HC: Handyman | Ch. ??? - Dual Kingdom

Author's note:

Hi everyone!

This is the second of two chapters about the Breach written from the bees' perspective.

I hope you enjoy it

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The hive had known hardship, and it had known cold. But now, it knew strength.

The storehouses brimmed with honey—thick and golden—the fruits of countless flights and tireless labor. Comb after comb gleamed under the gentle, warm breath of thousands of wings.

The nursery chambers were full, their wax walls sealed with care, humming with the slow, steady life of larvae. Nurses moved tirelessly, tending to the young.

One of them approached the queen and offered to feed her. The queen accepted with quiet grace. As the nurse presented the thick, white meal, the queen breathed deeply, savoring its richness. With just a taste, she felt its vitality rush through her.

Oh, how delicious—and how precious—it was. The food of queens, and a treasure even rarer than honey: Royal Jelly.

Only the youngest nurses could produce it, their glands transforming chewed pollen and honey into this sacred substance. It was thick, white, and glistening—more nourishing than pollen, more potent than nectar.

She turned her gaze toward a nearby nursery. Larvae, small and blind, floated in pools of milky jelly. For their first three days, they were granted this luxury—a head start in life, a taste of royalty. After that, their diet changed.

Farther off, she saw a different nursery. There, nurses fed older larvae a pollen loaf—still nutritious, but lacking the shimmering essence of Royal Jelly.

Only the queen consumed it daily. She had to remain strong—for the colony, for the rhythm of egg-laying, for the future. But one day, a single larva would be chosen. Bathed in it, fed with it, raised upon it. That one would rise to become the next queen.

As she fed, savoring another drop of the rich jelly, the tremor came.

The hive shook with a deep, resonant rumble. Cracks split through soft wax. Workers froze, antennae raised, the rhythm of the hive faltering in alarm. The queen stilled, already preparing the scent of war, of flight, of final defense.

Then the sky opened.

Light poured in—harsh, holy, blinding.

And through it came him. The giant.

The hive went still.

He loomed above them, enormous and calm. His scent was familiar—smoke and honey, wood and warmth. He did not reach for their stores. He showed no aggression. He simply... watched.

And then his paw moved—slow and deliberate—toward her.

The queen trembled, her antennae curling in hesitation.

Her instincts screamed—flight, defense, a call to arms. The hive could be under attack.

But then she paused. The scent. It wasn’t threat. It was warmth. It was him.

Her fear wavered, then dissolved. He did not smell like a foe. He never had.

She breathed deep and released a calming perfume, bidding her kin to maintain order. She didn’t want the workers to release the pheromones of war and attack their ally. The Sky Opener.

In a show of faith, she lay still as the giant’s paw enveloped the nursery around her. Then—crack. The wax beneath her feet shifted. The world lurched. Her chamber—her seat of power—tore from the hive like a limb from a body. She steadied herself as the ground tilted beneath her. The sound of splintering comb and panicked wingbeats filled the air.

The bees swirled in alarm. Dances of confusion filled the air. What was happening? Why was she being taken? She answered them—not in words, but in motion. Her body danced with poise and grace, her pheromones a song of reassurance. Trust the giant, she told them. We have always grown through his will.

She rose into the air—her, a few cells with eggs and larvae, and the nurses that clung to her. Then came the light.

It was only the second time in her life she had seen the sun. The first had been during her mating flight, when she had left her birth hive to find her future—but even then, leaves and branches had shielded her from the full blaze of the sky.

Now, there was nothing between her and the source.

The sun.

A golden sphere that poured warmth into her body and light into her eyes. It shone brighter than she had imagined, like the heart of the hive itself—limitless, radiant, alive.

Then, also for the second time in her life, she was brought into a cavern.

Empty. Echoing.

Darkness.

Silence.

With a massive boom, the sky sealed shut above them.

The workers that had come with her clung close, still buzzing—confused, worried. And for a moment, the queen faltered. Her hive. Her family. Gone?

No.

Not gone. Close. She could still smell them—the old hive humming with life. It had not been an exile.

Why would the giant separate them? Why remove a piece of the whole?

Unless…

The queen felt her thorax tremble—not with fear, but with joy.

This was not an ending. It was a beginning.

The giant had judged them worthy—not of replacement, but of expansion.

The honor was indescribable. To be the mother of not one hive, but two. To begin a new colony. A new legacy. To extend the lineage of their dynasty.

She turned to her small retinue, her mind alight with purpose. In the gloom, her body danced orders: Nurses, you are foragers now. Honey-makers, become builders. This was a second beginning—and they would rise to meet it.

Wax would spread again across this cavern, becoming a metropolis of resin-coated comb, as glorious as the one they had left behind. A new throne would rise. And in the neighboring hive, her daughter would rise too—nurtured on Royal Jelly, destined for her own reign.

The queen closed her eyes and remembered the sun.

She would ensure that her lineage remained worthy of the gentle giant’s trust.

*

In the old hive, the colony was thrown into disarray. Their queen had been taken. They were queenless.

Panic rippled through the comb.

Without a queen, there would be no eggs. Without eggs, no workers. Without workers, no honey. And without honey, the hive would collapse. It would starve. It would die. A nightmare of doom loomed just beyond the walls.

But the bees did not give in to fear.

An unsung melody spread through the hive—a vibration in the wax, a shift in scent, a change in flight. No single bee commanded it. There were no trumpets, no cries. Only instinct, honed over a thousand generations, and a reverence that filled the air like perfume.

It was time.

They had to raise a new queen.

Nurses and builders turned toward the nurseries. They combed through the youngest brood, inspecting each larva with care. They looked for signs of strength—markers that whispered of royal potential. One had hatched from her egg with uncommon precision, leaving behind a clean, almost polished slit. Already, she had grown just a little faster than the others. Already, she was more voracious, her small mouthparts working with ceaseless hunger as she devoured the jelly left for her. And her movement—she didn’t merely wriggle like her siblings. She thrashed. She writhed with life. With purpose.

She would be the one.

Around her, the workers moved swiftly. Neighboring cells were opened and emptied with care. The nearby larvae, briefly exposed to the air, were gently transported by nurses to fresh chambers farther down the comb, where their development would continue, unharmed. No life was discarded, but space had to be made—for greatness.

Heat pooled as bodies gathered. Wax softened. The workers reshaped her cell—once a humble worker's cradle—into something far grander. It widened and lengthened, descending like a waxy chalice. A queen’s chamber.

And into it, they poured Royal Jelly.

Not a drop. Not a taste. A flood.

The young larva floated in it, her body nearly submerged. She fed with wild appetite, consuming more in minutes than a worker would in a day. Nurses watched in awe, whispering their admiration through the hive. She feeds faster than the rest. She grows stronger each hour. She will be majestic.

Word spread.

The new queen would be powerful, they said. She would be wise. Her form would be large, radiant with purpose. Her wings would carry the hive’s hopes. Her presence would command unity.

And as she grew, the hive began to hum again. The rhythm returned—not fully, not yet. 

The new queen would rise.

*

Where was she?

There was only darkness. Empty, formless darkness.

But not silence. Not absence. There were memories—faint, but persistent. Memories of unrelenting hunger. Of warmth and sweetness, of being cradled in love and fed by devoted mouths, drowning in that sweetness, needing nothing else.

But now, it was dry. Still.

The hunger had faded.

Something new remained.

Not pain. Not need. Just... readiness.

She stirred, faint at first. Her limbs were no longer soft or shapeless. They moved with weight, with definition. Her wings, folded tight against her sides, twitched like a memory returning. Her mind—once dim and instinctual—sparked with something more.

Awareness.

She bit through the silk and found herself inside a second enclosure, surrounded by wax that was warm and familiar. It smelled of the hive—and of herself.

But it no longer comforted. It confined.

She flexed her legs, testing strength. It was there—coiled like fire in her thorax, like thunder in her wings. She was not what she had been. The larva was gone.

She had become.

A pulse moved through her—deep, instinctive, commanding.

She pressed upward. Her mandibles worked in precise strokes, cutting into the wax of her chamber. The seal cracked. A sliver of light crept in—dim and golden, filtered through the hive’s thick air, but dazzling all the same.

And then, she broke through.

The royal cell split open, its top falling away like the petal of a blossom.

She rose.

Her body unfolded—longer, thicker than a worker’s. Her legs gleamed, newly hardened. Her thorax pulsed with strength. Her abdomen, long and fertile, curled beneath her like a banner.

She stood for the first time, and the hive fell into stillness.

A corridor of bees had gathered. Nurses, guards, nurses—all lined the wax passage in reverent silence. Their antennae lowered, their wings still. They made no sound, yet the air was electric with meaning.

She stepped forward.

The hive was familiar, but also different. She smelled the old wax, the honey stores, the pollen loaves. But she also smelled the absence—the void her mother had left behind. A throne without a ruler.

And she knew.

This hive is mine.

Not as a possession, but as a purpose. She was its future, its promise, its beating heart. Every bee in the corridor turned to face her. They did not cheer. They did not sing. But their silence was a roar.

She walked the length of the passage—slowly, solemnly—her procession a rite older than memory. She paused. A nurse stepped forward, hesitant.

The new queen reached out and brushed her antennae gently against the worker’s. A greeting. A benediction.

Then, with a pulse of scent—clear and undeniable—she claimed the hive as her own.

Workers brushed their antennae against her as she passed. A few followed. Then a dozen. Then dozens more. A growing retinue.

Behind her, the royal cell stood open and empty. Ahead of her, the hive thrummed with life—and waited.

She had emerged.

She was queen.

*

The new hive was up and running.

The first focus had been the wax. Young workers had gathered in clusters, their abdomens quivering as they secreted delicate scales. Bit by bit, they shaped the comb—raw and uneven at first, but quickly refined into the perfect symmetry only bees could create.

From a small piece of wax, wedged between a stick and a clay wall, there now hung a growing structure—sturdy enough to store honey, pollen, and whatever else the colony would need.

Then came the food. Foragers returned with their legs laden with pollen and their honey crops full of nectar, passing it off to honeymakers or into storage. The hive had no surplus yet, but it was enough to feed the young and fill a few wax pots. Every drop mattered.

Brood rearing was also in full swing. Eggs laid by the new queen were tucked into newly minted cells. Nurses rotated constantly, checking temperatures, feeding jelly, adjusting the wax.

And from those first eggs, new bees had already begun to hatch—nurses, foragers, guards—each stepping into her role as if the hive had always existed.

Guard bees had taken up posts at the entrance, wings lifted and antennae alert. They tasted the air, read every scent. It was a small force, but fierce—ready to defend what had already become their sovereign realm.

Then, there was a shift in the air. Faint at first, but undeniable—and growing stronger.

The old queen breathed in deeply.

She could feel the scent carried into the hive by the workers, or drifting through its vents—faint, but distinct. Her daughter had risen. The young queen’s pheromones were rich with certainty and gravitas. The workers responded with devotion, laboring under her rule with purpose and pride.

And beneath that, the old queen sensed the bridge between them—a delicate thread of shared scent and shared blood. A lineage unbroken.

She felt no envy. Only pride.

Workers from both hives passed one another in the air without tension. The lingering trace of the giant’s scent soothed old instincts, and the genetic bond between the hives did the rest.

The dual kingdom had bloomed.

Together, they would stretch farther. Reach higher. Their flight paths would trace broader arcs across the cliffs. They had come to this land as one.

And now they were two.

And still—they were one.

INDEX