"I've fought fairies. That sword's fake, and it's stupid. Doesn't even make sense." He spits on the blade, and it bends.

"Doesn't need to make sense for me to kick your ass with it," he says, lunging for the goblin and trying to stabbity-stab him through sheer force of will.

The goblin blocks. Defensive. "See that?" he appeals to the crowd. "The moron admits it!" On the next parry the blade shatters.

Sure whatever it was just for show and—" Still gonna kick your ass, sword or no sword you're still just a disgusting little piece of garbage who can't even hold his own against a Swiss Army Knife just 'cause it's well-made."

Lunge again, trying to grapple bodily with the goblin and to cut him with the knife's various tools while using another hand to try to keep the club—or the club's hand—away.

Grappling goes worse than armed combat did. He can keep the club away, but the goblin is holding his own and Sadde gets smeared with it's-probably-blood.

Close combat is hard work. The extra energy from the oath goes a long way and is still going, but it's not clear whether goblins get physically tired at all.

Stabbity stab stab what if he tries to like stab a neck or an eye or something ugh—

The goblin doesn't so much have weak points as hit points, but does move to protect his face.

While clutching at Sadde and swinging the club with his free hand, he abruptly stumbles. Both of them fall, and land inside the circle of stones.

He wonders if he could do anything about it wait actually he is magic now that they stumbled what if he gets some of Bob no he'll do that later pepper spray—

The pepper spray works. Not as much as it should, but the goblin goes down with a snarl.

Then the circle of rocks seems to leap in the air, each one lengthening into a spike. At the same time, the scene with the goblins outside seems to flatten as if they're cartoons. And the spikes launch straight inward, with the points at them both, while they somehow stay rooted in earth.

Just how rooted, can he dodge, can he dig himself out, can he not be impaled by spikes—

They're dodgeable, sure, since he's still by the edge and there's space between one and the next. They grow on, straight past him—and also pass over? Geometry's going all weird.

He's almost enclosed now, a dome of stalagmites, each one of them perfectly straight. The crowd in the background's still visible, though it's confusing as much as it's flat. The cardboardlike cutouts extend to a third dimension, but not like they were. Instead each one traces its way through wherever the goblin passed through coming here. The trees are the same: by peering just past the direction that used to be out, he'll see every path that the branches traced out when they last bent around in the wind.

The largest goblin is just as trapped as Sadde is, and is cradling his head while making no move to grab his weapon.

...well whatever freakiness is going on is not actively hurting him and he does have a promise so he makes a move to grab the goblin's weapon.

It's harder to move, like he's pushing through air. But the gets to the club like he planned.

The goblin looks up. "Too late. We're both dead." It doesn't look all that true, since only one of them has been impaled (horizontally) by a (vertical) stalagmite. (Sadde goes involuntarily cross-eyed if he tries to look directly at whatever happened there.)

He remembers something—

"I'm not. And I heard goblins can yield and become weapons. Yield, and I'll let you live for now. Then I'll ask you for an oath, and you can choose between living with it or dying anyway."

"Too late. Both eaten. Rather stay as me."

He hauls himself off (around?) the spike and falls again. And expires. He's looking straight at Sadde with an expression that might or might not be analogous to spite.

"Fucker," he snarls, and wonders how this is gonna affect his oath.

But now he has more pressing issues. Like what the heck is going on. He looks around trying to figure out the answer to that question.

Inside the enclosure, space works like it should. Though it is growing harder to move. The air's almost liquid and pressing him down. At least Euclid is still in control.

But the outside is worse. He can still see the crowd, though it's flat once again. Now the trail from each goblin is short. It's the trees in the center: for each tree in the front there's a series behind, like a flip book was spread page by page. For the small ones, they have fewer pages to stack, while the large reach as far as he sees. 

The goblins' new presences dwindle away, by comparison as the old grows. And from their point of view, Sadde doing the same. For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.

Argh. Okay he gets it this is some time duckery, he should get out right now. Can he get out right now?

Nope.

Moving around is still not trivial, but the real obstacle is the barrier around the outside. The stones lengthened into stalagmites when everything got all twisted, and more of them sprouted up from the ground. The stone thicket is much too dense to get through.

Sight. He has the Sight. What sayeth the Sight?

The Sight saith that he's barred in, standing on nothing in particular, and slowly sinking into the void where the ground isn't. He can still feel himself standing on earth regardless of whether he's wearing his glasses. The Sight does confirm that despite all the weirdness the area outside the stalagmite fence isn't more magic than it should be. An unusual change of perspective, but nonmagical trees didn't start glittering.

What, really? So the whole 2D effect is just for show and the things are still tridimensional there?

Things on the outside didn't become magical where they weren't already. It's just a perfectly ordinary three-dimensional stack of two-dimensional trees.

In other news, the front layers of the stacks are beginning to disappear, and be replaced with the similar layers from immediately behind. It's fine-grained enough to make a credible illusion of motion. The Sight believes that the illusion is "moving" at the same speed that Sadde is sinking, even though the sinking looks slower if considered separately.

That is not how trees work.

Can he sink less? Can he jump or something? How fast are the trees going?

It's at flip book speed, not Star Wars hyperspace speed. The trees just look like they're moving in a strong wind, the rocks look stationary. People and animals flit in and out fast enough that it's mostly the motion that's recognizable. They're moving backwards.

The sinking is completely out of his control. He can jump as usual, and then comes down as usual. The space between the ground he's standing on and the top of the dome expands regardless.