The Bee Dungeon

The First of the Fifth’s Second through Fifth Daughters were currently pacing about in a group within their joint hive. They knew that their queen mother was working on a new honey type, but they had not expected her to suddenly evolve. Now, with hardly any warning, their queen mother was sealed up in a cell, possibly for days given the example of other queen evolutions. For the moment, there were no problems, the hive was functioning well as the First of the Fifth’s workers handled their task with the immaculate precision and efficiency their queen mother prized.

But the daughters knew all that could change very rapidly, and none of them understood the full picture of the hives’ efforts. Not to mention that the First of the Fifth performed a lot of duties outside of the hive. Who among them was going to receive the scout reports on the state of all the other hives in the Tower? Who among them was supposed to determine how much honey to deliver to each of the other hives? Who among them should manage cross-pollination of new flowers? Each of them could perhaps to one of those jobs, but none had the comprehensive view of their own joint hive, much less the entire hive of hives, necessary to make decisions with confidence.

“Hi, queen mother evolving already?”

But then, new mana and a new dance joined the debate. All the daughters turned to find another of their number arriving, one they had not considered. The First of the Fifth’s First Daughter had heard her mother’s message as well and returned to her home hive with a full squad of communers and drones. The daughters quickly began laying out the situation to her.

The First Daughter wasted no time and immediately began dancing to her communers.

“Coordinate with shortcut guards, ask hive of hives to report status and honey needs there. Bind sister queens mana together, make sure all can see what others doing. Cross-pollination can wait, gardeners working with dangerous one on King’s task anyways. Just report if new flowers spotted.”

The Second through Fifth Daughters stopped their own dances and stared as the First Daughter took command of the situation…and was apparently already aware of wider hive of hive’s circumstances. The First Daughter then turned to them.

“Ok if help coordinate? Helped Fourth of the Seventh’s hive, helped hive of hives with shortcuts, so can help while queen mother evolving?”

The First Daughter was a bit surprised when her siblings burst out into rapid and relieved dances for help. She had thought they’d be better positioned to manage things given they lived in the queen mother’s hive and she did not, but apparently all of them were specialized in specific tasks. But that was no problem for the First Daughter.

After all, she had plenty of experience helping hives with absent queens keep their affairs organized and efficient. And now, she could help her sisters and her queen mother in the same way the Fourth of the Seventh had helped her.

Juosiutik double-checked the stone experimentation room. Nothing especially valuable or flammable was left in the area and the only bee present was a communer from the First of the Fifth’s Third Daughter standing on her shoulder. An emergency water stone was lodged safely in the roof where any burst of mana would cause it to shower the room, the big chimney overhead was clean and clear to let out any fumes, and she had healing and antidote potions in a pouch on her belt. She took a deep breath. All the safety precautions were in order.

Juosiutik herself stood in a corner of the room by an open door where she could easily flee…or be blown outside instead of against a wall should any sort of blast impact her. One of Toivenaq’s iron shields was set up there to block most of the corner from the rest of the room. Kneeling behind it, she held out her hand over a small bowl and stirred up her mana. A honeycomb of light appeared and shifted to a brighter yellow that emitted small, crackling sparks. Crackling yellow honey dripped from it and began to join the pool already in the bowl. With this, she should finally have enough.

Juosiutik had learned from the Tower Keeper that she could learn to produce specialized honey types with her blessing and the bee magic it taught her, though she had to consume the honey in question first. The Fourth of the Eight had recently donated enough shocking honey for her to add it to her repertoire. It had been a trial that left her body twitching and her tongue and throat numb, but she managed to pull it off. Now, she had finally gathered enough to experiment with. The mana required to create persistent magical honey was no joke, but she couldn’t ask the bees for their honey until she had solidified a useful recipe for it.

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Which meant it was time for potentially explosive experimentation. Her blessing as a honey herbalist did give her better intuition about the results of novel mixes and warned her of danger…but, unfortunately, explosives were also a useful and desirable recipe so Juosiutik was choosing to ignore any such warnings. She poured the honey into a very long ladle and carefully maneuvered the awkward implement around the shield. Then, she extended it into the room where a clay pot sat in the center…holding a piece of fire radish within. She quickly poured the honey inside and then ducked behind the shield.

Soon, a plume of fire burst out of the top of the pot before the vessel cracked and shattered. Sparks crackled amidst the flames and formed some sort of glowing sphere in its center for a moment before it all dissipated.

Juosiutik looked to the communer and nodded.

“So, shocking honey and fire radish also explode.”

The communer danced a salute and began relaying the results back to the Third Daughter’s hive, where they would be assigned to a worker to remember. Juosiutik, now running low on mana, stood back up and cleared the room of heated, sparking shards before heading outside.

Outside, she found a swarm of gardeners buzzing through the Apothecary, carrying seeds and pollen, tending to flowers and feeding them mana, and foraging from those that had bloomed. The ground sparkled like gems in the sun from the mana flowers filling the garden. A new swimming gardener landed on the lotus flowers there, including glowing variants crossbred with mana flowers. A digging gardener broke through the soil and crawled out of the ground after checking on the roots below. A gravity gardener flared her mana to keep her flower from squishing or uprooting the others nearby. Juosiutik could hear but not see the new blinding gardener tending to the shadow vines and other subterranean plants within the garden’s small cave.

She made her way to one of her favorites and knelt down by a patch of quickblossom. A shocking gardener led shocking workers to each of the flowers. The shocking bees crackled as their wings buzzed, sparks flying off them and into the flowers as they rubbed their wings and hairs together. Now that the Fourth of the Eighth’s hive had grown, they had taken over the lightning duties from Beero and her soldiers and the quickblossom flowers were all the better for it. Juosiutik smiled, she now had enough for Belissar to absorb, ensuring they would never run out at any point in the future. And with the Fourth of the Eighth’s hive providing as much lightning as required, Juosiutik would soon be able to produce her mother’s potion in bulk.

She paused though and looked closer. Her eyes widened as she saw the quickblossom flowers themselves spark and crackle. Little bolts of lightning jumped between the flowers and the bees whenever they got close.

And it wasn’t limited to the quickblossom. The mana flowers were glowing brighter, the air distorted around the flame radish and fire mana flowers, and slimy nectar dripped from the gelatinous heather. A breeze constantly blew through the garden from the soaring bee blossom overhead and she could have sworn the cave with the shadow vine seemed darker than usual. Juosiutik knew that Belissar had applied some boons from the God of Flowers, but this was something else. The nectar from all these flowers was starting to become magical all on its own. Oh, the potions she could make with all of this…

But she shook her head. The time for experimentation was over for today. She instead turned to the center of the garden, where one gardener covered in flowers rested on top of a moving rose monster, dancing with the gardeners flying to and from her. Juosiutik waved.

“Hi Frelis, how are things going?”

“Flowers growing strong. Shouldn’t grow this close, but Tower’s mana helping, so do. All blooming now.”

Juosiutik smiled.

“So, we’re ready now?”

Frelis replied with a question dance of her own.

“If dangerous one’s flowers ready?”

Juosiutik winced again at the bees’ name for her. Unfortunately, her recent string of experiments with explosives had not helped. She shook it off and nodded, however. In the end, there were worst names. Being dangerous wasn’t so bad…when it was intentional.

“Yes, I was going to pick some for the Tower Keeper now. If that’s enough for him to absorb the base variant, then it’ll be ok to start cross-pollinating them.”

Frelis danced the salute and then began to beat her wings.

“Then, can tell King room is ready for flower one! Will go with you!”

The rose monster responded by wrapping its vines around Frelis, who stopped beating her wings.

“We can go with, together?”

The rose monster pulled its roots out of the ground and slithered over to Juosiutik. She couldn’t help a smile. She was now creating magical honey out of thin air, talking with monster bees and monster flowers, and tending a garden full of mystical flowers they were about to share with a fey disciple of the God of Flowers. She could only wonder what her mother would have said if she could have seen all this…

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