The audience muttered as the explosion cleared. Louise herself wasn't quite sure what this meant. She looked to Colbert, who nodded, then said the ritual words and kissed what she had summoned.
The enormous cookie rippled, and a chocolate chip cookie landed in her hands.
It was only the beginning.
A psychopath, a half-elf, and the pope walk into a school. It sounded like the beginning of a bad joke, but here they were.
Sheffield frowned at the bushes growing cookies like fruit, at the places where cookies were mined straight from the ground, and at the enslaved mages forced to cast spells to make more cookies. Small, colorful kittens whipped the poor bastards whenever they did something wrong, or just because. She nudged the ground with her foot, and her expression twisted as instead of dirt, cookie dough squished underneath her shoe. "So… you were right. A Void Mage like you guys, except she's lost her marbles."
Vittorio nodded. "I don't know what this obsession with cookies are about, but Tristain is lost. Princess Henrietta just… disappeared. The school is the epicenter."
Joseph, recently cured of his sociopathy via Void spell, frowned. "Are those… grandmas?"
Indeed, a gaggle of old ladies in a variety of costumes passed by. Sheffield shuddered as one's head turned one-hundred-eighty degrees. "Okay, so I've got invisibility bracelets for everyone. And my special locator device is telling me she's in the dining hall. For some reason."
"Has anyone ever told you that your powers are bullshit?" asked Saito, Tiffania's familiar.
"Your face is bullshit."
"That's enough," Vittorio said. "Let's go."
They creeped past the kittens, avoided doughy golems, and hid as a cookie dragon of all things wandered by.
"I should take control of it…" Julio whispered.
"Later," his master replied.
And then they were in a throne room. A stalactite dripped glowing blue fluid from the ceiling, forming a lump of what appeared to be sugar. Dozens of rectangular planes of light hovered around the walls. An enormous cookie in the middle of the floor, scribed with the runes for Gandalfr, was being gnawed on by grotesque, bright red worms.
At the head of a dining table was a throne. On the right, Henrietta was chained in skimpy clothing to a comfortable-looking chair. On the left was a naked Kirche with meathooks stabbed through various body parts, chaining her to the ground. At the floor in front of it was one Charlotte Hélène d'Orléans, a.k.a. Tabitha, kneeling in supplication.
And on the throne was The Clicker herself. Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Valliere, Dread Mistress of the Tristain Bakery, Archwizard of Chocolate, Queen of the Grandmatriarchs, and Void Baker.
She did not look pleased to see them.
"So…" began Saito, "Could you maybe not enslave all of Halkegenia?"
Charlotte stood. "My mistress deigns not to speak with you, and so I shall speak as Her herald."
"Charlotte…" Joseph said. "I deserve everything you might do to me. But this is not the way. She will twist everything in her madness."
Eyes narrowed. A beam fired from the end of Charlotte's staff, striking the king in the chest. He screamed as pustules made of cookie batter erupted from his skin. "Although I am not my mistress, I speak with Her authority, so you will show respect. She knows of you, mages of Void, and She despises you."
She pointed at Joseph. "Spoiled child of royalty." She pointed at Vittorio. "No one to tell you what you could and could not do." She pointed at Tiffania. "Peaceful life with no expectations."
She slammed her staff on the ground. "While all of you had all that you could want, or missed nothing you needed, my mistress was tormented each day. She tried to meet expectations that your religion set, that your society dictated, that your people forced on Her, and was mocked, belittled, and spat upon."
"Isn't this sort of an overreaction?" Sheffield asked. "Yeah being the school's punching bag sucks, but it's kind of part of life. Get over it."
Louise's hand rose. In it was a spear made of a material almost impossible to even conceptualize. A beam of light like crystal glass shot out, enveloping Sheffield in an instant, and the woman fell to the floor, shaking.
"What you have just felt is the accumulated feelings of every moment She was in this school," Charlotte said. "Rejoice, for you have touched Her divine emotions, and fear, for you have earned Her wrath."
Sheffield didn't speak, merely twitching as she suffered the 'kind of part of life' she had referred to. When she failed to 'get over it,' Tiffania stepped forwards. "You know how this pain feels. Why would you subject others to it? You should understand how terrible it is. I don't understand how you could do this."
"Have you ever suffered like this?"
"Not as such, but…"
"Then shut up, ignorant fool." And Tiffania found that her mouth would not open.
Those unaffected by magic so far, Vittorio, Julio, and Saito, looked at each other. Julio shrugged, then walked forwards and bowed to the floor. "I for one welcome our new cookie overlords."
"…That's fair," Saito said.
"All of Halkegenia is to be destroyed by windstones in the near future," Vittorio blurted out. If anything would get her attention, it would be the mounting catastrophe!
"My mistress intends to convert them all to cookies. Problem solved." Vittorio found himself pulled to the floor by chains of white chocolate. Though he kept composed, inside he screamed with all his might. "And so one remains."
"…Um, like, I'm pretty sure I'm a harem protagonist, and I'm too sexy for you to say no to?"
Louise leaned forwards with a glare.
With her herald, punching bag, and concubine in tow, Louise marched to the elves. When they saw the cookies, they fought, for they were the symbol of the great Enemy, all those millennia ago. But unlike Brimir, she held a connection to the Outer Bakers themselves, and every time she died, she ascended, then returned to the first time she summoned the Great Holy Cookie, with new powers from cookie heaven itself. Until, a mere half-dozen ascensions later, even the elves could not be anything but overwhelmed.
And Louise turned her hungry gaze to the skies themselves.
A/N: Louise summons the eponymous cookie from Cookie Clicker. Whoever clicks the cookie gains the powers of the cookie. Which, if you have ever played Cookie Clicker, you know isn't terribly great for anyone involved.
I recommend reading "The Clicker Saga" by Red_H2O (co-authored by yours truly), which is what most of the descriptions of CC stuff in this chapter were drawn from. Though incomplete on this site, the story can be found in its entirety on Reddit.