After some unknowable amount of time has passed, something changed. Ty’s attention was piqued. He could see the goblin that was the witch’s newest servant drawing nearer and nearer to him, faintly hear the small creature muttering to itself, and as Ty watched it reached out a hand to grab the ring—
—and it picked up the ring.
Ty willed the goblin to put the ring on. He could feel the servant putting up a feeble resistance before the ring slips onto his finger, and Ty takes over.
Ty gasped. He was awake and not just in the ring. He was in two different places—one was in the ring, and one was in a body, a physical body once more. He looked down at it. It was not his own body, it was the body of a goblin, but that mattered little. He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew he could return it to his original form.
In the ring, Ty opened his eyes. He was floating above what looked like an eternal black lake, and from how startled the goblin looked, he assumed his eyes looked black and hollow like the elven woman’s had when she had stolen Ty’s body.
THANK YOU FOR RELEASING ME, Ty said to the goblin. THANK YOU FOR THIS BODY. I’LL TREAT IT WELL. SOMEONE WILL COME ALONG AND DO THE SAME FOR YOU EVENTUALLY. And with that, he began to change his body—the green skin faded to pale white, the large ears and nose began to shrink, he began to get taller, and otherwise he returned his body to its normal form. He was still wearing the goblin’s clothes, however—a basic leather shirt and trousers. He figured he’d have to look around for something different at some point, but wasn’t in too much of a hurry; he had more pressing issues and was way more overjoyed about having a body again than he was upset about having the goblin’s clothes, and in any case, the clothes fit him fairly well.
Ty set the ring back on its pedestal and left it there. Eventually the goblin would seize some other unknowing soul’s body. In the meantime, however, Ty could transform into the goblin’s form whenever he desired—he didn’t know how he knew that, again, but it was something he was aware of.