//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1: The Hunter in Blue 
// Story: What it means to be a Hunter 
// by Holiday Agnaktor 
//------------------------------//

Pure Heart, a relatively thin-looking snow-white unicorn with a long violet mane in a ponytail, proudly stood in front of the white marble arches of the entrance to Canterlot Castle, looking at all the ponies walking in and out of it. Most of the ponies were wearing armour of some kind, each set of armour flashier and more exotic than the other. Pure Heart was pretty sure he saw a set completely made out of bones and skulls at some point. Why anypony would wear something like that was beyond him. All those armoured ponies were walking in and out of the castle because it also doubled for the local guild hall, the place where all the real hunters meet up before going on hunts.

He was starting to have some second thoughts about participating in the annual monster-hunter tryout. Yes, being a hunter would mean that he was part of the legendary monster hunters, yes, he had trained for pretty much his whole life in combat, but these were monsters they were talking about. There's quite a lot of difference between fighting one on one with another pony and having to dodge giant claws as if your life depends on it. Then again, it was his destiny to protect ponies, and slaying dragons that threatened everyday-life seemed like the ultimate way for somepony like him to protect ponies. His cutiemark, a violet shield, symbolised that.

Pure Heart pulled himself together, shaking his head between his hooves. He got a few looks from some of the ponies around him, but he didn't care. If he was doing this, then he would be getting looks anyway. The tryouts were really popular to watch. What's not to like about newbie hunters trying to wield oversized weapons and getting kicked unconscious by equally oversized monsters? And today Pure Heart was going to be one of those newbies. At least no one could say that he didn't try. If this didn't work out he'd join the royal guard. It wasn't as good as being hunter, but it would have to do. He was specialised in combat against ponies, so getting accepted there wouldn't be a problem.

He walked through the arches, and into the castle, and was blown away at the size of the place. The ceiling here was at least 3 times as high as the one in his own little apartment, and this was just the entrance hall. Great white marble pillars rose from the grey granite floor. Between the pillars stood small trees in large olive-green pots, bringing some colour to the place. Rays of light shone in from small gaps in the ceiling, bathing the hall in warm golden sunlight. 

Pure Heart stood there for a few seconds, taking it all in, before noticing the looks everypony around him were giving him again. And again, he didn't care much about it. He had already lost all his shame by coming here to probably receive a good monster-beatdown, get laughed at, and go home.

He crossed the hall, looking left and right at all the ponies that were there. There were some small groups of ponies that were probably hunters, chatting and telling stories, there were some stalls with all sorts of merchandise, and there was even a full blown kitchen! Pure Heart never knew that vendors were allowed in here, not to mention a small restaurant! Well, apparently they are allowed in here. Maybe a special permit, or something? He made a mental note to look into this later.

When Pure Heart finally got to the other side of the Great Hall, as it was called, he saw a scarily long queue in front of a white marble counter at the back of the hall. The queue was filled with nervous looking ponies, some of them carrying improvised weaponry, though most of them didn't.

Pure Heart looked around, not completely sure whether this was the place where he should be. Surely the hunter tryouts would attract better prepared ponies than this. That green one over there was carrying a shovel! Did he seriously think that a shovel would be good enough to kill monsters? Ugh. Some ponies. You don't just join the most disciplined corps of fighters with a shovel.

He spotted a lone hunter sitting on a bench at a table wearing blue feathered armour that looked as if it had belonged to a minstrel once. A heavily armoured foreign minstrel, maybe from Saddlearabia, or something. It didn't look as if it would grant much protection, but it probably did anyway. Hunting-armour is weird. His armour covered him completely, not even one scrap of fur could be seen poking out from under his exotic clothing. He even wore a mask, covering his face. He appeared to be going through his backpack. Pure Heart walked up to him.

"Excuse me, sir, is that over there the queue for the hunter tryouts?" Pure Heart asked him hesitantly.

The hunter slowly looked up from his backpack, looked at the queue, and went back to rummaging through his bag.

"Yep, that's the queue. Are you going to try to become a hunter or something?" he answered with a rich, laid-back, middle-aged, golden voice, whilst closing his bag with a dark blue aura.

"Yes sir!" Pure Heart answered Maybe a little too enthusiastic.

He looked up from his bag and looked Pure Heart up and down one time.

The hunter leant back on the bench. "A little bit eager, are we? Ech, we were all one day as eager as you. Have you picked your weapon of choice yet?"

Pure Heart shook his head and answered with a "No sir!", quieter this time. He hadn't. He wanted to keep his options open until he had taken a good look at all choices. He knew that most weapons were fairly heavy, so he had been honing his levitation power so that he could wield heavy weapons with ease.

The hunter clapped his hooves excitedly and rubbed them together. "Ah, then I'm going to help you pick one."

Before Pure Heart could interrupt him, the hunter already explained himself. "Weapon-picking is the best part of monster hunting! So many choices! So, what are you good at? Aiming, swinging heavy stuff, complex swordplay, what do you do?"

Pure Heart decided that he might as well let the hunter help him. "Well, I noticed that most of the melee weapons used were gigantic, so I practised levitating heavy things a lot. I think my options are pretty open. I think I'd prefer something close ranged, though."

The hunter sighed. "Well, that still leaves you with-" he looked up for a second in thought, "-around nine different weapons to choose from. You might want to get a little more specific than that if you want to get a proper weapon. There are quite a lot of weapons that are heavy and involve hitting the enemy, you know. Let me just ask you a few questions, and then I'll suggest you a weapon based on that, yes?"

Pure Heart nodded. He thought that the hunter probably knew best what to focus on.

"First of all, what's your name? I like knowing who I'm talking with," the hunter asked.

"I'm Pure Heart," Pure Heart said with a smile, "I want to become a hunter so that I can protect as many ponies as possible!"

Pure Heart could hear the hunter chuckling behind his mask. "Sure you do. Aren't you just in it for the thrill, the money, the cool weaponry? The knowledge that you can kill pretty much anything?!"

Pure Heart shook his head, looking horrified at just the thought of being a hunter for such trivial reasons. "N-no, sir, I actually want to protect ponies!"

The hunter shrugged and leant back on the bench again. "Eh, to each their own, I guess. And for my name... Well, you can call me the Blue Hunter. Blue, if that's too long for you. Some of us experienced hunters like having a bit of...mystique hanging around us. And 'The Blue Hunter' just sounds cool, doesn't it?"

'Blue' looked at Pure Heart, as if he expected him to confirm his opinion. Pure Heart couldn't see it, but he suspected that Blue had an expectant grin hidden behind that mask.

"It, eh, sounds very mysterious!" Pure Heart told him in a slightly softer voice than normal, "It, eh... really gives you this aura of mystique and...eh...mysterious-ness!"

The Blue Hunter looked at Pure Heart in silence for a few seconds, probably with a disapproving face under his mask, before continuing. "Soooo! Do you think being able to move is the bee's knees?"

Pure Heart nodded. It was probably best to just humour the hunter and call him 'Blue'. He was getting free advice from the guy, so he was not going to just annoy him for no big reason. "Yeah, that seems kind of important. I don't want to be stuck right in front of the monster as it's about to do some kind of death attack."

The Blue Hunter nodded sagely. "Ah yes, that rules out both types of lance. You're pretty much a sitting duck with those. So, next question, do you like having a shield of some sorts? Something to stand between you and the monster?"

Another nod. This one a bit more hesitant. "Well, yeah, but I don't want to have to depend on it all the time. I'd rather just stand someplace that the monster doesn't target in the first place."

"Huh, most people prefer not having a shield. They say it slows them down." Blue sounded surprised. 

He stood up and picked up his backpack with levitation. "Well, we're down to two options. Follow me, I'm going show them to you."

Pure Heart nodded again excitedly and followed Blue towards an open doorway at the right side of the Great Hall. Behind it, there was a spacious hallway with a lot of large wooden doors on both sides with brass number plates. They walked along the hall for a bit before the hunter stopped at a door with the number 23 on it. He got out a key and unlocked what was apparently his room.

"Some people choose to stay here at the castle after they become hunters. You don't have much here, just a bed, a wardrobe, a weapon rack, and a box for your stuff to go in, but most ponies don't mind. They're spending most of their time in the wild anyway. The doors are extra big to not screw over the longsword and lance users. Their weapons are slightly too big to fit through normal doors," Blue said, as he walked over to his weapon rack and started looking through all the different weapons on it.

The weapon rack was made out of brass and was quite big. It took up the entire back wall of the room, leaving just enough space for the rest of the furniture. The small wooden bed was pushed into a corner, making a bit of room for a small wardrobe, and a big red box near the door. Next to the box there stood a tall mirror, probably for seeing if the armour was equipped correctly.

The rack was packed full with weapons and colourful sets of armour. There were all sorts of weapons: big swords, small swords, huge swords, giant axes, lances, spears, hammers, and even some oversized musical instruments. Blue picked out a (relatively speaking) small sword with a shield and one of the huge swords out from the rack and put them on the ground in front of Pure Heart.

The smaller sword looked like a normal double edged sword made out of steel, except that it was slightly thicker than a regular sword should be. The shield that went with it was a round, white shield with a yellow sun painted on it. It wasn't that big, but it looked big enough to deflect most attacks from monsters if positioned correctly. The greatsword was double-edged as well, and far bigger than the sword and shield. It was around a meter and a half long and was around 30 centimeters from edge to edge. It was about as thick as half a leg. It too had a yellow sun on it, this time on side of the blade, where the grey steel connected to the hilt. The greatsword didn't have a guard. It would probably just be in the way.

"Here you go," Blue said, "a sword and shield, and a greatsword. Your pick."

Pure Heart looked at how big and heavy the greatsword looked, and didn't think that anypony would ever be able to lift that.

"Ehm, I mean no disrespect, but... Blue, how am I supposed to use the greatsword? Isn't it far too heavy?"

Blue lifted the greatsword in his magic with apparent ease. "No it isn't."

Pure Heart shrugged and continued to look at both weapons critically, trying to see how they would be used. "You said that these would have a shield, correct?"

"Hmm-hmm."

"Well, the big one" -Pure Heart poked the greatsword- "doesn't have a shield."

Blue chuckled softly, before holding the greatsword sideways in front of him, showing how wide it was. "What do you mean, 'no shield'? This sword is the shield."

Pure Heart looked at the sword in silence for a few seconds before letting out a little "Oh." of realisation. "You know, that seems very handy. I think I'll take the greatsword."

"Ah! An excellent choice!" Blue said, while dropping the greatsword in front of Pure Heart, and putting the sword and shield back in the weapon rack, "You know, most ponies don't use the greatsword because it's too big and slow. It's because they try to make it do what they want. They try to move it from point A to point B in a straight line and then complain that it keeps going. Instead of moving it in straight lines, you need to move it in circles. Just a tip."

Blue picked up a sword and shield in his magic and made a few chopping motions with the sword. "You see? doing this with the greatsword wouldn't be possible. It simply has too much momentum."

"So...I need to just let it swing? And alter the path of the sword to hit things?" Pure Heart said with a grin, "That sounds fairly effective." This sounded like something he could do, maybe.

Blue nodded. "You got it. It's a lot more difficult than it seems because you need to let your magic go with the weapon, instead of trying to be in full control."

Pure Heart picked up the greatsword in his magic. It really was lighter than it looked. It was still really heavy, but at least he could lift it. Swinging it would probably not be that much of a problem, except for the stopping part that Blue had mentioned. 

He looked questioningly at Blue. "Can I just take this?"

"Yep, it's all yours now," Blue said with a shrug, "I can make another one whenever I want, no biggie."

"Woah, thanks, sir!" Pure Heart almost bounced from excitement. He was maybe a bit too old for getting this excited when getting cool things, but he didn't care. He just got a sword that was longer than himself from an elite hunter. Of course he was excited.

Blue sighed deeply. "Y'know, you can drop the 'sir'. I really don't care for formalities," he said.

"B-but, si- I mean-" Pure Heart began with a confused look on his face before being silenced with a wave of Blue's hoof.

"Ech, forget it, it's not a big deal, you can keep calling me 'sir' if that makes you feel better. In fact," -Blue placed a hoof on his chin thoughtfully- "having somepony call me 'sir' will do wonders for my image. So if you want to, calling me 'sir' is just fine. Forget I said anything."

Blue walked towards the weapon rack and starting looking through the sets of armour that hung there and levitated a suit of metal armour from it, and dropped it on the ground on top of the greatsword in front of Pure Heart with a clanking noise. "Here, take this. You might be able to use this."

Pure Heart looked at the metal armour. It consisted of a steel helmet with a hole in the front to make place for his horn. The rest of the suit was made out of leather with chainmail and steel plates on strategic places to further reinforce it without sacrificing movement. It didn't look like the most protective armour out there, but at least he would be able to move in it. 

He put it on with his magic. The thought of facing monsters with no armour didn't really make him feel comfortable.

When he finished putting the armour on, which felt surprisingly light, he picked up the greatsword again with a violet glow. He gave it a slow experimental vertical swing, noticing that stopping it took more effort than he would like, just like Blue had said. He had only just stopped the greatsword in time to not crash it into the wooden floor.

He walked over to the mirror, and saw that the armour didn't look half bad on him. He looked pretty cool even, in his opinion.

Blue walked up next to him and gave him a friendly punch to the shoulder, causing the armour to jingle. "So, are you ready to smack a monster?"

Pure Heart nodded. Yep, he was as ready as he would ever be. Plus, now that he had gotten a few pointers from Blue, he might actually stand a chance. So that was nice too.

"Well let's go then!" Blue said while motioning Pure Heart to follow him before walking out of the door and onto the hallway.

Pure Heart put the greatsword on his back, securing it with a strap that was probably there for holding weapons. He then followed Blue with a grin on his face. 

Time to hunt a monster.