· Gained Ability Hot Cocoa Jet. "Welcome to Candy World. For visiting enjoy your gift of an exclusive multifunction ability curtesy of your friendly neighborhood Muffin Man. Hot Cocoa Jet – You can now spray extremely hot cocoa from your fingertips on command. Use this as an offensive weapon, or merely to acquire a tasty drink."
Senani exited the portal into the new world and found himself rather surprised by the notification of a new ability. How powerful must this Muffin Man have been to grant people an ability by them merely setting foot on his planet? Senani quickly began looking around and discovered he had entered a rather strange village. The walls of each building in the village were made from gingerbread. The gingerbread buildings had white icing mortar between each section and windows made from sugar glass. The village was a confectionaries delight.
There were peppermint trees with peppermint bark and jellybean vines growing all around. Many of the yards were lined with giant bon bon bushes to create some semblance of privacy. A lovely puddin river flowed through the center of the town underneath the chocolate cookie bridge. The ground was covered in cotton candy of all shades and colors. It looked like an artist had splashed paint every which way, not caring where each color fell. To Senani's surprise, Snowball kitties and tootsie roll puppies wandered the streets aimlessly. He could not tell if they were strays or if they had owners.
As Senani continued to raise his glance, he noticed a massive gingerbread castle in the distance. Even from this far away Senani could see the massive trees towering over the walls. There were peppermint, spearmint, and wintergreen trees. It all looked rather delicious. The grounds around the castle are surrounded by a vast rock candy wall with a closed candy cigarette gate protecting the occupants within.
By this point, Argent had joined him. The duo looked rather strange as they ventured into the city. It was safe to say they stuck out like a sore thumb.
As they moved down the street, the gingerbread men and sugar cookie women pulled their cotton candy curtains closed and called their pets inside. The faces that they managed to see trembled in fear at the sight of the outsiders.
This did not hinder the duo. They continued to make their way toward the castle. The same fate awaited them at each home they passed. Each cookie closed their curtains and hid in fear.
By the time the duo arrived at the castle gates, the once lively city had become deathly quiet. Though I suppose with Senani and Argents appearance this was not unexpected. Neither of them bothered to use an illusion. Argent did at least appear in his undead human form. As a dragon he would not have fit down the streets.
Quickly the duo arrived at the gates of the castle. Even there they found that no one dared to respond to their call at the butterscotch intercom on the wall beside the gate. Though in the case of the castle, they were truly unsure if anyone was inside or not, the gate and wall fully blocked their view.
With the less than warm reception they were getting, the duo wandered to the largest house inside the village. They assumed this individual would be someone important and could perhaps enlighten them on the situation.
Senani knocked on the door with his dragon scale covered hands. He soon discovered that his hands were far harder than the gingerbread of the door. With his first knock his hand went through the door. As he tried to remove his hand from the door, he managed to rip it off the frame. The occupant of the home quickly ran to greet him.
"Please tell mister Candy Crusher and his Treant General (Treant's are large living trees. They possess a great intelligence and come in many varieties and sizes.) that we paid our sugar tax for the week. We have no more to give. He took most of the young men and women to work the sugar mines already. If he takes anymore, we will not survive the caramel volcano season. He knows that when they erupt the mines are dormant for 3 months. If he tries to take any more, he may as well kill us all now." Pleaded the large gingerbread man from within. As he stepped into the light, Senani found himself surprised that this gingerbread man's icing made him appear to be ancient. Though from what he had just said, Senani supposed that may be the case.
Senani replied, "Sir, we are new here and do not know Candy Crusher. We do not even know what a Treant is. We came to learn about the Muffin Man and perhaps to find his candle."
"The Muffin Mans candle, that's what the Treant came for as well. He even convinced Candy Crusher to betray and kill the King. Even the Kings champion Gyngy was taken hostage and forced to work in the mines. Rock Crusher had been his best friend. He captured Gyngy himself. Was a sad day for cookie kind. Though I spose we fared better than the cotton candy people. Thousands of them were merely slain and broke down into sugar. The greedy treants keep digging for sugar.
With the stockpile they have made you would think they already claimed the candle. But we know they haven't. If they had, there would be new confectionaries among their forces. So far only the gummy worms and lemon heads have joined em. They are sour to their very souls. Easily betrayed us all.
You wanna prove you ain't helping the Treants? Free Gyngy from the mines. Follow the puddin river past the licorice fields. If you make it to the taffy beach you went to far. Look for the smoke. The treants mining machines are thick with it. Makes the air hard to breathe in those parts."
Senani and Argent felt they had no choice. The treants were obviously their competition, and they needed information. Perhaps this Gyngy knew where to find the candle. Clearly this Candy Crusher did not.
The duo began to follow the gingerbread man's directions. Carefully they travelled through the city and toward the licorice fields. The licorice fields were a vast wasteland and completely devoid of life. Even the wind did not blow in the licorice fields.
Sensing the eerie silence, and realizing that they needed to move swiftly, Senani unfolded his wings, and Argent transformed into his true form. As the duo gained altitude, they began to see the smoke that the gingerbread man had told them of, and they began to fly in that direction.
Flying proved far faster than walking. After a half hour the duo began to see trees of all shapes and sizes leading cotton candy people, gingerbread men, and sugar cookie women on chains toward the smoke. The numbers they possessed were astonishing. Particularly so due to their size.
Senani and Argent stopped to discuss their findings before their inevitable discovery.
"I could burn them all" stated Argent.
"If we burn the cookie people, their kin are unlikely to help us." Replied Senani.
"I'll spray the trees; you grab the chain and move it and the critters attached into your land grant. Easy way for us both to gain some life force while we are here. If we're lucky we might even gain more abilities." Proposed Argent.
Senani could think of no reason this wouldn't work, so he and Argent began their assault on the Treants. As the unholy purple fire touched their limbs and began siphoning the life force from their bodies the treants began to scream in pain. Senani managed to transfer chain after chain into his land grant. The duo was extremely efficient in their task, flying here and there back and forth.
Unfortunately for the treants, they were large in size but slow in speed. Even those that dropped the chains to run found themselves unable to escape Argent's fire. To the contrary, once they moved out of the chains range, they were sprayed with the terrifying fire. One after another, they were absorbed. In a matter of moments, what had once been an army, had now become little more than ash on the ground.
With the deed completed, Senani recalled all the rescued sweets from his land grant. There were thousands of them, all waiting to find out what fate they were to meet now. A glimmer of hope shone in their eyes, these two had spared them and torched their captors. Perhaps freedom would be in their future.
Senani took their silence as an opportunity to speak and be heard clearly. "Our names are Senani and Argent. We have come to this place to rescue one named Gyngy. Do any of you know of his whereabouts?"
His question was met with dead silence. Either they did not know, or they were not saying. Either way, Senani transported each of them to Deviant Home and requested that Zurin and her Draco Veres remove the chains and care for the sweets until Senani could find a safe location to bring them back to. Zurin happily complied.
Senani and Argent rose into the air again and began to fly toward the smoke, torching any treants along their way and freeing any chained sweets they found. With their power growing almost as fast as the number of their allies, the duo continued toward the smoke, moving ever closer by the moment.
As the duo continued to advance toward the cave, the ceaseless destruction of the Treant army did not go unnoticed. Unbeknownst to the duo, many of the forces on Candy Planet were now keeping watch over them.
The destruction continued all the way to the cave entrance. On the field that had been overrun by treants pulling along candy prisoners, all that remained were ashes. In a matter of hours, the war had turned in the favor of the confectionaries. The invading Treant forces were severely diminished, yet the war was not over yet. At the mouth of the cave, stood another type of guardian. Here were the sour gummy worms, lemon heads, sour cherries, wartails, and sour gummy bears. Each far larger than the gingerbread men. The smallest would be the size of a small child while the gummy worms were closer to the size of anacondas. Some were extremely massive, while others were still quite small.
At this juncture, Senani decided to speak rather than fight. "We have freed many of the prisoners that were held by the Treants. You no longer must serve the Treant overlords. Join us, and we will help you retake this planet in the name of the Muffin Man."
A large green wartail spoke for the group. "We do not serve the Treants. We serve the Candy Crusher. The Muffin Man created us to fight and placed us under the command of the Candy Crusher, and the Candy Crusher has commanded us to aid the Treants and protect this cave, and we will destroy you, and any others that stand in our way."
Argent smiled when the confectionaries refused to cooperate and cast out a deep breath of his purple fire right into their midst.
When the fire cleared away, the candies still stood in one piece, laughing at the duo. Nothing had been absorbed, and they were unharmed by the fires Argent released. This presented Senani with an epiphany. Undead were not harmed by Argent's flames. All the confectionaries must be golems created by an extremely skilled wizard. While these golems possessed a state of sentience and were able to speak and think for themselves, this was the only possibility Senani could imagine. After all, if each of them possessed souls, or were alive, Argent would have just reduced them to a pile of ashes. No wonder the treants wanted them. This army would be something most would be unequipped to deal with.