After the first day—a day that my delegation mostly spent resting after the journey—Ambrosia’s mood improved drastically. She also became heavy with eggs and spent the next two days inside the Hive Explanatoria.
These eggs were placed in the care of the hive’s Nurses and its Queen, Rulia-103.
I feared that selfish bee instincts of Rulia-103 might make her distaste having to rear daughters of another Queen Bee, even if this Queen Bee was her mother. But to my relief and quiet pride, Rulia-103 was thankful for this opportunity.
"Mother, Father, your brood will be cared for by my most experienced Nurses!" Rulia-103 claimed. "Several thousand of my sisters... and from the latest generation with all the latest genetic upgrades... It will improve the effectiveness of my hive so much! Oh, Father—but will you morphotype them? And other eggs in my hive..."
Of course I agreed to that, and then several other bees began asking me the same on the behalf of their own sub-hives!
These sub-hives were the fortresses guarding the crop fields of Naregan people, and several herald bees from them made a long—an entire day on bee wings, even on the fastest ones—to witness the upcoming grand ceremony and tell everybody about it.
I had to disappoint them.
"It will take too long to travel all the way to your sub-hives... My presence is needed here and in Hive Supremo too much. But you are my girls, my daughters and granddaughters and perhaps even great-granddaughters... So I know you and your hives will thrive even without my morphotyping pheromones!"
And then Amby strictly told everybody to not pester me with unimportant matters and to submit all requests through my Attendants, as per standard protocol.
Still, it took me another day just to greet everybody who wanted to see me or Ambrosia, accept hundreds of small and large gifts from all my daughters and make sure they would find their way in the cargo of my delegation’s dragons.
Only on the third day of my appearance, I finally had time to do what I wanted from the start—take Ambrosia on a date.
This was our romantic journey, after all! Even if it was for work.
I asked Whisper about the most beautiful places of the city, interrupted Woe’s rest so we don’t have to fly all over it on foot, took my bodyguards and Amby’s Attendants, and then cajoled Amby to go on a tour.
(She was reluctant, as always, but I knew that the last tour we had together—on a mecha manufactory—impressed her enough for another one.)
The first place we visited was an old temple to the pantheon of gods worshiped in Naregan kingdom. It was as wonderful as Whisper described it—humans probably spent decades on it. It was a beautiful work of architecture with almost every surface covered in carvings, gilding or colorful ribbons used as decorations. Outside was an entire garden of living mountains with a pruned forest underneath it.
Besides a list of ordinary gods, pretty typical for any pagan culture I could remember: gods of being the boss, fertility, bad weather, hunting, war, death, and so on, there was also Dalmanrach.
The statue and a shrine to him were clearly built recently, but he was moved to one of the most important spots in the temple—to the right hand of the god of being the boss.
My own images were also added to the temple, and a smaller shrine to me was built near the shrine of the goddess who had bees as their holy animals. This shrine and the shrine of Dalmanrach had especially many flowers and other traditional offerings on them.
Human priests in simple green or red robes did various duties there, and several dozen humans were quietly praying, talking to priests outside the temple, or just studying the carvings.
There were bees inside, though, but they were here only for work. A few Agent Bees were here to answer people’s prayers with telepathy and foster devotion, and several squads of Warrior Bees were guarding the place from insects who might attack the Agents.
I and Amby didn’t interrupt the humans, only sent telepathic greetings to the bees we saw.
We came quietly, looked at all these beautiful things from afar—we wouldn’t be able to see them well from up close anyway—and left just as quietly. Humans were too busy to notice us.
After this, we visited several other human temples. The city had more than one, and they were the most beautiful of their buildings. At least, according to Whisper. The first temple we saw was still the largest, but the others had many incredible decorations and statues, too.
There was a dedicated temple of the Blood Brotherhood, which had an incredibly realistic statue of Dalmanrach. Although instead of a feathered dodo head, the god had a scaly dodo head—it was modeled after a dodo from this world, which were scaled dragon-like creatures like all local "birds".
By the end of the day, I felt like a tourist on a vacation, but Ambrosia—despite being visibly impressed by what she saw—got more thoughtful with every other temple we visited. I kept away from her thoughts, but when we got back to our guest suite in Hive Explanatoria, I couldn’t help but ask.
"What’s on your mind, Amby? Whenever you think so hard, I fear for the wellbeing of our Empire!" I was joking, of course. But every joke was based on some truth...
To my relief, Amby found it funny enough to smile, so the Empire was not in danger.
"No, nothing like that. First, I must thank you for bringing me to visit all these places today, Necty." She reached out to gently stroke my cheek. Then she took her hand away and frowned. "This made me realize that humans also understand beauty, and this understanding has a lot in common with ours. What other similarities do we have in our mindset? Or will have? Will we eventually show the same egoism and laziness that humans suffer so much from?"