Chapter 56: A Bee-lated Job
Belissar smiled as he watched two hives of bees migrate to the Orchard. One of the queens, in particular, seemed quite excited as she zipped around the new room. That, above all, convinced Belissar he had made the right decision.
At this point, the day was growing late. Belissar decided to give the bees a break from the routine purifications, so he headed for the Apiary farmhouse instead. As he settled in to rest from the day, he considered what he would do next. The Orchard was now set up and none of the new features required any more direct and immediate action from him. The migrating queens needed to set up their hives, the Flower Meadow queens would need time to raise or evolve some sprayers, and he had no idea how long it would take Cross-Pollination to start working. In any case, all three of those were the work of his bees, not him, so he would need to find something else to work on in the meantime.
His bees barely even needed him for the normal purifications at this point. He would need to set up a campfire site in the Orchard and start the fire before the purification, but after that the bees could handle it themselves. In fact…Belissar turned his tower sight to the Memorial and saw the wounded bee still flapping her lightning wing as she stood outside the memorial beehouse. Since she still had access to lightning, she might even be able to start a fire on her own, in which case Belissar would be entirely unnecessary…against the normal wolf-shades at the very least.
Point was, the bees could and would take care of the fighting and growing aspects of the Tower work for the near future. Belissar’s role there was setting up traps, leading the celebrations, and making decisions on the rewards. None of that would take up the majority of time he had each day. But Belissar wasn’t just going to sit around and do nothing while his bees were working their hearts out.
Fortunately, Belissar did come up with a task, one that the bees had specifically requested. One of their dances at the meeting had stood out to him, when one of the bees requested more beehouses.
Yes, Belissar had stopped making beehouses. He had put that task aside after upgrading the Apiary beehives, but there were far more queens than that who were currently building their own hives. Including all of the Flower Meadow queens, the ones who had been here the longest and who were bearing the brunt of the fighting and the sacrifice.
Belissar frowned. It was a travesty that he hadn’t made anything for them as of yet. He may have been distracted by world-shattering revelations and heavy panic on account of Tower Lords and shades, but at there was no excuse to delay any further. Now that he confirmed the Tower wasn’t in any immediate danger, he would make that task priority number one. Especially now that the queens were starting to reproduce, so their numbers would only grow. If he didn’t get started on it soon, he might fall behind permanently.
Well, there was the magic training with Chief Rohsuak. He had learned how to use magic, but surely that wasn’t all there was to it, right? And there was also the quest about helping the bear people acquire blessings or something. But for Belissar, the bees came first, and they deserved a roof over their head.
Belissar nodded and rose to his feet, walking to the bed. He had his path set forth now, so now it was time to rest and prepare for the work to come.