The Bee Dungeon

Belissar was still feeling quite perplexed by Finnakynne’s visit, but Tarwantrad said they would handle it on her side so he put it out of his mind for now. After all, he had a new flower to plant!

He created one new node of mirage flowers in the battle fairy grove, informing the bees once Niobee had confirmed it wouldn’t affect them. He warned the karnuq and asked them to warn the sigmaka about the new feature, then asked the Second of the Sixth to keep some medicinal bees near the flowers just in case. She had raised a number of antidote bees for her hive as well, so hopefully they could help anyone who ended up lost and poisoned.

Speaking of the Second of the Sixth, it seemed she had expanded her hive dramatically. She had raised new workers and a couple of daughter queens to help, but that wasn’t all. She now had gardeners, communers, honeypots and the like. Additionally, she had raised soldiers, sprayers, and lancers as well, all with the slim stingers that characterized medicinal bees. Belissar wondered how that would work, but it did seem they had the same medicinal qualities as their non-combat focused sisters. They hadn’t tested the soldiers or lancers yet, but the sprayers could apparently spray their healing compounds directly onto the wounded.

That proved helpful when a whole team of sigmaka fell into a pit trap all at once.

The Second of the Sixth wasn’t the only bee raising new variants. Belissar made his way over to the bumblebee meadow, carrying the leftovers from the swirled honeycomb tray he’d given Finnakynne a piece of. He went ahead and poured it out over the Heart of the Forest, seeing how the little shoot would like the new honey. Given that the shoot waved its little leaves around and began glowing, Belissar figured it liked the new honey very much.

He'd have to figure out how to make it himself sometime. That honey proved more complicated to replicate than even the attributed honeys. He’d probably have to ask the First of the Fifth how she made it in the first place, but didn’t want to distract her given how much swirled honey they were going to need from her soon.

For now, he’d just have to share what the First of the Fifth gave him with the Heart of the Forest. The little shoot had earned it, in his opinion.

He glanced around at the big flowers covering the field…and at the big bees now landing on them. Previously, while the monster bumblebee queens and soldiers had grown huge, the workers had remained hardly bigger than their mundane counterparts. Belissar had thought that’s just how monster bumblebees worked…but he had been mistaken. Ever since the flowers had grown, the bumblebee workers began growing with them. Now, there were bumblebee workers the size of monster bee soldiers happily drinking from the big flowers all around them.

So, apparently, the monster bumblebees would grow as large as the flowers they gathered from…and now those flowers were growing larger each day, thanks to the Heart of the Forest if Belissar’s guess was correct. And if the workers could grow…then perhaps the queens and soldiers weren’t done growing either. Belissar couldn’t wait to find out.