Miss Glory froze as Captain Drake stood brushing off the dust on his uniform with the back of his clawed, scaled hands. It was everything she had feared when facing off against the two. 'Thorn Queen' wasn't a threat to her, not really. She could cut at Miss Glory, she could destroy a few vines, but in the end Miss Glory was her antithesis. She controlled the tools that Leah used to fight.

Yet, she had let the girl break Drake free.

She may have had a chance if she had reacted quickly enough. If she had turned just an instant sooner, she might have brought her vines around to lull the lizardman back into a deep sleep. That hoped died as a fiery orange glow lit Drake's maw. He didn't even use a technique, judging by the lack of words. There was just an intake of air before the fire exploded out from his maw.

Whoosh. Fwoosh.

"Pop Wall!"

Miss Glory threw her vines into the air, and the surrounding plants responded. They rose, forming a barrier of green around her. She knew it was futile the moment she tried. However, there was a chance that the water in the vines would stem the tide of flame enough to keep her pod intact.

Darkness surrounded her, and she curled into her body to protect her pod.

To Miss Glory, her pod was everything. It was the core of her being. She was no person, not in the same way as the other Fingers. She was cursed, and that curse gave her a semblance of consciousness.

She was a plant that became a woman, though the how escaped her.

Crackle. Crack. Hiss.

Orange light pierced through the vines, lighting the green like the rising sun. Veins lit up along the vines, glowing bright-white as the heat grew. The water inside boiled as Miss Gliory raced through her options.

The light focused to a pinpoint in her mind. There was only one chance. She drew in aether through her roots, calling on as much power as she could as she opened her gate further.

Ba-bump.

Miss Glory's pod pulsed, sending out waves of power from her gate into each of her tendril vines. Her overall form was larger than what normally appeared. Her roots grew deep, especially in the surrounding garden, and small pieces of her touched every plant in the garden. Leah had guessed right that it took her time to take control of new plants. Her roots needed to touch the plant she wanted to control, and that took time to accomplish.

She drew the aether from those plants, drinking from them like the roots of a great tree. The orange light grew around her as Drake's flames burned through her vines, but she had bought enough time. She stretched up and out like a flower, her bulb rising along with her vines as she grew tall and wide.

"Pop Rafflesia!"

It was her ultimate technique, the same as all the other Fingers. It was a form that made the most of her power. It allowed her to square off against the various heavy hitters of Undertown. It towered high over the garden as she burst from her cocoon, revealing the large red flower with her pod at its center, and eighty long vines with snapping jaws.

She looked down on the garden below, and the thought of grasping hold of Leah burned in her mind, despite the threat of Captain Drake. She had to focus, pulling back her anger as she searched the field below.

Leah had run away, and she spotted the woman jumping behind a tree. It was a mistake. She allowed her attention to stray away from Leah, and followed the lines of fire that spread across the garden. It was no longer a major threat. She was too large, too grand, to be taken down with a simple flame.

She would find Captain Drake and rip him limb from limb before he could hope to burn her any further. Then she would chase down Leah and do the same. A barking laugh cracked from her bulb as she tried to locate the lizardman.

However, no matter how she searched, she could not see him. That wasn't right. He had tried to burn her just moments before. He wouldn't have just run away, thinking he had the advantage against her.

"The great and mighty Captain Drake." She laughed as her voice bellowed out across the garden. "You ran away! I can't believe how much of a coward you are—a dragon afraid of a plant!"

He didn't respond, and Miss Glory turned her attention to Leah. If she could not have the dragon, she would have the 'Thorn Queen.' Snapping vines reached down and grabbed hold of the tree she had hidden behind, and with a modicum of effort, Miss Glory ripped the tree away. She threw it without thinking, sending it sailing into the barrier and falling on the castle's walls.

She didn't even hear it land.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Miss Glory found Leah huddling behind the crater left by the tree. Her arms were wrapped around her shoulders, and she was in no position to fight. Miss Glory grasped hold of her, pulling her away from the tree and up to meet Leah face-to-face. She would not let Leah cower in fear of her power. She would face Miss Glory head-on.

However, when she forced Leah to face her, the woman didn't even meet her pod with her eyes. In fact, her focus seemed to go beyond Miss Glory, and out into the barrier above. That wasn't right. Miss Glory was the strongest thing in the garden.

Then she noticed the shadows beneath her flicker and grow before doubling in size.

"You were never a match for me," Captain Drake's voice echoed from above, and Miss Glory turned her pod skyward to face the captain.

He flew on two leathery wings, though still humanoid. His feet dangled, claws pointed down, and his tail flicked against the wind from his wings. In his right hand was an orb, almost as large as the sun itself. He held it above his head, and Mis Glory didn't need to predict what it was.

It was her end.

"Blazing Sun."

In one movement, Drake threw the orb down at Miss Glory. The heat and light forced her to close her flowers around her pod. It was too late though. She would not survive the attack. The only thought she had to comfort herself was that Leah would be caught int he blast as well.

She would not die alone.

Erin's bones pressed hard against her sides in the jaws of the massive plant. She had only wanted to stay out of the way. Drake had taken off high into the sky as Miss Glory burst open from her strange vine cocoon. She'd done what she had to do to free Drake, and thought she could get out of the fight.

Miss Glory hadn't allowed her to run.

"Ngh."

Her gate blazed against the wounds covering her body as the spines inside the strange plant maw cut through her cloak and into her skin. Blood seeped out of her, only to be replaced moments later with new stock. Wounds tried to close, but stopped as they touched the spines. She intentionally lowered the power of her curse so that she didn't grow into them as part of her own body.

She knew what happened when growth went unchecked.

She wasn't strong enough to free herself. However, the sight above her made that irrelevant. Drake floated, silhouetted against the sky by the small sun in his hand. A pair of leathery wings held him aloft, flapping in massive beats. He wasn't in his dragon form, which Erin had heard about from Sayed and Jean, but the wings weren't normally on his back at all.

It was almost like a shade—a perversion of the human form, as the Coven would have said. Not that it mattered. The Coven was long behind her, on a different world. She wouldn't go back there ever again.

She couldn't hear what he said—the pain overrode anything but her mind begging her to rip herself out of the plant's grip. Erin wasn't Alex or Sayed. They would shrug off pain and pretend they didn't feel it. She could survive almost anything, but she couldn't ignore how much it hurt. Her eyes focused on Drake as Miss Malone looked down on her. Too late, the plant woman noticed the captain. The sun fell and crashed against Miss Malone's body.

She burned, and Erin burned with her.

Burning was a different kind of pain. Fire gave an instant flash across her skin, prickling before nerves were burned away and the feeling ceased. Then there was just a cold numbness across her skin. Her eyes boiled and melted away, before regrowing again and again as the plant mass around her lit bright.

Miss Malone fell, and Erin fell with her.

Her body was burnt black, her clothes and cloak fused to her skin. However, she was alive. One thing she had learned was that she could survive almost anything. So long as part of her mind remained, and kept her curse steady, she could regrow herself from what remained. It took time and energy, but it could be done.

She just needed to not die on impact.

Whoosh. Flap.

Claws cut into her shoulder, right into her regrowing nerves as Drake swooped down and caught her. The claws tore at her, but held strong. The pain faded to a dull sting in seconds, and her skin tried to regrow around the wounds. She directed her curse away from the spot, letting it deal with the injuries across the rest of her body.

"You look horrible." Drake minced no words in his assessment.

"I can take worse." Erin blinked as her eyes popped back into place, and blurry images swam across her vision.

Flap.

"You're not kidding." Drake chuckled, and wind caressed her regrowing skin and nerves like winds from a wildfire. "I doubt you're immortal though. I've never heard of a curse that could do that."

"Maybe I am." Erin clicked her teeth together as gums reformed beneath them.

She didn't know the far limits of her regrowth abilities in the second level of her curse. Testing the limits of her curse with her friends was a dicey proposition to begin with. Asking them to sever limbs to see if they would regrow seemed like a horrible idea. However, she had what she could do to others to judge from. Alex and Sayed alone were more than enough to guess at how much she could regrow.

Though Alex complicated the situation. She knew she could regrow his limbs, but hadn't done the same with any of the others. Part of that could have been the nature of his particular body. Alex was the result of an experiment by Doctor Ozymandius, after all. She shook her head to knock off ash as skin reformed beneath it, a popping noise echoed down her neck as she did.

Pop.

"Gruesome," Drake whispered as she forced herself to sit up. "How long until you're fully recovered?"

Behind him, Miss Malone's plant form collapsed in a smoking heap. It was a foregone conclusion. Once Drake had been freed, he was her natural counter. That was why Erin had gone for him over anything else.

"A few minutes." Erin focused her curse across the rest of her body.

It drained at her, like a sapping sensation that left the healed portions numb and tingling. However, she could stand after a minute, and fully felt like she was herself not long after that. That also gave her time to realize that her clothes were in tatters, either burned into loops of melted cloth, or completely dispersed into ash. Her pale skin burned as the sun bore down on her.

"I'll find you something." Drake shook his serpentine head with a sly smile. "I owe you at least that much for waking me, outlaw. Then we'll move on and end this madness."

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