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The first clue that this was a dream, should have been the clock and its hands that crawl in the opposite direction. Its chirps and chimes sounding every few minutes in varying pitches.
The second were the cookies all around him shouting but their voices are all muddled and distorted. like trying to hear through several walls away.
Pure Vanilla cookie tries to blink, tries to feather his lids in the hope that it will break this strange spell. Instead it just gets stranger, it gets so much worse. He blinks once and twice and–
poof
Gingerbrave and his friends are gone. Swept up like a magic trick and hidden away by a sneaky magician's hand.
A chill nearly turns his jam to ice and his eyes fly wide, frantic in a feverish way as he shouts “Gingerbrave? Strawberry cookie?”
The sound bounces down the now empty hall, swallowed up in the hazy backwards chime of the clock.
“Wizard Cookie?” Pure Vanilla's voice quivers before he can even get the name out.
He's alone.
If he's honest the Ancient hasn't truly been alone since his return from the Abyss–
No, the… dark side of the moon.
Fingers tighten along the comforting handle of his staff but it doesn't respond. The dutiful eye of the yellow blossom is sealed closed as if it's fast asleep.
Pure Vanilla tries to channel to it, tries to jostle it awake with the power of his soul jam.
My soul jam, silly Nilly!
A breath catches as the echo of those words itch at his coating. Threaten to worm into the pores of his crunchy dough and rot him from the inside out.
No
No no no not Him
Like a sheep he tries to skitter away, to run from the sense of danger and hungry eyes that watch from silken shadows. Pure Vanilla has not felt a lot of true terror in his life. But this, Him, He scares the Ancient like nothing before. Reduces his knees to gooey jelly and threatens to unspool his sanity just by merely existing.
A gleeful little laugh pipes up from a shady corner and it's all Pure Vanilla can do not to jump in sheer fright. He watches as eyes, small eyes begin to fester and swarm and open and stare. They watch him with a gleeful crinkle to their corners, like they think this is the most fun. Like his existential terror is incredibly precious.
“Where are my friends?” Pure Vanilla tries to keep his voice strong but the tremor in his hands betray him. Some of the little eyes roll and wink out of existence, others narrow, more seem to be laughing.
It wouldn't be a game if I just TOLD you that you silly little cooke!
The chiding voice crawls, caresses, climbs its way along Pure Vanilla's dough and catches in the fold of his robes. It pets feather light fingers across the shell of his ear and a warning hiss bursts from the Ancient's mouth.
“Please,” he emplores, because He was good once. He's where all of Pure Vanilla's powers have come from. The being that bred Knowledge into Earthbread before twisting it into lies and trickery.
A hand probes along the small of his back. A real hand. Firm and as cold as the tundra's of Dark Cacao's kingdom. Its gentle and almost loving until the fabric is bunched and without warning Pure Vanilla is slammed sideways into a window pane.
The sound reverberates, ricochets his thoughts and scrambles his already waning vision. It's been so long since Pure Vanilla has been without his staff's abilities. His own eyes so sensitive to full light that even now they water between the sheer brilliant beams dancing through the window and the discombobulation.
Something tuts and another hand swats his hat away, gathering fistfulls of his curls to slam his head harder into the glass. It positively vibrates, threatens to crack and in the liquid vision before him, Pure Vanilla thinks he sees some of his jam trickling down his face.
But it's the shape over his shoulder that draws the bulk of his attention.
A blue shadow that dwarfs him in height, that curls over Pure Vanilla with a wicked grin and crinkled eyes that mirror his own in mix-matched hues.
Shadow Milk cookie sighs, his lips still quirked as if he feels pity for the cookie he's playing with.
They both know it's a lie, but the tiniest part of Pure Vanilla that hasn't lost hope, still prays.
As if he can hear it, Shadow Milk cookie leans in and rests his chin on his counterparts shoulder, nuzzling their cheeks together.
It shouldn't soften anything in Pure Vanilla, it shouldn't. But it does and the shame he feels makes him almost as nauseous as the concussion he might have.
“Silly Nilly,” the jester chides, releasing his hold on blonde locks to tap the newly dirtied window. “I'm trying to be a gracious host here but you're making it awfully hard ya know.” The finger taps harder and the barest of cracks spirals out from under his forceful touch.
“Shouldn't you be thanking me? After all I'm showing you what you wanted to see!”
A noise of confusion is all Pure Vanilla can get out before he's pressed fully into the window and he sees.
“No–”
Jam, soul jam oozing around the remains of several cookies who have crumbled in a brutal battle. There are fabric scraps of pinks and blues and a book of spells discarded and practically ripped to dust, a candy cane that's been half buried and a lone hand that still grips it in a stubborn bid for life.
“NO–”
Someone is shrieking and it takes Pure Vanilla too long to realize he's the one doing it. The noise of panic and pain almost heaving out of his chest as he tries to thrash in Shadown Milk cookies hold. The other is shrieking too, the sound is joyous and odd as he laughs and laughs and laughs as the cookie in his arms wails in mourning.
No matter how much he swings and claws and screams there is no way out of the jesters hold. Pure Vanilla is trapped, enveloped in a cold embrace that only tightens the longer he tries to throw himself into the window to try and make it outside and–
“And what?” Shadow Milk's voice is cajoling, his head rolling at an unnatural angle. His eyes are twinkling like supernovas, bright and feral.
“You make it out the window and then what? The mad priest falls to his death, foolishly trying to save the little cookies he lead to their doom. Oh! What a silly, stupid little fool.”
Petite fingers skim along the side of his face and cover his eyes just as the cracks start to spider outward. It smothers out the light, smothers the jammy fractured glass and the corpse filled courtyard below. It eats up all the light and the warmth and the pain and not a moment later Pure Vanilla is blinking up at a sky of blue eyes and endless inky black.
Ah, the dark side of the moon.
How easily he's dragged back here time and time again.
Nothing aches as Pure Vanilla slowly sits up, ignoring that there's really no sitting up in a space that is a void.
Instead he tries to fill himself with his fury and his terror, his heartbreak and finds even those things slipping between his fingers in this space between spaces.
Something brushes along his back, a solid mass that curves around his side until he's face to face with Shadow Milk again. The jester is pressed into his side, one fist lightly holding his cocked face aloft.
“Don't you know it's bad form for the actors to just go and die so abruptly like that?” He chides and it would almost sound sweet if not for the way his eyes blaze at the thought of Pure Vanilla's death.
The sage blinks in reply, slow and measured as his dough needs a minute to settle and restart. It feels like his jam has turned molasses thick, like his head is full of cotton balls. There's a tsk sound and suddenly his vision is nothing but blue. Nothing but pretty lashes and the faint smell of blueberries as something wet laps at a few spots on his cheeks and jaw and along the curve of his temple.
Shadow Milk cookie is… licking him.
The thought should fill him with more disgust, but the wetness is cool and welcomed and Pure Vanilla simply closes his eyes as the jester continues his minstration's.
There's a moment when it feels like Shadow Milk is going to pull away and Pure Vanilla quickly turns his head to the side. Seeking, leaning until he feels the feather light touch of lips on his own.
It's a kiss as much as it's a simple application of pressure. A symbol of closeness that Pure Vanilla doesn't hesitate to use to his advantage and with swift precision he leans in harder and clamps down sharp teeth on a tender lower lip.
His mouth fills with the taste of soured blueberries and he all but chokes on Shadow Milks indignant shrieks before they descend into a frenzy of brutal fangs and seeking tongues.
It's not the first time they've done this, it won't be the last. Shadow Milk likes him too much to crack him open and eat his soul jam out with that too cold tongue and those wickedly sharp teeth.
Pure Vanilla feels himself being gathered into a tenderly bruising hold and slips his arms under a ruffled collar and prays that he'll wake from this whole thing in his own bed. Covered in sugary sweat with a sinful ache at his core and unexplainable bite marks that won'theal properly from his dough.
He prays
Shadow Milk simply laughs and draws him in deeper.