POBee 45.1 - Prepare the Bee-fenses!
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.