The Bee Dungeon

Belissar spent the rest of the day gathering materials and working on the Memorial hive. Upon Beero’s request, he would build a second Bee Barracks like the first, positioned just before the Memorial. The Bee Barracks would be largely as the first, but Beero and Belissar did come up with some new ideas.

The karnuq helped him carry lumber and stone to the battle meadow. At first, Belissar wasn’t going to bother then seeing as they had wounded to take care of, but when he went to ask them for material Chief Rohsuak insisted. There were plenty of karnuq who hadn’t participated in the battle, such as Muuraqi, and Chief Rohsuak reminded Belissar that working for the bees like this was precisely what the God of Bees wanted as her trial.

The karnuq quickly brought over the necessary materials. Muuraqi’s mana could cut through stone like a hot knife through butter, or stick separate pieces together like they had been solid from the beginning, so with his help the new barracks took shape rather quickly. The soldier bee army also flew over to help once they saw what was happening, dramatically speeding up work on the roof. By the end of the day, Belissar hadn’t finished all the frames, but the basic structure was already complete.

Belissar was thus able to implement the new ideas. First, Belissar made the roof flat, with an entrance and a ramp directly up to it, so that the wounded soldier bees would have a place to perform their magic dances. Beero specifically requested platforms for them, and so he obliged. Belissar also placed a stone parapet around the edges of the roof to help shield the bees from spines, breaths, or any other long-range attacks a shade might come up with. His hope was that, should a shade reach this barracks, the wounded soldiers could rain spells down on it without exposing themselves to danger, even if they couldn’t fly.

Belissar’s own idea was to place a shortcut directly within the Bee Barracks, now that he knew he could. He linked this one to the Bee Apartment the Second of the Sixth lived in, so that her medicinal bees could fly directly to Beero’s hive when they wanted to check on the wounded. Both Beero and the Second of the Sixth enthusiastically approved of the plan when he proposed it, and even now he could see medicinal bees exploring the new structure.

Now all he had to do was finish up the trays and convert the structure into a proper Bee Barracks feature and the Memorial hive would be complete. To Belissar’s chagrin, though, the time for the purification arrived before he finished. Still, the wounded bees now had a roof over their head, so Belissar could tolerate finishing up tomorrow.

Because like it or not, his Tower needed to grow, lest there be far more wounded next time…

Metsaitti stood alone in one of the larger caverns within the Dirt Tunnels. With the casualties in the bee army and most of the karnuq’s veteran hunters wounded, Tower Keeper Belissar had considered skipping today’s purification. Metsaitti had stopped him by volunteering to face this one personally.

It would be good for him, both to fulfill his duty to the Tower and to face challenges on behalf of his patron gods. But, well, if pressed Metsaitti just might admit that he was also excited to use his new blessing in battle. He had explored his new abilities since the trial, but he would not be able to take their full measure until he had used them to slay an opponent in a true battle.