Captain Karpakynne hovered before the Royal Pixie Guard, one of the old lances of the Order of Hive and Stinger in hand.
“Alright! Listen up, girls and boys! Today is the day when we separate the girls from the women and the boys from the men! Today is the day when we stop playing around and fight a real battle, with nothing but cold steel and guts!”
One of the guard tilted his head.
“Nothing? But, isn’t this room filled with traps? Couldn’t we just lure the shades onto them?”
Captain Karpakynne’s gaze snapped onto the speaker as she scowled. She thrust her spear in his direction.
“No banquet for you!”
The guard immediately zipped around in a panic.
“Wait, no! Not that! Anything but that! I’ll fight, I’ll fight!”
Captain Karpakynne scoffed.
“It’s that lack of grit that I’m trying to fix in the first place!”
Her expression suddenly went neutral, with no hint of either mirth nor passion. Her eyes went cold, and her voice dropped to barely more than a whisper.
“And…our queen intends to reclaim the world from the Hunger. What do you all think that means? Do you think she can do that without making us face the shades? Do you think Her Majesty herself would have retreated to the land of the fair if it was as simple as tricking them into a pit? Do you remember what happened the last time we tried to fight? What happened to the Knights of the Roses, or the Order of Hive and Stinger, or the bolt benders of the storm pixies?”
The Royal Pixie Guard went silent and several of them shivered. Some even began to tear up. Captain Karpakynne let the silence hang over the group for a moment.
“…the fight is real now. We’re not just playing pranks on stuck-up silver elves anymore. And the bees here, the ones that make that amazing honey, the ones we play with in the name of training? They’re flying right into the jaws of the Hunger. You’ve all seen that Memorial, right? Felt the mana lingering around it? You’ve seen the number of bees carved upon its pillars, haven’t you?”
She glared at the other pixies.
“Do you plan to let the Hunger do to them what it did to all the rest? Will you let them fight alone?”
Pixie warriors glared through their tears and ground their teeth. One let out a shout…and then another, and another, until Captain Karpakynne had an angry mob of pixies waving around little swords and spears. She nodded at them, turned to face the door of the Tower ahead of them, and pointed her spear forward.
“Then forward, Royal Guards of Queen Vanieskon and the Pixie Court! Let us stop this invasion of the Bee Tower with the strength of our arms!” Follow current novels on Nov3lFɪre.ɴet
Shortly thereafter, the Tower Keeper started a purification. A wolf shade formed and stepped into the Tower…and found a cloud of shimmering dust thrown right into its face. A mob of pixies jumped on its back as it roared and pawed at its face, stabbing it repeatedly with their little weapons. Captain Karpakynne made a small smile as she backed away and pointed her lance forward.
“Utterly sloppy but…now, finally, we are on the attack against the Hunger. Niellare, you and your hives did not die in vain, the bees fly to battle once again. And the pixies fly with them!”
She imbued the lance with her mana as she spoke. The black and yellow striped bulge near its handle converted her raw mana into a potent magical venom, the whole lance making a buzzing noise once the bulge was full. Captain Karpakynne then beat her wings and flew as fast as she could, thrusting the lance straight into the distracted shade’s eye.
And so the Royal Pixie Guard completed a minor purification on their own, hardly even using their magic.
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Belissar stretched his arms over his head as he left the meeting grove. The day was growing late by the time the signatories finished their discussion. He even had to trigger the late afternoon purification remotely as well, though his defenders insisted on waiting for him before starting the celebration afterwards. He would have to hurry home…not only to start the celebration, but because the signatories planned to meet again tomorrow! The discussion on the sigmaka may have finished, but the signatories now needed to review Nenavann’s proposed changes to the Circle of Dungeon Masters’ code.
Belissar was slowly beginning to realize that he might end up spending more time in the Compact than not…for he was now one of the signatories himself. He would no longer be waiting for them to make decisions and get back to him, he was now supposed to be there to make those decisions in the first place. Which…was a good thing, he supposed, but it did take him away from his tower. He would thus need to make the best of the time he could spend at home. He would need to ask Chief Rohsuak to meet with the sigmaka and inform them that the Compact wished to speak with them, as well as arrange a meeting place for the sigmaka and the fair folk’s delegation if they agreed to speak…all on top of keeping track of the bees, the karnuq, the spiderkin, the humans, the challengers, the purifications, the missions from the gods…
“Hi Belissar! Finally done?”
Tarwantrad’s cheerful greeting broke Belissar out of his thoughts and caused him to blink twice.
“Oh, hi Tarwantrad. You’re still here? Did you wait here this whole time?!”
She waved him off with a smile.
“It’s fine, I expected as much, so I just watched and took care of my dungeon in the meantime. Besides…you’re not fully comfortable in the Compact yet, are you? I didn’t want you to have to make your way home alone.”
Belissar blinked again before slowly beginning to smile.
With Tarwantrad’s guidance, he made it home without issue and started the celebration banquet. The pixies were particularly elated, having taken care of the afternoon purification on their own. Belissar was especially curious about the lance Captain Karpakynne used, apparently its bee-markings weren’t just for show.
He also made sure to praise the bees a great deal and let them know that he trusted them, to many a happy dance. A dance that reminded him what all his efforts were for…
The next morning, Niobee got up early and flew out of King’s hive. King would be going to the Bee-yond again today to talk with all the rude and evil ones that made him feel bad, though luckily there were enough nice ones that Niobee was willing not to sting them all just yet. But Niobee definitely wouldn’t let King face them alone, so she had to be ready to leave with him.
That, unfortunately, meant she had to spend the morning getting her other work done while she could. In this case: helping the drones…
Niobee flew over to the hive of the fallen, where once again a small group of drones and communers were waiting.
“Hi, drones and communers! Try dance with mana again!”
Niobee watched as the drones and communers tried, once more, to dance with mana. The communers could connect with mana, but their dances were just dances. They passed on messages, but didn’t seem to do anything to the bees receiving them.
The drones, surprisingly, shockingly, utterly unexpectedly, were having better luck. Like they were better at doing things with mana than communers! Niobee still didn’t know how that could be the case, but she guessed that maybe First Dronecaster’s example was helping. The drones, however, had a different problem, in that they couldn’t regenerate their mana, which made it hard for them to practice doing things without using up lots and lots of honey. Niobee buzzed her wings at this. Of course, drones couldn’t do things without eating even more of the honey than they already took!
She calmed herself down, though, since King had already taught her that drones did actually have a job and weren’t wasting all that honey they ate before being kicked out after all. So, she set aside her old worker instincts regarding them and focused on what she could do to help. If only there was a way to get the drones mana besides eating honey…
Niobee paused…and then suddenly began spinning about. There was! There were several ways, even! Niobee saw everything that happened in the Tower, after all, so she knew! The karnuq and humans got mana they didn’t have from the queens of all things! And the moving hives had mana but didn’t eat any honey! The bees just had to make a core out of wax and mana that could then provide mana for them!
Niobee then began to dance.
“Drones, split up. Half go to Queen of All Bees and ask if can have mana. Other half split up more, go to First of the Fifth’s Fourth and Seventh Daughters and ask to teach how make mana core. If works, can make mana without eating honey!”
The drones all perked up and happily danced salutes before flying off. Niobee watched as they flew off as fast as they could. She could feel them today like she never could before, through the Tower’s mana, through all the communers in the area, and through the hive-link. So, today, she could feel how…eager they were to see if her ideas would work. How eager they were to find jobs and contribute to the hive of hives. How bad they felt about not having jobs and eating honey.
Her antennae drooped. She…hadn’t realized that. She thought the drones were just eating the honey without a care until the workers kicked them out. But…it turned out…the drones knew what the hive of hives was spending on them too. And they wanted to help in turn…as all good bees of the hive of hives should.
Niobee’s wings fluttered and she cleaned her antennae. King…was right after all. The drones were bees too.
Niobee decided…she wouldn’t give up until she found a way to help the drones too.