The Bee Dungeon

Outside of General Rippotis’ Tower was a huge warcamp. Tents covered blackened fields, Ground mages rebuilt collapsed buildings, and magical barriers prevented attack from sky, ground, or underground. Tower Guards and dragonkin patrolled the perimeter around the clock, while entire flocks of wyvern riders flew in formation overhead. In the midst of this camp was an especially large building, constructed from stone and adorned with golden decorations and colorful banners. This building held a large room around a big table with a map of the general’s Tower, marked with trinkets and tiny flags.

A group of Tower Lords stood around this table, grim expressions on their faces. A Tower Guard gulped before entering the room. The lead Tower Lord glared at him.

“Report.”

The Tower Guard executed a shaky salute.

“T-The next convoy…was destroyed, my lord. The wyvern patrols found its remains…”

The lead Tower Lord, Lord Feilos, slammed his fist on the table.

“Hunger take it all!”

It wasn’t supposed to be this way, he knew High Lord Stadvolous had lied! When he had been told he would be leading the attack on General Rippotis’ Tower, he had objected in the strongest of terms. To attempt a siege on the Tower of the man synonymous with the art of war, the home of the Dragon Banner Army itself…it was apparent the High Councilor intended to murder him with the general’s blade. Lord Feilos had strongly considered going to the High Council and revealing the plot right then and there.

But that snake Stadvolous had deceived him with sweet words. He claimed that the task would be easier than expected. He said they would wait for General Rippotis and the Dragon Banner Army to leave and that Stadvolous would confront the general personally, ensuring neither he nor his army could return. Lord Feilos would not be fighting them, he would only be fighting civilians, trainees, and whatever skeleton crew General Rippotis left behind. General Rippotis was one of the strongest opponents of raising monsters, after all, so he simply could not produce any new forces once his Tower and his training facilities came under attack. Meanwhile, Lord Feilos would have an entire coalition of Tower Lords and the hordes of respawning monsters they prepared in secret to back him up, all he had to do was let the monsters rampage and chip away at the defenders’ strength and the Tower would fall in time.

Or so Stadvolous had claimed. But, perhaps predictably, he had lied and that was not how the assault went.

The first problem came before they even began the siege. General Rippotis’ people, upon noticing their army approaching, had not done the sensible thing and surrendered. They did not stand aside and allow their betters to fight. No, mere farmers and blacksmiths decided to resist him in the most hateful and self-destructive manner that they could. They set fire to their own farms, knocked over their own forges, and destroyed absolutely everything of value in the settlement around General Rippotis’ Tower before they fled inside.

Lord Feilos had expected to make use of the vast fields and granaries General Rippotis used to support the Dragon Banner Army, instead he was left with a charred wasteland. He had no choice but to arrange for constant convoys back from his army’s Towers, lest the dragonkin grow mad with hunger.

And that is when the second problem began. A few days into the siege, General Rippotis’ forces began raiding the convoys. The general’s Tower had a vast area of influence and therefore a vast area where he could hide external shortcuts, it simply wasn’t possible for Lord Feilos to find and contain them all. Likewise, he didn’t have enough monsters and Tower Guards to assign them to convoy work, they had to use mundane peasants and weak kobolds for those jobs. General Rippotis’ skeleton crew, after all, was still a force capable of defending his Tower from the worst the Hunger could throw at it, all Tower Guards and stronger monsters were needed to make any headway against them.

Lord Feilos, of course, was not an idiot. He knew that it wouldn’t matter whether or not he could defeat the Tower’s defenders if he couldn’t secure the supply line, the dragonkin would go hungry long before the Tower fell. He had split off some of his forces to guard the convoys, even if it meant slowing down his assault on the Tower. He didn’t want to split off enough to guard every last wagon, though, so instead he ordered constant wyvern patrols over the route. Surely the fliers would spot and engage any raiders long before they reached any of the convoys…

…if it had been the Dragon Banner Army doing the raiding, that was.

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“And Hunger take Stadvolous! He couldn’t have bothered to mention that General Rippotis has monsters?!”

Yes, General Rippotis, one of the staunchest opponents of raising monsters, the one who said humanity had to be the ones to fight, who insisted that ferocious dragonkin had to be raised and tamed by hand…had secretly raised an army of monsters, unbeknownst to Lord Feilos. His convoys were not being attacked by humans or wyverns as expected, but by swarms of stinging insect monsters! The tiny terrors were too small to spot from the sky, they could hide amongst blades of grass for the gods’ sake! And yet, once assembled into swarms, they could easily overwhelm a grown man or a squad of kobolds. He simply did not have enough antidotes to hand them out to every last crate-carrying peasant! He had tried equipping a convoy with those heavy clothes beekeepers used…but these were monsters, not simply insects. They had larger monsters among them, the size of a hand or so, who could easily tear through heavy cloth with their stingers and let their smaller brethren past the defenses.

At the end of the day, his forces just weren’t prepared to handle swarms of tiny, flying, and stinging insects. How could they be?! This was the absolute last thing they had expected General Rippotis to employ against them! Lord Feilos looked up and scowled at the Tower Guard who had brought the news.

“What in the gods’ names were the escorts doing? I thought I told them to stay with the convoy this time! Don’t tell me dragons and Tower Guards blessed by the gods themselves fell to tiny insects!”

The Tower Guard flinched but duly reported.

“The insects…ignored the escorts, attacking the convoy itself. They got into the crates and supplies and poisoned the lot. One of the survivors mentioned the bigger ones were carrying small pouches, we believe they contained poison. The escorts attempted to intervene but it was impossible for them to remove all the insects once they got inside the wagons. A dragonkin attempted to remove them with its breath…but the wagon did not survive.”

Lord Feilos let out a scream of rage.

One of the other Tower Lords at the table kept his face impassive, speaking with a deadly calm voice.

“The supply situation is growing critical. We’ve already rationed the Tower Guards’ food to the maximum appropriate extent, and the dragonkin will not consent to being rationed as well. We needed this convoy. Lord Feilos, what is your plan to address this?”

Lord Feilos whirled on the man.

“You dare question me, Lord Beframos?! You forget your place!”

Lord Beframos scoffed.

“Forget my place? While we defy the gods and overthrow the High Council? What a meaningless claim. As meaningless as our efforts will be if you cannot protect a single convoy from a bunch of insects!”

The meeting devolved into a shouting match. Lord Feilos was just about ready to take out his anger on his insolent subordinate when he noticed that not all the shouting was coming from inside. A Tower Guard burst into the room with a panicked look on his face, skipping all protocol and propriety.

“My lord, you must come quickly! We are under attack!”

Lord Feilos blinked.

“What?”

But he began marching outside nonetheless. Under attack? By who? Did General Rippotis’ forces decide to sally out? That would be a foolish decision, they might have destroyed some unguarded convoys, but Lord Feilos’ army had taken little damage beyond the expected attrition of a Tower siege. He was still confident he could crush General Rippotis’ skeleton force in an open battle…unless they had grown overconfident from their success? He could only pray that was the case, he could turn this entire siege around if they made such a grievous mistake.

Such a mistake…seemed unlikely for members of the Dragon Banner Army but who else could it be? Stadvolous, for all his conniving and sabotage, had managed to engage the Dragon Banner Army’s main force, so they couldn’t possibly be here. High Councilor Heigiosa was under siege by High Councilor Konilias’ forces, so it couldn’t be her. And all of their subordinates should still be returning from the Grand Subjugation. Maybe it was the Hunger? It would chose now, of all times, to launch an incursion…but General Rippotis’ territory was vast. They should have noticed an incursion long before it arrived…

Lord Feilos finally arrived at the site of the attack…and all his thoughts cut off.

There, standing but a hundred paces from his camp, was the Dragon Banner Army. And at their head, flying on the oldest and greatest true dragon in the Conclave, was General Rippotis himself.

And he did not look happy.

Lord Feilos’ mind struggled to comprehend. How had this happened? How was this possible? Had Stadvolous lied again about engaging the Dragon Banner Army? But even if so, it should have taken weeks for the Dragon Banner Army to return, how had they moved so quickly? And, above all, how had they arrived here without being spotted? He had wyvern scouts patrolling all over General Rippotis’ territory, tiny insects were one thing but they could not possibly be so incompetent as to miss an entire army!

Unfortunately, General Rippotis did not seem to care for his confusion.

“Ah, there you are. Lord Feilos, I and Raklasi challenge you as one dragon to another! Let the greater power reign supreme and take all that belongs to the weaker!”

All eyes in both armies turned towards him, waiting for his reply. Lord Feilos, of course, was not an idiot. He realized quickly that he could not dwell on the impossibility of the situation, he needed to respond now, whether he understood what was going on or not. So, quickly judging the situation and what was about to happen…he placed his hands behind his head and knelt on the ground.

“I will surrender, if you promise not to kill me!”

General Rippotis looked down upon him as if he was utter dirt.

“So be it.”

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