Chapter Text
The sun rose and fell on Earthbread, again and again. Time continued to flow by, its rhythmic march guiding cookies through their lives. Love, death, creation, destruction. All in beautiful succession. Each ingredient of life, working off of each other to create beauty. Fleeting beauty. Some things seemingly reign eternal, but as life marches on, all things crumble and change. Heroes from long ago fall and retire, but their legacy lives on.
Years ago, a brave little cookie chased a crowned cakehound into the forest. Now, by the wind of a butterfly’s wings, he became king of a kingdom, simply known as the Cookie Kingdom.
The Cookie Kingdom was home to many oddities. A fountain that produced riches and food, countless buildings dedicated to crafts, elementals among dragons, commons among ancients. For a while, the kingdom grew. Buildings got renovated, ships left the harbor, roads were paved, but slowly, this all stopped. The fountain filled. The buildings stopped production. The kingdom stood stagnant. So the king stood to the task of filling the unknowable hole left in the Cookie Kingdom.
King Gingerbrave, “The Brave King”, manually ran the kingdom. He mined sugar, created lanterns, decorated, baked bread… but as he did, the kingdom began to change. The Cookie Kingdom, a place where enemies could live in eternal harmony, slowly lost what made it special. Cookies began to age. Tensions rose between beasts and ancients, leading each of them to leave the Cookie Kingdom, one by one. Elementals returned to their homes. Leaders returned to the kingdoms they once governed.
One by one, cookies left. King Gingerbrave, Strawberry Cookie, and Wizard Cookie were all who were left. The forest, which had been cut back, began to reclaim the kingdom. Renovations on the castle fell. The once beautiful gardens grew into thorny disasters.
The trio stood tall, protecting what was once home. But even then, they grew tired. They grew older. Slowly, Wizard Cookie and Strawberry Cookie’s determination began to waver, and they left the overgrown Cookie Kingdom. Strawberry with a runaway group of Dark Cacao warriors; Wizard on a pursuit for more.
The Brave King stood in his kingdom, as if he was a ghost. One who haunted the ruins of a once bustling utopia.
His world stood still. Once a kingdom, now an overgrown forest.
But one day, he saw something, quite peculiar indeed.
A clever little cookie, chasing a crowned cakehound into his kingdom…