Well, feck.

Shift didn't want to open his eyes. His head refused to stop spinning and his prone body was absolutely covered from his chest down in a wet, sticky substance he didn't want to identify. But he knew keeping his eyes closed would get him nowhere, so, against his best judgement, Shift slowly lifted his eyelids.

Wherever he was, it was dark. Not because it was night, because he could catch glimpses of a hot, red sky above him, hidden behind arcing trees towering over him more so than they usually did. The ground underneath him was soft and moist dirt, with small wisps of grass defiantly attempting to stand after being trodden underfoot more times than could be counted, especially by grass, which was not famous for its ability to count. Surrounding him on all sides was a shin-deep, murky liquid that would be considered less water and more sludge. A shin-deep lake of sludge wouldn't sound too repulsive, and to a somewhat tall human standing on two legs, trudging through it would garner little more than an expression of disgust and possibly a desire for a new pair of shoes. Not only was Shift much smaller than a somewhat tall human, being a goblin himself, but he was also laying prone in the marsh, his head and shoulders being the only areas rendered safe from the icky black goo. Thus, his expression of disgust was multiplied by at least tenfold, and he instead now desired an entirely new body.

Standing upright in itself became a challenge to Shift, as the swamp seemed to have an unnatural attraction to him in the mere seconds they had been introduced and was desperate to cling to him and drag him down into a wholly unappealing relationship. Thankfully, when Shift set his mind to a goal, he insisted to see it to completion or at least closure, and today his goal was to stand up. The path to this noble goal was full of setbacks and expletives, but strong will prevailed, and Shift was eventually granted his reward of being able to stand on his own two feet, desperately attempting to wipe gunk from his chest and arms, standing now at his full height, knee-deep in the same gunk. Attempting to move his legs forward in this sludge was swiftly deemed impossible, so Shift decided to take his new problem literally one step at a time. When he lifted his right leg up to take a step through the slime, he paused.

In order to realize why Shift paused, one must consider the goblin's taste in clothing. As a desert native, Shift favored practicality in his clothing over style. Thus, the clothes Shift wore had a purpose. He wore light leather armor against his body to protect him from blows in battle. Around that was cloth wrapped into a shirt, pants, and cloak to protect his body against harsh desert sands. He also wore cloth boots that served a similar purpose. The plural word "boots" insinuates that he wears two, which would be correct, as a boot is relatively useless without its pair.

Shift was missing a boot, and this bothered him.

"Feck," he muttered, repeating his favorite expletive. His boot must have gotten stuck in the sludge. After spending all that time standing up (which one must be reminded was, at the time, the most noble of goals), he did not relish having to bend over again to shift through the slime he had just escaped looking for his lost boot. Shift was also well-versed in luck enough to know that his was bad enough that if he did so, he could anticipate falling right back in. Unfortunately, Shift knew a boot was useless without its pair, and he decided it would be more worth it to find the missing boot rather than abandon the one he had.

When he placed his foot back down into the muck to steady himself once more, he soon realized the boot was the least of his problems. His primary problem now was the case that something, somewhere, was breathing very heavily.

As good as his hearing was, Shift couldn't exactly place from where around him the breath had come from. It was a long, slow draft inward, and the force of it caused the muck around his knees to shrink away from him. The most accurate way to describe the noise would be as though it were a snore from a creature that was very much awake. It was a thought that consumed Shift's mind until it suddenly occured to him why he couldn't tell from which direction the noise came.

Shift was only paying attention to what was around him, not what was under him. The force of the breathing noise wasn't what caused the muck to shrink away from his legs. The muck was shrinking away from his legs because it was breathing.

(Pausing for a moment, what Shift didn't stop to consider was that ooze creatures do not breathe, so to speak. In fact, it would be much more accurate to describe the act as though it were a large stomach that was growling in hunger. This is not something that occured to Shift's mind in the first place, though, and upon realizing he was standing in an omnivorous creature, the curious thought of exactly what noise it was making was pushed aside for the much more panicked thought of how long it would take before it began consuming.)

With an unabashed scream and reflexes powered by sheer terror, Shift kicked his way backwards, managing to stumble back a few steps before gravity decided he'd had his fun and it was now time for business. Thankfully, those few steps he took were enough to cause him to land with his back to the dirt ground around the ooze's crevasse. Reaching around himself for something to grab ahold of, his hand managed to find the rogue root of a tree, weaving into the ground only to reach back out in a chaotic display of nature doing things that are weird. Chaos and weirdness didn't faze Shift, in fact, chaos and weirdness had saved his life on many occasions on many worlds, and it seemed now that this was no different. He grabbed as tight as he could to the rogue root with both hands and pulled for all he was worth, but no strength he could muster would free his legs from the ooze. Looking back to his adversary, Shift freed one hand to adjust his fingers into as many arcane movements as fast as he could recall them. A burning heat raised within his chest, painless but fierce, and his eyes shined red for a fraction of a moment before he spewed a command, the words themselves as hot as a volcano's blast.

"Let GO!" A flicker of flame burst around his fingertips, heralding the spread of a much larger flame across the surface of the ooze. Shift could hear a shriek, though he wasn't sure if it was the ooze or the flame making noise as it ignited. What made the noise didn't matter, what did was the overall result; his legs finally pulled free from the jet-black monster, its tendrils flailing as they lost grip against their most recent catch, both themselves and Shift's arcane flames being absorbed into the overall mass, empty again and calm once more.

Shift took a minute to catch his breath, as such moments of panic and self-preservation tend to cause him to put silly little pleasures like regular breathing aside as the heat of the moment overpowered him. When his thoughts were sorted out once more, his first thought upon being free was to rip off the boot he still wore and hurl it back into the hungry sludge, shouting "Here, have the other one, if you're so damn hungry!". He soon realized odds were high that the ooze did not hear or understand him, leaving him to watch his boot suffer the fate he had so deftly escaped; slowly sinking into the sticky beast as a disgusting, shuddering growl emerged from it.

Shift closed his eyes and placed his hands on his knees, sitting against the tree of his salvation. He chose to take a moment to himself, something he liked to do when faced with the specter of death so suddenly. This was when he liked to ask himself questions.

Where was he now?

Why did he land where he did?

What if the next encounter won't be as easily escapable?

What was crawling on his hand?

Shift's eyes shot open. After his most recent experience, he refused to let any strange feeling go for granted. He lifted his right hand to his face, and slowly began to smile. On the back of his hand was a very small, lizard-like creature. It was a deep red, and stretched from the base of his knuckles to his wrist, a very small creature indeed. It seemed to be perched on his hand, pausing. Shift tapped it with the finger of his other hand, and noticed it turn its small head to look at him.

"Hey, little fella," he muttered cheerfully.

With a hiss, the creature opened its mouth to reveal rows upon rows of tiny but visibly sharp teeth, its mouth dripping with a deep green liquid.

With a noise that crossed a grunt and a yelp, Shift whacked the lizard from the back of his hand into the distance, continuing to beat his hands against each other long after it was gone. Growing tired of brushing against death, Shift stood up and attempted to scan the skyline for any sort of landmark. Though he could barely see the sky or even the sun beyond the trees, he could make out a mountain range, which struck him as familiar and safe, and promised him that the forested marsh could not stretch on forever. He averted his gaze from his goal to the path in front of him, and began to make his journey to find out where he was and, more importantly, how he could leave.

It may have been for the best that Shift journeyed in the opposite direction of the forest behind him, because the countless eyes peering out from the shadows of the undergrowth probably would have done little more to unsettle him, anyway.