POBee 65.1 - The Bird and the Bees
“Ok, here we go.”
The King gave his command. The First of the Fourth felt the entire world shift at his word. It filled her with heat and power, spurring her to action. And she knew why, as she felt a cold chill creeping along.
This was it. She fixed her eyes upon the entrance, not looking away for even a second.
Something dark began to coalesce around the Tower’s entrance...above the ground. The First of the Fourth began dancing immediately, sending her meaning along her mana to her children at the front.
“Air attack!”
The King had warned her to be ready for anything and the First of the Fourth had taken his words to heart. His wisdom was clear as the enemy immediately defied their expectations. But the soldiers and queens both had learned the lessons of their defeat well. They knew now it was possible for an enemy to appear higher up. The soldiers trained and drilled for that exact occurrence and with the First of the Fourth’s quick command immediately reorganized for an aerial foe. Some squads moved closer to the ground to cover that angle, while a group of sprayers moved into range above the incoming invader. The rest of the soldiers began to move as well. No longer did they hover in place, holding a static formation around the enemy. Instead, they began to zig zag through the air in constant movement, with random stops and dives and turns to prevent an enemy from tracking their trajectory. They would not wait for the enemy to strike but begin their evasion before the attack approached.
A moment later, a screech rang through the First of the Fourth’s body, far louder than she had anticipated from the stories. Her body trembled as her eyes beheld the enemy. A bird, much like the one who had broken through their army, now flapped in the air. It was far smaller than the original had been, comparable to the difference between the daily wolf-shades and the very first. But the First of the Fourth would not let its size fool her. She knew that this was a foe that could quickly escape her grasp if she made a single mistake.
She would not let it have the chance.
The moment the shade appeared, the sprayers launched their attack, coating the bird in toxins. The shade screeched at them and flapped its wings, but the sprayers had already melted back into the swirling mass of bees in constant motion and the shade lost track of them. A second sprayer squad jumped out of the mass and launched their attack as well. The shade attempted to dodge and got out of the immediate path of the attack, though some of the toxin still impacted it as the sprays spread out.