The Bee Dungeon

Belissar had a quick chat with Niobee and Chief Rohsuak about their impressions of Tarwantrad. He felt quite positive about her, for once, but he wanted to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. Chief Rohsuak agreed that Tarwantrad had been perfectly friendly and it seemed beneficial to forge a positive relationship with her, though advised him to treat any conversations with the Compact the same as the ones with the sigmaka. Even further deals with Tarwantrad personally needed to be considered carefully.

Niobee’s perception was simpler. Tarwantrad hadn’t hurt him and had offered them mushrooms, so it was acceptable to continue talking with her. The bees would continue to watch her closely, but they did so with everyone. They still escorted Belissar even when he spoke with the karnuq, much less someone outside of the Tower.

In any case, Belissar had a few adjustments to make as a result of the talk with Tarwantrad. He went ahead and enabled the new mushrooms in every applicable room and had Niobee inform the queens and gardeners of the change. Then, he was about to move the battle Fairy Grove to be the first room of the dungeon when he paused. On the one hand, he wanted to put it there as long as the nexus door or whatever Tarwantrad had called it stayed open, just in case it turned out the Compact wasn’t as friendly as Tarwantrad had been. On the other hand, he realized that might leave the door vulnerable to shades, and he wasn’t sure if it would close permanently if a shade corrupted the area. He didn’t want to break the deal by accident.

After a few moments of thought, Belissar decided to compromise. He put the battle Fairy Grove second, right after the Dirt Tunnels but before the Lava Field. Hopefully that would give them enough time to either deal with a shade before it reached the nexus door, or to respond to an attack by the Compact before it reached the battle meadow. The Dirt Tunnels would also buy time to rearrange the rooms in case of a big emergency purification.

After that, both the bee army and the karnuq posted sentries to keep an eye on the door, and then everyone returned back to their business. Impending negotiations with the fey or not, the work went on.

Speaking of ongoing work, the Third of the Third found that her chosen task was far more complicated than she had ever imagined. Her original cooperation with the carpenters bees had gone well, that much was fine. The carpenters, while they could not perform the dance language her hive could, could still follow instructions and process wood into whatever shapes and sizes she desired.

It was then she hit the first unexpected problem: what exactly was she going to build? There was no way she could ever match the magical palaces built by the King, so she wouldn’t even try to build one of those. The karnuq, as well, had their own methods, and had taken to using stone rather than wood. They had mostly completed their hives as well, and did not require as much assistance from the bee army.

She found her answer examining the defense layers of the Bee Barracks. The King had arranged for a wall of sharp stakes that would ward off larger predators. The Third of the Third then noticed that the King had also planted some thorny roses that had wrapped around the nearest stake, creating an additional layer of spikes to deter anything that could squeeze in between the larger stakes on top of providing more flowers to forage from.

Her scouts had then reported that one of the Flower Meadow gardeners had planted an entire patch of those roses near the wooden platform towards the front of the room, and had cross-pollinated the roses with many other flowers types to create mana-imbued thorns with novel effects. That had gotten her attention, and an idea had coalesced in her mind. If she added a line of stakes through that patch, the roses the garden had grown would wrap around them, forming a veritable wall of mana-imbued thorns. That wall would block the approach to the wooden platform as well, further protecting members of the fallen hive who had not yet regained their wings. She could join efforts with the hive of hives in a way that would improve the fighting power of the bee army.

Her decision was made, and she had the carpenters begin forming sharp stakes for the construction squads to carry. It was then that she had run into the second issue.

Stakes were really heavy. The construction squad had lifted heavy things before, but mostly in the form of flat planks of wood. The stakes the King had used were formed of entire logs, practically entire trees minus their roots and branches. Soldiers bees could lift them in sufficient numbers, but that would require drafting far more soldiers into the construction squads. The Third of the Third could not justify doing so, especially not when the army needed to train in the confusing room, as well as guard against the latest newcomer.

She found her answer in the bumblebees. The bumblebee soldiers, being far, far larger than the usual soldier, severely cut down on the number of soldiers needed to carry a stake. Just a handful or even one of them was enough as long as they worked with the construction squads. And drawing them away from the army wasn’t that big an issue. The bumblebees, lacking the same level of coordination or even language as the monster bees, required a tighter hand to fight alongside the army, which took the form of a soldier or worker bee sitting on their back to relay commands. So, when fighting in the confusing room, they could just put one of the chromatic workers on the bumblebee soldier’s back to guide them. For the bumblebees, it was no different than fighting with the soldier bee army anywhere else, so they could get away with a bit less training.

So, the Third of the Third managed to get sharpened stakes without asking the King, and managed to get those stakes to the construction site with an acceptable allocation of labor. Then, she ran into the third problem. The stakes would not remain upright, but fall to the ground whenever they tried to place them. A closer inspection of the original stakes revealed that they were partially buried underground.

And so, once again, the Third of the Third had to go and coordinate with yet another set of bees. This time, she spoke with the digging queen, the Fourth of the Fifth, and managed to recruit a squad of her digging soldiers. At this point, her little project was drawing entirely too many resources from the hive of hives. If she ran into a fourth issue, she was prepared to call the entire thing off.

So, she came to watch personally and paced about as she watched the digging soldier squad clear out a hole of dirt, vibrating their thick mandibles to break up the soil while their legs and Ground mana moved it out of the way. They made good time, and had quickly made a hole roughly the diameter of the stake.

The Third of the Third stopped pacing and gave the next order. Her workers wrapped weaved stems from the Fourth of the Seventh’s hive around the stake and around the soldiers, including two bumblebees. The air hummed as the two bumblebees beat their wings and took off, the smaller soldiers following along. The stake slowly rose into the air, then began to tilt upward as one of the bumblebees stopped and hovered in place while the other continued to rise.

Then, slowly, surely, they began to move the stake forward. The Third of the Third locked her eyes onto it, forgetting even to move her abdomen to keep the air flowing through her trachea. One of her communers stood by the hole in the ground, helping the bees overhead align the stake on the center of the hole before they slowly lowered it down. Eventually, the stake stopped moving as it hit the bottom of the hole.

And then came the moment of truth. The bumblebees and soldiers hovered closer to the stake, allowing the weaved stems to go slack. The Third of the Third began to buzz her wings as the stake seemed to sway…but then it stopped. A tiny bit of adjustment and it remained still. It remained upright, pointing its sharp point into the sky.

The Third of the Third broke out into a happy dance. The effort had succeeded, this project would pay off after all.

The digging bees began to push dirt into the hole and send some Ground mana down through it, packing its walls a bit more densely together to hold the stake in place. The workers began to remove the weaves from the stake so they could prepped for the next one. And the Third of the Third’s mind began to race.

She had borrowed bees from the hive of hives for this experiment, but now that the concept was proven she needed to arrange a permanent allocation. She would have to trade honey with the Fourth of the Fifth so she could raise a digging soldier squad of her own, as well as work out donations for the bumblebees to make up for using their soldiers long term. She also needed to ask the Fourth of the Seventh, or her partner the First of the Fifth’s First Daughter, if they could teach her hive how to weave the stems together as well. All of that would take time, negotiations, and expanded honey production.

But once she had it all arranged…she could then improve the hive of hives defenses, replicating the work of the King himself. And that was an effort worth pursuing.

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