The Bee Dungeon

As Belissar spoke with the First of the Fifth, Niobee suddenly flew before him.

“King! Beero doing something dangerous again. Should go?”

Belissar nearly started walking towards the battle meadow shortcut before he caught himself. His face scrunched up and he crossed his arms. Eventually, he took a deep breath.

“…no, I’ll stay here. Let the Second of the Sixth know to go and wait on standby. You should go and help her if she needs it, if you need my permission like with Metsaitti then you have it.”

“Ok!”

Belissar took another deep breath as Niobee flew off and resisted the urge to check in on Beero with his tower sight. He had just resolved to let the bees take more risks in the name of growth, so he could not go running off in a panic every time one was in danger. In this case, Beero and the wounded bees had taken risks before…and came out of it stronger than ever. If they were doing it again, then he had to allow it. It was exactly what his Tower needed right now.

He decided to trust in Beero to pull through as she already had. He decided to trust in the Second of the Sixth to take care of her should it turn out badly. And he decided to trust in Niobee to render any assistance they needed and to call him if they needed his help specifically.

He would trust his bees as they trusted him.

So, he did his absolute best to focus on the First of the Fifth’s report and put the risky situation out of his mind.

Beero stood before the stack of bright red honeycomb lying before the Memorial. The other wounded soldiers crowded around her. None of them could go any further of this, the heat emanating from the honeycomb enough to surpass their tolerance should they step any closer. This was honey made from the nectar of a fire mana flower, further processed by burning bees raised with fire mana honey themselves in the Lava Field where Fire mana flowed through the very ground and air. This was the honey that nearly brought down the mighty karnuq soldier before the Conduit and the King himself intervened.

It would be battle simply to approach the honey.

Beero stilled herself and took a step forward. Then another. And another. She kept crawling even as the heat burned her chitin armor. Her wings buzzed, involuntarily trying to spread cool air and counteract the heat, her lightning wings crackling as her mana began to surge through her.

But she kept going.

Perhaps it would have been wiser to let one of the others do this. Some of the newest wounded soldiers hadn’t taken up the lightning yet and Beero didn’t know if the lightning would play well with fire. Additionally, one of the Flower Meadow queens had also become a burning queen like the Third of the Sixth and was raising burning soldiers who would have Fire mana from the get go. Beero could simply leave fire to them, maybe even welcome them into the Memorial squads if any of those soldiers were injured in future battles.

But that wasn’t Beero. She was no queen, carefully considering the future of the hive as a whole. She was no King, deciding the course of every hive all at once. She was no Conduit, who could see all that dwelt within the Tower like a communer connecting every hive.

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She was a soldier. Her job was to charge into danger to protect the hive, and now the hive of hives. So that is what she did.

She pushed right up to the honey, stuck her proboscis in, and began to drink.

She immediately felt her insides begin to burn as the fire tried to set her ablaze. She tried to pull it into the stream of lightning surging through her, but the fire and the lightning collided. The fire bounced off the lightning and spread through her body instead, burning her further. Soon, pain flared in every corner of her body.

But, well, Beero was used to it. It wasn’t the first time she had felt this way. And she was not alone, either. Previously, she had to drink mana honey directly from the King’s hand. But now, the Conduit had grown as well. Beero could feel as the mana of the Tower turned towards her, boosting her reserves and easing her pain.

So, Beero set aside the pain and got to work. As with the black lightning before, she tried to draw the fire into the flows of her mana and make it her own. She stopped the beating of her wings and instead began vibrating her whole body, trying to generate as much heat of her own as she could. Once again, she failed. The lightning and the fire repelled each other, preventing the fire from being drawn into her mana. It seemed she was already full with lightning.

It was then that Beero had a simple thought that had somehow never occurred to her before. What if…she tried to turn the lightning off?

She had never considered it. The lightning had been made a part of her. If she let go of it, she thought it would overwhelm her once again. But…that was the black lightning. The lightning that had long since faded. All the lightning coursing through her now was generated by her own body and mana. It obeyed her in other ways. Why not this one?

And deep down, she was not a lightning bee. She knew because the Fourth of the Eight had become a shocking monster bee queen, now raising actual shocking bees born with lightning. Beero was still a normal soldier bee, just with lightning in her.

So, for the first time ever, she tried to turn off the lightning. And to her surprise, it shut off, just like that. Her mana stopped producing lightning. It took a second or two for the remaining lightning to fade, but just like that she was back to a normal monster bee soldier.

Or not. Her mana continued to flow at an accelerated pace, looping outside of her body where her missing wings would have been. And now…it was once again regular mana. Regular mana that was open.

Once again, she tried to draw the fire into the mana. And this time, it took. The fire began to stream into the flows of her mana and follow along with it. She siphoned it out of the various corners of her body to strengthen the stream, which became a blazing river of fire surging along the path of her mana. And as it blazed and flowed, her mana began to wrap around and infiltrate into it, as it had done with the black lightning before. This time, it was far easier. Fire from honey did not fight her the way lightning from the shade did. And more than that, her mana was more powerful than it had been back then, and her skill at manipulating it was far greater.

Bit by bit, the fire began to become hers. Before long, her missing wings began to reappear, now made of blazing fire instead of crackling lightning. Her new fire mana now spread throughout her body, stopping all remaining fires from burning her. It flooded through her proboscis, allowing her to take in more of the fire mana honey without further harm. It wrapped around her body, protecting her from the heat scorching her chitin.

She had done it. She had brought fire into her body as she had with lightning…and changed her mana from one to the other. She withdrew her proboscis and stepped away from the honey. Her comrades crowded around her, dancing countless questions, but she stopped them, and asked them to take some distance.

Her idea had been a success but there was still one last thing she wanted to test. As she stepped out of the blaze, she commanded the fire to fade as she had with the lightning. As with the lightning, the fire quickly cut off.

Then, she commanded the lightning to return. She needed to know if she still had it within her, or if the fire had replaced it entirely.

At first, nothing happened. The lightning had been with her for so long that she could barely imagine being without it. And since it had been forced on her by an enemy, she wasn’t certain how to bring it back. She tried rubbing her legs against her hairs and beating her wings to generate tiny-lightnings, hoping they would help.

And they did. The moment she felt a tiny lightning, she instantly remembered the feeling of lightning surging through her body. Her mana leapt to respond to her command.

A moment later, her lightning wings returned.

And then a flash of light filled her vision and everything went dark.

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