The Bee Dungeon

Interlude 144.1 - Peer Bee-view

Interlude 144.1 - Peer Bee-view

The queen heard the water man’s voice and crawled out. She understood the voice as some attempt at communication, though how it carried any meaning she couldn’t say. It certainly was no elegant dance.

But she did understand that when he directed the sounds towards her that they either had arrived at a safe spot, or else were about to leave one. Since they had been flying beforehand, it had to be the former, so she crawled out to take stock of their surroundings.

She froze immediately when she saw the world beyond. Before them was a mighty mountain of stone, covered with golden banners. Banners that she had never seen, but still recognized somewhere deep within her.

This place belonged to the Queen of All Bees.

Which meant she had arrived at her destination. She stood still, awaiting instruction. While her preference would be to fly out and sting her enemies, she knew that the Queen of All Bees must have brought her here for a reason. She would not reveal herself until she knew why.

A moment later, she was surrounded by a bright light, and then found herself before the Queen of All Bees once again. She danced her salute dance and then the Queen of All Bees replied with a single step.

“Wait.”

She saluted once again and then found herself back in the world. The Queen of All Bees had spoken. She had arrived, but the time was not ripe yet. So, instead, she crawled back inside her hive at the bottom of the bag and began to quietly awaken her children.

The time was not ripe yet, but she knew that the moment soon approached. She intended to be ready. For once it arrived, she would have her revenge.

Once the captain gave the all clear, Ruckanos guided his wyvern to step inside the Tower. He found himself inside a subterranean tunnel, made entirely of dirt. He scoffed at the sight.

No entrance hall. No guards or servants to receive visitors. No adornments to honor the gods. Look, the shrine of the patron god was left sitting in the dirt, for the gods’ sake! The Tower was clearly in the hands of some feral barbarian. He’d imagine even the mindless peasants would know better than this!

He dismounted his wyvern for a moment and strode over to the shrine. It was a strange thing, with a giant bee in place of any sort of man, but it was not Ruckanos’s place to judge the gods. Indeed, what greater honor would there be but to introduce a new god to the Conclave? So, instead, he smiled and bowed his head.

“You’ve suffered much, haven’t you? But fear not, your chosen Tower Lord is here now, and I shall set things right as you have commanded.”

The shrine did not respond but they rarely did. Ruckanos knew the gods would not bother with his words alone, so he intended to prove himself via his deeds. So, he turned to remount his wyvern…

Only to find that his men had all dismounted theirs. The captain pointed to the tunnel ahead.

“I’d recommend we proceed on foot, commander. These tunnels are too cramped for the wyverns. We’ll have to lead them through ourselves.”

Ruckanos held back a sigh as the men fixed light crystals to their helmets, shining beams of light down the dark tunnels. They then drew their blades and proceeded ahead of Ruckanos and the mages.

They had hardly begun their march when they came to a stop. The captain stepped forward and poked the ground with his sword. A large section of the ground vanished to reveal a hole. Ruckanos raised an eyebrow.

Pit Traps, huh? A waste of a feature choice, and a lazy one at that. Servants and monsters could dig something like that easily enough. Concealing it was another matter but little more difficult in the grand scheme of things. Pit traps were, therefore, something that could be employed en masse with only the barest amount of effort. To waste one of the precious boons of the gods and the Tower’s limited mana on such a thing…well, Ruckanos was once again reassured why he had been brought here.

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One of the mages stepped forward, carving a spell circle into the dirt just before the pit. Then, after a quick chant, the ground itself extended across the pit and hardened, forming a bridge across. Ruckanos’s men strode across as easily as walking on the ground. The wyverns, on the other hand, were long enough to crawl over the pit with little assistance.

If this was all the Tower currently had to offer, Ruckanos questioned how it had survived this long in the first place.

They continued onward until once again the captain halted them. He glanced around a bit before taking a step and waving his sword out ahead of him.

A moment later, a stream of golden liquid poured down from the roof. When it hit the ground, it did not spread out in a pool, but clung together in a viscous blob. One of the vanguard tilted his head.

“Is that…honey? I guess that would explain the bee decorations but…as a trap?”

Ruckanos raised an eyebrow, but the captain narrowed his eyes as he inclined his head so that his light shone across the honey. Ruckanos caught a glimpse of purple in the otherwise golden mass.

“Stickier than normal and probably poisoned. Easy enough to avoid but you’re in for a bad time if you get drenched. Stay alert.”

Ruckanos shook his head as he carefully stepped over the mass. The idea itself wasn’t terrible. A sticky spray to restrict mobility combined with a poison, an effective if basic combination. But the execution…the execution was atrociously sloppy. The trap had been placed too soon after the last, when the group was still on guard. And it had been placed by itself in an otherwise empty tunnel. No additional traps or even decorations to distract attention, no follow-up traps that struck if the first was disarmed, not even an ambush prepared to take advantage of the split attention. It was as if the traps had been placed entirely randomly, without any thought as to their use. His tutors would have had aneurysms had he presented such a setup.

More and more, he felt he was dealing with a feral beast rather than an intelligent being.

What followed was an excruciatingly boring journey. The twisting tunnels were filled with nothing but dirt and the occasional, easily avoided trap. No monsters or defenders accosted them, no servants came to greet them. No new traps appeared, nor did the two they had seen appear in any new patterns. They encountered some remnants as all who entered in a Tower did, but these were swiftly dealt with. And, of course, there were no rest zones to manage and contain them.

This Tower was strictly amateur in every possible way, it seemed. Even the maze itself featured no particularly novel layout, as if the master had just left it as it first appeared. Which Ruckanos suspected they probably had.

This caused Ruckanos to frown, because something didn’t add up. How had such an amateurish Tower managed to survive, much less grow as quickly as it had? If the imposter Tower Lord was this incompetent at basic floor layout, then someone else must be responsible. He, of course, believed that the patron god was preparing the way for his arrival but he also did not delude himself into believing that the gods would intervene so directly as to defend the Tower personally from its own purifications.

That left one answer: the imposter had been exceedingly lucky with their choice of starting monster and acquired something that could cover for their incompetence.

Which brought up the most important question of all…where were all the monsters? They had traveled nearly an entire room and had not encountered a single living thing. If this were a normal Tower with a competent lord Ruckanos would have assumed the Tower Lord had intentionally placed a cramped, winding maze to buy time, allowing them to observe any incoming threats and prepare for them accordingly. But he had already established that this imposter was nowhere near that competent…so why hadn’t they thrown their monsters into the fray from the very start? Unless the patron god had again intervened to clear the way for the rightful Tower Lord?

“Halt.”

Just then, the captain’s voice cut through his wandering thoughts. He looked up ahead…and saw a dim light coming from around the corner. He smiled. Finally! The way out…or at least some civilization. The color of the light and the way it flickered was more indicative of a fire of some sort, maybe a torch?

The captain silently motioned to two of his men and then the three of them crept forward together. But then, the captain sniffed, and then jumped back, pulling the two men along with him. He gave a hushed but frantic whisper.

“Wind!”

The mages pushed forward one of their number, who tried to pull off a chant as he formed a spell circle right in the air with his own mana. The spell was sloppy, his hands shook, and his voice wavered, but he managed to pull it off. A gust of wind blew down the tunnel and around the corner, and the light suddenly cut out. The captain then motioned to the two men.

“Check them for poison. There was a strange smell on the air.”

The captain crept forward quietly and glimpsed around the corner before making his way back.

“Wax candles of some sort, probably the source of the smell. Beyond that is the exit to an open field.”

Ruckanos frowned. So, some sort of candle that spread poison via smoke? Again, not a bad concept…but the execution was all off. Letting the light flicker past the tunnel so they’d clearly notice something had changed? Moreover, why hadn’t the imposter placed candles throughout the tunnels so they wouldn’t suspect anything wrong? He shook his head.

Well, at least it was over. A new room was just ahead, this one wide open. Ruckanos doubted they’d find anything interesting there, but at least they’d pass through it quickly…