Chapter Text
It hit him suddenly in the night. A feeling, forceful and frantic.
It thrust him from his slumber and pulled on the strings of his very soul, leaving him winded and heaving. Pure Vanilla Cookie, weighed down by exhaustion and confusion, lurched for the staff by his bedside, holding it out in front of him and swinging from left to right to ward off what or whoever was attacking. Moments passed, however, and the rumbling began to calm, and before he knew it, the silence was heavy around him, save for the sound of his chest rising and falling in shortening bursts.
He opened his eyes, letting them graze the room for any clues as to what had just happened. It seemed odd that, as he cautiously let the seconds pass by, no cookie had come to alert him to any issue. The streets beyond his window sounded empty, his chambers seemed undisturbed, and the only thing that remained of the rumbling was the ringing in his head which had all but faded into a soft bit of nothingness.
“How peculiar…” He whispered to himself, his nightgown spilling off the side of the bed as he uncovered himself from his sheets.
When the feeling struck him a second time, Pure Vanilla Cookie was ready for it. He planted both his feet and staff steadily into the ground to support himself as the rumbles rippled through his body; like an earthquake hitting him head on.
Just as before, it ended within moments, and he observed afterward that despite all the commotion, both his room and castle were still intact. Nothing had fallen off of shelves, no furniture or belongings of his had been broken, and the room was silent again. It felt as though, rather than the world around him being subjected to the onslaught of rumbles and shakes, it was instead contained within him; a figment of his imagination that had convinced him so assuredly that something was the matter.
He didn’t doubt that something of his mind could have such an effect on him. As a healer, he knew that gut feelings were to be trusted, and that an individual was to be believed when they said that something was wrong, but why him? Was his own mind trying to tell him something? And how could he listen if the turmoil it brought on gripped his rational mind so intensely?
Despite how violent the rumbling had been and how much it had shaken him, it didn’t seem to be coming back. That underlying sense of panic was gone, replaced instead by utter confusion as he tried to wrap his head around what had just happened.
“Perhaps I simply had… a bad dream.” He decided.
That certainly couldn’t be true. He knew something was wrong; could feel it so intensely in his chest, but for the sake of his slumber, he decided this was an issue best dealt with the following morning. Pure Vanilla Cookie returned to bed.
That morning, there were no more clues to tell him what had happened.
He’d asked a few raisin cookies to come in and inspect his room for him, and when they did, they found nothing to be out of the ordinary.
“You didn’t feel anything last night? In any of your own rooms?” He asked them, brow furrowed with apprehension and worry.
“Nope! Everything seems good here, Pure Vanilla Cookie. But what happened? Do you think someone tried to break in last night? Did something attack you?”
Pure Vanilla let his gaze flutter past them, focusing instead on the beams of sunlight that creased the walls of his room. He was deep in thought. “No, no.” He whispered. “I don’t believe so. Thank you for your help, little ones. I am incredibly grateful.”
The next night, Pure Vanilla was prepared.
His staff was no longer propped up against his nightstand, but instead rested in his bed beside him, drowning out the glow of the crescent moon above. He didn’t mind the brightness. The Ancient Cookie wrapped himself in his covers, though not too tightly, and rested his head against his pillow with a huff, though not before propping his pillow up ever so slightly against the board behind him; a measure he’d take for the sake of waking up quickly and acting quicker should it come to that.
As his eyes closed, his mind opened. Pure Vanilla grabbed his thoughts by their handles, pulling them open with all the strength he could muster. If this was an internal issue; some block deep within himself, then he had to pry open its whereabouts and address it at its root. Normally, meditative measures such as these were a bad idea to try while laying in bed— simply because he might fall asleep in the middle of it! But considering this all started in the night, perhaps the best course of action to take was to attack it in the night as well.
Pure Vanilla Cookie searched deep within himself for the answer. Any inner turmoil, anything weighing on his mind, anything begging to assault him with earthquakes in his sleep. He was unsuccessful, and as he feared, his active imagination soon dwindled into a quiet nothingness as sleep consumed his mind.
When his eyes opened next, it wasn’t to the familiar light of his bedroom in the morning. Instead, the land around him was covered in swathes of shadows; though those shadows were familiar to him, and in nearly an instant, Pure Vanilla Cookie at least had a guess as to what the root of the problem was.
His eyes slowly drifted across the void around him. In the past, this place: the other-realm, may have scared him. Now, although its unfamiliarity was slightly unnerving, he had faith that he could defend himself here in a way his prior self could not. Shadow Milk used to have full control over the domain, but now he could feel it; their shared ability, coursing through his dough.
But why was Pure Vanilla Cookie here? And where was…
A sound, high-pitched and distant, suddenly drew his attention to afar.
On the flat barren horizon, he could somewhat make it out: specks of light on the backdrop of darkness. Light on the dark side of the moon seemed promising. He smiled. Perhaps there was something waiting for him here, like a clue of some sort. He treaded lightly toward it.
Creatures, he soon realized. He could tell by the way they moved. But, startlingly, the closer he got, the more apparent the situation became to him. Creatures, yes, but a hoard of them, all surrounding one familiar source of darkness.
Shadow Milk Cookie.
They were brutal in their assault— uncharacteristic of what he had assumed to be typically gentle, glowing beings. They kicked and shoved, poked and slashed. They almost gave the impression that killing him wasn’t their intention; they only wished to hurt him.
The creatures had wounds, but they somehow seemed old, like Shadow Milk Cookie had stopped making any move whatsoever to subdue them or fight back. The dry, jammy appearance of their cuts gave the frightening impression that this had been going on for a while. Had the Beast run out of energy? Or did he simply lack the will to fight any longer?
Whatever his reason, this couldn’t continue. Compelled by instinct and the strong desire to protect, Pure Vanilla Cookie was by his side in a second, placing himself firmly between the Beast and the creatures attacking him. At first, he could hear the sound of Shadow Milk scrambling backward; as though the Ancient Cookie were simply another burst of light there to hurt him, but as Pure Vanilla’s shield assembled itself around them, it seemed to become clear that he was there to help.
He could only wonder which emotions exactly had struck Shadow Milk Cookie at that moment, and he could only wonder what thought process had willed the Beast to lunge toward him, wrapping his arms around Pure Vanilla tightly and burying his face into the healer’s hip as if the embrace was all that could save him from the torrent of attacks being blasted at their shield.
“Don’t worry, Shadow Milk Cookie,” he said through gritted teeth, digging his heels deeper into the ground. “I won’t let them harm you anymore.” To add some weight to his words, Pure Vanilla Cookie took a deep breath inward before slamming his staff down in one hard motion. In an instant, the shield that had surrounded them exploded outward in sharp beams of light, sending his vision into whirling spirals of chaos as the creatures around them crumbled. The other-realm, at first engulfed in noise and movement, was now deathly silent, save for the rapid sound of their breaths piercing the air around them. They were safe.
As quickly as this had all unfolded, Shadow Milk pushed Pure Vanilla away, snarling with an animalistic ferocity.
“How dare you attack me in my sleep! Just to swoop in and try to save me? My, my, my, I didn’t know you had all of this in you.” He said. His terror from being attacked was now gone; replaced with an attempt at composure as he summoned his staff back to him. “You do surprise me, Pure Vanilla Cookie, I must say.”
“Shadow Milk Cookie…” He said, expression sunken with sullenness. “I have not made any moves to attack you. The chaos woke me up. I only wished to see what was wrong.”
“Well–” The Beast hissed. “I never had nightmares like this until you stole my control over this realm. It must be your doing.”
“A nightmare?” He asked, and watched as Shadow Milk’s recognizable silhouette suddenly recoiled, backing away from him with a growl.
“I don’t have nightmares. I didn’t say that.” All enthusiasm was gone from his voice. But in an utter betrayal of his words, the realm around them began to tremble just as it had in Pure Vanilla’s room, nearly bringing the two of them to their knees were it not for the help of their respective staffs planted firmly into the ground of the abyss. Shadow Milk, weak from the torment he’d been subjected to before being saved, took just a few seconds longer to stand back up.
Pure Vanilla Cookie opened his mouth to speak, but was promptly interrupted by another agitated growl from the Beast before him, a protest to his intrigue toward the situation. Suddenly, Shadow Milk Cookie drew nearer, his breathing ragged and breath strong as he tried to stitch the distance between the two of them with threads of intimidation.
“I did not invite you here,” he said. “Just because you stole half my power doesn’t mean you get to use it willy-nilly. That’s called bad sportsmanship, Vanilla, and it’s not how we play the game!” He reached out to roughly pull at Pure Vanilla’s cheek, and the Ancient let him, unwavering from his position until Shadow Milk drew away with a grunt.
“Shadow Milk Cookie,” he said firmly. “We share one soul. If any cookie on Earthbread was to hear what ails you, it should be me.” And then he smiled, clutching his staff tighter to his figure, keeping his voice soft and playful in an attempt to disarm the anxious Beast. “Or have you forgotten? I am a healing cookie. Perhaps I can make your pain go away?”
Again, as if on cue, the world shook once more.
“Ha, ah ha ha ha ha!” His laughter rang, his silhouette contorting into a dark flash of limbs that thrust and kicked with glee. “To think the cookie who bested me in combat could be so stupid! I feel bad for you, Pure Vanilla Cookie, I truly do.”
And the Ancient awoke with a start.
The next day was spent impatiently waiting for sleep to befall both him and his Beast once more.
He could assume, after two consecutive nights of these disturbances in the other-realm, that some kind of turmoil had been afflicting Shadow Milk Cookie’s mind; plunging his dreams and subsequently their shared world into a chaos that drove them both out of their slumber.
The creatures that had attacked Shadow Milk seemed to be of the light; the memory of their brightness slicing through the Beast's darker figure was unmistakably distinct in his head, but why would anything so pure attempt to do such a thing? Pure Vanilla Cookie, despite his apparent mastery of his abilities at the spire, lacked anything more than a fundamental understanding of how the other-realm worked. Its intricacies and rules were foreign to him, and so the truthfulness of the creatures who had appeared to him there was debatable.
It was a possibility that beings such as those he’d fought were able to infiltrate the other-realm at their leisure, but it also struck him as likely that the creatures were merely fabrications of Shadow Milk’s subconscious. Nightmares, truly, and nothing more, though they were experienced so intensely in his sleep that they were able to manifest themselves to him in a more physical way. His own mind had been doing him harm, and for how long? He was uncertain.
And then, there was the rumbling. He'd felt it in his room, in his mind, and in the other-realm. It hadn't stopped after they'd defeated those creatures, but they had seemed to go away once he and Shadow Milk Cookie had departed. He couldn't wrap his head around them, nor their cause, but it was safe to say they had something to do with his nightmares, and were just another problem to be solved.
As he moved through the motions of the day— eating, though he couldn’t quite stomach his food; discussing defense plans with Black Raisin Cookie, though her meticulous explanation of their necessity didn’t quite reach him— he couldn’t shake the thought of the Beast from his mind.
Shadow Milk Cookie’s shaking figure, his whimpers of fear and howls of pain as he made no move to fight back against the creatures, the way he’d— if only for a moment— clung to Pure Vanilla Cookie with such ferocity once he’d understood that the Ancient hadn’t sought to hurt him. A feeling had struck him then; overwhelmingly so. Pure Vanilla needed to protect him, and so he had. But what did it all mean?
“Pure Vanilla Cookie?”
His attention was gently pulled from the depths of his mind and instead to the cookie in front of him: Gingerbrave. The child’s eyes were creased with worry, and his frown spoke a thousand words that his mouth did not. His concern made Pure Vanilla smile.
“My apologies, Gingerbrave. I didn’t mean to trouble you. I seem to have gotten lost in thought.” He laughed, leaning backward against the grass, letting his back lay flat and his eyes flutter open to observe the light above.
They had been sitting on the floor of his garden, the smaller cookie curled up in his lap, drifting to and from slumber as the afternoon ambled on. It was a welcome change to the rest of the day's activities, which had mostly been busy work and kingdom duties that he simply couldn’t get his head to focus on.
“Oh, okay,” Gingerbrave replied, sinking back into his lap. “You just started mumbling about something, but I couldn’t make it out! Are you— you know, doing alright?”
Pure Vanilla Cookie laughed. “Thank you for asking. I must admit, I have been thinking as of late.”
“About what?” Gingerbrave asked.
In the past, he might’ve neglected to answer or would’ve assured that it was nothing for the child to be concerned with, but now he elected to be honest. After all, Gingerbrave had traveled nearly all of Earthbread for the sake of their battle against evil. The brave cookie deserved all of his transparency.
“I’ve been thinking about Shadow Milk Cookie.”
The little cookie gasped, twisting in his lap to face him completely; his hands pressed against the Ancient’s chest and their faces close together. “Shadow Milk Cookie?! Has he been hurting you again?” He could feel the fiery flames of anger welling from beneath Gingerbrave’s dough. “We weakened him last time, Pure Vanilla Cookie, I’m sure we can defeat him again! It’ll be easier now, too!” But the child was quietly settled down by a pair of gentle hands that rubbed his cheek and soothed his soul.
“You are right…” Pure Vanilla Cookie whispered, "Shadow Milk Cookie is weaker, and defeating him for good would not be hard... But, his desires have changed, and he’s gained many a foe; including that of his own mind. I want to… help him.”
“But remember at the spire?” Gingerbrave said, his voice slightly calmer now. “I thought he didn’t want your help?” The Ancient took a moment to ponder his response, knowing the strength his words held for the young cookie.
“Shadow Milk Cookie... believes he is not deserving of love, so he rejects it. He thrives on negative attention and is frightened by the positive. It isn’t that he wouldn’t like my help… but that he can’t reconcile with himself for wanting it.” He smiled then, placing his hands on Gingerbrave’s shoulders. “At least, that’s my theory. Whatever Shadow Milk Cookie’s plight may be, I wish to assist him in beating it. I only hope I can reach him in time, and that he'll allow me to stay.”
“So, you’re going to go find him? Can I come?”
Pure Vanilla laughed. “Yes, I do wish to find him, but not yet by leaving this kingdom…” He moved a hand from Gingerbrave’s shoulder to tap lightly at his temple, and the cookie gasped in understanding.
“Oh, I get it! You’re going to use your cool new powers?” He asked.
“I intend to try,” the Ancient Cookie replied.