The Bee Dungeon

Belissar watched as the karnuq hunters took turns at the Shrine of Bees. The shrine glowed bright for each one and Belissar noticed the hunters’ mana grow stronger. It seemed that this indeed was the way forward for the karnuq to receive blessings, which in turn would progress one of his longest-running missions.

He considered how else he might help them. He recalled Chief Rohsuak and Juosiutik both mention that mana-infused food, like his bees’ mana honey, would promote the growth of mana in those who ate it. Maybe he should start giving the karnuq more honey?

On the other hand, they would naturally gain access to more as he taught them beekeeping and invited hunters who fought in purifications to the post-battle celebrations, so perhaps things were fine as they were now. In any case, it was time for the celebration, so Belissar put those thoughts to the side and started to bring out the honey these hunters had earned.

It would turn out, however, that the karnuq were not the only ones growing…

A worker covered in small, glowing specks of mana flower pollen landed on a water lotus, careful not to fall into the water. After drinking some nectar and flying off, the center of the lotus began to glow faintly…

A gardener landed on the flax flower, dusting her legs to brush off the glowing pollen. The workers didn’t like to visit this one. It produced less nectar than other flowers, its nectar had no particular features of note, its pollen was heavy and hard to carry, and its delicate petals that couldn’t support much weight made nectar collection difficult.

So, the gardener took it upon herself to see that these flowers were properly cross-pollinated, allowing the workers to focus on more productive flowers. She brushed her antennae up and down the stem of the flower, mingling her mana into the trace amounts flowing through the mundane plant. If her observations were accurate…the flowers were nearly ready to produce seeds. She’d find out in the next day or two if her efforts would be rewarded…

In the Dirt Tunnels of the Fourth Floor, a digging worker flew through pitch-black tunnels. She could send out small pulses of mana through the air to identify her immediate surroundings, and landed at regular intervals to send longer ranged pulses through the ground. As such, she had no issue navigating without her sight.

And then, finally, she found her target. Vines growing along the floor of the tunnels, melding into the darkness to hide from sight. But practically shining bright to her mana pulses given the density of their own mana…especially within their flowers. She landed on the closest flower and found it gushing with nectar for its first ever visitor.

She drank as deeply as she could, then packed as much pollen into her pollen baskets as she could fly with, and then began the trip back to her hive. Leaving packs of mana-infused pheromones on the ground at regular intervals so that her sisters could fly straight here in the future…

A digging gardener led a soldier bee into the Dirt Tunnels, releasing pheromones and mana so the soldier could follow her into the dark. She would have done the job herself, but this one required a soldier’s size, so she had to slowly guide the bigger bee through the darkness.

But, eventually, they arrived at their destination. A light began to glow in the tunnel ahead and the soldier picked up speed, now able to see where they were flying. And revealing the flower clutched in her legs, still slightly glowing.

It had taken much, much convincing to persuade the queen to allow this. To expend an entire mana flower? Unthinkable. But the gardener had remained firm in her conviction. The queen sent other gardeners to check as well and all of them agreed with her assessment. The gardener had pointed out that some of the mana flowers from the King’s patches would regrow overnight as well, and so the queen had finally relented.

And so, the soldier bee carried the mana flower to their destination. At the gardener’s direction, the soldier laid the flower down in the dirt, right next to a glowing mushroom camp.

The gardener had spent days poring all over this mushroom. She concluded that, frankly, there was no normal method by which they could cross-pollinate it. Mushrooms just didn’t produce pollen or seeds the way flowers did, so the very idea of pollination was alien to them. In the end, it turned out that mushrooms were a different kind of life from plants, too different to pollinate one another.

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But the queen had ordered her to uncover the secrets of the mushrooms, and so she did. And in her endless attempts to analyze them and find some form of pollination, she discovered an alternative. Mushrooms were, ultimately, a form of scavenger. So…what if she planted the spores of the mushrooms in the body of another plant? A plant like the mana flower? She felt that if there was any way to cross-pollinate the mushrooms, this was it.

Only time would tell if she was right.

Pollen from a cloudberry flower melted into the glow of a mana flower of the First Floor Flower Meadow. A light blue, nearly white speck of light lifted from the mana flower and began to drift on the wind. It floated aimlessly, never approaching the ground, and a faint mist began to condense around it.

Until a gardener bee flew up to it. Her antennae glowed slightly as she brushed them through the mist. She danced and reached for the mana of the communers linking her back to the hive.

“New seed. Room too warm. Looking for cold.”

Then she waited, hovering by the light as it shifted about…though at a distance as she felt a chill spreading through her chitin. Eventually, the mana link to the hive began to grow and she felt the communer dance on the other side.

“No cold place. Orchard gardeners say new room might work.”

“Ok, will take there.”

The gardener steeled herself and approached the seed once more, shivering as she passed through the mist. She wrapped her legs in a loose cage around the glowing light, holding it with mana rather than chitin. She then flew off, the light pulled along by her mana as she made her way to the shortcuts. She passed through and arrived in the orchard. A worker from the Orchard hives flew up to her immediately.

“Where going?”

She danced as best as she could while keeping hold of the seed.

“Fairy Grove. New seed.”

“Ok! This way!”

The gardener followed the worker to the Fairy Grove’s entrance. A gardener from the Orchard hives flew over as they approached.

“New seed? What kind?”

“From mana flower, wants cold. Feels cold.”

The Flower Meadow gardener couldn’t help but shiver as she danced.

“Ok, this way!”

The Orchard gardener took over from the worker and led the Flower Meadow gardener inside, and then the two gardeners flew through the Fairy Grove. The grove was…weird. The colors of the trees and the flowers seemed to shift ever so slightly, telling the gardener to turn to stay on course. The leaves above rustled and swayed and somehow made it seem like the sun’s rays were coming from different directions, throwing off her orientation. Even the tiny-lightnings everywhere tried to pull her in different directions. The mana of the Tower, however, still flowed through this place, and it told her to keep flying straight. And that is what the Orchard gardener did, so the Flower Meadow gardener did so as well.

Eventually, they arrived near a nexus of rapidly shifting mana.

“Here!”

The Flower Meadow gardener didn’t need the Orchard gardener to tell her so. The seed in her legs began to vibrate as it resonated with the mana concentrating in the air. The temperature of the area was still too high but the rapidly shifting mana ahead of her contained occasional flashes of light-blue and white that matched the seed’s own glow. Her instincts felt it should be sufficient to make up for the unsuitable environment.

So, she simply let go of the seed. The seed agreed with her assessment as it drifted down, passing into the dirt near the nexus. The Flower Meadow gardener landed and brushed her antennae against the soil, buzzing her wings as her mana felt the seed begin to take root.

“Works! Thanks!”

The Orchard gardener acknowledged her and then the two flew off. There was plenty to do before the seed grew…

The First of the Fifth received the reports on the progress of cross-pollination efforts in the brood chamber of her hive…or rather, a brood chamber. This was technically not hers but her Third Daughter’s, but she insisted on being here today. Because today…they would learn if the dangerous karnuq’s methods had any merit.

Because if they did, it was critical that the bees begin to adopt the new methods. Evil beings that dared claim kinship with the King had come to invade and the King said more were on the way. The karnuq as well were taking a great role within the Tower, taking on duties that belonged to the hive of hives. The Firstborn even considered them part of the hive of hives outright. So, if the bees wished to protect the King from beings of similar scale to his own, as well as to keep up with the karnuq, they needed to grow.

So, in addition to redoubling the cross-pollination efforts across the entire Tower, the First of the Fifth had instructed her Third Daughter to begin trialing methods inspired by conversations with the dangerous karnuq. Mixing the nectars was proving to dilute them too much to raise new brood and they had yet to determine a countermeasure. The dangerous karnuq could address this by just increasing the amount of ingredients, but that method proved difficult for the amount of nectar in a single brood cell. They were working on concentrating the combined honey by putting it through multiple rounds of mixing and evaporation, but that method would take too much time and effort to apply en masse even if it worked.

But then, the First of the Fifth had an idea to bypass the issue entirely…because bees ate pollen as well as honey, especially when first growing. Up until now, she had been raising her brood on honey and pollen from the same plants in an attempt to reinforce their properties. But, what if she tried to mix and match the honey and pollen? Then she could raise a larva on two different but undiluted ingredients. Well, it might work, or it might end up providing insufficient amounts of the compounds within to affect the growth of the larva, so the same issue might still apply. There was only one way to find out.

The First of the Fifth and her daughter both stood completely still as they watched the covered cell begin to bulge, and the nursery bees move to open it up…

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