Chapter 586: Ashes to ashes (and water)
“They do, but they don’t dare to attack our shores again,” Bloodhero said proudly when I asked her this question some time later. “It’s not like most of them can even breathe above water. They are massive, but pathetic!”
“But they ARE in our rivers?”
“Yes, Father. There are scouts that keep watch on them, just in case. If they start moving suspiciously, you will know immediately.”
“Good thinking, Bloodhero. Continue in the same vein. I want to know if these beasts will be flushed away when the ash starts flowing their way!”
***
Although I decided that dumping all the ash from our lands into the local rivers was a great idea, it wasn’t executed overnight.
Gathering ash was a slow and arduous process, interrupted occasionally by heavy rains that began falling naturally over the area now that the weather there had returned to its more natural state. The water carried ash away, partially doing our job and partially just making more mess around our roads, train tracks and underground buildings.
Worse, the mix of volcanic ash and water was notably corrosive. It corroded any exposed metal and wood much more aggressively than water, forcing maintenance workers to spend extra effort cleaning our machines and covering them in oil for extra protection.
Our Researchers have discovered that the mix of volcanic ash and water could be turned into a much less corrosive substance by mixing it with vinegar, but they have yet to establish specific proportions, and the process still took days. Other possible means of dealing with the ash were even more time- and effort-consuming. So much so that simply testing it could take months.
All in all, I decided that all this volcanic ash was not worth the bother and could be safely dumped into the rivers.
Of course, these rivers would flow past countless fields, and the ash will still end on many fields of usnea plants, but at least in smaller amounts than the heaps that were covering the Central Region!
The usnea trees could survive a bit of ash.
Especially when there was much nicer ash from The Fields Region that could be used to fertilise them. Humans were already using ash as a fertilizer for centuries, and bees didn’t even have to work on researching how to do the same—they just had to follow their example.
Or direct humans to do things. There were, after all, a lot of fields to restore. And plenty of sacrificed infrastructure to rebuild.
Two weeks after the ash cloud dissipated, the Bee Empire definitely was on the road to recovery. Although there were still resource and goods shortages here and there because of train delays and factories not being all active, some mechas were already turned on and helped to clear the ash.
Little by little, the pace of regular life was returning to the Central Region, and through it, all other places.
Around this time, the first heaps of ash were dumped into our rivers—large ones, the kind that looked like an ocean if you stood on one shore because you couldn’t see the other.
I gave orders not to dump everything in one place, and to do it slowly, to give the rivers time to carry the ash away. Still, the ash was carried to the rivers on massive carts, which were too heavy to be pulled by humans—they had actual engines instead.
(I’d call these “cars” if they were any less primitive or were at least a little bit faster.)
Soon, the water in these rivers became dark from the ash. Downstream, people living near the river reported seeing dead fish swimming in it, and of course, the stench of wet ash coming from the water.
Humans didn’t like it one bit, but had to tolerate it; bees were told that we were both cleansing the Central Region and trying to kill fish-beasts. They took this idea with enthusiasm.
The bees in the Central Region worked with extra effort to cleanse their homes; bees from other regions that were sent to help worked with extra effort to help the Empire and also kill fish-beasts.
A week later, I could barely believe my eyes.
The thick layer of ash that was covering the ground and the forests of the Central Region with a layer of dark grey until now was almost fully gone! If I didn’t see (and direct) countless workers shovelling it into carts, I wouldn’t have thought this was possible.
My girls were showing me how incredible their work ethic (and numbers) were yet again!
The rivers were now thoroughly black from all the ash in them, and this ash had flown way south, past countless human towns and countless usnea tree fields.
All Bee Empire citizens were warned not to drink contaminated water and to check the water in their wells before drawing from them, too. However, the ash wasn’t such a contaminant to poison even wells.
But it thoroughly killed all the fish in the rivers or chased them into the open sea.
No matter how poison-resistant or acid-resistant the fish was, the amount of ash in the water was simply choking! Fish couldn’t breathe through so much ash and either suffocated or fled.
Another week later, when the stream of ash began to leave rivers, the water there became safe to swim in for the first time in half a decade.
For humans, of course. Bees couldn’t swim in anything larger than a bathtub, anyway. Our wings were too fragile, and the fuzz that covered our tails and limbs was too thick.
I was happy on behalf of humans, though. The news from Agents that humans in some towns were celebrating the ability to swim in water safely made me feel nostalgic.
Then I received a new report from a ship returning from the Ashida continent, and I forgot all about the humans again.
Malevolence and her people have finally finished building runways to accept planes from our continent! A couple of weeks ago, in fact.
Finally, the two continents could be united by a solid and swift connection!