12 Doors of Christmas, year 2: Door #5

Door #5: The Gingerbread House

Snow falls, dark and distant, as the first blue tinge of a coming dawn steals over Canterbury Lane. Exhausted from a day and a night of furious gingerbration, our heroes slumber outside the gingerbread house where their hosts, a band of animate gingerbread men, reside.

JAMPA: Psst. House. House, listen. Not eating gingerbread house is the second hardest thing Jampa has ever done. Jampa's first hardest thing is not eating gingerbread people. Jampa needs to find some cookies without feelings to eat before Jampa starts eating townsfolk, house. Jampa doesn't want to fulfill negative yeti stereotypes.

Just then, a sentient cookie with feelings and (a little) dignity emerges from the house.

GINGERBREAD MAN: Breakfast time, new friends! Wake up! It's a beautiful morning!

KABLOO: (stirring stiffly from sleep) Guh, you lying, freakish homunculus. This morning, like all others, is an unwanted puppy to be put in a sack and drowned in coffee.
GINGERBREAD MAN: Oh, we don't make coffee here! It's far too dangerous. If were ever to fall in, why, we'd go all soft and steamy, and all our precious sweetness would diffuse into the coffee!
JAMPA: Jampa is not listening... Jampa is not listening.... Maybe just a sniff!

JAMPA: (sniff sniff) Mmmm.....
GINGERBREAD MAN: We missed you at the Gingerbration yesterday, Mr. Nicholas! We kept today's Long Nights gift inside for, as you requested. Did you get your errands done?
NICHOLAS: Er, yes, I got a lot done. The state of the lane left me with some questions, however. As my friends have probably told you, we haven't been here is many years. What's happened to the elves? And that handsome red tower that used to stand on the hill?
KABLOO: As you'd know if you hadn't ditched us to go run "errands" in the wasteland, this place got thrashed by golems about, oh, 25 years ago. In the past couple of decades, they've killed or run off all of the elves, wrecked your tower, wiped out all other life in the Lane...
GINGERBREAD MAN: And stopped the snow, don't forget that!
KABLOO: Hee hee, yes! Any dick can commit genocide, but it takes a flair for evil to stop it snowing at Christmas, too! I think I might be developing a crush.

TODDY: How many golems are we talkin' about? I mean, please don't start singing my praises again, but we ran off a nutcracker just before we showed up here. We can take these things; they're just toys.
GINGERBREAD MAN: The stories say that there were three golems, but we've only ever seen one, o hero! He's very powerful, though. He took over all the weapons and defenses that your people built to stop him... that's how he wiped out the elves!
TODDY: Yeah, well, I'm not just some elf. There's no toy built that I can't break! I proved it to my little cousin Perry at his 5th birthday party, and I'll prove it to this dickbag golem!

As a second gingerbread man emerges from the house, perhaps slightly perturbed that exposition is delaying his breakfast, Kabloo chimes in with a much-needed voice of racism:

KABLOO: What I don't understand is how your frankly ridiculous race has survived here when everything else has been wiped out. I'd lay money on you dopes dying out even without a golem stomping on you.
GINGERBREAD MAN #1: I guess we can show you our secret, since you're a friend of the hero. Ready, Skip?
GINGERBREAD MAN #2: Ready, Zip!
BOTH: CONTACT!

For a blinding moment, the warm glow (and spicy scent) of gingerbread magic overwhelm the light of  the slow-climbing dawn! The glow fades to reveal a large gingerbread cube gleaming with holiday magic!

NICHOLAS: Detect magic... hmm, impressive. What do you call this?

ZIP: The Cube of Many Cookies! It's the source of all our magic... and the source of us, of course.

TODDY: What do you mean, the "source of you?" You mean this thing is some kind of gingerbread queen and you're all drones? Where does... you know, where do you....
ZIP: Oh, no, the cube isn't alive! Neither are we, really. We're just magical constructs, like the golems.
TODDY: So that's why the golem doesn't just kill you?
ZIP: Oh, no, he kills us! It's like your little round friend said, we die constantly.
SKIP: That bear you killed ate almost our entire royal family!
ZIP: Ha ha, that's right, Skip! And all my brothers!
SKIP: But as long as there are at least two of us, we can always just summon the Cube and make some replacements. That's our motto: "Go ahead and kill us! We'll bake more!" I'll show you:

Heat and a piercing hum surround the Cube, until, with a final, triumphant "DING," a fully-grown gingerbread man emerges from the Cube's crumbly surface!

NEW GINGERBREAD MAN: Hi, I'm Sunny! Can I get anyone some refreshments?

ZIP: No, we just made you as an illustration. We'll probably send you out to join the resistance in a suicide raid later on tonight.

SUNNY: That's swell! I welcome death!

JAMPA: Little gingerbread man is so fresh... so warm... can Jampa... hold him?

SUNNY: Sure, buddy! Grab an arm and swing me up there!

NICHOLAS: There's a resistance movement, you say?
ZIP: Sure! Mostly just us, since the massacre in the hotel. We were slaving over a hot Cube for days after that disaster!
SKIP: I remember that! The house smelled great!

NICHOLAS: What happened in there?
ZIP: Oh, the elves' leader had a crazy plan to trap the golem in there and fight it, but it didn't work. The elves got hit with all their own defenses... it was just glitter and blood as far as you could see. And then a fire started somehow, and of course all those brandy-soaked elf bodies flared up. We lost all the elves and almost all our gingerbread soldiers.

SKIP: Oh, and their leader didn't make it either! Remember? He was human, and I think his name was Nicholas, too!

As morning settles in, Nicholas' friends look on helplessly as he gazes in deep hrough toward the room where he must meet–where he has met–his fate....