Mockery Deathmatch Episode 3: Decomposition

 

Dust particles danced in the dim light of Gavren's sword, the only sound in the room being the prickling of stone on stone. The cave ceiling had stopped collapsing, leaving behind a tomb of rubble where Cori had been standing.

"Cori!" Lyra pushed aside the masked figure as she scrambled toward the pile, her skewed hat’s red threads still glowing faintly. "Can you hear us?"

The figure smoothly spun to the side gracefully and unbothered.

Korvash pressed close to the rubble, his enhanced senses straining for any sign of life beneath the stones.

Marigold, displeased, exchanged glances with the masked figure for a while, before stepping forward to help the others. Another shower of pebbles rained down from above, revealing the instability of the situation.

The masked figure tilted her head at the scene, her porcelain face lit by the sword on the ground underneath her. When Marigold heard a step, she looked back at the woman, when she witnessed her perform a little pirouette, seemingly unbothered by the chaos around her.

"Well,” she said, with a drop in octave, muffled behind the mask.

"This got boring." She clapped her hands, catching the attention of the others.

“Don't worry, my dear audience, we’ll be back with more very soon. "

“But until then, I shall leave you with a ticket for the next event~.”

Cards began to spiral around her, her form folding in on itself like origami until nothing remained but the faint sound of distant bells, leaving behind a handful of play cards on the cave floor.

Lyra stared at the playing cards scattered where the woman had vanished, each one blank. "By the spirits… what was that thing?"

"Questions later," Korvash said grimly, rolling up his sleeves.

The three of them attacked the rubble pile with desperation.

"Careful," Lyra warned as Marigold lifted a particularly large boulder. "You're pushing yourself too hard."

"Mhm" Marigold nodded, seemingly deep in thought.

They worked in tense silence, the only sounds their labored breathing and the scrape of stone against stone. Korvash used controlled bursts of wind to clear debris, while Lyra's red threads helped stabilize loose rocks.

Then Marigold's hand found something soft beneath the stones.

"Here! I've got them!"

Cori's body was warm but limp when they finally freed them from the rubble. Their pink hair was matted with dust and blood, and something was wrong with their outline, as if their edges couldn't quite decide where they belonged.

"They're alive," Lyra said, checking their pulse. "But look at this..."

Cori's arms seemed to shift between solid flesh and something more translucent. The trauma had triggered some kind of involuntary shapeshifting.

Korvash let out a sigh of relief. “Seems like the kid’s tougher than they seem.”

A Heavy Loss

While Marigold tended to Cori's injuries, Lyra rushed to Gavren's still body. She knelt beside the armored figure with a red potion in a glass bottle. Tilting his head backward while emptying the bottle, she waited while holding her breath.

From a distance, Marigold and Korvash knew the situation when they saw Lyra’s body shrivel up and become smaller with her head buried in her chest and shoulders. Her big hat laid on the ground, revealing her straight black hair.

Nothing.

His breathing had stopped. Blood pooled beneath his dented armor, and his skin was already growing cold.

"No," she whispered. "No, no, no..."

Korvash got up, Marigold lagging right behind him, Cori on her back.

Korvash then placed a gentle hand on Lyra’s shoulder. "Lyra. He's gone."

She sat back on her heels, tears streaming down her face. "I should have... we should have..."

"It’s not your fault," Marigold said quietly, her voice carrying unusual emotion.

She looked at Gavren with a saddened expression.

“We can’t leave him here.”

"It wouldn’t be right."

Lyra wiped her baggy silver eyes and nodded. "He deserves better than this cave."

They gathered Gavren's sword, and the wrapped crate he'd been carrying. But when they tried to figure out how to transport both Cori and Gavren's body, the logistics became overwhelming.

"We can't carry both," Korvash admitted. "Not safely… Gavren is too big and heavy."

Marigold stepped forward without hesitation, gently putting Cori down on the ground. She knelt beside Gavren's body. "I will carry Sir Gavren, you carry Cori."

"Marigold, you're already damaged," Lyra protested. "The extra weight might---"

Marigold deadpan lifted her skinny arm again and flexed her nonexistent bicep, looking directly at them with a tiny little smile on her face.

The others stared for a moment, then chuckled, causing a brief moment of light in the darkness.

"Thank you," Lyra said softly as Marigold carefully lifted Gavren's body onto her back.

With Cori carried by Korvash, Lyra carrying additional supplies and Marigold carrying Gavren, they assessed their options. The entrance was completely blocked, they could only go deeper.

They made their way to what looked like a doorway leading into darkness. But before Lyra could conjure light, narrow candles began igniting automatically along the walls, creating a flickering path deeper into the mountain.

The group exchanged wary glances.

A few hours earlier that day.

High in the mountains, overlooking the jungle...

The morning sun casted long shadows across the jungle below. Cailleach stretched and yawned as she emerged from her cave workshop, squinting in the bright light, then putting her freshly salvaged and damaged goggles on her face.

She walked to a section of cave wall where 6 marks were carved into the stone. She added another line with her claw.

"Day seven," she murmured to herself. "LUCKY number seven."

She stretched more as her tail stiffened for a few seconds as her body cracked in a bunch of places. “Today is the day, I can figure this thing OUT!”

Her cave shelter resembled a mad scientist's laboratory. Charts and diagrams covered every wall, connected by lengths of jungle vine, stringed like a conspiracy web.

The cave sat 120 ft up the mountain. Upon entering, you’d find a wide space with a palm-tree bed near a campfire. Crates, cloth and materials lay scattered everywhere.

Research supplies were sorted into distinct zones: bestial crystalline samples in one corner, mysterious ancient artifacts in another, salvaged materials from corpses on the island, and stacks of field journals piled high on makeshift tables. Half-finished mechanical devices cluttered the floor.

She even kept a stone oven for burning organic waste, where an animal tail lay discarded, half-charred.

She approached her "investigation wall," where her various research threads were mapped out in meticulous detail:

- Crystal cores in island wildlife

- No sign of active intelligent life, several dead groups spotted

- Massive footprints in multiple locations, no matching creature sightings yet

- Atmospheric decay phenomena affecting organic matter!!!!

- Ancient symbols and arcane ritual grounds

- Cave paintings and murals throughout the island that tell unique stories.

- Traps set all over the island

- Old artifacts hidden in various places

Her attention lingered on one particular cluster of notes labeled "PRESERVATION PARADOX”

Tests #1-8.

Each entry documented failed attempts to preserve food and organic matter, with carefully recorded variables and hypotheses.

She walked back and forth impatiently while thinking deeply, scanning her notes.

Then threw a stack of parchment paper on the ground as she scratched her head.

"AAAAAghhh I can’t figure this out ... .Why did the decay rate accelerate only on day 4?"

She said aloud, tracing a line between her journal notes and sketches of various mysterious objects. After going through her notes for a while and jumping head first into the pile of mysterious artifacts, she walks back to her wall more calm and collected.

"Here’s a hypothesis… Localized entropy field."

She said as she lifted a twig in the air. “YES! That has to be it!”

“The island isn’t covered in a field of it… it has to be one core thing that emits it.. An item… of which its present location is wiiiiiith me." She waved her stick around, pointing to herself.

Cailleach glanced at a numbered list of supply crates, each prepared with a cloth, like a mini parachute. Her expression intensified.

“So it’s not about dropping the desired preservatives in a safety zone… it’s about distancing myself from the source, which creates a safety zone.”

She smiled and scribbled something on the wall, then broke her stick in half dramatically.

CRACK! “Ah wait…” She sighed, realizing she did it again.

She shrugged and packaged two more artifacts in a crate with some other filler materials and sent it off with a parachute down the mountain.

A little later Cailleach made her way down the winding mountain path, field journal in hand. Her plan was simple: start at the outer perimeter of where the crate had landed and work her way inward, testing the decay radius. If the item responsible for it was present in the crate, she’d find results, if not, she wouldn’t.

But when she reached the outer area, she found something unexpected.

A massive lizard lay sprawled on crystallized sand, its scales blackened and split.

The damage was severe.

"Huh?" She approached cautiously, noting how the sand beneath and around the creature had been superheated to the point of turning to glass. “What do we have here?”

Looking around the beach, it was obvious.

Multiple footprints. Human-sized, going in several directions.

"Someone did this," her eyes beaming with curiosity. "Someone with incredible fire capabilities."

But her spark dropped quickly when she realized it meant danger.

She pulled out a dagger and began examining the carcass. She struck something hard within the beast's core, exactly what she'd been hoping for.

"There you are," she whispered, extracting a smooth crystalline stone. The gem pulsed with inner light, identical to the cores she'd been finding in other creatures.

"Interesting," she murmured, making notes. "Cores appear to be indestructible. Even extreme thermal damage doesn't affect them. Why?"

More importantly, Cailleach realized she wasn’t alone on the island anymore. The implications were troubling. Someone else was on the island, someone powerful, capable, and intelligent. This could be a problem if she wasn't careful.

She needed better gear. But to build gear, she needed machinery. To build machinery, she needed power sources. The animal cores might provide that power, if she could figure out how to harness them.

But hunting these creatures required significant strength, and with someone this capable already wandering around...

"Unless I use explosions," she smiled, then shook her head. "No, too risky with intelligent life nearby."

Her train of thought was interrupted by a more immediate concern, her rumbling stomach. For the past three days, every piece of food she brought back to her workshop had spoiled within hours. Aggressive decay that reduced organic matter to sludge.

She'd tried everything: burying food, sealing it in containers, even hanging it from trees. Which is what led her to believe there was a dome around the island, if it touched the walls.. It would decay, but nothing worked.

In reality she believed that the decay seemed to follow her no matter where she went on the island.

"It has to be one of the artifacts," she said, pulling out her field journal. "Process of elimination. Send them all out in packages, monitor the effects, identify the culprit."

That's what Crate #8 was for her latest test package containing two of her most suspicious artifacts. If the decay followed the crate, she'd know which items were causing the problem.

She looked toward where the crate should have landed, then back at the burnt lizard. If there were other people on the island, they might have seen her package!

"I need to be quick," she decided, gathering her tools, then running off.

As she made her way through the jungle toward the crate's landing site, she noticed fresh decay spreading through the vegetation—leaves withering, flowers crumbling, small dead animals already decomposing.

"Definitely Crate #8," she confirmed, making notes. "The culprit is in there."

She put her goggles on. “I am a genius~”

But as she got closer, the sky began to darken unnaturally. The air grew cold, and wind started whipping through the trees with increasing violence.

She looked up to see storm clouds boiling up from nothing, turning the afternoon sky black.

Through the growing chaos, she caught a glimpse of light emanating from the direction of her crate. Bright, pulsing, definitely magical in nature.

Then a dust storm hit.

The wind nearly swept her off her feet as debris filled the air. She could hear roaring in the distance, not weather, but creatures. Lots of them, all making a terrible howling noise at once.

"Nope," she said, turning back toward her mountain cave. "Not dealing with that right now."

She fought her way back through the increasingly violent storm, bruised and battered by flying branches, soaked by swamp water.

Nearly an hour later, she crawled into her cave workshop, exhausted and filthy. The first thing she did was check on a piece of fruit she'd left on her workbench,

To her shock… The fruit was still fresh.

In silence she struck a victory pose, then landed on her knees happily. "I DID IT!!" she said with satisfaction, chomping on the juicy fruit. She walked to her investigation wall and made a large mark next to "Crate #8 - DECAY CULPRIT IDENTIFIED."

Back in the cave...

The candlelit path led them to a circular chamber that felt wrong the moment they entered. Ancient symbols spiraled across the walls, but fresh scorch marks and recently extinguished candles suggested this place had seen use within days, not centuries.

Black footprints tracked across the floor, too long, too narrow, with claw marks in the first few steps before becoming more human. The prints led from a stone table at the center to a far wall before disappearing.

"Someone was just here," Korvash whispered.

"Recently," Lyra agreed.

The footprint pattern told a story: monstrous claws transforming into human feet as they moved away from the table. They all knew who it had been.

"The masked woman," Marigold confirmed.

They had little choice but to lay both Cori and Gavren's body on the ancient stone table—it was the only flat surface large enough. As Marigold arranged Gavren with dignity, and Lyra checked Cori's condition, Korvash examined their supplies.

The smell hit him immediately, nearly tripping him up as he stepped back in reflex.

"The rations..." He gagged, pulling out containers of what had been dried meat and bread. Everything had turned to putrid, liquefying mess despite being sealed.

Lyra looked up from Cori with a growing alarm.

"How is that possible? It's been less than an hour."

Then Marigold noticed something. "Lyra, Korvash..."

As they turned to the table, a horrific discovery revealed itself in front of them. The knight's body was already showing signs of advanced decomposition. His skin had taken on a waxy, unnatural pallor, and smell...

When suddenly Cori's eyes snapped open with a sharp intake of breath. For a moment, they stared up at the curved ceiling above them, vision struggling to focus.

Then they saw where they were, laying on a stone table, surrounded by carved symbols, metal implements hanging overhead.

The memories flooded back. Not just of the cave collapse, but of older, deeper horrors. Being strapped to tables just like this. Experiments. Pain. Needles and scalpels and voices discussing them like they were an object.

"No," they whispered, their form beginning to flicker and shift. "Not again. Please, not again."

They tried to sit up, to escape, but their injured body wouldn't cooperate. All they could see was the ancient table beneath them, the symbols carved into the walls like surgical instruments, the others standing around them like doctors preparing for surgery. When they laid their eyes on Garven’s body next to them.

"Cori, it’s okay… it’s-” Lyra said with a shivering voice, but her reassuring words couldn't cut through the panic.

Cori's scream, when it came, was purely human. Raw, broken, and full of terror. Their voice echoed through the halls for a while.

"Easy," Korvash said, backing away to give them space. "You're with us. You're safe."

It took long minutes for their breathing to slow, and their body to stabilize. When they finally sat up, their eyes were wide and haunted.

"Where... where are we?"

"Some kind of ritual chamber," Lyra explained gently. "We had to bring you somewhere safe after the collapse."

“We didn’t do anything to you… we just needed to lay you somewhere.”

Cori looked around, taking in the symbols, the scorch marks, the evidence of recent use. "But… there.. There's a sign of...."

Cori while crying tried containing their voice, and composure while trembling, then covered their mouth while looking at Garven’s decaying body.

They backed away from it, falling to a corner on the ground by a wall.

“You were gonna use me to save him…”

“Right!!?”

The others looked sad, struggling to articulate the situation.

Marigold stepped in front of them. “You’re wrong!”

“You’re wrong Cori!”

“Look at the situation here, did anything today teach you that they’d do something like that?”

Marigold, with a pained expression, deeply stared at Cori while her voice trembled.

Cori, after some time, managed to calm down, allowing the group to talk about what happened while they were unconscious.

While they helped Cori recover, the decay problem became impossible to ignore. The smell of decomposition was overwhelming.

"We can't stay here," Marigold declared. "Whatever is causing this effect will continue to worsen."

“I feel cold..” Cori said, while still staring blankly in the distance, sat by a wall.

Korvash looked at them, “Are you still injured?”

Cori got up and shook their head. "I feel air flow coming from this wall… There must be another way out."

Following the draft revealed a hidden passage behind a section of wall that looked solid until touched. A piece of the wall emerged with a faint glow, pushing forward and slowly moving to the side. Hidden under the steam that crawled over the cold stone were steps that descended into darkness.

As they approached the hidden entrance, a line of red symbols on the floor began to glow in a pathway that lit up from the ritual table, through the passage, and down into the depths below.

"This connects to something," Lyra breathed.

The glowing symbols led them down worn stone steps into a vast underground chamber. The space felt ancient beyond measure, filled with the weight of centuries.

Massive pillars dominated the center of the room, one descending from the ceiling, one rising from the floor, coming together in the middle where something important was clearly meant to rest. But the space between them was empty.

The walls were lined with skeletal remains, and stone altars bore evidence of old sacrificial rites. Everything about this place screamed "tomb".

Lyra, as she put her hat back on, asked for Marigold to dust off the empty pillars, revealing the symbol of a glowing tear. The pillars when dusted off however revealed markings all over them spiraling on to the square stone elevation surrounding it.

"This is a prison," Lyra said with growing horror, recognizing the symbols carved into the walls. "These don’t strike me as burial markers…but containment seals."

"W-What was imprisoned here?" Cori asked, though they all suspected they knew the answer.

The missing artifact between the pillars, the recent ritual activity above, the transformed footprints...

"Whatever it was," Marigold observed, "someone let it out."

She pointed to the wall on the other side of the hall.

On the far side of the tomb chamber, they found the source of the draft, a section of wall that had been blown apart from the inside, leaving rubble and a narrow gap. Scorch marks indicating a large explosion. Likely also what caused the dust cloud swirling around. Through it, they could hear the sound of running water and wind through trees.

"Let’s just… get out of here, at least we have an exit," Korvash said nervously.

As they squeezed through the gap, they made it outside at last. All of them taking a deep breath of fresh air.

But with a synchronized precision they held their noses in disgust when what greeted them outside wasn't the relief they'd hoped for, but the sour smell of iron.

Lyra looked at the others in confusion. “This smell… it’s-”

Splat…

The whole group looked at Marigold’s cheek, covered with a red liquid.

Drip… Drip… Drip…

It continued as rain was falling, but it wasn't water. The drops were dark, thick, and tasted metallic when they touched their lips. In the distance, lightning flashed through clouds.

"Blood…" Lyra whispered in horror.

A couple miles away, at the same time, a battle took place in the heart of a swampy jungle.

A masked figure danced ballet in the rain while three white cloaked riders in golden masks sat on monstrous beasts. Brown haired ant-eater and mole hybrid creatures without eyes and  5 meter long tongues.   They circled around the woman, but were frozen in terror and confusion.

She spun and leaped through the downpour, her movements graceful and precise while chaos raged around her.

"Seriously..." One of the cloaked figures said.

Back to the group at the tomb.

Staring at the darkened cloudy red sky above them, Korvash turned to the group with a tormented expression, "What the hell is going on on this island?"

Miles away, experiencing the same thunder and rain in the background, 120 ft up the mountain in the cave workshop...

Lightning flashed outside Cailleach's cave as she sat at her workbench, completely absorbed in her latest project. She hummed a cheerful tune while tinkering with a mechanical device, occasionally pausing to take bites of fresh fruits, a luxury she could finally enjoy now that the decay problem was solved.

Her box of mysterious artifacts from the island were scattered all over the cave floor.

Behind her, the storm raged with supernatural fury, but she paid it no mind.

Her blue eyes sparkled with innocent curiosity as she made another adjustment to her contraption, followed by a pink light with a high and low pitched hum harmonizing a long tune.

She giggled softly to herself as sparks flew from her latest project.

Taking her final bite while wagging her tail.

 

 

“Yep Cailleach, you are a fine genius.”

EPISODE END.