Despite every instinct I possessed, Queen squirmed against my Mind, her nerves affecting her body in ways she wasn’t accustomed to. She tried desperately to use our Mind to grab the bear or even trap the teddy bear, which was primed to declare the round over. But nothing happened. Her frustration at her inability to access her own Mind to do what she wanted only made her squirm even more, and I didn’t accommodate her. Her hopes wouldn’t pan out.


    “Bear! Please, cease your hostilities. We can resolve this peacefully.”


    Queen’s shout, more like a croak, rang out, mostly drowned out by our buzzing swarm and the bear’s roars. It seemed that her words reached the bear, at least to some degree, because its ears perked up ever so slightly. Even as it looked up at us, though, its teddy bear waved its arms and declared, ‘Correct!’, just as it did last time. There was no delay this time around. The landscape immediately shifted and the bear’s body rippled, primed to change into a new type. But it had heard Queen’s cry. Would it keep attacking us, regardless?


    “Enno, that bear is intelligent. Not only that, we can understand it somehow. We must figure out a solution before we become exhausted.”


    You think we’ll lose?


    “Of course not! But if we can speak to them, we can resolve this situation without going all the way to their deaths. Or Linking them. My point is, it is odd that we can… understand them. As if they are speaking, but not quite. Like their voices have a tinge of Mind with every word. We must figure out how to communicate with them and end this foolish attempt of theirs to attack us. Else we will lose more warriors, and will expend energy unnecessarily. Efficiency above all, no?”


    Yeah, very good points all around. In that case, I’ll help you try to talk to the bear, even if it’s a little weird. Are you just going to try talking to it? Them, I guess, considering the mysterious second voice. Wait. What if they’re like us, Queen?! What if they’re two guys in one guy?


    “Excuse me, bear. Please, disable your Ability at once,” Queen shouted, ignoring my weighty theories.


    The fernen were now looking at Queen with their heads tilted, as if she were crazy. Belial and Belphegora would never do that, though they wanted to. Very much. As it turned out, Queen and I were the only ones who had heard the bear’s ‘voice’, at least when it came to bees. None of them had heard it themselves, even if they now knew about it thanks to the Link. The fernen, while we were not privy to their thoughts, seemed not to hear it based on the look they were giving Queen. As for the bear, it was now looking up at us more intently. It definitely should be tipped off at this point, so hopefully it wouldn’t continue its attack.


    In that next moment, the bear’s rippling fur transformed, expanding outwards and shortening. Black fur shrank, overtaken by white fur, except on its arms, legs, and parts of its face. Its snout got shorter, and rather than long and lithe, the bear’s body transformed into something much shorter and almost pudgy. There was no mistaking it.


    “Please, panda bear, disable your Ability immediately,” Queen shouted again.


    My worries melted away. Even if the bear didn’t disable its Ability, a panda with no discernible martial arts capabilities might struggle to pose a threat to us. That meant I could focus on the crazy shit Vlugh was spouting for just a moment.


    “Like I said, I refuse to go into any more detail unless I can speak to the queen directly,” he said for what felt like the fifth time.


    Beelzebub was about ready to explode in anger, but she was just about the only bee not lost in thought or otherwise freaking out internally. Like he said, he didn’t want to reveal any details, but over the past few minutes, he had laid out a bit of a story where, instead of dying, he had experienced a crazy hallucination sending him some sort of message from a giant eye. That was it. Many of the bees, such as Beryl and Beelzebub, saw Vlugh’s claim as nothing more than just that: a far-fetched claim, a hallucination brought on by being on the verge of death. Actually, it was mostly the warriors that held such an opinion, plus some outliers who were listening in like Belle. It just so happened that two of the most important bees, though, and the ones most likely to influence my decision making, thought Vlugh’s claim was both extremely serious and a huge deal.


    “Could it have been one of the knights? It was Meyara’s bullet that pierced his skull; perhaps her Ability went further than we expect,” Bedivere said.


    “I don’t think so. It doesn’t fit their goals or the overall situation they were in,” Beatrice replied. At this point, most of the discourse either revolved around indifference, believing Vlugh to just be a crazy guy now, or following the speculation Bedivere and Beatrice cooked up.


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    Honestly, without more details, I didn’t see a reason to care much about Vlugh’s claims. Even if he saw some kind of giant eye giving him visions and instructions, it was pointless to speculate on them because he actively wanted to tell us. At least, after a little encouragement. The only issue was that he was being so stupidly stubborn and insisting he talk to me alone, despite the fact that I was a bee constantly talking to everyone I knew. Did he think I wouldn’t just be streaming his secrets live for the whole hive to see? So I’d been focusing on the more pressing matter of the mystery bear while I waited for him to either drop the stoicism or for my bees to do something drastic, but no dice.


    “I think Mother should meet him alone.”


    I nearly made a new egg from the sensation of Bedivere spinning around at breakneck speed to face Beatrice, who was now being glared at by a host of warriors.


    “Excuse me? I believe your speculation has made quite the leap, Beatrice,” Bedivere said, his deep voice turning gravelly and dark.


    For the most part, the other bees were more shocked than anything. But the warriors had reacted instantly to Beatrice’s musings, their singular instinct of ‘protect’ coming under fire from an unexpected place. To nobody’s surprise, Beatrice was unamused by the outburst. In fact, she pushed back. Hard.


    “Stand down. Of course, I would never dream of putting Mother in harm’s way, but it is a simple solution. The Link still works on Vlugh, if inconsistently. We know everything about Vlugh’s capabilities. And there are innumerable ways to prepare for an intervention in the conversation if required. Unless the warriors doubt their capability to act in such proximity. And this is all ignoring the fact that, despite their current… situation, Mother’s Mind is perfectly capable of protecting herself against a single, weak opponent.”


    Her words were scathing, but the warriors cared little for words. They were the action oriented types. So mixed with her words, Beatrice flexed her rarely used influence as the Aide, causing all but Bedivere to part immediately. In fact, the words were probably directed at Bedivere more than anyone else. Beatrice stared him down, face-to-face despite the comical difference in size and presence.


    Bedivere was the first to avert his eyes. He looked down at me, cradled in his arms, unable to fly with any sort of grace, and tensed. For a moment, I thought he might try punching Beatrice in the face for her suggestion. At this point, though, I had already made my decision.


    “I agree with Beatrice. Set me down in there and I’ll talk to him. Alone.”


    This whole charade had gone on long enough. Did Vlugh have most of the leverage in this exchange? Yeah. I mean, we wanted information from him and there was not really another way to get it. But it didn’t need to be this overly complicated. If he wanted to talk to me alone, whatever. I could handle it. I’m a big bee.


    The look in Bedivere’s eyes turned pained. “At the very least, can we set a condition of meeting outside of his little fortress? It makes the situation infinitely more dangerous.”


    Fantastic idea, Bedivere! Couldn’t have said it better myself.


    “Vlugh, I’ll meet with you alone. Provided we meet outside of your fortress of solitude.”


    “Fortress…? Sure. I’ll come out now. All the bees, and fernen, should be far enough away so they can’t hear us,” he said as he stood up. “I ask that you not share the information I’ll be telling you. Honestly, I bet you will also not be overly excitedq about sharing this knowledge, so you’ll probably do it yourself.”


    Bedivere set me down in the comfy nook of a destroyed tree, which I deemed a temporary throne, and by the time Vlugh came up to meet me, our swarm had cleared out. Not far, of course, but far enough to satisfy the knucklehead in front of me. At the same time, I had to use my Mind to shove away massive stalks of bamboo that had appeared, covering the entire area that Queen and the others were trapped in. It wasn’t violent bamboo or anything, but it prevented us from meeting the bear head on, like Queen wanted. And Belial’s attempts to destroy the bamboo were fruitless, as it instantly grew back even stronger than before. While they slogged through that joyful mess, I kept my eyes open as Vlugh sighed and sat on the ground below me, not expecting any funny business but staying cautious nonetheless.


    “You probably haven’t stopped sharing with the hive, but like I said, you’ll stop anyway. What I said is all true, but I can’t really share more details, aside from one thing.”


    He leaned in close enough to make me uncomfortable.


    “The eye knows about where you come from.”


    Just like he predicted, I immediately shut off the conversation from the rest of the bees, filtering the content heavily. If Vlugh was actually talking about what I thought he was saying, he had been contacted by the freaking gods. Or at least someone with knowledge of the gods. And by proxy, talking about where I came from, which meant knowledge of me. And I had enough of revealing things about myself to hive for a long while.


    “Nice. Good way to lead the conversation. And for the record, you convinced me. So, what is it you so desperately want to keep hidden from me?” I asked.


    “What I hid were my overall goals. I was given a mission by the eye. A mission that would supposedly be of help to you. So no need to be concerned about my intentions being a threat to your hive. If anything, it will be so useful you might decide to make preparations now.”


    “Right. As if there aren’t a million other things we have to prepare for. So spill it. What’s this mission of yours?”


    He hesitated for a moment. “We need to go to Dreva and find one of the others. I don’t know much more than that. But it would probably be a difficult journey, and Dreva itself is a mysterious and possibly dangerous place.”


    “Hold on. Others? Other whats?”


    Right as I asked Vlugh that question, Queen pushed through the final wall of bamboo, finding on the other side quite the duo, a comically sad-looking panda arguing with the shiniest beaver I had ever seen.