How Could I Forget?

[Rose POV]

The books refer to the mating of the bees as nuptial dance… with that name, I would expect some kind of beautiful dance under the moonlight, but the reality was brutal.

The drones take turns to mate with the queen. Each time the process takes a few seconds, and the drone's part that is joined to the queen just literally blow up… once they finish their "task", they fell from the sky already dead.

There is nothing pretty in it… but their deaths work for our plan.

There is not many of us looking this savagery. Even if they are in a vulnerable position, they know how bad it will be to lose the queen now, so the worker bees are in high alert and have already killed a few rats and spies from Blackie's faction. Frederick also had to escape when he was discovered, so only Ines and I are here from the human faction.

I could try an assassination just after the nuptial dance finishes, and that would finish with any possibility of the hive raising again, with no males left and no queen it would definitely die, but there were two problems with this.

First, the worker bees might go berserk and attack us, if this happens neither Blackie nor Green Shelter are ready to face a full attack from them. The second problem is that the Aes Sidhe are not supposed to interfere with this.

Also, the plan is ready and will start after the "dance" finishes and all the bees, or at least most of them go back into the honeycomb.

The last few days, everyone has been active.

Those with venom gas or similar powers are working in making bombs with anyone smart enough to help. Others are supporting the human faction to bring grenades and explosives from Green Shelter, the explosives are supposed to be placed in some key points that Giorgio identified in the honeycomb structure to bring it down.

The last two groups are mainly composed of rats and minor beasts, tey are either scouting and following the movements of the Hive, while the others are resting.

This last group is one of the keys to this plan… as they will deliver the packages.

The explosives will be connected to a trigger, while the grenades, bombs and other devices will follow as a result of the explosion.

We have to wait for the queen to lay the eggs, that way she will be weakened and the worker bees will be busy taking care of the eggs, and a large amount will be inside.

The only problem with this plan was that despite our best effort, not all the bees will be inside, and the strongest bees might survive the explosion.

The nuptial dance ended, and the floor was filled with the bodies of the remaining drones.

As expected, the Queen went back inside, followed by about half of the worker bees, while the others stayed outside protecting the Hive.

This was something we knew could happen, Also one of the reasons to wait. We need them to lower their guards and for more workers to go inside to help.

But the plan was ready to start.

_________________________________________

The worker bees guarding on the outside stayed the same for a while, but it started to decrease three days later.

That was also the time it took for the first eggs to hatch and the need of bees to take care of the larvae raised, this was the moment we were waiting for.

That night the plan began.

Under Blackie's command, the beast army launch a direct attack and rapidly got upper hand forcing more bees moved in that direction

An attack was launched from another direction this time the group was smaller, but the beasts and humans that composed it were stronger than the creatures in the leading group.

This second attack was a feint and is intended to create more chaos, so the rats and minor beasts could get inside during the battle.

The tactics and the battle weren't as effective as I would want, but with the minor involvement policy, all I could do is be sure that the losses weren't too significant.

Unfortunately, without the Hayley going all out the sheer amount of power goes down by a lot, but during this last few months, the weapon technology has been recovered and evolved a little to fit our needs. Green Shelter will need to depend on it to survive without us until they discover and train talents like Kamila. In the smaller group, none of the sides was winning and just limited themselves to trade blows

I was again up in the sky looking at the battle and Paws was following the rats/beast inside to be sure that all the bombs are placed correctly and that the workers inside don't mess up the setup either.

Despite the plan going well, I had a weird feeling… not the kind of feeling that tells me that something terrible is about to happen, but a weird one…

The rats inside were discovered after going in.

With the little space inside the bees had a hard time fighting the slippery rats that kept moving to their targets without caring for their own lives.

If one of them died, another one took the bomb and kept going.

Outside the battle was in a standstill but because of what was going on inside neither the bees inside could help the outside or the other way around.

I kept an eye on the surrounding to be sure that no one took the chance to attack from there. In Blackie's story, he mentioned that some farm beast joined the Queen Bee, but at least it doesn't seems, like they are around anymore.

When the last rat explosive got to a place filled with larvae, the order came down.

In the barn Pinky together with healer-guy were in charge of the trigger.

Pinky was the only one besides me that knew what was going on inside the honeycomb. And healer-guy… well, he has a thumb to press the trigger.

The primary explosives started the chain reaction followed by all minor bombs that were placed in highly populated areas.

I closed my eyes focused on the souls living around me, but as I already expected, there were some strong enough to survive the blast… at least that was what I thought until a shiver went down my spine…

I noticed a few things that happened at the same time…

The forest got quiet, and the sounds of the battle calmed down… when I looked there, the battle was still going but not as strong as before… no fire, sparks or huge impacts.

And the souls inside the honeycomb got weaker…

Actually, everyone became weaker. I can't see the Auras, but I still know the current condition of someone from their soul status.

It was as if they were repressed or sealed.

I was scared of leaving the Astral Realm… whatever was happening in the material world wasn't affecting me in here, and I couldn't take my chances.

At least this weird phenomenon was good for us. The bees got weaker, and all of them got affected by the fire and collapse of the honeycomb, leaving only the ones outside to handle and that battle was also turning in our favor.

The human side depended mostly on weapons, so even if they got slower or weaker, the guns still were as effective as before, and slowly the smaller group started to win their own battle.

I didn't see much of it as I was busy trying to find the source of this weird event.

My eyes finally noticed something the third time I looked around… someone that I didn't notice before was on his knees near the honeycomb…

His breath was ragged, and his face was covered in sweat.

I went there as fast as I could while he fell nose first on the floor passing out.

Everyone around felt when their abilities came back.

But the scene in front of made me remember something that happened a few months ago but the roles were inverted…

---Flashback ----

Spencer was on top of my body, protecting me from the flames. I could feel my throat and lungs burn with each breath I took… I don't know how long I laid there with him, but it was bad…

Way to end… in the middle of a burning forest…

I just wanted to close my eyes and give up when I heard something moving on our side.

A beast that survived?

No…

A human figure was coming our way as if it was walking in the park. The flames didn't damage him. He took both of us, and the fire didn't hurt anymore as if it was ignoring our presence.

After that, I woke up in the hospital… and forgot the exact moment when we were saved by Stan.