The Bee Dungeon

After checking the new bees in the Apiary, Belissar made his way to the bumblebee meadow, both to check on things and because he just liked watching the bumblebees zip around him. He approached to find the workers as usual, leisurely making their way from flower to flower. Each one he approached stopped to fly a few circles around him before resuming their work.

Still, he didn’t want to disrupt them too much, so he quickly made his way to the nests to greet the queens and then move on with his day. As he did, though he heard a loud thrumming noise. Less like the buzz of normal bees, and more like tree leaves rustling in heavy winds. He looked up to find a large shadow blocking out the sun, and then four heavy shapes landed before him with a thud. His eyes widened.

Several massive bumblebees now stood on the ground before him. They were different sizes, but even the smallest was as large as a lancer, while the largest was even bigger than a large dog. They had their stingers extended, each as large as a dagger…or larger.

The queens flew out of their nests shortly after. Belissar turned to them in a daze.

“Are these…bumblebee soldiers?”

The oldest queen flew one circle around him to confirm.

“Wow…they’re big.”

The queen flew one more circle around him before releasing some mana-laden pheromones to convey additional information. Belissar’s eyes went even wider.

“They’re…not done growing? Even the big one?”

The queen flew one more circle around him. Belissar could only nod blankly for a bit…then started to grin.

“These are really going to help, I think. Great work everyone.”

After that, he was treated to four queens zipping circles around him repeatedly. The four soldiers spread out their wings, beating the air with heavy thuds as they slowly took off. They then flew around him in circles as well, kicking up gusts of wind around him in the process.

Belissar continued to grin. The largest bees he had ever seen…and they weren’t even done growing yet. At this rate, his bees might be able to face the next shade on even footing. It seemed that monster bumblebees had been an excellent choice after all.

Things, however, were not going as well for the Fourth of the Seventh’s drone. The drone had done his best to be useful for his kind and merciful queen mother, and the first communer and the other queen of the hive had done their best to support him, but it hadn’t worked out so far.

The first communer and the other queen had tried to teach him how to forage, noting his larger eyes and better senses. However, it turned out he lacked a honey stomach to begin with, so while he could drink nectar he couldn’t store it or pass it along. That also meant that he couldn’t help to process the nectar into honey either.

Scouting was the next option…but it turned out his senses were tuned to one thing only. He could find and identify other bees easily enough…but had no instincts for flowers or hive locations. They would be teaching him from scratch for that task.

Next, they thought about having him help dry honey and infuse it with mana…but this did not work out either. He did not have the instincts to analyze the honey’s current state, so could not adjust his drying on his own. He could do it by watching the other bees, but he was less efficient at it than them. And, unfortunately, his mana was not regenerating like the worker bees’ did, so they considered it too dangerous for him to infuse the honey with it. He would end up having to drink more honey to compensate, so it would defeat the purpose.

And the brood tenders flat out refused to have a bee without the appropriate instincts handle the brood. Even guard duty wasn’t viable due to his lack of a stinger. ṜäNóΒĘŚ

It turned out that he was built for a single task only. And since that task was currently unnecessary, there wasn’t much he was especially suited for. Even the first communer and the other queen were a bit at a loss of what else to do with him at the moment, so they just had him fanning the hive to help regulate overall temperatures. A task that was largely unnecessary in the perfect and totally stable climate of the King’s realm.

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He still conducted that task with all the effort he could muster, but he could not help but wish he could do more. He had failed at his one task, the task his brothers had nobly given their lives to achieve. Whereas they had sacrificed for the good of hive of hives, an effort acknowledged by even the King himself, he had done no such thing, and yet continued to drain his mother’s resources. He had even offered to leave again, now that they had taught him to forage he could at least survive on his own, but the other queen and the first communer would have none of it. His kind and gracious mother had saved his life, and so they would not allow him to struggle alone.

So, if he wanted to stop being a burden and pay back the hive of hives for even a little of the honey they spent on him, he had to find something to do. But what, exactly? What could he achieve without instincts or a honey stomach or a stinger or regenerating mana? His sisters could do anything he could and much better. Was he doomed to just wait around for the next wave of queens?

He didn’t know, and so he kept his eyes open and his antennae swaying. He at least had better senses than his sisters, so maybe he’d catch something they wouldn’t. Though, without the instincts to actually identify anything other than a queen, he wasn’t sure what exactly to look for. All he could really see were his sisters hard at work, and the swirling patterns of their mana throughout the hive.

He couldn’t bear to watch his sisters do all that he couldn’t so he kept his focus on the mana instead. The mana of the hive was no still, homogenous pool, but a whirling river flowing in cycles. Each worker within the hive absorbed and released their own mana, pulling the mana of the hive towards them while pushing their own mana into the flow. The new nectar brought in released mana of different sorts which was then processed and homogenized the by the workers as they made honey from it. The eggs and the larvae released mana of their own, calling for their tenders whenever a problem arose. And above all the various swirls were the large currents released by the queen herself, the main pathway that carried the mana of all the other bees throughout the hive, with the smaller rivers of the communers breaking off and joining back with the main flower as necessary.

The mana of his home hive was particularly chaotic. The river from his queen mother was weaker than usual, flowing much further away as she was currently out of the hive. The mana of his worker sisters, however, were stronger than normal to compensate, while the first communer was keeping up a main river in the queen’s absence. Their system, therefore, was more like a system of smaller rivers than a single circuit, many smaller cycles joining together into a larger whole.

This, however, was in contrast to the other queen and her kin. The other queen kept up a powerful and orderly flow, with each worker joining and breaking off at specific points. A well-ordered circuit without a bee out of place, where even the eggs and the larva were strategically placed to help the river flow.

Or at least, those ideas were what the first communer and the queen was trying to do. The two river systems were colliding as the joint hive mixed and interacted. Sometimes the flows were able to mix together without too much trouble, but in other places they collided and formed whirling rapids. The communers seemed to congregate at those locations, giving instructions through physical dances rather than via mana. One such location was right by the drone, in fact.

His eyes fixed upon the chaotic swirl. There was something about it that drew his attention, something that triggered the few instincts he was born with. Before he knew it, he found himself crawling towards the swirl. His antennae twitched and then stretched out in the direction of heaviest mana concentration.

And then, suddenly, a bit of the mana swirl brushed against his antennae…and locked onto it. Mana from the swirl began to split, mana from the two hives now separating and streaming into his two antennae, one type of mana for each. The drone panicked and crawled back, the last thing he wanted was to take the hive’s mana on top of its honey. Unfortunately, he could not stop whatever process had begun as the mana stream only intensified, the swirl unraveling into two separate streams flowing into him.

The chaotic whirl reappeared within his body as the two streams collided within him, with his own mana joining in and twisting around them, condensing them down. And then…mana began to flow from his body, surging back out into the hive’s flow of mana. A single stream of mana instead of two.

The drone fell flat against the hive, hoping that whatever he did had not disrupted the hive. Unfortunately, those hopes were quickly dashed as he saw the first communer and the other queen rushing towards him. The queen started dancing before she even fully arrived.

“Drone! You did this?!”

The drone wanted to fly away but he managed to dance out a confirmation. The queen whirled towards the arriving communer.

“Fourth of the Seventh’s communer, can feel?!”

The first communer stumbled as she slowly danced.

“Yes can feel…other queen? Can see other workers…”

The other queen, the First of the Fifth’s First Daughter, suddenly burst out into a rapid dance.

“Amazing! Incredible! Can feel Fourth of the Seventh’s hive! No…AM part of Fourth of the Seventh’s hive now!”

The drone froze, uncertain what to make of this turn of events. The First of the Fifth’s First Daughter then rushed over to him, practically twisting their antennae together.

“Drone! You did, right? Can do again?!”

“T-Think so?”

She nearly began dragging him as she turned.

“Good! Then do! Help join hives together!”

He managed to glance at the communer, who danced her confirmation as well.

“Already asked queen, she says yes. And, good work, drone. Will help a lot.”

The drone paused at that, and then did his best to dance a salute as the First of the Fifth’s First Daughter dragged him along. It seemed he had found a job to do after all.

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