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The first thought that arose once Elder Faerie gained consciousness was that he should not have woken up.
His corpse - or what should have been his corpse - was half-submerged in a sweet, sticky substance, like he’d been preserved in jelly amber. His dough pulsed with an insatiable ache, aftershocks rippling from the epicenter in his chest and through his weakened limbs. He passed hours on his back, making no effort to remove himself from whatever contraption he’d been hooked to, studying the dingy walls and foreign machinery.
Eventually, a cookie entered the room. “Finally awake, huh? She told me it’d be quick, but I didn’t think this quick.”
He had a disarming smile at odds with the menacing whisk slung around his torso. Goggles were perched in his blonde coiffure. “Hopefully you haven’t been too bored.”
The man approached the metallic pod and pressed a button out of Elder Faerie’s line of vision. A suction underneath him began to consume the jelly clinging to his body, ripping away gelatinous clumps with startling intensity. Once that was finished, the man removed a number of catheters from Elder Faerie’s arm, plucking each out with care and inspecting the dough beneath. His gaze snagged on the monarch’s sodden wings.
“Fascinating,” he thought aloud. His crimson eyes sparkled with admiration. “Can you really fly with these? They feel so delicate, but that could just be due to the jelly’s effects…if only you could give me a demonstration! I’d have loved to study them in flight.”
“Who…” he croaked. His voice crackled from misuse. “Who are you?”
“Should’ve introduced myself, huh? You’ll be seeing a lot of me.” The stranger gave him a brief, out-of-place salute. “Butter Roll Cookie, director of the laboratorium! A pleasure to meet you.”
Laboratorium. Yes, Elder Faerie was familiar with this place. In his brief visions, he’d glimpsed globs of dough in enormous mixers, brittle, crumbling cookies (the ones labelled callously, “failures”), and distilled life powder gleaming in hundreds of stoppered vials. Through the door Butter Roll had left ajar, he could glimpse cookies in lab coats scuttling past, carrying labelled ingredients and sheets of printed results. This was an institution dedicated to breaking the sacred, built on the work of individuals whose work had consumed their interest entirely.
“I’m surprised you can talk,” Butter Roll was saying, scratching the blonde stubble on his chin. “After losing all that energy, I figured you’d be out like a light.”
“Perhaps any ordinary cookie would succumb to exhaustion,” a voice crooned from the shadows, “but he is no ordinary cookie.”
Dark Enchantress stepped into the light. She was a buttress of grandeur - shoulder plates with edges serrated as teeth, a corset of gleaming bone to match the length of white hair swaying at her hips, and tar-black fabric that curled around her body like bark. Her magnificent horns had grown in size, only dwarfed by the pair of wings beating hot wind into his face with each intermittent flap.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” she greeted with false magnanimity. “I do hope you’ve enjoyed your stay thus far.”
“Oh! Boss!” Butter Roll stood up, granting her a wide berth. “I was just about to send someone to inform you about-”
“Leave us, Butter Roll Cookie.”
He gave her a curt nod, exiting soundlessly. The room door slid shut behind him.
“Only a week has passed since your arrival, yet you’ve regained more than a fraction of your waking power,” Dark Enchantress said, circling Elder Faerie’s chamber. Her lips split into a sneer. “Remarkable.”
“You seem displeased.”
Her gaze narrowed. “Do not play at coyness, Elder Faerie. Should I appreciate the insipid waste of power that accompanied your reign?”
“To what aim have you resurrected me? Even you are aware of the consequences of tampering with baking magic.”
“Ha! Aren’t you a devoted parrot, echoing their warnings?” She jerked his chin up with a gloved hand. “We are past consequences, and you will be put to better use under my command. A power such as yours should not lay idle.”
He looked down at the marks in his dough where the catheters had been removed. The thin tubes ran down the side of his resting chamber, across the floor, beneath carts filled with discarded supplements, and into a control panel on the wall, where they merged into one large pipe. A golden substance, which he recognized to be his own jam, had been siphoned out and deposited into a large trough. It was clear his weariness was not only attributed to whatever dark magics had been utilized to revive him.
“I trust you understand your new purpose,” Dark Enchantress told him, eyeing the glowing jam. “For once in your lethargic, interminable existence, you will be part of something greater.”
He arched an eyebrow. “I suppose I should thank you for the opportunity.”
“I see death has given you an attitude,” she drawled. “No matter. You will come to see the merit in your role eventually.”
“Will I?”
She scoffed, turning away. Her wings flapped irritably. “I already tire of your questioning. Be frank, Elder Faerie, or risk wasting my time.”
“Your true intentions elude me, Enchantress. Surely by now you’ve amassed enough life powder to fuel your ghoulish endeavors. I do not believe you would build a crucial part of your scheme around events you could not have guaranteed.”
“So he is canny after all,” she mocked. “The difference between myself and your bygone allies is that I consider contingencies. Had you not perished at the hands of Shadow Milk Cookie, you would still find yourself here, in my laboratorium.”
Elder Faerie seemed to consider her words. He leaned back against the cool interior of the chamber, his lavender hair pooled out beneath him. From a distance, he would have appeared still submerged.
“You will not succeed.” He said it without vigor or passion, as though this was just another fact of the world.
Fury flashed across Dark Enchantress’ features. She gripped her staff tightly, keeping herself from striking him where he lay. It brought him no particular joy to see her angry, but he nearly hoped she would forgo restraint and put an end to him that very moment.
It was a pointless hope, and he knew it.
Her rage melted away, and when she spoke, her voice was clear as a stream, trickling into his ears. “And that is why I will usher in the new age, and you will only be remembered as fodder. But you needn’t despair, Elder Faerie.”
Her head tilted, and the white tendril of hair curled at her cheek brushed against his own. “You have always been a servant of fate, a tool to be used. The only difference is who wields you.”
Elder Faerie grew accustomed to the laboratorium in a matter of days. When he awoke, he would have jam suctioned off his body (“the healing jam is there to aid you in replenishing your strength,” Butter Roll had informed him cheerfully, “so we can keep drawing yours without any fuss!”) and catheters inserted. Removing them would alert one of the nearby technicians, who would sedate him and re-insert the tubes once he’d lost consciousness.
He was never permitted to leave the extraction room, not that he had enough energy to do much but sit up. Using his wings, which were perpetually damp due to the overnight submersions, was out of the question. Where would he fly to, even if he could? As far as he could tell, the lab was sequestered deep underground, a labyrinth of rooms carved from bedrock. He was entirely out of his element.
There was little in the way of company. Butter Roll suffused enthusiasm, but in the few conversations they’d had, he seemed to be more interested in examining Elder Faerie’s insectile features. His curious nature seemed benign until he began posing questions like, “If I were to cut off a portion of your wings, would they grow back?”
“No,” Elder Faerie had said, hoping to dissuade him.
“Have you tried?”
“I…cannot say that I have.”
He nodded fervently. “Well, there’s a first time for everything.”
“Director,” his associate intervened, her tone tinged with exasperation. “We aren’t to harm the subject. Boss’s orders.”
“This wouldn’t harm him,” Butter Roll insisted. “I mean, he’s been sedated so many times, I doubt he can feel pain anymore-”
His associate grabbed him by the arm, dragging him off in the name of lunch. Elder Faerie had a blessed week without the man before returning to regularly scheduled poking and prodding.
Occasionally, other higher-ups would come by. Licorice Cookie found the ooze Elder Faerie was resting in more interesting than the man himself. Twins dressed in checkerboard print and about as tall as their hats spent the better half of an evening observing him (“He’s got such pretty wings!”/”His wings are pleasing.”) A hunchbacked cookie with a gnarled staff watched him from the rafters, an unhappy frown on her face, garbled mumbles tangling like the catheter tubes.
None of them were the cookie Elder Faerie wished to see most. He held no delusions that he could convince Dark Enchantress Cookie to abandon her schemes this late in the game, especially now that he’d witnessed the effort necessary to fuel them. He had, however, expected to see more of her after she’d gone out of her way to emphasize his importance. The multiple ongoing projects in the facility she had to monitor, alongside her other investments, likely kept her busy.
One evening, he noticed that he felt less light-headed than normal, and surmised from the empty trough that they had not drawn jam from him that previous night. His suspicions were confirmed when Butter Roll lifted him from the pod, sloppily wrapped him up, and deposited him into the hands of the choco-chess twins waiting outside the door.
“There you are!” said the white pawn, just as the black pawn said, “We’ve been waiting.”
They escorted him down the hall, one at his back, the other leading. He focused on walking in a steady, straight line past vats of spoiled dough and whirring mixers. His biggest challenge proved to be a set of stairs leading into a separate wing, decorated in lush carpets and hazy with incense burning from sweet braziers.
It was a far cry from the cold, clinical atmosphere in the earlier corridors. The leading twin approached a sheer silk curtain and pulled it back, revealing a circular room heavy with drapery.
In its center, reclining on a divan, was a cookie smoking from a long, thin pipe. A stream of mauve trickled from the corner of their lipsticked mouth.
“Oh, good,” he said, his voice velvet as the fabrics spilling from the walls. “You’ve brought him.”
The children ambled up to him. They stretched out their arms, palms open, and he pressed a handful of jellies into each. “Now shoo.”
Once they’d departed, he let out a theatrical sigh and emptied his pipe onto an open tray. “I’ve been tasked with making you look presentable,” he informed him. “Your armor is here, but if you seek a professional opinion: I suggest you disregard it for the evening.”
“I would prefer my armor,” Elder Faerie said evenly.
The cookie rolled his eyes, retrieving the stack of armor from behind a small set of violet stools, muttering something like obstinate men and their obsession with armor. He allowed Elder Faerie to dress, then ran a comb through his hair, scrubbed his face, and dabbed a floral-scented ointment beneath his eyes.
“Dreadful eyebags,” he’d explained.
“I haven’t slept all that well,” Elder Faerie admitted.
A scoff. “I don’t recall asking for elaboration. Keep your woes to yourself.”
“You work alongside Dark Enchantress, yes?” Elder Faerie asked, barely acknowledging their blunt jab. “Do you know how she was able to bring me back?”
He made a flippant gesture. “I prefer to stay out of the laboratorium’s business. What goes on beyond these halls is beneath my interest. All I know is that Dark Enchantress collected your…remains herself. She retired to her rooms thereafter.”
“How long?”
“Do I look like a scribe to you?” he complained. “She was cocooned there for much longer than anyone anticipated, but I couldn’t tell you the hour or minute. When she at last graced us with an appearance, she was clearly fatigued. And instead of doing anything worthwhile, she went straight to visit you.”
He stepped away, inspecting Elder Faerie’s face. Apparently what he found was satisfactory, since he turned away and bellowed, “Licorice! Take him away.”
“Stop calling on me like I’m some servant, Affogato,” Licorice groused, ducking beneath the silk entrance. He covered his nose with a thick sleeve, squinting through the haze of incense.
“Then stop coming so obediently,” Affogato crooned. “He’s finished. Get along, now.”
Licorice reluctantly took charge of him, leading him into a separate wing of the building. Here, the corridors were thin, lit with torches lined upon the walls. The floor gleamed with beaten obsidian, cold enough that it felt like they were walking across a frozen pool.
Eventually the corridor opened up into a small parlor with another set of doors that stretched far above their heads. The pair awaited entrance by an ornate hearth, bathed in the dappled light of garnet flames.
He tried his luck asking Licorice questions. “Where does this lead?”
Licorice made a face. “Dinner.”
Elder Faerie cleaned up nicely.
Dark Enchantress languished at the far end of the long table, watching as he settled in across from her. Dishes were laid out before him - ornately stacked jellies, tiered cakes, and glasses of delicate flan. Elder Faerie consumed none of it, which came as no surprise: like her, he had little need for nourishment. Still, she’d hoped his partiality for sweets would betray him just this once. She’d have liked to see him succumb.
Partiality for sweets? she thought irritably. That wasn’t something she ought to have known. Normally she was well-fortified against residual memories from her previous shell, but occasionally they made themselves known, rearing their ugly heads like insects caught in the dark. The issue had arisen with that vanillian sod, but she’d managed to smother it and carry out her plans.
Unfortunately, now that she’d brought Elder Faerie into the fold, she would have to deal with the incessant bombardment of memories she no longer wished to keep.
“Dark Enchantress,” he called, his voice measured. How she despised the infuriating opacity of his tone. “Is there a reason you’ve summoned me here?”
She gestured at him with her half-empty wine glass. “Can I not treat my guest to a meal?”
“This change in status must have escaped my notice,” he said dryly. “When did I become a guest and not a captive?”
“Guest, captive…” she took a long sip, smiling. “Accomplice. Strive to be multifaceted for once in your indolent life, Elder Faerie.”
“You, who is single-minded in her goal, would teach me about multifaceted?”
“Of course. I have donned many faces in the name of progress. I can be patient. Generous. Kind.” She watched him through the candle’s dancing flame, satiating her hunger. “I do not merely hope for the betterment of cookiekind, I lay the path for its ascension. Our dreams are one in the same. If you refuse to take initiative, someone must.”
“The reason you harvest life powder from innocent cookies - the reason for my being here - is to propel your ultimate ambition.” His eyelids lowered. “You seek revenge, not progress.”
Dark Enchantress swirled the wine in her glass. “Have you not pondered the purpose of your mission, not even once? The order you’ve been given by beings you won’t dare to defy.” She paused her movements, and the wine slid to the bottom, staining red in its wake. “Is that all there is to you, Guardian of the Seal?”
Elder Faerie’s eyes widened. For the first time since his arrival, he seemed genuinely off-put.
She laughed. “Something the matter? Conversation not to your liking?”
He tore his gaze away, clearing his throat. Privately, she mourned the loss of that cracked egg-shell expression.
“My….” How she relished his hesitation. “My purpose is to watch over Earthbread and prevent the spread of darkness. Guarding the seal was just one obligation among many.”
“And you would let yourself be defined by ancient obligations forevermore? Crumble for them?” She rose, walking down the table in slow, deliberate steps. Her gloves fingers trussed the tablecloth, creating ripples in silk.
“I have no regrets.”
She bypassed the armrests, her steps coming to a halt at the chair’s crest. She held a base desire to seize his untouched steak knife and slash at his dough, just to see that false tranquility shatter. To witness anger finally follow suffering, as was natural, instead of this worthless display of loyalty.
She bent down, speaking directly by his pointed ears. “What use is there, lying to me? I know you too well.”
A sardonic smile, there and gone.
“She has no regrets. I have no regrets. Yet, by some inexplicable means, you remain entrenched in the past. You reject every chance at revolution, preferring to chain yourself to paltry tenants of honor and righteousness. You know the full scope of the witch’s caprice and stay complacent, watching your brethren fall for a nameless cause-”
His head spun to the side, eyes smoldering. “Enough.”
“And he shows himself capable of anger!” She gave him a vicious smile, fingers skirting over his shoulders. “Well done.”
“You have enough gall to speak on the deaths of my faeries-in-arms whilst extracting life powder from thousands of innocent souls.” The corner of his mouth tightened. “All that sacrifice for a nameless cause.”
“Please,” she goaded. “The only thing you’ve been willing to sacrifice is yourself. True change demands more.”
“More?” he echoed. “Pray tell, Enchantress. What happens to cookies whose dreams divert from your own? Do they not deserve betterment?”
“Cookies are blind to their own faults. They cannot be trusted to build the future.”
“In other words, they will be fodder.”
“At last, you’ve displayed a modicum of intelligence,” she droned, positioning herself in front of him. His back was straight with distaste, eyebrows pressing divots into his chiseled dough. Anger looked handsome on him. “A promising development.”
“And once again, I find myself unable to understand my involvement here.” He leaned forward, chin in palm. “You’ve reiterated your plans for my jam. Would it not have been more expedient to leave me in the hands of your subordinates, rather than entertaining…” he made a gesture towards the delicacies on the table. “This?”
“Would you prefer I leave you to their devices entirely?”
He let out a huff of air that could be mistaken for a laugh. “No, though I doubt you care for hospitality.”
“Haven’t I treated you well? I could have given orders to keep you unconscious and beneath glass.”
“Yes,” he murmured after some time, lost in his own thoughts. “You could have.”
She studied him, displeased to see the openness that had briefly been present closing up like a shriveled plant. His statuesque appearance returned, flattening the creasing beneath his eyes and tilt of his lips. She detested his audacity, but detested this blank slate of a man far more.
Elder Faerie had not been the only one to question her motives behind this dinner. There was no use trying to convince him of anything; she’d known from the start that he would sooner crumble then allow her to sway him. And she should have been content with this - his pitiful beliefs would not change the potency of his jam. She was not being compelled to arrange time with him. She did not have to think of him at all.
Still, words clung to her, a relentless irritant. She despised the smooth inflection of his voice, the relaxed slope of his neck, the complete lack of fear even as he spoke word after ignorant word. She hated how, even in this weakened state, she could feel the power emanating from his dough. It sickened her to think of what it must have felt like at its prime, and how he’d spent centuries idling away, letting it rust and rot. It was revolting.
More revolting was that she craved his submission. It was abnormal of her to be so fixated on a being near-inconsequential to her plans, but she could no longer deny it. She assured herself: his steadfastness would not be so wretched if it was directed at a more worthy target. If he would simply give in. If he would devote himself to her entirely.
She liked to make him wait.
After the first dinner, he believed there would never be such a scene again. She might visit him, of course, to assess his well-being, and they would exchange a few barbs, but that would be all. She had minions, after all, to take care of these details for her. There was no need to dirty her hands with another tangential discussion. He should have known she would defy his expectations regardless.
They developed a routine. She would attempt to corral him into agreeing her ideology was superior - these were never offers to join her slew of minions; she only wanted him to yield. They would exchange a few barbs once the pretense of politeness had been dropped. When an hour of discussion had failed to produce her desired results, she left him to his isolation. Then she made him wait, day after day, for her sporadic return.
He spent much of his time parsing through their previous conversations. Renewing the luster of her sneer in his memories, the commanding cadence of her voice.
The door slid open. He sat up, lavender hair spilling around his waist.
It was not Dark Enchantress. A female of short stature, dressed in jeweled robes and carrying a pair of hand mirrors, stood at the entrance. She studied him from a distance, clearly unimpressed.
“So this is the legendary Faerie King,” she said in lieu of a greeting. Her words dripped with derision. “You should be honored to have a role in my master’s plans. Not many are so fortunate.”
Elder Faerie regarded her with amusement. “I shall keep it in mind.”
“Besides your jam, I cannot glean what remarkable qualities of yours have possessed my master so.” Her eyes narrowed. “This is far worse than last time. At least then she was willing to hear my concerns.”
“Your concerns?”
She ignored his question, speaking primarily to herself. “I refused to believe she could be susceptible to such a thing, but I am left with no other answers.” She pointed one of her mirrors at him and shouted, “What manner of magic have you cast upon her?”
Elder Faerie processed her accusation. Fury writhed like a living creature in her eyes. “I can hardly stand as it is,” he told her. “And if I’d retained my magic, I would not use it for that purpose.”
“There is no other explanation,” she snapped. “My master’s mind is strong. She could not be so easily influenced unless she was caught in a powerful spell, and there is only one individual in this building capable of that.”
“What influence do you speak of? I observed nothing out of the ordinary.”
“What would you know of ordinary?” the minion spat. “I chose not to question her when she departed to the Faerie Kingdom on her own. When she revived you, however…I could not begin to comprehend it.”
“How did she go about reviving me?” Elder Faerie had long been curious, but no one would answer the question.
The woman’s expression contorted. She seemed genuinely pained. “The most valuable thing of all. A portion of her life powder, baked into your new body.”
He stared at her, speechless.
“Not a word,” she ground out. “I cannot bear to hear your voice…what could warrant such a sacrifice? I admit that my confusion must be a result of my own deficit. It is not my place to understand all she has in store when my mind is too feeble. But you are undoubtedly a weakness, and it would be against everything in my jam to allow you to-”
“Pomegranate Cookie.”
She flinched. A clawed hand came to settle at her shoulder. Dark Enchantress turned to face her, and she fell into a bow, the ruby-hued stones at her forehead clinking against the metal floor. “Master!”
“Tell me, what sort of rousing discussion were you entertaining our guest with? Surely not anything I’ve expressly forbidden you to mention. I trained you better than that.”
“It is within your full authority to punish me as you see fit, Master. I’ve committed a grave error and desire your tutelage."
Dark Enchantress made her wait. Then, “Leave. Let me not see you near this room again, Pomegranate.”
The woman climbed unsteadily to her feet. Her mouth trembled. She seemed dismayed at the lack of acknowledgement, even in the form of punishment, but she kept silent, bowed once more, and exited the room.
“Enchantress,” he greeted, finding his voice.
“Faerie,” she responded in kind.
She came to his side, inspecting the jam filled catheters. “I trust you’ve given thought to our prior discussion.”
“Your pride is astounding.”
Her lips curved. “Only because you have none.”
“For all your contempt of my mindless devotion, your allies seem to possess similar qualities.”
“It is a mercy to serve me.” She skirted the area where Pomegranate had knelt. “They will be the first to taste my new world.”
“I was under the presumption that in the end, they, too, would become fodder for your project.”
She eyed him cryptically. “They would understand that it was an honor.”
Elder Faerie thought back to Butter Roll and his lust for knowledge, to Affogato’s love of decadence, to the nervous Matcha Cookie who’d hesitated to make herself known. “I beg to differ.”
“Do beg,” she goaded. “I may even consider your input.”
He settled down into the chamber, a well-behaved corpse in its coffin. Part of him reeled from the recently divulged information. He wondered if Dark Enchantress had overheard Pomegranate’s full tirade.
“I thought you’d like to know,” she added, her smile filled with mirth, “that your companions are on their way here.”
It was the first time she had given him news of the outside world, and though he should have taken it with a grain of salt, he was compelled to believe her. “The Ancients?”
“Battalions from the Hollyberry and Dark Cacao kingdoms. Creme Republican airships,” she listed, clearly enjoying his shock. “It seems they’ve scrounged up a pathetic force. They’ll arrive on the morrow.”
“You must intend to leave by then,” he guessed.
“We are nearly ready to depart.” Her fingers brushed the skin where the catheter had been inserted, and she yanked it out. He hissed, golden jam burbling out of the tube like a golden spring.
“By now, I have more than enough of your jam. I could leave you here for them to find. Would you like that, Elder Faerie?”
“You would not leave me here.”
“How are you so certain?”
His eyelids lowered. “You won’t.”
“So stubborn,” she murmured, dropping her hand, depriving him of touch. “So desperate to be of service. You needn’t worry. I won’t abandon my tools for others to use.”
She swept away from him, cape dragging like an ocean of black behind her. He thought to ask her to stay, to reach out and snag her cloak and demand another moment of her time. Would she think him greedy? Would she encourage it?
In the end, he never found out. The door shut behind her, and he accustomed himself to the quiet, the void her voice left behind.
He was growing rather used to darkness.