Chapter Text
—Year 50 of Imprisonment—
Darkness. It’s all consuming, there is nothing but darkness. Nothing but Darkness and him, that is.
No, squinting against the inky blackness, he can make out the familiar shape of chains at its edge. Weaving around him, constricting and suffocating despite their distance.
He knows if he were to approach them, to reach out and gently brush his hand against the cool metal in search of a weak link, it would burn. The fiery pain would spread rapidly, racing from his hand up his arm, spreading like venom through his veins. And yet, it was a mere fragment of the pain that the witches had inflicted on the day that marked the beginning of the beast's imprisonment, and the end of their reign.
He grits his teeth, his train of thought sparking a prickling phantom pain at his fingertips.
The illusory injury prompts a flicker of white-hot anger as he is reminded of the power he had, his birthright—taken from him like candy from a child.
How dare they?! Those self-righteous, conceited witches—those hypocrites! What did we do that they haven’t? They put themselves upon a pedestal, ‘the saviors’ of cookie kind, the ‘heroes’ who sealed away the wicked beasts.
…And everyone believed them.
A laugh escapes him, jarring in the void that is his prison. His vision blurs as his eyes swell with tears.
Everyone went along with it, no questions asked. If only they knew. Knew how insignificant they were in the eyes of their gods. Knew what their intended purpose was. If only they knew they were nothing more than delectable treats to the witches— ones that escaped a horrible death by a hair.
But what use is truth when no one believes it?
—Year 130 of Imprisonment—
Darkness. By now he’s used to it. By now he knows he cannot escape the chains.
This dark prison seals away his ever simmering anger. The utter nothingness of the void envelops him as it silences his furious screams.
But today he is calm. Today he sits quietly, allowing memories to resurface. They wash over him, jumbled and surreal, overlapping each other as their edges blur together.
Five friends, freshly out of the oven, smiling brightly with hope in their eyes as they survey the world they’ve inherited, naive ambitions filling their heads.
Cookies flocking to his academy, young minds excited to learn from none other than the fount of knowledge himself.
The hours spent in his study, furiously scribbling his findings into a leather-bound journal.
His discovery of the Faerie Cookies, and his frequent visits to their kingdom.
Encountering a young faerie, a curious but noble mind. The two studying the peculiar life forms of their words.
Planting a sapling with bark as silver as fish scales together in the center of the faerie kingdom…
The next ones make him suck in a breath.
…Cookies starting to turn away from his truths.
The faeries becoming distant.
His academy’s halls—void of students.
His fall.
And then his friends’.
The witches standing before them, angry. The chains encircling the five. ‘Beasts’, they were proclaimed.
The light from outside his prison growing smaller and smaller as the gaping hole in the tree that had grown from the very sapling he had nurtured was sealed. The last thing he sees is the face of a familiar faerie—an old friend, lips curling with disdain, chest held high in ardent rectitude.
His muscles tense, clawed fingers curling in rage at the memory of the betrayal. His scream is shrill and wrathful. His hands shake and twitch, needing to hit something, to shatter something, to do anything, but there is nothing solid but him here and even in his anger he knows not to touch the chains.
His claws bite into his palms as he clenches them in fists. He can feel his blood boiling, fury rolling off him in waves.
It doesn’t last long. Soon the anger ebbs, receding as quickly as water sliding down the shore to rejoin the ocean. His frustrated shrieks become sobs, and he curls into a ball, head pressed between his knees, his tears invisible in the gloom.
—Year 200 of Imprisonment—
Darkness. An idea had found him in the darkness.
It happened about a week ago. He’s not sure why it hadn’t occurred to him sooner. Perhaps isolation had muddled his mind. Nonetheless, it worked. He no longer waits in pitch black.
Instead, he hovers above a shadow pool of milk that stretches as far as the eye can see. Above him, the dark sky is filled with the same eyes that adorn his hair. Muscles he didn’t realize were tensed relax with his return to the dark side of the moon.
He can only stay here for so long—during his most recent visit here, his consciousness was yanked back to the tree within a few hours.
But when he is here, he can see. He can see things outside of his dark prison. He can see beyond the darkness. In his home realm, his eyes can see everything.
Young cookies running through a sunny field, careless and free.
His spire, in severe disrepair—but still standing proudly; its white walls a beacon among the trees and hills.
His gaze stretches further and further, beyond the ocean—to Crispia—further than even he had traveled. And somewhere deep inside of him, a trace of joy leaps merrily, elation rushing in at the prospect of new discoveries.
A moment later, that joy withers, crumbling like ash. A sharp tugging sensation drags his all-seeing gaze back to familiar lands.
Back to the Faerie Kingdom. Back to him.
His eye twitches. Revulsion crawls up his throat with a sharp, acrid taste.
A young cookie, cloaked in silver armor, approaches a throne, before dipping into a graceful bow.
Sitting in the throne is an older cookie with long silvery locks, a gleaming circlet framing his almond colored face. At a slight wave of his hand, the younger faerie rises, shoulders rolled back as he speaks.
“Elder faerie cookie, all is well at the silver tree. No disturbances have occurred.”
Elder Faerie Cookie. So that’s the name he uses now.
Rage crashes over him, the edge of his vision bleeds into red, and he wonders if the exaltation in name—and seemingly title—ensued his own entrapment.
That sniveling, supercilious piece of shit—arrogant coward—
His hair flares up around him, curling through the air, impervious to gravity, coiling and twisting through the air, untamed and seething with anger.
Around him, the realm shifts, adjusting to its master’s mood. Ripples muddle the surface of the normally still pool beneath him. Beside him, a figure reminiscent of the disloyal faerie forms, standing tall with a judgemental expression splayed across his features. The figure is a perfect replica, the only tell it’s a copy being its deathly stillness.
His jaw clenches, teeth pressed together until they ache. His breathing grows rapid.
Under the gaze of his own sky, he is a creature of hellish ire and sadistic rancor.
He doesn’t think. If he did, it wouldn’t make a difference. A spear materializes in his hand, it’s cool metal light and well balanced. As he studies the weapon, all he can see is the face of the faerie, staring down at him as his fate of imprisonment is sealed.
A fiendish shriek ripples through the air, so loud his ears ring. He realizes the yell came from him when his throat burns from his raw screeches. Breaths heavy with outrage, the spear shifts in his clutch, his grip tightening on its shaft, and with a steely resolve, he plunges it into the chest of his old friend’s likeness.
It slides in easily enough—he’s forgotten how weak cookies are, how easily weapons pierce their dough, with little to no resistance and so, so much blood.
As thick red blood soaks through the puppet’s chest, three more spears appear, before sinking themselves into the puppet’s dough like porcupine quills.
As he watches, he’s dimly aware of the unhinged grin that grows on his blood-spattered face, even as a tear trickles down his cheek.
He’d trusted that faerie.
Look where it’d gotten him.
Here.
Alone. Caged. Forgotten by the world he’d helped to shape.
His fingers begin to twitch violently, and his hands ball into trembling fists as his blood boils. His thoughts spiral into darkness—vivid images of ruin, of tearing down everything that backstabbing cookie held dear.
He’d take it all.
Bit by bit—one thing at a time.
He’d make the old fool watch as his precious kingdom crumbled around him, as his loyal soldiers fall one by one.
Then—and only then—Shadow Milk will come for him, with a merciless sort of cruelty honed by centuries of spite.
He’ll carve pain into every remaining moment the faerie has, make sure every breath the coward takes is laced with regret.
And when the time comes to end him, it won’t be swift.
It will be excruciatingly slow—it will be a work of art.
He inhales deeply, closing his eyes. The raging storm inside him softens—just for a moment.
No—he can’t do anything yet. Not while he remains chained, bound by ancient spells. But even the witches’ magic won’t last forever. Their spells are strong, but time is stronger.
Everything decays, given long enough.
So he’ll wait.
He’ll bide his time, patiently watching as the spell that traps him frays at the edges. Until his chains are weakened, until he can break free.
I have time. I’ll wait as long as it takes.
They can’t hold me forever.