Charles' thickly-gloved fingers fumble with the robust controls on the Vim Reader. He curses roughly to himself, lamenting his position here. When he became a Stave, he had hoped it would involve a lot more "visceral monster slaying". But then he scored too highly on the technical aspects of the Graduation Gauntlet, and so was assigned to work here, the Depleted Lands. Where the largest animate creatures are Gilo Rats, which can grow to be the size of large dogs if fed consistently. They usually aren’t. The simple yet deadly sword hanging at his side hadn't seen use outside the training yard back at the Tree since he got to this gray, droll wasteland. A place so safe, so boring, that he didn't even take a partner when he was shoved out here to adjust the Readers anymore. Company is fine, but sometimes a man needs to stew silently in his misery for spiritual reasons.

Today feels different, though… Something in the cold, filtered air in his environmental suit. He’s got the jitters.

He finishes dialing it in to adjust for the changes in the Vimscape of this area since it was last tuned. Which, against all precedent, were actually substantial this week. He'd been hearing of spotty disruptions across the field of Readers the Warden had them deploy here, starting a month or two back. Certainly something to stew on, as the Depleted Lands were, by nature, *depleted* of Vim. So much so that untrained men couldn't survive long out here, when their body's ambient Vim was drawn out like their heat would be in cold water. Except slower, and with more spitting up blood. A region so boring it’ll literally suck the life out of you. Charles chuckles to himself. The planting of the legendary Magentu Tree of the Depleted Lands offsets this effect somewhat, though its prodigious Vim production is kept contained with special equipment to preserve the properties of the Lands for study.

It's a short walk to the next Vim Reader. He's got the route memorized, and they're placed fairly close to each other to more easily detect the minute fluctuations in this place. Said fluctuations, more often than not, signified the birth or passing of an Edo Worm. Except this time he can see something is wrong. Not much exists to obstruct his view of the next Reader, once he gets into visual range. There’s a short hill nearby, but it doesn’t obstruct his view from the angle he arrived from. He hustles over, breath fogging in his leather, glass, and metal mask.

"What in the goddamn..." he mutters.

The Vim Readers are constructions of pale crystal and gray rock, reaching up to a man's torso at the crystal's peak and stuck down into the earth with a spike that makes their total length about the height of a man.

Charles considers these facts as he examines the thing, uprooted from the ground as if pushed like a lever. A mound of earth has been disrupted around the grounding spike, and the whole area is coated in something.

Charles leans down and swipes a sample with one of the tabs he keeps in his field bag. It's some sort of... mucus? Gelatin? Charles is beset by confusion. Did uh, did uh... a dozen extremely rare fully grown Gilo Rats get together and pry this thing from the ground, and then slobber everywhere to mark their territory? New behavior? Of course, by now, he's totally memorized every known creature in the Depleted Lands, animate or not. Now he's ticking off possibilities, rubbing his hand where his beard would be if he weren't wearing a mask. A freakishly large Edo Worm?

His brooding is interrupted by a squishy sound behind him. He turns with a start, heart racing immediately. A fist-sized gelatinous blob has rolled onto the carpet of mucus behind him, probably from the other side of the nearby hill. He takes his hand off his sword and begins to relax.

"Just a slime," he breathes aloud. "You're losing it, Charles."

Slimes are one of the many useless, harmless, vaguely irregular species of wildlife that squabble away for survival in the Depleted Lands. They possess strange material properties and an extraordinarily long lifespan, but display almost zero complex instincts or behavior besides the tireless, plodding, plopping pursuit of more grass to roll over and absorb. Since they don't seem to have internal organs besides their irregular core, that observation tracks. Very simple creatures. He's seen wild specimens as large as a cat, but from what the Staves know, they don't get much bigger. It would explain the mucus though...

"You make this mess?" he asks the slime. It just plops its plump little gelatinous body another few inches forward. Charming. Unbothered by the rodent-tier creature, Charles resumes his pondering. He should probably return to the Tree, so he can get some help in getting the Reader right side up again. But maybe if he just grits his teeth and lifts with his legs…

While he’s getting in position to make this attempt, he hears another squelching sound, deeper and more consistent this time. The difference causes him to look.

The slime cresting the nearby hill and rolling towards him is not cat-sized. It sports multiple bulbous innards, a height of around 4 feet, and two rippling, muscled gelatinous arms on either side. Its mucus core shifts and swirls. Charles releases his grip on the Reader and begins to flee. He has to remember his training, make a plan. When faced with a clearly hostile, unknown enemy…

He’s physically fit, and this is good terrain. But the monstrous slime is unburdened of his weighty, cumbersome, Vim insulating gear. Hot breath fogs his goggles as his booted feet strike the deathly grass beneath and he runs from the first unknown element he’s encountered since arriving in this godless place. He can tell from the sound that he’s not gaining any ground on the divergent creature. He chances a look behind him.

The slime, abandoning the principles of rolling or bouncing behind him, is instead loping at him using its arms as crutches. It gives it a surprising movement speed. As he watches, the thing sets both hands into the grassy turf and then pulls itself forward to rocket at him at high speed.

Charles manages to scramble out of the way and it misses, touching the grass again and rolling rapidly to a stop. It leaves a slough of mucus in its wake. Charles regains his bearings, draws his sword, and assumes the classic defensive stance of the Staves.

It’s too fast, Charles thinks. But that won’t matter if I cripple it here. His blade is held parallel to his body, his footing splayed so that he may respond to the opening strike with a powerful counterattack after he moves to the side. The slime moves first, as expected. It lopes forward, leading with a big right overhand swing that has its body twisting forward. Charles coolly steps to the side. The slime’s fist impacts the ground with a squelch, and Charles moves inward, twirling his blade upward to lop the slime’s right arm off at the elbow. Satisfactory. The left forearm though, propelled by the twisting of the central body along the axis provided by the planted right arm, smashes into his exposed left side. His torso explodes into pain, and he’s sent sprawling. The slime sets itself down and grabs its dismembered forearm, and begins to jam it back onto the stump. Charles rolls through the wispy grass and tries to get his bearings.

It must have known, he thinks to himself, and gets to a crawl. He managed to keep ahold of his sword in the launch. As he gets to his feet, the slime finishes readhering its forearm to its upper arm and tests it out with a confident looking winding. His presumably broken ribs ache as he takes a new stance.

How could it have known? he asks. He shifts his blade so that it is perpendicular to his spine, forming a right angle, the handle held near his face. The miniature slime from before approaches in the background, as the mondo slime begins to advance, slower and more ominously this time. Charles’ mind races further as he begins to backtrack.

I should have kept running. The pain in his torso echoes. I should have aimed for its innards. When it comes again, he plans, he will plunge his sword into its central body and dash its organs with his blade. The slime lopes forwards, and the two circle each other. The slime makes a quick twisting jab forward with its left arm, but Charles rolls to the side. His torso screams in protest. He should finish this fight quickly. He waits for the slime to take another swing. When the big right arm comes zipping for his skull, he ducks beneath it and lunges forward, sword held tight.

His blade plunges into the body with a phwish, and feels a sense of satisfaction and relief as the sword cleaves into the depths of the thing and splits one of its alien organs in two. The monster begins to shudder, but before Charles can rejoice further he’s scooped from behind by the slimes’ monstrous right arm. Pressed into the thing’s center mass, his protective gear begins to dissolve, besides various metal doodads.

Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. Charles writhes in blind panic, trying to twist his sword out of the thing to get a shot at another organ, but soon enough his face is immersed and the first sections of his skin begin to feel this agonizing dissolving sensation. The slime’s slime is thick, sticky, and inertia-sapping. Charles’ mind races desperately, searching for a solution where there is none.

I should have kept running, he thinks, before his thoughts devolve into the panicked ravings of a dying animal.

Minutes later, his consciousness fades and his soul awaits its fate.