The Bee Dungeon

The Firstborn scrambled to the next soldier cell as her mana filled back to the minimum necessary. A part of her longed to join her soldiers, to see her army’s preparations firsthand. But she quashed such feelings, for such was not her role.

The King had spoken and had appeared as solemn as the day she was born, just after the fall of the First Dynasty. Not even when he had honored the fallen from her hive had he appeared so. It was obvious that this had been a decision he made only with great deliberation...and perhaps resignation. Such was the nature of the danger they would soon face.

The truest test of her army. A threat on the scale of the one that ended the First Dynasty...or perhaps greater. The Firstborn would like to believe that she was ready but doubts still crept into her mind. The King was preparing for a bloodbath. There was a risk of loss with every purification, but this time the King seemed to be expecting deaths.

Such was the purpose of her army. Neither the Firstborn nor a single one of her soldiers would hesitate to give their lives for the sake of the King, yet still the Firstborn was troubled. She no longer wished for mere victory. She wished for perfection. The strongest army that could win any fight without grieving her King.

To see the King as she saw him today was perhaps her greatest failure yet. Proof that as strong as her army was, it could not yet avoid troubling the King. That falling as the First Dynasty had was still a very real possibility.

Unfortunately, there was little the Firstborn could do about that for this battle. The time was upon them, the soldiers she laid now would not be ready in time for the fight. The queens of the Flower Meadow were not striving to grow their numbers...but to replenish them if the battle turned out as bloody as the King feared.

So, she allowed her heart to burn. She would trust that her warriors would carry the day tomorrow, whatever the cost. And then she would do all in her power to cut that cost and ease the King’s burden.

After laying her next egg, she rested right next to the cell, willing her mana to regenerate that much faster...

A soldier bee sat at the entrance of the Memorial's beehouse. She watched as her sisters flew in the distance, practicing as many different maneuvers as they could think of, preparing for as many different scenarios as they could.

She could not help but beat her single remaining wing, but without its pair she would never fly again.

The King had preserved her life right when she was about to leave her hive in a final exile. She believed it had been for a reason, and that reason was beginning to take shape. She now had a job as the guardian of the fallen, the one who looked after the home of her sisters who had sacrificed for the hive and the King.

Yet still, now that the eve of battle had arrived her questions returned as well. Was this truly all that was left to her life? Was this truly worth the continued support of her Queen, and her worker sisters? Would she truly never join her sisters in battle again? Was she truly doomed to remain here even as the sisters of her squad passed on?

There was no one to answer her questions, nor would she ever ask them. She would not dare take the time of even a single worker. After all, she contributed the least to the hive of any bee within the King’s realm, despite having received some of the most gifts from the King himself.

So, she was left alone with her thoughts as everyone else prepared...

The First of the Fifth watched as her workers scrambled. The sound of buzzing filled the air as her workers fanned their wings in sync, creating an air current across the latest honey batch. The First of the Fifth’s mana surged and touched that of the honey. She knew then that the honey in Tray 3 was drying faster than expected, so she could reallocate some of those workers to the mana processing chain. She brushed antenna with the nearest workers, sending them to relay orders to that effect.

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A great battle was coming, greater than any within her lifetime. That meant that the Firstborn would have a great opportunity to gain the King’s favor through the victory and sacrifices of her soldiers. That was a field the First of the Fifth could not compete on.

So, she wouldn’t. Instead, she would utilize her strengths to remind everyone of who she was, and the critical service she provided for the King. She would ensure that she could not be forgotten even in the midst of the Firstborn’s moment.

And that meant honey. Lots and lots of honey.

She followed the workers as they transferred from Tray 3 to the entrance, where her workers were assembled into large lines. Foragers arrived at the entrance and landed in front of designated lines, passing the nectar in their honey crops to the first workers in the chain. The workers then began blowing the nectar into bubbles while cycling their mana through it, starting the process of converting it into honey while also imbuing it with mana. The workers then passed it to the second row, where a large strip of greenish-blue interrupted the yellow lines.

The First of the Fifth was not merely producing honey. A great battle was coming...and the King was expecting blood. And unlike the Firstborn, the First of the Fifth could address the King’s concern directly, through the creation of healing herb honey. She would prepare vast stockpiles of the honey in order to heal as many of the future wounded as she could, reducing the sacrifices required of the Flower Meadow queens. She would become a balm for the King...and would turn the Flower Meadow’s sacrifice into her own triumph.

But the nectar she gathered from the healing herbs was not enough, not least of all because she had allowed the other queens access to it in return for producing drones. So, the First of the Fifth did the unspeakable.

She mixed the honeys.

She combined her rigorously categorized products into a single amalgam where quality could not be guaranteed. She turned her hive to brute mass production and focused on expanding the healing honey stockpile as much as possible. The first step of doing so was to have the medicinal workers participate in the honey processing. The workers could producing the same healing compounds as the healing herbs, and so could imbue any nectar they processed with a bit of it.

Of course, diluting the healing compounds by mixing the honeys also reduced its potency. Which was why the First of the Fifth was also mixing the nectar of mundane flowers with that of the Mana Flowers. The additional mana from that precious nectar resonated with the scarce healing compounds from the healing herbs and boosted their effect, allowing a much lower concentration to reach the same levels of effectiveness. With the additional compounds from the medicinal workers, she was able to produce acceptably effective healing herb honey even though the majority of the nectar came from other flowers.

She would not dare serve such shoddy honey to the King, but it was sufficient to heal the wounds of the soldiers. And nothing, not even her own pride in her honey quality, would prevent the First of the Fifth from being of service to the King.

For that was what it meant to be the most favored queen.

Even the Fourth of the Seventh had been stirred to action by the words of the King. She had not the strength of the Firstborn, for her first soldiers hadn’t even hatched yet. She could not produce even a fraction of the honey the First of the Fifth could, even if she were blessed with a magical hive like the best of the Apiary queens had. But she did all that she could.

The workers she sent to the Flower Meadow to forage were redirected to the Flower Meadow hives, dropping off their nectar to the queens that would do battle. The workers gathering from the Apiary nearby offered their nectar to the First of the Fifth. The First of the Fifth would normally reject such an offer, but today she accepted the nectar, to the Fourth of the Seventh’s surprise. And then, she sent some of her workers to the newest queen, the First of the Fifth’s child. The First of the Fifth had loaned some workers to help her out at first, but had recalled them in the time of need. The Fourth of the Seventh was the closest queen and didn’t seem to have as urgent a task as the First of the Fifth, so she figured she could lend a hand.

Her workers said the new queen danced a gratitude dance like they’ve never seen before. She wished she could have seen it, but that would have to wait. There was work to be done, and not a bee in the realm would rest for even a moment until it was finished.

Belissar himself spent the time reviewing the traps. He moved some of them about, such as placing one of the honey traps by the door to the Apiary. It would spray its honey just before a shade reached the Pit Trap waiting there, hopefully knocking them off balance so that they would stumble into the pit. He set up a couple traps like that. Then he double checked the kindling and firewood at the bottom of each pit and refreshed them as needed. He wove a couple more rope-torches for the bees to carry and double checked that the campfire in the Apiary was ready to go on a moment’s notice.

He then went ahead and added more traps, as many as his current mana could buy. He figured they would make more sense than monster spawners given they wouldn’t have time to reach their spawn limit. And...he also needed to keep his mana for after the new choices came in. Traps could be removed once they were no longer needed, but spawners would keep hold of the mana for each monster they spawned.

And there was no world where Belissar even thought of getting rid of bees to reclaim some mana.

And so, everyone in the Tower prepared themselves for the fight to come, as the purification cooldown slowly ticked down...

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