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When the Witches had baked the heavenly virtue of knowledge into a cookie, they had been sure to keep very specific things off-limits.
For example - the nature of cookie creation, why cookies were created, the world of humans, and simply the concept of humans other than witches all together.
Of course, none of these measly barriers was enough to keep Fount’s curiosity at bay. After all, it seemed a bit counterintuitive to gate-keep knowledge from a cookie whose sole purpose was to spread it.
So, he asked questions, prayed to the Witches for answers, and at first, they indulged in his questions. They told him about the human world - human names that worked nothing like those of cookies, human cities and nations, and how humans were made of blood and skin and cells rather than jam and dough.
But there then came a day where the Witches stopped answering.
It wasn’t a gentle, gradual refusal - it was a solid ignorance, as if Fount’s questions were nothing but pesky gnats to be swatted away.
And thus came his endless rabbit hole into a dimension completely different than the one he was so familiar with.
Being the Fount of Knowledge, he had access to resources no other cookies did. To underground archives filled with books that contained every branch of magic explained in precise detail, of human encyclopedias that were long outdated, of a special sort of forbidden knowledge that no normal cookie should ever be aware existed.
Of course, he was no normal cookie. To him, no knowledge was forbidden or taboo. Knowledge was intrinsically neutral, and it would forever remain that way.
But the knowledge of humans.. well, that was something completely different.
Humans were a species that existed above even the most powerful of cookies, ones that could very easily crumble them if they so desired, and just the mere idea of it all…
Well, it inspired a new, dangerous sort of curiosity within the Fount of Knowledge.
Fount spent days upon days studying the limited resources of humans he could get his hands on, cherishing every single detail and reciting it ten times over until the very words were forever engraved into his mind. The Witches may be able to keep things away from him, but knowledge is something that can never be taken away, no matter the circumstance.
Throughout his studies, Fount kept asking the Witches questions. He bothered them, nagged them, badgered them endlessly, even though he knew his attempts were in vain. Because when you have an unquenchable thirst for the unknown, you tend to do foolish things for some semblance of satisfaction.
But, alas, he couldn’t stay as the Fount of Knowledge forever. His old friend, Herald, knew better than anyone that stagnation in a certain identity or persona was impossible. The tides of change affected all cookies, even peculiar ones like Fount.
And thus came his corruption into the grand Shadow Milk Cookie.
He’d always known that his corruption would happen eventually. Since he was blessed with the curse of endless knowledge, including that of the future and the past - he knew that remaining pure forever was simply not an option.
His wonderful fall into the world of deceit had sidetracked his main goal of discovering more about the human world for many, many years. It almost completely slipped his mind at times, but his own stubborn nature would never let him completely let it go.
It had been Fount’s grand goal - his life goal, even, although the Beasts were effectively immortal and didn’t have any sort of lifetime - to completely understand how the elusive humans worked, and perhaps even travel into the human realm himself.
It was outlandish, but Fount had come to befriend the extraordinary as one of his closest companions.
To be completely honest, Shadow Milk’s “grand goal” was only slightly different from this.
Well- technically, his grand goal was to deceive every cookie on Earthbread through his teachings, spread rumors and make everyone dispel the truth, yada yada yada- you get the point. Evil Beastly things.
His second grand goal was more of a personal hobby- an expansion of Fount’s original idea, per se. (A much better expansion, might he add.)
See, Shadow Milk wanted to become a human himself.
I mean, just think about it! He was never meant to be contained in the puny cage that was his cookie dough. He was all knowledge itself - well, now he was deceit, to be more accurate. How could anyone expect to keep such a broad concept in one singular body? Seriously, how stupid were the Witches?
After all, why else would he spend so much time in forms that weren’t his own? A snake, a lady dressed in azure, a small child, an old man- basically, just everything and anything that wasn’t his own body.
Before you start fretting, let him say this- obviously, this sort of transformation wouldn’t be permanent. Shadow Milk would have to use ridiculous amounts of power to keep the human body from slipping, power which he frankly doesn’t have, nor can he get his hands on. A shame, he knows.
And, yes, Shadow Milk hates to admit that he is not an all-powerful cookie with infinite energy reserves. You can thank his unfortunate creators for that screw-up- just another to add to their never-ending list. Jeez, when are they ever gonna get themselves together?
Well! Enough about how useless the Witches are in his sad little cookie life, and more about turning into a human!
Yes, contrary to popular belief, Shadow Milk doesn’t really monologuing about the trials of his past, or cursing his creators for being such worthless people. It adds a nice tragic element, sure, but this isn’t meant to be a tragedy! It’s meant to be an enlightenment, something to keep all you wonderful readers on the edge of your seat!
Drawing himself out of his monologue, he casts a glance at a plush of himself settled atop a table nearby. The plush is slightly misshapen, giving him an awfully large forehead.
Shadow Milk registers it as one of Candy Apple’s many gifts that she’s given him throughout the years, something he keeps with him just to stop her from throwing a tantrum or something else that was annoyingly histrionic.
And, no, not because he cares for Candy Apple. Shadow Milk is really incapable of properly caring for anybody, if you were to ask him, and he’s fine with it.
He sighs, adjusts the placement of his Soul Jam on his chest, shutting down his train of disgustingly tragic thoughts before deciding to think more on his servants, considering he’s already on the topic of Candy Apple.
Black Sapphire would be perfectly fine in the event of his absence - which is the fancy way of saying if he screws up the spell and dies. Yes, Black Sapphire had been a faithful servant of deceit for many years, and was more than capable of living by himself. Truly, one of his most fruitful students.
Candy Apple.. well, she would be much more difficult to console if he disappeared, given her concerningly obsessive attachment with him. But she’d get over it sooner or later. Maybe it’d take a few decades, but the grief would pass.
Blegh! Why is he acting all sappy and nostalgic now? The grand master of deceit itself is not going to be bested by a mere spell. He’s not an idiot! In fact, he can’t remember the last time he messed up a spell - and, believe him, he remembers way too much.
Shadow Milk brandishes his staff in his hand, staring at the blue gem while the thin, slotted pupil stares back.
He is one of the most powerful cookies on Earthbread - he will succeed. He is deceit itself, and the only way he can successfully die is if lies themselves died out.
Or if he puts a massive amount of effort into one spell and ruins the fabric of reality, which is exactly what he’s about to do. Fun!
Shadow Milk murmurs the beginnings of the spell under his breath, immediately noting how the air begins to smell of ozone and tiny crackles of energy start appearing all around him. There’s barely a strain on his Soul Jam- which is a great sign, considering the last thing he wants is for a very specific cookie to be alerted of what he was about to do.
A small smile graces his lips as he starts to think about the aftermath. He, the only cookie in history to achieve a human form. The Witches will have to pay attention to him then, he’s sure of it.
Will anyone notice what happens? Surely none of his Beastly friends will, and even if they do, they’ve grown far too bitter with him to particularly care about his fate. Fair enough!
His mind then begins to linger on his unfortunate counterpart, the disgustingly compassionate holder of Truth.
Considering they share the same Soul Jam, there is a.. fair chance that his other half will notice the spell happening before he can finish it.
Ah, whatever. Pure Vanilla never really wanted to be his friend, anyway. Why would he care what happens to Shadow Milk now?
As he progresses further with the spell, the air crackles more, and he can feel his grasp on his beloved other-realm slipping. Shadow Milk yanks on it, harshly keeping it within his reach, like an owner to a dog on a leash.
The strain starts to kick in as he finishes the first half of the spell, his Soul Jam’s energy growing more fatigued by the second. It feels as if his Soul Jam is a rope, and the rope is growing taut and it just might snap if you aren’t careful.
But of course he’s careful! He will complete this spell. His only goal in his useless, wretched life was to learn as much about the humans as possible - and what better way to learn than to become one himself?
Now that he thinks on it, he realizes how foolish the Witches were for keeping the information about humans from him. Maybe, if they paid attention to him and answered his questions, he wouldn’t be putting his very existence on the line at the moment. Maybe, if they cared about their so-called precious virtues, they’d have stopped him from spiraling all those thousands of years ago. Maybe, if they hadn’t sealed him away with that forsaken tree, he wouldn’t be the wretched cookie he is now.
Shadow Milk feels the reality around him begin to warp, and his control over the other-realm is brutally ripped away from him, and he can feel the entire Spire trembling beneath his feet.
He stumbles to his knees, but he keeps speaking, because he’d be damned if he got this close to humanity and gave up midway through.
His dough screams with pain, but he ignores it all. It was worse when he got stabbed with silver forks and his original body crumbled on the spot, and it was worse when Pure Vanilla took his hand for that split second before he ripped it away.
He’s been through worse, and that is what grounds him.
It is agonizing. It is like the moon and the heavens and the earth and the oceans themselves were placed upon his back and he is forced to carry them all at once. He feels himself get dizzy, but he keeps going, keeps trudging forward towards his maybe-death.
Shadow Milk feels warm jam start spilling down his chest. He doesn’t care. He isn’t afraid of death, he never has been.
“Shadow Milk!”
He flinches for a second, his tongue slipping up, and the world pauses for a moment, holding its breath.
The words keep spilling out of his mouth even with his mistake, but something is wrong, this isn’t what was supposed to happen, wrong-
He says the last word of the spell. Dough.
And everything falls apart at once.
—
Shadow Milk wakes, but not quite.
He knows his body has crumbled. This is exactly what it was like the first time, when those awful forks came crashing down from the skies and trapped his very soul in the silver tree.
But this time, instead of eternal darkness, there is a light.
It is warm and familiar and he knows exactly who it belongs to, but he chooses to ignore that part.
Shadow Milk wonders if he would be okay with dying now, after finally completing what he’d spent his entire life researching.
He thinks the answer is yes.
But a small voice inside him protests.
It’s tiny and sounds suspiciously like Fount, long before he had realized the worthlessness of his life, but it’s there.
He thought he had squashed that voice out long ago.
Shadow Milk snarls, knowing that if that voice is still there, then he can’t die. Not yet. In all of his attempts, that voice is always there, and it always stops him.
He bares his teeth and climbs towards the light with his claws, ready to face the terrible world once again.
—
His entire body feels like it is on fire.
He dares not open his eyes, because he knows it will be a sight he does not want to see.
His dough - skin? - burns, almost as if he’s in the oven again, and there is a tinny ringing in his ears - his ears - that won’t go away, and his thoughts are so scattered he can’t even process what has happened yet.
“Shadow Milk?” The disgusting, familiar warm voice asks gently, yanking him into clarity. “By the Witches.. what did you do?”
Shadow Milk’s hand twitches, and he feels a pool of jam - blood, maybe? - shift around him.
His breathing is ragged and shallow, and there is a pounding pulse in his ears that won’t go away, and his body aches so badly it makes him wonder if he should’ve just let himself die instead. What did he do?
Just as he is about to slip into unconsciousness again, there is a brief sensation of blessed cool against his burning skin, and the pain eases- just enough for Shadow Milk to open his eyes.
He is on the floor, his body haven fallen sideways after he initially collapsed onto his knees, in a pool of his own blood.
Blood. Not jam.
The first thing he notices is that there is a hand in front of him.
A hand, with fingers and knuckles and veins and bones and fingernails and skin that isn’t pale blue but rather a tan-ish color and-
It worked.
Shadow Milk starts to laugh with broken elation, his voice hoarse, more akin to gravel than anything else.
It worked! The spell worked. Perhaps he didn’t make it to the human world as he had originally wanted, but he did it.
He’s become a human.
His laughter rings louder and louder, echoing throughout the room despite how ugly it sounds.
Bless his young, naive self for being so interested in the humans. Had he known what it would’ve led to? Most likely not, but he doesn’t care. It’s the goal that matters, and he finally got there.
Shadow Milk uses his newfound arms - arms! With muscles and blood and cells and skin! - to push himself upward, not bothering to wipe off the blood dripping from his body.
The rest of the room seems normally sized, which means despite being a human, he’s still cookie-sized. An annoyance, yes, but most likely a side effect of his slip-up in the incantation. One that can be avoided later on.
He glances about the room and makes eye contact with the only other person there.
Pure Vanilla Cookie.
“Like what you see?” He asks with a bloody grin, his human lips and mouth not too different from the ones of a cookie.
While he isn’t all that happy with Pure Vanilla being witness to his grand scheme, he does take delight in watching his horrified expression, and seeing that calm demeanor finally break. Witches, if that’s what he had to do the entire time, why didn’t he do it earlier?
“Shadow Milk- how did- wh-“ Pure Vanilla takes a small step back.
Good. He wants Pure Vanilla to be scared of him. No amount of idiotic empathy or compassion can stop the horror that comes with watching a cookie turn into a human before your very eyes.
“Aww, Nilly, I never took you for the queasy type! Tell me, did you think you were going to be my dramatic savior? Were you going to be my deus ex machina? I must tell you- never the biggest fan of that trope!”
Witches, he can feel how uncomfortable Pure Vanilla is, and he relishes in it. The grand holder of Truth being faced with maybe one of the ugliest truths out there and immediately chickening out- funny, isn’t it?
“You- you’re a witch. How is that- how did you even-“
Shadow Milk clicks his tongue in disapproval. “Ah-ah-ah! Not quite right, Nilly. See, I’m not a witch - I’m a human! Pretty neat, amirite? Same good old Master of Deceit, but new and improved!”
Pure Vanilla clutches his staff with such strength that it surprises Shadow Milk. He didn’t know little ol’ Nilly could be so strong!
“Why did you do this? You’re- you’re covered in jam-!”
“Wrong again, Nilly! Jeez, two wrong answers in a row? Three strikes and you’re out!” Shadow Milk gestures with a toothy smile - teeth! Those are something new! “This is actually blood, which is- well, it’s just the human version of jam. I figured you would’ve made this connection by now, but, alas, I thought wrong.”
Pure Vanilla’s expression hardens. “Why did you do this?”
Shadow Milk pretends to give it a good amount of thought, even though he’s already got the lie waiting on his tongue. “Well, I figured if the Witches keep ignoring us and all of our prayers, then surely they won’t mind me becoming like them, right? After all, they are the ones who trapped me in the tree!”
His other half opens his mouth for a second, but then Shadow Milk cuts in. “My turn for questions, Nilla! Number one- why did you try and rescue me? Really, the gesture is lost on me.
Shadow Milk watches with a strange sort of glee as Pure Vanilla thinks through his answer. All that work, when he could’ve just lied! How sad is that?
“The Soul Jam- it reacted so strongly to.. whatever spell you did,” Pure Vanilla trails off for a moment, gazing away from him, “And I worried you were hurt.”
“Worried about me?” Shadow Milk breaks into another laugh. “Wow, Nilly, you’re quite the sap, aren’t you? Just oh-so-worried about your poor Beastly other half and how he might fare in the big wide world. News flash: I’m perfectly fine.”
Shadow Milk scoffs at Pure Vanilla’s stupidity, scooting out of the pool of blood before attempting to stand up on his own.
This results in his knees completely giving out on him and landing right back where he started. Shadow Milk scowls, cursing his legs as Pure Vanilla makes his way over and offers his hand with that annoyingly calm face.
Shadow Milk swats it away without another thought. “What is your obsession with helping me? I thought you were horrified with me! Look at me! I’m all skin and you’re all dough!”
Pure Vanilla keeps his hand outstretched. “You may be in an entirely different form, now, and have completely broken the laws of how cookies work, but- you are still my other half. I will not turn my back on you.”
“Yada yada, so heroic- cut the crap already,” he mutters. Pure Vanilla’s act of being all helpful and kind is getting really old. “Just leave me be.”
His hand stays outstretched.
Shadow Milk scowls and takes his hand out of pure necessity, the texture of crispy dough against warm skin throwing him off a tad.
He helps himself upward before slapping Pure Vanilla’s hand away, his knees still wobbling as he finds his balance.
Turns out, as a human, Shadow Milk is naturally taller than Pure Vanilla is, and he doesn’t even need to float! Isn’t that a blessing?
Shadow Milk waves his hand in the air and his magic comes back to him weakly. It feels a little bit stranger than usual, but it still works like normal, so he isn’t one to complain.
“Alright, well, you can go now, Nilly. The climax is over, and, well, I’m the main character here,” Shadow Milk says, shooing Pure Vanilla away from him.
Pure Vanilla pauses. “How will you.. return to your normal form?”
“Gosh, are you really so worried about me? I’m flattered!” Shadow Milk places a hand to his chest in a dramatic show of emotion. “Either way, a magician never shares his secrets! Bye-bye now!”
Shadow Milk opens a portal beneath Pure Vanilla’s feet and sends him back to the Vanilla Kingdom with the snap of his fingers.
Oh, how it feels to snap! Isn’t that just beautiful? He really wonders why the Witches didn’t give cookies fingers to begin with. They’re so versatile!
And then, after a few moments of internal monologuing, the room is silent again.
His lifelong goal, finally completed. Well- not entirely. He did become a human, yes, but he didn’t quite make it into the human world as he’d wanted.
Ah, whatever. Something for another day, without annoying cookies like Pure Vanilla abusing their Soul Jam’s connection to come speak with him just to “make sure he was okay”.
Shadow Milk glances at his fingers and flexes them a few times. He can already feel the form slipping, but he has a fair amount of time left before he has to change back.
Just as he is about to begin cleaning up the bloody mess he caused, the door to the room crashes open and reveals two distressed servants.
“Master Shadow Milk Cookie, are you-“ Black Sapphire’s voice is cut off as his jaw drops at the sight of Shadow Milk. “O- oh. Oh my.”
Candy Apple screeches at the top of her lungs, almost enough to make his ear bleed. The perk of having eardrums now.
“Ah, don’t be worried, kids! Same good ol’ actor, different costuming! Isn’t it great? I made this one myself!” Shadow Milk gestures to his face, with hairs and a nose and cheekbones and all sorts of other things.
The two servants stare in a mix of horror and awe at him.
He’s going to have a lot to explain, it seems.