Old practice art inspired by https://www.furaffinity.net/view/3125486/.
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The dragon, Ziggy, had enjoyed eating jellies, jello, and candy. But after a certain incident, his body had begun to turn into gooey slime, and soon, he would become nothing but a messy goo dragon.

October is a time of year where one can dress up on a specific day and start collecting a hoard of tasty treats. The day of Halloween, where one becomes quite hollow indeed. Ziggy loved Halloween, not so much for the dressing up part, but for all the tasty treats that one could obtain.

Ziggy had not been wearing a costume when he decided to start collecting his hoard of sweets in a nearby village. Most of whom he met were disappointed in his decision not to wear a costume, and yet they would still give him a petty treat. Ziggy had always been one to run his mouth while showing little consideration for others. When it comes to Ziggy's personality, he has always been the type that is easily likeable, and he knows it. He could always find some way of talking others into getting what he wanted. All of that went down the drain when he came to the door of Long's domain, a seemingly friendly lizard man that wanted nothing to do with Ziggy, (especially after the last time they met). Long had donned an old white bed sheet and his head stuck out the top with white powder smeared around his face. Ziggy burst into laughter and commented on how ridiculous Long looked. Mildly annoyed, Long explains how he could not come up with a costume of his size and did not have the artistic ability to make anything fancy, so he decided to go with something simple (and sometimes, simple is best). Long grows a little more irritated, when Ziggy describes Long as looking like the word 'sickness' itself. Ziggy was holding up a line that was slowly beginning to accumulate behind him, making a scene drawing a lot of unwanted attention to Long. Long was frustrated to the point of snapping, he angrily yelled at Ziggy saying that he at least tries to get into the Halloween spirit and that you can't criticize someone's costume when you aren't even wearing one yourself! Ziggy just blankly stares at Long as he tilts his head to the side, clearly acting confused as those behind him start demanding that Long just give him a fist full of candy and be done with it. Ziggy then proceeds to smile smugly as he states that 'clearly' his costume is a lush and beautiful blue dragon and proceeded to strike a pose. Long grinds his teeth as he bellows that this is not how it works! Grinning sadistically, Ziggy explains that he does not even have to bother with such troublesome dress up when he already looks as good as he is going to look, and that at least he doesn't look like a scaly grandmother that forgot how to use powder.

It is at this point that Long's mental state snaps. He slowly skulks back behind a slammed door and a few moments later returns with a bucket of assorted sweets. Ziggy stood there nonchalantly as he waited in anticipation. But what Ziggy didn't expect was to have a brick of a bar dropped into his bucket weighing almost a kilogram. Ziggy smirked as he started walking away, but quickly did a double glance back at Long whom Ziggy swore that he saw Long chuckling to himself as he handed out the smaller assorted treats to the others waiting in the line. Ziggy did not think much of it, and decided that he had hit the jackpot for tonight. He headed back to his domain, a cave hanging off the side of a cliff that entered into a section of the mountain.

Once inside the safety of his domain, Ziggy began his favorite activity of the night, trying each tasty treat and rating them in order on how much he enjoyed each one. While he was rummaging through his bounty, the first piece he pulls out is the massive bar that he had gotten from Long. Seemed like all of the other candies did not even get close to the weight of the bar combined. Ziggy examined the bar, it had G-X in big letters, with no brand name or contents label that he could see. Turning the bar around Ziggy notices a folded piece of parchment tucked into the seam of the wrapper. Ziggy pulls the parchment from the wapper, it was a note form Long, Ziggy could tell from his sloppy handwriting.

The note reads, “Hey friend, This is Long. You know how I am, tend to have a problem finding the right words in the moment. I would like to formally apologize for the inconvenience I caused tonight. So, for your troubles, I gift to you something of my own creation. Enjoy this tasty treat I made just for you and I hope that you have a (goo’d) night.”

Ziggy smirks as he starts tearing open the bar, almost salivating with anticipation. He hoped that it would be chocolate, but when he tore the wrapper open, it was a shiny and smooth looking green bar. Ziggy wondered what it was as he pricked it with one of his claws and then licked it. The mysterious green bar felt bland, it did not even taste like much of anything. Shrugging and without giving much thought, Ziggy takes a giant chomp (one that he would soon regret). Ziggy struggles to swallow such a mouthful of tasteless solid that quickly seemed to melt and mix with his saliva to form a gel that was dripping slightly out of his mouth. Ziggy drops the tasteless green bar to the floor as he feels something strange happening inside his chest and stomach. His mouth and throat all felt coated as if the substance was clinging to every surface that it came in contact. Ziggy grunts and breathes heavily as he holds his stomach, and gets confused when he feels something wet. Ziggy looks down and sees that a gooey green substance was forming around his stomach and working its way up his scaled chest. Startled, Ziggy thought that he would have noticed something wet forming on his body, but the reality was that he could hardly feel anything, he felt no pain, but that didn't really help his situation. Ziggy hacks and coughs up slime onto the floor, splattering his arms and hands in the process. He could feel a faint wetness on his lips as he had difficulty breathing when the goo began funneled down his nostrils. Stumbling forward, Ziggy struggles to even lift his legs or arms to move forward, even though he no longer had any feeling within his limbs, he could force them to move, and the limbs still obeyed. Was not long before Ziggy's wings and tail would separate from his body and splatter onto the floor, eventually Ziggy's entire body melts into a giant puddle of goo and a few moments later his new body would start to assimilate. Once Ziggy was fully assimilated, he was not quite sure how to to feel. Ziggy could physically feel nothing; pain, taste, touch, he couldn't even feel the heat or coldness of the air around him or the weight of his gooified body, he wasn't even breathing. He felt weird, and he didn't really dislike nor thought it to be pleasant, he wasn't experiencing any emotions of fear, hate, or excitement. He just didn't care, Ziggy felt like he was incapable of caring. Ziggy just looks at himself with glowing yellow eyes and just doesn't know how he's supposed to respond to this. He just walks over to the other candies that were in his bucket, leaving a thick trail of slime behind him, his gooey tail sliding across the ground. Ziggy's entire body coordination was extremely off and he had to focus on his libs for each step, even for something as simple as opening/closing his mouth or flexing a finger. It was almost like he was learning to walk again for the first time. Pinching a single sweet from the bucket, Ziggy struggles to unwrap it with the tips of his soft gooey claws. He tries popping the treat into his mouth, but it sticks to the side of his lower jaw, he forces his gooey tongue to stretch unnaturally to the side of his mouth to snag the treat and pull it down his throat. He could not taste the sweetness of the treat on his tongue, the only taste he could experience was the tasteless goo that now made up his mouth and entire body. Ziggy just dips one of his hands into the candy filled bucket and pulls out a fist full of treats and just proceeds to plunge his candy filled fist directly into his stomach, wrapt and all. Disappointed in still not being able to taste the sweetness of any other treats he had collected, Ziggy unfusses his hand from his stomach and started making his way towards his sleeping chamber. Along the way, he remembers the gift from Long that still remained on the floor. He picks up the green candy bar responsible for turning him into what he has become, and chucks it into a garbage bin with a loud bang from hitting the rim. Ziggy then huddles down onto the ground in his sleeping chamber, he didn't feel tired, but he wanted to settle down for tonight. As he slowly drifts off to sleep, his body begins to melt until he is once again nothing more than a puddle of goo.

Long had been practicing his goomancy to manipulate and bend goo and slime to his will. He had specialized gels that he practiced and experimented on. Through dedication in the gooey arts, he could produce bars of condensed gels that would react instantaneously with water turning it into gooey fluid. You can imagine what would happen when one of these condensed gels would do to a creature when ingested, the water in their bodies would cause them to turn into slime, the digestive enzymes making quick work of all organic matter.

Unfortunately for Long, he has broken a prime rule held by all goomancy users in his village. "One will not use one's skills to harm others no matter the case. Five time repeaters of the offense will undergo trial, those found guilty will be stripped of all their possessions (including clothes) before they are displayed publicly for their transformation into a goo creature and banishment from the village with all proof of existence removed and memories forgotten. And finally, one that performs the ultimate taboo of turning any outsides or fellow village folks into a goo minion shall not have right to trial and will be stripped of all possessions (with any stolen items returned to their rightful owner or victims families) before they are displayed publicly for their transformation into a goo creature and banishment from the village with all proof of existence removed and memories forgotten."

The lizardmen of Long's village are of a prestigious society. They have high values and expectations of one another that each is to uphold. Lizardmen that disregard the rules and perform actions of atrocities will be punished severely. In the past, Long's village has had rogue lizardmen goomancers that get greedy with power and try turning our lizardmen into their goo minions in an attempt to raise an easy army. There is even a story that at one point, almost half of the village lizardmen were transformed into the gooey minions of an evil goomancer whom's name has been lost and removed from their history. Nearly hundreds of lizardmen had fallen victim to this goomancer before they were apprehended and transformed into a goo lizardman themselves. After that incident, something had to be done about the goo lizardmen left over that were now freed from the evil goomancers control. So whenever a loyal lizardman gets transformed into goo, they are given a choice. They can either have a goomancer release their soul from the slime, and slowly their bodies would melt and eventually seep into the ground or they could continue existing in their form and be stored in a cauldron ready to be released only when there is an emergency.

All those that have been turned into goo creatures have no emotion and can feel nothing, but they also can not experience anything like love or attachment. It is for this reason that it is used as punishment in Long's village.

It is rumored that lizardmen goomancy users manipulate slime that were once lizardmen. In Long's case, his father had been a victim of a rogue goomancer and had been turned into slime. Long's father had released his soul from the goo, but now Long wanted to find a way to bring his father's soul back into the goo, just so he could see his father again, even as a goo creature. But all of that could be going out the window when he is discovered.

Hopeful Ziggy will be more well behaved now that his emotion are gone. And Long may be joining Ziggy as a goo lizardman soon, a trick for a treat...

I wish all a happy Halloween (and to stay safe during covid-19).