There's a large cavern behind the curtain of moss— bigger than she thought anything underground in Florida could be. Supernaturally large, even. In the center of it, in a massive dip, there is a perfect recreation of the underground room they found in the tunnels. She can see it in her mind's eye, and she can see it right in front of her.
There she is, in all her rotting glory. The Mystery Lady. Priscilla Cain. All that's left of the woman her grandfather killed. All that remains of her great-aunt.
It's easier to see her now that she isn't running through the woods, disappearing into woods, and leaving hair on the ground. Trapped in the flashlight's beam, there's no doubt about it: she's dead. Skin made of bark and animal hide sloughs off of what bones remain; patches of moss and animal bone fill the scorched cracks of her face, making up eyes out of rocks and water.
It seems to Tiff that the only things here that were original are assorted bones in her body— a femur here, a rib there. Most of the assembled body is there. Her head isn't. It's the head that is assembled from assorted detritus and carcasses, leaking necromantic energy like purple bolts all over the place. Tiff can feel it like a punch to the gut, just looking at her.
As soon as Tiff shines her flashlight beam across the pit-of-dirt-recreation, fear flashes in Priscilla's inhuman eyes, chiseled across rock and ever-flowing water. In that fear, the skittering ceases.
"We can piece together what happened to you, you know." Tiff doesn't look her in the eye. She just lowers the beam of the flashlight, trying to de-escalate the situation.
The bone creature drops from the ceiling. It reassembles itself between Tiffany May Sheridan and Priscilla Cain. Scapulae scrape the sky, jagged and absolutely brilliant. The sight of it takes her breath away.
And, unfortunately, it completely sideswipes Drew— runs him down, knocks him into the wall of the cave. Tiff's sure the earth moves and the sky goes with it— but it's more useful to be useful, and there's no real way to be compassionate and try for some pacifism with your dead great-aunt when she's actively trying to use her fucked-up, conceptually-very-cool six-legged gator horse to try and kill you.
"Oh, fuck," she mutters, trying to re-evaluate her entire plan with regard to everything happening here. "God absolutely damn it."
Matt doesn't seem to have the same issue of freeze-and-think. She can see him out of the corner of her eye; he's already moving, already drawing— and, quick on the draw, he fires at the bone creature from two feet to Drew's right. The shot rings out, tinnitus against the cave wall in such a closed-off space, shell and shot to the right front leg. A shard of bone snaps out and flies across the proverbial room, scratching Matt's cheek deep enough to draw blood. He doesn't flinch.
Tiff decides, as the leg buckles and the creature leans while trying to reform itself, that now is the time to do something stupid. Now is the moment; she can't hesitate any more, can she?
And, god, she hates that this six-legged gator is also kind of a horse, because she knows that her next move is going to be to get up on it.
"Keep it distracted," she calls to Matt on her way past. Running up the leg doesn't go how she thought it would in her head. Things rarely do. She sees Matt's nod and tries to climb up the leg, but it isn't like she can find her standing balance on a tree branch while it's swaying, and it isn't like she can stand on its spiny ribcage, even with her back hunched against the low ceiling of the cave. She loses her footing; she ends up a tumbling bolus, displaced and rattling in its trypophobia-nightmare ribcage.
Well, shit. She's just going to have to fight it from the inside, then.
Matt doesn't need to be told not to shoot her. While he switches tactics, Tiff turns on her hands and knees on intercostal bits of bones, just until she can see Priscilla through the fist-sized holes by her face.
Priscilla isn't doing much to fight, Tiff realizes. She's cowering. She's under the table with a rock in her hands, shaking like she's reliving what happened to her and a thousand hurricane drills beyond it. Isn't it a position Tiff knows well? Hurricanes, earthquakes, remembering all the shitty things that happened to you— isn't it the way things go?
It's almost as if Priscilla Cain isn't a threat— almost as if Tiff was right on some level, almost as if this thing is protecting her from people like them. That bit of confirmation sours Tiff's stomach and the carbonated apple whatever resting there. In the belly of the beast, she has no choice but to let it rest and keep fighting. There's Drew on the ground, trying his hardest in conditions he was never meant to be in; there's Matt to the side, trying to take out the legs without hurting anyone else; and Tiff has to do something, even as she wishes she had Kepler here to look to for inspiration and protection.
This thing doesn't even have a baculum to bite, so it doesn't matter that there isn't a rat to latch on. She draws the sword.
It gleams, steel thorns she holds in both hands. The weight, the heft of it; it's all foreign and she isn't quite sure what to do with it.
It's just a sword, right? It's the same as always, the same as fighting Oneiron with no training— except she can't bicker with this thing and she isn't in a blind rage.
That's fine, though. She swings it all the same, at the interior of the ribs, in a hacking upswing with both hands. The serrated blade catches on a rib above her head and saws halfway through when she frees it. iff has had enough experience with a bone saw to know that it doesn't bode well for the structure of these bones. Maybe it means that the periosteum is degraded and weaker than it should be. What it definitely means is that the ribs under her start to crack— and, when they do, she falls through it.
She hits the ground and tries not to wince at the way she knows her knee is going to bruise.
There's that voice in the back of her head again: Go insane. Do something crazy. Play knights with this very real monster and expect it to know the rules. Bite the bones. Get inside its skull.
That last one might be viable, actually. She has seen enough Power Rangers at Drake's behest that she knows about what they did to that skeletal triceratops. She doubts that pulling at some load-bearing bone in its neck would do much of anything, but maybe there's something key to going for the head. Once this thing is down, she can focus on trying to talk to Priscilla and trying to explain.
She can't tuck and roll. That's stupid. It's no less stupid than just getting up and running for it— putting herself between the descending mouth and Drew, who has since pushed himself up and pulled out a taser. (Like that's going to help. Who knows. Maybe it will.)
It's like Matt can read her mind. He pulls the lever action to chamber and groans at her, "Oh, come on. Don't get in its mouth."
"I'm not going to get in its mouth."
It's a good idea, though. Mentally, she thanks him for it. If she can get her sword in there, she can probably just kind of swing it around like a fork in a blender until the head pops off its broad, equine shoulders. The main issue is the teeth.
Using her left hand to hold it open is her best bet here. She waits until Matt has distracted and ceased to distract it by fumbling with his gun for a second too long. Reloading is a bitch. When its attention is on her instead— the one who actually has a functional weapon in their hands— she lets it come down to snap at her and jams her left arm in there, elbow between two teeth, hand wrapped around one up top. There's enough room to bring her right hand, sword first, into its mouth.
"God, Tiff, don't—"
"Too late."
And it is too late. She knows it as soon as she's done it. Sure, her right arm may be the fork in the blender, but her left sure isn't. It's a plastic toy in a hydraulic press.
She persists. It's a horrible idea. She keeps her hand in its mouth.
Another shot rings out; another blow from a wincing Drew connects with its side; and she keeps her hand in its mouth. One of its legs gives out; shrapnel hits Drew in the torso; and she keeps her hand in its mouth. Drew rages out and beats the leg into shards of nothing; she keeps her hand in its mouth.
It's hard to maneuver anything in the jaws of this thing, inside its long, hollow skull patched together from all sorts of parts— but she manages. For all the clumsy, fruitless fighting and intercostal adventures, she manages to drive the point of her aunt's sword up into this thing's head. The jagged, slightly-curved tip pokes through a Tiff-made fontanel.
When the creature falls apart, the head goes with it. When the head goes, Tiff goes— stumbles forward, lands on her knees. She manages to let go of the sword and yank her right arm out; her left isn't so lucky. She doesn't know what's happening aside from the head hitting the ground, the jaws snapping shut, and a crack echoing through the cavern amid a clattering cacophony of bone hitting the ground and breaking. Shattering. Piling up into shards of being, bits of spaniels and sparrows.
And there is Tiff on the ground, with her arm like a sword in a stone. It doesn't bode well, and it hurts (say less)— but at least the fight is over for now, she knows getting her arm out won't turn her into a grog, and she's pretty sure she can fix it by alleviating the pressure and not moving her left hand, sideways though it may be, for a while. Something in the back of her head screams that she sprained or broke her "elbow" (there's no such thing, she knows, since the actual elbow is just the joint where the radius and ulna meet the humerus), but she thinks it's more accurate to say that her arm is in the vice grip of a dead creature's mouth and she can't get it out herself. She should be grateful, she knows, that the leather sleeve of her jacket means nothing pierced the skin.
"Shit," she mutters, on her knees, looking at it, gritting her teeth to hold back a scream. "That's pretty stuck."
Matt sets his gun on the ground by the pile of bones and takes a knee next to her. "Got your arm a little stuck in a gator head, there."
"Yeah, Matt," she snaps. "It sure looks like it."
"Don't worry. I'll help you," he teases. "No need to ask."
"Thank you." It's hard to sound grateful when you're in such a state, but she's pretty sure he gets the memo.
"Alright." He puts one hand on each part of the jaw. "Brace yourself. Get your arm out as soon as it's open."
"Yeah, I know, Matt."
He pries it open without warning. The bones creak at the hinge; Tiff tanks her arm out and snatches the sword like a fucked-up, slightly-poisoned Arthur; the jaws snap shut once more.
"Is your arm okay?" he asks.
The lie comes just as easily. "My arm is fine."
"Are you sure—"
"It's fine, Matt! God!" She rises to her feet. "Sorry, sorry— I have to go talk to Priscilla."
Priscilla, as it turns out, is still in the pit, with her hands over her ears. Tiff stands behind her, watching the bones reform, hoping it doesn't mean another fight is on the way.