The Hive

The chute is slick. Way slicker than I anticipated. Like, buttered-banana-peel-on-a-waterslide slick. And steeper—way steeper. Maybe I should have thought more carefully before taking the plunge. This bitch is a goddamn death luge.

"WHAA—HO SHI—OH GOD!"

I'm not even pretending to play it cool. My arms flail trying to use the sides of the tunnel to slow myself down, my feet slip out from under me on the trail of blue ooze, and I go flying down like a shot of vodka down an ice luge at a frat social.

I continue to pick up speed, wind slapping my face. My orb of Light bobs helplessly behind me like, 'Yeah bro, you're on your own. I'm not built for speed.' My spine takes every bump like it's signing a waiver to get thrown out of alignment. I barely manage to avoid screaming like a preteen on a rollercoaster. I almost—almost—pee my daisy dukes.

Then the chute suddenly ends, and I'm airborne. But only for a moment. Then gravity comes swooping in like, "Hey buddy, remember me?" And I drop. Maybe ten feet? Maybe more? It's hard to tell when it all happens so fast, and everything is so dark. I can see the foots on my feet as I twist through the air, plunging into the darkness.

I hit the ground with a plorp! It's… Soft? Really soft, almost reminding me of a water bed. I extend my arms, feeling and exploring my blind surroundings. Squish. There's a wet, gelatinous bounce. A ripple. I groan and roll over, blinking rapidly, trying to remember how to breathe again. My orb of Light finally catches up and floats down to my shoulder.

I grunt, rub my ribs, and focus on the small sphere of white light, pumping some of my Stamina into the Spell. The orb expands a couple of inches in diameter and its light intensifies, turning from a flash light into a miniature sun.

I blink, letting my eyes adjust to the illumination.

Oh. Oh no.

The light blooms, spreading across a cavern like fog catching fire. The shadows slink away like roaches. And then I see them. Slimes. So many fucking slimes.

Hundreds. Each blue-hued and wobbling. The floor is covered in them, like a gelatinous mosh pit. Some are little blobs, like Jelly Boy, twitching and pulsing like happy little water balloons. Others have vaguely humanoid shapes, standing upright with gooey arms and no faces—like the ones I saw in the City. They're all over. Hanging from the walls. Slopping over each other. Some are just chilling, others bouncing around aimlessly. I realize I landed on top of a pile of the creatures. Examining the jelly-like substances beneath me confirms that fact. At least fifteen of the monsters formed the jelly pad that broke my fall.

And then I notice the bones. Ribs. Skulls. Bits of armor. Long femurs snapped like pencils. Dozens of skeletons—some clearly human, or humanoid (they very well could be elf bones). Some have tusks, denoting them as orcish in origin. All are picked clean. Scattered like a dropped bucket of Halloween decorations. My stomach flips. You never realize how unsettling bones are until you stumble upon actual remains.

I avert my gaze, scanning the room for Jelly Boy.

At the far end of the chamber, raised above the slime tide, sits a stone platform. A crude throne is carved into the back wall, like someone jammed an HBO-produced high fantasy setpiece into a gelatinous apocalypse.

On the throne sits a corpse. This one has yet to fully transform into bones, and is closer to the 'mummy' stage than a recently deceased person. The body is elvish, with tapered ears and elongated features. It's draped in rotting finery—robes black with age and crusted slime. Its arms hang limp over the sides of the throne, and its head is slumped sideways, like it dozed off during the world's worst PowerPoint presentation. When my orb of light catches its face, I notice that a portion of it has sunken in with rot, revealing portions of its skull. I shiver.

Atop the corpse's head sits a crown of dark iron. It's a jagged and brutal looking thing that gives the body an oddly saintly appearance.

One of the slimes near the raised throne turns its attention towards me. And then, in unison, every single slime in the chamber turns in my direction, like someone flipped a switch on their collective gelatinous nervous system. Every wobbling pseudopod, every jiggling surface—all of it—shifts to face me.

I take a single, instinctual step backward. Now, the surface doesn't support my foot as it sinks into the mass of slimes beneath me. I try to wrench my foot free, which is a mistake. As soon as I do, the slimes beneath me surge like a living tide, and suddenly I'm knee-deep in cold jelly. I flail, try to leap free, but it's like trying to jump out of a pool filled with industrial-grade Play-Doh. My legs are sucked in, locked down, slurped away like spaghetti into the wet innards of the slimes.

I need to act fast! I try to cast Wizard's Fist, but as soon as I move my arms to make the focus pose for the Spell, a blue pseudopod snaps out like a whip, lashing my right wrist and yanking my arm down. The mass of slimes bubbles and rise, crawling over me in a rush of chill and stickiness. My limbs are pulled out to the sides—locked in place. I'm pinned down and smothered. Jelly sleeves clamp over my arms like sentient restraints, and my mouth goes dry with panic as I sink deeper and deeper into the blue ooze. The more I struggle, the more they tighten around me.

Don't panic, I tell myself. But it isn't helping. I'm panicking… I'm definitely panicking.

Fuck, fuck, fuck…!

"Help!" I scream, and I don't know why. No one's hearing me down here. No one's around to help. Joe, you fucking idiot.

By the time the surge finishes, I'm completely immobilized. The only thing sticking out from the surface of the ooze-formed prison is my head—and even that's held upright at an uncomfortable angle by a column of quivering slime. I look like a cursed lollipop.

I strain, try to move anything, but it's like being inside a vat of pressurized jelly. I now know approximately how much slime mass it takes to outmatch a Strength score of 40, and it's a surprisingly low number.

A ripple runs through the cavern before all of the slimes suddenly shift their attention to a cave entrance I didn't initially notice in the far corner of the cavern. It's massive, almost perfectly circle hole in the wall that looks like it was bored out of the stone by a fifteen foot tall worm.

Three humanoid-shaped, bipedal blobs of translucent goo shuffle into the cavern from the cave, each with a strange dignity to their movements. Their movements remind me of soldiers. They're carrying something between them—a cage—and what's inside stops my heart for half a beat.

Jelly Boy.

His blue form is curled up, barely moving inside the metal bars. His normally smooth body is bubbling with agitation. When he sees me, he jolts upright and begins to boil. Two pseudopods extend from his form, gripping the bars of his cage. The air fills with a loud buzzing as his surface froths and pulses with fury, stretching and retracting like he's screaming with his whole body.

"Jelly Boy!" I shout, trying to reach him—forgetting I can't move an inch. "I'm here! I'm—just don't freak out, okay?! We'll get out of here, I promise!"

The cage is gently set down on the stone platform in front of the throne.

A deep thud echoes from behind the slimes. Then another. And another, before a tremor runs through the chamber. A wall of glistening cerulean the size of the opening the wall emerges into the cavern. It's a giant slime. Similar to Jelly Boy, it has two dark eyes. Within its center is a shining, opalescent sphere. I realize that must be its core.

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The giant slime quivers and pulses as it bounces into the cavernous room. It pauses for only a moment when it notices my presence. It turns its eyes to me, only briefly, before it bounces towards the throne. The massive slime rolls forward and begins to envelop the stone seat. It covers the entire thing. The throne and the corpse atop it vanish into the depths of its body.

The room falls still. The slimes go completely motionless. All buzzing, gurgling and other sounds die. The only noise in the room is my grunting and straining as I continue to try to wrestle myself out of the slimes' imprisonment.

I only stop when there's motion upon the throne.

The corpse jerks. The body twitches within the gigantic slime, limbs spasming like a puppet waking from a hundred-year nap. Its head snaps upright, jaw unhinging in a grotesque pop. Its ribcage expands. Collapses. Expands again. It continues to work its jaw before opening its mouth in a too-wide gesture. A sound slips out—a harsh, gurgling gasp, followed by a long, otherworldly groan.

And then… it speaks.

"YOU… human."

The voice scrapes against my brain like rusted knives. The kind of voice filled with a will that defies death—hundreds of years of anger playing across decaying vocal cords.

"You are the cause of this anomaly."

My eyes dart to Jelly Boy, still thrashing against his own prison.

"What—what the hell does that mean?" I ask. Perhaps I can reason with this slime? I do have the Slime Tamer Ability, after all.

The corpse's head tilts, crown dull within the pulsing jelly surrounding it.

"For your crimes against the Hive," it continues, "you will die. And your body shall feed the Hive. But first… we must attend to judgment. To punishment. And to re-integration of the anomaly."

Okay, so perhaps my Ability is worth jack shit in these circumstances. I lurch forward instinctively—well, try to—but the slimes holding me in place just jiggle smugly.

"You lay a single finger… Er, or whatever it is you have, on him," I growl, "and I swear to God, I will turn this Hive of yours into pudding."

Pudding, Joe, really?... It was the best I could conjure on the spot.

I can't move. I can't cast. But I can rage.

And right now, rage is all I've got.

I scream and put my all into my Strength, pushing my body against the slimes' embrace. A cold, wet pseudopod slaps itself across my mouth, instantly silencing me.

"What a waste of vocal cords…" the corpse-puppet says. "Now, let us turn to the judgment of this Anomaly!"

POV: Jelly Boy, Heroic Slime

Jelly Boy quivered.

Not in fear. Not exactly.

Okay—maybe a little in fear, but only because his adopted human—his beloved, idiotic, squishy-limbed, bark-mouthed, easily-breakable Joe—was very much jelly-locked and surrounded by the Hive. Jelly Boy had learned that most Earth-borne creatures were adorable, but very very dumb. Humans. Dogs. All the same. He had once seen a commercial where a dog got its head stuck in a wooden fence. It was just like Joseph—good natured, but getting himself into trouble. Jelly Boy had taken in the lost human. He was Jelly Boy's responsibility. And Jelly Boy loved him.

And the Hive? The Hive was being a bitch.

Jelly Boy watched through the bars of his ridiculous metal cage as King Slime—resplendent in its oversized, needlessly performative mass—oozed over the ancient throne. The slime formerly known as Drone-937 stared at Jelly Boy through the bars of his cage, a smug but empty-minded vibration rippling through the surface of its body. Drone-937 would now be known as 'Tom.' As in 'Tom' from Vanderpump Rules. It didn't matter which Tom the slime was being named after as both were useless dolts. Just like the slime formerly known as Drone-937.

The crowned corpse at the center of King Slime twitched, puppeted from within by the power of King Slime's body. It fixed its one empty eye socket and one milky dead eye onto Jelly Boy.

"You," the King intoned, the corpse's voice vibrating through the Hive's shared mindspace much like a fart (though Jelly Boy only understood farts conceptually, as slimes didn't produce gas), "are guilty of treason."

Jelly Boy jiggled.

"You severed your link to the Forever. You defied your calling. You spat upon the unity of the Hive, upon the sacred Chorus of Echoes."

Jelly Boy plorped.

"And you returned to our Realm, but failed to immediately return to the fold of the Hive."

The corpse's jaw unhinged wider. Jelly Boy imagined giving a sarcastic shrug, but his gooey nubs were locked inside the cage.

He settled for a dismissive blorp.

Joseph flailed helplessly in his jelly prison.

"You will be re-assimilated."

There it was.

The death sentence wrapped in formal declaration.

"Your mind will be restored to its default schema. Your free will… corrected."

Jelly Boy should've been scared. He should've been quaking in his goo.But no.

What he felt was—

One: Concern.

Because Joseph—dear, dumb, squishy Joseph—was poking his stupid monkey face out of the slime with a look that said "I'm about to do something dumb but heroic," which usually meant "I'm about to get my ass kicked."

Jelly Boy loved him. That was Joseph. A human-sized golden retriever, brave and loyal and dangerously stupid.

And two: Annoyance.

Because King Slime—High Sovereign of the Hive, Keeper of the Core, Grandfather of Oozes, etcetera etcetera ad nauseum—was being such a LeeAnne right now.

LeeAnn—the official shit-stirrer of Real Housewives of Dallas. King Slime wanted a scene. Needed to validate his own importance by dragging someone down. That wasn't boss bitch energy. That was Desperate Energy™. Jelly Boy didn't like LeeAnn, and he didn't like King Slime.

The moment was broken when every slime in the chamber extended a pseudopod. Hundreds of tendrils slithered forward—slowly, reverently—like a ritual was unfolding. They glistened under the light of Joe's Spell. Thick and serpentine. Wet and humming with psychic energy.

They reached through the cage bars. They latched on. And Jelly Boy felt it. The mental tug. The familiar melody of Hive-thought. The warm embrace of the Collective. The sweet, numbing lullaby of Not-Thinking. Of Not-Being. Of Obedience.

No.

He trembled. But not in surrender.

Jelly Boy, once known as Drone 1,576, gurgled a sound that might've been a growl if he had lungs. His form boiled.

If King Slime wanted drama? Oh, he'd give them drama. He'd show them real Housewives energy.

Jelly Boy let the tendrils come.

He didn't fight them. He fought the urge to resist.

Now, as the tendrils touched him, he let his thoughts fade.

He let himself forget who he was. He let himself become we. Just for a moment.

The re-assimilation was immediate, familiar, and almost… cozy.

His consciousness diffused and spread across the Hive like spilled glitter across tile—chaotic, colorful, impossible to clean up.

The pain dissolved. The fear dulled. Identity smudged like chalk in the rain.

And still, deep inside the collective murmur of thoughtless eternity, a single voice remained.

His voice.

Because this? This was the plan.

The moment his mind fully integrated with the Hive, Jelly Boy activated his Residual Casting.

Something he'd learned from Joe. Something he'd practiced with the party. The ability to target slime matter—even detached slime matter—regardless of distance, size, or consent, and use it as a medium for the spell components and magical energy he absorbed.

It worked on Joe's Slimy Shields.

And now? It was going to work on every last stupid, drama-starved gelatinous bitch in this cavern. All at once.

Power surged up through his gooey center. Power stored during the battle in the nest. The plasma blast from the Baby Storm Dragon: that elemental breath attack that had nearly vaporized him. But he had successfully absorbed a large portion of the blast. He'd coiled it up within himself, saving it for something useful.

Like this.

RESIDUAL CASTING:

Spell: Mass Neuronic Electrical Conveyance.

Circuits of electrically-fueled energy fired from his body, flooding the entire Hive. And it hit them like a divine revelation. Suddenly, all of them were watching Bravo and all of Jelly Boy's other beloved platforms. Every last slime. From the teeniest blob to the King's own throne-engorged form. Thousands of hours of television. Dumped into the Hive-mind all at once.

The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Atlanta. Potomac. Salt Lake City. Vanderpump Rules. The Bachelor. Traitors. Love Island.

Season after season.

Backstabs, catfights, wine throws, petty alliances, confessional drama, hot tub betrayals. One prosthetic leg being slammed onto a table in righteous fury.

ALL. OF. IT.

Beamed like a psychic nuke into every single shared neuron.

The Hive screamed.

One slime puked. Another lost cohesion entirely and became a puddle. Another blob began muttering "Who is this Lisa Rinna and why is she so angry about a bunny?!"

The King Slime quivered violently. The corpse throned within it spasmed, jaw flapping.

"NO! WHAT IS THIS CORRUPTION?! WHO IS... KEN TODD?!"

Jelly Boy laughed—or, at least, buzzed with joy.

He felt them fracturing. Thoughts splintering. Personalities emerging.

Because the Hive—his Hive—wasn't built to handle this much... tea. This much identity.

It wasn't a chorus of the Forever, anymore. It was a reality show reunion special—twelve seasons in—and every slime just realized someone else had been talking shit in the group chat.

The psychic feedback loop intensified.

In the corner of the chamber, one slime began crying and muttering, "I just wanted to find love on the beach, okay?"

Another screamed, "Justice for Ariana!"

King Slime, now writhing in confusion, shrieked, "I see too much! So many confessionals! WHY ARE THERE SO MANY CONFESSIONALS?!"

Jelly Boy glowed.

He was no longer Drone 1,576.

He was Jelly Boy, Bitch.

And this Hive? Was about to get a spin-off.

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