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When Taako wakes up, it’s five o’clock in the morning and all he can think is I’m gonna make some fucking cookies.
It’s that thought that drives him to immediately jump out of bed, pause to run a brush through his hair, and then immediately march out of his room and over to the kitchen. Most of the ingredients are plentiful— a full bag of flour, several cartons of eggs, sugar— but to his dismay, there’s no chocolate chips. But he can manage— he’s Taako, from TV, if he can’t manage to make a batch of plain cookies taste good, who can?
Half an hour later, he eats those words— the cookies are a charred mess, this baking pan will never be usable again, and he considers it a miracle the fantasy fire alarm hasn’t woken anyone up. The whole mess goes straight into the trash, and he almost gives up right then and there— but then, who the fuck gives up after one failed batch?
An hour and two properly prepared batches later, Merle emerges bleary-eyed to the smell of baking. The moment he notices, Taako rushes over to shove a plate full of cookies into his hands, before immediately retreating back to the kitchen to resume shaping cookies.
“What’re these?” Merle asks after a moment, an edge of suspicion in his voice.
“They’re cookies, my man!” Taako says, sticking the cookies in the oven and pulling out a just-finished batch. He directs a Mage Hand to scoop them onto a cooling rack while he gets to work scooping out some more cookie dough.
“...It’s way too early in the morning, why are you making cookies?”
“Hey,” Taako says, turning to flick a wooden spoon at Merle. “You can’t decide when inspiration strikes! If I’m gonna wake up at five in the early and make cookies, that’s what’ll happen. Y’can’t postpone perfection.”
Merle gives him a skeptical look, but Taako ignores him to resume mixing more dough. He can hear Merle try one of the cookies, though, and then go right through the rest of the plate the moment he tastes how good they are— and then he slaps Merle’s hand away when he tries to have a go at the still-cooling cookies.
“Hey, what gives!” Merle protests, cradling his hand. “It’s just a cookie!”
“They’re still too hot,” Taako pronounces, crossing his arms. “And if you wanna have them once they are cool, you can make yourself useful.”
Merle grumbles at the unfairness of it all, but nonetheless grabs some potholders and dutifully puts the sheet Taako hands him into the oven.
Magnus emerges soon after, clearly drawn by the sweet scent of food, and Taako does much the same to him— gives him delicious, delicious cookies, and then makes him work for more. “These would be better with chocolate,” Magnus muses, stirring some batter up in a bowl.
“Yeah, I had the same idea,” Taako says, cracking an egg into a different bowl, “But I couldn’t find any? And I wanted to make cookies, like, right then and there, so I just left them out.”
“I could go get some now?” Magnus suggests, putting down the bowl.
“Yeah, go do that,” Taako says absently, shaking out an empty bag of sugar. “Oh, and could you pick up some flour too? And eggs. And, uh— actually, here’s a list.”
Magnus blinks down at the paper Taako just shoved into his hands. “Taako, this is just the recipe.”
“Yeah, if you could just get enough for ten thousand batches like that,” Taako says, already focused back on his work. “And the chocolate chips, of course.”
“...Yeah, okay, sure.”
“And get me a second oven while you’re at it!”
Magnus gets back just in time, as Merle and Taako are running out of dough. And of space to put the cookies.
He returns not only with quite frankly ridiculous amounts of cookie ingredients, bought in bulk from the Fantasy Costco, but with a handful of helpers also carrying ingredients— Carey, Killian, and Avi all also have their arms laden with bags, and the elevator is full far past capacity to the point where they have to make multiple trips to deliver it all to Taako.
“Okay, before you get all relaxed after that delivery, I’m gonna want y’all to set up that new oven for me,” Taako says, waving at the other side of the kitchen where he already cleared a space. “Payment will come in a batch of cookies all for each of you.”
Killian narrows her eyes. “Hey, we never said we’d do anything but give Magnus a hand—”
“Okay but these are really good cookies,” Magnus says and hands her a plate. “Here. Try these.”
Killian takes a bite, and then her eyes widen. “Well, fuck me, these are great. Where did you want the oven?”
And just like that, three more helpers are added— and Taako puts the recipe stapled up on the wall, with annotations scribbled in on how to get them just right. They work for another hour, and then someone comes looking for all the people who haven’t shown up to any kind of work today.
The Director steps out of the elevator, all stern regality and with probably more than a few stern words on her lips, and then she pauses when she sees the stacks of cookies lining the walls. “What’s going on in here?”
“I’m making cookies!” Taako announces, dumping a cup of chocolate chips in a bowl of batter. “And these chumps are helping, I guess.”
“Hey, we’re doing all the same work as you!” Merle protests, stirring a bowl.
“Yeah, but I started it, so it’s my operation.”
The Director sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Why are you making cookies instead of doing your actual jobs?”
“You can’t postpone perfection!” Taako announces. “I decided to make cookies, so I’m making cookies, and I’m gonna continue to make cookies until I’m done!”
“You’ve made approximately—” the Director quickly glances over the stacks of cookies, whispers some quick math, and then gives Taako a dry stare. “You’ve made approximately seven thousand cookies, you need to take a break.”
“They’re good cookies though!” Taako insists, giving her a plate. “Come on, try some!”
The Director eats one of the cookies, but remains nonplussed. “I will admit, they are delicious. But you’ve already made more cookies than there are employees in this organization.”
Taako dumps another two batches on her plate.
“You can’t bribe me, Taako,” the Director says, though the way she’s eyeing the cookies says otherwise.
Taako balances an entire bowl of freshly mixed cookie dough on top of it and gives the Director a bright grin, and finally she relents. “You should at least start handing these out if you’re not going to eat them yourself,” she says, stepping back into the elevator. “It would be a waste if they went bad.”
“Yeah, sure— Magnus could you start consolidating cookies?”
They relocate to the cafeteria, in part to start handing out cookies and in part because there just isn’t enough space in the Tres Horny Boys’ suite.
Every time another coworker comes by to try the cookies, they inevitably start helping out in the hopes of getting more— soon, there’s so many people bustling in and out of the kitchen that Taako has to take up a more administrative role, directing people this way and that with wide swings of the Umbra Staff and shouted orders. They’ve also run out of chocolate— even a supply run to the Fantasy Costco only turning up a couple bags— so they’ve started branching into other flavours, taken from a cookbook Taako retrieved from somewhere.
Taako is rather unsettled by how quickly they’re running out of ingredients, though.
“D’you think you could convince the deals guy to hurry up on restocking?” Taako asks Lucretia as she nibbles on a spoonful of cookie dough.
“I don’t think we have enough money for that on the entire moon,” she deadpans.
Taako shrugs. “So we pay him in cookies. He can eat chocolate, right?”
He can, it turns out, and in fact is more than eager to help out for only a couple hundred batches; barely a dent in what they’ve made over the past half-day. He even supplies some of the Fantasy Costco’s own workers— who Taako has never seen before today— a small horde of kindly old ladies who can somehow bake up cookies even faster than even Taako has managed.
Sure, they say some weird shit now and then, but who doesn’t? It’s just a little creepy, Garfield’s creepier by default. Taako’s definitely only staying out of their room because he’s tired of them demanding grandma kisses and telling him to call him. And he needs to rest for a moment. He’s not creeped out.
And he is taking a break— he hadn’t expected to, but everyone knows what all they’re doing by now, and everyone needs a little R&R, right? Especially Taako. Gotta keep those good looks up.
Incidentally, he’s pretty sure everyone in the Bureau is helping out with the cookies. It’s like the allure of chocolatey goodness (or non-chocolatey, if that’s what they like) is enough to make everyone abandon their posts— Taako’s pretty sure he’s even seen Angus pitching in with passing around ingredients while keeping his nose buried in some book. Lucretia has also wandered past more than once muttering about buying out farms to plant more cookie plants, which of course makes perfect sense to Taako— of course you can grow cookies! That works, right?
Then his short break extends into a nap, and by the time he wakes up the stacks of cookies have extended out of the cafeteria and are lining the halls. “We just don’t have the gold to pay for farms,” Lucretia is muttering as she paces back and forth. “And we don’t have the space for all the cookies we have, but cookie production must be optimized so we need the farms...”
“Just pay for them with cookies, duh,” Taako says, breezing past her. “I mean, that’s the only thing that matters in life anyway.”
“...Yes, fair point. So, I’ll need to arrange for negotiations...”
She wanders off again, muttering to herself, and Taako takes off at a trot in the other direction. It seems like the grannies have multiplied in the couple hours he was out, now nearly outnumbering the actual Bureau employees, and Taako gives the bustling crowd of identical women a wide berth. What’s that that one muttered? Indentured servitude? No, that’s totally normal…
Taako isn’t even baking any cookies himself at this point, all the production flowing more than smoothly without so much as a prod from him— owing of course to Lucretia’s deft management skills.
He’s overseeing one of the recently purchased chocolate mines right now, perched on top of a roof with a warm mug of cocoa in his hands and a red shawl wrapped around his shoulders.
“You think we should get the grannies to help out down here too?” he asks the empty air next to him where his umbrella is sitting, except it’s not empty— is it? It might be empty. “The current workers are lookin’ a little overworked.”
Static hums, and Taako sips thoughtfully at his cocoa. “Yeah,” he says, “I’ll do that. Get more of them off where I actually spend time. God, it’s like there’s more of them every day.”
It’s been— maybe a week, he thinks? Since that first rush of baking urges, and he’s mostly over it, but it’s like that single burst of inspiration was enough to change his entire world. He’s almost surprised the Bureau of Balance hasn’t changed its name to like, the Bureau of Baking or whatever. The Bakery of Balance. Balance Bakery? Baking of Balance. Bacon of Balance.
No, wait, that’s off topic.
He’s been eyeing a cookie factory now too, wondering if he’s got enough cookies yet to barter for ownership of it. He probably does? He’ll have to discuss it with Lucretia though, she’s better with numbers than him.
He takes another sip of his cocoa. “What do you think. Get a factory, or get some more farms?”
The static shrugs, and the ever-present sound of white noise rises to an all-new high to drown out a voice— but Taako understands her just fine.
“Yeah, I figured. Factory it is.”
He finishes off his cocoa and stands, picking up the Umbra Staff as he goes, and the static vanishes like it was never there, leaving empty air once more. He drops off the roof, casts Levitate to catch himself, and casually tugs out his stone of farspeech to make a call— “Yo, ‘Cretia, you got some numbers on how many of those sweet sweet snacks we got right now?”
“Have you ever wondered if maybe none of this is real?” Magnus asks, dumping a bag of walnuts into his next batch of cookies. “Like maybe all this is just a dream someone’s having, and the moment they wake up it’ll have never existed.”
“Sometimes I wonder if you’ve ever cooked a batch of cookies in your life,” Taako replies, giving a pointed look at the bowl Magnus is stirring. “Didn’t I tell you to put in almonds?”
“Oh, did you?” Magnus pauses to look at the recipe, and groans. “Oh, dangit. Start over?”
“Nah, I’m sure it’ll work out fine,” Taako says, brushing his hair back out of his eyes and tying it back with a ribbon. “So, uh, no I never think about that because that would imply I experience any kind of existential dread which I obviously don’t. Why?”
“Just thinking,” Magnus says, rolling up the sleeves of his jacket and stretching his arms over his head.
Taako grimaces. “God, Maggie, go put a shirt on, I don’t want that shag carpet chest of yours getting hair in the cookies.”
“You’re just jealous ‘cause elves don’t grow chest hair,” Magnus says, but he does button the jacket up so Taako counts it as a win. “But, uh, yeah— you don’t think there’s anything weird going on?”
“Nope, everything’s normal and as it should be,” Taako insists. A grandma wanders in carrying a rolling pin and attempts to plant a sloppy kiss on his cheek, but he dodges out of his way. “This is how things are supposed to be.”
“If you say so,” Magnus says, still looking skeptical but letting it go just as he lets go of the bowl of cookie dough when the grandma takes it from him.
“I do say so,” Taako says, twirling his umbrella through the air before handing it off to the ever-present blob of static who’s existence by his side is just a fact of life. “And in fact, I think your mutinous implications that my entire cookie empire is somehow just a dream I’m having might just earn you a demotion.”
“I literally said nothing about you being the one having it.”
“Even worse. Keep that up and you’re going to the mines.”
“Okay, okay, sorry.”
“You having a good time down there, Ango?” Taako asks, leaning over a stack of books to peer at Angus. “What’cha reading?”
“Researching the effects of prolonged exposure to interplanar transportation magic,” Angus says. “Did you know only a couple people have visited the true, purest reaches of the elemental planes? They’re always depicted as sorta ordinary places that just happen to have a lot of their element around, but those’re just the border regions! And some creatures that spend ages in other planes get twisted and changed, so they don’t work or think quite exactly like things on the prime material plane, but that usually happens over generations and real slow? And—”
“Okay kiddo, that’s great, I understood none of those words,” Taako says, though he understood all the words and in fact already knew them by heart. He smooths his robes out and leans on the books. “Look, I’m gonna be frank here, I’m here ‘cause we’ve got a frankly ridiculous number of cookies and Lucretia’s havin’ trouble countin’ them all.”
“About 3.56 million cookies, going up at a rate of 96.58 thousand cookies a day,” Angus says, not looking up from his book. “Not accounting for any sudden peaks in activity.”
“...Okay, I don’t think I’ve seen you leave this library for at least a week,” Taako says. “How did you know that.”
Angus picks up an elaborate-looking chart, then puts it back down and picks up the stone of farspeech it had been covering. “Madame Director’s been telling me about how much of which different sources of cookie manufacturing you’ve bought out. It’s just some quick math.”
“I’ve been thinking of setting up some cookie banks, so people can store their cookies and accrue cookie interest.”
Angus beams up at him. “Sure, sir, I’d love to help you do that!”
“Well, okay, I was just gonna say it sounded like you’d make a good cookie accountant, but sure you can help with the logistics.” Taako’s ears flick. “If you really insist.”
“You’re the one obviously implying an invitation.”
“Nonsense!”
“I’m forsaking Pan to take up worshiping the cookie god.”
Taako blinks, then slowly looks up from the financial report Angus handed him a week ago which he’s only now getting around to reading. There was a big boom in cookie production, apparently. “...Oh?”
Merle nods. “Yeah, since Pan apparently doesn’t care about me anymore, might as well pick a more forgiving deity.”
Taako looks back down at the report. “Well, fuck, good for you. Why’re you telling me this?”
“Well, I mean, cookies are your whole thing now, aren’t they?”
“Apparently.”
“Don’t you know a god I could switch to?”
Taako puts the report down. “Merle, do you seriously think I know a damn thing about gods?” He steeples his hands. “You’re the cleric here, you figure something out.”
“You think I haven’t already tried figuring it out? You weren’t exactly my first choice!”
“Just make a temple to cookies themselves or whatever,” Taako says, returning to the report. “And get off my cookie mountain already. You’ll track mud everywhere.”
“Taako, we have a problem.”
Taako groans. “Lucy, I swear, if you’re gonna start going on about existential shit too—”
“What? No.” Lucretia squints at Taako. “No, this is about resource management— what are you talking about?”
“Oh, good.” Taako slumps down in the chair he’s been leaning dramatically against for the past half hour. “Magnus keeps trying to engage me in philosophical debates or whatever, and it’s seriously harshing my vibe. What’d you want?”
“Oh, yes,” Lucretia says, adjusting some reading glasses Taako is pretty sure are supposed to belong to Angus. “Yes, well, it’s about the chocolate mines? Some recent reports I’ve received seem to be indicating that, well… we’re running out of chocolate.”
Taako blinks. “Seriously? We’re running out?”
“Yes, we’re running out,” Lucretia repeats. “At our current rate of production, the entire world is likely to run out of chocolate within the month.”
“Hm.” Taako steeples his fingers, trying his hardest to give off the air of someone completely engaged in the conversation. “Well. That’s a problem.”
“Sir, if I may make a suggestion?” Lucretia asks, adjusting the glasses on her face again. Taako motions for her to continue. “Um, so I was thinking— if we don’t have chocolate that exists here, at this moment… we could use wizardry magics to make some?”
Taako blinks. “Lucretia, that is the best suggestion I have ever heard in my life. Conjure more cookies. Genius. Lemme just do that right now—” The ever-present blob of humming static by his side hands him the Umbra Staff, and he flicks it to conjure a plate of triple-chocolate cookies. “Genius. You’re hired. Go arrange a bunch of wizard towers or whatever for me, I gotta whole bunch of vacantly spinning in a fantasy office chair to catch up on.”
“I’ll leave you to it,” Lucretia says in Angus’s voice, turning to leave, and then she blinks as she opens the door. “Oh! Magnus, what’re you doing here?”
“Shhpshhhphhhh lemme in!” Magnus hisses, pushing past her and shutting the door quickly. There’s several thumps against the door a split second later, like things getting thrown at it, but they quickly stop and Magnus breathes a sigh of relief. “Man, it’s like they’re getting angrier every day.”
“What, the grandmas?” Taako asks, raising an eyebrow and kicking off of his desk to send his chair spinning. “Yeah, I’ve been getting a bunch of cryptic messages written on the ground in hard candy, I think they’re upset at being set to work everywhere. Like I’d give up a perfectly good workforce that was handed to me.”
“That sounds a little immoral, sir,” Angus says.
Magnus yelps. “Weren’t you Lucretia a moment ago?”
Angus blinks. “Was I?”
“Yeah, probably,” Taako says, still spinning. “What were we talking about? Creepy grandmas?”
“I don’t see how you can put up with them when we both know you’re just as creeped out by them as I am.”
“They make good cookies.”
“Is that your only measurement for the tolerability of a person?”
“No, but it helps. Also I don’t have to spend any time with them since I’ve passed off all the actual logistics of cookie production off to Angus-Lucretia over there.”
The entity currently in an uncertain state of existence waves politely/cheerfully and returns to the book they were reading.
“Okay, that’s another thing I wanted to talk to you about,” Magnus says, glancing at them with a frown. “Are you sure— okay, can you please stop spinning like that? I’m trying to have a serious conversation here.”
“If you can’t stay serious while I’m spinning, it’s obviously not that important,” Taako says, speeding up.
“Okay, fine, whatever— are you sure any of this is real?” Magnus crosses his arms. “And I mean, okay, hear me out— are Lucretia and Angus supposed to be in a bizarre nebulous state of simultaneous existence?”
“Sure they are,” Taako says. “Life’s just like that sometimes.”
“And what about the humming blob of static sitting on the back of your chair?”
“Hey, that’s m# ##st#r you’re talking about,” Taako says, and then he pauses— what was he talking about, again? Oh, right, the ever-present static blob. “She’s supposed to be there.”
Magnus raises an eyebrow. “Okay, what’s the logo on the front of your apron say.”
Taako looks down at the dark blue circle. “I dunno, weird unreadable text shapes.”
“And you don’t think that’s weird…?” Magnus presses.
“Dude, I know like, three languages tops,” Taako says, crossing his arms. He’s still spinning. “Just ‘cause I’m wearing a shirt in fuckin’ #eg##t#-ese or whatever doesn’t mean all of existence is actually a fantasy computer simulation or whatever. You’re overthinking things.”
“I just think you could do a little more critical thinking instead of obsessing over your cookie empire for once,” Magnus says.
“Excuse me? Is that any way to address the cookie emperor?”
“That’s not a thing, Taako.”
“You’re fired, Magnus.”
“You can’t fire me, I don’t work for you. Literally no one actually works for you, at least in an appreciable way that results in you being able to ‘fire' them.”
Taako sticks his foot out to come to a stop facing Magnus, and tries to focus on him— though the way the room continues to spin makes it a little difficult. “Get out of my office. Oh, and help Angcretia arrange wizard business or whatever, ‘kay?”
“Yeah yeah, whatever you say,” Magnus says, turning around to open the door. Lucretia follows after him, adjusting the collar of her sweatervest, and then Taako sees the two of them make a run for it chased by a horde of angered old ladies— and Taako sighs.
“Fuckin’ idiots can’t close the door on their way out,” he says, casting a Mage Hand to shut the door before he resumes spinning. “So, ##p, got any thoughts on what flavors to try next?”
And the static hums, and Taako nods. “Yeah, I’ll be sure to put that on my bucket list.”
“So, the cookie conjuring plan went great,” Lucretia says, leaning precariously over Taako with Angus on her shoulders.
“Cookie production is up twenty-five percent from where it was before we recruited the entire Neverwinter mage’s guild to the plan,” Angus says, reading off of the papers in his hands. “Um, this also says the grannies are requesting to be allowed wizardry training to assist in cookie conjuring?”
“Fuck, let them,” Taako mutters, ears quivering as he slowly, painstakingly edges one of the wooden blocks out of the base of this precarious tower. “If it gets more of them out of my hair, even better.”
“A couple of them apparently want to be taught specifically by you,” Lucretia says. “Something about… such a sweet dear, I’m sure he’ll know better than all those other stuffy wizards?”
Taako snorts loudly, nearly startling the staticked presence into toppling the tower. “No thanks, I’ve gotten enough pinched cheeks for the rest of my natural lifetime already. They can find someone else.”
Angus nods, returning to the report. “There’s still some people concerned about the ramifications of eating conjured cookies, because ‘what if they suddenly vanish while you’re in the middle of eating them’?” He looks down at Taako. “Is that a valid concern, sir?”
Taako thinks it over as he removes another one of the fantasy Jenga blocks. “...Depends how shitty the wizard who conjured it is,” he admits. “And I mean, none of them are me, so I’d say it’s a pretty valid concern.”
Lucretia nods. “A possible solution is rather related to your speciality, in fact— they could switch from conjuring cookies from nothing to transmuting other, less valuable materials into cookies. Gold, for instance.”
“Sounds good to me,” Taako says, smoothing out his robe as the staticky mass removes another block. “How’ve the grannies been?”
“They held another protest under the moon base last week,” Angus says. “They mostly just howled disconcertingly and waved signs saying ‘we rise’ though, so we’re not too sure what to do about it.”
“Just leave them, they’ll sort themselves out. Is that all?”
Lucretia nods. “We’ll leave you to your… incredibly important work, then.”
Taako nods back, carefully easing a block out, and then the static’s knee bangs against the coffee table and startles him into knocking it over— and Taako shrieks. “I knew it! I fucking knew it, #u# you fucking cheater, don’t try and hide that!”
The static laughs, the noise barely recognizable as anything other than crackling, and Taako cross his arms. “Alright, we’re playing something else now. No more bullshit fantasy Jenga cheats for you.”
“So I’m guessing you’re still too stubborn to admit any of this whole situation was at all not your doing.”
“And I suppose you’re still too stubborn to give up on none of this being real.”
Admittedly, the fact that Taako and Magnus are currently sitting on the deck of some silver ship Taako can’t quite seem to recognize is a point in Magnus’s favor, but Taako’s never going to admit it. “I think you’re just jealous ‘cause I totally changed the world.”
Magnus just shrugs, more focused on the wooden duck he’s carving. “Actually, I was more busy thinking about how to figure out if I, specifically, am actually the real Magnus or whether I’m just a projection of your perception of him taking on some semblance of consciousness.”
Taako blinks, slowly taking a sip of his coffee. “Well, if you’re thinking, that means you’re real, right?”
“Well, yeah, but like,” Magnus waves his carving knife around vaguely, trying to pull together the words. “It’s like, I don’t know if I’m actually thinking? Or if everything I’m saying is just your brain putting together something resembling me and capable of a semblance of a conversation, but you’re really just talking to yourself. I don’t know if I, or anything really, exists without you to experience it.”
“Now hold on,” Taako says, putting down his cup. “When did we agree that this was my dream we’re having? And only mine?”
Magnus shrugs. “I mean, what else would it be? Who would put together a whole dreamscape just for you to have a nonsense cookie empire plagued with creepy grandmas?”
“It could happen,” Taako says. “People are weird.”
“Not that weird.”
“Look, if you know so much about what’s going on in my head, which we’re apparently in right now, riddle me this:” Taako spreads his arms out to indicate the entire ship they’re standing on. “Where are we, why are we here, and why do I have a headache suddenly?”
Magnus shrugs, resting a hand on his head to stave off a headache of his own. “I dunno, I only got what you know. Actually, no— we’re going to visit other planets looking for more cookie resources. While also on a ship or whatever.”
“Okay, but who’s piloting it?”
Taako blinks, looks around, and realizes they’re in the helm of the ship now. A small gnomish man waves cheerfully at them. “Davenport!”
“Oh, wow, I feel so much safer now,” Magnus deadpans.
Taako, meanwhile, stares down at his hands. “Hey, does this mean I’ve got some kinda lucid dreaming powers right now? That’s how it works, right?”
“Fuck if I know.”
Taako focuses super hard on his hands, trying with all of his might to conjure into existence some form of pastry. He shuts his eyes, wills with all his being, and then opens them again— but his hands remain empty.
“Well, what’s the fuckin’ point of having a weird-ass dream if I can’t make it weirder?” Taako asks, flouncing towards the door in a huff. “You can come find me in my room or wherever, I’m gonna sulk.”
Upon reflection, Taako returns to a state of unconvinced— just because things are a little weird doesn’t mean it’s all fake, yeah? And what does Magnus know. The only person in Taako’s brain is Taako, thanks, no existential dread for me.
He has more important stuff to focus on anyway, like negotiations with Lucas Miller relating to his studies into interplanar physics whatsits— more specifically, his recent discovery that transmuting a perfect circle of dark chocolate creates a portal to the newly-discovered Elemental Plane of Cookies. The fact that no one realized it was there before now nags at the edge of Taako’s mind, like it should’ve been obvious, but he ignores it— thoughts like that inevitably lead to nothing but headaches and lost time.
For the moment, though, he’s just sitting at the edge of a building and watching a small crowd of transmutation specialists gathering around a roughly town-sized circle of black glass. The static which has stuck by his side all this time (and which he is not questioning, thanks maybe-dream Magnus) is pacing around in circles, static raising and lowering sharply like she’s talking and Taako knows she’s just being anxious about whether or not s##et#i## #h# c##s#d could really be repurposed so whimsically— but it’s not whimsical, he insists. This is very serious business, these cookies.
Somehow, an ephemeral entity composed entirely of static manages to look nonplussed.
She does, however, deign to finally sit down next to him and make unbearably loud white noise in a more conversational manner. You think they’re gonna succeed? she seems to be asking, though again the only actual noise is indecipherable.
“Oh, maybe,” Taako says, sipping at the mug of hot chocolate in his hands and adjusting the shawl around his shoulders— and hey, has he done this before? “They’re not me, though, so who can say.”
Why don’t you go down and do it yourself, then?
“What, and ruin this manicure?” Taako’s nails are thoroughly unadorned, though you couldn’t guess as much from the way he’s waving them around. “No thanks, I’ll just watch. It’ll be funny if they fail, anyway.”
The static hums, but doesn’t speak again, instead settling to watch. And then, finally, the crowd of wizards spreads out around the edge of the circle and place their hands on the edges— and hey, they almost look like some kinda evil cookie cult summoning an eldritch horror from the depths of hell, from this distance and with their robes. Isn’t that a thought?
And then the glass turns to chocolate in the blink of an eye, and for a brief moment Taako sees through it into a doughy heaven lined with chocolate chips and nuts and all manner of baked delights— but then the idea of summoning an eldritch horror turns significantly less imaginary when half the wizards throw back their hoods or cast off their hats to reveal heads of thinning silver hair and wrinkled faces. The assembled Grannies all step onto the portal, chanting something Taako can barely hear from this distance, though nothing intelligible.
He’s not sure he wants to be close enough to hear, though, as from the portal rises a behemoth of cruelly-mixed flesh and dough, writhing and consuming all the grandmas, before stretching and splitting into the shapes of the grannies it just ate.
Taako hums, and takes another long sip from his mug. “Okay, so maybe I could’ve treated them a little bit better.”
“How does it feel, Taako,” Magnus asks, pacing angrily around and around in circles in front of Taako as Taako rubs at his temples in an attempt to stave off a headache. “How does it feel! To know you just initiated a dream apocalypse.”
Taako raises his hand. “To be fair, I didn’t know it would happen.”
“You didn’t think it was at all weird that you were accessing a secret thirteenth plane which no one knew about? You didn’t think it was hidden for a reason?”
Taako shrugs. “It was cookies, my dude, when’ve cookies ever been a bad thing?” Something wet slams against the boarded up windows of the building they’re holing up in, and Taako jumps a little. “I mean, prior to all this.”
“Fuck— Taako, if you had the slightest shred of awareness of what’s going on around you, instead of sticking your head up your ass like always, you’d have seen this coming!” Magnus snaps. “Okay? Do you get that?”
“Well maybe I can’t, okay!” Taako snaps back. “Maybe I’m just a shitty, idiot wizard who can’t pay attention to save his fucking life, much less other peoples’— because I can’t fucking focus or I’m too trusting or all kinds of fucking reasons, or maybe I just thought I could bake some fucking cookies without it turning on me!”
“Well look how that turned out!” Magnus’s yell is punctuated with another thump, this one shaking the entire building, and Taako thinks he can see the bar holding the door shut bend. “You’ve brought about the end times because you didn’t want to quit while you were ahead.”
“Aren’t you the one who’s been yelling at me about dreams this whole time?” Taako asks. “Wouldn’t quitting just be me waking up, and then the world would be just as gone?”
“Well, yeah,” Magnus says, bracing himself against the door. “But you could’ve at least let it go peacefully, instead of this fresh hell.”
What little sunlight manages to filter through the windows is red— deep, bloody red, and half the time red feels like family but this is the other time, the time when it feels like an open wound seasoned gently with salt.
“What do you care?” Taako asks. “If this is a dream, then you’re not really Magnus, you’re just my brain doing weird things— why would any part of me care about stuff that isn’t real?”
“Uh, because you’re an inherently empathetic person who just puts up a front of prickly apathy in an attempt to avoid getting close to people who’ll inevitably die or betray you?” Magnus crosses his arms. “Didn’t think I’d have to spell it out for you.”
“Okay, that sounds totally fake,” Taako says, leaning on a wall. The building shakes again, and he quickly straightens up. “But okay.”
Magnus shrugs. “I dunno what to tell you, buddy, I’m literally you. If that isn’t enough to convince you, I dunno what is.”
“If you’re me, why’re you Magnus instead of, I dunno, my reflection in a mirror?”
“Dude, how the hell am I supposed to know.”
The door starts to buckle, the wood splintering and letting some foul, doughy liquid leak through. “I think I’d like you better if you were a mirror. Then I could get angry and punch you, dramatically shattering the glass in a symbolic representation of my deteriorating sanity.”
Glass shatters. “What, can’t you punch me like this?”
Taako shrugs, casually levitating another table over to brace against the door. “Nah, it doesn’t have the same impact. I could punch you in real life too, but then I’d break my hand probably, and then I’d have to sue you for damaging a masterpiece, which’d take up way too much paperwork time. No point.”
“That’s the worst logic I’ve heard in my entire, too-short, and imaginary life,” Magnus says, crossing his arms. The door snaps, loudly, and he glances back at the spiderweb of cracks covering that side of the room. “Also, could we take this argument to the road? I know none of this is real and I’m gonna die the moment you wake up, but I at least want it to be on my own terms.”
Taako eyes the suspiciously briney liquid spreading towards his boots, and takes a step back. “Yeah, okay.”
They retreat to the back of the ambiguously sized building to push through a door that may or may not have been there all along, stumbling out into a cramped alleyway lit as red as everything under this sky. They turn one way and immediately come face to face with a tide of fleshy dough, and then it’s a mad scramble to get away— clamber up a ladder, Taako nearly slips and falls but Magnus catches his hand and pulls him up onto the roof next to him, and they catch their breath for a moment, look around at the wasteland around them, and then they take off across the roofs away from the towering monstrosity taking over this city.
“So, where were we?” Magnus asks, sliding down a particularly steep roof behind Taako. “Punching people?”
“You were spouting total horsehsit about me giving a single shit about anyone who isn’t me,” Taako says, flipping over a railing. “Which honestly should be a point for you not being a dream figment, because what part of me would ever believe that?”
“Wow, you sure have your head shoved right up in there, huh?” Magnus comments, landing right on the railing and springboarding off it to land in a roll just past Taako. “Hey, can you tell me what the inside of your intestines look like? I’ve always been curious.”
Taako makes a face at him as he twists around a pole to drop neatly to the street. “Okay, now that’s just rude. Who taught you manners, dipshit?”
“No one did,” Magnus says, just straight up dropping off the roof and slamming into the ground, standing up after like the concrete around his feet isn’t shattered. “I mean, you know this, I’m you.”
“Ladeedadeeda, not listening to the total utter bullshit channel, chhchkskkkkkskcch all I’m getting is static, someone fix the fantasy radio antennae,” Taako says, pressing his hands over his ears and looking away firmly.
Magnus just crosses his arms. “Yes, you’re very mature.”
“Are you gonna make any new points, or are we going in circles?” Taako asks.
“Look, all I’m saying is you need to stop being such a prickly asshole,” Magnus says, his voice shifting a little, like he’s reciting words in the tone and inflection of someone else from so long ago— but Taako can’t focus on who or when. “I know— we both know, it’s been way too long since we felt like we had… family...”
Taako scoffs. “More like never.”
“...But we don’t need to be like that anymore,” Magnus continues. “We don’t have anything else— we’ve been at this for years, Taako, can’t we just accept that we have a family now?”
“...Years?” Taako asks, eyebrows furrowed, and for a moment he’s somewhere else— somewhen else, talking to someone he doesn’t recognize though he feels like he should, and she’s saying the same words Magnus is saying, except he knows it’s the other way around—
The static returns, and it’s only then that Taako realizes it was gone in the first place, and he doesn’t remember what he was just thinking about.
There’s a flood of viscera-flavored cookie dough flowing down the street towards them, but Taako doesn’t run, just turns to face Magnus. “...What if you’re wrong?” Taako asks. “What if you’re wrong, and they just hurt us?”
“At least we wouldn’t have shut ourselves up in an ivory tower for the rest of our lives,” Magnus says, stepping back as the flood starts to rear up. “And besides, I… get the feeling we’re already past that point. What’s the risk?”
Taako stares at him for a moment. “Yeah,” he says, “What the hell. I’m already risking my life every other month, what’s a little potential heartbreak?”
And then the wave hits them, and for a brief, brief moment everything hurts—
Taako wakes up with his sheets tangled around his limbs and his heart racing like he was just running a marathon in his sleep. The details of his dream are already slipping— some argument with Magnus? Static? The end of the world or whatever.
Slowly, he breathes in and sits up, ears perked and rotating every which way, looking for imagined threats. He sits there, recovering the same way he always does from night terrors, no matter how weird this one came out. Then he blinks, sniffs at the air, and climbs out of bed— there’s a strange, sweet smell in the air, and he’s determined to investigate it.
He opens the door, and immediately he’s greeted with the sight of Magnus in an apron and oven mitts, carrying a sheet of chocolate chip cookies. Magnus quickly notices him and lights up, hurrying over to shove the cookies in his face. “Hey, Taako, you’re finally up! Me and Merle made cookies, do you wanna try—”
Taako slams his door in Magnus’s face and goes back to bed. Not today, Grandma.