Chapter Text
Hands clasped in front of the stove, still coated in flour and sugar, she prayed for this to work.
"Please, please, please."
Her plea wasn't directed at any god in particular, but she'd run out of ideas. There was something lacking in all of the previous batches she'd tried so far. A missing spark.
Perhaps the universe itself held an answer.
"Please."
Above her whispers, she heard something rattle.
Opening her eyes, she looked towards the cabin door. No one was supposed to be here yet. She welcomed unexpected visitors with open arms, but the timing—
The rattle sounded again. It wasn't the door.
It was coming from the oven.
She looked back, hands unclasping as she reached for the latch. The fire still burned, and the metal would likely scorch her fingers, but she was past caring. Had she finally succeeded?
Had she created life?
BANG!
With a rush of heat and light, the oven sprang open. She pulled her hand back just before the hot metal could graze it, throwing her arm over her face before it was hit with the intensity of the fire.
In the same moment, she heard a tiny voice.
"I refuse to be eaten!"
With a gasp, she lowered her arm. Running across the counter top in front of her, golden brown dough sparkling in the light from the oven's flames, was a cookie.
A living cookie.
Frozen in awe, she watched. The small thing made its way over her baking tools, scaling her ingredient jars, finally reaching the windowsill. Without stopping, it took a leap, disappearing through the open window into a moonlit night.
She stared at the empty space where her creation had vanished. Tears of joy pricked the witch's eyes. Laughter bubbled out of her, uncontrollable.
The answer was obvious now. That was what she'd been missing. The final, most precious ingredient.
Bravery.
It had to be tonight.
The sliver of the crescent moon glowing through her dormitory window shone as bright as the midday sun. Her dough itched. If she missed this opportunity, she'd have to wait yet another month. She was tired of endless planning and theory crafting. All she needed was one more piece.
And nights like this were perfect for baking magic.
White Lily Cookie rolled over in bed, turning her back to the window and its tempting moon. She pulled the covers tighter around her. No, she hadn't thought everything through just yet. What if her hunch was wrong? What if she was caught? Could she afford to go all the way back to square one?
Unease settled over her like a second blanket as she stared at the wall, making her feel sick.
Is failure really that horrible a fate? a voice deep inside of her asked. Is it worse than the way that they ignore you?
Is it worse than his pity?
White Lily threw the covers back, sitting upright. Her mind was made up.
It would be tonight. For better or for worse.
She crossed the floor, slipping into her blue student robes. When her first roommate had begged for a room reassignment due to the smell, she'd hated how wide the room felt without another living presence to occupy it. But recently, it was a blessing. No witnesses to her late night excursions made her plans all the easier.
For the first time, she wondered how Pure Vanilla got away with it.
White Lily shook her head and headed for the door. No, she wasn't going to think about him. He hadn't stayed with her. He didn't want to continue the experiments.
As always, she'd have to find the answers she wanted on her own.
White Lily held the handle as she slipped outside, pulling the door shut against her back with a soft thump. Before her, the dorm hallway glowed underneath the light filtering in through the windows. The crescent moon had to be at its highest point in the sky for it to be this bright. White Lily took a breath, trying to still the fluttering in her chest.
She'd made the right choice. It had to be tonight.
Running through the halls of the Academy, footsteps soft, White Lily felt like an intruder. She'd grown used to dodging the teachers on night patrol and other students' not-so-secret night liaisons long ago, but tonight was different. The Blueberry Academy she knew was a light sleeper, but valued the quiet. If anyone opened an eye, it turned away by the next morning. There was no limit to what one could get away with if they maintained good grades while the rest of the student body was awake.
But tonight, the Academy felt like it was holding its breath, waiting for something.
Maybe it was just her own nerves. She hadn't encountered a single teacher on night patrol, nor any of the usual familiars that roamed the halls, looking for students breaking curfew. Perhaps it was sheer luck. No reason to assume something else was happening when the inherent chaos of the universe served as a perfect explanation.
Still, she needed to stay careful. White Lily caught a glimpse of herself in the passing windowpanes. Her hair glowed in the slices of moonlight, making her look like a ghost. And even if she weren't spotted, she was well aware of her other giveaway.
White Lily made up for her overwhelming scent with silence.
She was used to drawing into herself, smaller, quieter, less of a nuisance. She could hide herself in books and speak only when spoken to. Her knowledge could bridge the rest of the gap. She could make herself useful enough to be tolerated.
White Lily pressed close to the walls and the shadows as she moved to her destination. This part of her chosen extracurricular had proven to be second nature. She could find the truth in the hidden spaces that others overlooked, where she'd learned to hide.
And once she solved the mystery of this recipe—
White Lily ran the rest of the way down the hall to the Headmaster's observatory. Her resolve wavered with each step closer. Yes, it was the perfect night, but she didn't know for sure that the final piece lay inside. It was little more than an educated guess, stitched together from whispers between teachers in the hallways and strung between the lines in archaic historical texts. But White Lily had nothing else to work with.
She had to find whatever remained of the first Headmaster.
As far as recorded history was concerned, the founder of the Academy was acknowledged, yes. But aside from a symbolic portrait in a dusty hall, it was as if the world itself had forgotten them. How could the Cookie that brought magic to Earthbread only be a footnote? And if the whispers were right, the remnants of their soul still underpinned all the magic of the Academy. Someone like them had to be powerful enough to survive the process she'd read in the book.
And if a shade of them still existed here, it would have to be—
White Lily stopped in front of the observatory's door. She reached out for the handle, suddenly realizing she was shaking. This was going too well. Even with such good luck, White Lily felt dread wash over her. Something had to go wrong.
She wasn't used to anything else going right.
Wrapping her hands around the handle, she gave it a quick tug. Locked. Her shoulders eased as tension drained out of her with a sigh. Finally. Something expected.
"Bloom," she whispered towards the door lock.
Small, glowing vines spread from her hands, wrapping up the door handle and spiraling inside the lock. Her namesake flower blossomed from the center, catching the moon's rays for a moment before fading in a shower of sparks. White Lily pushed against the door. It swung open, the moonlight partially illuminating the stairs just beyond.
Maybe these random coincidences would hold for just a little bit longer.
She took light steps up the winding staircase, one hand tracing the wall as she spiraled upwards. The observatory doubled as the Headmaster's office. She'd been called there a handful of times—to be congratulated on her scores, to be offered the choice to skip a grade, and to be quietly chastised about missing class.
The last time had been a chance to look around more than anything else. White Lily was already well aware that the real knowledge was hidden away in the library. But if the rumors were true, and the first Headmaster was interred somewhere on campus grounds, where else would their dough have gone? They'd already been reduced to a symbol. Why not be put to rest with their title that was carried on to this day?
She reached the top of the stairs, her steps muffled as she crossed onto the carpeted floor. The office was more symbolic than functional, arranged around the observatory telescope, left primed as if anyone had used it in centuries. The Headmaster's cluttered desk was a sign of their active mind, but the other bookshelves and scrolls that lined the walls were dusty with disuse, settling into their role as ornaments.
White Lily headed behind the desk instead. She knew better than to disturb the piles of papers and research notes, but perhaps there was something else. A hidden switch perhaps. Maybe a trap door?
She ducked her head down behind the desk chair. Nothing but more dust.
Sighing, White Lily stood back up, glancing around the room. Maybe a hidden latch on one of the bookcases—
She froze.
Glowing in the moonlight on the blank wall above the staircase was a spell circle.
A crescent moon containing an unblinking eye.
White Lily almost forgot to breathe. She knew that symbol. It had shown up more than once during her research, with the same familiar stare as the blueberry beholders that watched over their hidden garden.
Dark Moon magic. Dangerous. Forbidden.
And on the wall of the Headmaster's office.
She'd chosen the right night.
White Lily approached with slow steps, staring up at the circle. How was she supposed to reach it? None of the bookshelves were close enough to climb to it. She knew the theory of levitation magic, but since it hadn't related to her research, she didn't know more than the basics. Cracking or destroying the wall would ruin the only clue she'd found.
White Lily stopped just before the first step down on the staircase, staring up at the circle, mind buzzing. There had to be something—
She glanced away, the afterimage of the circle superimposed on her vision.
And her view changed.
Instead of shadowed white steps leading back down, a new vision opened up in front of her. Purple steps sloped upwards underneath spiraling arches, open to a wide sky.
No, it was as if the sky itself had come down to greet her.
Just beyond the bounds of the staircase, spiraling galaxies and clusters of nebulae floated in an endless starry expanse. For the first time, White Lily understood the poems and rhymes comparing the universe to the sea.
She blinked—
The stars vanished. Reality settled back in. The bright moonlight felt cold in comparison.
White Lily let out a breath. Had she hallucinated that? She took a step back, staring at the spell circle once again. It hadn't changed, its lines glowing just as bright as before.
Staring back at it, White Lily waited until its afterimage was visible when she closed her eyes. Turning her head just so, she looked at the stairs again.
The hidden hallway sparkled into view once more.
She didn't wait for it to fade this time. Running into the vision, White Lily felt her very jam shudder with excitement when the stairs under her feet felt solid, real. She kept running, up towards whatever secrets were hidden in this place.
The stairway ended in a platform, bright and sparkling underneath the innumerable stars. At her feet, a giant circle was etched into the frosted glass, a copy of the one outside. A giant eye looked up at the cosmos, cradled by the moon that she could no longer see.
At the center of the circle was a giant moonstone.
White Lily looked around at it all, holding her hands to try to stop them from shaking. She'd expected a tomb, remains of crumbs, if anything at all. This could be something else entirely. But her dough and jam felt like they were ringing, echoing an unseen resonance.
Whatever this was, she had to know.
The circle at her feet was silent. Unlike the one that led her here, it was only lines, nothing more. It needed a catalyst to spark to life, and one this big would not accept something as simple as moonlight. The moonstone could act as one, but one wrong move would make it shatter. She'd had enough bad luck with the tiny pieces she'd taken from the alchemy lab to know better. Acting on the circle itself was the safer bet for now.
White Lily knelt down at the circle's edge, warnings from her teachers rolling through her mind. The more powerful and dangerous the magic, the higher the price. But she'd come too far to worry about the cost.
She pressed her hands against the etched lines.
"Bloom."
Light burst from the circle. Vines and flowers that sprang forth from her magic, tracing the pattern to its center, where—
They withered into black ashes.
Just as White Lily pulled her hands back, an arc of electricity jumped from the circle. In front of the moonstone, a dark circle appeared. White Lily couldn't repress a shiver.
A rift. The kind she'd only read about in books, but never expected to see.
It grew, shadowy tendrils spiraling outwards like the galaxies circling overhead. The deep blue of the sky above shifted to purple. A sickly sweet scent reached White Lily from its depths.
Melted sugar, spoiled milk, rotten jellies.
She threw a hand over her mouth, trying not to retch.
The darkness stopped at the edge of the circle, smooth as the unbroken surface of a lake. White Lily stared back at the void, hand still over her mouth, the silence ringing around her.
Then laughter shattered the stillness.
White Lily jumped, her arms pulling back from the edge of the void as the cackling pitched higher. It seemed to echo off the sky itself, vibrating the glass underneath her.
"FINALLY," a voice reverberated around her. "Someone STUPID enough to open a rift HERE!"
BOOM.
When reading about fear responses in other dessert creatures, White Lily had privately wondered if hers was fight or flight. As it turned out, hers was the third response.
She froze.
A clawed hand had risen out of the darkness, pressing against an invisible barrier at the surface of the circle. It retreated, swallowed by the void—
BOOM.
Two fists this time, slamming against the barrier with a sickening crack. Whatever was there continued its assault, scraping and clawing against it, as if they were trapped underneath a layer of ice, and not breaking free would doom them to drown. But as the seconds passed with no progress, those hands fell away and vanished.
"Oh, now THAT'S no fun at all," a mocking voice echoed out of the chasm. "If you're going to ask for the star of the show, their call time MUST be accurate! Why bother opening a rift if you can't let ME out too?"
The darkness below her was still impenetrable, but some deep instinct within White Lily told her that it was moving, shifting to accommodate whatever had thrown itself against the barrier.
"FINE then," the voice continued. "You want to bargain with a Beast? Two can play that game. But you had better watch your words!"
The voice ended their statement with a high, mocking laugh.
Bit by bit, her curiosity overrode her frozen limbs. White Lily leaned closer to the darkness, trying to catch sight of whatever was moving inside.
Two blue eyes opened in the void, staring up at her with slits for pupils.
"Oh?" a voice echoed up out of the depths. "Now THIS is something new. You're practically fresh out of the oven! And who might YOU be?"
The voice was suddenly friendly, as if they were crossing paths on a sunny walk, not an unseen being speaking up to her from parts unknown. White Lily lowered her hand from her face, trying not to breathe in the smell.
"Are you," she said, hardly believing her own words, "the first Headmaster of Blueberry Yogurt Academy?"
The voice didn't answer right away. Instead, its eyes narrowed in the suggestion of a smile. They clicked an unseen tongue.
"Now, now, that's not very good manners, is it?" the voice said. "To ask a question when I was the one to ask FIRST?"
The darkness shifted as the eyes grew bigger in size. White Lily leaned back as she realized their owner had moved closer.
"Blueberry Yogurt Academy," the voice continued, rolling over each word. "So that old place is still holding it together, huh? How hi-lar-i-ous. I'd probably find it funnier if I knew EXACTLY how long it has been."
White Lily let the baited question hang in the air.
"So it is you," she said, leaning over the circle to look into the void. "You're still alive?"
Underneath the glowing blue eyes, she caught the outline of a sharp toothed smile in the void.
"Define alive," the voice said.
An involuntary shudder ran through her. From the flicker of movement in those sharp irises, White Lily knew that they'd caught the movement too.
"Are you afraid?" the voice asked.
She steadied herself.
"No," she answered.
"You SHOULD be," the voice said. "You have no idea what kind of magic you're playing with, do you?"
White Lily shook her head. "What I feel doesn't matter," she said. "I…came here looking for a piece of your soul, but what I really need are answers."
"My soul?" the voice asked, rising higher in clear confusion.
"How do I make the ultimate cookie?" White Lily asked, her braid falling over her shoulder as she leaned further into the void. "How do I stop cookies from crumbling? How can we be stronger? How can we become perfect?"
The eyes looked up at her, still wide.
Laughter filled the empty space once more, long, loud, and mocking. She stared down at the blue crescents that had replaced the staring eyes, wiling herself not to cry.
"I need to know," White Lily continued, hating the way her voice broke. "We could live without fear or pain. If you're really the first headmaster, you have to understand. You taught us magic. We could be better than we are now! We could be different!"
The laughter faded, the eyes blinking up at her once more.
"Oh, my poor little lost student," the voice said in a mocking cadence. "If I knew how to be PERFECT, I wouldn't be here."
White Lily rolled back against her folded legs, pressing her hands into the cool glass underneath her.
"So you won't answer me either," she said, more to herself than to the voice. "Then fine. If you won't help, I'll just take the piece of your soul that I need and do it myself."
Her hands balled into fists. She couldn't lose her nerve now, not when she was so close.
"You're an ambitious one, huh?" the voice said. "I like that. But that's FAR easier said than done. I have a, let's say, prior engagement that makes that a bit difficult. But if it's SOULS you need, maybe you came to the right place after all."
White Lily blinked in surprise. "What do you mean?" she asked, looking back into the darkness.
"Oh, things really haven't changed, have they?" the voice said, rising higher with glee. "Acting on ignorance, asking the WRONG questions, expecting moi to fix them." A giggle punctuated their sentence.
"I'm FAR from the only one in here," the voice continued. "I'm just the one who got here FIRST."
White Lily opened her mouth to question him again—
An arm slammed down on the glass next to her.
No, not an arm. It bent the wrong way, had too many joints to be called one. And that wasn't a hand next to her, it had too many appendages that ended too sharply—
White Lily didn't have the words for what she was looking at. She could only watch as it reached out of the void, long talons screeching onto the glass right next to her as it tried to gain purchase.
"Let me put it this way," the voice continued with glee, "This rift you opened? It connects to a whole other realm, if you'll pardon the lack of a proper name. Outside of time and space, where those discarded by the Witches have fallen to their lowest point."
White Lily couldn't breathe. The sweet smell of rot flowed from the void as more appendages rose out from it, melted abominations with too many eyes and mouths to count, roaring, reaching—
"I'll thank you on their behalf, my little lost student!" the voice said, still carrying over the sickening grind and crunch of the bodies still emerging from the rift. "You have granted these poor, suffering souls their FREEDOM!"
The laughter echoed around her once more as the largest abomination yet rose from the darkness in front of her. As its shadow fell across her, all she could do was stare.
It was the perfect night. Everything had fallen into place. She'd expected something to go wrong, but this badly? This completely?
She had to move. She couldn't give up like this. She had to—
Something grabbed her shoulder, as the flutter of a blue cape passed over her.
Time seemed to slow.
For just a second, she saw the face of one of her teachers looking back at her under the shadow of the monster.
Their eyes were wide. Out of fear or desperation, she couldn't say. But their arm extended out, and White Lily realized their grip was gone. They'd thrown her backwards, away from the monster.
And even before it happened, guilt blossomed inside her.
She'd made a mistake, and they would pay the price.
White Lily collided with the stairs, pain causing time to resume its normal course. Grabbing her bruised shoulder, she sat back up, ready to yell—
But it was over.
A mass of tormented spirits writhed over the spot where the teacher had stood, swallowed into their mass like a ship falling under the stormy waves of the ocean. White Lily swayed on her feet as she rose, a small part of her amazed that she could stand at all. She couldn't break her gaze away.
What had she done?
Shouts echoed behind her. Before she could process the words, more blue robes passed her, running up the steps to the rift. Horror broke through the invisible ice holding her still.
"You can't—!" she shouted after them, but another figure blocked her view. She looked up to see the shocked and horrified expression of another of her teachers, holding up their cape as if fabric alone could protect her from what she'd already seen. They were yelling something over their shoulder at the others.
"—Moonstone! We have to reseal it with the moonstone! Otherwise it will keep—"
Their words were lost in the loudest roar yet, trembling the very stars around them. Turning back to White Lily, they shook her shoulder before she looked up at them.
"Run, and don't stop running," they said. "Do you understand?"
She still couldn't speak, couldn't even breathe. But they didn't wait for an answer, pushing her towards the steps.
"Go!"
The command and the momentum from the movement gave White Lily something to seize on, something to do in that moment. Mindlessly, she ran down the stairs, ignoring the roaring behind her, the shouts of the other teachers, the smell that would haunt her. Out through the entrance, down into the headmaster's study—
They'd beaten her there.
White Lily didn't remember the monsters or the spirits passing her, only rising out of the void, but they had. There was no other explanation for what she was seeing, other than slipping through time.
It was a tangle of snarling and fire and wings. Dripping ooze over broken bookshelves, monsters with too wide eyes staring back at her over the telescope.
The smell was still the same.
She whirled around—the portal was gone. Only the staircase down remained. She didn't think about the teachers, the other space, or how the monsters had traversed it.
White Lily continued to run.
Down the stairs, out through the hallway, the destruction was the same. The sleeping Academy was awake now, witnessing its own destruction in a cacophony of screams, flames, and shattering glass.
Guilt's roots grew deeper into her with every stride.
She'd thought so highly of herself, thinking that she could save everyone. But now that the Academy was crumbling around her, the truth was blinding. The world seemed to contract onto a single point.
She did not care about any of this. Not the academy, not the teachers, not her classmates.
While it all burned down, there was only one she wanted to save.
"Pure Vanilla Cookie!"
The eyes of the orchids swiveled to look at her as if she'd called them instead. In the early morning light, she could see the panes of glass on the hidden garden's roof shining underneath the vines.
And waiting in front of the door, a familiar figure.
Pure Vanilla's face shifted from drawn concern to an open smile as her voice echoed across the clearing. White Lily stumbled against the shrubbery, almost collapsing to her knees in relief. Their hidden garden was untouched. He was here. He was safe.
"Pure Vanilla Cookie…!"
He caught her by the forearms before she fell to the ground. Gripping his arms back, she reassured herself that he was there. That he was real.
"White Lily Cookie?"
She was suddenly aware that a shuddering, sobbing noise was coming from her own mouth.
"Are you all right?" he asked, concern rising in his voice. "The dorm leaders said that we needed to leave, but no one had seen you. I thought that…you might be here."
A pulse of warm healing magic traveled up her arm. White Lily tried to laugh, but it came out as another sob. He thought she was hurt. She could add making her kind friend worry about her to the long list of mistakes she'd made tonight.
"Do you know what happened?" Pure Vanilla continued.
A distant explosion answered him.
"I…" White Lily started, her voice wet. "I ruined it. I ruined everything."
He leaned in closer, his blurred blue and yellow eyecing trying to focus on her face.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
She pulled away, her sleeves slipping from his hands as another explosion echoed above them. She couldn't let him see the stains on her sleeves, the smear of jam she could feel hardening on her chin, or her salt-streaked face. He'd only feel sorry for her.
She didn't deserve pity.
"I thought it was the perfect night," White Lily said. "That I could really do it. It was…going too well…"
Pure Vanilla's face flattened in understanding. He didn't approve. She knew he didn't. His absence had told her all she'd needed to know.
"I've unleashed the spirits from beyond the portal," she continued. "And the teacher who tried to close it... They... It's all my fault..." She rubbed a sleeve over her face. "I... I've ruined everything..."
Pure Vanilla didn't let the silence last.
"Do you remember when we decided to skip a grade?" he asked.
White Lily stared back at him. Why was he bringing this up now?
"Back then," he continued, a tiny smile starting to rise on his face, "I told you I wanted to study together. Both of us, we were so curious about magic."
She shook her head.
"Your natural kindness didn't let you see the true me," White Lily said. She pulled her own hands in towards her chest, trying to stop them from shaking. "Now you know. Our goals were fundamentally different..."
Pure Vanilla kept smiling.
"That's not true," he said. "Do you remember? When we first started school,
a baby fell from its nest after a storm."
White Lily held her own hands tighter.
"Everyone could only watch in sadness," Pure Vanilla continued. "Including myself. It was too late for spells... But you stayed with the baby bird until the very end... Pondering ways to protect such a fragile life with magic from nature's cruelty."
She remembered how warm that bird was. How their wings fluttered against her careful touch.
"Despite everything our teachers said," Pure Vanilla said, narrating her memories. "That magic was not a panacea."
She'd wanted to prove them wrong. The bird had wanted to live. Its will should've been enough.
Did the world have to be this unfair?
"Ever since, you've always questioned the impossible," he continued. "And somehow made it possible in the end."
But she'd still failed.
"Pure Vanilla Cookie..." White Lily started, and then stopped.
"Some things cannot be undone," Pure Vanilla said, walking across the space she'd made between them. "Just like our teachers, just like that baby bird. Instead, you must face your mistakes head-on. Find an answer that will help you move forward, even if just a little."
She felt his light touch on her arm.
"Just like you've always done."
White Lily looked up at him. She didn't have to heart to contradict that smile. Swallowing her words instead, she covered them in the silence she'd grown so used to tending.
Pure Vanilla's description didn't fit. What he saw, that wasn't her. She'd meant what she'd said; she wasn't that kind, that selfless. She only wanted answers. Results.
Someone like Pure Vanilla couldn't understand that. He was helpful. Talented. A shepherd boy with a gift for healing their teachers had never seen before. He saw the best in everyone. Someone like him, always in the light, didn't know what shadows could do to someone like her.
What he saw was a better version of her. Someone stronger. Someone closer to perfect.
Pure Vanilla took her hand and squeezed it.
He was so kind, and it only made her feel worse.
White Lily fell forward, gripping him in a tight hug as the tears overcame her. She felt his hesitant pat on her back as she sobbed into his shoulder.
Before the sun rose on the end of Blueberry Yogurt Academy, White Lily had made up her mind. She'd find her answers. She'd become the kind of cookie that Pure Vanilla believed she was.
She would change.
That was the only way she could atone for what she'd done.