The Bee Dungeon

After confirming the details of the Flower Meadow beehouse, Belissar heard a pair of chimes.

New Mission Received: Construct new type of beehouse.

New Mission Received: House all queens.

He nodded as the God of Bees officially sanctioned his current efforts. He really had put that task aside for too long. But no longer. With nothing but the small, daily purifications on the horizon, he had nothing more urgent to deal with.

That did remind him, though, that he would need to resume those purifications soon. The Tower would even force him too if he put that off for too long, and he still felt it was important for his Tower to continue growing. He rubbed his chin and frowned, though. With the soldier bee army taking casualties so recently, he wasn’t sure if they were ready.

But then he had a thought. Why not just ask? He had all the Flower Meadow queens with him right now, so he might as well hear it from them. He took a moment to think of how to phrase the question in a way that wouldn’t just result in “Whatever King chooses!” responses.

“So, I have another question. How is the soldier bee army doing?”

The queens all went completely still at that, causing Belissar’s heart to race. That reaction was not what he had expected.

“Um, I mean, you lost a lot of bees lately, right? Is the army, um, recovering well?”

The bees remained still, but eventually the largest queen began to dance. Slowly, ever so slowly, barely enough for the Tower’s translation power to recognize it as communication.

“Army…ok. Losses…recovered.”

Belissar gulped at her tone but took a deep breath to try and calm himself. The queen…was clearly hesitating to talk about this, and Belissar wasn’t sure why. He wanted to ask her, but given how hesistant she seemed he didn’t feel comfortable pushing further. He would just have to make a decision based on that. But, he could still see the soldier bee army training in the skies of the field beyond and they still painted a formidable sight to him, at least. So, if the queen had confirmed they had recovered, then there was no reason not to resume purifications, right? Belissar figured worst came to worst, they could just rely on the pit trap strategy again.

…assuming the shades would go back to the mini-wolf types.

“Ok, um, if there’s no problem, I’m thinking of facing another minor purification tonight. Um, hopefully the easy ones from before. So, um, let me know if there’s anything we need to do first, and otherwise, um, get ready for later?”

The queens froze once again. Belissar was about to rescind the order when they exploded into motion. Belissar’s eyes spun around at all the bees zipping about him, but the Tower’s magic barely managed to catch a few of their dances in total.

It seemed they were flying salute dances as quickly as they could.

Belissar was altogether confused at this point but decided to take that as a good sign. With that done, he moved on to begin preparing a new campfire site in the Orchard and to double check the defenses. Once that was settled, he’d move to get started on the new beehouse. Purifications had delayed it long enough, after all.

The Firstborn stood in a daze even as her Flower Meadow compatriots continued dancing their salutes. And, unusually, the Conduit remained even after the King walked off. She landed by the Firstborn and began a gentle dance.

“See? King still trusts! Wants Second First of the First do well! Still cares! Like Niobee said, King is best King!”

The Firstborn barely managed to acknowledge her. Satisfied, the Conduit flew off to rejoin him, leaving the Flower Meadow queens with their thoughts.

After her abject failure in the latest purification, the Firstborn had been fully prepared for exile or death. She knew the King was unlikely to demand such things, but her instincts prepared her regardless. That had not occurred. ɽÄNŏ𐌱Ёᶊ

Again, that was not a surprise given the actions of the King thus far, but the Firstborn at least expected some consequences. So, she anticipated some sort of censure. A demotion from her post, in favor of one of the other Flower Meadow queens or maybe even the First of the Fifth of the Fifth, should she have interest in the job. A reduction of her resources or an increase in oversight, perhaps with the King or the Conduit giving her orders from now on. At the very least, she expected the King to admonish her, and address her shortcomings.

But again, none of that had occurred.

No. Instead, the King had called her to inform her that he was building her a palace by his own hand, as he had done for the most productive queens of the Apiary. And he was not just building her a palace like those. He was making larger, grander, a new design he had not built before. Not only that, but he consulted her directly. He asked her and her comrades what they would want out of a home. He valued their thoughts and their desires, as small and limited as they were compared to his own wisdom.

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He was granting them the grandest reward immediately after their greatest failure. The Conduit’s words had proven correct. The Firstborn truly could not comprehend the depths of the King’s favor for even the least of his bees. But perhaps that was to be expected of the King who suffered not even a crippled soldier to die when he was able to save her.

But even that was not the greatest surprise of the day. The Firstborn had thought the moment she had been expecting had come when the King asked of the state of her army. She, and all her compatriots, had gone silent in shame. What could the state of the army be but abysmal? Yes, the queens had anticipated casualties and preemptively laid a new generation of soldier eggs, so the losses had been recovered almost immediately. But the army at its peak had failed utterly to stop the enemy. The army itself was revealed as flawed and incapable of its fundamental purpose. So, how was such an army doing? The answer could not be anything good.

And then, once again, the King defied all of her expectations. He specifically asked about the casualties. The Firstborn gave an answer, and then the King had made the declaration that rocked them all to the core.

He was starting up the purifications again. And he asked them to be ready.

Not only had the King forgiven them for their failures, but he was also still expecting them to continue their duties. He was not replacing them or moving them to other roles. He still trusted them to defend the hive of hives, even after their failures.

As the Conduit had assured her, the King was far more forgiving than any queen the Firstborn had ever known of. Even she would not have let one of her children continue a role they had failed in so utterly. They would have been reassigned if they were not exiled outright. Instead, the King was giving them another chance.

The Firstborn leapt into action and into the air, her wings beating as fast as they could as she shot into the air. She would not let this chance go to waste. She would not let her King down again.

She quickly conferred with the other queens to explain what she planned to do. They quickly agreed and then they all raced off to the skies above. Soon, they arrived at the place where their joint army trained. The soldier bees quickly ceased their maneuvers and gathered up before their queens, the mere sight of their mothers outside of the hive pulling their attention.

The Firstborn made the declaration.

“King giving another chance. We battle again today.”

The army nearly dropped out of the sky as the soldiers’ wings halted at the declaration. But the Firstborn gave them no chance to recover, as limited as her time was.

“Queens will fight too, today. Will command.”

Some of the soldier bees fell so far they landed upon the ground at that, before the objections began. But the Firstborn had none of it.

“Not all. Today, me alone. Other queens stay safe. Our job to raise army. If did well, won’t be hurt. If did poorly, another will replace. But no matter what, cannot fail again. Will not put King in danger again. Hive of hives bigger than one.”

The soldiers fell still at that. The soldiers of the other hives looked to their queens but all the Flower Meadow queens danced their assent and commanded them to follow the Firstborn’s lead for today’s battle.

This was the resolution of the Firstborn, as well as her assessment of their failures. Their army was deadly and disciplined…but it was slow to adapt. They trialed new tactics in response to their failures, but only ever after the fact. That was no longer enough. The soldier bees, as strong as they were, were still limited by their own instincts. When they saw the enemy ahead, they lost most of their thoughts save to defeat it. They had trouble adjusting to anything that occurred until they experienced it directly.

The Firstborn identified a potential solution from the past, ironically from the queens who had perished altogether. The queens of the First Dynasty of the First Spawner that came before her had led from the front. It was thanks to that that the Third Queen of the First Dynasty of the First Spawner, the first of her line, had pioneered the rotating squad attack that was now the cornerstone of the army’s tactics.

Monster bee queens had more intelligence and more flexibility than the average soldier or worker and were not as beholden to their instincts. Beyond that, they had an innate ability to command their children through the links in their mana. Orders that came from the queen would be received and responded to far more quickly than from a fellow soldier.

The Firstborn had experienced all of this herself in the latest purification. In the darkest moment, she had confronted the shade directly alongside her workers in a desperate final stand. And when the shade attempted to burn them all with its lightning, her greatest sensitivity to mana had caught wind of it, her experience had identified the potential threat, her flexibility had suppressed her instinct to attack the enemy without cease, and her abilities as the queen had passed her command to the workers in time. As a result, she and all of her workers had managed to avoid the enemy’s attack, something the soldier bee army had partially failed to do.

The Firstborn felt, therefore, that the presence of a queen on the battlefield could increase the flexibility and speed of command of the army. Perhaps they could adjust to the enemy before the worst occurred. And, if nothing else, seeing the fighting with her own eyes might inform her how better to prepare the army in the future.

And, above all, the Firstborn needed to take responsibility for her own failure, and see the job done.

The soldiers were clearly unhappy that a queen would be exposed to harm, but reluctantly agreed. Of course, attempting to take command without practice would be a recipe for disaster, so the Firstborn would join the soldiers’ training for the rest of the day. The other queens returned to their hives to continue their normal work. The Firstborn had proposed that they would rotate which queen commanded the army each day, so that all would have a chance to face the battlefield themselves, and that all would still be able to grow their hives as a queen must. She would simply be the first.

And so, the Firstborn took command of the army. She simply watched at first, familiarizing herself with the way the soldiers operated. And all the while, she thought of what she might do against the enemies they had faced…or perhaps enemies they had not.

This was her second chance, and she would do any and everything she could to see it done.

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