//------------------------------// // Chapter fifty, all around the world: But here we are. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Nowhere, Anywhere But Here, midday, Fortitude- “Excuse me sir, would you or any of your friends like a pie?” The mare before me in the bonnet asked as she held up the pie. Skelly is already warning me that while the townsfolk are friendly, they will attempt to kill us against their will. “You ‘don’t’ have to ‘eat it’ right away, I just thought it would be nice to give one to travelers such as yourself. We hardly get any around here… thank goodness for that…” “What flavor is it?!” Questions Flamberge, the red headed mare looked a bit wary. “It’s rhubarb I will have ‘you’ know! It tastes great, ‘will’ you give it a chance? It has been said that it is good enough to ‘die’ for. ‘If you’ won’t ‘eat it’, then I’ll just have to find someone else to give this pie to.” The mare was quite good at warning us, a lot better than the bartender, rhubarb leaves were only mildly poisonous and I don’t think that’s what was put in the pie as it did smell good. The poison had to be something more potent than rhubarb leaf extract. “If pie isn’t your thing, then I’m perfectly okay with…” “Okay, we’ll take it!” Taking the pie from the shocked mare, Flamberge passed it off to Skelly. “Our friend Skelly likes eating food and since your offering, I don’t think she’s ever had rhubarb before!” “Doesn’t she need to watch her girlish figure? I mean she’s already quite good looking, oh… have you had lunch yet? Maybe you should eat a big lunch before you…” The mare’s eyes widened as Skelly dove into the pie face first and started to eat it. The mare looked quite horrified, so it was definitively involuntary and they were quite aware of what they were doing. That kind of reaction couldn’t be faked. “’I hope she’ doesn’t get a tummy ache from eating it. ‘Will’ you ‘accept my apology’ if the pie doesn’t taste good? ‘I’m sorry’ if I didn’t make it right, rhubarb is a bit difficult to deal with.” Skelly just waved her off and kept eating the pie, she apparently liked the taste and would be perfectly fine. The mare watched as Skelly finished the whole pie and then stood there staring at the mare who started sweating a bit. Once it was clear that Skelly was not going to keel over from a pie that reminded me of our battle with Top Snide, the mare turned to me. “Um… is your friend going to be alright?” The mare asked. “I mean she looks a little pale, maybe you should get a doctor to check her out?” Skelly grinned, she motioned for us to get what we can from the mare. Skelly was always a pale beauty, even when she was just an animate pile of bones. I’m unsure how she could get any paler than possibly being related to one of the ponies of the apocalypse. “Don’t worry, we know.” Even at my reassurance, the mare didn’t look relieved. “Our friend will be fine, she won’t even need medical help for it.” “How can you be so sure?” The mare didn’t take her eyes off of Skelly. “There is actually a poison powerful enough to kill our friend!” Exclaimed Flamberge as Skelly took on a proud stance. “So what are the problems that comes out at night?!” “I would tell you if I could, just know that physical force won’t even touch what’s behind most of our current woes.” That was rather upfront. “I can only tell you what you can’t do.” “Is this thing annoying?” As I asked this I noticed she was the only pony on the street at the moment. “Yes.” The mare continued to look at Skelly and the mare was still looking rather surprised. “Maybe you can help with the smaller problems, but I can’t tell you what I need your help with.” “Could you maybe write it down instead?” There was a long pause and I was wondering what the mares reaction would be. Eventually the mare smashed herself in the face with one of her hooves. “Oh my goodness, everyone in this town is an idiot!” It seems like she just realized something. “Hold on, I’ll give you exactly the information you need to solve at least one of our many problems.” She left and eventually came back with a note, upon reading the note I nodded to her. “I know we can take on one of those!” My brother stated fiercely as he looked at the note in my hoof. -Night- That mare wrote plenty down for us. A number of ponies that lived here had somehow gotten it into their minds that they needed to speak with emphasis and stressing to actually say what they wanted to know. We are solving that one problem real fast when it was incidentally pointed out that they didn’t need to actually talk to tell us anything. They can’t tell us verbally, but there was more than one way to communicate. Whatever it was that stilled their tongues was now in trouble from the people of Anywhere But Here. Even when their minds weren’t exactly sound, I could see quite clearly that their writing skills weren’t affected in the slightest. It was a dark and foggy night, exactly like it had been every night since the various things that happened started to happen to ‘Anywhere But Here’. The fog clung to the ground thickly, but it still let you clearly see the sky. We had a list of those things that were problematic now, one of those was a being that caused a few problems around here. It was a ghostly minotaur that is said to be powerful enough to end us all quite easily. We were waiting for the moon to rise and once it started its way into the sky, we saw four stars moving up to meet the moon. It appears that Blade has succeeded in becoming a star. I am thinking that many things are as possible even when they seem to be absolutely impossible. If nothing were possible, then nothing there would be. “Hope to see you again someday Blade!” Turning to me, Flamberge gave me a small grin. “Now how are we going to deal with this specter?! It may not cure the town of their other problems, but at least they’ll have one less thing to worry about by the end of tonight!” “I can agree with that.” This was going to be dangerous though, we were going to deal with this threat now. We left our tent that encompassed Travel On and proceeded towards where this menacing minotaur manifested. It didn’t take long for us to find him near the oasis lake, it was a ghastly slightly dilapidated looking bulky bull that was floating in the air and was wrapped in bandages that glowed like he did. His red eyes settled upon us. “So there seems to be bravery in this era after all...” He spoke slowly and his voice wavered about in pitch. “Do you wish to fight me? Just know that it is quite fruitless to do so, none can defeat me for I am…” “King Ram Bees, the mino-taur, the mino-taur~!” He started singing with a rather flamboyant music that started playing from out of nowhere. “With me there’s no escaped clause~!” “The mino-taur, the mino-taur~!” I did not know where those voices were coming from, but they were singing backup quite loudly. “For I am King Ram Bees, the mino-taur, the mino-taur~!” The minotaur wasn’t doing much more than just singing at a much faster pace than he could talk and I found this ridiculous. “Prepare the gauze, prepare the gauze~!” The backup voices sang. “I’m King Ram Bees, the mino-taur, the mino-taur~!” The minotaur wasn’t wearing a crown as far as I could see. “All other beings are flawed~! “Demand applause, demand applause~!” The backup voices came in again. “I am a king with no earthly flaws~!” Once he finished his eyes became serious, a large dome of energy rose up around all of us. “There’s no escaping me once you’ve heard my song mortals and there is no battle that I cannot win!” “Can we each ask you a question before we fight?” The minotaur considered my question for a moment. “Of course, you are going to perish to my ghost bees anyway even if you don’t fight me personally.” As soon as Ram Bees finished saying that, he unleashed a swarm of small ghostly bees that hovered around him angrily. My brother reacted like how I felt. “Ugh, ghost bees on top of that over the top horrible singing… this guy is pretty weird on a number of levels!” My brother Flamberge turned away from me to King Ram Bees. “Okay, let’s get my question out of the way, what are you currently made of exactly?” “Magic and my own mighty spirit as being the greatest king of the minotaurs to ever bring them to faster ruin than any other leader has before me, next!” The minotaur crossed his arms and stared us down, well I already knew I had won this fight just by what he just said. I was the best king that the minotaurs have ever had and this pale blue bull was just a loud boastful jerk. “I have to wonder, what are you doing out here, nowhere near your home?” It seem that Sweetcakes didn’t see the minotaur as threatening at all. “This place, in the badlands of Nowhere, attracts all manner of strange phenomena and I am one of those things that came here willingly!” Well that answered that question and the entire list of oddities that were written down about the problems going on in this place. “Do we get a choice in what our battle will be like?” That was my question. “Since I am challenging you, you get to choose how we fight. Whether it be battles of the mind or battles of the body.” Okay good, I am already having good idea of what to do already, now I can stack things better in my favor. It is good to always take a pragmatic approach to things when the lives of your friends and family are threatened. “If I were compare us, I am worth more in five seconds of speech than the lot of you have been your whole lives. Also there is nothing that you can’t accomplish with the application of enough bees!” “Skelly, do you have any questions?” Watching the mare sign something out to me, I just smiled and turned towards the ghostly minotaur. “Skelly wants to know something unusual. If someone defeated one of your descendants, then does that mean that they have defeated you as well by proxy?” “None of my blood would be defeated so easily, if that were to happen then I would gladly be felled by a worthier king than I. Such a thing as a king greater than I is clearly impossible, for I have both muscles and bees… of the ghostly variety!” Ram Bees is having very poor chances if his family line was the one that I moved off the throne by smashing them in the back of the head with my shield. “I even left the strongest, most callous, idiotic minotaur that I could possibly sire to carry my family legacy on to horrible glory over the last few hundred years! Are you ready to tell me what our most glorious battle will be?” If I am remembering right, the last hundred years have had only bad rulers… and I knocked out the most recent one… Yep, I’m quite safe to win this battle quite easily for I have no reason not to. “I am accepting of your challenge, I challenge you to have at one point in life defeated Princess Celestia in any way shape or form.” I watch as the minotaur blinked and stared at me with his swarming ghost bees angrily buzzing around him. “That is clearly impossible, no minotaur or king has ever defeated her! Not even someone of my perfect mass!” The minotaur ghost flexed and posed then slowly he started to disappear. His cloud of ghost bees having quickly ceased to exist a moment prior. “What?! Why am I fading away?!” “I am a minotaur king who defeated Celestia, so it is not being impossible task and that is why you are disappearing.” The ghostly face, as that’s what I could still see, dropped its jaw before its disappearing neck reached up to its head. “You lose.” “Truly…. there was one greater than…” He never got to finish as he hopefully moved on to the afterlife to whatever end he deserved. “Seriously, that’s all it took?!” Flamberge exclaimed in a slightly angry tony. “I thought there was something dangerous enough to kill a dragon here! That didn’t seem very dangerous at…” A loud rumbling interrupted my brother. Slowly a large tentacle with a spherical tip rose out of the acid water of the oasis and then the end of the tentacles split open revealing a large oval shaped eye with a slit pupil, in the light of the moon we could see several more tentacles slowly snaking out of the water. On second look, the acid water was actually turning into the tentacles, the tentacles were not coming out of the acid. Well, that would certainly explain what the bartender meant by the water not always being acid. Skelly took up her axe, Sweetcakes lit two of her tails on fire and brought out the tengu fan to enhance her fire making abilities, Flamberge pulled out his flaming sword and I wielded my anti-magic shield bravely in the face of such a horror. “I am thinking that it is being a horrifying eldritch abomination made of tentacles!” One that cause me to shiver violently just seeing as more and more of the acid water turned into tentacles by the second. “I’m sure we can take it!” Flamberge shouted bravely as he pointed his flaming sword at it. “There’s nothing that we can’t beat with the application of enough fire!” - Five minutes later, Flamberge- “Oh come on!” We lit the thing on fire, but that just made it more dangerous and I now stabbed at the tentacle threatening to squeeze the life out of me multiple times. Not that Sweetcakes, Skelly or Fortitude were fairing any better. As far as I’m concerned, this night was going to suck. It would be quite a long night if the flaming tentacle demon, the one that currently had us all in its powerful grasp, had anything to say about it. -Some weeks later, volcanic region, Shocking Awe- I looked at my two associates. Teatime Clockwork was just plain disgusting, he used machines instead of working up the strength of his own body! The machines of his were weak and I question his intelligence every chance I got. Dispel Grace’s body was much better and it looked like he put the effort into being strong, but his holier than everyone attitude rankled me a bit. “My associate, Doctor Caballeron, has informed me that our next clue is in the hooves of the longma at a place called ‘The Volcano’.” Te-agh-time unfurled a map and pointed out the location near the dragon lands. I wonder what wonderful body breaking fights we would find here? I wanted to join the Fiery Fights!