I Only Summon Villainesses

I tracked it through the pale branches overhead, my sword raised despite my burning legs. My earlier vigor was thinning already. The burst I’d commanded from my body wasn’t free, and every second of exertion was a withdrawal from an account running dangerously low.

It came again. Tongue and tail this time, staggered, one after the other so that dodging the first put me in the path of the second.

I parried the tongue with my blade and felt the impact rattle through my shoulder, then pivoted to catch the tail on the flat again, but this time the force was calculated. It didn’t just hit. It coiled around my sword with terrifying dexterity and wrenched sideways.

The sword tore free from my grip.

It clattered across the pale roots and came to rest ten paces away. The Chameleon retracted its tail and stared at me from the canopy, its head tilted and those pale slit-eyes unblinking.

“I guess we’ll find out,” it said in my voice. But this time it didn’t giggle.

I stared back, weaponless, essence depleted, body screaming at me through every joint and muscle, and I did what any reasonable person in my situation would do.

I gathered flames in my fist.

So much for preservation. The fire condensed in my palm, hot enough to make the air around my hand ripple and distort. I couldn’t afford to throw it carelessly, so I wouldn’t. I had to make every shot count.

’Not that I have a lot.’

The Chameleon’s colors shifted again. It pressed flat against the branch, muscles coiling, preparing to launch.

Then it stopped.

Its head jerked sideways, away from me, toward something deeper in the white forest. The pale slit-eyes widened, and a low rumble built in its throat that sounded almost… satisfied.

And then I heard it.

Something faint and distant, coming from the direction the Chameleon was looking.

Nisha’s voice.

Not the Chameleon’s mimicry of Nisha’s voice. I knew what that sounded like now. It was sad to say I had gotten familiar with the subtle wrongness of it, the uncanny valley of copied speech stripped of authentic personality.

This was different, raw, ragged, and uncontrolled.

It was a scream.

The Chameleon looked back at me. And I watched its mouth stretch into something that should not have been possible on a reptilian face.

It smiled.

The smile was knowing, deliberate, and profoundly human in its cruelty. The kind worn by someone who has watched you walk into a trap and wants you to know it.

The flames in my fist guttered as my concentration fractured. Every tactical deduction I’d made in the last five minutes reassembled in my head with sickening new clarity.

The creature hadn’t just copied Nisha’s voice from a distance. It had mimicked her mannerisms, spoken to me as Lisha would, and for a short moment I was very convinced. That kind of mimicry wasn’t possible from observation alone.

This Chameleon had been in close proximity to Nisha, close enough to study her, to learn the way she spoke and moved and thought. Or, in a much worse scenario, it had done something to her that gave it direct access to those things.

And instead of fighting me when its cover was blown, it stalled.

Not because it was afraid. Not because it was waiting for some transformation or power surge. It stalled because somewhere deeper in this forest, something was happening to Nisha, and this bastard’s only job was to keep me here long enough for that something to finish.

Nisha’s scream meant she was alive. That was the one piece of good news in this entire wretched situation.

But something still wasn’t sitting right. There was a piece I was missing, lodged at the back of my mind like a word stuck on the tip of my tongue. One moment I almost had it. The next, it slipped away.

And the Chameleon kept smiling.

I set my gaze on the Chameleon and shot towards it, fire blazing in both hands. As I charged, the chains flew out. All five of them scattered in different directions, arcing wide into the forest from angles the bastard skin changer wouldn’t have seen coming.

And of course, it didn’t. Its attention locked onto me, the frontal assault, the obvious threat, and it lunged to meet me head on.

Instead of crashing into it, I let the chains do their work. They whipped back through the trees from five different corners, converging on the creature from behind, and wrapped tight around its hindlimb, catching it mid-lunge.

That had been my plan exactly, and seeing it come to fruition was so satisfying.

’Finally, something good worked out for me!’

The chains snapped it back, killing its momentum mid-air. It was snatched back by a full meter, limbs flailing, and in that same instant I commanded my legs with the [Warlord’s Command] and pushed myself forward with a speed that would certainly destroy them later.

Later was not my problem right now.

The flames crackled in my fists, switching between blazes and sparks. My Nave was beyond reach and my essence was a ghost of what it should have been, most of it wasted on that useless brawny Faun. What little I had left would have to be enough.

My first strike connected to the side of the Chameleon’s face and exploded into flames. I instinctively controlled the blast and the fire rolled over, consuming the upper body of the reptile.

The creature growled in agony, sounding like it was in catastrophic pain.

’It’s just fire, don’t be dramatic.’

I did not let up. I followed with my second hand and buried another punch straight into the bastard’s head while it was still reeling back. The flames exploded again, and this time I didn’t control them.

I released everything and let the force knock it back, sent it barreling through the air until it smacked against one of the trees behind it and crumpled to the ground.

It stayed in that position for a moment, and I… I straightened slowly and sucked in the pain, gritting my teeth.

One step after the other, I walked towards it. My fist clenched and unclenched, but the flames were gone. Even when I tried to manifest them, nothing but feeble sparks flickered and died.

Nonetheless, I stood before the creature and glared down at it.

“Where is Nisha, you nut job fraud.”