Visiting the Nyubet
A stallion stood at the edge of what looked like a very icy desert. Winds blew powerfully, yet they were simply lukewarm. Despite the power of the sun nearby, and the shining surface of this place, the heat was no more powerful than an early morning. This region had become know as the Nyubet, thanks to what inhabited it. The ground there was just like sand, although each grain was as white as snow and the grains of "sand" were as big as a pearl or even a golf ball. It was only fifty years old, yet nopony knew how it had gotten there. Not even those who had lived right next to it know.
Spiral Tooth didn't care. Being a newly appointed "Monster Hunter Grand Master", he was eager to see what new challenges were strewn ahead for him. The sky-blue pony had a curled, white mane and tail, with some edges strewn about here and there. His eyes were as white as the Nyubet, as well. The most notable feature about him, though, were his spiralled "canine teeth". The doctors said that it was a rare disease not yet understood by the medical community. So far, he hasn't had any problems with them, but he considers it one of the signs for him to become a hunter.
His armor possessed scars and dents that he had yet to fix and buffer out. Said armor was only gray plated armor with a skirt of ring armor all around the stallion's body. The helmet was quite particular as well, as the visor took the shape of what looked like a crescent moon on its side with the points sticking upwards. He wore a gigantic sword on his back which showed its vigor to slice open monsters, what with its jagged blade and sharp end. The handle, however, was covered in a white cloth, to ease the grip onto it. Next to this stallion was a tremendous, pony-sized spider with a less than 'cute' face. They were known only as 'throos', and they were impossibly rare. Nopony knew how Spiral Tooth even managed to get one, but that's how it was with most owners of these incredibly intelligent beings.
Spiral Tooth had been known in a bad way throughout Equestria and its neighbors for causing tremendous collateral damage when hunting, so, to avoid him getting into any fits, the heads of the MHGuild, they put him on as a false grand master in hopes that he would, perhaps, perish in a battle with one of the monsters way out of his league. A grim outlook, but no one was willing to hire him anymore. He was charged with hunting what lay within the Nyubet, but the only living creature in this young region wasn't to be taken lightly. Grand masters usually hunt triple-star ranked monsters, and these are the highest threats imaginable. Only skilled groups of experienced grand masters are capable of felling such beasts using their combined wits and strengths. These hunts usually last several days as they try to weaken the beast before properly fighting it to lessen the dangers. However, there are monsters that have been deemed "Permanently out-of-bounds" or "Mission Impossible" by the heads of the MHGuild. These monsters are called Quad-stars, and for a good reason. The one being hunted was currently a quad-star, and even the most powerful of grand masters had never come back from a fight with it.
For these reasons, Spiral and his throos companion were being accompanied by several hundred armored troops, the leaders currently informing their troops of the situation, whilst the commander stood next to Spiral. The commander had a turquoise coat covering his strengthened body, and orange hair with a large white streak flowing through his mane and tail. He also wore a commissar's red coat, showing how he lead his troops. He simply looked sideways at the overly proud stallion with his weird armor. Sure, the commander's troops wore armor, but theirs was of a standard.
"I don't understand how you're going to kill it. The rare survivors say that it is the size of mountains. It has killed all those who have tried to capture it for their use, and you're here on a quest to capture it?"
"Or get a sample from its skin." Spiral answered with glee.
The throos hissed loudly in response.
"And, how, pray tell, are you going to do this?"
"I'll hitch a ride on one of your ski-boats and jump onto it when it gets close enough."
"And then?"
"Then me and Fyx will chop it up in no time!"
The commissar couldn't believe what he was hearing. This was the "grat warrior" sent to deal with it? He simply sighed and walked towards the ski-boats, with Spiral following closely behind. The stallion saw what were know as "Ski-boats". They were simple wooden boats, usually with two decks, both holding ten cannons each, and a single mast and sail on the deck. The bottom may have had the typical curvy shape to "cut through" the sand, but it held two smooth planks of wood made to share the weight equally across the surface. The boat did exactly what it needed to.
"So...How many of you guys are going to help me?"
"We're about ten thousand."
Spiral sputtered for a minute.
"And because each ship can hold atleast fifty of us, munitions and material added, we have two-hundreds boats ready."
"The pony who hired me really wants it dead."
"That's for sure."
The three had arrived at another area near the Nyubet. It was bristling with boats being readied to sail, with ponies carving off some imperfections in the wood. Others were simply carrying boxes of materials and food onto their ships. Crates lay everywhere and so did many of the soldiers. Soldiers who simply spoke of their experiences in life or how they feel about the trip.
"That's quite a lot of soldiers."
"And quite a lot of cannons. Now follow me onto my ship."
The stallion and throos did as told, the two simply looking at the other wooden ships in the area. Most of them were simple and plainly colored, some ranging from brown to a slight clay-red. The commander's ship, however, was lined with blue on the hoof rails and cannon hatches. He and his two invitees stepped aboard the wooden ramp laid upon both the deck and the floor. Spiral and Fyx had fun 'tripping' over the wooden blocks sticking out of it.
"WILL YOU STOP THAT!" the commander yelled.
The hunter and thethroos froze in place then begrudgingly climbed aboard the ship. Mumbling and grumbling, the commander took what looked like a giant white conch shell and spoke into it. His voice echoed powerfully and brought the attention of everypony in the area.
"Alright! Troops. Prepares to set sail." he shouted.
There was no longer any remaining sounds of story trading. There was only the sound of synchronized hoofsteps marching across the solid, barren desert ground and going aboard their respective ships.
"I already know what you're all thinking, and I assure you, we will make it out of this alive. Our employer is counting on us, so don't disappoint him. The whole of Equestria, nay, the world with know of how we defeated the undefeatable. We will become heroes and pioneers for a new future! We'll all get back home, and drink and celebrate as much as we want!" the commander shouted throwing his foreleg into the air before falling back down on it.
He gave the shell back to another soldier as everypony shouted in unison in agreement and loyalty. Spiral adjusted his helmet and smiled as he heard and saw the reaction the others had. Fyx even hung onto the rail and a distinct hiss scared the guards around.
The commander signaled the navigator to send the sign. The navigator, who wore a tricornered hat, nodded, grabbed something beneath the wheel, then tossed it into the air. A loud bang followed by a flashing orange light illuminated the area above all the ships. Finally, the sails were let loose and the ships began to slide into the Nyubet. It was truly a sight to behold. Such an immense fleet sailing away together truly gave a sense of grand size and admiration. However, to Spirals' confusion, two groups of fifty ships left the main fleet and sailed to the far east and west of the hunter's ship.
"What are they doing?" the stallion asked the commander as he turned around.
"They are going to flank the monster while we take it head on. We'll be alerted to various messages via these boxes here near the entrance to the lower levels."
Next to the door to said levels stood four glass boxes with one crystal floating in each of them. They all stood next to eachother, but on a wooden bench. The crystals were green, yellow, red, and black, respectively. They wera ll very dark, as if they were "off".
"What do they mean?"
"Green means that all is going according to plan and that nothing wrong is happening. Yellow that the target has been sighted and is currently being engaged. Red is that the situation is critical and needs to be abandoned or reinforcements are required for completion."
"And the black one?"
"That one is automatic. It alerts the others...to the complete and total annihilation of one group. I've only seen it light up once. That was a terrible day for us all."
"Well...maybe you, but not me." Spiral nonchalantly remarked as he rubbed his chest armor.
The commander didnt take too kindly to this and yelled at the hunter.
"Yeah?! Well maybe you should go alone against several thousand soldiers and see what happens? I guess that your death won't bother anypony's at all either!" the stallion then stomped off towards the navigator.
"Yeesh. Touchy." Spiral mocked with a hoof fiddle.
Fyx nodded in approval to his friend.
It had been hours since anything had happened, and the soldiers were starting to enjoy the trip. Meals of carrot and cucumber chowder had been served on pretty much every ship, which was thoroughly enjoyed. Fyx was given a special clam chowder in a small white bowl which he appreciated very much. As Spiral laid down on the deck with a full stomach, he watched his friend, sitting on his butt, drink every last bit of the chowder down his gullet. The bowl was still pretty much as big as his head when he held it against his face.
"I'm so bored. How can you even eat that? It's gross!"
The throos suddenly stopped drinking from the bowl and dropped it to the ground as his face seemed completely covered in curiosity. Suddenly, one of the soldiers yelled to the commander:
"Sir! The crystals have lit up. It's those on the left flank."
"What light?!" he answered as he hung over the deck near the navigator.
"...It's the black one...sir..."
"But we didn't even get the other two lights..."
Fyx hissed loudly.
"SPIRAL! Tell your pet to be quiet." the commander shouted.
"It's because he hears something is coming. He's never wrong."
There was a long moment of pause before the commander took a decision.
"MAN THE BATTLE STATIONS! FULL ALERT! NOTIFY THE OTHER SHIPS THAT THE CREATURE IS COMING!"
Chaos had quickly swarmed the whole fleet of one hundred ships as all the cannon-hatches were pushed open by each cannoneer ready to apply his knowledge in blowing stuff up. Spiral Tooth and Fyx ran up the stairs to reach the commander and have a better view of the overlying sea of pearls, yet there was nothing in sight. Silence had befallen the ship, with only the gentle battering of the sails.
The entire fleet was very cautious of what was going on around them, being very careful as to notice every single movement, even that of a fly doing a backflip in front of their faces, or one of the soldiers going seasick and unleashing his fury overboard.
"Sir...I don't like this." the navigator whispered.
"I don't either, but we're forced to do this."
"Commander, maybe you should be more aware of your surroundings. Look forward." Spiral whispered as he pointed forward.
There was an enormous mound of the pearls moving at a moderate speed towards the commander's ship, but it disappeared just as suddenly as it appeared. One of the soldiers activated the yellow crystal to signal the surrounding ships, and he did good too, as Fyx bounced up and looked to the right, attracting everypony in his viscinity to look in the same direction through curiousity. A huge mound of the pearls had reappeared beneath several of the ships before rising quickly and violently in the air like an explosion, tossing ship and screaming soldier into their dry doom.
"THE NYUM-BUNET HAS ARRIVED!" the commander yelled.
The sudden shift in the sand created tensions that made several ships spin out of control and smash into eachother. Others were out of the zone of effect and began to fire their cannons at the gigantic, sandy mound. It didn't look like anything but a rounded dome, yet the tiny explosions of the cannons on the manifestation creating nothing but insgnificant bellows of smoke. Two furious red eyes glowed out of the sand to show what looked like a portion of a head in the shape of a crown. Whatever was left was only an assembly of floating stones covered in various sheets of ice.
As the rest of the sand began to slide off, an enormous arm burst out of the sand with such ferocity that the few clouds standing above the beast were completely blown away, just as the dozen ships in its zone of effect became after being smashed by what seemed to be an arm of immense proportions. The sand coming off of it showed that the body was also composed of the same structure, with stones of various sizes sometimes covered with ice. The hands, however, showed them to possess seven digits, although they weren't segmented like the rest of the body. How the colossus roared, nopony knew, but it sounded like shredded metal echoing in a cave.
Everypony on the commander's ship stared at this creature. It was atleast sixty-five meters in height, if not more, and it looked completely enraged. It had already torn away an impressive portion of the main fleet within mere moments, something that not even a pourpros would be capable of, and those were one star beasts. Spiral Tooth and Fyx just stared at the creature with their mouths wide open, literally.
"Snap out of it you two. We underestimated this creature. We'll have to settle with you two chipping off a piece of its body before we return. If we can atleast figure out the Nyum-Bunet is, then we'll probably have a chance at destroying it in the future. SOLDIER!" the commander suddenly turned to another stallion."Signal the remaining backup fleet that we need their help."
"But...that will just send them to their dooms..."
"We have no choice...If we don't do this, we'll never manage to reconnect Equestria and its Nuverian neighbors, and family members will be cut off forever."
"...I...I understand." the soldier answered with a disapproving frown.
"Don't forget, soldier. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
"I know..."
The commander turned back to Spiral and Fyx and said:
"We're going to get you as close as possible to that creature. When we do, you'll grapple onto it and try and take a piece from its head, atleast. That's the most valuable area."
"The little floating bits or the crown?"
"The crown."
"Alright. L-let's do this...Fyx."
"Bring her about!"
"Yes, sir!" the navigator answered.
Shouts and battlecries filled the air, accompanied by the sounds of roaring cannons belching metal and ash, only to be smashed to bits or grabbed and tossed far, far away by the giant. As more ships began to encircle it, it simply spun around in place to toss them all aside. Some survived, others didn't...
Using the changes being created by the sand, the navigator tried his best to navigate to the back of the Nyum-Bunet. It took several minutes of trying and avoiding attacks, but he finally did it. Fyx hung onto Spiral Tooth's back while the stallion bid his companions good luck and jumped off the boat and used his sword to hang onto the creature's back, sliding down a bit as he did. The boat sailed off as the creature turned around to try and face it, only to miss it by mere seconds, and making its two passengers scream and sway along with it.
"MER-MOW!" Fyx angrily yelled.
"Yeah, yeah. Hold on. I'll get the grapble claws out. Now where was that button...here!"
Three metal claws unhinged themselves from the surface of Spiral's hoof plating and dug into the stone composing the monster's body. The hunter looked up and gulped, then looked at his companion hanging onto him.
"Welp, I guess it's a climbing from here on out."
Fyx simply nodded in response, although his face was covered with fright and terror. Every now and then, as he climbed up, Spiral would have to jump and grab onto a tinier stone to reach a smaller stone then jump from there. What's worse is that the Nyum-Bunet would regularly turn round, creating a potentiaal "fly zone" for Spiral if he wasn't hanging on to anything. The sheer pressure simply created by the colossus' movements showed why it was so fierce and powerful.
"I...I can't believe it. THESE are quad stars?!"
The throos growled.
"I know, right? Who would've thought that even the greatest of the great couldn't take it down. I mean, we've even managed to at least would a Gigantis Vesuvius Vulcan, but not outright kill it. This thing is just amazing, but at least we're near the head now."
"Mow!"
Using his experience in dealing with this creature's actions and way of moving, the hunter slowly hopped from floating stone to floating stone, being wary of their rotations. With one final hop, the stallion made it to the crown, to which he sighed in relief and wiped his forehead...before realizing he had his helmet on.
"I hate this helmet sometimes."
"M-m-m-m-m-m--"
"What is iiiiii...Oh crap."
SpiralTooth and Fyx had landed on the crown, yes, but they had landed right next to the colossus right eye, one that was filled with so much anger not even a star could compare in heat. It had been looking at him the whole time, so Spiral simply smiled nervously in return. If one ignore the cannons being fired and exploding against the creature's skin, there would be a long awkward moment of silence.
"I'll just...take a piece of your head here. Plink. Thank you Fyx. There we go. I'll be off now." he quietly said as he put the piece of stone into his armor then slowly began to escend.
The hunter felt a pressure build up and felt the movement of the Nyum-Bunet's body which drew a heavy fist towards him. The stallion yelled and jumped off, expecting the colossus to punch itself in the face, but this one wasn't an idiot. Instead, the arm twisted down towards him.
"Oh craaaaaaaaaa--"
Additional cannon fire came from the left of the Nyum-Bunet, pushing its arm out of the way. This angered it and attracted ts attention. This only left Tooth to fall to his doom, until he was caught by a magic net created by the unicorns. Said net was levitated back to the commander's ship, where the hunter and his throos caught their breath after such a frightening event.
"You have the sample?"
The two didn't look at him, but Fyx gave a thumbs up in approval. The commander went back to the navigation decked where he was tossed the same conch shell en-route.
"ALL SOLDIERS, FALL BACK! WE'RE GOING HOME! DOUBLE TIME! LET'S GO!"
All ships turned around and hurried their way to get back to the border. One of the ships got caught during this transition and was thrown with pin-point accuracy against another, turned them into mushed rubble. That being said, others weren't in a very good shape either. Some had been horribly damaged while other ships had been torn to pieces. Some, like the commander's ship, only had a few large chunks missing, but they were holding together.
"Say...If you had unicorns...Why didn't you enchant the...the cannonballs to give a bigger bang?"
"We did." the commander answered as he looked at the colossus watch them leave.
"Then what happened?"
"It has a peculiar ability which nullifies non-natural abilities, be they magic or other."
"Other?"
"I don't know. That's just what I was told."
"Commander, it's doing something!" a soldier shouted.
The Nyum-Bunet shouted out in extreme rage. However, instead of diving back under the sand, it began to rise out of it. And rose it did. Soldiers began to scream in fear and panic as the colossus somehow stood on the sand with two legs just like the rest, although they didn't have feet or toes. It had grown tremendously compared to its previous appearance. It was now one-hundred-and-fifty meters tall, and it showed. When it came out, it plunged its arms into the sand and threw them out as it rose, creating a massive tsunami. The massive all of pearly sand engulfed a great many ships, mainly those whose unicorns were fast enough to create a barrier to protect them, or those who could simply not block weight of that magnitude.
There were only ninety-two ships left. There were no fewer than fifty-seven.
Several ships began to break off and try and flee their own way, but each step the Nyum-Bunet made was enough to clear two whole towns. It would intercept and crush them, or bend down and toss them.
Forty-two ships were left.
Finally, as it noticed that they were going for the border, it roared extremely loudly, somehow expellin what looked like frost from its mouth. The winds in the air had gotten colder, but it was just starting. A blizzard the width of the Nyubet was coming from behind the Nyum-Bunet, and it was coming fast.
"IT CAN SUMMMON BLIZZARDS?!" Spiral Tooth shouted.
"WHAT?!" the others onboard the ship replied.
The unicorns could not compensate in time, and every ships was caught by the storm, blinding everypony in strong winds and storms of snow. It was so thick and powerful that you could barely see in front of you, and soldiers were tossed off the ships and into the air. Thunder claps tore down the skies whilst the freezing winds froze many of the remaining ships into place, along with their passengers. The Nyum-Bunet would then crush them to pieces and continue its path. Once the blizzard had cleared, there were only fifteen ships left, but nopony could keep count now.
After several hours of the creature persistently chasing the fleet down, they had finally reached the border and crossed it, each ship grinding to a halt...well...three ships remaining, with a total of sixty-nine remaining soldiers. Everypony simply looked with astonishment and terror at the colossus who had literally stopped at the exact millimeter defining the border between the Nyubet and the surrounding deserts. It did not breath, so it looked like a still statue. It only looked down at the remaining few invaders. There was a long pause, with the few remainders gulping in distress. Finally, the creature understood that they weren't invading again, so it turned around and just immediately sunk through the sand as if it was water. It disappeared, and no traces were left of it.
The remaining ponies were gasping for air and their hearts were so tired they felt like they could let out at any moment. There was nothing but coughing and sweating going on for the next few minutes, until a "thunk" was heard. Spiral Tooth had thrown the piece of the Nyum-Bunet at the commander, who just looked at it with widened eyes and a silent expression. He was also trembling with fear like a little colt.
"Take it. I may be a 'brat' as several liked to call me, but even I know that this wasn't worth the lives of all those stallions. Fyx did a count of everything, and I'll file my report. I'll still get my pay, but it's a bitter piece of chocolate when there's no sugar to mix into it. This was a failure for me. It didn't react to your cannons, so it most definately couldn't have reacted to my sword...Goodbye."
"H...How will you make it back...?" the commander almost sounded silent.
"There's a ride waiting for me."
The commander simply continued to pant as he destressed as much as the other cowering ponies. What was he going to say to the families?
MISSION SUCCESS
Participants: Spiral Tooth and Fyx
Objective: Kill or take a sample of the target.
Target: Nyum-Bunet
Level: Quad-Star. "Impossible mission"
Outside reinforcements: 10.000 soldiers + 200 ski-boats
Casualties: 9931 soldiers + 197 ski-boats
Tremendous casualties
Rewards: 50.000 bits
Extra rewards: N/A (Secondary objective met. Primary not met)
Personal commentary of participants:
Spiral Tooth: Mission Failure.