Epic of Bee

There was the sound of hundreds of little one-centimeter blue, glowing balls clinking into the bowl that made everyone go quiet. There were a lot of Levi-Stones in that bowl, but that still didn't answer my second question about the usefulness of the crafts.

"I have been collecting these as a bit of a hobby, and with hopes that one day I might come across like-minded people such as myself to help me with my ideas. You want to know why we should build them? I could give you many reasons, but I think that a simple test will work much better," Gamble explained to me, pointing to the craft.

"We are going to fly it in here?" I asked, hoping that was not the answer.

This room was large, but something told me that it wasn't anywhere near big enough. Gamble smiled and shook his head no, and I sighed in relief.

"No, if you can turn on the viewing window, you will be able to see them, but I guess we could also use the map you have in place better now," Gamble said, walking over to the table where I had placed the map. "Oh, Joni, can you tell the boys it's time for the test pilot run?"

I walked up to the table and went to the other side opposite Gamble so I could see what he pointed out. I was beyond curious to see what these things could be, and then I remembered something.

"Hey, I am going to go sit down and take one of the drone fighters out to watch them. I want to see what they can do in the first person, so to speak. Hilda, can you put what I see upon a display for everyone else?" I asked as I walked over to my chair.

*Poof!* 

"Yes, but I can't promise that the drone will stay looking at the boys the entire time," Hilda explained, and I nodded. 

"That's fine; I want to get a look at the area that we are flying over right now anyway," I said as Miasma and Messia helped me sit down.

Miasma came and crawled onto my lap, and she gave me some Honey Bee-fore I slipped into the drone's vision. Once inside, it was almost like I was a passenger in a weird jet thing that hovered, but then I started to look around me. 

We were traveling over a forest, but there was a weird dot about fifty meters in diameter that was dead. As we flew over them, I could see that they were perfect circles, and everything that was green and brown was now grey and lifeless, but only in the circles.

The stuff outside of the rings was perfectly fine, and then I also started to notice something that was similar to every dead spot I flew near. There was a blackish-green mass in the center of each clearing, and it was hard to tell, but I was sure that it was pulsing.

My attention was pulled away when the drone circled around, and I got my first look at Tag and Sig on the Flying Fish Bikes. They were both wearing helmets, so if I hadn't known that it was them, I wouldn't have recognized them.

The two started out moving at an average flying speed that I could fly at along, and then they separated, and I watched both the boys duck down. They had spread out almost thirty meters, and both boys were tucked down and looking like they were holding on quite tight.

'This is the result of all your hard work in gathering subjects and the people you need to help you and everyone else keep moving forward,' Hilda spoke to me in my mind, and then the boys disappeared.

The drone was pushed back and shook violently, but it held its ground or air. What the hell was that?!

I dropped out of the drone and back into my body and just stared at Gamble, whose smile was cracking his face. Were the boys even okay after that?

"How can they move so fast, and why can't we move faster?" was the first question that I asked.

"These stones create a small field around you that keeps you normal and stops the resistance to the air. This ship could do the same thing, but we would need a Grav-Orb, and getting one of those only comes from the sky whale. They are all monitored by the Skyfolk, and it is a huge event when one dies," Gamble explained.

"Then, what happens to the orbs after? You have collected so many of the other orbs, then you must have come across one of these ones, right?" I asked, hopefully.

"They harvest the Garv-Orbs to help support new sections of their massive flying city they are building to replace the city that has to be moved when a whale dies," Gamble explained.

"Well, that is a good enough reason to keep ahold of them, but what about the Levitation Sphere like the one the ship uses now? Can we just get more of them?" I asked, but my hopes were dashed again, I thought.

"No, if you tried to run more than one, it would end, making it almost impossible to control. The sphere had to be a certain distance apart, and that would be on the bottom floor, and then you would get twice the speed," Gamble explained resignedly, but this was good news; twice as fast was good.

"Do you have any? Of the Levitation Sphere's?" I asked, and Gamble looked at me strangely. "Hilda and I can control them at the same time, so that will work, right?"

"...Yes, I supposed it would. Excellent thinking, you are more than just a Queen to be so insightful," Gamble said in praise and then bowed to me.

"I will also get a place set up with your help to start manufacturing these, and then we will talk about what we can do about that water wheel of yours!" I said with excitement. 

Who needed sleep with this much excitement buzzing around?