The Bee Dungeon
Chapter 286: The Second Wave Bee-gins...

The Hunger surged at the entrance of Belissar’s Tower once more, as it did at the start of each purification. But this time, rather than being halted by the Tower’s power, it flowed along the trail of Hunger the swarm had left behind. It poured through the Dirt Tunnels, unhindered by Pit Traps or disabled Sticky Honey Traps. It rushed through the Lava Field, the mini-volcano now dark and silent. Before long, it arrived to the Bog, traveling the half of the room the ant swarm had covered before their demise.

It finally hit the end of the trail and there the Tower’s mana shone bright once again. The Hunger screeched and tendrils lashed, but it burned away as it tried to flow any further. Instead, it began to pile up at the end point…and soon, shades were condensing once again, right in the middle of the Bog.

The bee army and their allies had already pulled back, though. With only half the Bog left, they decided not to risk a committed defense against an unknown shade. A handful of wardens, pixies, and bees remained behind to probe and ambush the next shade, including the swimming and slime bees, but the bulk of the army withdrew to the two defense rooms they had left: the Fairy Grove and then the battle meadow itself.

Meanwhile, the condensing Hunger rose into the air, past the fog on the ground the pixies had maintained. Belissar’s eyes narrowed.

“Watch out everyone, it can probably fly.”

And then, Belissar’s heart sank. A triangular head emerged with two big eyes and a ring of smaller ones all the way around. Two Hunger tendrils took the place of antennae, writhing about, while spiky mandibles clacked below. Buzzing sounded through the room…and not from his bees. Did he…have to fight bees today?

Fortunately, the rest of the shade emerged and Belissar realized from its slender, sleek, and hairless body that it was a wasp instead. He let out a sigh of relief. He knew he was being silly and that a shade of the Hunger would not be the bees he loved…but he was not mentally prepared for that battle.

He could only hope he was prepared for this one. The wasp shade had spikes and sharp angles all over its chitinous body and a pair of mantis blades on its front legs in addition to its normal mandibles and stingers. It was huge, too, as big as one of the lancer bees. And, worst of all, it was not alone. A full twenty of the shades formed before the coalescing Hunger was spent.

Wave 2 begun. Remaining hostiles: 20.

Belissar relayed as much to the bees. The soldier bees left behind had already started their dive, though, aiming to hit the shades as they formed. A squad struck one of the wasp shades and it let out a screech.

But it didn’t fall. It spun its head around and snapped at one of the soldier bees, ripping her off its body, though the bee armor she had equipped kept her alive for now. Her squadmates clung to its body as they would a bird shade and tried to sting it again…but without its chitin deflected their stingers. Without the speed of a dive, the soldiers’ stingers couldn’t pierce the wasp shades defenses. Worse still, the sharp edges and spikes along the shade’s body sliced and cut at the soldiers that tried to cling to it. The rest of the squad was forced to break away once their armor barriers broke.

The wasp’s mandibles crunched down on the bee in its grasp until the armor barrier and all the sacrificial artifacts broke, but her body began to glow with the power of the Memorial, preserving her long enough for one last effort. She concentrated all of her mana and the power protecting her into her stinger and swung it upwards. The full force of a Memorial-empowered death blow managed to pierce the wasp’s chitin and stung through its head. The shade screeched even as it finally cut the soldier bee in half before fading into mist.

Remaining hostiles: 19.

Her sacrifice had not been in vain, both sides had drawn blood and Hunger. The rest of the wasp shades, though, had sprung into motion. The next soldier bee squads missed their fast moving targets…and then the shades retaliated. The wasps’ stingers had no trouble piercing soldier bee chitin and neither did the wicked blades on their front legs. The squad was forced onto the run, saved only by the pixie armor, though one of them was cornered until her armor broke as well. She attempted a deathblow but didn't manage to sting any of the shades' heads before she perished.

Belissar ground his teeth together but he knew this was necessary. They only had two defense rooms left, they needed to know what these shades were capable of to arrange the defense. And now, thanks to these soldiers’ sacrifice, they did. Belissar thus dutifully relayed what he was seeing to the rest of his defenders, no matter how much the words pained him.

Sprayer squads tried their luck next, filling the air with their toxins. The wasps they targeted didn’t manage to dodge…but didn’t try to. Instead, they charged through the mist and into the sprayer squad. The sprayers tried to flee but had not expected this response, so their retreat was delayed. The wasps set upon them, the sprayers had no chance to get away...and had not been equipped with the armor since they weren't expected to enter melee. Worse still…if the wasps were affected by the sprayers’ attack, they showed no signs of it. They didn’t even screech as they tore the sprayers apart, not even when one of the sprayers enacted a death burst to shower them all in toxins.

At this point, the queens recalled the ambush force, as the danger was too great for a small number of bees. The bees attempted to flee…but the wasps chased after them and the wasps were faster than them. Fortunately, though, the bees were not alone.

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Arrows shot out from the mist, piercing through a wasp that didn’t change course. It screeched and vanished and then the others broke off their charge. The wardens kept up a barrage, but the shades began quick and erratic changes in direction so no more fell. Still, the bees had safely made it down to the mist. The wasps buzzed but did not pursue them there.

Instead, the wasps made a beeline straight for the room’s exit. The defenders were not fast enough to catch them and the Bog had no obstructions to a flying foe, so there was little they could do to stop them.

With the speed the shades had displayed in open air, the damage they could do to soldier bees had in close combat, and the resilience they had displayed to the sprayers’ attacks, the defenders decided to face them in the Fairy Grove rather than the open air of the battle meadow. The whole army deployed as quickly as they could.

They were not fully gathered when the shades arrived in the room, but the Fairy Grove helped buy them time. The Fairy Grove’s effects worked on the shades as well as it did on the bees and soon the shades were flying in circle. Some tried to fly up past the canopy, but the branches of the trees closed together wherever the shades flew, blocking their path unless they took the time to chew through the branches. The wasps elected not to attempt that, and so were trapped among the tree trunks and branches.

The pixies assisted with this, their magic helping move trees or creating the illusion of more, further confusing the shades. Falling branches from the trees and vines animated by the pixies forced the shades to scatter from one another, which in the Fairy Grove meant they were soon separated entirely. The pixies and Fairy Grove combined even managed to drive two of the wasps towards one of the fairy circles. The pixies hit the circle with a jolt of their mana. The circle burst into a huge spout of water that dowsed the wasps, sending them hurtling to the ground. The pixies hit the circle again and it’s mana shifted to green. The roots of the nearby trees twisted and curled, grabbing the two shades and squeezing the life out of them before they could take back to the air.

And since the shades were flying, not as much of the Hunger coated the ground beneath them as with the ants. It took them much longer to corrupt an area of the Fairy Grove than any ground shade, so the Fairy Grove continued to work its magic upon them while the defenders assembled. Soon, the army was ready to make their move.

Chromatic bees led the way but they hardly needed to. The Fairy Grove itself changed its effect from what Belissar expected. Rather than driving the defenders apart, it seemed to encourage them to stick together, opening up paths in the trees leading straight ahead while closing off paths that would separate them. The wasps had been split by the grove into seven groups of two or three shades each, so the army split up itself to deal with them.

The first group was handled by the battle wardens. Their arrows had already proven effective against the shades. Wardens surrounded three shades in a clearing, creating barrier wards to box them in and showering them with arrows until they fell.

The karnuq did the same, using their own archers to take the shades down at range. Their attempts to surround the shades didn’t go as well, one shade fell to the arrows but two others got into cover amongst the trees before attacking the karnuq. However, a branch the shades were hiding behind suddenly fell without warning, exposing the shades and drawing the karnuq’s attention. One shade was pierced by arrows, the other stabbed by karnuq spears as it tried to dive them.

That left five groups to be handled by the bees. The Firstborn charged straight at one with her monster bee knights at her side. The bee knights were even bigger than the shades, boosted by the powers of their queen, and equipped with pixie bee armor to boot. They took the shades’ stingers head-on and impaled them upon their own, suffering no losses in the process.

The Fourth of the Seventh flew above the canopy with her nomadic and breeze bees, along with the Third of the Third and her construction team. They followed a plan proposed by Captain Karpakynne and flew above a clearing where two shades lurked. The Fourth of the Seventh hovered over the clearing and beat her wings as hard as she could with all her children joining her. A full hive of nomadic and breeze bees created a howling gale that knocked the wasps out of the air and pinned them to the ground. The Third of the Third’s construction team then had no trouble dropping rocks to finish them off.

The fifth group was addressed by Beero and the hive of the fallen. With multiple battlecaster squads, they were able to surround two shades and begin several casts simultaneously. The dronecaster supported Beero’s team and sped up their cast further, allowing them to send out lightning stings before the shades could reach them. Both shades were struck by lightning stingers and brought to the ground, where the battlecasters could hit them again to finish them off.

The sixth group was handled by the monster bee trappers and archers. The archers started barraging two shades from a distance, causing the shades to charge in. The monster bee trappers hid in the branches above and, inspired by the battle with the spiderkin, dropped silk nets down on them. The shades got tangled in the nets, though their various blades and spikes let them cut through them fairly quickly. But the brief instance where they were trapped was enough for the archers to get close enough for their stingers to pierce the wasps’ chitin and that was the end.

The Royal Pixie Guard spread out amidst all the groups, using misdirection and magic barriers to protect their allies from any counterattacks, save for the final group. But that was because the last group already had pixie support of their own. For the last pair of shades was assigned to the bumblebees, the queens believing the bumblebees’ size would help them face the wasps evenly. Finnakynne, still riding on her bumblebee soldier friend, was naturally carried along. She took one look at the wasps charging at them with mandibles snapping and frowned.

“Oh no you don’t!”

Finnakynne waved her hands to either side of her and then thrust them forward. Nectar, sap, and pollen drained out of the nearby trees and flowers and flooded towards the two wasp in airborne streams. The barrage did nothing to the wasps’ chitin…but the sticky fluids and pollen clung to the wasps’ wings and slowed them down. Eventually, the shades drifted down from the sky, unable to maintain their lift. They were easy prey for giant bumblebee soldiers and their big stingers.

And then all the bumblebee soldiers began zipping around Finnakynne in a circle of fuzz. Finnakynne blinked…and then smiled shyly.

“Ah…um…your welcome?”

The bumblebees replied with faster zipping and loud buzzing.