POBee 63.1 - The King's Rewards

POBee 63.1 - The King's Rewards

The Daughter of the First of the Fifth laid the last egg her current mana would permit. She gave her workers some space to tend to the new egg. Now that she needed to wait for her mana to return, she took a moment to observe her hive. Or rather, their hive.

As the Fourth of the Seventh’s workers offered to assist her with building her hive in the first place, she had worked up her courage and proposed to build one joint hive. Since they were working together anyways, it didn’t make sense to do the same job twice, she thought. And, on a more selfish note, she thought that if their hives were joined together she would have more opportunities to repay the Fourth of the Seventh for all she had done.

She recalled trembling as she had approached the Fourth of the Seventh with her unthinkable idea. What queen would share a hive with a bee other than her children? There were bees that did that...the cuckoo bees. The evil scourges that refused to produce anything of value and stole the work of others. She had prepared a full dance routine to explain her reasoning, and how her intentions were purely to improve the efficiency of both their hives. How she would never, under any circumstances, even think of exploiting the Fourth of the Seventh’s efforts, and how she fully intended to contribute back in excess of what she had received.

But, when she first asked the question, the Fourth of the Seventh cut her off and said...

“Ok!”

And now they were working together. She and her mighty savior. In a grove filled with mana flowers and protected by vast chasms, built specifically for them by the King himself. A clear sign of his favor, one that would surely please her mother greatly once she was ready to report on their progress. And that the Daughter admitted made her feel quite happy in and of itself.

She watched as her workers returned with nectar brimming with mana...including workers from the generation she feared she would lose. Instead, they were now the most numerous and energetic of her laborers yet.

And it was all thanks to the Fourth of the Seventh.

Speaking of which, one of the Fourth of the Seventh’s workers now approached her. The one who had approached her from the start and coordinated their hives efforts. The Daughter and the worker greeted one another. And then...the worker paused. She seemed hesitant to start her next dance. The Daughter crawled forward and gently brushed antenna against the worker. Their mana and pheromones had clashed at first, but at this point the hives had started to acclimate to one another. They knew they did not belong to each other, and yet they were not strangers or rivals. So, the worker relaxed and slowly began to dance.

“Other Queen...have request. Hives stabilizing, move complete. Queen had plan before move, wanted to use soldiers and copy King. Can let her start again? Might have less workers, honey from us...”

The Daughter froze...and then immediately began to dance. She was surprised by the request, but she once she realized what was being asked, she did not spend even a single moment thinking about it.

“Yes! Of course! My hive, growing well. Don’t need extra help. Can give help instead. Will give help!”

The moment she could begin repaying her savior had arrived sooner than she had ever imagined. The worker began a dance of gratitude and apology, and then the worker and the queen of two hives began to plan their future honey production and expenditures...

And this time...as they flew from the mana flowers and landed on the healing herbs, some of the initial pollen they had gathered was lost. This was intentional, even, in accordance with the new instincts they had received. They rubbed their wings and legs together, scraping a bit of the pollen off and even adjusting the tiny-lightnings on their bodies so that the pollen wouldn’t stick as well. And then they flew off to return their resources to their queen and hive.

The pollen from the mana flower pulsed faintly with a subtle glow from the mana still contained within it. This glow then entered into the center of the flower, which began to close. The flower quickly wilted...and a faintly glowing seed dropped from its head into the patch.

The next day, the First of the Fifth’s workers would pause as they arrived at the healing herb patch. A new flower had appeared, reminiscent of the other healing herbs, but glowing with a soft, blue-green light...

The First of the Fifth was beside herself, dancing about in a rapid, meaningless dance over the cells filled with the latest batch of nectar...something that was entirely new.

This...was beyond anything she had ever imagined. The instincts granted to her by the King were not for the sake of producing excellent honey, which explained why she couldn’t bring the quality of the blended batches up to standard. No...they were for something else. Something so much more.

An entirely new flower had grown from her workers’ efforts. She tasted the nectar herself. It started in a similar state as finished healing herb honey, infused with mana that resonated with and elevated the medicinal compounds within. But it went even further than her bees did, the mana not only elevated but adjusted those compounds at a fundamental level, granting them new and greater effects than could be achieved in a mundane plant.

This nectar could be processed into healing herb honey through basic concentration and evaporation, with no need for her workers to imbue it with their mana at all.

And if they did so anyways, running through the process with the maximum effort and precision the First of the Fifth always strove to achieve? This could be the First of the Fifth’s greatest achievement yet.

She and the King had now collaborated not merely to produce new honeys from new flowers...they had changed the very landscape itself and brought to life a new and powerful flower never before scene in his lands. He and her hive, working together, had done this.

And what’s more...who was to say this would be the last such achievement? There were the poison flowers, and the new flowers that radiated heat. There were those useless flowers in the Flower Meadow, though the First of the Fifth didn’t see much hope there. And there was an entirely new room filled with fruiting trees. What other flowers could result if her workers continued to pass between them?

The First of the Fifth’s mind raced as she considered how to prioritize her efforts. She would need to have the mixed foragers passing between as many different flowers as they could. At the same time, she now had multiple new flowers to produce honey from, that she would then need to refine and iterate upon until it reached a quality suitable to serve the King. She just had so much to do.

It was at this moment that she received word that contact had been reestablished with the Fourth of the Seventh’s and her daughter’s workers...