Cao Nyut taught Bun spells and enchantments, the likes of which have long since vanished from our world.

From here, the stories diverge. Different peoples have different traditions. The Lomm Cao, one of the hill tribes of the Northern Ranges, tell a story about how Cao Nyut taught Bun a special incantation of endurance, which he promptly cast on himself and the pachyderm. They then climbed the Tallest Mountain in the World, the Lomm Cao Pin, and defeated a terrible monster there, making the Northern Ranges safe for inhabitation.

Another tradition comes from the Mookh Yabu, an ancient people, now extinct, who once inhabited the verdant delta, not a week’s journey by foot from where you now stand. The Mookh Yabu were wise rivermasters. Evidence has come down to us that the Mookh Yabu were irrigators, resevoir diggers, and weir builders. Their mythology, too, ties them to the sea.

As the Mookh Yabu had it, Cao Nyut and the Legendary Bun took on a quest from Shinu, Mistress of the Mookh Yabu Pantheon. Shinu was angry with the her husband, The Sky Father, because he always chased the moon from horizon to horizon instead of paying attention to his children, who were getting burned from his damaging rays due to his negligence.

Indeed, The Sky Father ignored The Queen, all the Gods, and all of his children; and all of Cannesia suffered drought and famine.

Now, Shinu had heard of Bun and Cao Nyut’s adventures, for by then they had already made themselves famous with many exploits. So she called on them to help; however, they humbly refused.

“How can we go against The Sky Father?” they said, “He Who Watches All?”

“He watches nothing,” spat Queen Shinu, “he only has eyes for the moon, whom he watches from horizon to horizon.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Yet Bun and Cao Nyut, however worthy they might have been to help Queen Shinu, felt meek, and so they sheepishly refused.

Shinu came up with a plan. She decided to lure Bun and Cao Nyut into a river with the Flower of Ishdanwal, the petals of which were pink satin, the stigma of which was bright and yellow like an egg yolk, the stem and leaves of which glowed like cuts of precious emerald. The distant wind carried the Flower of Ishdanwal’s scent to Bun’s and Cao Nyut’s noses–the sweetest, thickest, most fragrant aroma, and it intoxicated them. So soothed, they marveled at The Flower of Ishdanwal, and, once under its spell, Shinu, Mistress of the Mookh Yabu Pantheon, bade them to travel down the River Driveway of Clow Morrokh, the God of Rain, who had gone to sleep ever since the Sky Father started ignoring everyone.

Bun and Cao Nyut traveled dorn the River Driveway, facing four monsters along the way. First they faced Saddith, the two-headed snake of wind and water. While Saddith chased Bun, who ran nimbly around the boat, Cao Nyut summoned a great ball of earth and hurled it into Saddith, crushing his head of wind.

Second, they faced Glongill, a great gilled eel with two arms and four legs. Glongill attacked them by capsizing their boar in the middle of the night, exposing the two adventurers to all the monsters of the Clow Morrokh’s River Driveway.

“How dare you intrude on my master’s river highway?” hissed Glongill. But Bun leaped out of the water, climbed up its leg, hopped over its great back, and stabbed it in the back of the neck before whispering in its ear, “Shinu, Queen of the Gods, has bid us to summon your master, to save the earth. The crops are burning. Her children are dry. We need his help.”

But Glongill only fought tenaciously on, so Bun killed him, and they carried on.

Third was a nameless thing, a creature of the mists. It first appeared all around the boat, making faces at him in the light and shadows all around, a ubiquitous, low-hanging cloud of gloom. For three days and three nights, it hung down over the boat, whispering to the pair of travelers that they were lost, that they should turn around and go back. More than once, Bun tried to run foolishly away, but Cao Nyut held him fast. Finally, at the dawn of the fourth day, it finally disappeared.

Fourth and finally was the Shishmash, a terrible hundred-headed serpent as tall as a mountain.