The swamp.

"This was a fucking horrible idea." An hour ago you might have responded in kind, but after soaking your worn leather shoes in another deceptively deep puddle of swamp muck, you were starting to agree with your vulgar friend - and have no intention of letting him know that. You turn to see him catch his arm on a hanging liana, sending him off his balance and sliding onto the murky mud, swearing up a storm.

"I'm really, really, really starting to think we shoulda chanced the mountains," he grumbles, tearing off the vines with his dirt-caked daggers. "Ya that scared of seeing other gnomes?"

"If you're so sure maybe you should have made that decision," you mutter, the air and mood starting to get to you as well. "I don't see a point in crawling back through several miles of mud just to wander onto a mountain range of musclebound, hammer-crazy gnomes who'd dogpile a mage on sight, personally." You pause, feeling another squelch under your feet, followed by the disgusting smell of rotten plant matter. "Oh, troll gonads."

"Ah, push over," snaps the thug, stepping ahead of you. "Obviously ya got no idea what yer doing. Maybe it's time ya let someone who can actually swing a weapon lead the WAAAAAAAAARGH!"

No sooner than he's gotten five meters ahead of you, the Gritsheim hooligan disappears from view. Moments later you hear a very, very wet 'sploodge' noise, followed by a groan of discomfort. You stare into the air vacated by his vanishing act, breaking into a chuckle a few seconds later.

"Fuck buckets... What kind of asshole places a pit trap here of all places?!" you hear him gripe. "Oi! Munchkin! Ya gonna get me outta this or what?!"

"I don't know. You seemed to have a much better idea of what to be done."

"Will ya just quit with the fucking wisecracks and pull me up?!"

"All right, all right." You turn to the trees growing all around, finding a vine to pull on. "Just don't go anywhere."

"Real fuckin' hilarious," you hear him snap, just as you reach out for a particularly sturdy vine - which responds in kind and curls around your arm, followed by your ankle. Before you know it, you've been suspended several feet off the ground; the view made higher thanks to your diminutive height.

"Hey, how's that rescue coming along?!"

"Might be a little delayed," you grunt, trying to reach for your grasped wrist, a task made all the harder in your upside-down position. You try reaching down - or up? - your leg for the vine, but you don't even make it past your waist. Before you can scowl to yourself you hear the most terrified yell you never expected to hear.

"AW, FUCK BUCKETS!"

"What now?!"

"Leeches! Worms! Fuckin' bloodsuckers, that's what!" he screams. Mad squelching and scrambling is heard as your buddy presumably tries to pull a way out - and the assortment of annelids off his body. "Gah, this is the worst! What kind of asshole digs a pit like this and fills it with swamp freaks like this?!"

"That would be... me."

You pause your struggling for a moment, trying to get a look at the apparent newcomer...