With one new flower now planted, Belissar had no excuse not to address the second. He took a deep breath, steeled his heart, and then made his way to the core room with Niobee, the First of the Fifth, and some gardeners. He walked to the pedestal in the center and crouched down where he left the flask of ambrosia, picking up the Heart of the Forest from the top of the flask.
He blinked as he looked down at the seed in his hand.
“Was this glowing before?”
The seed appeared to have a soft glow of mixed gold and green light. Niobee danced with the other bees before replying.
“Didn’t see when King left here! First of the Fifth and gardeners say was glowing when they saw!”
Belissar blinked again.
He ended up shrugging. He had no idea what, if anything, it meant for the seed to glow. It was clearly already a special, magical thing he didn’t understand. But since it had been glowing when the gardeners arrived, he figured they’d have warned him if it was anything dangerous.
He turned to them now.
Belissar nodded and took another deep breath. He slowly opened the flask and carefully, ever so carefully, dripped a single drop onto the palm of his hand. He held it out for the First of the Fifth. The golden dropped began to sparkle in the light of the core.
“This…is honey from the God of Bees, if I’m not mistaken.”
All dances in the room immediately ceased and the buzzing of wings dropped to the absolute minimum necessary to remain airborne.
“Could you…check this?”
The First of the Fifth trembled but slowly began to wobble forward. She gently landed on his hand, crawling one step at a time towards the drop. She slowly unfolded her proboscis and gingerly extended her tongue to take one, single, small lap from the drop.
And then she immediately began to dance as rapidly as she could. The steps were unintelligible but Belissar could tell she was happy. After a few minutes she suddenly came to a halt, before beginning a solemn dance.
“Amazing. Incredible. Queen of All Bees’ honey best honey. Want to make honey as good for King, but can’t.”
Belissar gave her a smile.
“Your honey is amazing. So…we can’t use this honey?”
The First of the Fifth danced one round of a happy dance and then stood still for a bit before replying.
“If bees drink now, can make stronger, help evolve. But bees can’t evolve to make. Not strong enough, not enough mana, and missing…something. Not sure what.”
Her antennae and wings drooped.
“Sorry. Not good enough for King…”
Belissar placed down the flask and used that hand to brush her while shaking his head.
“You’re more than good enough, all of you. Here, why don’t you drink the rest of that drop? You’ve done great. Here, you too, Niobe.”
The First of the Fifth and Niobee immediately began to object but Belissar remained firm even as he poured out another drop. Eventually, the two bees conceded and lapped up the ambrosia drops, immediately taking off and zipping through the air. Most of their dance was unintelligible again, but this time he caught some “King best king!” moves in between. He chuckled and smiled at the bees.
“Then, shall we find a place to plant a new seed?”
All the bees saluted as one.
Belissar made his way to his first potential planting location for the Heart of the Forest. He smiled as he was tackled by a bunch of fuzzy bumblebee queens, rubbing their fur as they climbed all over him.
“I’m happy to see you too.”
Once the bumblebee queens had calmed down, Niobee flew over and conferred with them. It took only a second before the bumblebee queens took off and began zipping circles around him at maximum speed. Belissar was, therefore, not surprised when Niobee gave the verdict.
“Bumblebees say yes! Excited for new home!”
Belissar made a wry smile. Well, he wasn’t entirely convinced the bumblebees hadn’t just agreed since he was asking, but he also didn’t expect them to object. It was the reason he had come here first, after all.
There were three existing Flower Meadows in the Tower that he could plant the Heart of the Forest in, with one empty room slot if he needed to make a fourth. He figured, both from the Tower’s description and the gardeners’ analysis, that the Heart of the Forest would begin turning its surroundings into, well, a forest, so he had to take that into account when choosing where to plant it.
He ruled out the battle meadow since it would place the Heart of the Forest in harm’s way, after Nenavann had specifically asked him to take care of it. Additionally, he wanted to keep the battle meadow’s skies open for the bee army to fly through without obstructions. They already had the battle Fairy Grove if they needed a forest to fight in, so converting the battle meadow into a forest didn’t seem like a good idea. Though, Belissar would have to consider whether the second Fairy Grove could remain a battle room now that he had to keep the nexus door there open…
But that was something to consider for later. Besides the battle meadow were the karnuq and bumblebee meadows. Of those, he felt it would be disruptive to the karnuq to turn their home room into a forest. It was, at least, something he would have to speak to Chief Rohsuak about before trying. He’d have asked if he needed to…but he figured he had a better option available.
Regular bumblebees lived in forests to begin with, so Belissar guessed that the bumblebees wouldn’t particularly mind if a bunch of trees grew in their room. And since the implication was that the Heart of the Forest would make plants around it grow better, Belissar hoped its presence would prove beneficial to any bees around it.