She tries not to take note of the fact that she's behind Priscilla when she puts the sword behind her back and announces, "We weren't here to hurt you."
Tiff knows she has a low charisma score. If she were to build herself for Pathfinder, she might choose ysoki and then nerf that particular stat. It's a shot in the dark that she does anything remotely useful here. It's a shot worth taking, though. She would hate to agitate her more. She would hate to hurt the wounded when they're undeserving.
Tiff's goal was always to help. Somewhere along the way, she thinks she may have decided that putting her undead great-aunt to rest was a phenomenal idea. Both are good options. The only bad one is getting her shit rocked a little more. She's trying her hardest not to move her left arm. It already hurts like hell she can barely move her fingers without gritting her teeth, to the point that she thinks she shouldn't move it at all. If there's something worse in store, she doesn't want to see it.
She just wants to come to an end that isn't a total wash of violence. Or, rather— it's not the violence that's the issue. She knows that. On some level, she likes the way it feels to come out of a rage with blood on her face and her chest heaving. It's the satisfaction of a job well-done and a life saved.
If she can help the victim, though... Didn't she learn from Despina? Didn't she try it again with the Lewis clone? Didn't she begin with Mark Croft himself, after she realized how Oneiron was manipulating him? Just as the Skunk Apes extended a hand of compassion toward her, she thinks she has tried.
And so she tries again.
She repeats it. "We weren't here to hurt you. I know what it looks like— a bunch of Cains bumbling in here like we're looking for a witch or something— but— But we didn't. We're more in the same boat than that. I think— We always knew it would go like this. Right? That's the way the story is."
The annoyance creeps back into Drew's voice. He taps his stomach, winces, and removes his hand. "Tiff, this isn't a story. This is real. This is the way our lives have unfolded."
"Tiff." There's an odd, dream-like quality to Priscilla's voice. "Tiffany."
"May." She regrets it as soon as it's out of her mouth.
"Tiffany May." Priscilla leans forward under the creature, using its leg to brace herself. "Tiffany May Cain. A name given to you—"
"I regret to inform you that's not my name."
"It's your name now."
"Fuck. I can't argue with that. Your reasoning is sound." She pauses, swallows, continues. "We— We know what he did to you. We were more concerned about, like... I don't know, seeing if you were okay. Or what we could do. Or something."
She doesn't turn around. Hollow, she asks, "Why would you care if I were okay?"
"See— we know you're not, because you're dead and all, but— I don't know. I came here to see what was going on and to— I came here to apologize, I guess. We know what he did to you. You shouldn't have had to go through that."
Priscilla doesn't say anything.
Tiff does. "We know it's— frightening. It's terrifying to have someone— three someones— show up out of the blue. You were right to protect yourself, but we weren't here to hurt you. I'm... invested."
She turns, finally, rocky face on a swivel, eyes weeping rain like the sky outside the cave. "Who are you, young witch hunter? You're a Cain, but you reek of divinity."
"Weird." Tiff doesn't frown, but she doesn't not frown. "You're the first person here who has caught onto that." She pauses, amends, "To the divinity, not to the— I'm not a witch hunter. None of us are witch hunters, except—"
She looks across the dark cavern by the scant light of the moss and her flashlight's cracked beam, to Matt standing on the other side of the bone creature. When she makes a small, frantic gesture around Priscilla's back, he sighs and lowers his gun. (Mentally, she thanks him. She's pretty sure he doesn't get the memo.)
"None of us are witch hunters," he agrees, finger off the trigger. "None of us are here to hurt you."
"No, yeah," Tiff continues, deciding it might be best to keep as much attention on herself as possible. "From the beginning, we were— Well, we were concerned. We saw you in the woods, and tried to find you, and then we learned— Well, you know."
Priscilla frowns as much as the rocks of her head will let her. She steps closer, somewhere between ingenue wobbling and predatory stalking.
"He did it with that sword, you know."
"I figured. Destiny has a way. And I did— I did see him take a sword up to protect himself. I guess Peepaw threw it in the lake, Aunt Esther picked it up years later, and she handed it off to me when I begged to take on a part of her destiny."
"Well, if you have taken the sword and you're not on my brother's side, then I suppose I could call you my champion."
She shakes her head, feeling the water drying on her cheeks. "I'm no champion."
"Do you not wield a divine weapon? Did you not come here to assist?"
"Hey, hey, technically everything about me is divine."
"Tiff, quit being an ass," Drew snaps, hands suspiciously over where he got hit earlier, like gate theory applied to the exterior of his armor. What good was the breastplate, then? Christ.
"It's your mom's sword, dude. I'm just wielding it."
He raises his arms like a communist cat. Tiff tries not to think about the implications (thought they may thrill and delight her later).
"Whether or not you were meant to wield the sword doesn't matter. You wield it anyway." It's certainly a way to draw Tiff's attention back to the topic at hand, and it would seem that Priscilla Cain knows that. "For all those years, I asked the universe for someone to help. I prayed. It took a few decades, but someone finally answered."
"It wasn't supposed to be me, though. She tried. She tried." Tiff disregards the sword in her hands, somewhere between barbed and pulsing with light; it's more thorny steel than lily pads; she knows that without looking down.
"I don't think it matters who it was meant to be. Somebody answered. That counts for something."
"No, I'm telling you— it was supposed to be Aunt Esther. This was one of the things she had to do. It's complicated, but— you know, your niece. Or— I guess she wouldn't have been born yet." Fuck. That's a part of this tragedy that Tiff hadn't let herself think about. She wasn't anticipating it hitting this hard. Having died so young and in obscurity, Priscilla Cain never got to meet her nieces and nephew. How is that fair? How is any of this fair?
"My—" Priscilla either doesn't get it or is trying her hardest to come to terms on a level of quiet and press on despite it; Tiff can't tell the difference. "My niece?"
"It's more juicy if we realize the enormity of it here," Tiff sighs, "but the truth is that I think we've known since we saw your name in your journal, incomprehensible as the rest of it was. Since Matt and I went to the library and found any mention of you in the paper scratched out and found your journal missing. Hell, I think we've known since the first night, when we climbed down into that hole you led us to. It was always going to end like this, right? It was always going to be that—" Tiff chokes on the thought. "That Peepaw killed his sister, tossed her bones in a cave, and erased her from existence."
Priscilla doesn't say anything about how crassly and frankly that was worded or about the flames on her skin post-mortem. Her eyes go wide with understanding on a different part. "Oh. We're related. I knew you were Cains, but I don't think I put it together. You're—"
"Your great-nephews or some shit," Drew interjects from the other side of the cave. "Can we get on— I think I need to sit down, and— I don't like this."
"Nobody likes being undead, Drew," Tiff reminds him, as if she has any clue. (She doesn't.) "Don't be rude."
Matt's less concerned with the faux-pas than the grimace on Drew's face. (Tiff will admit that she is, too, even if she's trying to stay on track here.) Gun still lowered, he asks, "Dude, are you okay?"
"I'm fine," he lies.
Alarm ringing in her skull, Tiff decides to get back to that in a moment. Confronting Drew on his hypocrisy and how badly he has been hurt will have to wait until all of this is done and they have a moment where they can get the hell out of here. "What would put you to rest? Is this a thing of vengeance, or do you want something more? I'm trying to be delicate, but— there's no real other way to put it."
Priscilla considers it, thinking finger lingering at the tip of her chin. She turns and walks toward the bone creature, running one hand along the less-jagged lower parts. "I wanted someone to do something. I asked; I begged the universe. Would you do something for me?"
She doesn't look at Tiff. She doesn't look at anyone. She just looks at the patchwork bones under her hands.
When Tiff doesn't say anything, Priscilla continues speaking. "You're my champion; you're my niece. If I ask you to do something, will you do it?"
Tiff doesn't hesitate. She does her best to keep it simple. "Yes."
Priscilla nods, still not looking at her. "When I came back, there were only two things I wanted. The first was revenge."
"I could do revenge." She says it before she knows it's true.
"The second was..." When she trails off, it's as if she's unsure— unsure of how to say it, unsure if she wants to say it at all.
All Tiff can do is prod. "What was it?"
She gets nothing but a coat of silence painted over the top of Drew and Matt bickering and Matt's boots on the wet floor as he crosses the cavern to get in Drew's face about whatever the hell it is.
"Listen. We... We can't help you if we don't know what you want. Like I said, we know what happened to you. He's not a good person. I don't want to get into everything that he's ever done, but— rest assured, we know the story." Tiff swallows and sets her jaw. "You weren't doing anything wrong. He held the sword aloft and killed you anyway."
Her voice is quiet, soft, and hesitant. "What I did was a sin, wasn't it?"
"Aunt Priscilla."
She doesn't turn her head, but something softens when she hears her name.
"Even if it were a sin— and it wasn't— you wouldn't have deserved that. Sinning isn't real, though and, if it is, it's human. It's natural. It's human. Trying to be something more than that is... Well, frankly, it's silly. But this— this thing about sin, it's unfounded, I think. Hell doesn't even work like that. It doesn't work in the way we were told. It's real, sure. It's a place. You just don't go there when you die. Does sin really matter, when Hell is just another place?"
"I'm not sure I understand what you're saying."
"I'm not sure if I have time for the whole theory-of-the-universe discussion." Tiff steps closer until she's by the steed. It's hard not to think about horses when she sees this thing. She has been wary of them since Gatlinburg. The fact still remains that this isn't a horse. It's a necromantic construction built like a bison with a body the size of a portable and a head like a souvenir shop gator head without the dried-out skin.
She decides she doesn't have to think about it. That's the essence of courage, isn't it? You lift your hand to the thing that terrifies you, and you do it without shaking.
"Maybe I could tell you about the rest of the universe sometime. Once all this is over, I mean."
"You're an odd one." Priscilla tilts her head to the side. "Tiff, was it?"
"Short for Tiffany May, yeah."
"Tiffany May." It rests on rocky lips like something bitter; she swallows it. "I missed your whole life.
"You should have been in it. That's the way things go around here, I guess. My little brother's upstairs— outside the cave, I mean, and the word works. Andy's waiting for us, and I haven't seen them in— I had to leave them behind for two years. My aunt had to set out on her own as a pregnant teenager. This place isn't good. This family isn't great. The combination of the two has robbed us of everything: a childhood, a family, your whole life. You should have had a long one.
It should have been dinners on Sunday and those weird flowy shirts I always see old women in Florida wear and telling us stories about who you were as a young woman and who you were as an older one. It should have been what you wanted; it should have been something. It should have been better than what it was. Whatever it was going to be, he took that from you."
"He took it from me," she agrees, voice broken and hollow. "He took..."
Tiff finishes the thought for her. "He took everything."
"I only ever went down there to get away from him and from... everything. I wasn't even doing witchcraft, and he accused me anyway."
"You know, we can't even do that. We have anti-magic blood, it would seem. I did some tests— the procedure doesn't matter so much, but it involved fae blood and—" Tiff realizes that this isn't terribly relevant right now. Now isn't the time for the I-tested-my-blood-against-my-friends' rant or to mention the magic granted to her by semi-divinity.
"He pricked my mole." Priscilla says it like she's a thousand miles away. She's wounded in her head and she's wandering away from the site of the crash. "I have one. Or— I had one. On my back. He came up behind me one night— out by the pond, when it was visible over the top of my bathing suit. He pricked it and made a noise when it didn't bleed the way he thought it should, even though I felt it. And he found me in the hole. We used to go there all the time. We dug it out as kids, but I was the only one who used it anymore, and—"
Brows furrowed, Priscilla cuts herself off. She looks up to the parts of the steed that are above her with that classic Cain rage in her eyes.
Tiff knows the button to push. Hasn't Nothing trained her well? "And he pulled your hair."
Voice shaking and a little less hollow than before, she completes the thought. "And he cut off my head."
She has to prod more. "And he put your bones..."
"Here." She gestures to the cavern around them. "he dumped them here. It's an old moonshiner's cave. And it's... dumb as hell."
"I've never heard of it."
"It isn't the kind of thing they would teach you in Sunday school."
She supposes it would be like the tunnels running under Lake Wonder. She just didn't expect anything like that here. She decides, for once, to not say anything.
Priscilla's voice turns steel. "What I don't have is my head. And what I wanted was to be buried with everyone else. Like I still belonged there. Like he made a mistake. Like gagging on all his vitriol was worth it to keep being a part of this family."
"Do you still want that?" She asks it hesitantly. She isn't sure she wants to ask.
"It's the only thing I have ever wanted."
In all her efforts not to think about that, Tiff puts together something else like a jolt to her central nervous system. All her words come out an excited, jumbled mess. "Oh my god, I know where your head is!" She doesn't wait for Priscilla to say anything. "Matt and I got lost when we were running from— from your steed? Your steed. We were running from it. I— I don't like horses. I know it's not a horse— You know the lost chapel? It's in the podium there. I think Matt might have caught a glimpse when we were there, and maybe— I don't know, I don't think whatever's in there is a colonial relic. I would ask him, but he and Drew look a little preoccupied right now, so I'll leave it, but I think it's there."
Priscilla blinks in the face of all of that. "I haven't been able to see in there."
"I wonder why. It isn't an actually-divine place, and I didn't notice any wards— and I think Peepaw would stay away from that particular folk magic feel. Maybe it's just the power of what might be animating you— grief, vengeance. Maybe it's keeping you from seeing what you're meant to see."
Or maybe it's the same thing as fate. Maybe that's what hid it from her, for the sake of story. You can't solve the issue yourself if the narrative won't let you— even if there is no narrative. Tiff isn't going to mention that. It isn't worth getting into.
"I haven't been able to see inside the chapel. And I haven't been able to look for long. It's like I keep going to sleep; it's like I have been asleep for years."
Another thread connects itself to a pushpin and covers itself in glowing yellow-green dust. "I wonder if that's a side effect of destiny itself— But we would need more evidence, I think." She nods, like this is a mystery worth hypothesizing about right now. "How long after your death would you say you felt awake the first time?"
"I don't know. the whole world felt different. And my steed— Butterscotch, my steed—"
"That's a nice horse name." Tiff tries not to crawl out of her skin.
"It was the name of my aunt's horse when she was... alive."
"Aunt Rebecca, right? She hasn't been for a long time." Tiff thinks she may have fucked up by saying that without thinking.
Priscilla doesn't seem more despondent than before, though. "Yeah. I figured. She got a breast cancer diagnosis when I was a teenager. Zach used to play with her wigs to keep things light at family gatherings. You can only wear so much curly plastic before things getting less tragic and more funny."
That's exactly the kind of thing Priscilla should have been able to tell her as an adult woman, as a great-aunt herself. Instead, the same man who played with those wigs lit her corpse on fire.
Tiff swallows the bitter anger. "My hypothesis would be— it has to do with fate, which certainly is a force that needs to be studied but, like— When you have someone whose fate was to enact vengeance, and someone whose unfinished business and last wishes were linked to it— Maybe the two of you were actually meant to work together, which is why all of it was on pause before she was chosen and after she had to leave. Aunt Esther's presence is the catalyst. It works like strings."
"And now you're here."
"Like I said, I will be your champion— but it's because you're choosing me and I'm choosing you, not because of fate's decree. On some level, fate is utter bullshit and you can do what you want with it, I think. The truth is, though... Well, shit. Someone has to pull the trigger. Why shouldn't it be someone willing? Someone who, like most of us in the universe, wasn't attached to destiny in that way? I've seen botched fate before. I've seen it intercepted by accident. Why shouldn't someone do it on purpose, when the real instrument of fate can't or won't?"
The rocks of Priscilla's face creak into a frown. "I'm afraid you've lost me."
"It's all... irrelevant," Tiff admits. "I'm just thinking out loud."
"You do strike me as the type."
"Uh— thanks? I'm not sure what to do with that."
"Perhaps you get back on track."
"Right. So— If you've been watching over the chapel because the insistence on a thing being a blank spot means it stands out more as a result— But how have you been looking? Just with the steed, when you can?"
"The spiders have retraced my steps over and over again since I woke up here. They either found nothing or couldn't enter the chapel."
"Then I was wrong, earlier. I suspect it was the latter. That would make sense. Whether you're intending it or not, you're undead. LIke Butterscotch and the spiders, you're powered by necromantic energy. Whether it was the people who originally built the chapel or Peepaw doing it— which is unlikely— I would guess that the chapel became one of those holy places that the more faithful undead have trouble with. One of my bosses is a vampire, but she's also LDS— kind of— and she has the same issue."
"I didn't create the spiders, you know," she says, like that's the topic at hand. "I wouldn't know how."
"Neither would I."
"I did put Butterscotch together. It just felt right. When he stood, it was like... being safe for the first time in a very long time. The spiders, though— those were already here when I came to. They take more energy from the trees than I do."
"I wonder— since you have no experience with magic— I wonder if they're the ones weaving that illusion of a healthy stretch of wet woods that dropped the other night. If you couldn't, Butterscotch couldn't, and the general population of the town definitely believes everything is the Devil— it must be the spiders." In all her wild, emphatic gesticulating, Tiff notices the green veins running up her arm from where the spider bit her. She has no doubt her chest looks the same. "Speaking of the spiders. A couple bit me."
Priscilla nods. "They do that."
She shows her great-aunt her wrist. "This'll clear up, right?"
There's a pause of meaningful silence.
"Right. How would you know."
"I just wash it off. River water. You can't get a brain amoeba if you're already dead."
"God, you're so cool."
Of all the things in the world, that's what makes Priscilla wrap her arms around her. The rock-wrapped bone is stronger than Tiff anticipated; Priscilla's vise grip traps her with her arms against her sides. It's hard not to melt under the pressure and heat of realizing you're the first person this terrified young woman has touched in decades.
When Priscilla pulls away, beaming from ear hole to ear hole, Tiff announces, "We shouldn't waste any more daylight. Even if it's raining."
"What's your plan, then?"
"You can't enter the chapel, but I can. Do the spiders know if it's empty? I'd assume it is, but I'd like to know."
Priscilla cocks her head to the side, as if listening. She frowns. "No. He's there."
"Who, Peepaw?"
"They say they can see him through the windows, the same way they saw you."
"These spiders fuck so hard. Can I have one? For studying?"
"If you have something to put one in, I don't see why not. I don't own the spiders."
"I absolutely have a jar with me." She nods. "I'll grab one on the way out. Pluck it from the walls, so to speak."
"Get back on the rails, Little Engine."
"Choo choo, I guess?" She looks around Priscilla and Butterscotch to try to catch Matt's attention. When staring at the back of his head doesn't work, she calls out, "Hey! Matt!"
He puts one finger in front of Drew's face (who makes a face like he wants to bite it off) and looks over his shoulder at her, expectand and annoyed— saying nothing.
"Why would Peepaw be at the chapel? Did you tell him about it?"
"No, not really. He only knows the story we told him: that you fought some wizard and we're looking for an undead woman in the woods linked to a six-legged bone creature that showed up at church."
"I was looking for you," Priscilla mutters.
"I figured," Tiff whispers back.
Matt keeps talking. "I did also tell him we were continuing our search today."
She groans. "Matt, it's Christmas Eve! We didn't show up for breakfast or lunch like we were supposed to! He's probably pissed off and looking for us!"
"How would I know? I don't have reception out here."
"If he's the one who killed Priscilla, then he probably has some inkling that it's her running around the woods, and he's waiting at the chapel."
"How in the hell was I supposed to anticipate that? I'm not a mind-reader, Tiff."
"Well— Fine!" She can't think of anything witty to say, so she looks back at Priscilla and speaks at a normal volume. "What would you want from him? We know where he is. He plays a role in all of this that I don't think we can ignore. Aside from your skull, and a burial I'll see to myself, what would you want from him?"
She considers it for a moment. "I want to know that he regrets it. That he's sorry. That he knows he was in the wrong."
"Failing that?"
"Failing that, I want him to be sorry."
"Once we have your skull and that sweet, sweet emotional catharsis, you can find us outside the chapel. Then we could do goodbyes and burials from there, in whatever way you choose. Matt and I will see to it— and I will see to it most of all."
"You would do that?"
She doesn't mention that she went into a blind rage over a rat twice. "Yes. I would."
"Then I'll call you my champion for real, Tiff. And I'll tell you when that little string tells me it's time to rest." She places one cold, damp hand against Tiff's cheek. "Tiffany May, the Champion of Priscilla Cain."
Covering Priscilla's hand with both of her own, Tiff nods. She doesn't say anything at all.