--Chubbles—

Chubbles was a simple slime.

Unlike Pudding or Jello, he cared little for ethics, and despite his devotion to the jungle gym, had few thoughts about morality.

And yet, it was he—not Luna the good hearted, Surprisibus the crafty, or even Omnom the swift—no, it was he, Chubbles the slime of action, who had been sent on this important mission.

Save the mentally deficient delvers from themselves.

He raced along the slick, glassy floor of his home, skidding around a deep pool and tumbling through the doorway into the dungeon’s new room.

The slimes had been calling it The New Room, under the principle of Occam’s razor. Van Gogh violently disagreed with this name, but they continued with it anyways. The room was new, that made it The New Room.

It was only half a room, really, but that was just getting into semantics.

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Inside it, three towering delvers were making mouth sounds. Their strange appendages—which had an uncanny resemblance to Astrid’s, but all wrong in the way they moved—were waggling about in an ungainly manner. Delvers, it seemed, did not glide, the way proper folk did, but flailed.

One of the delvers had clambered onto the dais, reaching for the Do Not Touch Chair.

Their beloved Queen Clare had given that chair its name, and the slimes loved her for it. Do Not Touch Chair. Simple, straightforward. Ethically and aesthetically unambiguous. A perfect name.

Chubbles raced forward, leaving a slippery trail behind him. The delver was tipping closer to the chair, starting to lose balance. His fingery arm-ends were inches from the death sentence—and Chubbles was too far away to stop him.

Light. A bright flash of it.

The slime skidded to a halt, bumping up against a delver’s leg.

Laughter pealed from above, as the delver on the dais fell backwards onto his friends, and all three of them tumbled into a heavy heap. Chubbles was squished right in the center.

[Gotcha!] Puck rolled in the air, giggling. The delvers stared up at him in amazement, still using Chubbles as a doormat. [Serves you right, too! Who said you could touch that?]

Chubbles sighed with relief as he realized all three of the delvers were alright. Their weight was too much for him, though.

A delver jabbed him with a sharp elbow, and he popped—splattering slime-goop everywhere like smashed mango.

Ah, well.

Time to respawn.