The Bee Dungeon

Chapter 360 - A Hard-Earned Bee-prieve

The Fourth of the Seventh created a wind that propelled the monster bee lancers even faster. Beero and the battlecasters then struck the Tower Guard with a lightning sting once more, allowing the lancers to dive directly on target. With the Beeswarm Barrage perk degrading the Tower Guard’s defenses after all the stings and sprays he had taken, the lancers managed to break through his armor.

From there, it did not take long for the bee army to overwhelm the man. He was slain without any further bee casualties, much to Belissar’s relief.

The rest of the Tower Guards retreated after that. Even though two of the remaining stronger ones were wounded and the weaker guards incapacitated by the poisonous pollen, Belissar did not have the bee army pursue them. There was still a third who was only lightly wounded and who returned to guard his companions at the entrance and all the fair folk closest to them were dazed by the explosion as well. It only took the Tower Guard a few minutes to begin retreating from the room once the water one returned in any case.

After that, the alliance reset themselves. The wounded were recovered and taken back to the nexus door room, where the fair folk and the Second of the Sixth had prepared a medical tent, while Wardmaster Varilold and her wardens rushed to repair the wards damaged by the explosion. Belissar kept an eye on the Tower Guards with his Tower sight and the help of the hive of hives...but they made no further moves to assault his Tower. The stronger Tower guards all left the Tower and returned to their camp outside. The remaining Tower Guards inside of the Hall of Purification began building defenses and through the mundane honeybees in their camp Belissar overhead that they were planning to try a siege instead.

It seemed Belissar and his allies had earned themselves a reprieve. They agreed to meet later that night to discuss the day...but for now, Belissar had something to do.

He went to the Fairy Grove himself to gather the dead. The miracle lighthouse saved many of them...but it only had a chance to save them, not a guarantee, and the Tower Guard’s first breath attack had hit many bees. A good fifty-five bees had lost their lives.

The Fairy Grove did not attempt to divert him this time, instead opening up paths directly to the battlefield to speed his way. At the place underneath the battle between the Tower Guard and the hive of hives, Belissar found the bees that had not been saved...held up by bushes and beds of flowers so he could easily find them. He teared up as he glanced around at the forest around him and smiled.

“Thank you.”

And so, Belissar was able to recover the bodies of the bees without issue. The Fire-Resistant Bees perk had not managed to save their lives, but it had preserved most of their bodies, which Belissar was most grateful for. Belissar carried each and every one of the fallen soldiers back to the Memorial, placing them within its central beehouse.

He was greatly pleased to see ephemeral bees fly out of the bee house and hover in the air around him once more, as during the memorial service for the karnuq. He gave them a smile.

“Thank you all for protecting the Tower.”

The ephermal bees danced once last “King is best king!” dance before flying back into the Memorial beehouse, which sent a pillar of light up into the sky. Belissar watched until it faded, then took a deep breath and steadied himself. He knew the God of Bees would take care of them now, so comforted himself with that and turned to leave, narrowing his eyes.

It was likely those wouldn’t be the last bees lost in this conflict. He was even planning to delay the full memorial service until Starami was defeated for that very reason. But, until then, Belissar was going to do everything he could to minimize the losses. So, for now, it was time for the Tower Keeper to get back to work.

Fourth Queen Pezuya stood in a corner of the medical tent the fair folk had prepared. She watched as healer bees and fey magicians tended to her warriors.

The sigmaka had deployed to the latest battle as well, Fourth Queen Pezuya led a squad of their best warriors, all of whom had acquired full blessings. She herself had the blessing of the venom swordswoman, enabling her to wrap herself and her blade in an aura of the noxious compounds all sigmaka could produce and charge them with mana, turning them from debilitating to deadly. All of her warriors had similar blessings and with this she thought they could easily bring down a single human warrior.

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She had been wrong. They had encountered one of the Tower Guards separated from the vanguard and engaged him together. The guard, despite being panicked and isolated at the time, had immediately attacked them with a fire breath. One of her warriors had been caught off guard and his noxious aura had ignited, setting him ablaze. He had survived...though he may have wished he hadn’t.

To prevent the guard from attacking with fire again, Pezuya had charged him down and engaged him in close combat with her warriors. But...that Tower Guard had proven far more capable and experience than she had ever imagined. His blade had been like lightning, swift and sudden and nearly impossible for her to track or predict. His shield had been like the bedrock of the deep Underway, hard and unyielding, blocking their attacks with uncanny ease.

Fourth Queen Pezuya, the greatest warrior of the sigmaka, chosen as one of King Ratuatapi’s queens due to her might...had to admit, with great reluctance, that she had been outmatched and would have been slain had she been alone. As it was, even though they had outnumbered the guard, they still had suffered greatly. Many of her warriors, including herself, had suffered various minor cuts from the blade, or had been smashed in the face by the shield. Two of them had not been so lucky. One spearwoman lost an arm, another spearman had been stabbed in the gut and then knocked to the ground hard. Combined with the one who had been burned, that meant three of the sigmaka’s best warriors were now left lying in the medical tent, their very survival uncertain.

The Second of the Sixth crawled over each of them as her healing bees injected them with healing stings, her antennae glowed as she manipulated the mana for even greater effect. Pezuya walked over to her once she had finished with the last one.

“How are they?”

The Second of the Sixth danced quickly.

“Bad but will live. Burned one screaming too much, so had anesthetic bee sting. Sleeping now. Stabbed one ok, will live. Recommend one without arm join sigmaka hive of fallen and try evolve.”

Pezuya grimaced.

“I do not know what you mean by hive of the fallen, but I can tell you that sigmaka don’t evolve.”

The Second of the Sixth paused, her antennae twitching, before slowly resuming her dance.

“Don’t evolve? ...then, can try heal arm. Can but...will take long time.”

Pezuya’s eyes widened.

“You...can heal her arm?”

“Can, but will be slow.”

Pezuya bowed her head.

“I don’t care how long it takes, if you can restore her, I will be forever in your debt, Second Queen of the First Dynasty of the Sixth Spawner.”

The Second of the Sixth danced a confirmation.

“Ok, will try. But have to tend to other wounded first.”

Pezuya nodded.

“Of course.”

She then stepped away, letting the Second of the Sixth return to her work. The news that the bees could healing a dismembered arm lifted her spirits...but only briefly. The fact that the bees could do that...only reinforced the painful lesson she had learned from this battle.

The sigmaka...were entirely irrelevant. A single one of the Tower Lord’s soldiers had torn through their mightiest warriors with ease. If she assessed their strengths honestly...a single squad of those soldiers working together might be enough to destroy their entire people. Maybe the sigmaka might eventually bring them down but they’d suffer horrendous and irrecoverable casualties in the process.

An army of thousands of soldiers like that? Even if the one they faced was above average the sigmaka had no hope of resistance whatsoever. They were a bug the Tower Lord could squash at any moment.

The worst of it was...that soldier wasn’t the strongest the Tower Lord had available, not by far. Pezuya had watched as a single Tower Guard wrestled down a dragon with his bare hands and then set the sky ablaze. She had never felt so powerless as she did in that moment, she could not help but imagine that man turning their home into an inferno with a single breath, as he would surely do once he had defeated her allies.

But then, he didn’t. She watched as that man was overwhelmed by the Tower Keeper’s bee army, how they stung him over and over until his armor failed and their stingers hit flesh.

And then she not only watched, but felt the power of the fey herself, as their attack rocked the entire room and knocked her to her feet.

That was when she knew, when she learned this lesson. The sigmaka, as they were, were irrelevant. They were children playing with gods, acting as if they were equals with the Tower Keeper and the fair folk that could destroy them at will. They were only able to do so because their allies allowed them to. And they only survived now because their allies decided they were worth saving.

Fourth Queen Pezuya would spend the rest of the day thinking long and hard about the future of her people and what she could possibly do to preserve it...

Meanwhile, Captain Karpakynne and the digging monster bee assassin were leaning on the back of Starami’s true dragon. Captain Karpakynne reached into her pouch and pulled out a piece of honeycomb she had requisitioned as supplies. She broke it in half and placed a piece before the assassin before digging in herself.

“By all that’s sweet, how many stings can this dumb lizard take?!”

The digging monster bee assassin didn’t answer, just kept lapping up honey to restore her mana as best she could. She had a lot more stinging to do, apparently...