Chapter Text
Okay, let's kick things off!
This first story wasn't a direct suggestion but rather something I got inspired to write after fulfilling a different request on the CRK subreddit. So it seemed like the perfect opening.
WolfyTheReject suggested an AU where the other Ancients also attended the Witches' Banquet and met the same fate as White Lily. My first thought was: "If that happened, I bet Pure Vanilla would be the one to give Red Velvet Cookie his new arm." (So thank you, Wolfy, for letting me play in this AU again.)
For the sake of a quieter setting, we're going to separate Shadow Priest (the newly transformed Pure Vanilla) and Dark Enchantress from the others for a bit. Then we'll let them meet Red Velvet Cookie on the road after the chaos of the Witches' Banquet has subsided...
==
This was not a walkway for cookies. The material was simple, nothing more than compounded dirt, but it stretched absurdly wide. Dozens of cookies could've stood side by side across it. And two or even three of them could've fit in one of the massive footprints left fresh in the dust.
Some prints were a single unified shape, while others were broken with a gap in the middle, the back of the print pressed deeper into the earth like a stake. White Lily did not know what to make of these strange foot coverings the witches had worn as they fled. Nor did she care. Only the details relevant to taking them down and making them pay mattered now.
Tall grasses lined either side of the massive road, their edges highlighted by the grapefruit red sun as it set. Among the grasses lay bits of half-baked cake creatures, dropped and splattered by the witches in their haste. The cakes were neither inanimate like the strange smiling cookies she'd seen nor were they fully sentient or capable of living on their own. The life powder was bleeding out of them. And the scent of charred icing was nauseating. Not even Pure Vanilla at the peak of his power couldn't have saved them. The thought piled new fuel on the fire inside her.
The physical heat in her dough might've cooled, but the boiling rage in her heart remained. She'd called herself Dark Enchantress Cookie to the witches. Mostly to aid in terrorizing them. And how well it had worked; they'd fled without even trying to stop her. But that was part of the problem. If they'd really seen her as a sentient creature, one worth reasoning with, they would've listened to her before running. They gained no insight whatsoever from the ordeal. Nothing would change.
They'd have their next little get-together, chat about proper precautions, and go right on doing their abhorrent work with no regard for her kind.
Which was why the only proper solution was to dismantle the entire system. The witches. Their magic. All of it. And if some cookies actually survived? Well, let them build a better world. Not that she believed any survivors would exist. The witches' oven had burnt down her optimism, and their laughter had scattered the ashes.
"Dark Enchantress Cookie," she said, just to hear it aloud again. "I rather like the tone of it." She turned back to Pure Vanilla. "What do you think?"
He nodded, his expression thoroughly apathetic. His appearance hadn't changed nearly as much as hers had, but the contrast was still drastic. His once blue-and-cream robes now reminded her of a moonless night sky. Black transitioned to crimson on the underside of his long cape. Black horns, though thinner than her own, protruded from his head, the remnants of his hair parted around them. Her own hair had melted away, and her long, tight gown mirrored the same red-and-black color scheme. She looked like a completely different cookie.
So, yes, a fresh moniker would be more than appropriate. But she waited to hear Pure Vanilla's opinion all the same.
"A name should reflect the image a cookie wants to portray," he finally said. "If you feel 'Dark Enchantress Cookie' suits you better, you should keep it." He then massaged his temples. "I apologize. There's a lot of emotions in my head I'm not used to at the moment."
"I understand," she said. No doubt he was feeling the same rage as she was. But he so rarely lost his temper with anyone. How odd that must feel for him now. He walked along the path like a lost child, taking in landmarks and yet making no sense of them.
When he turned, her eye was drawn to a golden outline in the shape of his soul jam embroidered across his chest. Of the soul jam itself, she could see no sign. Nor could she tell what had happened to her own Soul Jam. Had it melted in the heat of the oven, perhaps absorbed into her dough? She certainly hadn't lost any strength from the ordeal. In fact, she felt more powerful than she ever had before.
Pure Vanilla knelt beside one of the dying cake pieces sticking out from the grass--a limb, by the looks of it. His face stayed so stoic. White Lily wished she could read him better. Their minds had connected in the oven, but now he felt closed off from her. Or, more accurately, closed off from the world.
"I do still wish to help cookiekind," he mused. "But I no longer know what that looks like. My heart no longer knows what it desires."
She shook her head. What a sad, sorry thing her precious priest had become. But she would help him through this. Just as she would guide all the former Ancients to victory against the witches.
The rustle of leaves and a fleeting silhouette nabbed her attention. Another cookie? But the shadow was too short to be any of her friends'. Not to mention, it looked vaguely familiar. Yes...she'd seen it back at the witches' house, too--another of their kind escaping his captors. He'd darted with blurring speed between cake monsters, both living and fallen. Only she'd missed the opportunity to gather any more details beyond his small size.
Pure Vanilla got up and hurried after it. His arm straightened in a flash, staff tight in his grip. Without a word from its wielder, the staff glowed bright red, and the grasses parted to reveal their little stalker. Now that White Lily saw him, she realized why he was so small. This cookie was hardly more than a child. His tattered cloak fluttered back in the wind, revealing he lacked a right arm. The edge of his shoulder was smoothed over; either he had lost it when his dough was still soft or he had never had one to begin with.
A soft whine came from behind him as a tiny cake puppy peeked timidly around his leg.
The sight of it brought a small smile to Pure Vanilla's face. "It's all right, little one," he said gently. "We won't hurt you. And it's always better to meet face-to-face, wouldn't you say?"
The child sniffled, looked him over, and then glanced down at the road at her. "Dark Enchantress...Cookie?" he said in a scratchy voice. "That's her name, right?"
Pure Vanilla nodded. "It is."
"Oh." The child fidgeted in the dirt with his foot and inched closer to Pure Vanilla. His cake creature followed. "My name is Red Velvet Cookie. This is Chiffon. And your name is...?"
Pure Vanilla frowned once again. "I'm not sure right now."
Red Velvet tilted his head in confusion at this, staring up at Pure Vanilla with curious, blue eyes.
"But what about you?" Pure Vanilla asked as he knelt down to get more on eye level. "Have you lost your arm?"
Red Velvet's bright blue eyes shimmered with oncoming tears. "I... lost my friends," he said.
"Your friends?"
Red Velvet Cookie nodded. "The cakes. They...we played together. But now Chiffon is the only one left." His young cake hound rubbed its face against his leg on hearing the name.
"I see," Pure Vanilla said, a heaviness in his voice that could only come from knowing the same pain. "Poor thing. There is a lot of destruction here, isn't there?"
"Yeah," Red Velvet answered. Chiffon whined and put its paws up, trying to nuzzle under its friend's single arm.
"But perhaps we can still bring something new out of it." Pure Vanilla stood and walked back the way they'd come, passing White Lily Cookie without a word. He picked up the broken cake limb from where it lay on the road and brought it back to where Red Velvet Cookie waited. "A gift for you? Show me your right shoulder."
Red Velvet Cookie winced looking at the detached limb and covered Chiffon's eyes. But he rotated until his shoulder faced Pure Vanilla all the same. Pure Vanilla lay his staff in between them, its face glowing red once again. Then, with careful precision, he angled the cake limb and touched the end of it to Red Velvet's shoulder. The child's body glowed with the same red as the staff. Icing and dough flowed over one another, melding perfectly. The arm was obviously not the ideal size, a decent amount bigger than his cookie arm. But he held it out and flexed the fingers effortlessly. When Pure Vanilla saw the spell had worked, he smiled in satisfaction, and the red glow faded from both the staff and the child.
"There we are," Pure Vanilla said. "I believe this will serve you well."
Red Velvet bent and stretched his new limb, startling each time it actually did what he wanted. "I...guess."
"I'm sorry I couldn't do more," Pure Vanilla said. "My healing powers aren't what they were, it seems."
White Lily utterly disagreed. He could always mend wounds, restore cookies' dough to the way it had once been, but this was different. He'd changed a cookie's body into something new. How could he not see his powers were so much more now?
Chiffon shook itself out and gave Red Velvet's new hand a tentative sniff.
"I'm sure there are other cake creatures out there who could use your care," Pure Vanilla said. "Perhaps this arm will help you connect with them."
Red Velvet Cookie held his breath and with slow, deliberate movements, he raised his hand and gently used his cake claw to scratch Chiffon on the side. It was obviously a favorite spot, as the pup immediately closed its eyes and lolled its tongue. Red Velvet smiled. "...yes. Maybe it will. Thank you, mister."
"My pleasure," Pure Vanilla said as he started forward on the road. "Stay safe out there. I hope you see a better world someday."
Red Velvet Cookie rubbed Chiffon's stomach and pointed with his new hand towards the grass. The two of them jumped in, hiding themselves once again. "Yeah! You, too!" he called.
It was a well-played exit, but White Lily knew a ploy when she saw one. The child wasn't that good of an actor. But instead of calling him out right away, she walked up to Pure Vanilla's side and matched her pace to his as they continued down the massive road. The grass rustled alongside them every step of the way.
"He isn't leaving, you know," she said, in case he'd failed to notice himself. "He's clearly following us."
"Oh, is he?" Pure Vanilla, his expression stoic once again. "I suppose we shouldn't be surprised."
White Lily sighed. "If he tries to join our cause, I won't reject him. He's had enough of that already. But I would like you to explain something to me."
"Of course. What is it?"
She hardly knew where to begin. She felt frustrated, not at him exactly, but at this broken world where mending a child's arm and sending them off with a smile amounted to a lie. "You saw the same vision I did. And you agree there's no pleasant way to bring an end to the witches' tyranny? If we succeed at all, it'll be with chaos and destruction, much of it caused by me."
"I do agree on that much," he allowed.
"So why give an impressionable child such a false idea about us? Why give him hope that there's anything better on the horizon?"
In answer to this, Pure Vanilla paused and looked up at the real horizon. The grass stopped rustling along with him. The sun was barely more than a glowing line now, the warmth of the sky half-swallowed by night. "If you do plan to end the world," he said, "surely that only increases my obligation to make cookies' remaining time on it as pleasant as possible."
White Lily...no, she really needed to drop that name. Dark Enchantress Cookie could only chuckle at his reply. "Not even the witches could truly change you."
"They've changed me enough," he said. Then, with a tentative curiosity much like Red Velvet's, he reached up and rubbed the side of his right horn. "Perhaps I too should pick a new name."
"Of course," Dark Enchantress Cookie said. "Let me think. In the oven, when our minds linked with each other, I thought of you as my shadow. My priest."
He lifted an eyebrow. "'Shadow Priest,' hmm? No doubt a certain Beast would call me a plagiarist. But yes...I like it."
She took his hand. So that settled that. But his words gave her another thought, one that excited her mind and laid a clear path before them. "Ah, yes. The beasts could be valuable allies, couldn't they? We should go help them out of that troublesome tree."
"I agree," Shadow Priest Cookie replied. "Lead the way, and I'll follow you."
She walked a few steps ahead, listening as the grass rustled once more, and the sun well and truly slipped out of view.
Behind her, he whispered so softly, he probably didn't intend for her to hear: "Always."
==
I don't have a cut scene for this one yet, as that's going to take a little longer, but I did make a little tl;dr comic (with Dark Enchantress obviously being meaner than she actually was):
I did not have any reference pics of Shadow Priest (and my drawing skill wouldn't do much for him if I did), so his look is a palette swap of Truthless Recluse with the Dark Enchantress horns added on. Because everyone knows curved horns say, "I'm evil now." ^_^