The Bee Dungeon

PONon-Bee 377.3 - The Bee-sults of a Lifetime

Starami tried to dive down towards the fey Tower Lord from above, where even the giant waves couldn’t reach him. He unleashed a concentrated breath of fire, the same sort that had pierced through the fey’s fortress.

The fey replied with a water cyclone, surrounding Starami with steam as his fire breath cut through it. The fey dove back under the water where a powerful current pulled him out of the path of the fire breath. Starami clicked his tongue but the water cyclone was now surrounding him on the sides, he was forced to fly high before it collapsed in on him and pulled him down below.

His fey opponent did not seem used to duels between Tower Lords, his attacks were too dispersed, mostly consisting of big waves and streams. He could send an entire fleet to the bottom with his attacks, but a powerful individual like Starami could blow right through such wide spells...so long as he wasn’t caught and brought down into the water. But, on the other hand, the fey was quite good at moving himself around, and so Starami had yet to land an attack either. Starami’s power, too, was focused on empowering himself, he could not take control of the environment like the Water Tower Lord could. They were at an impasse.

But an impasse only worked in the fey’s favor. Here, in the fey’s Tower and far away from Starami’s own, the fey’s mana was endless. Starami’s was not and he had already spent much of it. It was on him to end this quickly...but diving into the ocean against a Water Tower Lord was beyond risky. Starami could only attempt it if he was certain it would work...or if he was too desperate to do anything else.

So, Starami bided his time. His Claw was in the room; better to wait for them to finish their opponents. Ansari and Klinpidas were facing powerful opponents, but Renoros was not, he would win his fight and tip the balance of the others. So, Starami just had to keep the fey Tower Lord engaged and prevent him from escaping...

Then the wave of mana from the bees he recognized flooded the room, spell bees filled the sky, and Renoros vanished from his senses shortly thereafter.

While Starami was still struggling to process that chain of events, Klinpidas vanished too. Starami whirled his head back to find the fey swordsman now holding Klinpidas’ blade. The bee swarm that had apparently killed Renoros then dove down into a gap in the ocean, straight towards Ansari.

Starami’s gaze whipped back towards the entrance and found the rest of his monsters and Tower Guards routed by the fey and their monsters.

His blood ran cold. There was no denying it now; he had lost. Even if he defeated and captured the fey Tower Lord, without an army Starami could not keep him. Not long enough to convince him to give up his Tower, not inside his own Tower with his entire army attacking Starami all at once. Starami no longer had a path to victory.

If he pushed through and reached the core, he could attempt to negotiate with the patron god instead of the Tower Lord...but that was pure fantasy. He doubted the gods would negotiate with him while he was under atonement...and his chances of reaching the end alone were close to zero. Not against fey who could clearly bring down dragons.

He dodged the fey Tower Lord’s next jet of water on reflex as he considered his options. But...there were none left. The only thing he could think of was try to break through and retreat...but he would not get past the undersea mana storm alone. He’d have to kill the water spirit here first, which meant going into the water against an elemental spirit and a Tower Lord in their preferred medium.

He had taken too long to think as it was. Ansari, the last of his elites, vanished from his perception and the swarm of bee monsters and bee-shaped spells now turned their attention to him. A cloud of buzzing chitin, mostly yellow and black but with all sorts of colors mixed in, now came streaming towards him. Starami took a deep breath to prepare another fire attack...

But the fire died in both his throat and his chest. He could still feel that familiar mana in the bees, the mana from his mead. In his four hundred years of life, he had lost interest in most things, one of his last remaining pleasures were food and drink. The mead he had found had brought him the first true joy he had experienced in a long time, a delight he had forgotten was possible.

Now that he knew these bees were connected to that mead, he saw them in a different light. And now, in the end, when he knew defeat was imminent no matter what he did...he found he could not bring himself to destroy them. Not even for his pride, not even to spite the fey that had stolen them from him.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Once he realized that, his fire went out. He let his arms drop to his side. He felt tired, more tired than he ever had. His pride urged him to fight to the bitter end, to strike as heavy a blow as he could with all the power he had left. But...what was the point? An attempt to impress the God of the Dragons with his tenacity in his final moments? Deep down, he knew the truth: The God of Dragons would not care. If the God of Dragons cared for him, he would not have let the other gods place him under atonement...and that was assuming it wasn’t the God of Dragons who was angry at him in the first place. Would defiance in the face of a shameful defeat redeem him in the God of Dragons’ eyes, after all that? No...the God of Dragons had likely abandoned him already, in all but name. His only hope was that the God of Dragons considered him a possession to hoard, regardless of his actions or his end.

All he could possibly achieve would be to destroy the only thing in this world he enjoyed. So, instead, he turned away from the incoming bee swarm. He looked up to the sky and thought about his life. Centuries of striving, struggling, and scheming all to arrive at this moment. A relentless pursuit of power, crushing rogues and rivals, taking everything he could from everyone. Everything and everyone he had sacrificed along the way. Never being satisfied, never having enough, always grasping for more. And for what?

He was the most powerful man in the room...and he would die alone. Then he would be stripped of everything he had built, everything he had achieved, and all his efforts and his power would come to naught.

For a brief moment, for the first time in centuries, Starami considered something different. He had a dream of a life where he had made a different choice, if he had gone down a different path. A life where he ignored the endless competition in the Conclave and had instead focused his life on cultivating the apiaries and meaderies in his territory. Where he had used the powers of his Tower to encourage the development of mead and all who assisted in making it.

Some bees in his territory had apparently become magical even though he ignored them and had been tamed enough for a beekeeper to gather their honey. Spawning monsters was forbidden, but raising and taming naturally born magical creatures was not, Starami could have brought those bees and their keeper to his Tower. He could have worked to encourage the growth of such bees long before now, even! He could have had a beeswarm like the one flying towards him now without needing to hide it at all, raised in the same admirable tradition as the Dragon Banner Army’s dragonkin. He could have spent each and every day checking on delicious mead and its makers, instead of stressing and striving over his schemes and his position.

And he wouldn’t have had to raise and bury generations of children just to ensure he could put his blood on any Towers that appeared in his land. If he saw new Towers as a means to expand meadmaking instead of his political influence, he could have simply gifted any Towers to a favored beekeeper. Perhaps...he could have still raised children, but to be beekeepers instead of future Tower Lords. Then they could have participated in his work even if no Towers appeared during their lifetimes...and their legacies in meadmaking would have endured even if they didn’t. Perhaps then, raising children would not have seemed so pointless to him. Perhaps then he would not have almost entirely ignored his last son’s upbringing, with dramatic consequences...

Perhaps then Stadvolous would have disregarded him for his apparent lack of ambition, so he never would have been brought into the plot. He never would have set off on this ill-fated campaign, would have never needed to grasp at increasingly desperate plans to preserve his power. At this very moment, he could have been back in his home, surrounded by more mead than he ever could have ever drunk, sharing a cup with whichever favored beekeeper had become his peer after he gifted them the new Tower. The coup would have been a distant event with no impact on his fortunes and he never would have encountered the fey. The gods would have never become displeased with him, for he would have had no reason to defy them.

And his mead had surprised Stadvolous even in this life, what would it have become if Starami had poured his life into perfecting it? That mead could have become the talk of the Conclave, a delicacy which every Tower Lord sought, even the High Council itself. Starami would have gained influence far beyond the might of his armies, which themselves would have been empowered through the daily consumption of mana-rich honey and mead. Starami could have gained more power, more influence, and more acknowledgement than he ever had in this life, without any risk to himself or his Tower besides the Hunger, no matter what had happened with the new Tower, the fey, or the coup.

All if he had ignored the pursuit of power above all and focused on what he really wanted.

Starami scowled as the dream faded and he was brought back to his life as he had lived it. Where the very bees that once made his mead now swarmed around his dragon cloak, blotting out his vision as they tried to sting through his mana. And as he considered the life he had lived instead, he had but one thing to say.

“What a waste.”

He did not move, even as the mana of the bees began to eat away at his dragon coat...