Ouroboros Spine Just looking for a fight

At twilight, the basin full of mud could've easily been mistaken for solid ground. The treacherous nature of the waterlogged soil wasn't clearly visible even in the brightest sunlight; under the cloak of darkness, it was nigh impossible to predict. Farstep picked his way slowly down the mountainside, his eyes bright and keen on a large lake in the distance, with no sense of caution whatsoever. He was thirsty and that sense overrode everything, even his usual instinctual awareness of his surroundings.

His first step on the mucky floor of the spine didn't give away the precarious position he was in, but his second step did. His foot hit the ground, he registered the sponginess of it, and then the floor seemed to open up and swallow his leg, right up to the shoulder. His momentum stopped so suddenly that Farstep jerked forward before smashing his muzzle into the too-wet ground as his torso descended. His hind legs remained elevated and his free forelimb scrabbled for a hold, but any amount of pressure on the ground, now a mire, caused that foot to sink as well.

He struggled for a moment, spluttering and growling and letting his heart race as panic seized him, before he managed to free his sunken limb. It took an absurd amount of effort for the male to pull himself back from the brink of what seemed a pit of quicksand (quickmud?), but eventually he did, with a fresh coating of mud from his paws to the middle of his chest to thank him for making the mistake of stumbling into the spine. He smacked his lips, eyes alighting on the glitter of water in the distance, and his tail shook pitifully between his haunches as the promise of water proved to be nothing more than a lure.