Delayed Attack

Kamila was deep in her thoughts, nothing that I could tell her would impact her decision, this was something that she had to choose by herself.

I got up and finally could leave the place with some peace of mind… I left tailless behind to keep an eye on her.

The conversation with Kamila left me tired and in a bad mood… I wanted to hug someone, but Spencer, my friends, my brother everyone was in Green Shelter, and the things with Hayley were still awkward.

I felt cold scales coiling around my arm and fur snuggling into my lap. Paws and Cai-Cai noticed my mood and came to my rescue.

Not the kind of hug that I thought of but comforting anyways. Without Dante, I couldn't hear Cai-Cai's voice, but we still understand each other.

…

Feeling a little better and being sure that Kamila wasn't going to do something to herself, I focused on the current situation and went back into the barn.

I felt like we needed to go to the queen bee's base to figure out what she was planning. I thought of going by myself, but Blake (after asking me about Kamila) told me to not get too involved this time, as long as I just alarm them of incoming danger the rest of the job was for Ines and Frederick. Following his wishes, I limited myself to keep an eye around using clairvoyance.

It made sense, he took the opportunity for them to learn more. A few minutes later, Ines was already on her way toward the Queen Bee's base using her camouflage with Frederick following behind carefully.

From far away, I was able to discover Frederick's location, and after some additional work, I found Ines. After seeing them, I moved my gaze to a mountain that wasn't there before the meteor shower. The solid light brown rock with some holes from where bees regularly went in and out was the only clue I needed to understand that it wasn't a mountain but a huge honeycomb.

The light brown rocks from before were the same color as bee wax, without touching it I knew that it wasn't as fragile as the normal one, probably one of the enhancements of the worker bees was related to the wax production.

The current number of bees was frightening.

I know that there was no way for them to handle so many of them… even if they were regular bees, it would be almost impossible, and the odds when facing evolved ones was even worst…

With these numbers, if they attacked right now, there was no way for the alliance to handle them…

With this strength they didn't need to wait, they could have struck a lot of time ago when they defeated the Alpha Cow…

Then why they didn't do anything until now?

It was as if they were waiting for something…

'Spence are you busy?'

'Yeah… can't talk right now…'

I didn't need to keep the connection to know that he was having a hard time, whatever was he doing she couldn't bother him to collect info for her, probably he wasn't even in Green Shelter…

I didn't have another option but go and get it by herself. I locked eyes with my young panther and patted his head before letting him go.

"Scout around, let me know if something happens."

I knew that he complied to my request right away without the need of an answer coming for them.

Right now, Lucy was following Spencer to protect him from soul attacks, Tailless was keeping an eye on Kamila. Paws was my best scout due to his abilities, and Cai-Cai was with her too… she asked her to keep an eye around, it helped her to get information about the camp and also boosted the rat's morale.

If she wanted to go back, she had only one option to use Astral Gate.

I closed my eyes and went to the only Astral Anchor that I knew for sure was still at Green Shelter.

After the familiar feeling ended, she appeared in what seemed to be the nurse station in the new clinic. Dana was there playing with Dante while Isabella was talking with another nurse about the patients.

I wasn't here to talk with either of them and just needed a way to get here.

Dante looked straight at me, let me now that he knew that I was there. Not that it was a surprise, so she just asked what was in her mind…

'Do you know where is Spencer? He seemed to be in some kind of trouble when I talked with him earlier.'

'He is following a lead in the Source Stone investigation.'

'You mean that pearl?'

'Yeah he wanted to be sure about something, so he went to the vortex…'

'To the vortex?!?!'

'Don't worry, according to Pinky heroes have something called Plot armor so he will be fine.'

'Really? Using Pinky's word to keep me calm?'

'Say whatever you want… it worked anyways.'

She didn't want to answer him because she knew he was right… even if it was a stupid reason, she still felt that it kind of applied for him… whenever he was on the verge of death, something or someone appeared and helped them.

*sigh*

She dropped the subject and asked him what she came here for. If Spencer runs into troubles, she will know through the Astral Link.

'Do you know anything about bees?'

'They hurt like hell… when I was a kitten, Hope had to take me to the vet because of it…'

'I mean about their physiology, society, how they live…'

'Probably I can look for it in someone's mind if you want… anything particular?'

I wasn't sure what I was looking for… and hearing too much info was going to take time.

'A reason for them to delay their attack.'

'Well, there are a lot of reasons for it… they might even got into a war with other beasts like we did.'

It was just a guess, a good one, but I knew that there was another reason.

'I'll go to the library.'

'Okay.'

In my way to the library, I materialized myself before going in…

I spent a lot of time here with Spencer, but despite that, I haven't seen all the books here… I'm not Hope.

I looked at the bored girl playing with metallic marbles and smiled.

"Hey miss, can you help me?"

"Rose? What are you doing here? I thought you were in that awesome fight killing bees and getting honey for sweets."

"No honey yet, need some info, what you got about bees??"

"Troubles over there?"

"Yeah, there are a lot more than we thought and for some reason, they are not attacking, I think something else is going on."

"Mmm come with me."

I followed her to the biology section, and she took two thick books from there. One about insects in general and one more specific about Hymenoptera (an order from the insect class)

"Those two are the only ones that mention insect's physiology and some other details. And…"

She started to walk again.

Finally, in the business section she took another, thinner book

"Beekeeping: start your own bee farm!"

"This one can help too."

"Thank you! You are the best anything else I can do for you?"

"I don't know… can you think of a reason for the bees to delay their attacks?"

"Mmm…"

Hope closed her eyes… she can remember every word in these books so if she could think of something that would help me save time it would be great.

"A colony of thousands is not that weird, so taking the amount of time passed since this happened, I think that there are even more than what you saw. The problem is that they might not have enough food, and with the resistance from our direction, they might have gone to the other side to solve the food problem first."

It was a good theory.

Together with Hope, we went into a table and opened the books.

Hope told me theories and helped me go faster. I had no problem processing the information I got from the books and from Hope at the same time.

I slowly made a list of the reasons for them to stop their attack.

Food…

A war with other beasts…

Winter coming…

The queen changed her mind…

Everything I could think off was in the notebook as theories kept appearing. I kept doing it until I started looking at the physiology of the Queen and the difference between her, the workers, and the drones…

And it was when I understood the reason.