The Bee Dungeon

Belissar awoke the next day and went to check on the hives. He found the queen of the closest hive waiting for him at the entrance to her beehouse, flanked by two workers.

“Hi there, want to show me something again?”

The queen danced a salute and then brushed antenna with the two bees, who flew up towards Belissar. His eyes widened as he looked more closely at them...and found they were the wrong colors. One had bluish-green and black stripes, while the other alternated purple and black. He took a closer look...

Medicinal Monster Bee Worker

Vitality: Minimal

Strength: Minimal

Speed: Average

Magic: Minimal+

Defense: Minimal

Special: Minor

Notable Skills: Herbal Shot, Poison Sting, Brood Offspring, Brood Tender

Description: A monster bee worker raised on the nectar of healing herbs. It produces healing compounds and its stinger is optimized to deploy them. Additionally, will improve the overall health of its hive. These changes make it poor, though not entirely incapable, at combat.

Maddening Monster Bee Worker

Vitality: Minimal

Strength: Minimal

Speed: Average

Magic: Minimal

Defense: Minimal

Resistance: Minimal

Special: Minor

Notable Skills: Mad Poison Sting, Sacrificial Strike, Brood Offspring

Description: A monster bee worker raised on mad honey. It now produces the neurotoxins present in the honey in its own venom glands. Its stings, in addition to the normal bee toxin effects, may cause intoxication, hallucination, and in very high dosages paralysis.

Belissar’s eyes widened. This...was an unexpected development...and a massive one. Monster bees...could apparently change the properties of their venom, or even their color and shape based on the type of honey they were fed. He was starting to understand why they were considered monsters.

Bees with venom that had the same intoxicating effects as mad honey. Belissar could immediately imagine how that might be useful, for it meant even the workers would now stand a chance against larger and more powerful foes. Even if it took them a long time to take a shade down, they could now unsteady and slow it. If he thought about it more...that meant these workers could now help the soldiers with their work. It meant even the smallest of his bees was now a threat the shades would have to deal with.

Medicinal monster bee workers were harder to wrap his head around. Bees that...could make healing herbs in their bodies? He supposed that made sense, no reason they couldn’t make medicine if they could make poison, right? The confusing thing for him was the idea that they could deploy said medicine via their stingers. That...seemed a bit contradictory. Apply medicine...by stabbing the patient? Or maybe they would spray it instead?

Belissar didn’t know, but figured the bees would know what they were doing. In any case, extra medicine was always a good thing. He especially liked the part of their description about improving the health of the hive as a whole. Healthy hives and stronger broods always made him happy.

But the most important part of this development was not either of the two bees themselves. It was the knowledge that monster bees could change and grow into new forms...without a reward from the Tower or the gods. Belissar’s mind raced as to what might be possible. If a couple of healing herbs and poisonous flowers had led to this...what might his bees be able to do? How far could they take this?

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He smiled and nodded his head towards the queen.

“Well done, this is amazing.”

The queen in question froze solid. Belissar chuckled as he went about to check on the other hives. And as he did so, he began to dream of all sorts of fantastical and impossible bees. Fantastical and impossible bees that might be very real one day, between the power of the Tower and the magic of the monster bees.

“I’ll have to get some more plants next time...”

The Firstborn froze completely as her mind processed the report. The First of the Fifth had sent her new workers across the King’s lands, declaring her achievement with the approval of the Conduit. And this news...changed everything.

The Firstborn admitted she had underestimated the First of the Fifth. She was the eldest of the Apiary queens, and yet she did not seem to understand their purpose as the Firstborn did. They were defenders first, and all else second. Should the invaders break past the gate to the Beyond, all that they had built would be torn down and destroyed. So, there were no tasks more important than preparing for the fight to come.

And yet, the First of the Fifth spent her days and her efforts on the production of honey. The Firstborn could understand the need to maximize production, but the First of the Fifth took it further. From what the Firstborn had heard, she obsessed over quality, and split her honey based on her assessment of each batch.

The Firstborn understood, to some extent. She, too, had the desire to offer her tribute to the King, and she agreed that he deserved nothing but the very best. Yet, she could not help but be a bit disappointed. The First of the Fifth was her counterpart in the Apiary, the eldest of the queens that the others looked to and followed. She did not wish for the First of the Fifth to change her focus, or anything of that nature. The Apiary hives’ honey production had proved to be a critical asset in the Third Invasion. Moreover, the Firstborn was glad that the armies of the Flower Meadow were powerful enough that the Apiary hives could devote themselves to such efforts. Yet...she did wish that the First of the Fifth remembered the broader picture. She worried that her counterpart was neglecting their primary duty with her obsession and causing the younger queens to follow suit. It did not befit her role as a fellow firstborn.

But that assessment had proven largely wrong.

The First of the Fifth’s efforts had paid off in completely unanticipated ways. Her honey from the new plants had transformed into a weapon that had great effect upon the enemy of the Fourth Invasion. And now, her offspring had taken on the qualities of the honeys she curated so obsessively. Her workers could now deploy a venom unlike anything the Firstborn’s army possessed and had dedicated tenders to ensure every larva of her brood grew healthy and strong.

And she had done all of this with the plants that the Firstborn had neglected.

The Firstborn was ashamed to admit she had ignored the wisdom of the King. After he had gifted them with new patches of flowers, she had focused her workers’ efforts entirely on the mana flowers. The flowers that would provide the most nutrition for their efforts, to allow her army to grow as large and powerful as possible with as little work as possible. So, when the other new plants had proven to have no more mana than the normal flowers, she had not paid attention to them. Their nectar and their honey had been mixed in with the rest of the normal fare, treated no different than any other.

So, she had not noticed the potential lurking inside that humble nectar. She imagined what might have been if she had done as the First of the Fifth. She imagined a soldier bee with a debilitating sting, causing the enemy to stumble and fall after but a few attacks. She imagined what her soldiers might look like had they been tended by dedicated healers.

She had been truly foolish.

The Firstborn set out to rectify this. She wished to separate out and organize her honey based on its source. She would not go to the extent the First of the Fifth did, but at least she would separate the nectar from the new patches so that they could feed some of the new brood upon it. She quickly realized, though, that this was not possible in the short term. Her hive was still operating on a smaller workforce, one that could not sustain her current army if they shifted focus away from the mana flowers. They did not have the time to spend on organization, nor on gathering sufficient nectar from the other, low mana patches. As they were, they would struggle to gather enough honey from the other plants to produce even a single worker of the types the First of the Fifth had displayed, much less a honey-guzzling soldier.

The Firstborn stood still again as she realized the truth. It had not been that she had not noticed the potential of the plants...it was that she couldn’t have. Her focus on the soldiers prevented her from taking the steps necessary to ever discover such a thing.

It was only the First of the Fifth, and her obsession with honey quality, that could have produced this outcome. It was only her who could have revealed this new path for the army’s growth.

Once again, the Firstborn realized the wisdom of the King. She had wondered why he permitted the First of the Fifth to do as she did. But now she knew. For not all bees in the hive had the same job. The queen did not go out to scout and gather. The soldier did not give birth to the next generation. The worker was not the first to fight.

And the King had built a hive of hives. He was the king of queens. And so, each of his queens had a different role to play. Each of them had their own mission to fulfill. Each of them was vital for the success of the whole.

The Firstborn thanked the First of the Fifth in her mind as she began to lay a new generation. And for once, she lay not a single soldier egg, instead intending to dramatically expand her worker force. She would need a great many of them to gather the honey necessary, for to feed a soldier larva on mundane nectar would be a herculean task. A task that would require her to cut down the growth of her army substantially, and for a long time.

But the Firstborn wanted to produce the finest army bee-kind had ever seen, and to do that she could not leave a single flower unvisited. She would follow the path set out before her by the King and the First of the Fifth, and they would all work together to fulfill the King’s grand designs.

For though the queens could not be more different, they were all, in the end, one hive. The hive of the King.

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