The Bee Dungeon

The Firstborn of the First Dynasty of the Fifth Spawner, the first of her line, paced about after laying another egg. She was...troubled by recent events.

She was the favored of the King, that was the truth. He had granted her rulership of a mighty keep just beyond the gates of his own abode. She was the first of the queens to offer him tribute, each and every day. It was the honey of her children that graced his table. And she was the first queen that he greeted each and every day.

And she had been the first to receive his blessing. He crafted for her a hive with his very own hands, turning towering trees into a dwelling without equal. When he was finished, he inspected her brood personally to ensure their safety and comfort. Ultimately, he was not satisfied, and spawned guards of his own, tasked with the defense of his favored queens.

She was truly the most favored of all bee-kind. The first queen, above all others. Well, the Conduit had the honor of serving the King directly and spoke with his voice, but in the end, she was not a queen. The Conduit was the King's worker, and the First of the Fifth was his queen, and the queen knew which was preferable.

And yet...she had recently learned of troubling developments.

The queens of the First through Forth Spawners were not like her, or any of her siblings and peers. They were simple, barbaric even. They lived on the outskirts, far beyond the King's abode at the very edges of his territory. They lived in humble hives of their own make, blessed not by the constructions of the King. They dwelled not within his sight. They rarely offered tribute, he never dined upon their labor.

And it was only natural. They produced the barest fraction of even the least of the Apiary queens. They barely produced enough honey to feed themselves! And moreover...the First of them bore the title of the Second Dynasty. A declaration of shame, a reminder that it was the bees of their spawner who had failed to defend the King, and perished in vain. And to make it worse, those of the First through Forth spawners had been present for the Second Invasion. It was said that the King fought personally in that dreadful time and slew the invader with his own hand. A testament to the might of the King...and to the weakness of all the queens that lived then. Where were their hives when the King was threatened? Where were their armies when the invader assaulted his realm? It was little wonder they had been cast from the King's sight, exiled to the outskirts of his domain.

Or so the First of the Fifth had thought.

That the queens of the Flower Meadow had produced soldiers of their own was known to the First of the Fifth. She had assumed this was a desperate act of necessity. Those who were not blessed with the protection of the King had to fend for themselves. It was yet another sign of their impoverishment. The First of the Fifth would admit the soldiers were an impressive sight...but a wasteful one. They could not gather the nectar. They could not process the honey. They could not take care of the brood. They were nothing but a drain upon their colony, they consumed that which should be offered to the King. The First of the Fifth would not make that mistake.

And she was proven right. Word of the Third Invasion came...and the bees of the Flower Meadow were utterly unprepared. In their panic to boost their defenses, their meager stores ran dry, long before the invader was due to arrive. They would have starved, had the Conduit not convinced the First of the Fifth to offer charity. It was only by her grace that they survived, for it would not do for any claimed by the King to perish against his command. And as she opened the endless stores of her hive and let the honey flow, she demonstrated once and for all the diligence and strength of her offspring, the reason why she was the favored queen.

It was when her workers returned that she learned of the first doubt.

She had not bothered to scout the outer realm, for why would she? Surely there was little there that would matter to her, the one who dwelt in the abundance of the King's own home. Surely the impoverished queens there required every meager scrap they could find.

The reports of her workers told a different story. They spoke of a land of plenty, flowers as far as the eye could see. And worse...they spoke of a treasure beyond imagining. Mana flowers whose nectar overflowed with power, that did not require the mana of the workers to produce honey suitable for the brood.

The First of the Fifth was confused by this. A treasure such as that should have enabled any competent queen to match...or maybe even surpass her own brood. They should have been capable of fielding an endless tide of workers, and with the abundant fields her workers reported they should have been able to construct truly grand hives. She did not believe that even those disgraced queens would be so incompetent as to starve when they had access to such a treasure. She assumed they had warred amongst themselves for control of it...but the reports indicated their brood were working together.

Even the First of the Fifth had to wonder...had the King truly exiled them into a place of such abundance?

And then came the battle.

The First of the Fifth had her scouts observe. They returned and gushed with fantastic tales of giant bee warriors flying circles around a monster more terrible than even the spider or the hornet. The creature was felled before it even reached any of the King's defenses. The armies of the Flower Meadow queens had stopped it all on their own.

And then came the ceremony.

The King gathered the fallen with his own hands and gave what he called "honor" to them. He carved the titles of the Flower Meadow queens into towering monuments. He carried a wounded soldier on his own shoulder.

The First of the Fifth was despondent at this. The exiled ones had received honors even she, the favored queen, had not. The strength of their arms and the gratitude they had earned called into question all she had ever known. At best...the queens of the Flower Meadows had redeemed themselves and more in the eyes of the King. Perhaps they would even be welcomed back into his abode.

At worst...she was wrong about their exile in the first place. Perhaps they did not dwell in the outskirts because the King was disappointed in them...but because he trusted them the most. Because he believed that they could defend themselves, a trust they had fulfilled. Why else would he grant them such grand treasures such as the mana flowers? Why else would he show them such honor when it was all said and done?

Had she been wrong all along? Did the King care more about stingers than honey? Was she kept near to him not because she was favored...but because she was weak? Untrustworthy?

The First of the Fifth could not remain still. She paced about every moment she was awake, even as her workers tried to calm her. But how could she be calm? All that she had worked for, all that she had built may have been for naught if she had misunderstood so greatly!

Until...she felt it. The rumblings in the ground and sky, the mana of the King stirring to create wonders. She flew out of her hive, wishing to see what had occurred with her own eyes.

And what she saw did not disappoint.

A glowing field of flowers stretched out before her. Countless mana flowers grew before her, nothing like the lone flower here or there the Flower Meadow queens scrounged from. No, there were so many of them their mana began to coalesce and shimmer in the air.

This...this was an abundance an entire dynasty could be built upon.

She glanced at the King. Before, she would have had no question as to his intent to favor her. But now...she could not help the creeping doubt. Was this a boon for them? Or did the King have other intentions with all this she could not see?

But he smiled at her, a sight that brightened the world like the dawn.

"Go ahead, I made it for you all."

The First of the Fifth nearly fell from the sky as she ordered her hive to swarm upon the flowers below.

Shortly thereafter, the First of the Fifth watched as her workers filled row after row of wax cells with glistening honey. She danced about happily as she drank from the honey packed to the brim with mana and felt her own reserves grow.

She had not been wrong. She was truly the favored of the King. She saw now his wisdom, the intent of his designs. She was the favored...and that meant that she was precious. She had to be protected. So, the King had grown the Flower Meadow queens, such that they might sacrifice in her defense. And he tested the mana flowers upon them, to ensure the gift was suitable for her. Once he had, he had granted her an abundance of the treasures beyond the Flower Meadow queen's wildest dreams.

And that wasn't all.

He had also created fields of new flowers, types the queen had never seen. And as her workers processed the nectar from these new plants, she found the honey they produced possessed new and mysterious qualities, types entirely unlike the honey they had produced before now.

As she had expected, it was honey that ruled all. The King wanted her to expand her production in ways never before conceived. And he had granted them an overabundance of the mana flowers so that she would have as many workers as she needed to do it. Her wings buzzed as she looked over the different trays of honey, each possessing honey made from a different source.

She truly was favored above all. She would go forth and work without doubts from now on, confident that she, more than any other, understood the King.

...at least until the scouts returned with reports that the King had done the same thing in the Flower Meadow, that is...