After that success with the flower, I finally gave the dragons names. At least now I could distinguish them easier—before, I mainly looked at their lifespan counts.
Of course, their names were as cool and fearsome as the dragons themselves: Scourge, Disaster, and Woe! Even if they didn't learn them, the system immediately noted those names in their statuses.
"I wish I had come up with a name like that for myself," Destroyer commented on that. "It would've brought even more fear into my enemies."
A sentiment shared by many Beemarines.
On the next day, after the first gift, the dragons brought nothing. But I stayed patient, and a day after—the day when I was in the siege camp again!—Scourge and Disaster each brought similar yellow flowers full of nectar.
I ordered some Foragers to move the flowers away from the feeding spot and consulted my subordinates.
"It almost looks like the dragons waited until your appearance to give more things, Father," Explanatory noted. "Of course, this can be a false hypothesis… There's not enough statistical data to speak about."
"You are right—it will be wrong to make assumptions so early. Not scientific at all."
Woe interrupted us with a loud "Graaaaw!" that was immediately echoed by its two friends.
"Aha! This is the sound they always make before eating." Explanatory pointed at the dragons.
"They expect food, perhaps? Hammerwork, this is on you."
"Should we reward them for this with one extra portion of food or two?" Hammerwork asked.
She was never happy about feeding the dragons, but didn't protest anymore.
"Just one. But if they bring something else, give more. I want to encourage them to bring things other than flowers until they bring something useful."
Twenty minutes later, the dragon trio was pushing each other with their wings and fighting for the portion of food they got. The almost playful scuffle made the ground shake under my feet and felled several trees.
Then I saw another, much smaller dragon dive from the sky. It was bright blue with several white marks, and clearly aimed at the distracted dragons' food.
"Hey, watch out!" I shouted, pointing at the beast. Despite its small size, the blue dragon flew like lightning!
The Beemarines near me flew up, readying their hammers for a fight against anyone and everyone. The black dragons turned their heads, too.
Just as the blue dragon's jaws almost touched the black dragons' deserved reward, they stopped fighting and looked at it.
Then, all three descended on the interloper with their wings, claws, and teeth!
After an instant of a furious fight, the blue dragon fled, leaving a bloody trail from a torn side and several bright scales, each the size of my head.
Everything happened so quickly that I didn't have the time to look at the blue dragon's status!
Scourge, Disaster and Woe kept eating as nothing happened, but after they left, I ordered my bees to gather and wash the blue scales.
There were only four of them, oval-shaped, shiny, and very light. They bent in my hands, but sprung back if I let them go. My stone knife left scratches on them, but had a hard time cutting through.
When I flew to Hive Supremo, I took them with me and showed to Things-Things.
She examined it from all sides, including sniffing the scale with her antennae and biting it.
Then she beamed at me and made a little dance of joy.
"This is incredible! Light but durable… Chitin of murder hornets is more durable, but it's heavy and *soooo* hard to work with! But this? This is amazing!"
She waved the scale in the air, shaking with excitement.
"We can drill holes at their sides and make amazing armor out of them. It will be much lighter than the bone armor, while offering even more protection! And we can still add spikes to it. Please, bring more scales if you can, Father! And I will make the first set of armor for you. It will be the most beautiful one!"
"I don't even fight. It will be better suited for Bloodimina—"
Things-Things didn't listen.
"My best Craftsmen will be on the task. And then—oh, I know! I will ask the Artists to scratch their best well wishes on this armor. I will be an armor *and* art!"
I bit my lip. This was getting more and more tempting. Dragon scale armor and bone crown…
"Do we have enough Craftsmen Bees free for other ongoing tasks, like refreshing clothing and making new containers? What about aphid tunnel digging? I don't want anything important to suffer, Things-Things."
"Oh, it will be alright, Father! I have it all written down and counted—don't worry! Mother Queen would scold me so hard if I let things get mixed up."
"Yeah, she would. She keeps the entire Empire Council in check while also looking after the young… I should thank her for her hard work today!"
My thanking rod was very *hard* just from imagining all the ways to thank my beautiful and hot wife, who was even hornier than I.
Over the next week, the starving hornets became more active than ever.
Every day, they would fly out in groups of ten or even twenty, desperately searching for more food—and every time, my army would fight them off like the first time. Easier, actually. The hornets were on the verge of dying out.
There were still a few wounded on our side, but very few. Most of our problems came from everybody else who wanted to get into the army's food stores or after the army itself.
But there was no one more serious than the black dragons, and soon, I realized why.
Because the dragons were scaring them off! Just like they kicked the blue dragon's ass, they fought off everybody who tried to eat from their feeding spot.
This theory was confirmed when I saw them gang up on another dragon, which was barely in sight of the siege camp.
And the dragons kept sporadically bringing items, each more peculiar than the other…