I Only Summon Villainesses

I followed them because the alternative was standing alone on a field of frozen corpses, and that didn’t feel like a winning plan.

Ilse caught up to me as I went, her Destrier picking its way through the wreckage with its ears flat and its ghastly blue eyes rolling. She’d stayed back through the whole of it. I understood why now — a summoner standing too close to two Calamities mid-slaughter was just a soft thing waiting to be stepped on. She slid down off the frost horse and walked beside me instead, her gaze fixed on the two figures ahead of us.

”I have never seen Brunhilde fight beside anyone,” she said quietly. ”I never quite imagined her beside anyone too.”

’I could say the same about Kassie too.’ I thought with a scoff and added.

”They fought like they’d practiced.”

”No.”

Ilse’s voice was strange.

”They fought like they remembered.”

I didn’t ask. There were too many things in this North that I didn’t have the stomach to stomach all at once.

The pass opened ahead of us, a narrow throat of dark stone where the two mountains leaned in close, and the snow there was old and grey and packed hard. Kassie and Brunhilde reached the mouth of it a few steps apart and, for a moment, neither of them slowed.

Then both of them stopped.

At the exact same time, shoulder to shoulder. And I felt the temperature of the whole thing change.

The army was dead. The lane was cut. And with nothing left to point themselves at, the two of them were, very suddenly, just standing next to someone they hated.

’Oh no. Here it is.’

Kassie spoke without turning her head.

”You froze the ground in front of my strike. On the centaur. You assumed I would land where you wanted me to. Thinking I’m still that little girl you trained will be your undoing.”

”You did land where I wanted you to.”

”That’s not the point, fossil.”

”It is the entire point.”

Brunhilde’s voice had gone flat and cold again, the warmth of the fight bled out of it completely.

”You haven’t changed. You still swing like the world owes you the space to do it. I simply built the space. You should thank me.”

Kassie’s greatsword came off her shoulder slowly.

”I would rather lose the arm.”

The red haze around her thickened, curling off her like smoke off a thing that was about to catch fire properly, and across from her the air went brittle and white, frost climbing up out of the snow at Brunhilde’s feet without her seeming to ask it to. The two of them turned, finally, and faced each other in the mouth of the pass, and the narrow stone walls seemed to lean in closer to watch.

The same connection that had been so beautiful a minute ago was still there. I could see that. It hadn’t gone anywhere. It had just turned its edge around to point inward, and somehow that made it worse — two people who knew each other this well had so many more places to cut.

”Brunhilde.” Ilse’s voice cracked out, sharp with command. ”Standdown.”

The frost stopped climbing. Just stopped, mid-spire, like a held breath.

Brunhilde didn’t take her eyes off Kassie, but her blade stayed in its sheath. A summon was bound to her summoner. Even a Calamity. Even an arrogant fossil four hundred years old.

Kassie, of course, was bound to me.

And everyone in that pass turned, slowly, to look at the one person who hadn’t said anything yet.

’...Why is this my job.’

”Kassie,” I said.

She didn’t move.

”Kassie. We’re being watched.”

That moved her. Not the order — Kassie had never once in her existence stood down because I told her to, and we both knew it. But the truth of it reached her in a way an order never would. Her head tilted, her crimson eyes catching the grey light, and I watched her actually listen to the mountains around us.

Because I was right. I’d felt it the moment we entered the throat of the pass and hadn’t wanted to name it. We were not alone in here. The dead army on the plain hadn’t been meant to kill us. An army like that, thrown at two Calamities, was never going to kill us, and a family like the Hammerfelds would know that better than anyone.

It had been meant to slow us. To count us. To make us spend ourselves and show our hand, and then to herd us, neatly, into exactly this narrow place between two walls of stone where there was nowhere to run.

”...Ah,” Kassie said. The fury drained out of her shoulders and something far more dangerous took its place. Interest. ”Ah. I see.”

Brunhilde had felt it too. The frost at her feet melted back into the snow.

”Clever,” she murmured. ”Whoever built this.”

High above us, on the lip of the pass where the two mountains nearly kissed, the snow shifted. Just a little. Just enough.

And a single figure stepped to the edge of it and looked down at the four of us with his hands folded behind his back and that harmless, patient, terrible little smile I had already learned to dread.

The fool.

”Ehhh,” Altharion called down, his voice carrying easily through the cold. He sounded delighted, the way he always sounded delighted, right up until the moment he stopped. ”You made such a mess of the welcome party. That wasn’t very polite of you.”

Beside me, Ilse went very still.

”I told you,” she said, under her breath, and I couldn’t tell if she was speaking to me or to herself. ”I told you he was trailing us.”

Above us, Altharion spread his arms wide, and behind him, all along the rim of the pass, the snow began to move.

Not a wave this time. Not a flood of summons throwing themselves at us in the open.

This was arranged. This was patient. This had been waiting for us to walk all the way inside before it closed.

Kassie started to laugh, low and pleased, and rolled her shoulders until they cracked.

”Brunhilde,” she said.

A slow, manic grin spread across Brunhilde’s face to match.

”...I know,” she said. ”I see it too.”

And the two of them, side by side once more, turned to face the trap that had finally finished closing around us.