The Bee Dungeon

PONon-Bee 368.2 - Bee-vining the Will of the Gods

The kobolds and the Tower Guards with them paused as the wave of mana washed over them from the Tower, but soon enough Starami was sending them orders to continue. None of them looked particularly happy, but the kobold wranglers complied and flared their mana to get the kobolds working again. The little dragonkin took up axes and approached the creaking and buzzing trees...

The flowers in the trees’ canopies and the bushes surrounding their trunks let out big puffs of pollen that lingered in the air, any kobold that inhaled it ended up on the ground coughing. Roots lifted up and caught feet before sinking back down into the dirt, trapping kobolds’ legs down into the ground. And for the kobolds that persisted despite that...a swarm of angry bees flew down from the canopy of a tree and attacked them.

Said angry swarm followed the kobolds that ran back to their wranglers...who subsequently became their next target. The wranglers soon found flowers from the grass and bushes around them creating pollen clouds, roots appearing far from the tree trunks, and angry bees getting into sensitive and inconvenient places.

And all after the wave of divine mana that no fully blessed Tower Guard could mistake.

Starami wasn’t paying attention to them, though. Instead, he was staring at the new statues in the rogue Tower’s first room through the eyes of his monsters. He may have claimed they were a fey trick...but he knew better than to believe the gods would allow the fey to manipulate a Tower so. The God of Air and a Nature god, the God of Trees and Forests if he remembered his theology correctly. That gave a current tally of the God of Light, three of the four Great Elemental Gods, two of the Nature gods and three different life gods including the Tower’s own patron. Two of which had blessed this Tower during this siege...

Starami...was presently considering if he should withdraw. The sheer amount of divine support this young Tower had gathered was...concerning, particularly considering they had already expressed their wrath with his actions. Combined with the continued harassment of the fey, none of whom he had caught yet, the difficulty of the Tower’s rooms, and the defeat of his elite Tower Guards...no amount of wishful thinking could delude Starami on his current chances of success. Had this been a normal Tower assault, he would have called it off already.

But...to go back now...to throw himself upon Stadvolous’ mercy? He would, at best, preserve his own life, but at the cost of great humiliation and the loss of all he had built for his entire life. And likely not even his life, there was every chance Stadvolous would send him off to die after stealing his Tower. He was doomed either way.

Likewise, the gods had declared their displeasure with him and ordered him to atone...which they could not have down if his own patron, the God of Dragons, did not agree with them. And yet, the God of Dragons would also hate a coward who fled from anything less than overwhelming power. The fey defeated his elite Tower Guard, yes, but it was with traps and overwhelming numbers of small insect monsters. Meanwhile, he still had ninety percent of his forces intact and both he and his dragon remained undefeated. The God of Dragons did not support him staying and yet the God of Dragons would also be displeased with him if he ran now. What could he do?

But then, a message arrived for him.

“My lord, I think you should see this”

As Starami wrestled with the choice that had no good options, his dragon and wyvern riders continued patrolling around overhead. One squad moved further out, over the edges of the purified zone on the opposite side from where Starami’s army had arrived. There, the forest gave way to fields, abandoned farmland from the looks of it.

And, at the very edge of the purified zone, a fortress rose above the farms. A fortress that showed clear signs of recent renovation...and that had people patrolling its walls.

Starami blinked. This...had to be a trap, right? The fey, who had completely avoided contact with his forces outside of the Tower, surely would not leave their base of operations out in the open like that, right? He couldn’t imagine they intended to resist him directly now...and over in a part of the purified zone irrelevant to the siege of the Tower. It made no sense as anything but bait.

And yet, Starami turned to his adjutants, who had been standing in deathly silence ever since the wave of divine mana, and spoke.

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“Prepare the army to march.”

He had no choice but to take the bait. After the night before and the necromancer before that, he could not allow the fey such a large base of operations. And...even if it was a trap, it was a chance to use the full might of his army, including his dragon and his flying monsters. If the fey were to repel such an assault, it would have to be through great power, whether in the form of raw strength or in vast mystical lore.

If Starami were to succeed, he would have struck a blow against the fey, his first successful blow of this assault, and would have confirmed the might of his army against them. If he were to fail...it would be in the face of great power. He would have no choice but to acknowledge that he was beaten, a defeat he would be forced to accept regardless of the consequences...and, hopefully, a defeat the God of Dragons could accept as well.

So, Starami ordered his army forward. Now was the time he would discover if there was any hope of victory...or if this entire assault had been a fool’s errand from the start...

As Starami turned his attention to the new fortress in the distance, a group of his Tower Guards approached one of the watchmen at the perimeter of the camp. They glanced around before speaking, making the watchman raise an eyebrow.

“Um, can I help you?”

The approaching guards frowned. One of them growled as he spoke.

“Beroura, you trained as an augur before you transferred to the Tower Guard, right?”

Beroura furrowed his brow.

“Well, yes but...why do you ask, Soltiotis?”

Soltiotis’s face darkened.

“Why do you think?”

One of the other guards stepped in.

“Do you by any chance know the divination ritual, Beroura?”

Beroura frowned.

“For one who is not an augur, an Oracle, or a Tower Lord to appeal to the gods directly is forbidden, Germistis. Even the Tower Guard must only appeal at the shrines of their Towers and only by the will of their lord. You know this.”

Germistis glanced around, then leaned in and whispered.

“Look, Beroura, you felt the divine power, didn’t you? You’ve heard that this is actually a Tower of Light, right? Do you really think this is going to go well?”

Beroura glanced away.

“That’s...a rumor, isn’t it? A fey trick or something?”

Germistis shook his head.

“No, it’s not. Fulepou was there.”

They all turned to the third guard, who had been wringing his hands and muttering to himself this entire time. His expression went blank as he noticed their attention.

“Yes, I was there. I saw the God of Light’s statue, staring down into my soul, asking me why I fight against her, and I had no answer. And I was there, when...it happened. I saw Captain Abenioktis and the Starami’s Spear Squad when they made their usual pre-assault offering...and the gods spat it back out in their faces. I saw them beg Lord Starami not to assault the God of Light's Tower...and I saw him burn them to ashes without a second thought...”

Soltiotis growled.

“That’s how it is, Beroura. Our lord couldn’t give shade’s breath about the lot of us...or about the gods, apparently, so do you think the gods care about his rules?”

Germistis moved to make eye contact with Beroura once more.

“Beroura, you trained to seek out any sign of the gods once before. So...tell us we’re wrong. Tell us the gods are not obviously displeased with our lord and that he is not leading us into damnation.”

Beroura stared at him in silence for a moment before shaking his head.

“...what does it matter? Lord Starami is mighty and so he holds all of our fates in his hands. Such is the way of the God of Dragons whom we have sworn oaths before, the powerful do as they please, the weak reward their protection with loyalty. Even if you’re right...what could we do?”

Germistis once again glanced around before leaning in, whispering right into Beroura’s ear this time.

“...Starami’s Claw was repelled. Lindkontas the Dragonblood is dead, three of the others went straight to the healer’s tent and two haven’t left since. I saw them return myself. The gods have not blessed this Tower for nothing...and Fulepou’s squad is scheduled to help besiege the Tower again soon, in view of its lord. But you’re right in that we have sworn oaths before the gods to serve our master. So...it is the gods we must hear from now, to hear it outright what they will for us to do...”

Beroura’s eyes widened. He leaned back to make eye contact with Germistis once more and Germistis held his gaze. Beroura’s frown deepened and he remained silent for a long time.

He glanced around before he finally spoke again.

“I...might have watched the augurs a few times. We will need an offering...”

Down in the Underway, a squad of Tower Guards marched through one of the supply tunnels. They had been sent by the quartermaster to investigate a missing convoy. Most of the supply tunnels they had checked were completely normal and they had reported as much to the quartermaster, but he had insisted they check every last inch of every last tunnel, until they found something he could report to their master.

And so, the grumbling Tower Guards marched down one of the smaller tunnels despite having cleared them all before the assault even began...but then they came to a complete stop in the middle. They drew their weapons and hoisted their shields, their captain frowning.

“This...wasn’t here before, was it?”

In front of them was another entrance to the supply tunnel...one leading to a part of the Underway they hadn’t scouted at all. And one that none of them recalled seeing the first time they had cleared this tunnel...