The dam moved forward another dozen ters, crushing four more trees—two on each side—with loud rumbling and cracking of ice. Its movents sent splashes of water and ice ships flying, creating a cloud of mist that threatened to swallow the wall-guarding bees.
They dashed away each ti, but I saw so of them being hit by the ice chips. The sharp shards left scratches on skin unprotected by their natural scales or clothing, sotis even cutting down a health point.
But those injuries were minor compared to the damage to the dam itself and the riverbanks!
Unlike the ice wall, which sank into the ground under its own weight, the dam was lighter than the water surrounding it. It also wasn’t fully connected to the bottom of the river—we didn’t have ti to build sothing like this.
So, with each ter that the flood pushed it forward, this mass of ice tried to detach from the bottom of the river and its banks and float higher. Where it would be carried away by the river entirely!
"More seeds!" the leader of the gardeners’ group shouted. "Don’t just throw them, they will be wasted if they don’t land on the ground!"
Despite this terrifying situation, my girls kept a clear head on their shoulders. Even though I wasn’t with them physically, they knew that I was watching, and each of these bees thought:
’I can’t let Father down! I can’t let the colony down!’
No matter how far the dam had pushed past the wall already, they tirelessly planted more seeds. Their motions were hurried, but not frantic, and they forbade themselves from panicking.
I really wanted to tell them how proud I was of their work, cheer them up! But I didn’t risk distracting them even with a single telepathic ssage.
"We only have two dozen seeds left!" gasped a bee standing at the side, where a small pile of ice-hole tree seeds was lying in a wooden cart like a bunch of cabbages.
I swore silently.
Of course, the seeds here weren’t infinite. More were going to co here—reinforcents of bees and seeds were already on their way—but I knew they wouldn’t co in ti!
I only had to teleport around the place a few tis to be sure that the reinforcents were too far away. They flew as fast as they could, but it wasn’t fast enough.
When I returned to the dam, there were already ten fewer seeds in the stash, and the dam advanced for seventeen more ters.
With a loud crack, it broke another pair of trees and froze them into their own mass. As this happened, I realised sothing.
The dam was much larger now than it had been before!
All the trees it broke in its way, together with ice and dirt the dam raised from the river bottom, added to the dam’s mass.
Now it beca too heavy to float and sank again, digging into the riverbank and anchoring itself!
However, the flood was still pushing it from the back, sotis even spilling over it and threatening to spill onto the river banks ahead.
The dam continued to advance, and if it moved just another ten ters, the bees that reinforced the ice wall itself wouldn’t have enough seeds to close the holes this would create.
As I made these calculations, the dam moved three more ters forward. It had definitely slowed down.
If my astral projection was breathing, I’d bate a breath. Instead, I just watched anxiously.
Five ters until the breaking point...
Three...
Two...
One and a half...
I imagined myself biting my lip and clenching my fists—the best I could do to release my anxiety.
It was still one and a half ters away.
The dam... wasn’t moving.
Its own weight and the ice-hole trees anchoring it to the river banks did their jobs. For now.
But I didn’t dare to be too happy! Instead, I teleported closer to the sides of the dam, looking at the roots of the horizontal anchor-trees.
I wanted to know if they were holding on tightly enough or if they were going to break.
To my relief, the roots really held tight. This part of the river bank was made mostly of stone, which the ice-hole tree roots pierced like it was soft ground.
But unlike soft ground higher upstream, this gave the anchors extra dependability.
Neither I nor the local gardeners allowed ourselves to fully relax despite the feeling of relief we all just experienced. The bees’ leader gave orders to add their remaining seeds to the thinnest part of the ice wall that stretched from the dam.
The entire construction looked like it could break at any mont, but it held. It held for ten minutes, after which extra seeds were brought from other places, and the wall could be reinforced until it was truly secure.
At this ti, I made sure that all other dams and sections of the ice-hole tree wall were ready for the mont when the flood reaches them, too. The bees all over the wall were pulling out extra seeds and planting them near dams ahead of ti.
Half an hour later, the water reached several other dams. But the bees there were more prepared, and the wall withstood the initial onslaught of the flood without much issue.
Similar things repeated all over the wall within the next few hours as more and more water poured from the mountains. By the evening, I could safely say that the flood was contained!
If I looked from high in the sky, I could see a dark, hair-narrow wall of muddy water. On one side of it was the Bee Empire—on the other side were wide expanses of water that was pouring whenever it could.
As long as nothing broke suddenly, we were safe. But looking at all this water, I had sudden doubts that it would all go away on its own.
’And even if we could, should we LET it?’ I thought suddenly.
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