The power of growth twined out of Erin''s arms and out into the guard as she kneeled over him. Her gate was fully open, and between funneling energy into keeping the black thorn vines growing over the doctor and healing the man, she was already straining her limits.


    It was all her stupid training from the Coven back on Erys. She wanted to leave to complete her mission, or not accomplishing that, at least not get involved in a useless fight, but she couldn''t convince everyone else around her to do the same. There were times to get involved and fight, but knowing how to pick battles was key to fighting a revolution.


    Yet, she couldn''t just leave them alone. If she did, they would die. The same thing had happened to her back on Glory Plateau. When they faced Lucien, an ex-Apostle, there had been no way to win the fight. Still, she had run in and helped Alex and Sayed escape. She could have run on her own, and if she had, she might have been killed and trampled by the evacuating citizens of the island as the island itself was torn apart from the inside.


    Maybe it was because Alex was lucky, but so far, every time she helped him out, it worked out for the better.


    "What are these insipid vines?" The doctor clacked against the vines across from her, cutting through them and ripping them from his body in large jerks with his four crustacean arms. "They will not restrain my greatness!"


    He ripped away the last of the vines, and Erin stood up from the guard. He was in no position to stand up, but she couldn''t buy any more time. She drew her dagger from her belt and reached into her bag for seeds. From what she had seen, the doctor was strong and tough. If she were smart, she would run and let him take the guard and the kid peeking out from the alley.


    "Who are you supposed to be?" The doctor''s face split as he talked, revealing writhing tendrils squirming beneath it.


    "''Thorn Queen'' Leah," Erin said, drawing out three black seeds between each of her fingers.


    Click. Clack.


    "The People''s Revolution?" The doctor''s claws pinched the air as he scuttled to the side toward the water. "I have found a few of your people in town over the years through my conversions. I have never been able to get information from them other than who they worked for. Your people are one of my potential buyers if you might be interested in my masks."


    "What about this is interesting?" Erin asked as she kept the doctor in front of her. "What about taking over innocent people did you think the revolution would be interested in? We fight for people, not to take control of them. You rip out their humanity and leave them broken husks. We want to free them from the Scions and let them live their own lives."


    "The goal would justify the means, in my mind," the doctor said, still maintaining his distance. "An obedient army awaits you on any island you put the masks on. With the revolution''s network, you could easily get them out to the populace and then slowly gain control. With the masses on your side, the Scions must choose between destruction or compromise."


    "The Scions don''t compromise," Erin said. "If we did what you say, they would use a D.J.P."


    "Hah." The doctor''s voice cracked as he laughed. "But could they do it on every island across the Twelve Kingdoms? Could they do it to the Empyrean itself if it was compromised? The Divine Judgement Protocol is not a measure to be taken lightly. The Scions want order at any cost. If they cared for destructions, Erth would be destroyed."


    "Have you ever seen one?" Erin asked, leaning back on her leg with her dagger in front of her. "Have you ever witnessed a D.J.P.?"


    "No," the doctor admitted, scuttling back toward the water. "I have heard stories, but I have spent most of my career stationed here."


    "It takes an entire island and reduces it to ash," Erin said. "One of the Scions themselves channels enough aether to warp reality and causes the island to burn. No one survives that. Not a single person walks away."


    "Again, a measure the Scions do not use lightly," the doctor said. "This is why they can be forced to negotiate."


    "You don''t negotiate with gods! You either crush them, or they crush you!"


    Her heart raced in her chest, but she knew she was right. The doctor knew nothing about the revolution if he thought that they would ever buy into his ideas. The revolution was one for the people, and they were looking for a way to beat the Scions. They knew the threat the Scions were to humanity. There would never be a negotiation.


    "Hrm," the doctor said before looking down the street. "A pity. If the revolution is uninterested, I guess I will have to go with my second line of clients. Perhaps the Underground Lords would find my masks much more agreeable."


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    Erin clenched her teeth. That wasn''t an option either. While they didn''t directly compete with the Underground Lords and their black markets, they weren''t on friendly terms either. The Underground Lords would try to overthrow the Scions just to replace the Empyrean with their own rule.


    "Why are you like this?" Erin asked as she and the doctor danced away from where the guard lay. "Why are you so willing to sacrifice so many people?"


    Skitter. Clack. Clack.


    In the distance, down the street, a rock clattered across the cobblestone. Erin didn''t think anything of it until she took a moment to think about the doctor''s words. Something was approaching in the fog, and the doctor served as the perfect distraction.


    "Ah, it is not evil, but good I seek," the doctor continued his distraction as he backed her further down the street. "I seek for humanity to grow better and stronger. To do that, I need the funding to continue my research without distractions. It matters not to me who is in control. All that matters is that I can pursue my knowledge to benefit all of us."


    Tap. Tap.


    Erin could hear the footsteps behind her. She was already formulating her plan. If what she guessed was right, she would soon have an army behind her as well as the doctor in front of her. She would be pinched between the two just as surely as she would in the doctor''s claws.


    She tossed the seeds in her hands forward, and they clattered against the doctor''s carapace. Inside her, she reached out to the seeds with her gate and called on the vines to grow along the doctor''s body.


    "Thorn''s Grasp!"


    Instantly, the vines started crawling over the doctor''s body, wrapping around his claws and limbs and trying to bind them closed. The doctor immediately started cutting into the vines, but they were just a distraction. Erin stopped watching him and instead focused on the fog behind her.


    She reached into her bag and pulled out a bag of seeds. With a wide arc, she flung them out and behind her, throwing a second arc and a third to make sure the seeds were scattered all behind her. Even as she finished, the first of the shambling forms of townspeople molded out from the fog.


    They came in the hundreds, though she could only directly see ten. The rest she could sense in the aether around her through her gate. They shambled forward like puppets, their movements closer to a mimicry of humanity than a human gait. If she had been a normal person, she would be terrified. However, she was an outlaw and a revolutionary, and she was prepared.


    "Thorn Garden."


    A wall of vines erupted up as the possessed townsfolk entered her reach. The vines crawled away from her like a slow-rising wave, covering the townsfolk as they grew higher and higher, forming a moving wall that crawled over and bound the townspeople in thorned vines.


    "Impressive," the doctor said as he removed the last of the vines on him.


    Click-clack.


    The claw came for Erin''s head, and she ducked it by the width of a hair. The doctor was on her in an instant, his claws cutting at her at every opportunity. She only kept ahead by constantly rolling and dodging as she ran across the ground and away from the doctor. Unlike Alex and Sayed, she wasn''t good in melee. Her main ability was in strategy, not throwing punches or swinging swords.


    So she ran, and the doctor chased her. The vines of her garden stopped growing as she ran, and in her fading senses, she could feel the townspeople struggling through the vines and breaking them. They wouldn''t be trapped for long, and she didn''t have a good way to hurt the doctor directly. What she needed was a way to hit back.


    She considered her available plants as she ran down the street. She had her black thorn vines, but they wouldn''t be enough. There was another option that would better restrain the doctor, but she had no way to hit him hard enough to put him down.


    However, she was about to take a play out of Alex''s book.


    When they had met on Glory Plateau, he had come up to her in the middle of a fight to ask her what she could do. It had seemed insane at the time, but it had worked. Now, she had a piece of information she could use, but she didn''t know enough to use it. She needed the kid. She needed Klaus.


    She ran back toward where the guard had been and saw Klaus kneeling beside his body. The guard whispered to him but still sat unmoving against the wall. Erin knelt next to him, even as she heard the approaching clacks of the doctor from behind.


    "Klaus, I need your help," Erin said. "I need that wolf that has been around town. I need it to help me fight the doctor."


    Klaus looked up at her with wide eyes but eventually managed to speak, "My brother?"


    "Can you call him to help?" Erin asked. "I need him to fight the doctor."


    Klaus looked very confused, but the guard reached up and touched his shoulder lightly. The guard smiled at Klaus.


    "Klaus, be brave," the guard said with a smile. "That''s something we all have to be when things are scary. It doesn''t mean you aren''t afraid. It just means you''re fighting against it."


    Click-clack.


    "Oh, you stopped running."


    From the mist, the doctor''s monstrous form emerged. Erin reached into her bag and pulled out two yellow seeds from a pouch as she turned and faced the doctor. Whether Klaus could call on the wolf for aid was out of her hands now. She could only do what she could with what she had. She took a deep breath as she faced down the doctor.


    "Are you sure you want to fight this time?" the doctor asked as Erin aimed her throw. "My minions will be free of your thorns soon, Leah. When they arrive, you will not be able to defeat them all."


    "Maybe not," Erin said, flicking the seeds out from her hand and to both sides of the doctor. The doctor didn''t try to dodge because the seeds hadn''t been aimed at him. The second they hit the ground, she reached out with her gate and empowered the seeds.


    "Green Whip," she said as two long stalks shot up from the ground and grasped at the doctor''s claws.


    Clack.


    The doctor''s claws cut the first one, but the second wrapped around his chest, and the green plant did what it was built to do. It constricted around the doctor''s chest and pulled on it hard. With a silent gasp of air, the doctor was thrown back and into the ground, landing hard on his shoulders with a solid hit.


    Thwack.


    Erin would have smiled if she hadn''t seen what had happened before. If the doctor knew the Path of Grit, then the strike was just a way to slow him down. She reached in her bag for more seeds as what she knew proved to be true. The doctor rose from the ground on his crustacean limbs and opened his mouth in a guttural scream.