Mockery Deathmatch Episode 2: Displacement

The workshop looked less like a room and more like a mind spilled into physical space — every surface buried under tools, diagrams, coils, and half-finished devices. Brass coils hummed with faint runic inscriptions, their glow casting dancing shadows across bottles of powdered starlight and crystallized moonbeam. A calendar on the wall was crammed with furious red-ink circles. A clock ticked loudly beside a stack of glass tubes melted into strange, twisted shapes.

In the middle of it all, bent over her desk, was Cailleach. The mapach's dark red fur blazed with flame-like patterns, white-tipped ears twitching as she worked. Bronze goggles pushed back wild hair that matched her coat's natural reds and golds. Tool-belts and half-buttoned pockets bulged with wire scraps and crystal bits. Her claws, ink-stained and singed, sketched furiously into a battered leather notebook.

"Day fifty-seven. Fourteen failures, two partials, one catastrophic structural collapse…" Her bright sea-blue eyes never left the page. "And a wall repair bill I'm still pretending doesn't exist."

The sketch pinned above her workbench showed her obsession: a jagged crown-like artifact, spines curling in impossible symmetry. Beneath it, in her own scrawled handwriting: The answer is in the core.

"No more chasing rumors," she muttered, circling an equation so hard the pencil tip snapped. "It'll come to me. Instant retrieval, perfect precision. All I need is one clean—"

The pressure gauge on her bronze-and-glass machine trembled, its needle dancing into the red zone. She glanced at it, ears twitching. "Containment holding… probably just a fluctuation." The brass coils began emitting a higher-pitched hum.

Her hand slammed the activation lever.

The machine roared to life. Its crystal heart blazed pink, runes flickering like captured stars. Energy crackled between the coils, and the sharp smell of ozone filled the air.

"Containment stable… leyline locked… oh yes, you're mine this time."

A single loose bolt squeaked, growing louder as the vibration deepened. The pressure gauge needle slammed against its maximum reading. A hairline crack appeared in the crystal core, spreading like frozen lightning. She spun around, ears flat against her head, just as it burst — glass raining across the room in glittering shards.

"Nonono—!" She ducked behind the bench as a blinding flare of white swallowed the room.

When her vision cleared, the workshop was gone. Only mud remained—thick, brown muck that squelched beneath her as she struggled to sit up. Lake water lapped nearby with gentle, rhythmic waves. Dense jungle canopy stretched overhead, blocking out most of the sky.

She groaned, staring down at her empty claws. No goggles. No tool belts. No instruments.

"Oh, that's just insulting."

Her mind was already racing, trying to piece together what had gone wrong. She found a stick and began sketching equations in the mud. "Containment failure at... what, eighty-seven percent capacity? The crystal matrix couldn't handle the resonance differential." Quick, sure strokes formed diagrams in the muck. "But the leyline lock held, so the energy had to go somewhere..."

The stick snapped under pressure as she worked through the variables. She flicked it aside with an irritated tail-swish and grabbed another. "Dimensional displacement, obviously. But the targeting parameters were..." She paused, frowning at her mud-sketch. "Wait. There weren't any targeting parameters."


"UUUGH I did it AGAIN!!"

She groaned as she squeezed her eyes shut, snapping the twig she held in two.

A low growl cut through her frustrations.

She looked up to see a creature emerging from the tree above her—It jumped down about to charge her, bigger than a hunting cat, its hide mottled in greens and browns. Sharp eyes fixed on her as it began circling.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me!!"

The beast lunged. She jumped aside, nearly slipping in the mud. Her shoulder struck a rock and she yelped, rolling away as claws raked where she'd been sitting. She scrambled up, grabbing the rock.

"Back off!" She hurled it at the creature's head. It ducked, then lunged again.

What followed was desperate, messy survival. She used everything within reach—rocks, sticks, claws, her teeth. Handfuls of mud flung at its eyes. When it charged, she dove behind a fallen log, splinters flying as claws raked bark. She grabbed a low-hanging vine and tried looping it around the creature's neck, but it twisted away, nearly taking her arm with it.

"OH- no, that was bad!"

"Hmm...."

She said half panicking trying to brainstorm mid fight rubbing her temples.

After what felt like forever,  

Her coat hung in tatters, mud caked her fur, and blood seeped from a gash on her forearm by the time she finally finished the creature with a jagged stone. She stood over the twitching body, chest heaving, her entire arm throbbing from the blow.

"Three hours," she gasped, glaring down at the carcass. "Three hours of troubleshooting, completely wasted."

She said, looking at the little pocket watch hanging from her coat.


"Let's get this over with then,"

She crouched beside it, dragging claws along its hide, and using sharp stone to cut the corpse to examine it. "So... my friend, what exactly are you?" When the stone hits something hard. There, a faint shimmer pulsed through its veins like corrupted circuitry. Something deep inside the creature pulsed with the same eerie light.

"Huh." She cocked her head, tracing the glowing patterns.
"What do we have here?" She said with increasing wonder.


A little later, she grabbed it by the tail and dragged it toward the lake. The damp wood along the shore hissed and steamed when she tried to light it, stubbornly refusing to catch. She clicked her tongue in annoyance.

"Of course. Nothing's ever simple."

She hauled the carcass inland, grumbling about moisture content and fuel efficiency. The jungle pressed closer around her, but she eventually found dry kindling. After building a quick fire pit and tossing the body in, she crouched to examine that strange glow more closely.

There — wedged just beneath the ribcage — a stone. Smooth, milky white, humming softly in her palm. Her ears snapped forward as she turned it over, watching how it bent the light.

"Oh, now THAT, is fascinating." Her voice shifted completely — bright, eager, almost breathless. She held it up to the flames, eyes widening as it refracted light in impossible ways. "The resonance frequency is all wrong for standard quartz, but if the crystal matrix includes elemental compounds..."

She was utterly absorbed now, rotating the stone, testing its weight, checking for temperature variations.

The fire crackled higher, devouring the carcass. When she finally glanced up, crickets were singing and stars peppered the sky above the canopy.

"What?" She blinked, looking around in confusion. "When did it get dark?"

The reality hit her...she had no shelter, no tools, and zero % clue where she was. 
She needed to find somewhere safe before more things came looking.

Cailleach pocketed her finds, then followed the sound of running water deeper into the jungle.
She took lots of mental notes as she studied her surroundings.

Until the clearing opened before her, bludgeoned bodies everywhere — dozens of them, some in rusted armor and robes. Humans, Elves, Dwarves, other Anthropomorphs... piled together in a pool of dirt and blood.

Weapons lay scattered among the corpses, telling a story she couldn't read.
The smell hit her first, thick with wet earth and iron burning in her nostrils.

"Whoa." She stopped at the edge, nose wrinkling. "That's... intense."

Her eyes swept the scene, taking in the full scope of it. What had happened here? Some kind of battle? More like massacre.. 


She then noticed how there was a big circle in the ground surrounding the bodies.. a dip in the ground by at least a few inches... Could it be an enormous footprint? Blood of a multitude of bodies colored the edges of its circumference.


Then she saw the glint of metal.

"Oh my." Her ears perked forward. "Oh my, oh my, oh my."

The horror of the scene faded into background noise as her gaze jumped from one piece of salvageable equipment to another. Copper wire there, bronze fittings here. A staff with crystal inlays leaning against a tree. Leather, crystal, gold, silver... Stuff she hadn't even seen before!  

Raw materials everywhere she looked.

She was practically vibrating with excitement now. "Ohhhhh how peculiar!~" her pupils dilated upon her discovery. She dove in, gathering everything useful she could find. As she sorted through the debris, testing components, stuffing the best pieces into a makeshift sack she'd fashioned from torn fabric. Her movements grew more animated with each new discovery.

The leather-bound book she found was particularly promising — filled with diagrams and formulas she didn't recognize. She flipped through it quickly, pausing at a page covered in unfamiliar rune work.

"Ooh, that's clever." She eyed the symbols, tracing them with her claw. "Looks kind of like a... I wonder if..."

She looked around the clearing, then back at the book. The bodies should be burned anyway...


What's the harm in testing her new book, she grinned, the expression sharp and eager.


"Let's see what this does."

Seconds later, a big explosion lit up the jungle for miles.

The blast threw her backwards into a slippery slide of mud as debris rained down around her. For a moment she just lay there, ears ringing, then sat up and looked back at the clearing.

Where it had been, there was now a smoking crater.

In the middle of a coughing fit,  she burst into laughter.  "HAHA!!! YES!!! Did you see that?! It actually worked!" She scrambled to her feet, eyes blazing with manic joy. "The thermal channeling must have ignited the ambient mana in the corpses themselves, creating a sympathetic resonance cascade that—"

A distant roar sliced through her excitement. Then another. And another.

An orchestra of howls from various directions.. and multiple species.


Her ears flattened and eyes grew big as reality hit her. She just announced herself to every predator within miles. She could already hear movement drawing closer.

She hefted her salvage sack over her shoulder, staggering under its weight. Dawn was already near as she glanced down at her new book, then back toward the approaching predators. A slow grin spread across her muzzle.

"I really need a workshop."