The Bee Dungeon

Belissar was still feeling quite perplexed by Finnakynne’s visit, but Tarwantrad said they would handle it on her side so he put it out of his mind for now. After all, he had a new flower to plant!

He created one new node of mirage flowers in the battle fairy grove, informing the bees once Niobee had confirmed it wouldn’t affect them. He warned the karnuq and asked them to warn the sigmaka about the new feature, then asked the Second of the Sixth to keep some medicinal bees near the flowers just in case. She had raised a number of antidote bees for her hive as well, so hopefully they could help anyone who ended up lost and poisoned.

Speaking of the Second of the Sixth, it seemed she had expanded her hive dramatically. She had raised new workers and a couple of daughter queens to help, but that wasn’t all. She now had gardeners, communers, honeypots and the like. Additionally, she had raised soldiers, sprayers, and lancers as well, all with the slim stingers that characterized medicinal bees. Belissar wondered how that would work, but it did seem they had the same medicinal qualities as their non-combat focused sisters. They hadn’t tested the soldiers or lancers yet, but the sprayers could apparently spray their healing compounds directly onto the wounded.

That proved helpful when a whole team of sigmaka fell into a pit trap all at once.

The Second of the Sixth wasn’t the only bee raising new variants. Belissar made his way over to the bumblebee meadow, carrying the leftovers from the swirled honeycomb tray he’d given Finnakynne a piece of. He went ahead and poured it out over the Heart of the Forest, seeing how the little shoot would like the new honey. Given that the shoot waved its little leaves around and began glowing, Belissar figured it liked the new honey very much.

He'd have to figure out how to make it himself sometime. That honey proved more complicated to replicate than even the attributed honeys. He’d probably have to ask the First of the Fifth how she made it in the first place, but didn’t want to distract her given how much swirled honey they were going to need from her soon.

For now, he’d just have to share what the First of the Fifth gave him with the Heart of the Forest. The little shoot had earned it, in his opinion.

He glanced around at the big flowers covering the field…and at the big bees now landing on them. Previously, while the monster bumblebee queens and soldiers had grown huge, the workers had remained hardly bigger than their mundane counterparts. Belissar had thought that’s just how monster bumblebees worked…but he had been mistaken. Ever since the flowers had grown, the bumblebee workers began growing with them. Now, there were bumblebee workers the size of monster bee soldiers happily drinking from the big flowers all around them.

So, apparently, the monster bumblebees would grow as large as the flowers they gathered from…and now those flowers were growing larger each day, thanks to the Heart of the Forest if Belissar’s guess was correct. And if the workers could grow…then perhaps the queens and soldiers weren’t done growing either. Belissar couldn’t wait to find out.

So, she crawled through the joint hive and checked it with her own eyes, even as the Fourth of the Seventh’s communer reported on various developments and issues. The honey production lines were working well, though they now had communers and drones all around them. The Fourth of the Seventh’s workers were experimenting with the First of the Fifth’s new honey production method, though without their queen present only the communers and drones had enough mana manipulation abilities to even attempt it. The First Daughter made note of this, she herself hadn’t had the chance to try her queen mother’s method, but if the workers could pull it off themselves it would revolutionize their hive. As expected of the Fourth of the Seventh’s workers!

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She brushed the first communer with her antennae.

“Good work, is good idea. Like what Fourth of the Seventh would do!”

The first communer paused before breaking out into a happy dance.

“All for queen mother!”

The First Daughter agreed with that, and joined the dance for a bit before they moved on. Truly, the Fourth of the Seventh’s ingenuity and drive inspired them all! That feeling only intensified as she observed yet another legacy of the Fourth of the Seventh. In an open section of the hive, soldier bees and workers worked together to process stems from the flax plants her queen mother once allocated to the Fourth of the Seventh. The stems that had finished processing were brought to the soldiers, who then began weaving them into shapes. They made the vines the hive of hives could use to carry entire trays of honey at once, as well as the new pollen baskets inspired by the karnuq’s own. Those baskets vastly improved the amount of pollen their workers could bring home, keeping their bee bread production on par with the new developments in honey making.

The First Daughter danced about. Truly, the Fourth of the Seventh was the best…

She paused her dance and stared at one of the soldiers. She tapped the first communer with her antennae.

“Communer, feel that?”

The first communer turned towards the soldier in question and pointed her antennae in said direction. Her antennae glowed lightly and then she began to dance.

“Feel. Soldier’s mana…pulsing?”

The First Daughter brushed the first communer’s antennae once more. She thought that had been the case, though her connection to the Fourth of the Seventh’s hive was still not entirely perfect. That was frustrating, but at least she had the first communer here to confirm for her.

“Fill soldier cell with queen mother’s honey, tell soldier to use. Think can evolve, think will be different from Fourth of the Seventh’s other children.”

The first communer fluttered her wings.

“Is ok? Need First of the Fifth’s honey for hive of hives?”

The First Daughter danced the confirmation.

“Is ok, one soldier cell should be fine. And…think this is opportunity, can do something new. Like Fourth of the Seventh would.”

The first communer saluted at that.

“Would. Ok, will tell. Queen mother will be happy if works.”

The First Daughter danced the negative, though.

“Happier. Fourth of the Seventh always happy, even if doesn’t work.”

The first communer could only salute at that before crawling over to dance with the soldier. The First Daughter sent messages to her own communers to make the preparations. She would have to thank her queen mother. Now that she could decide how to use the honey donations, she could start trying new things. She could make not only her own hive, but even the hive of hives itself more like the Fourth of the Seventh.

And for her, that was the best thing she could possibly do.

The Firstborn gathered mana to her wings. The mana followed her wings, spreading out to increase their size and the amount of air they could move. She beat her wings once more and pushed out with the mana and a small gust of wind blew behind her. She dove down along with a squad of soldiers all around her.

Usually, this is where she would fall behind. Instead, the gust of wind blew her ahead of the squad, and the magically increased size of her wings kept her there. She was the first to reach the target and unleashed her mana enhanced sting.

As before, the mana coated and mimicked her stinger, thrust forward to strike from a distance. But unlike before, the mana now lingered, a mystical stinger left in the target. The soldier squad began to adjust the angle of their dives. Five stingers struck the same exact spot she had.

She was making progress. She could now fly faster than a soldier despite her bigger body, sting harder, and sting from a distance. What’s more, the new power granted to them by the King was perfectly suited for a queen. Her mana was more abundant and powerful than her children’s to begin with and naturally called to them as the mana that tied the hive together. It degraded the target faster than any other and created a path all her soldiers could easily follow.

She was almost ready. She could certainly hurt an enemy now, but it was still too risky for her to join the battle as a queen. She would need to work on her defenses, on some way of keeping herself safer than the usual soldier, before her children would allow her to fight.

And she had the feeling she would need to sooner than any of them expected or wanted. The hive of hives had encountered another, a hive of hives not built on mutual cooperation for the sake of a king, but on the domination of a powerful queen. From the start, the most likely opponent according to her instincts was a rival hive, so it would be the Firstborn’s duty now to protect the hive of hives from this threat. Likewise, the King had encountered a new being the flower one warned them was dangerous, with a queen mother who was even moreso.

The hive of hives continued to grow, and so did the threats they faced. The Firstborn would spare no effort to ensure she grew with them and give her all to keep the hive of hives safe. Her mind drifted to the honey granted to her by the First of the Fifth’s First Daughter but she put the thought aside. Her instincts told her it wasn’t time yet. Only once she had finished with her present course would she attempt to use that honey.

Renewing her resolve, she turned to consider her defenses and how she might improve them…