Threadbare

The Birds and the Bees

In an instant Threadbare was in a forest, vast and mighty. The trees grew from saplings to maturity in a matter of moments, then rising until they eventually rotted and fell. Other vegetation waged war under the trunks, mushrooms and shrubs and grasses and weeds flickering and dancing in battle lines that shifted faster than the seasons, flickering arcs of violence that wrote large the lie of sylvan tranquility.

The only animals that Threadbare saw were fast appearing corpses that swiftly crumbled into food for the all-conquering plants. And he knew that this wasn't a deliberate admission, but that the scope of the passing time involved was so great that the brief flittings of other creatures were too temporary to be seen through this particular lens.

Truth be told he wasn't sure what viewpoint he was inhabiting; he seemed to have a view of one particular patch of land... whoops no, it was a sea now. Threadbare focused his attention, to try and capture all the details he could.

The ocean part lasted for quite a while, with volcanoes bubbling to the surface to the west, then quieting down into new islands. Eventually the waters receded, and the forest began again. The trees were different this time, though. Oak, pine, other northern varieties that he recognized from Cylvania. And though they grew tall and wide and crumbled just like the last ones had, they never quite reached the heights of the start of the vision.

Then things started slowing down.

At first he thought it was the trees losing potency, but then occasional flickers appeared, and he could pick out the shapes of animals going about their business in the woods. Time was reducing its pace, just a bit.

And then holes started appearing in the ground. Flickering shapes that seemed to have far too many legs, and rarely stood still long enough to get more details.

The trees slowed even further, and a few of them disappeared. And the holes in the ground seemed to fill in with a brownish substance, something between mud and clay. It dried quickly, becoming gray, cloth-like substance, and he realized where he had seen it before.

This is a hive, Threadbare thought.

And no sooner had he realized it, than the remaining trees slowed their growth even further, and he got his first look at the insects.

They were large, fully the size of human children. Occasionally they flew on wings that labored mightily to support their bulky, bumbling frames. Each of them bore a coat of black and yellow, and that last part confirmed that he was staring at some variety of bee.

Instantly he felt his focus sharpen, as he studied the holes in the ground a little more carefully. Bees meant honey, and though he was a golem, he was still a bear. He couldn't DO much with honey, true, but he still considered the stuff a guilty pleasure. There was no harm in looking, and often at home he'd spend a few minutes of quiet time just contemplating jars of the stuff.

But the perspective never shifted below ground. He spent an interminable amount of time watching the bee creatures build, cultivate fields of flowers, strip out everything that didn't contribute to their health and growth, and fight off predators.

Some time later, when the trees were down to barely visibly growing, he started seeing humans show up, usually passing through or running for their lives. A few adventurer-looking types tried to raid the holes in the ground. Some made it back out again, usually running for their lives and minus a few friends.

And then everything froze. The trees stopped growing, the wind stopped stirring the fields of flowers, and the bee creatures stood as still as statues where they were, some caught in midair or midstride.

What happened next hurt.

Everything seemed to crystallize, to fragment into a million pieces, and then expand outward.

Green light, bright green, glaring green seeped between the fragments that were trees, beefolk, leaves, grass, and even the empty spots between. And for a second, for just a fragment of an instant, Threadbare thought he could see numbers.

He wasn't surprised. He knew that shade of green. Knew what that light was, more or less.

This was dungeon work. These were the lights that underlay the space between worlds.

But... this was the outdoors, wasn't it?

Was this another situation like Cylvania's, where the entire land had been turned into a dungeon?

While he tried to make sense of what he was seeing, the fractured milieu expanded outward, then contracted inward. It was like a breath, like the whole world had stopped what it was doing and taken a deep breath

and when it was done, some things had changed.

The trees started visibly growing again. They were mostly the same though, but a few had more outlandish colors on their leaves.

The flowers were mostly the same, but sparkling light glistened on a few of the blossoms.

And the bee creatures were different.

They were still the bulky, graceless insects they had been, But now each of them wore a sort of hexagonal hat that looked like a cross-section of soil, with dirt on the bottom and grass and flowers and plants on top.

And they immediately moved toward the holes in the ground, and started changing them. They carved until they were hexagonal, not round, and as Threadbare watched time slide by, once the holes were done they popped down into them, blending their hats seamlessly with the terrain.

Shortly thereafter, more adventurers came. And things happened as they did, with more fighting and running and chaos. Eventually someone put a sign down near the tunnels that said DANGER. GROUND BEES.

That seemed to calm things down for a while. A few years, maybe?

The bees used it to expand. And more and more shining flowers popped up in their cultivated fields. The majority of the gleaming plants were red, and that was the clue Threadbare needed to realize what they were.

These were magical reagents.

Though he'd rarely dealt with the part of enchanting that entailed going out and picking your own components, he knew that every once in a while, a sprouted plant would be imbued with magic. This would turn it into a reagent, which could be used as fuel to enchant a magical item. Red reagents were the most common, with orange and yellow the next rarest, respectively. Violet was the rarest reagent known to modern magic, though rumors abounded of white reagents and rainbow elements.

Reagents weren't limited to plants, either. Magic could settle into the depths of the earth as well, imbuing ore or growing magic crystals, which were another important part of enchanting. It could spread in small ponds, turning the water into magical fluid. It could even rarely infect living creatures, creating powerful monsters that could be slain and harvested for reagents.

The upshot was that those flowers were quite valuable in most civilized realms. And the bees weren't using them for enchanting. They were letting them ripen, and spreading their pollen around, and probably using it to make magical honey.

Which explained why the adventurers started coming around again.

Only this time something was different.

They weren't in sensible groups. Sometimes they were even solo. And most of them were wearing mismatched clothes and armor pieces that looked like they'd salvaged a battlefield and grabbed whatever loose and rejected items they could find and called it a day.

It was no surprise that many of them died horribly.

What WAS a surprise, was when their corpses disappeared, leaving piles of gear.

And then they came back.

Not as undead, but running into view from the outside, usually either almost naked or with cheap clothing or armor. They always did the same thing, too. They beelined (no pun intended) to where their loot lay, grabbed it, and ran off.

Then most of the time they'd come and have another go at stealing from the bees. And sometimes they'd die again, and the whole process would repeat.

Threadbare had never heard of anything like this happening before. Was it a skill? Were they magical duplicates? It was incredibly powerful magic if so. And that begged the question, why would anyone with that much power rely on adventurers who couldn't even afford to put together a decent set of armor?

And then there was a new sort of movement at the edge of the region.

A flock of bird-like creatures with humanoid torsos had migrated in, and they liked what they saw. They set about building shelters in the trees.

Several of them carried spears and bows, and for a moment Threadbare thought that they would hunt the bees, but no, they left them alone. And soon the reason for that became evident, as strings of humanoid skulls started to decorate their thatched village.

That wasn't to say they existed conflict-free. Occasionally the ground bees would try to harvest their trees for hive material, and the bird people would fight them off. And occasionally a bird person would go flower picking, and the bees would try to swarm them. And the adventurers didn't seem to care, treating both the birds and the bees as enemies, for the most part.

And then something quite unexpected happened.

An adventurer with some proper armor arrived, slaughtered every bee outside, and started clearing the fields.

Desperate, the bees underground in the hive swarmed out, and managed to bring the adventurer down.

And six of them blurred, and changed.

Gone were the stocky, insectile forms.

In their places were humanoid forms, still obviously insects, but with a good deal of human traits mixed in. Soft, flexible faces, long legs and arms that ended in fingered hands, and breasts that seemed to indicate all of them were female.

And each bore a golden tiara resting upon their bald heads.

Queens of some sort, Threadbare thought.

Intelligent queens, as they soon got to work, picking up the adventurer's gear and using it to drive him away when he came to reclaim it.

And then they scattered to different parts of the region, seemingly splitting the hive between them. The ground bees seemed to accept them without question, and the queens soon ordered them to build out. Out and up.

Soon they were making buildings, then walls, then towers. But the towers needed supports, and that required much more wood.

In very short order, their need for trees ran up against the bird people's territory.

Threadbare expected war. And sure, there were a few initial skirmishes.

But to his surprise, one of the queens came to talk with one of the elder birds, a woman with the legs and lower half of a vulture.

And then the bird folk were manning the towers, and shooting arrows at adventurers.

Oddly enough, that seemed to draw more of them.

And then, one day, there came a flap of scaly wings in the sky and everything was on fire.

Everything was ash for a time. No way to measure it, since Threadbare couldn't go by the tree growth any more.

But just at the point where he'd decided that this was the end of it, a few trap doors in the ground opened and beefolk and birdfolk poured out, and set about rebuilding.

There were fewer of them this time, and their flower fields were gone, so replanting was a priority.

Then people started showing up. At first he thought it was more adventurers, but they were traveling in families and many were hauling carts. They settled by the river, and were quite surprised when the natives approached them.

Again, Threadbare expected war. Again his assumption was proven false.

Instead, they seemed to come to an agreement.

And in a burst of sped-up time, new construction began to form around the region. Trees grew from saplings, the wood repopulated, and the flower fields were slowly stocked once more... but this time they were joined by fields of crops as well.

But the walls and towers this time were even sturdier.

Threadbare woke with a start, coming back to himself, and finding Renny staring down at him, worried. Midian was nowhere to be seen.

Something was off. Muddled, he asked Renny, How long has it been?

Hours. Which is strange, Chase usually doesn't take as long.

Well she is a professional, Threadbare said, rubbing the side of his head with one paw. I think I got a very good look at Queen's Ford. This could be a tricky situation. If she tries violence then there's a very large hive underground that's killed quite a lot of violent people. I should probably tell Anne to be careful how she approaches this

Roaring explosions echoed through the ship; one after the other.

Threadbare knew this sound well.

Cannon. The ship's cannons.

He realized what was bothering him now, what was different. The ship didn't have that hum it made when it was in flight.

Well, Renny said, looking nervously at the door. It might be a bit late for telling Anne how to approach matters...