Chapter 5: Dulce Et Decorum est
The bee was colossal, nearly thrice his height, and while the beast had no iris and instead two massive, basketball-size compound eyes, Cyrus could tell the creature was glaring at him, mandibles twitching. The air was filled with the scent of honey left out for too long, and he could see a strange, comb-like structure where a normal bee's sting would be, and then he saw bees easily the size of his fingers start wriggling out.
Whatever bees he made managed to scare away with his torch trick came swarming back, in clouds so thick and dense they obscured the walls and blocked his vision. He could tell immediately that attempting to use his pistol on that seething swarm would fail miserably, and any bullets simply wouldn't cause enough damage to stem the tide.
His eyes darted around, looking for any way he could turn the situation to his advantage, and saw another entrance to the bee hive, its honey-comb walls dripping with nectar and pollen. Strafing to the right, Cyrus ran towards the entrance as the Queen Bee gave a shriek and launched a stinger easily the size of an arrow, which he ducked under as it soared overhead and sunk deep into the walls of the hive, seeping a vivid green venom that hissed like a snake when it intermingled with the honey, although Cyrus could barely hear it over the deep, constant thrum of the Queen Bee's wings. The entrance was so thin he could barely squeeze through it normally, and he dropped a torch in the crevice to dissuade the swarms from following him.
He looked around to find himself in a small grotto, thick with bushes and mahogany trees growing in the pale green light of jungle spores, all of which ringed a deep pool of tepid water, leaves and algae covering its surface. He was considering how he could use this to his advantage, he heard a loud impact and turned to see the wall of the hive caving in towards him, as if the Queen Bee had reared back and charged into the wall at full speed in order to reach him. A few moments later this theory was confirmed when another impact echoed through the cave and the hive's exterior began to crack and bend, honey pouring like ichor from the breaks in the walls.
Cyrus began to cover the ground in all the slime he had on him, letting it cover the leaves and bushes and soaking into the trunks of the trees, trying to keep his cool as the Queen Bee beat a slow, heavy tempo into the shattering walls of the hive. He could see fragments of thick yellow beeswax falling away, bouncing off the ground with thunderous impact. He pulled a torch from his pack, lit it, and waited.
With a great crash the wall of the hive finally shattered, and bees poured out like water pouring from a collapsing damn. Cyrus took a deep breath, threw the torch directly into the center of the foliage, and dove backwards into the water as his torch started a conflagration. Sinking into the green-ish muck, grabbed a hold on the side of the pond and waited as long as he could to take a breath. He could see the greenery of the grotto rapidly turning into a mix of a red and orange, the fires gaining a strange sort of quality, like they were being viewed through foggy glass. Faintly, he could could the roar of the fire as it spread, eating up leaves and scorching the sides of the hive, honey rapidly caramelizing as the Queen Bee let out a shriek of fury, apparently as unwilling to enter the water as her subjects were.
Cyrus saw something flitting through the water, a dark shape in the corner of his vision, and realized he may have just traded in one swarm of enemies for another. He bumbled with his spear, unused to handling it in the water, but managed to spear one of the piranhas before it could take a bite out of him, blood clouding the water and attracting even more piranhas to him. As he fended off a couple more of the creatures, he could see a sprinkling of ash landing on the surface of the water, evidently the result of the massive conflagration he had started. He had a feeling Nissa would hit him if he accidentally burned down the entire jungle, but couldn't really bring himself to care about the environment as a bee the size of a small house.
At the same time, could feel his lungs burning, and he needed air, but he waited a few moments longer to make sure that more bees were caught up in the flames before surfacing for a panting breath of the searing air. He inhaled deeply (and fortunately didn't breath in a bee) and saw the fires filling the room as the Queen Bee shrieked and launched a fusillade of stingers at him, and he dove once more, the stings missing him and slowing to a crawl in the water. Curious, he decided to grab a few and stuck them in his bag, and then continued to fend off the swarming piranhas as the bees were consumed in fire, occasionally seeing a bee drop into the water, dead from the heat of the flames.
After this third surfacing and narrow dodge of the Queen Bee's stingers, he thought he saw a path between the flames that could get him back to the (hopefully) less flammable hive, where he could fight the Queen Bee without getting charred. He leapt from the water, weaving from side to side to avoid the stingers as best he could before reentering the hive and turning to fire at the Queen Bee.
It seemed to alternate between wild charges where he would respond with his spear and periods of strafing where it would shoot stingers at him from range. Cyrus vaguely wondered if the Queen Bee needed time to regrow her stings before dodging another barrage of them. The bee's exoskeleton was so strong that his bullets bounced off, leaving little choice to aim for the head of the rapidly moving beast.
If only it was a little slower, he thought, then realized that while he may not be able to pierce the bee's exoskeleton, the thin, gossamer wings of the bee were a different matter entirely. When the Queen Bee charged him for the umpteenth time, his spear struck true and separated its left wing clean from its body, sending the creature veering into a nearby wall with enough force to make him tremble.
By the time he had reached it, the smoke had already cleared, and a woman lay in the crater formed by the monstrous bee's crash. She had long blonde (honey colored?) hair that had two antenna peaking through, and she wore a long sort of dress divided into yellow and black stripes. She had a pack of some sort slung over back, but even that couldn't fully hide the pair of bee wings which sprouted from her back and seemed to fit through holes in the back of her dress. Cyrus supposed that if he had wings attached to his body, he would need special clothes to fit them.
After stopping to grab a few of the vivid jungle flowers (with his luck the girl only ate pollen from certain flowers or something) before lifting her up and using his magic mirror to teleport home.
After passing the girl off to the nurse he visited Nissa, to ask her about gardening. At this point he was basically used to the dryad's state of dress and could actually hold a conversation with the woman.
"Flowers? What's next, dinner?" Nissa snarked, looking at the bundle of vibrant blue and red blooms which he carried.
"No actually. It seems a little silly, but I thought maybe because the new girl was a bee she needed honey, or maybe she would need or prefer flowers from the jungle?"
"You want to plant them somewhere? Sure. All these poor girls have had their lives changed so much, and while I get Annelida and Medulla not wanting reminders of the corruption, I think our new friend might miss her home."
Nissa and Cyrus spent the evening gardening, marking off an enclosure of dirt and planting the flowers in the dark, crumbling soil. Nissa always seemed so worried, for good reason certainly, given that the Corruption and Crimson were spreading, but seeing that grimace melt off her face as she focused on gardening made Cyrus think that the entire trip was worthwhile. She definitely had more of a green thumb than him (did she have to water her clothes? Were they preserved by dryad magic?) but was patient when showing him how to dig holes and implant the flowers in them.
After dinner, Cyrus went to back to visit the still unconscious bee-girl. He was determined to try to be there for these girls when they woke up, at least. Thinking on what Nissa said, every one of these girls must have been tremendously confused when woke up- in an completely alien form and among strangers.
Sometime late at night her eyes opened, a soft shade of brown that almost looked like honey in the warm torchlight. She held a hand up to block the light and groaned. "Could you tell me where I am, mister?"
"You're in a village, we never really came up with a proper name for it. My name is Cyrus, what's yours?"
"It may seem a little on point… but Bea." It was definitely fitting, but Cyrus could understand how awkard a name like that might be. It would be like if Garrett was actually named Guide, no other name given.
"Well, do you need anything, Bea? Could I… bee of assistance?" She laughed at that one (Cyrus honestly thought he might scare the poor girl off if she didn't like puns. It was way too easy) and waved dismissively.
"No, honey. I'm fine." Cyrus had a feeling he would like this girl very much.
The next day, during lunch, Bea had joined Cyrus and the rest of the Boss Girls for a picnic, next to the patch of flowers he and Nissa had planted.
Cthylla was peering at Bea's wings with curiosity. "Do… do your wings work?"
"Yes, I think so." Bea said, rising to her feet and wiping off her dress. Turning away from the group, she broke into a run and jumped into the air, spiraling in the air and hovering slightly above the ground before looping around to hover next to the group, her wings a making a steady thrumming in the air.
"In fact, I think I could…" she wrapped her arms around Cyrus' torso, tucking them beneath his arms before flying up high in the air. Cyrus panicked for a moment, but once his heart rate calmed down he realized that it was actually rather nice up here in the sky, and he could see all the houses that made up the village in a way he had never thought of before.
Then Cyrus remembered how he got up here exactly, and all of a sudden he was flushing, feeling Bea's arms wrapped tight around him as she pressed up against his body. "Do you like the view?" She asked, giggling, and he could feel her warm breath on his neck.
He definitely liked the little trip, but the rest of the girls turned on Bea for scaring them like that. She did manage to calm them all down by promising trips into the air, and Cyrus wondered if it reminded of their old forms, or if they even liked thinking about their old forms as Bea buzzed through the air, carrying Cthylla under her.
It turned out that Bea had another remarkable skill other than flight: she was the best cook of all them, with a borderline magical ability to transform food into works of culinary art. She also didn't eat pollen or nectar, but she managed to convince Cyrus into constructing apiaries to get honey without having to go on a trip to the jungle. She seemed to have a supernatural ability to control bees, and Cyrus couldn't help but wonder what other sorts of powers the other girls had. Annelida had inherited the tail from her old form of course, Cthylla had incredibly sharp eyesight, and Cyrus noticed that ever since Visca had shown up slimes had stopped showing up near the town, although whether this was the result of gratitude or a desire to keep her subjects alive remained unclear.
Over dinner, Cyrus almost asked if Bea had inherited a stinger from her previous bee form, but he realized what asking a bee-girl to show him her stinger might entail and quickly shut his mouth. Far down the table, he could see Garrett scribbling into a notebook between bites, and Cyrus couldn't help but wonder why he was writing so fanatically, but decided that if it was truly urgent then Garret would have told him about it and shrugged it off. Plus, surviving dinner was usually an ordeal all on its own when the girls fought over seats never him, so it quickly slipped from his mind as Garrett scribbled away.
Cyrus' next destination was the Dungeon, although he had very little idea what the place was actually like, other than vague descriptions of a horrifying guardian defending the entrance to the buried catacombs and tunnels full of loot. He departed in the morning and after a packed lunch courtesy of Bea, found the blue brickwork structure in the afternoon.
A ragged old man stood vigil in front of the entrance, and stopped Cyrus before he could reach the door. "Halt, traveler! Until you relieve me of my curse, this dungeon holds nothing for you except death and woe."
"Then how do I free you?"
"Speak to me again when the sun sets and sky darkens." The old man stopped Cyrus when he got too close to the door, and he didn't really want to fight him, but there was a strange, rot like smell coming from the drafty door that told him that heeding the old man's advice would probably be in his best interest, so he took a seat on a nearby hill and tried to sleep a little before what he feared would be another brutal fight.
When the sun set in the evening, he rose to his feet and approached the elderly man once more. "I suppose if you've stayed around for this long, you will not give up just because I asked you?" Cyrus nodded.
The old man gave a resigned sigh. "Then please, save me from my curse." He seemed to vanish, and a hovering skeletal head took his place, the bones of the arms hovering on each of the thing's sides. Its sockets were cold and empty, although the structure of the skull gave Cyrus the distinct impression he was being glared at.
It let out a shriek and swung with its hand, attempting to crush Cyrus against one of the dungeon's support pillars, and he leapt backwards, sprinting outside as the creature tried to crush him, slapping against the ground or trying to catch him between the two hands with claps that sounded like that thunder. Cyrus quickly decided to focus his attacks on the hands, in hopes of crippling the thing's offensive abilities.
If he thought the Queen Bee was bad to aim at, this possessed skeleton was just as bad, with narrow bones that would already be hard to hit even before they started swinging around like wrecking balls. Every shot that landed on the arms was much more effective than those that hit the head, with sprays of bone and marrow resulting from every shot that landed. However, the arms still remained functional even when filled with great holes.
The left arm broke first, and it was as if whatever magic kept the arm moving in synch with the head stopped, sending massive fragments of bone hurtling through the air, crashing into trees and sinking deep into the walls of the dungeon.
The right arm broke in a similar fashion a few shots later, but the skull changed tactics once it lost both arms, rolling at Cyrus like a possessed bowling ball, knocking trees over and sending them flying into the air like sticks. Then it turned towards him, opened it mouth, and let out a spray of glowing white skulls, their teeth locked into a grimace, which soared towards him as the skull itself reeled up for another rolling attack. At the very least, his bullets seemed a little more effective now that both arms were gone.
Each of the smaller skulls curved in the air, seemingly guided perfectly to intercept his path as he dodged the main head, and he felt one glance his side as he dodged a particularly viscous charge, the skull bouncing off the ground like a ball.
Breathing was harder now, his breath came in deep pants, but he aimed with his pistol and fire a shot directly into the creature's eye socket. The bullet struck, bounced, and then continued to do so again and again, filling the beast's head with a spray of bony shrapnel. Enraged, it rolled towards him, kicking up earth as it soared across the ground, and suddenly Cyrus realized he couldn't dodge this one-
and it evaporated into smoke like all the bosses before it, and Cyrus could swear he heard a deep sigh of relief. Once the smoke cleared, it revealed a young woman that could have passed for the original old man's daughter, wearing a similar gray vest and red scarf (although in a much better state o repair), although both arms were covered in long opera gloves that hid the whole of her arms. Her hair was a beautiful sort of silver that gleamed in the light of the moon as Cyrus stumbled over to her.
Looking down, Cyrus could recognize that something was horribly wrong, a great piece of his chestplate was missing, the edges warped and bent, and the skin beneath the missing armor was horrifically burned in a way that didn't look anything like a normal burn, leaving the flesh white and drained of blood, as if it was some sort of magical curse had withered the flesh away. He felt faint, but tumbled over to the girl and tucked an arm under her before fumbling with his magic mirror and sending them both home.
As he closed his eyes to rest, he could have sworn he heard people shouting….
I'm not going to lie and pretend this is a cliffhanger or anything, we all know protag-kun here will survive for more harem adventures, I just wanted a chance to advance the relationships a little (and get the girls to play nurse, which is always fun).
The clothier's role will be filled by personified Skeletron, and I'm racking my brain to figure out how I can get the girls into maid outfits. Well maybe not, I'll see how it goes, but outfit changes and all that. Next installment is looking like preparation for the Wall, so I don't think we'll get to see her until the chapter after next?
If it isn't blindingly obvious, I like puns. Bea's name is rather self explanatory (bee, obviously, plus sticking to A motif I've got going on). I'm very proud of the fight scene at the start of the chapter, and I think this probably the most action heavy one yet- tell me what you think! More harem interactions coming next time, but tell me if you think I try for more cooldown between fights.
Chapter title is Latin, literally "It is sweet and fitting" I picked that because honey is sweet, plus the second part of the phrase is "pro patria mori", meaning "to die for one's country" and considering the chapter's two bosses were associated with sweetness and death, seemed like a logical choice. Funny coincidence, a clothier would do fitting of clothes, adding some unintentional meaning. I was considering calling it Komm, Susser Todd (Come, Sweet Death) after the song in End of Evangelion, but Cyrus doesn't actually die so.