Side Story 239.1 - Bee-ficient Efforts
“Gah!”
The wolfkin man cried out as a pillar of fire burned right past his face. He fell to the ground, clutching the area by his left eye. He had escaped death as the pillar had not struck him directly, but it had come close enough to burn the left side of his face.
“You incompetent mongrel! After all this time, you can’t even find a single bee?!”
The man gritted his teeth as he pulled himself to face forward and bow. Tears formed in his eyes from the pain but he had no choice but to pull himself together. The Inferno Empress was already displeased enough, she would not hold back with the next fire spell forming in her hand.
“M-My apologies, my empress. We found none in your purified land, and bees are rare in the Underway…”
Another blast of fire surged over his head, scorching his back and his tail.
“I don’t want to hear excuses! If you cannot complete this simple task then perhaps you are of no use to me…you and your people both! Leave, and do not return until you have acquired some bees!”
This time the Inferno Empress took her leave not with a veil of smoke but with a wall of roaring flames. The man slowly rose to his feet, resisting the urge to clutch at his burned face once more. He had no time, not even for pain.
His face and shoulders fell as he shuffled out of the dungeon under the glare of the guards. He and the tribe’s hunters had already scoured both the surface and the nearby Underway and found no bees in their vicinity. It was to be expected, it was a roll of the dice which species might survive in any given purified area.