The Bee Dungeon
Chapter 273: Bee-stablish the Foundation

Beero, the dronecaster, and the battlecasters did not take long to arrive. Wardmaster Varilold smiled at the sight as she barked out commands to the wardens. She turned back to Belissar and Beero and waved them over.

“If you would follow me.”

Belissar complied and the battlecasters flew along with him. The wardmaster marched through the Fairy Grove. Belissar furrowed his brow, the wardmaster didn’t have any chromatic bees guiding her at the moment. He checked with his Tower sight to make sure they weren’t going around in circles and blinked. The wardmaster was marching on a perfectly straight course.

“How are you doing that?”

Wardmaster Varilold turned to him and made a slight smile.

“Most of us fair folk see with more than eyes and the wardens most of all. This room’s wild glamour is potent, but unrefined, it is simple to counteract if you know what you’re doing. Moreover…”

She reached out and laid her hand on the nearest tree trunk.

“This room, unlike truly spontaneous wild magic, has direction and purpose. It ultimately responds to the will of the Tower and its Keeper. Its current attempts to misdirect me are more playful than anything.”

Belissar considered that and found himself nodding. While bees and karnuq had gotten lost in the Fairy Groves…none of them stayed lost for long and the fairy circles had never injured them directly. The same could not be said for the shade that had tried to charge through one.

The wardmaster took them to the fairy circle closest to the center of the room and stopped.

“I’m going to set up the foundation of the room’s wards here. What I establish here won’t have any particular effect but instead will guide the power of the nexuses. For the short-term, we’ll just use them to provide mana to the wards, but eventually I also intend to weaponize the nexuses directly.”

She gave him a grin.

“It has been a while since I’ve had a chance to work freely with nexuses like this.”

Belissar repeated her words for Beero and the other bees, then tilted his head.

“Really? The Tower calls them fairy circles, so I would’ve thought the Compact would have some?”

Wardmaster Varilold nodded.

“We do, but as you’ve no doubt observed they have a mind of their own, and a tendency to connect with one another. Once the nexus door network was corrupted by the Hunger, we couldn’t risk any new nexus doors letting the Hunger into the land of the fair…and beyond that, the mana of the land of the fair as a whole has been waning over the years, including in the nexuses themselves. We had to be extremely cautious in utilizing any of those remaining.”

Belissar frowned.

“Wait…does that mean the Hunger could come through one of these?”

The wardmaster crossed her arms.

“We are not certain…but our current theory is that it shouldn’t. That it has not come through your Tower’s connection with Tarwantrad’s dungeon implies to us that the nexuses within dungeons benefit from their purifying power. Still, we have not confirmed this, so we will be keeping a very close eye on the nexus door from now on. I’d recommend you use caution when interacting with the nexuses.”

Belissar replied with a nod and a serious expression. Wardmaster Varilold seemed satisfied and walked over to the edge of the nexus. Belissar and Beero followed her and she pulled out a small piece of parchment. She passed her hand over it and the parchment lit up briefly, then she handed it to Belissar. He looked down at it and saw black markings burnt into it in a circular pattern. There were two concentric circles with the space inbetween them filled with geometric shapes and curved symbols. He made sure to show it to Beero and her hive as well.

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The wardmaster gave them a minute before speaking.

“Wards are fundamentally a type of spellcraft, the language and symbols we use are not dramatically different from other schools. The main difference lies in their duration and thus the execution required. Wards are intended to be long-lasting or even permanent and that introduces a great many concerns that combat spellcasters don’t need to address. The biggest two are mana source and long-term stability.”

She motioned to the nexus.

“All spells consume mana as long as their effects are active. A ward will eventually peter out if it is not regularly replenished. In this case we can use the nexus as a continuous source…but that brings its own challenges. It is vital that the wards receive the intended amount of mana. Too little and they won’t achieve what we need. Too much…”

Belissar thought back to when he first tried magic and nearly blinded himself.

“…and they explode?”

Wardmaster Varilold nodded.

“Depending on the ward, that might be least bad option.”

Belissar gulped as the wardmaster knelt down and brushed her hand across the dirt and grass surrounding the fairy circle.

“Of the pattern I’ve shown you, the overall shape is all that is necessary to siphon mana from the nexus. Everything else are the instructions and safeguards required to do so precisely and safely.”

She then removed a pouch from her belt and pulled out a mushroom of all things. She planted the mushroom’s stalk right into the darkened grass of the fairy circle. She moved around the fairy circle repeating the process until it had become a circle of mushrooms rather than grass. She gave him an amused smile.

“Are you surprised?”

Belissar nodded honestly.

“I thought you were going to carve it or something…like the table we used for the compact.”

The wardmaster gave a brief chuckle.

“Most new warden acolytes think so as well. And that is one of the keys to understanding wardcraft. If you want a ward to stand the test of the time, the medium and method you use to realize the spellform are as important as the accuracy of the spellform itself.”

She spread out her hands and formed a spell circle out of mana, as Belissar had come to expect. The circle matched the one on the parchment exactly. The wardmaster spun her hands and the circle rotated until it lay horizontally above the fairy circle. She spread her hands and the spellform expanded until it encompassed the fairy circle, with the inner ring of the spellform overlayed exactly on the mushroom boundary.

“In this case, not only are we using a nexus grown within a forest, we are working in a dungeon. I’m sure you, the master, are already aware that a dungeon enforces the intended nature of each of its rooms, and no ward can battle with a dungeon for long. So, I must ensure the wards work with your Tower’s rooms and not against them. For this room, a spellform made of living things that drink up ambient mana will prove the most stable here.”

She then thrust her hands down and the spell circle dropped all at once, slamming into the mushrooms below. The mushroom caps glowed briefly and Belissar switched to his mana sight. He could see glowing roots, or perhaps mycelium as he recalled Tarwantrad mentioning, extending down through the dirt from the mushroom stalks. He watched in wonder as the mycelium began weaving itself into the patterns and shapes he had seen on the parchment, all underneath the surface. Once the pattern was completed, he saw streams of mana pull from the vortex at the center of fairy circle into the mushrooms surrounding it. The entire pattern began to pulse with mana in a steady rhythm. Wardmaster Varilold smiled as Belissar stared and Beero and the dronecaster began an excited dance.

“And that, in brief, is the art of wards. Activating the spell itself is no more complex than any other. The real work is in designing the form for your needs, deciding how exactly to realize it, and then shaping the medium. Come, now that we have the foundation set, my subordinates will begin work on the defenses.”

She took them back to the nexus door, where the other wardens were seemingly planting a garden of mushrooms and flowers, were it not for the spell circles being dropped upon them.

“So, do we need to learn those spellforms?”

Wardmaster Varilold shook her head as they watched the wardens work.

“Spellforms aren’t universal and neither are wards. I’d teach you if you were brand new to spellcraft, but you’ve already shown me that you have your own spellforms, ones that I assume better fit you and your bees.”

Belissar eyes widened a bit.

“Ah…is that like how you need to use mushrooms for this room?”

The wardmaster smiled and nodded.

“It is similar. As I said before, warding is ultimately another form of spellcraft. You and your bees will need to figure out spellforms for absorbing and transferring precise amounts of mana as the one I showed you, but once you do it would be possible for you to begin crafting wards of your own based on your own spells. That said, there are some other aspects of the craft you should learn first. The danger of haphazardly overlapping wards, for one, like THOSE TWO OVER THERE!”

A warden jumped and immediately stopped what he was doing as the wardmaster shouted at him. Belissar, meanwhile, watched the wardens intently while translating for the bees. His mind raced as he considered the wardmaster’s words. They could make more permanent versions of their own spells? What exactly could they achieve if he managed that? What could he accomplish if he could make long-lasting spell bees?

And from the excited dance of Beero, the dronecaster, and the battlecasters, he guessed that the bees were thinking much the same…

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