The First of the Fifth would admit she had been…distracted of late. After all, the King could make drones. Drones! The queens had not much considered the implications of the King’s spell-bees before. The King had spawned all of them already, had he not? And besides, the spell-bees only lasted for a moment, a few minutes at best.
But this…this was different. The King had spawned all of them…but through the spawners. They came from Tower, not from the King himself. It might be more accurate to say they came from the Conduit at the King’s command, the First of the Fifth wasn’t sure. But the spell-bees…the spell-bees came directly from the King, formed by him out of his own mana.
And so, the spell-drones. Spell-bees may only last for a moment…but so did drones, both vanishing after their task was done. So, the King’s spell-drones may not be different from any other. No, come to think of it, the King’s spell-honey and spell-wax persisted while Beero’s own vanished with time. The King’s spell constructs were…more real, in some manner they could not yet identify. It stood to reason the King’s spell-drones were more real as well…so, perhaps, they could do the original jobs that drones were meant to. And that meant hypothetically the hive of hives could raise a new generation of queens…with mana from the King himself.
Well, the idea was incredible…but it was not something the queens would propose themselves. How could they? Who among them deserved to raise queens with the King's own mana? No, surely the King already knew what he could do and had not proposed the idea for a reason. It was not her place to question him on that. And there was always the possibility that spell drones were not suitable for that task at all, so the First of the Fifth did her best not to dwell on the idea.
But then, that was not all that drones could do and not what the King had used his spell drones for. Drones could enable different hives to become one…and this worked with the Kinghimself. The Fourth of the Seventh and even some of her own daughters, if temporarily, had formed a joint hive with the King, saw the world through his eyes while he graced every bee in her hive with his presence.
The First of the Fifth was…incredibly envious, if she were honest. To grow closer to the King in such a manner…what bee in the hive of hives wouldn’t want that? She could only hope that one day the King would grant her such an honor as well.
But, at the very least, some of her own daughters had participated. She tried to content herself with that for now and get back to work. So, with great effort of will, she turned her attention back to her most recent project. She watched a wax cell as a bee started to emerge from it and the brood tenders moved to assist.
Experimenting with new bee types and bee hybridization had recently taken a pause. The evolution of the first dronecaster had been a revelation: with a heavier initial expenditure of honey the hive of hives could have drones that didn’t die, allowing them to raise new queens at will after raising one generation of drones…and thanks to the drones’ ability to Visit NovelHub for more amazing novels and chapters. All they had to do was grant them some of the First of the Fifth’s swirled honey and wait for the drones to evolve.
Unfortunately, that meant that until the drones evolved they could not raise any new queens. They were not willing to sacrifice the drones unnecessarily, not least of all because the King clearly did not want them to die. So all new queens, and bee hybridization attempts, were on hold.
She had succeeded in raising a new type of bee! She had resumed her experiments raising workers on the honey of one type of flower and pollen of another. She figured that those that succeeded could be evolved into either broodmothers or honeypots, which could subsequently provide the honey for later queens once the drones were finished evolving. In this case, she had tried a combination of healing herb honey and pollen from the poisonous flowers that produced mad mana honey.
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The broodtenders brought the new bee over to her and she brushed her new child with her antennae, observing the new type more closely with her mana. From what she could tell, the worker was mostly a medicinal type, but with bits and traces of the maddening venom in her medicinal stings. She…wasn’t certain if that was a good thing or not, but decided she’d present the new bee to the King anyways. He would know best how she would fit into the hive of hives, he always seemed to find a place for every kind of bee they could raise.
And raise more she would. She glanced towards the cell the new bee had emerged from, to all the cells surrounding it. Each containing a different combination of honey and pollen…and some of which were starting to hatch.
If all went well, the First of the Fifth would soon have much to show the King…
Over by the hive of the fallen in the battle meadow, Beero, the dronecaster, and a second battlecaster stood on the roof of their hive. Beero stirred up her mana and formed it into a circle of lightning above her. The battlecaster then danced and began to form the pattern for a lightning sting.
Then, finally, the dronecaster began to dance and form a pattern of his own, a shape of honeycomb Beero didn’t recognize. When the pattern completed, a stream of mana reached out to Beero’s lightning circle. It began to pull and the lightning surged from her circle into the pattern. The dronecaster danced again and his pattern now reached out to the other battlecaster’s.
Beero felt a sudden jerk on her mana and she lost control. The lightning circle above her crackled and arced. Beero quickly formed it into a lightning sting pattern before it could strike any of the three and launched it into the air. Her antennae drooped.
The dronecaster crawled over and brushed her antennae.
“Is ok, failed too. New pattern hard.”
Indeed, they were trying something completely new. The ward one had showed them an entirely new kind of magic yesterday, one that could persist and protect the hive of hive in perpetuity. Needless to say, Beero and the dronecaster had immediately set out to try and learn this new kind of magic.
The first problem they ran into was that they needed some sort of mana transfer spell. The first ward the ward one had showed them was a pattern for supplying mana to other wards. This was apparently a necessity, since the wards would be left outside of the caster’s body and disconnected from their mana, they needed someway to move mana through it. The bees, however, had no such spell at present…and previously had no need of one. Bees of the same hive naturally shared mana with each other, while bees of different hives could be connected via drones. But these processes were instinctual and so required no particular spell pattern to achieve…which mean they now had to figure one out from scratch.
And that would be difficult enough, even if Beero was fully focused on the task.
“No, is my fault. Sorry, am distracted…”
She was not. The dronecaster brushed her antennae again.
Beero slowly danced a confirmation. She had learned recently that the King could make spell-drones. The other queens were excited at the possibility that King could provide drones for new queens, but Beero couldn’t even get that far. No, for Beero, the King’s spell represented something far more fundamental.
The King, who was not a bee queen, could raise workers and soldiers and drones of his own. Constructs of mana that did not last very long, yes…but if what the queens believe was true, then still capable of performing the duties of real, flesh and blood bees. Beero could not help but wonder if she could one day do the same. She was supposedly a queen but incapable of laying healthy and viable eggs. What she could do, however, was magic. So, if there was a way to create functioning bees with spells…then perhaps she could do it too.
Perhaps she could perform the role assigned to her in full. Perhaps she could do with magic what she could not with her body…just like how she had learned to fight when crippled.
The dronecaster grabbed her attention with a dance.
“Want to practice King’s spell?”
But Beero had to decline.
“King showed us ward one’s magic, asked us to learn. Have to learn first. Trying to learn two new patterns at same time much more difficult.”
The dronecaster paused, his antennae twitching for a bit. After a few minutes, he finally started another dance.
“Maybe King asked because ward one’s magic will help Beero too?”
Beero buzzed her wings as her own antennae twitched, so the dronecaster elaborated.
“King can make spell-bees but don’t last long. Ward one’s magic makes spells last long. If combine…”
Beero joined in on the dronecaster’s dance, finishing his steps for him.
“…then can make spell-bees that last long. Can make…spell-hive that works like regular hive! THAT’S IT!”
Beero shot into the air and began zipping around the dronecaster.
“AMAZING! INCREDIBLE! DRONECASTER IS BEST DRONECASTER! KING IS BEST KING!”
The dronecaster stumbled but managed to get a dance out.
“G-Glad could help Beero…”
Beero shot back down to brush the dronecaster’s antennae repeatedly.
“Dronecaster always helps! Is best help! Now let Beero help figure out ward one’s magic!”
And so, Beero and the dronecaster leapt back into the practice, with Beero now fully focused and motivated…