Alice Ansegisel had been a hero, once upon a time, and not just any hero either. She’d been the greatest hero in the galaxy. She’d trained with the Count of Vermont, rescued the Princess of Storms, and outrun the Pale Rider. She’d vanquished foes all the way from Halptide to N’Arague and to list them all would be a feat unto itself, but more incredible than champions of darkness slain, she’d always shown mercy to those who sought it with sincerity in their hearts. But that had been long ago…

Before the formation of the Great Fault, before the fall of Celesin, before before had meant anything.

Alice was neither the avatar of destruction nor pillar of justice that people imagined when they imagined legendary heroes, physically she had not aged a day since she was nine, mentally she was somewhere between several thousand years old and ‘its impolite to ask a woman about her age.’ After protecting the Dominion throughout the entirety of the cataclysm she’d watched That Man return to power and been left wondering if it had been worth all the effort. On that day Alice retired. Now she was an old woman, living in a homely little cottage deep in the woods of some small planet, with naught but few old pictures and trophies to celebrate a long life in service to others.

She’d taken up knitting as a hobby.

Sometimes, Alice still took up arms, when some cosmic tyrant or demonic lord threatened the realm. But only when she felt like it was absolutely necessary. Even stronger than her resolve to remain neutral in these dark times was Alice’s belief that the next generation of sorcerers and champions ought to be capable of solving problems on their own, without having to rely on tired old women, after all she had already failed to keep the Dominion from falling and being reborn as the Domination. She’d taken an apprentice since then, and she was a spirited one, but she’d already graduated to become a powerful hero all of her own and she was in the process of testing another’s resolve.

Knock-Knock-Knock

It was for that very reason that Alice sighed when setting the little brown dandy she’d been knitting off to the side, already aware that it was not her apprentice standing outside of her mushroom-shaped homestead in that way that all good witches were aware of all the things that went on in their territory even when outside of their immediate line of sight, climbed to her feet with a groan and made her way to the door where a nine-foot-tall grizzly bear with honey yellow fur and a tiny red fez stood waiting for her.

“Good afternoon, Poh, how has my apprentice managed to screw up today’s mission?”

“Afternoon, ma’am, an’ pardon me for speaking outta turn but I was under the impression that Sammie weren’t your apprentice yet.”

“Pish-posh, the title is just a formality, I don’t want her getting a big head is all.”

“Mighty wise of ya, don’t want her gettin’ ahead of herself now, don’t think the Thousand Acre Woods could survive another Synestra. Nope-nope. Sammie’s too cowardly for all that, anyhow—”

“…”

“You’ve got mail.”

The bear presented her with an envelope clutched between a pair of dexterous claws, pristine white, with a familiar return address and a richly golden wax seal with a florid exaggerated A in the center.

“Goodness, what could that man possibly want from me…”

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Dark brown smudges on the envelope smelled of semi-sweet cocoa, indicative of her Christmas gift's enjoyment.

Inside was, as expected of such an eccentric, nothing of obvious worth -- he never bothered to use his words. Instead of a letter, it contained cookie crumbs; small photo prints of the eponymous Mister A figure skating around Eternity, buck naked as usual; him, again, relaxed in a Uvaldian tangerine hot spring surrounded by a host of dead uniformed Ulvadian Popojijos; and him dressed rather professionally as he, as evidenced in the scene, arbitrated a dispute among ducks; and, finally, a card that, on one side, was a tarot of The Devil and on the other side a spell glyph of metamystical wayfinding complete with coordinates to some place or another.

==========

Alice had since taken the letter into her home, set aside the scalpel she used to undo the wax seal, grabbed her reading glasses and gave the whole thing a once over just to make sure there were any details about the letter that she had missed. There were not. For a long time after she sat there in silence until Mr Poh began to wonder if she’d fallen asleep without him noticing, almost reached out, only for her to begin speaking as soon as the impulse entered his mind.

“Winn, dear, tell Sammie that I’m going to be taking a trip.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Make sure that she does all of chores and doesn’t slack off.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Water the plants and make sure they get plenty of sun too.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“And tell my husb—”

“Pardon me but I’m thinkin’ you oughta get goin’ before sundown if it’s that important.”

“Oh very well.”

She got cranky after sundown.

Alice, who had eluded the opportunity for a physical description outside of the vaguest terms so far, was just about four-feet-and-eight-inches tall with pink hair that fell down to her waist when it wasn’t tied up and a pair of bright pink eyes. Her skin was baby smooth and her face was acceptably cute. Alice could look like an adult any time she wanted, despite the not-aging thing, but that was not the shape of her soul so-to-speak and maintaining that form for any significant period of time became mentally taxing. Alice was not really a little girl or an old woman. Alice was some strange amalgamation of the two that bonded with an angel an unknown number of years ago and when the magical disguise dropped she looked more like a statue with ball-joints rather than a real human. Alice dressed like a grandma ought to. With a long modest dress that fell below the ankles and a blanket that hung over her arms at all times and a shoes that made the little clickety-clack sound when she walked across the wooden floor. Alice lived in a giant mushroom in the middle of a magical forest on some unimportant planet in what had once been the Mystic Dominion and was now something much more dangerous that wore it like a skinsuit, Alice had tamed the local bandit king, a vicious honey yellow Gau named Winn Poh, and now he was her personal errand boy. Alice sent everyone she knew a basket of cookies every Christmas and had been estranged from her husband for the last century or so, he knew what he did, but did not seem overly concerned about the delayed date of his return.

Alice had once, in her youth, kicked her way through no less than three Antaran Precusor Flagships. Alice was not the biggest deal that the multiverse had ever seen, but children had slept easy in their beds at night knowing that she was there to protect them from the things that went bump in the night, but her brand had fallen out of favor since she refused to fall in line with the King of the Night and now she like a moth eaten Raggedy Anne doll was just a relic of a distant past.

She had been a hero once, and with a sigh, and a moment to arrange herself inside her favorite chair, she supposed that she still would be—because Autun had been a very pleasant fellow that one time.

==========

One act of interdimensional astral projection later and Alice found herself waking up in some distant universe with fluttered eyelashes, and something felt horribly off, naturally she could had not brought the entirety of her Everstone exoskeleton with her on the trip but she ought to have a greater range of motion and perception inside her spiritual body. This felt like she was occupying a vessel. One that felt terribly heavy beneath the weight of whatever that sticky pink something oozing off of her body was…

“Looks like we’ve got a gate hopper, Tom.”

“I can see that, Jerry, little old thing must have gotten lost.”

“We ought to show her the way back, Tom.”

Before the mystery could solve itself Alice was accosted and when she turned to look at who was speaking to her in this dimly lit alleyway she’d found herself in, her head spun too fast, so fast that she was staring directly behind herself at a pair of horrified little yarn men stubby little woolen limbs and wide black button eyes and a pair of extra long needles like swords. Their rich red-black uniforms were made of a fine felt that someone must have put a lot of love into sowing before assigning them the brutish little personalities they had.

“Gentleman, there appears to be a misun—”

“AIEEE!!!”

In his panic the first one thrust his needle forward and the second followed suit because if they were going to make a bad decision why not do it together, and Alice much to her eternal disgrace, was so unused to having a body that did not have any bones that she failed to dodge before the two razor tips punched through her gooey abdomen. Piercing her grandmother dress at the breast with what would have been a very precise attack on her heart if they had not been stabbing a woman made out of goo—so that’s what the pink stuff was!

“Excuse you, a man does not stab a lady without permission!”

With permission still seemed dubious but just as the impulse entered her head her hands extended into two gushing torrents of pink slime, slamming into the little woolen men, violently glueing them the nearest wall and oozing into the gaps in their knitted little bodies until she realized what was happening and at once the amorphous mass broke off from her wrists. Leaving her hands dripping. Only then did the rest of her body orient itself. Turning a full one-eight-degrees one joint at a time until she was facing her attackers, slightly dizzy, and wearing her best stern face.

“Gentlemen, have you learned your lesson?”

“Yes ma’am,” They responded in a submissive monotone. Their gaps oozing a constant pink that called out to her for instruction with a voice in the back of her mind what sounded like popping bubbles, and against her better judgment she did. “Now, will one of you tell me where I am?”

And so they did.

“Aye ma’am, you’re in Cookieham Palace at the coronation of the one and only King Yarnles III.”

“Party crashing I do believe.”

“Yes, that’s right."

Outside, that is to say beyond the alley, she could see a palace made entirely of cookies and candy. With towers made out of gingerbread and capped by upside down ice cream cones. Visibly oozing vanilla beneath the crinkled construction paper sun that hung high above a painted blue sky with clouds of cotton moving in predetermined patterns. And somewhere within an ominous presence. And Alice, Alice gasped: "Autun, you fool, what did you do. It was just an arts and crafts starter kit."

Alice is now embodying Glittering Love (D-03-109), an abnormality that made entirely of glitter glue. It takes the form of a pretty young woman and charms unsuspecting victims into accepting its blessing. The blessed feel stronger and more energetic than ever as long as they do her bidding. They actively spread their blessing to anyone they come in contact with so long as they maintain a pleasant demeanor, but if Glittering Love loses her temper, they explode and transform into smaller variants of glue monstrosity designated D-03-109-2 and rampage until Glittering Love is appeased or subdued at which point they die off.

Alice currently does not have access to her all of her old powers, as she is inhabiting a new vessel, but will surely gain more over time as she becomes more familiar with her temporary body!

A/N: Autun's letter was written by Circ)