The Gingerbread Hag, Grosska Rotnail's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Grosska Rotnail licked butter-blood icing from one crumbling finger and smiled. The traveler who supplied it had screamed his last that morning, and now his marrow sweetened her cupcake. She was the Gingerbread Hag, built from stale crust and rotting candy, and she meant to bury all of Ashwood under her plague. Every knight she cooked. Every child she husked. Each one became another soldier in the army she was raising from the ruins of a life she once called magnificent. But an army is nothing until the world can see it march. Grosska had monsters penned in her gingerbread hut, snapping their sugar teeth. She had bones enough to raise a thousand husks. She did not have their fear yet. Ashwood still slept. That was the wound she meant to open tonight. "Dreg," she called, and the warlock came. High-Knife Dreg was her executioner, a half-waffle acolyte wrapped in a hood stitched with the bones of her dead. His wand dripped dark fire. Butter-blood runes crawled across his skin. Grosska trusted no one, but she trusted his hands to break things on command. That was enough. "The town has slept too long," she said. "Wake it." Dreg stared with burning eyes. "You are certain, Mother?" His voice fell flat and heavy, each word a stomp. "Reveal us now, and the crown sends steel. The milk-priests will smell the sugar." "Let them come." She crushed the cupcake in her fist. "I want them to come. Wickedness spreads faster than fear. When it touches them, it will eat them." Dreg bowed his hood and raised the wand. He carved a sigil in the air. From the swamp mud rose the Maple-heads, clowns of stacked pancake and dripping syrup, grinning with rows of needle teeth. They had grown bored waiting. Now they danced. Behind them shuffled the little muffin men, moldy and green, dragging forks and spoons like tiny blades. Grosska's Waffle-loc militia formed ranks beside them. "March," she said. The horde poured from the candied forest toward the sleeping edge of Ashwood. Dreg walked at their head. The clowns fell on the first outlying farms. Screams cut the dark. Lantern light bloomed in windows. A watch bell began to ring, wild and desperate. Grosska stood in her doorway and drank the sound like wine. By dawn, riders would carry the news. Ashwood knew her now. That was the whole of what she wanted. Then a scout clown limped back, one leg sheared clean off. It pointed north with a shaking, syrup-slick hand. Grosska followed the gesture. On the far ridge, torches gathered in a long white line. Not the crown's colors. Silver and bronze armor. Gilded horns catching the moonlight. Great swords that dripped something pale and gleaming. The milk-priests had smelled the sugar after all. And they had not waited for morning. Grosska licked her teeth. Her presence was known. Now the war she wanted marched to meet her.