Chapter Text
There was a new cookie in the oven.
Shadows slithered and crawled around the facilities of the oven, not bothering to acknowledge this new presence in the oven.
“…He.…”
Many cookies were put into this oven. Cookies with the sweetest of doughs. Cookies with the sourest of doughs. Cookies with decades of experience. Cookies who had only taken their first steps. Cookies of high birth. Cookies of low birth. Magic Cookies. Healer Cookies. All those cookies and many more arrived in the oven either by being dropped in from above or were transported in the form of powder in tubes connected to the oven. All the remnants of those cookies converged to create the cookie forming in the center of the oven.
The Ultimate Cookie.
A singular cookie born from the merging of hundreds of cookies in an oven specially made with forbidden baking magic. The singular cookie that would grant all of cookiekind freedom through an age of despair that would bring humanity to its knees.
This singular cookie was incomplete.
Despite already being made up of hundreds of cookies, the form was incomplete. More souls needed to be incorporated into the dough. More magic had to be mixed in to allow the souls to merge properly into the dough. More life powder had to be added to ensure the dough could take shape and live.
Every hour in careful intervals, the flames of the oven flared to meld the ingredients into the dough. The exception to that was when whole cookies joined the dough. In those cases, the oven flared once the cookie dropped in to mix with the dough.
The oven wasn’t flaring. This Cookie was not becoming one with them.
“Fire?OvenCookieFirePain.Where?WhatisWhoFireAmGoingICookie?Hurts!Hurts!-“
The Ultimate Cookie sighed. Several of the shadows copied their motion. Every day, every hour it was the same. One soul in their body thought one thing and suddenly hundreds wanted to join in and voice their thoughts. Alas they had only one mouth so it was always an endless battle between the souls in their collective conscience to voice their thoughts. A battle the Ultimate Cookie always had to be the battle field of.
It wished they would just shut up.
“….llo…?”
The shadows moving about the oven paused. Despite refusing to acknowledge the new presence, they had all anticipated the incoming heat. The searing pain of having another cookie join them. Either to become another nameless voice in the Ultimate Cookie’s body or become one of the shadows that slithered about this oven like they had any purpose still. They were still part of the Ultimate Cookie’s body but they refused to properly assimilate. They were all united in one body but the shadows crept around the oven away from the main body in clumps of burnt batter. Some did it out of a desperate idea that not sticking to the center dough meant they still had a self in a way. Others did it because they did not enjoy being stationary. Many had similar reasons but none had the same.
“He..llo..!”
The Ultimate Cookie turned to finally look at the mysterious new cookie in the oven.
The cookie was simple. Painfully so. Just a standard Gingerbread cookie of little note. Simple golden brown dough decorated with nothing but two simple skull buttons and a simple swoop of white haircing on his head. His eyecings were blue and staring right at them.
“Hello? Hello!”
The simple cookie was waving their arms at them with a nervous smile on their face. In their left arm was a candy cane.
“Uh... hello! Who are you? Where are we?” The cookie looked at them then around the oven again. His eyecings darted around the oven from the Ultimate Cookie staring at them to the shadows slithering around the oven who were also looking at him now too.
The Ultimate Cookie saw the way his shoulders tensed and his already nervous smile became fraught under the shadows’ gazes. Whoever this was was very lost and wasn’t brought in this oven the same way the others were.
With a wave, the Ultimate Cookie sent the shadows away. They may have refused to become part of the singular body but they were still a part of the Ultimate Cookie and thus were easy to command.
The simple cookie’s posture eased considerably once the shadows slithered away to corners of the oven not visible to him. He seemed to be unaware that the shadows were still watching. The Ultimate Cookie had just sent them away. It didn’t see the need to inform the simple cookie of his misunderstanding.
“Thank you for sending those shadows away but uhhh you didn’t answer my question,” the simple cookie was back to talking now that the major source of their discomfort was gone. “What is this place? And who are you?”
“Who are you?” The Ultimate Cookie asked back before they could help it. Its voice echoed with the voice of many crumbled cookies. Male, female, young, old.
The simple cookie paused his questions and gave the Ultimate Cookie a pensive look. He crossed their arms over his chest and held the candy cane against his body. His head had tilted back slightly and the Ultimate Cookie could faintly hear him humming. After a bit of time, he straightens up and offers a smile.
“My name’s Gingerbrave!” A simple name for an equally simple cookie. “What’s yours?”
He gave up his name with an ease the Ultimate Cookie desperately wished it had.
“CinnamonCandyHurts!ChocoWhiteBananaFrosted!SprinkleMilkCreamFruitSwirlMarshmallowHurts!GingerCheeseSodaDoughHurts!SpiceCaramel!Hurts-“
Irritation bubbled to the surface as the shadows tried to offer a name that wasn’t who they were. Cinnamon, Caramel, Chocolate, Milk, Marshmallow, Cheese, Spice, Soda. Another pointless fight to try and say something. Whatever their names were before, it was not their name now and the sooner they stopped pretending that it was still their name, the sooner they stopped pretending they were anymore than parts of a body, the sooner they would have some peace in this oven.
“The Ultimate Cookie,” The Ultimate Cookie finally replied after Gingerbrave started fidgeting in the long pause that was made for the Ultimate Cookie to shut up the shadows. “That is what we are called so that is our name. My name.”
Gingerbrave’s face scrunched up slightly in confusion. The Ultimate Cookie didn’t understand what exactly the issue was.
The Ultimate Cookie’s own face scrunched up in frustration when another awkward silence came between them. Cookies that came in this oven were never this difficult. The simple cookie should have crumbled and become a part of their body already. Having to talk to someone was new. “You’re here to become one of us,” the Ultimate Cookie stated matter-of-factly and gestured to the spaces where the shadows once were. “Another part of me.”
That frustration burned inside their dough like an oven fire when Gingerbrave took a step back, clearly alarmed. Some of the shadows that the Ultimate Cookie sent off slithered out of the crevices of the oven to watch the pair of them again. Why was this so difficult? Why had this cookie not mixed into the dough yet?
“Um I don’t know what told you that but I am definitely NOT here for that.” Gingerbrave was looking at them as though they were insane. What other reason would a cookie be in this oven? He was the anomaly for standing there as a cookie instead of another clump of burnt batter.
“Then why are you here?” Ultimate Cookie stepped forward, removing the distance between them that Gingerbrave was trying to make. Some of the shadows started whispering something that was too soft for anyone to make out. It was just more white noise to them. Gingerbrave appeared alarmed by it though.
With another wave, the Ultimate Cookie sent off the shadows again, ordering them to hide in even deeper crevices of the oven while they sorted out just who this simple cookie was and why he was here.
Standing so close, the Ultimate Cookie could see him even more than they had earlier. He was plain as their first assessment. The only thing notable was that his dough seemed tougher than a standard gingerbread cookie. Curiosity bubbled up and they reached their arm out as they got the sudden urge to reach out to him and feel his dough. To examine its sturdiness, one shadow whispered. To feel the sensation of another cookie that wasn’t crumbled remains, a voice muttered from their collective conscience.
Gingerbrave stepped back again before Ultimate Cookie could reach out to him. They pushed down the disappointment that arose from that and put the hand down. “I’m trying to figure that out actually. I was in an inn with my friends and went to sleep to prepare for us to go on another adventure then woke up here. I was hoping you could tell me the way out?”
“Out?” The cookies that made up their body stirred and the Ultimate Cookie’s hands flew to their head, grabbing the sides of it.
At some point, all of them had known the outside. The gentle warmth of sunlight, the soft breeze of the wind. A number of them bemoaned having taken it for granted. Others claimed to enjoy the comfort of the oven. Whereas before they faced the unstable, unpredictable force of nature which brought heatwaves and tornados without so much as a notice. Now they sat in an oven where nothing changed and the pain was put in set intervals. The last bunch were simply too scared to even think about it. Though there was little choice but to think about it with all of them crammed into a single dough that was only growing more and more each day.
“OutFreeOvenSafeSafeScaredHurts!AreOutHelpHurts!TheOvenSunWindOutOutyouOutNo!HurtsDangerokay?FreeNatureHurtsThefear..OutWindOvenOvenOutOutOut-“
“Be quiet!” Ultimate Cookie snapped at all the cookies trying to talk. The shadows from earlier crawled out of the crevices and echoed the swirl of Oven, Free, Safe, Danger, Out and so many other words that were blending together to form a cacophony that bashed at their head like a cake log hammer beating against an anvil. All desperately trying to be the one who got to speak.
Ultimate Cookie forced them to the back of the oven this time with force rather than command. It seized the connection it had with all the burnt batter and cookie remains in the oven and pushed them down until they all quieted down with a symphony of agonized screams and sobs. Ragged breaths tumbled out of them as they reeled from the strain of violently shoving themselves around.
Gingerbrave’s demeanor shifted again. He seemed to do that a lot.
They wanted to bring the conversation back before another awkward silence formed between them but words failed to form in their mouth as Gingerbrave stepped closer and his hand was now laying over their own hand. The one they had been trying to reach out to him with before.
“Are you okay?” Gingerbrave didn’t hold their hand with very much grip, if any at all. He just rested his hand over their own, his golden brown dough over their pitch black dough. His expression was soft. He wasn’t smiling the way he was when he introduced himself but he didn’t look alarmed the way he was when they told him he was meant to be a part of them. He looked concerned.
His hand was odd. It was warm but not in the way the oven was. The oven was hot and burned through them with waves of heat that hardened their dough and melded ingredients into them. Gingerbrave’s hand was warm in a way they only had faint memories of old lives to base on. Despite his hand’s warmth it felt vaguely detached. It was there and touching their hand but it didn’t feel wholly corporeal.
Gingerbrave’s grip tightened a bit over their hand before relaxing again. They stayed quiet for a bit as Ultimate Cookie’s ragged breaths slowly stabilized until they were breathing normally again. Gingerbrave looked them over and they had only noticed from him doing that that they had hunched over, probably from the strain of handling all the voices talking. They straightened up, still keeping their hand under Gingerbrave’s own hand.
Another silence stretched between them.
“We are fine,” Ultimate Cookie finally said after a while. For whatever reason, the shadows and the crumbled cookies’ voices hadn’t surfaced yet. It could feel their presence but the shadows and crumbled had gone quiet. Had they shut them up with that much force?
The Ultimate Cookie took a deep breath. “So you wanted to find the way out?” It was still quiet even though they brought up the outside world. How strange.
Gingerbrave nodded. “I need to get back to my friends and the Vanilla Kingdom.” A fire lit up in his expression at the talk of going back to his friends. Whoever they were. The Vanilla Kingdom sounded mildly familiar. By now there should’ve been vague memories coming in to explain the Vanilla Kingdom but they were still being quiet. “We’re gonna go to Beast-Yeast to find a way to stop Dark Enchantress Cookie.”
“Dark Enchantress Cookie?” The Ultimate Cookie knew who she was. She was their creator. A creator they had only met in the form of laughter that occasionally echoed outside the oven.
“Oh do you not know her? She’s this super evil cookie who wants to destroy the cookie world!” Oh. He thought they didn’t know who she was. Since it finally got him talking, the Ultimate Cookie once more chose not to correct his misunderstanding. “She’s trying to steal the soul jam and use them to cover the world in darkness!”
Gingerbrave continued talking about kingdoms and heroes which the Ultimate Cookie wasn’t particularly paying attention to. Their attention went to their hand which was still resting under Gingerbrave’s warm hand.
Gingerbrave had stopped talking and when the Ultimate Cookie looked up to see why, they were met with a sheepish look. “Oh um, sorry about just touching you like this without your permission.” His other hand scratched the back of his head in a bashful motion. “You looked really scared and the shadows around this place got really loud. I was calling out to you but you couldn’t hear me so I grabbed your hand.” His sheepish look became a bit nervous. “I hope that’s okay.”
They looked scared? And he was calling out to them? The Ultimate Cookie must’ve lost more control of the shadows than they thought.
After saying that, Gingerbrave seemed to be a lot more conscious of just how close the two of them were now. They were a mere breath away from each other. He started pulling his hand away from them and his feet were starting to step away to re-establish distance. Ultimate Cookie followed before he could disconnect them, their hand still under his and their white eyecings stared right at him, looking closely to see if he would make any more distance from them.
Gingerbrave’s eyes widened and his mouth opened to say something but he closed it without any sound coming out. He furrowed his eyebrow and lowered his hand before stepping back to where he was before so they were back in their previous position.
“It’s okay,” The Ultimate Cookie mumbled, still unsure what to make of the warmth that radiated from his dough and how they followed it without a thought.
Despite their sudden action to keep Gingerbrave close, there were still no cookies speaking up in their collective conscience. No whispers offering their unsolicited thoughts or advice. No talk contradicting their current action or egging them on. No battle to speak an opinion that the collective conscience wouldn’t agree on. The collective conscience and the shadows were still there, the Ultimate Cookie could still feel them but they were all quiet.
“We…” They tried to think of the right word. The silence made their thoughts move at a sluggish pace they weren’t used to. “Don’t mind.”
Despite the lack of finesse in their answer, Gingerbrave smiled. It was warm like his hand. “Well I’m glad I could help.”
His eyecings were looking around the area, lingering on the iron racks and dried up batter. Right. He wanted to leave. The thought of that made something in Ultimate Cookie ache.
“I have to go now to find my friends but I’m sure we’ll meet again somewhere.” His smile was soft and reassuring. He didn’t know there was no way out. The doors to the oven never budged in the rare times the Ultimate Cookie could see them. And those rare times became less and less frequent as more cookies joined their dough.
“The way out…” The Ultimate Cookie’s attempt to explain the lack of exit was cut off by a sudden thump shaking the oven.
Every part of them had gone still. From their main body to the collective conscience and the shadows that infested this oven.
Their hand reached out to try to grip Gingerbrave’s hand to stabilize themselves for what was coming but as the flames of the oven lit up, he wasn’t standing in front of them anymore. In front of them was no longer the simple cookie with golden brown dough and two skull buttons but just an empty space. An empty space that was lighting up with the rest of the oven as it fired up.
A scream tears out of their throat and the collective conscience screams with them, the noise having finally returned with the heat of the oven.
The heat tore their dough open starting from their scalp and in the crack that formed, life powder flooded in. Countless voices joined, all wailing in agony and trying to ask questions the Ultimate Cookie had no answer to. A few of them screamed loud enough for the Ultimate Cookie to understand. They must’ve been whole cookies dropped in that they hadn’t noticed. Or just particularly willful ones.
“My daughter, where is my daughter!?!”
“What is this place? Where are we?”
“Witches, please save me!”
“Dark Enchantress Cookie!!!”
What pitiful last words. Anything they said beyond that would now be one of thousands. A part of the legion that was their conscience. Another voice to fill a never ending racket in a single body. Here they are crumbling apart and all they can do is pray, question and curse before they die.
They wish they heard Gingerbrave’s last words.
More of their dough broke open as the flames of the oven burned. Their chest split open at the center and what spilt out was strawberry jam with shadows congealed in them. Life powder and cookie crumbs were pumped into the open wound on their chest, slowly filling the crack but not sealing it. The dough at their torso which remained in one piece hardened and blackened further.
The Ultimate Cookie made a small strangled noise at the wound on their chest. There was no escaping it, they just had to endure.
“WITCHESSAVEME!”
Witches. The so-called godly creators of cookies whom they worshipped for bringing about the dessert world. The cookies in their body could pray to whomever it was they worshipped. No one would answer in this oven.
Jam filled their mouth. They heaved out a cough to expel it and what came out wasn’t just jam but chunks of life powder and crumbs from their chest and scalp. The chunks sunk into the floor and grates of the oven. Either staining the oven or mixing with the shadows who were lurking in the area.
The life powder which had built up in them in abundance was meant for many uses but one of them was to prevent them from becoming hazy from the pain of it all. It would seem like clever design from their creator if it wasn’t for all the cookie souls inside them screaming so much that their mind filled with fog anyway.
Their hands split open, almost separating into 5 appendages per fist. Their legs cracked open in the center, nearly splitting them apart.
Life powder flowed into every single one of the cracks. Not to heal the damage but simply to add even more souls to its collective conscience. Souls that were straining to form a cohesive thought while being forcibly merged together into one body.
It doesn’t know how long the pain lasted. All it knows is that at some point it had stopped feeling jam in its eyecings and their body stopped cracking open. The oven’s flames stopped growing hotter and stagnated.
Inside their dough, the life powder settled, and spread across their jam. Their replenished jam circulated throughout their body, oozing out of the open cracks on their body.
The jam mixed with the batter of the shadows that made up their body to coagulate together into strawberry-red unbaked dough. That unbaked dough oozed through the cracks and filled in the open spaces of their body.
Under the heat of the oven, that dough slowly hardened and took form on their body. The life powder inside that unbaked dough and the life powder of the Ultimate Cookie’s own dough resonated, ensuring it fused together as one body.
Even as the dough finished baking into them, the heat of the oven continued baking the dough which had developed into a deep pink. It sizzled under the heat of the oven and it became darker and darker until becoming pitch black like the rest of their dough.
With their wounds now sealed up and the life powder integrated into their dough, the oven finally stopped burning and shut off.
Once the oven’s fire had finally cooled and the baking was finally over, their jam continued circulating but this time with no open wounds to spill out of. With control of their body once more, Ultimate Cookie’s eyecings went straight to the spot where Gingerbrave last stood.
It was empty. He must have assimilated into their dough.
It was the regular cycle of things. The fate of every cookie that fell into this oven. They fall in. It burns. They crumble. A new voice joins the lot of them.
The time with Gingerbrave was always destined to be brief. Even though by some miracle he came in unharmed and didn’t immediately assimilate, he was going to assimilate regardless of the odd way he arrived.
The Ultimate Cookie couldn’t help but feel a little sad.
The feeling of his dough on their own still lingered on their hand even as life powder and the remains of other cookies sunk into their dough. The loss of his warmth ached in a way that the flames of the oven never did.
His company was nice, even if their talk was uneventful. In that place of fire and noise, for a brief moment they felt something that was simply warm.
Speaking of noise, the shadows and voices of the others had stopped screaming and instead finally returned the noise that dominated their existence in earnest. Whispers and sobs filled the oven as shadows crawled out of the corners of the oven again. The silence they enjoyed earlier was completely gone in favor of a new cacophony of screams.
“ITBURNSWhere?AAAACookiesOvenDaughterWITCHES!ForsakenMotherLifeDoughCookiesOvenPowderDOORMYHurts!LifeWhere?WHO?Hurts!Hurts!DAUGHTER-Hurts!BURNS!WitchesOvenPainOUTIngredientsHurtsAlmightyOvenHURTS-!!”
With a disgruntled heave, the Ultimate Cookie shut them up once more, clutching their head from the strain. There were more of them than there were before.
The conscience refused to be properly silenced and they had now replaced screams with hushed murmurings and cries.
Many of them were begging for an end to the pain on their dough. Others were murmuring prayers pleading for the almighty to save them. There were prayers now for not just the Witches but small prayers for Guardians. Whoever those were. They wouldn’t be answering soon. No one did. Some pleaded for family. Did they even remember their names?
Some pleaded to be let out. Not just of this body but of the oven.
“HomeeeOutsideScary!WitchesAboveEndItMomOutDanger!OvenNODONTWITCHESOutHomeScaryNoDangerNatureWorld!Out!No!No!HomeWitchesHelpMe!EndOutOutOutNO-“
The Ultimate Cookie slumped on the grates of the oven. There was no use trying to silence them now. They couldn’t muster the same force they had used earlier to silence them so thoroughly.
Slumped on the ground, they could see the oven doors at the corner of their eye. Far away and out of reach.
Without anything else to do, they listlessly listened to what else the souls of their body were saying.
Most of them were begging for the same things they’d always been begging for ever since they joined the dough. To stop the heat. To go outside. To stay forever. To end their pain.
There was a small group however that the Ultimate Cookie could barely make out. A small choir of voices calling for something it too longed for.
“Warmth…Hand….Warmth….”
They spoke softly enough that their words weren’t blending together. The souls couldn’t form a complete sentence but the Ultimate Cookie understood what they were asking for.
Gingerbrave
Or at least something that Gingerbrave gave. Warmth in the form of nothing but a single hand.
The Ultimate Cookie’s chest ached. They too wanted that warmth back. The feeling of peace that came with it. The clarity they had in that moment with him. It knew best however that that warm touch wouldn’t be coming back anytime soon as he had assimilated into their dough.
Gingerbrave was probably somewhere among the shadows in the oven since he didn’t immediately register in the main body’s dough. They didn’t hear him among the cacophony of sound but with how loud they all were, the odds were likely they just couldn’t hear him.
He couldn’t hold their hand anymore but maybe if they were fast enough in finding what remained of him as a shadow they could preserve enough of him to talk still? If they pieced together enough of his shadow, maybe they could see that smile again.
The shadows gathered around Ultimate Cookie and their hand which Gingerbrave had held earlier disassembled into multiple long strands of shadows and unbaked dough. They plunged the strands into the gathered shadows, beginning to sort them one by one.
—————————
Gingerbrave rose from his bed in the inn with a start in a cold sweat. His candy cane was clenched tightly in his hands.
He, Strawberry Cookie and Wizard Cookie shared a room in Crow’s Nest Inn that had 3 separate beds for them set up by Black Raisin Cookie before they left for Beast-Yeast. They had gone to bed to take a nap and get some energy before leaving on the airship with Pure Vanilla and it seems he was the last to wake up since both Strawberry and Wizard Cookie were absent from their respective beds.
Outside the room behind the door, he could hear Wizard Cookie talking to someone. Strawberry Cookie most likely. Or perhaps some of the Villager Cookies?
“Gingerbrave! Are you up yet?” It was one of the Villager Cookies! “We have fresh raisin buns for breakfast!”
“I’m coming!” Loosening his grip on his cane, Gingerbrave exhaled loudly and shook himself around before getting off his bed. This was not the time to be laying in bed all day. Weird dream or not.
It was time to get ready for Beast-Yeast!