The Bee Dungeon

Belissar added a necrotic compost pile to the Second Third of the First’s room and let her know she could start leaving rabbit corpses there instead of in a random pile. To his knowledge, it wasn’t always a good idea to place carcasses in a compost pile, but Hesfalle had assured them that the necrotic magic of the features would break them down well and would even generate more Death mana as a result.

With that, a good day came to an end.

The next day, Belissar made his way over to the Apothecary’s Hut after his morning routine was over. For once, Niobee wasn’t on top of his head, as she was starting lessons with Finnakynne on shapeshifting magic. Belissar could still feel her through the Tower’s mana and the hive of hives, but he admitted he missed her weight on his head.

But she’d be back soon enough and he had something he wanted to do today, so he pressed on. At his destination, he found Juosiutik and the First of the Fifth’s Third Daughter’s bees carefully laying out a clay jar in front of bumblebee soldier. Juosiutik smiled and waved.

“Tower Keeper Belissar, hi! How can we help you?”

Belissar smiled back.

“Hi Juosiutik. I’m just checking in, I realized it’s been a while. Sorry I haven’t been by.”

Juosiutik waved off his apology.

“Belissar, you’re chief of the entire Tower, you have plenty of duties to take care of, not least of all during a battle.”

She then put her hands on her hips.

“Though, last I checked you were supposed to be my apprentice. Tell me, apprentice, have you been working on your alchemy, lately?”

Belissar could only rub the back of his head.

“Ah…not really…”

Juosiutik grinned and shook her head.

“I’m messing with you, Belissar. Honestly, you don’t need to learn alchemy anymore, you have us to do it for you! The First of the Fifth’s Third Daughter has been a wonderful help, and I think one of the spiderkin is interested in learning as well. That being said, you spend a lot of time making mead with mana honey, right? Maybe you could try applying some alchemy techniques to the process and enhance the magical properties.”

Belissar’s eyes widened.

“Ah, that’s a good idea!”

Belissar’s mind started to race with the possibilities. Could he make a mead that was also a healing potion, maybe with the Second of the Sixth’s mana? Or maybe he could make some sort of energizing mead if he mixed sedative and shocking honey?

Belissar sent a Tower message to one of his memory bees to help him remember that idea later on, then focused on the jar Juosiutik had placed on the ground. The bumblebee soldier was latching onto the jar and lifting off just a bit from the ground, testing the pot’s weight. The jar had a thicker seam in the middle.

“What are you working on?”

Juosiutik grinned.

“Bombs!”

Belissar nodded.

“Ah, yeah the First of the Fifth’s Third Daughter mentioned that. I thought we had bombs already though?”

Juosiutik shook her head.

“Not like these! I’ve been trying to figure out how to use the combusting orchids, since they can’t touch water at all. For now, we’re trying something simple, I dried an orchid and ground it into a powder. We made this jar by sticking two smaller ones together, the bottom half is filled with the powder, while the top is filled with water. When a bee drops it from above, the jar will shatter and expose the powder to the water. Then…it should do what your friend did during the battle, with the wall of orchids.”

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Belissar jumped a little.

“Is…is that safe?”

He did not like the grin Juosiutik gave him in response.

“We do have to be careful when adding the water, I’m working on solutions for that. As for the bomb itself, we’re about to test it and find out! Would it be alright if we used one of the empty defense rooms?”

Belissar gulped, but agreed. The bumblebee soldier confirmed she could carry the jar while flying and then the group moved very, very carefully to the empty Flower Meadow on the defenses floors. Belissar, Juosiutik, and the bees all stood by the shortcut into the room, then the bumblebee soldier picked up the jar and took off. She flew up into the air and then made her way towards the other side of the room from them.

Then, she released the jar.

Belissar was treated to the sight of a large fireball, a gust of wind, and a loud cracking noise as soon as the jar hit the ground. It, thankfully, wasn’t anywhere near as large as Tarwantrad’s explosion…but it was still the largest explosion one of Juosiutik’s bombs had ever created.

“Impressive…”

Juosiutik, meanwhile, was speaking to the First of the Fifth’s Third Daughter’s workers.

“The blast is good, but it looks like part of it was burning up instead of exploding. The idea is sound but I think the part holding the powder cracked before the part with the water. We’ll have to test it a few more times to see.”

One of the worker bees duly began to repeat Juosiutik’s words, much like Belissar’s memory bees, while a communer’s antennae lit up.

“Queen mother asks if same problem as radish bomb?”

Juosiutik nodded.

“Yes, I think so. I’ll have to try and think of a better way to trigger it, maybe I could do something with the water stones?”

Belissar glanced at her, not fully following. Juosiutik noticed and then explained.

“You know the previous bombs, where we put mana honey in a pot and tied fire radish slivers to the side? We’ve learned that sometimes the pot cracks in a way where it spills out the mana honey before it touches the radish sliver, so instead of exploding it just sort of spreads out and then catches fire. Sometimes, the part with the sliver stays as a chunk that keeps it from touching the mana honey at all and nothing happens at all. We’re a bit worried these might turn out the same if the part with the powder breaks before the part with water.”

Belissar did his best to follow along.

“I see, that seems bad.”

Juosiutik crossed her arms and sighed.

“Yeah, it’s a problem since we have to be so careful to keep the trigger away from the fuel until we actually want it to detonate. With the combusting orchid powder, though, I’ve been thinking about if we can use water stones. They’re dry until they’re exposed to mana, so hypothetically we could put them in the same place as the powder. I’m just trying to think of how to expose them to mana when the bomb is supposed to detonate…”

Belissar considered that. He tried to think of other explosions he had seen. The only two things that came to mind were Tarwantrad’s wall of orchids and Wardmaster Varilold’s trap wards.

He blinked at that last one.

“How about wards? They can store mana from what I understand and Wardmaster Varilold made them explode before.”

Juosiutik’s eyes went wide.

“Ah! I hadn’t considered using other types of magic! Would the fair folk be willing to help with that?”

Belissar grinned.

“Even better, Beero and the hive of the fallen have been learning wards themselves. I think they make them out of wax.”

Juosiutik turned to the bees and started bouncing.

“That would be perfect! If a wax ward could send mana to the water stone, then we don’t need separate chambers! We could fill an entire pot to the brim with combusting orchid powder, so we can make them more powerful, too!”

The First of the Fifth’s Third Daughter’s communer began zipping around.

“Queen mother says amazing, incredible! Says King is best king!”

Juosiutik nodded repeatedly.

“Yes, thank you for the idea, Belissar!”

Belissar smiled.

“Just glad I can help.”

Though, he did not mention that he was a bit worried about Juosiutik mentioning more powerful bombs…

***

As Belissar spoke with Juosiutik, Niobee was in the bumblebee meadow. She and bumble helper were both sitting on a bumblebee soldier’s back as the soldier went about her day.

“Ok, so I talked to Daddy a bit more about true shapeshifting. He said that the trick is that you must truly believe you have become whatever it is you want to become. So, I think the first thing we should do is make sure you understand humans and can really see yourself as one.”

Niobee happily danced a salute.

“Ok!”

Niobee and bumble helper then began discussing all that they knew about humans and what set them apart from bees.

“Oh, here’s one, a big one in my opinion!. Humans like to relax and play around, they don’t spend all their time working like monster bees do...though, the bumbles do play, come to think of it. I haven't seen the monster bees play, though...”

Niobee’s antennae twitched about.

“But, King always working for hive?”

Bumble helper froze.

“…wait what? Beely’s always working?”

Niobee happily danced about.

“Always! Always trying to help bees! King is best king!”

Bumble helper blinked.

“So…Beely never rests? He never just, I don’t know, plays around?”

Niobee denied as much. Bumble helper was staring with her mouth open.

“Not even when he was a kid?”

Niobee danced the negative.

“Was always helping older Hive-Builder when Niobee met!”

Bumble helper started to tremble. Niobee was confused as to why.

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