…They didn't agree.
The entire plan has fallen apart almost imdiately, and no amount of glue could fix it.
The dodo chicks, upon noticing bees, tried to swat us away. Their thoughts were simple and unfriendly. Sadly for us, they were already firmly imprinted on their hawk-dragon mother and that this generation of dodos won't be very friendly to bees no matter what.
This ant that we had to tie them for transport by force, which made an already complicated task ten tis more complicated.
At the sa ti, the black crow-dragons were afraid to even approach the hawk-dragon's nest. Even if bees asked really nicely with extra bribery! Not that we had a lot of snacks left to bribe dragons with, except for the fresh corpses. Which the dragons got their paws on already and didn't need our help with.
And finally, the hawk-dragon just didn't give us much ti to work with! It returned to the nest less than an hour later, forcing us to retreat before it decided to swat us away.
Of course, we could kill the hawk-dragon, but… Who will feed the dodo chicks then?
I didn't want to deal with this! Not right now! There was only one order I could give.
"We must accept—this won't work out. Not like this. Retreat! Let's go back to the camp and think again."
At least the hole in the ground we chose as shelter was still relatively comfortable. Also, the scouts began returning with new information, telling about positions of the larger dragons and about locations of more dodo chicks.
All of them were living in nests of other large dragons, all of which were predators, and built their nests high in the pillar mountains. Not a favorable combination for us and the dodos.
The scouts have found 11 nests nearby so far, with an average of 2 chicks in each—so 22 in total. From what I knew, this wasn't enough to re-establish a species (they would suffer from inbreeding too much to survive over the course of the next generations). I also doubted that we will find many more dodo nests farther away.
But knowing that divine shenanigans were involved, I didn't worry. As long as these dodos survived, grew and thrived, Dalmanrach will get the points to fix the inbreeding.
However, it beca clear that I will need human help after all to deal with this.
I wasn't so arrogant that I *only* arranged for bees to co on this mission. While it was in its preparation stages, I asked Whisper to arrange for so humans to travel here and be ready to pick the bees up.
But they won't co in another week at least. Until then, my squadron and I had to get the dodos out of their nests.
It we were too slow, they would grow too large to fit! They were already dangerously large for their nests, being naturally bigger animals than hawks.
"We must make more ropes," Malevolence suggested. "And if these beasts resist, we will just hit them until they let us tie them! We will kill the large dragons so our dragons stop being afraid! Father, we will crush all the opposition—just give us the order. That's what we are here for!"
She and the other bees were so ready to do this, just to save the effort… And the brute-force thod of solving problems would've worked, if there were more bees with us.
There weren't.
I smiled at Malevolence and shook my head.
"No. For today, we will wait for news from Tamsha. Perhaps he will be the help we need."
"But we are wasting ti, Father! There is an entire half a day left of sunlight!"
I clicked my tongue.
"A valid point, Malevolence. We should prepare this camp to keep dodo chicks in it—after all, we will need a place for them after we save them, and it's better to build it before we have beasts roaming between our tents."
"Yes, Father!"
The bees got to work. Although they were all soldiers, not Builders or Craftsn, they all could do simple work, and they all had the diligence to do a lot of it.
By evening, our camp looked less like a dirt cave with so campfires and more like a camp. There was also an area separated from the rest with a sparse wood fence large enough for a few dodo chicks.
A dragon also returned, carrying a dragon rider with news from Woe and Tamsha.
Farini's friend turned out to be a very skeptical person, but a good one. He helped Woe almost without prompting, making a splint for its leg and feeding the beast. This imdiately put Tamsha into my good books.
He also genuinely wanted to help Farini, but at the sa ti wondered if Farini, or himself, went insane.
A regular Agent Bee would've avoided dealing with soone like Tamsha altogether. But I sent a Commando Beemarine, not an Agent.
This bee refused to return without results, so she pestered Tamsha until she found sothing he wanted, no matter his beliefs. It was a cure for his mother, who caught so of the local plagues.
Now, although Tamsha still felt that he was making a mistake, the man was riding with a pair of servants to our location. He will reach it by tomorrow evening.
"Good. One day, or two… We can still wait this much," I said, making ntal calculations. "In the anti, girls, you can build better temporary pens for the dodos and find more of their nests. There have to be more than 12!"
Damn, I wished Dalmanrach had the courtesy of saying how many exactly. I wondered whether he was just being difficult or if giving information cost him so of those precious Ga of Evolution's points.
Either way, it made this day rather uneventful.
And on the next one, without delays—how lucky!—Tamsha has arrived. It was ti for to et the skeptic.
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