadow Milk stepped casually off the edge of the platform. The dual spell circles stuck up his sleeves activated at his command, glowing a soft blue. Silently, he floated across the chasm, still pushing his baggage in front of him.

The end of Pure Vanilla’s hat stick was jabbing at the jagged edges of where the stone met air. Shadow Milk considered grabbing the end of it and yanking it towards the edge. He considered the imagery with a smirk. Not enough to fall (crumbling from a fall was only slightly less idiotic than crumbling from starvation), but just enough for Vanilly to feel the pull of gravity and wipe that stupid serene look off his face. Even better if it scared him away from the stairs for good. A little reminder to not tempt Fate.

He was just reaching his hand out when Pure Vanilla, without any warning, looked up.

“Hello there, Shadow Milk,” Pure Vanilla said, his eyes opening to reveal gentle gold and blue.

Damn. He could have sworn he’d been absolutely silent. Shadow Milk retracted his hand.

“Well lookie here, what’s our silly little cookie doing so far up?” he replied, masking the disappointment with a patronizing tone. “Aren't you scared you’ll trip and fall? Get a little booboo?”

“I am a little afraid,” Pure Vanilla only smiled infuriatingly. “Which is why I’m letting my stick do the exploring for me, as you see.”

He waved the hat stand at Shadow Milk. The gesture was casual. Friendly. The imagery put a sick feeling in Shadow Milk’s mouth. It seemed like his subtle warning with the scrambled notes had gone ignored in the end. No, not just ignored. Ridiculed. Or else, why would Pure Vanilla be poking around the stairs again so soon after Shadow Milk had warned him? And why else would he be so cheery?

The stack of books in his hands felt heavy, despite how they realistically should weigh no lighter than a feather with the levitation spell. All of a sudden, it felt like none of these preparations mattered. The food, the excuses, the distractions. Like no matter what he did, his plans would just fall through anyway. His teeth gritted.

Pure Vanilla. Always being a nuisance. Always responding to the world with infuriating naivety and then somehow getting rewarded for it. Always a doormat, but only if the person asking wasn’t Shadow Milk, because apparently Shadow Milk’s warnings were less impactful, his wishes less important than any lowly, random stranger Pure Vanilla saw on the street.

Always, always getting in his way.

His lip curled, his scowl twisting itself into a nasty smile.

“But exploring for… what, exactly?” Shadow Milk tilted his head. Then further, till his view of Pure Vanilla was skewed sideways.

Pure Vanilla visibly stiffened. The movement of his hat stand slowed, then stopped. “Pardon?”

“Don't you remember, Nilly?” his nonchalant tone took on a warning edge. “What I said we were going to do on the first day, hmmm?”

“That we were going to… stay here and plan?” Pure Vanilla fidgeted. “Wait for Dark Enchantress to let her guard down?”

“Yes. Precisely. And did I say we had to explore?”

“No…”

“Did I say that going upstairs was essential?”

“Um…”

“Then do answer me. I’m positively dying to know,” said Shadow Milk flatly. “Why are you so intent on crossing this gap?”

“I… I uhh,” Pure Vanilla stammered, clambering to his feet.

“It seems to me that you are planning for something very different from I,” Shadow Milk drifted closer. “Care to share with the class?”

“I just… you were spending a lot of time up there,” the words spilled out of Pure Vanilla’s mouth in a frightened ramble even as he began backing away. “It’s been nearly a week since we got here and still no news so I was getting worri–”

“Excuses!”

Shadow Milk deactivated his floating spell. His entire weight bore down on the heel of his shoe as he drove it into Pure Vanilla’s chest. The stack of books, displaced by his sudden movement, toppled to the ground with a crash. Books plummeted over the edge. Loose pieces of card broke free from their binds and scattered across the steps like fallen leaves. The jars of gruel plinked as they rolled and clanked against one another. One of them broke with a loud crash, littering the landing with glinting shards and the sickening, purple ooze.

(Wasted efforts. Wasted concerns. But what was new? It was always going to be wasted in the end.)

Pure Vanilla crashed to the ground. Shadow Milk’s heel dug mercilessly into the spot between his clavicle and his neck as he drove his entire weight into that single point. The healer’s expression was pained, his eyelids fluttering with hazy confusion.

Shadow Milk reached out one clawed hand, and grabbed Pure Vanilla’s hair. The silken, golden locks felt smooth between his fingers. Like a fine tapestry that he was ruining. He yanked upwards, bringing Pure Vanilla’s face up to meet his.

“Listen up, wise guy,” he snarled, glaring into those hazy, blue and gold eyes. “I know what you’re up to. And I will only say this once.”

Pure Vanilla’s eyes were blown wide in fright.

“This may be a temporary truce,” Shadow Milk continued. “But we are not friends. We are not even allies. When we’re outside again, I will take back what’s mine. And then, I will kill you. And then I will kill your precious little friends. Not even the witches you pray to each night will be able to save you, because I will kill them too. If you want to live a little while longer, then stop with that sickening act of yours.”

Shadow Milk released his grip on Pure Vanilla’s hair. He floated backwards, back up towards the other side of the chasm. Pure Vanilla sat up and rubbed his neck. His long hair drooped in twisted strands in front of his face, shielding his expression in darkness.

“This is your last warning,” Shadow Milk snarled. “Behave. Stay on the ground floor. And stop. Following. Me.”

He landed on the other side and stormed back upstairs. He did not look back to see the expression Pure Vanilla was making.

***

Pure Vanilla sat in a daze on the landing. His hair was dishevelled. His heart was beating fast, his head still spinning from the shock of it all.

“Shadow Milk…” he said under his breath. The name felt bitter on his tongue, like poison.

The cruelty in the jester’s tone. It was so familiar, and yet it felt strange. Not the light hearted mockery, not the giggling jokes, but real, pointed cruelty. He realised belatedly that this was the first time he’d been hearing that old cruelty since they’d gotten stuck here.

He’d forgotten it, albeit momentarily, amidst the bitter-sweetness of the warm gruel and the banter at the table. He’d forgotten it, as those mismatched blue eyes had receded into a blurry blot, and he could pretend that the one sitting across from him had a heart as pretty as his voice. He’d forgotten that this was a beast he was stuck together with.

The beast that had harmed his flock. The beast that had corrupted his most precious memories.

His trembling fingers brushed against something cold. Pure Vanilla started. Feeling further, his fingers closed against a glass jar. It was heavy as he cupped it in both hands. He ran his fingers across the surface, feeling cold glass and…

He paused.

A label. Written in braille. The bumps leapt into his head as words as he ran his trembling thumb over the card over and over again.

“Day 1. Breakfast.”

The air smelled of that familiar scent.

He found more jars.

“Day 2. Dinner.”

“Day 1. Lunch.”

“Day 3. Dinner.”

Feeling around more, he found books. Many books. Books that were crumpled by the fall, loose pages that had been dislodged from their owners. Textbooks, guides, fairytales. All of them were bound in hardcover by a silky thread, their pages made of smooth card paper. All of them were in braille. 

Holding the 8th Volume to the Guide of Magic in his lap, he stared blankly down as he sat amidst the wreckage at the top of the stairs.

He didn’t understand it.

He didn’t understand anything.

But one thing was certain.

Nothing had changed. He still had to go up.

Chapter Text

Once upon a time, when the City of Wizards still existed in the physical realm, there was a kingdom of numbers. The Vineyard Kingdom, it was called. Mathematics held a holy place in this kingdom, and young cookies learned the language of numbers before they did that of words. Legends say that its founder was a wise mathematician named Merlot Cookie, who had been born from a wizard’s grape cultivation experiments to produce the perfect flavor of wine.

But of course, that was nonsense. Why would a group of humans obsessed with nothing but the cosmos be interested in perfecting wine? If anything, that sort of frivolous revelry had always been more of the witches’ domain than the wizards. The Vineyard Kingdom had divine numbers simply because the High Witches’ endless board game had meandered towards that outcome.

“Blessing of Wisdom,” High Witch Leah had declared as she played her card. The card had flown to land above a tile showing the image of a grape-flavoured cookie bent on one knee, a silver crown being lowered onto her head.

“Gift a Boon of Knowledge of the contents of your choosing for 3 turns,” Knowledge had recited meekly. “Tile effects will double while the Boon is active. The chosen Boon is…?”

“Golden Ratio.”

“As you wish, my lady.”

And just like that, Knowledge had passed the instructions and an inheritor spell carrying the relevant knowledge to the Herald of Change, who had then descended on Merlot Cookie’s coronation day to deliver the witches’ gift in the name of Change. Since then, the Vineyard Kingdom became the cradle of precision, geometry, and statistics.

And yet, not all cookies of the Vineyard Kingdom were avid fans of facts and mathematics. Standing in the main square next to the entrance of a museum, with a rolled up newspaper in one hand, was a little boy no older than 10. His dark hair was fluffy, and his purple dough shone with good health. His eyes bright, he’d tell stories upon his makeshift stage outside the city museum.

“Hear, hear!” He’d call out at the passing pedestrians. “Today’s story is about how a garden snake stole the apple of truth from the Fount of Knowledge himself!”

The boy told many stories. Some were about grand adventures, others moving tragedies. Some of the passing cookies would stop to listen, curious to hear the news of the cookies outside the Kingdom. And yet, the moment they realized it was merely a story made up by the child, their faces would fall, their eyebrows would furrow, and they’d walk away.

“Don't spread misinformation like that,” kinder cookies would lecture the boy. “When you deliver news, it's impertinent to get all the facts right.”

“But it's a story!” The boy would protest. “It’s not supposed to be taken as news.”

The adults would only sigh, shake their heads, and leave. His peers would whisper to one another whenever they saw him, saying things like, “Aren’t stories just fake news?” and “My mom says to stay away from Black Sapphire Cookie” and “don’t make him mad, he’ll start spreading lies about you!”

But the boy never gave up telling his stories. For many long days, the boy had only the wind and the crows for an audience. Until one day, someone stopped before his stage.

An elderly cookie with white hair and a long, flowing beard. He didn't look to be from the Vineyard Kingdom, his dough lacking the characteristic grape flavor of their people. Passing through the square, his steps had slowed as he saw the boy from a distance, only to hobble closer and cock his head to listen. Eager to please his sole listener, the boy serenaded the old man with his best, proudest tales. Every so often, he broke off to look up at the old man, to see if his expression had changed, or if he were about to walk away. But the old man stayed, smiling serenely. Even as the sun was beginning to go down, the old man still remained before the youth, having listened through every single one of his stories.

The adrenaline of all the storytelling finally exhausted at last, the boy suddenly felt a twinge of timidness towards this elderly stranger.

“Thank you for listening, Mister,” he said shyly. “I have to go home now, or my mom will be mad that I’m late for dinner.”

“No, thank you, my boy, for telling me such wonderful stories,” the old man chuckled. “But I must ask, why stories? Isn't it tiring, telling them in this place where stories are seen as lies?”

“Because stories are fun!” The boy chirped. “The people here just don't get it. When I grow up, I’m going to go somewhere where cookies understand how great stories are, and become the best storyteller in the world!”

“But what if you don't find that somewhere?” The old man tilted his head.

“Huh?” The boy stared.

“What if I told you that the cookies outside are all the same as the ones here?” The elder’s blue and gold eyes gazed at the boy searchingly. “That no matter where you go, nobody will understand your stories. What would you do then, my boy? Would you give up on storytelling?”

The boy thought for a moment, then raised his head.

“No,” he said. “I’d still tell stories. I tell stories because I like telling them. If I stopped telling them just because nobody listens, then it'd be just like lying! But lying to me, and not other cookies. Or something. And… and also, my dad says that Earthbread is huge! If I go far enough, I’m bound to find someone that gets it. I’ll just keep looking, and when I do, I’ll tell them my stories. Like you, Mister!” He beamed up at the old man. “I’ve been standing here for ages and ages, and today you stopped to listen!”

The old man’s eyes softened.

“A naive and hopeful answer,” his voice was light. “But I like that. It's only right that their creations live lives full of hope.”

There was a gentle flare of blue light. The old man’s features shifted. White hair became silky blue locks, wrinkled dough became smooth. A downwards starry mark painted itself above the cookie’s brow, and long, sweeping robes replaced the simple traveller’s garb. The unfamiliar cookie gazed gently upon the stunned boy, gold and blue eyes twinkling.

“Black Sapphire Cookie, would you like to attend my academy?” smiled the Fount of Knowledge.

***

Shadow Milk stormed up the stairs in a huff. His steps echoed loudly in the empty upper floors of the Spire. His breaths were ragged, and this time, not just because of the exercise. Pure Vanilla’s wide eyed, fearful expression as he backed away from him clung to his mind, like an accusatory brand that wouldn't leave. 

He waved it away. Curse Pure Vanilla! He could starve to death for all Shadow Milk cared!

He was done with all this! All this planning, caution, fretting over some stupid, lowly, insignificant cookie! He was going down that hole and resolving this mess once and for all!

Reaching the third floor, he made a beeline for the entrance. The gap in the wall was just as he remembered it. Looming, crumbling, void of all light.

The clack of his steps slowed, only to hasten again with renewed determination.

Curse it all!

The crumbling sugar bricks rattled beneath his feet as he reached the edge. He didn't stop, lest he change his mind. He just jumped.

His stomach flew up into his chest as he plummeted. If his mind weren't so preoccupied, he might have found the sense of weightlessness during the first few seconds of the drop exhilarating and nostalgic. His levitation spell circle might be helping with the stairs, but it was still strenuous to keep up floating for longer than a minute, let alone attempt to fly like he usually did. But unfortunately, the pseudo sensation of flying again was thoroughly overshadowed by the haunting image of hanging golden curls, and gentle eyes marred with fear.

(The sight of that fear didn't bring him joy this time. Not like back then in the real Spire, when he was in his element and the Soul Jam was the only thing he’d wanted from Pure Vanilla. It just wasn't the same. There was no sense of power to this. No victory. No superiority. No genius. Just a hollow emptiness that spoke of his own weakness. Of his lack of control. Over his Other Realm. Over Pure Vanilla. Over himself.)

Shadow Milk gritted his teeth. The acceleration spell circle in his sleeve whirred to life in a blur of blue. His drop morphed into an active nosedive, sending him shooting downwards.

He couldn't wait to be out of this place. Back to full power, back on track, back to normal.

Soon, he’d left the light of the opening behind. The darkness swallowed him up, cloaking his vision in darkness.

Or it would, if Shadow Milk wasn’t prepared. With a flick of his wrist, he pulled another spell circle from his sleeve. The piece of paper burst into a brilliant blue fireball at his command, following over his shoulder as he sped on downwards. Its azure flames flickered off the walls, sending his lone shadow dancing in the cold light against the stones.

And so, armed with a couple slips of paper and the weakest fireball he’d ever had the disgrace of conjuring, Shadow Milk headed down.

Down.

Down.

Down.

It was at some point in the long journey downwards that Shadow Milk snapped out of his angry internal tirade about Pure Vanilla and came to a sudden realization.

A very sudden, very horrifying realisation.

See, Shadow Milk may have considered the other realm to be like a home to him, but there were still parts of it that he rarely frequented, if at all. Like the attic or the cellar, he’d hardly ever visited the areas of his other realm beyond a certain point. After all, portal making and scrying could be done fairly easily in the shallower areas, with no need to venture all the way into the depths. Though, there was once that he’d tried.

It had been sometime during his imprisonment in the Silver Tree, before Pure Vanilla had gotten hold of the other half of his Soul Jam and drawn Shadow Milk’s attention. Probably even before Pure Vanilla had been baked. He wasn’t sure how long it had been exactly, but by then, the roots of the silver tree had grown enough to completely envelop his physical body, so that he could no longer see the wretched, waking world, could no longer hear the resentment of his fellow Beasts.

It was at some point near the beginning of that long solitude, that he’d decided to properly recede into his mind and send his soul venturing into the depths of his other realm. What had been the catalyst for it? Maybe it was the boredom. Maybe it was the need to defy the witches’ will of shackling him, even if only a little bit. Or maybe it was the sense that the real world was just so shit that wandering forever into an endlessly stretching mindscape sounded more appealing than staying. But who cared about reasons anyway? Shadow Milk certainly didn’t.

Regardless, into the other realm he had gone. Even with just half of his Soul Jam, the other realm had responded to him as it had in the past. He’d picked a direction and began floating leisurely off into the abyss to the company of the blinking blue sigils. It had been days of this floating, days of this meandering through empty space, before he had been stopped. Forced to abort the adventure of floating in a straight line forever, and having to turn back.

For there, in the deepest depths of his other realm, was an invisible wall.

It was not a wall in the physical sense. No, it was a mental wall. One that he could not break with force, nor climb over with wit. He Knew, and that Knowledge commanded him. It was a Knowledge that had been embedded into the very essence of his Soul Jam, that, much like his dominion over Dark Moon Magic, could not be uprooted despite his fall from grace.

The edge of the world.

Of course, he had tried to get past it. He’d been trapped for eternity anyway, why not see what was beyond the edge of the world? But he hadn’t been able to. The command stopped him, the only insurmountable Truth left in his Soul Jam of Deceit. Forbidding him from moving an inch further. For his own good or simply because the witches commanded it, he didn't know.

And yet now, hundreds of years in the future. Soul Jam-less, powerless, ignorant, Shadow Milk plummeted downwards. As his acceleration spell sped up what was once several days’ worth of slow wandering to an hour-long blast, his passage was smooth sailing. By now, he should have long since passed the point marking the edge of the world. And yet…

There was no wall.

There was no subconscious command. There was no invisible force pushing him back. There was nothing. Nothing preventing him from continuing to drop, falling nigh unknowingly past the edge of the world.

By now, his ire had completely switched targets, his prior frustration towards Pure Vanilla’s taking a backseat in the face of this new development.

Dark Enchantress Cookie… What had she done to his other realm? 

Shadow Milk poured more magic into the acceleration spell, shooting even faster through the darkness. Despite having left the hypothetical edge of the world behind, for a long while, there was no change in the scenery. Still dark, still well-like, still uneventful. And yet, something began to change.

There was a light ahead. Not the blue fireball that hung by Shadow Milk’s side, but a dim, ghostly prick of light far in the distance. Shadow Milk set his acceleration spell to reverse, allowing his breakneck speed to slow as he approached the end of the long drop.

The pinprick of light grew larger, closer, until at last, Shadow Milk found himself descending into a large cavern.

To call the hemispherical cavern large was an understatement. It was the kind of colossal that completely dwarfed a cookie’s existence. It was so large that its diameter was tenfold the length of the room that the High Witches played their board game in. It was so large that all the witches on Earthbread, and all the wizards too, could probably stand armspan to armspan, and still have a surplus of room.

The ghostly light that Shadow Milk had seen during his descent came from the cavern itself. Crystal surfaces smooth as glass made up the sloping walls of the cavern, glowing a gentle, pale blue. Moonstone. All of it. The most he had ever seen gathered in one place, condensed of the essence purer than any of the moonstone fragments found on Earthbread.

But the most notable feature of the cavern was not the moonstone walls, nor the sheer magnitude of the space. No. It was the pit.

In the center of the cavern was a hole. Even as Shadow Milk descended from above, he could not see far into it. It was as if the darkness of the hole were eating up all the light from the moonstone walls, to the point where it resembled more a lake of tar than a hole. This hole occupied most of the floor space in the cavern, with only a narrow ledge along the walls to mark its contours.

Shadow Milk drifted slowly downwards, descending onto the part of the ledge directly underneath him. His heels made a hollow clicking as they came into contact with the moonstone floor. The click rang out loud as a bell amidst the deathly silence of this place. Looking up, the crystalline walls melted into a dome of stars at the top of the cavern. There was no sign of the opening he’d dropped down from.

He surveyed the cavern with narrowed eyes. His own breathing was loud in his ears.

The gentle blue glow of the walls, the crystalline fractals of the moonstone. The lake of shadows and the starry sky above. The scene in front of him was serene, calm, still. Beautiful, almost. And yet, he didn’t trust it.

He didn’t quite know how to describe it. There was nothing wrong that he could directly observe, nothing objectively threatening. And yet it felt wrong. The air, the quiet, the shadows. All of it felt off in a way that he couldn’t explain. His dough prickled with discomfort.

He refused to believe that he was paranoid. He was better than that (He wasn’t, but that was beside the point). Not to mention, this was where his magic had been draining to. There had to be something. Some loose thread in this immaculate tapestry. He just had to find it.

Slowly, carefully, he pulled out the sigils that he’d prepared earlier. The sound of paper brushing against each other was near maddening. Magic detection, spatial stability, air flow… one by one, he attached the relevant pieces of paper to appropriate spots on the wall. They whirred to life as he activated them, automatically beginning to draw from the ambient magic and taking measurements.

He made his way around the circumference of the cavern, sticking his sigils in different positions to get a broader sample of data. With the cavern being so damn big, it took forever to make a round trip even with his flying spells helping him along, let alone to stick all these sigils to the wall. He’d barely covered a quarter of the cavern when his prepared sigils ran out, leaving him to scribble sigils on the fly.

He made sure to space them as evenly as he could, making use of the maximum range each sigil had to cover the gigantic distance. It was tedious, and horrifically boring, but he didn’t dare slack off on the setup. The key to his magic problems, the key to returning to the real world – it had to be here. He couldn’t afford to leave even the tiniest spot.

(Maybe he shouldn’t have smashed the gruel jars, he thought somewhat guiltily. This was definitely going to take at least a day. Knowing Nilly, he was going to agonise over Shadow Milk’s words and forget to feed himself again…)

No wait, no! Shadow Milk smacked the side of his head with his palm. No, no, no he wasn’t feeling guilty. He wasn’t! It wasn’t any of his business if Pure Vanilla decided to be stupid! In fact, it was beneath him! Pure Vanilla was beneath him! He should concentrate on the task at hand.

All of a sudden, there was a shift in the air. Shadow Milk’s head snapped up. Along the walls, his sigils lit up, responding to the disruption in a synchronized hum. His dilated pupils darted about, attempting to trace the disturbance, but with his magic sensitivity stunted, he couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from.

For a few moments, there was nothing but the ominous hum of his sigils, and the growing feeling that something was wrong.

Then.

A portal opened up.

Right in the center of the cavern, right above the hole. The space there split apart smoothly, as if it were silk being cut by a pair of sharp scissors. Green light spilled out through the opening. Then, the green light was blotted out by a massive shadow.

Shadow Milk’s heart stuttered.

Through the portal came a hand. A giant, bony hand, with five crooked fingers twice as long as Shadow Milk’s height. The surface of the hand was covered in a leathery substance, softer and yet more durable than dough. Skin.

(He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. Despite how weak they felt, his limbs were locked in place, miraculously stopping him from collapsing to his knees. Despite the silence, his ears rung with a thousand bells. His heart thumped in his chest, being wrung like a towel by some invisible force. The pain was nothing compared to what he’d been through, but at the same time, it was agonising. Unbearable. His dough fluttered hot and cold at the same time. He felt faint. But still, he couldn’t draw his gaze away.)

The witch’s bony fingers were clenched around the rim of a giant plate. For a moment, it simply hung there, the witch’s hand holding the plate over the shadowy hole. Then, slowly, smoothly, the witch’s wrist turned.

The plate tilted. Off the edge came crumbs. Not just cookie crumbs, but also cakes, pudding, giant apple cores and fruit peel. They fell like a thundering rainstorm, hailing down from the portal down into the pit. Where they were swallowed up by the darkness and could no longer be seen.

Shadow Milk watched through wide eyes as another hand clutching a fork came through the portal and scraped the plate of the scraps. Then, as suddenly as they’d come, the hands withdrew. The rip in space sealed itself closed, taking the bony hands, the plate and the ghastly green light with it.

And once more, there was nothing but silence.

For a long time, Shadow Milk didn’t move. He couldn’t move, his limbs still locked in place, his eyes fixed on the spot where the portal had opened and closed. His erratic breathing was so loud now that there was just him and the silence. Shamefully loud. Shamefully cowardly. Shamefully weak.

Until finally, the spell broke.

Slowly, distantly, Shadow Milk leaned to slump against the wall. His hair was drenched in cold sweat. He lifted his hands to wipe his brow, only to find that they were shaking.

A choked laugh made its way out from the depths of his throat, then another. All of a sudden, he was laughing. He was gaffawing, chortling, his laughter forcing itself out of his mouth with frenetic energy. He clutched his stomach and collapsed, his wheezing laughter like a pair of broken bellows forced to puff.

Oh. Oh, how funny. How ironic.

How pathetic.

Chapter Text

Okay so like Beast Yeast Ep 11 Holy shit????

That was a lot. The biggest fucking lore bomb. This has to be the first Beast cookie whose past was actually shown in detail. And like yeah absolutely the theory that silent salt was the traitor among the beasts is 100%. I'm going to retreat from searching for shadow milk art on twitter because I can anticipate a surge of smilk hate and calls for death within the next 24 hours to one week. As if we didn't know he was a mastermind type villain since the start. Hah, people are funny.

I really liked the lore given. It fits the virtue of solidarity quite well, and the kala namak knights' downfall was mmm very tasty. Silent salt is uhh... less morally grey than I'd hoped? But I can appreciate the backstory here. I also like how the idea of how history was distorted carried through. But honestly Elder faerie you could have fucking told white lily all this, like he was there when pretty much all of it went down.

My biggest gripe with the story though is that they fucking baited dark enchantress cookie like excuse me where's the in depth white lily internal conflict? Where's the introspection? Lore is very welcome and all but come on. And also the witches are still irrelevant to the story WHEEZE because turns out silent salt did the sealing and the witches are still nowhere to be fucking seen.

Honestly of all the beasts to be canonically redeemed silent salt is probably the most likely, I can definitely see it happening. I do worry though. Hoping and praying that if/when the other beasts die they're given like, a graceful end? Like appropriately dramatic and tragic, the type where you feel bad but also are relieved that they're gone. If devsis pulls a villain of the week ahh ending with the "oh noo, how could this be, my power noooo" and then they die I'm going to seriously crash the fuck out. The fact that it's entirely possible haunts me.

Also charcoal cookie is very mmmm. He honestly fits the quota for the characters I usually zero in on as my favourite rather than Shadow Milk. You know, middle aged, probably depressed guy. The beard sells it. Only thing missing is the borderline villainous trait, which is arguably the most important attribute to being my favourite character in any piece of media. Ah, but too bad for charcoal cookie, added to the game too late. Shadow Milk still lives rent free in my head.

Okay but that was mainly my thoughts on the main story, now we move to the next problem: How canon compliant are we staying?

I want to stay as canon compliant as possible, but now that we know for sure that the witches didn't do jack shit with the beasts, evidently, we're going to diverge from canon in that the witches were still the ones that sealed the beasts. I'm going to have to adjust my plans to allow the parts that can fit, fit, because I do like the challenge of trying to making what I want cobble together with canon. It's usually me trying to sidestep the rules like this that gives me the best plot points.

The theory that shadow milk caused the falls of all the beasts is looking very likely to be true, but I don't want to do that in this au. I want the beasts to fall on their own, and not just because smilk said so, because that just feels like a disservice to the character arcs I have planned for them.

Silent Salt's backstory, I'm going to keep as canon compliant as possible without changing too much of what I have planned. Because I really do like it, but I'll have to find a way to twist the Virtue so that so that the nobleness of the Kala Namak knights still serve the High Witches' vision in some way in this au. So in other words, Silent salt is not going to be the one who sealed the beasts, but I'll find a way to let elder faerie and him still have their involvement somehow.

Silent Salt mentioned in the story that his witch used to talk to him, but I'm not following that. Smilk in this au remains the only connection between the beasts and the witches.

The witches being plot relevant is probably going to be the biggest difference in this au when compared to canon. Smilk having witch trauma is not changing, nor is everything that he went through in my plans. But I'm going to add more villainous segments that hopefully echo to what we've seen him do in episode 11. Somehow. I don't think I have enough chapters to be able to fit all the memory segments I need without dragging out the main plot. So maybe it'll be like chapter 6, with a collection of those memories at the appropriate time. 

I didn't mention this in previous chapters, but I'm not following the lore from the doughael update. Pastry order's practices still exist, but they won't be feeding worshippers to the avatar of destiny because I need the avatar for a different purpose, and for that purpose it can't be sitting in the pastry order's basement. Similarly, with the cookie odyssey (which I recently just finished), Pure Vanilla's character development of "friendship and trust above all!!!" doesn't happen in this au simply because I don't like it. Dark Enchantress's attitude is also going to differ. I'm also not following the lore/popular opinion that Moonlight Cookie is literally the moon. Idk if I'll let her appear, but I need the moon for something else.

The virtues in this au don't have kingdoms. They only have domains that they stay in but no kingdoms. Kingdoms are ruled by regular cookies.

I'm glad there are "ancient witches" and regular witches canonically though, my 5 High Witches thing still holds water. And I'm glad that Sapphy was clearly still Smilk's minion back in the day. And that they talked a lot about fate. Fits my plans, alls good.

TLDR: Witches are still active and responsible, smilk is still traumatised, and still passes that trauma to everyone else, only thing that changes is how it happened and with the addition of a twisted version of silent salt's backstory factored in

Stuff I'm going to retcon:

Eternal sugar's creator is going to get a name switch. See because I had 6 names lined up for the potential witches, and was going to pick the between the remaining two when silent salt came out. But the one that ended up fitting most is also the one that's going to eliminate the one that I want to keep the most. This doesn't matter to you guys because there isn't a chapter that explains which witch made which beast yet except eternal sugar and mystic flour, but in my planning docs everyone's witch is going to get shuffled

The St Pastry Order memory in the earlier chapters is going to change names to be just a nameless witch cult.

Debating on whether I should change all mentions of virtues to "divine emissary" to fit the canon term that ssalt and elder faerie use.

The mention of the silver tree in chapter 12 is going to be edited so that it's already full grown when they were sealed in it.

And I didn't mention it before but I already did a retcon previously where knowledge's eyes are gold and blue instead of two different shades of blue like it was when I first started writing

AND TO MAKE UP FOR putting everyone through my extended ramble and disappointing you with the not a real update: Here, have a wip of a cover that I was working on because inspiration suddenly hit one day.

Should I make a twitter account for this story so I don't have to do this again the next time massive lore bomb drops lmao?