Chapter 183: Chapter 183
After checking the new bees in the Apiary, Belissar made his way to the bumblebee meadow, both to check on things and because he just liked watching the bumblebees zip around him. He approached to find the workers as usual, leisurely making their way from flower to flower. Each one he approached stopped to fly a few circles around him before resuming their work.
Still, he didn’t want to disrupt them too much, so he quickly made his way to the nests to greet the queens and then move on with his day. As he did, though he heard a loud thrumming noise. Less like the buzz of normal bees, and more like tree leaves rustling in heavy winds. He looked up to find a large shadow blocking out the sun, and then four heavy shapes landed before him with a thud. His eyes widened.
Several massive bumblebees now stood on the ground before him. They were different sizes, but even the smallest was as large as a lancer, while the largest was even bigger than a large dog. They had their stingers extended, each as large as a dagger…or larger.
The queens flew out of their nests shortly after. Belissar turned to them in a daze.
“Are these…bumblebee soldiers?”
The oldest queen flew one circle around him to confirm.
The queen flew one more circle around him before releasing some mana-laden pheromones to convey additional information. Belissar’s eyes went even wider.
“They’re…not done growing? Even the big one?”
The mana of his home hive was particularly chaotic. The river from his queen mother was weaker than usual, flowing much further away as she was currently out of the hive. The mana of his worker sisters, however, were stronger than normal to compensate, while the first communer was keeping up a main river in the queen’s absence. Their system, therefore, was more like a system of smaller rivers than a single circuit, many smaller cycles joining together into a larger whole.
This, however, was in contrast to the other queen and her kin. The other queen kept up a powerful and orderly flow, with each worker joining and breaking off at specific points. A well-ordered circuit without a bee out of place, where even the eggs and the larva were strategically placed to help the river flow.
Or at least, those ideas were what the first communer and the queen was trying to do. The two river systems were colliding as the joint hive mixed and interacted. Sometimes the flows were able to mix together without too much trouble, but in other places they collided and formed whirling rapids. The communers seemed to congregate at those locations, giving instructions through physical dances rather than via mana. One such location was right by the drone, in fact.
His eyes fixed upon the chaotic swirl. There was something about it that drew his attention, something that triggered the few instincts he was born with. Before he knew it, he found himself crawling towards the swirl. His antennae twitched and then stretched out in the direction of heaviest mana concentration.
And then, suddenly, a bit of the mana swirl brushed against his antennae…and locked onto it. Mana from the swirl began to split, mana from the two hives now separating and streaming into his two antennae, one type of mana for each. The drone panicked and crawled back, the last thing he wanted was to take the hive’s mana on top of its honey. Unfortunately, he could not stop whatever process had begun as the mana stream only intensified, the swirl unraveling into two separate streams flowing into him.
The chaotic whirl reappeared within his body as the two streams collided within him, with his own mana joining in and twisting around them, condensing them down. And then…mana began to flow from his body, surging back out into the hive’s flow of mana. A single stream of mana instead of two.
The drone fell flat against the hive, hoping that whatever he did had not disrupted the hive. Unfortunately, those hopes were quickly dashed as he saw the first communer and the other queen rushing towards him. The queen started dancing before she even fully arrived.
“Drone! You did this?!”
The drone wanted to fly away but he managed to dance out a confirmation. The queen whirled towards the arriving communer.
“Fourth of the Seventh’s communer, can feel?!”
The first communer stumbled as she slowly danced.
“Yes can feel…other queen? Can see other workers…”
The other queen, the First of the Fifth’s First Daughter, suddenly burst out into a rapid dance.
“Amazing! Incredible! Can feel Fourth of the Seventh’s hive! No…AM part of Fourth of the Seventh’s hive now!”
The drone froze, uncertain what to make of this turn of events. The First of the Fifth’s First Daughter then rushed over to him, practically twisting their antennae together.
“Drone! You did, right? Can do again?!”