Atomic Bees

Silver selinium blooms with uranium stamen. The flowers of the abyss, turning their metre-wide radial heads as distant quasars pass across the hidden sky. The silent gardens of the Archeans look like radio-telescope crops grown from spider silk and silver wire. The polished obsidian roof reflects your up-turned glance. Superconductor-roots to bring the heat, descending multiple miles.

Pollinated by Atomic Bees.

White bees the size of a toy car, heavy as a gamblers wrap of gold, as soft as sleepy mice inside your palm. The wings a silent static blur in blue and gold. Like a failed analogue signal.

The wings vibrate at the exact frequency of one of the inner-ear-bones. You can feel them in your head, passing back and forth, like skull-received radio noise.

The sting of the atomic bee is so fucking deadly that the death it brings briefly outstrips time. Like a gunshot skipping on a lake. Your cells are annihilated at such speed, and with such violence, that you are plunged through nearby wild dimensions as you burn. What this looks like to observers is a victim burning, turning to ash, and being caught in a violent unseen, unfelt wind, all at once as they flickerstop in and out. The wind of your extra-dimensional fall will plaster your ash to a nearby surface. You leave behind hiroshima-scar remains and an agonized radioactive ghost who has briefly seen outside time and space. Communicating with this ghost in incredibly deadly but can supply weird understandings.

The hives are warm atomic piles. Organic termite-mound cooling towers nine feet high, enshrouded in steam. Usually built by flowing water. The bees use burned up bones as carbon rods to soak atomic sparks. The beehive has long black carbonised bones pincushioning the core. This shows you where the honey is.

Every part of the bee and hive is utterly deadly and wildly expensive. Assassins want the stings. Lunatics and liches want the honey. Evil gods hunger for the royal jelly. It can breed new species without divine consent. Alchemists want the bees themselves.

Hit one with your sword and it goes 'clang' and spins away. It may leave a dent in the blade. The bees are peaceful. Do not anger them. They swarm quickly. Often guarded by Archean gardeners.

There may be atomic wasps. If there are, nothing has survived meeting them.