“Unless we go into the Teeming Jungle, anyway. From the warnings I saw on the board inside, that is appropriate for adventurers of level fifteen and higher,” Damaris said, shrugging as she glanced at the guild house again. “Not something to really challenge us, but there’re plenty of things in it that could be a threat. I even saw a notice that there was one of those new apis hives in there, somewhere.”
“Really? That could be interesting. In fact, I’d bet that the sealing stone is there, rather than in the other areas around town,” Velk said, grinning. “I’ll bet you a thousand coins, if you want.”
Damaris blinked, staring at him for a moment before demanding, “How in all the gods do you reason that, Velk? We haven’t even started going through the records!”
“Simple. The boss got the first one from some mines in the Flower Forest, right?” Velk asked, tilting his head as he waited for confirmation.
“Well, yes, that’s true,” Damaris agreed, starting to piece together his logic.
“See? The Teeming Jungle is another of those places with lots of huge plants and insects, though it has nasty animals too. It has an apis nest near it, too, though I’m not sure if that has anything to do with it,” Velk said cheerfully, and shrugged. “Anyway, if I’m going to try to figure out anything that’s similar about the areas they’re in, that’s what I’m going to guess.”
“Hm… I don’t know, but you could be right,” Damaris admitted, considering what he’d said, then shrugged. “Ah, heck with it. I’ll take your bet, Velk, and I’ll even focus on the records about the Teeming Jungle first. If you’re right, I’ll consider it coin well spent, since it’ll at least have cut a huge amount of time off our trip.”
“Fair!” Velk said, grinning back at her. “And if I lose, I’m wrong. Either way, I’m not too worried, Major. I’ll keep the town in order, promise.”
“Good enough. In that case, get back to work, you big lunk. I’m not convinced that the townsfolk are as cowed as they may claim,” Damaris replied, grinning up at him as she patted him on the shoulder. “It’d be just like them to try to lure us into a false sense of security. Go ahead and call in the majority of Thomas and Leah’s people, too.”
“Alright,” the orc agreed, and he headed off to get to work.
Damaris laughed under her breath, then turned back to the guild house. She had her own job to do, and she’d rather get it done before anyone came to screw up their plans.
Chapter 10
“Joy, down!” Cora said, and Joy dodged downward instantly, trusting the elf knew what she was doing.
A bolt of fire flew through the spot Joy had occupied a moment before, slamming into the man-sized bird’s chest. It let out a pained squawk as it fell from the air, and Joy quickly spun around as she heard the rush of wings from behind her, dodging to the side and stabbing instinctively. Her blade bit into the bird briefly as it passed, its talons closing on open air. She let it go, panting as she did so. Hopefully her venom would deal with the bird, like it had a couple of others.
Fifteen of the dappled brown birds had attacked them from nowhere only a couple of minutes earlier, and Joy was still trying to get her bearings. With Brianna and Stella only having melee weapons, it’d been left to Cora and Joy to thin the numbers of the birds before their swooping strikes did anyone in, since Joy could at least fly. She wasn’t as fast as the birds, but she was more maneuverable, which had saved her from several attacks. As it was, Joy had taken a couple of nasty scratches so far, and all of the others had a few injuries as well.
Bouncing through the air, Joy kept moving, her head turning quickly as she tried to take everything in. There were times she missed the wider field of vision that she’d had as a bee, but there was nothing she could do about that.
A flicker of movement from below caught Joy’s attention, though, and she dove suddenly as the bird lunged up over a treetop, aiming for Cora. Joy slammed into it just in time, burying her blade in its back, then twisted and recovered her sword as she glanced around. Cora smiled at her briefly, but extended her staff in the opposite direction.
“Lightning Blast!” the mage exclaimed, and a bolt of lightning launched from her hands at a fleeing bird, dropping it from the sky.
“Is that all of them?” Stella asked warily, her shield still raised, and the bodies of two birds that she’d managed to fell when they came too close around her. The human was bleeding from a gash in her shoulder, but she didn’t seem to be bothered by it.
“I don’t know,” Joy said, glancing around nervously. “I don’t hear any of them, but I saw about fifteen. Did we get that many?”
“I think so,” Brianna said, shoving a quartet away from her with a boot. “I see seven here, and Cora just took care of two, which leaves six. I’m pretty sure that each of you took out at least three more apiece, but I’m not entirely sure. You scattered them across the area.”
Cora nodded and slowly lowered her staff, letting out a soft breath as she spoke. “That sounds right, yes. I suspect there were sixteen, not fifteen, since I’m sure Joy took out four, aside from this one. Ironbeaks aren’t fun… they must be trying to feed their hatchlings, with this many coming after us.”
“Hatchlings?” Joy asked, blinking, then frowned in worry, suddenly growing concerned as she wiped off her rapier, then sheathed it. “Should we get rid of them? If we’re getting close to Irador, aren’t they a threat?”
“No, there’s no point. Ironbeaks nest in hard to reach sections of the mountains,” Brianna said, pointing off toward the looming mountains to their south. “We’d have to go really far out of our way, and we might run into entire flocks of them. Besides, the city will be fine.”
“Oh?” Joy asked, her eyes brightening a little as she looked at the woman, hearing hints of another explanation. She loved hearing more about the world, and the towns and villages they’d passed through over the past several days had been fascinating. “Why is that?”
Stella laughed quietly, smiling as she murmured, “Minor Healing.”
A light wreathed the human, healing her injuries slowly, but Cora cleared her throat, distracting Joy as she pointed off into the distance, down the road. “Do you see the shimmer in the air, Joy?”
“Um…” Joy looked down the road, squinting slightly. The sun was still to their east, which made it a little hard, so she shaded her eyes for a moment, then smiled as she exclaimed, “Ooh, yes! There’s a sparkle in the sky!”
That’s exactly what it was, too. There were rolling green hills in the distance, and in front of them were faint sparkling motes, almost like she’d see on the surface of a river, or on rocks like quartz. It was strange seeing it in the sky, but delightfully pretty.
“That’s the repulsion barrier,” Brianna said, nodding to Stella as the Acolyte started healing her. “It’s not something that’s put up around most cities, building one is just too expensive, but it gently urges monsters above level four to leave the barrier. I think it covers what… a ten-mile radius around the city?”
“Something like that,” Cora agreed, nodding happily, then added, “Not that it’s a perfect defense, Joy. Monsters that are determined can enter it just fine, as can those commanded by magi. It just makes the environment around the cities safer for starting adventurers or common folk.”
“Ah, okay! That seems useful!” Joy agreed, and grinned as Stella finished healing Brianna, adding, “Thank you, Stella! It’s really nice of you to heal us.”
“You were defending all of us, so it’s the least I could do,” Stella replied, smiling warmly in return. “Minor Healing.”
The soft mist of green light left Stella’s hands to wrap around Joy, and the apis let out a breath of happiness as the pain of her wounds slowly eased, then vanished. She really did like healing magic, after some of the injuries she’d had before.
“It’s still appreciated,” Cora said, her voice gentler than normal as she spoke. “I think we don’t say it enough, on the whole… but thank you.”
>
“You’re welcome,” Stella said calmly. “Still, we should get going soon, if we’re going to reach the gates before sundown. Do we want anything off the ironbeaks?”
“Their talons are prized in some crafting, as are some of their feathers,” Brianna suggested as Joy opened her eyes again. “We don’t have a lot of inventory space left, though. I’d say just their talons, since those will sell better.”
“I’ll gather those, then!” Joy chirped, and quickly rushed off to the nearest ironbeak, belatedly realizing that she’d been standing practically on top of one of them. Her embarrassment only lasted a moment, though, as she decided to come back to that one in a minute.
Cora laughed, then called out. “Just watch out for any other monsters! Where there’s one type, there can always be others!”
“I will!” Joy replied cheerfully, then got to work.
She didn’t particularly like harvesting from creatures, but it was the nature of being an adventurer, she supposed. She’d far prefer harvesting from flowers, but none of the ones outside the Flower Forest had been very large, so far, and it wasn’t worth the time to go through an entire field of tiny flowers. Besides, those had their own hives of bees nearby, and she didn’t want to steal their nectar.
* * *
“Wow! Those are some big buildings!” Joy exclaimed, looking at the city in awe.
It was much later in the day, and Irador had come into sight a couple of hours before, but she hadn’t really been able to tell how big it was until they were closer. It was only when she saw the men patrolling the walls that she’d realized they were close to thirty feet tall, and that made the immense buildings at the center of the city nearly four times that tall, which boggled her mind. The buildings were made of stone, too, and trying to get it up that high was astounding to her. In particular, the one with the four immense spires impressed her, along with all the glass in its windows.
“When we visited your old hive, it looked like they were well on their way to matching the cathedral,” Cora said, glancing at Joy in amusement. “They were working on a fifth floor to one tower when we were there, and that’s about half the height of the buildings here.”
“Yes, but that’s wax. This is all stone, and I have no idea how you’d go about building it!” Joy exclaimed, gesturing at the big buildings in excitement. “Sure, maybe the hive will be able to make something like that eventually, but that doesn’t make those any less amazing! Can we go look inside them?”
“We’re going to have to, if we’re going to make sure that we resurrect here rather than in Seldrim, in case of death,” Brianna said dryly, nodding at the big building. “The cathedral will likely be busy, but we can always go in the morning. The other buildings… well, the palace is going to be well and truly off-limits, so there won’t really be an opportunity to go there.”
“And don’t think about flying up to take a look, Joy,” Cora said quickly, looking at her with just a bit of worry. “The guards rarely have a sense of humor, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they simply shot you.”
“Alright, I’ll just treat it like it’s another hive,” Joy replied immediately, almost bouncing in her eagerness. “Can we go? I want to see as much of the city as we can!”
“Sure,” Cora said, visibly relaxing as she nodded. “We’ll probably go to the guild first, then find a nice inn for the night.”
“That sounds excellent. While the one in Seldrim wasn’t bad, it wasn’t good either,” Stella said, stretching as she grimaced, then admitted. “I think the inns here aren’t as nice as ones out west. On the other hand, they do have some good aspects… the places back home tend to have more people using drugs that they shouldn’t.”
They started down the road, and as they did so, Joy blinked, thinking about what Stella had said. While she hadn’t heard the term before, she knew what drugs were, as it was one of those things that’d popped into her memory when she turned into an apis. And as it did, she frowned slightly, mulling over the concept of them, and the idea of addiction.
“Why would they even use drugs? I haven’t thought about them before, but I know a little…” Joy said, tilting her head as she thought. “They can add special abilities, or even boost your body at a price, right? Or just make you feel good, but they also tend to ad… addict you, yes?”
“Essentially, yes,” Stella said, looking at the others curiously. “Do you want to handle this one?”
“Sadly, it sounds like you have more experience with drugs than we do,” Brianna said, glancing at Cora. “Oh, my dad got addicted to strength drugs for a while, he liked how strong they made him, but in the end my mother put her foot down. I honestly don’t even remember it happening, but she was adamant that I never even try them.”
“As for me, my mother is an Alchemist, as I mentioned once before. If I so much as looked like I might get addicted to something, she cut me off entirely,” Cora added, wrinkling her nose unhappily. “That made the time I broke my arm really unpleasant. She didn’t let me have any potions to deal with the pain, and I’d been taking a few too many healing potions, so I got to heal the natural way.”
“Ooh, that couldn’t have been fun,” Stella said, wincing sympathetically, but paused, thinking for a moment before she continued. “I grew up in an area that was largely desert, Joy. Not many plants, little water… I imagine it would be hell for an apis. Anyway, the only plants that really grew easily are those that are easy to process into drugs. Oh, some of them can be medicines as well, but when a lot of people are looking for ways to stop caring about their troubles, they sometimes turn to drugs. It… isn’t pleasant to watch, much of the time.”
Joy blinked, then opened her mouth to speak before thinking better of it. She thought for a minute, then spoke softly. “We’re really different, aren’t we?”
“Joy?” Cora asked, blinking at her in confusion.
“Apis, we’re really different,” Joy explained, looking back at her as the apis felt just a hint of sorrow for the others. “In our society, we have our place, yes… I’m a worker, or was a worker, and I was considered expendable. However, at the same time, the hive would never simply abandon me if I was injured or unhappy. The other workers would give me company and cheer me up, and so long as I did my part I’d always have somewhere to rest and honey to eat. I even heard that the humblebees had started healing the injured workers when they came back to the hive. Even when they exiled me, they sent me off with enough food to last the rest of my life, the supplies necessary to survive while I tried to find my place in the world, and the opportunity to become a queen as well. That… isn’t what it’s like for the rest of you, is it?”
“Well… no, not really,” Brianna admitted, letting out a soft sigh as she shook her head. “I think there are a few major things that cause the differences, Joy, but there are some similarities you might not be seeing.”
“Oh? What might those be?” Joy asked, cheering up a little as she looked at Brianna, her mood improving at the reassuring tone.
“A huge part of your people is that without your queen, you’ll all die. That gives you a focus that other species really don’t have, at least not among any of the species I know of,” Brianna explained. She gestured at the city ahead of them as she continued. “On the other hand, just about any human or elf can continue the species with another of our people, provided one is male and the other is female.”
“As long as you don’t mind inbreeding,” Stella muttered sourly.
“Shush, that’s beside the point,” Brianna scolded, to Joy’s amusement. “The point is that we can. And that means that we have far more reasons to be selfish than the apis do, since we don’t have the survival of the entire species resting on our shoulders. On the other hand, we do have families, and those often act a bit like the apis hives, even if they vary a good deal more.”
“True!” Cora said, her eyes brightening. “Like Joy said about the apis, as long as we try, most of our families will do their best to help the oth
ers get by. Unless the entire family is in a bad position and barely surviving, it won’t usually abandon a family member.”
“Ah! I didn’t realize that it worked like that!” Joy said, enthusiasm rushing through her as she nodded. “I’ve only really seen all of you adventurers, and a few shopkeepers! I thought you were all really, really independent, like me. Or a little like me.”
The others were quiet for a few seconds, then a chorus of laughter rippled through them, Brianna running a hand over her hair as she smiled in amusement. Their reaction confused Joy a little, but she couldn’t help laughing along with them, delighting in their amusement.
“Well, that’s what we get for only letting you interact with adventurers. We’re all away from our families for this, Joy… think of us a bit like you when you were out gathering nectar,” Brianna explained, grinning at the apis. “We form sort of miniature families inside the guild to help us, but most of us have families to go back to. Mine just isn’t anywhere near Irador.”
“Nor is mine, as I’m from up north, like Brianna,” Cora added, smiling as she added, “After we get you the jelly and you’re a queen, maybe you’d like to come visit? It’s a beautiful forest, and I think there’s a spot nearby that might be worth considering for a hive.”
“I’d like that!” Joy exclaimed, her eyes brightening with enthusiasm, delighted by the thought of meeting the families of the others. Even if they weren’t hives, it made her happier to know that they had people to go back to.
“Regardless, let’s get into the city, shall we? We can point out a few families while we’re there, just to give Joy an idea of what it’s like,” Brianna suggested, grinning broadly.
“That sounds good to me,” Stella said, picking up the pace, and Joy joined them as Cora laughed.
Chapter 11
Webs & Wards (Beesong Chronicles Book 2) Page 7