I Only Summon Villainesses

Whatever was happening over there between Tristan and that creature, its nature was cataclysmic. I could tell from the atrocious shockwaves that rolled through the ground and up through the soles of my boots while I scrambled to stay clear of Light.

He dove his wyvern at me again, twirling his sword with that treacherous skill of his, and through the slit of his silver visor he glared. I felt the look land like a fistful of needles.

By then I was past exhaustion. Every part of me that might have spared a damn for what was going on simply didn’t have one left to spare.

So with a furious white light burning behind my eyes like molten metal poured straight into the sockets, I stayed on him, measuring the distance as he came. He dropped into the dive, that devastating shockwave trailing under him, his sword angled to sweep me in half.

I vanished.

And appeared behind him.

The first thing I caught was his sword hand. I clamped onto it from behind and held, hanging off his back while he wrenched and twisted to tear my grip loose.

”You just never learn, do you? I left you with some burn scars last time. This time I’ll fry your brains, you humpless camel.”

His other hand had the reins. He yanked it hard, throwing the wyvern into a jagged, lurching climb meant to fling me off into open air.

Which was exactly what I’d been waiting for. The last of my essence was gone. I couldn’t have managed something as small as a Feather Step if my life depended on it, and it very nearly did. But I threw both arms around his neck and hauled him back with everything draining out of me.

”If I’m falling, you’re falling too, son of a bitch!”

The wyvern spiraled, screaming through the sky at full tilt, trying to wring me off its rider. At some point my vision smeared into streaks and I lost track of up and down. Still, my hands stayed locked. We climbed, we rolled, and then the wyvern plowed straight into the upper walls of the castle, tearing a chunk out of its side. We came down together under an avalanche of heavy stone.

The world went black. I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or shut. There was a grievous, grinding weight pinning my left leg and at the same time, my hands were still curled tight around something.

That was the first thing I made myself recognize. And the moment I confirmed that I had held the bastard through the whole fall, even buried blind under rubble I couldn’t make sense of, a stupid, immense joy rolled over me.

Then something cracked into my ribs and shot a jolt of pain straight into my core. It came again, harder, with a thread of desperation behind it.

Inside my locked grip, someone was thrashing, driving his elbow back into me, fighting to tear himself free.

”Let me go, you vermin!”

His voice jolted me the rest of the way awake. I cracked my eyes open, and there behind his dusty grey hair I unleashed a grin full of blood-stained teeth.

”What? Don’t want all this loving anymore?”

He went quiet for a moment, glaring back over his shoulder with a look that could curdle milk, a vein straining like a cord beneath the skin of his temple.

”Say. At this point, should we just get married? Why are you so freaking obsessed with me? I’m not even the best face card in the deck.”

He snapped his elbow at my face. I tipped my head aside, and it slid past and cracked into the stone behind me.

He hauled against my grip again. I held tighter. Then the bastard whistled.

A frown dropped over my face.

’This fool...’

He drew breath to whistle a second time but I got my fingers over his mouth in the nick of it.

At the same time, the glassy screech of his wyvern tore through the cloudy hush around us. And this holy idiot bit down on my finger so hard I felt sure he meant to take it off at the knuckle.

I came a hair from screaming. Instead I cinched my arm around his throat and gave him no room at all to breathe.

’That’s it. I’m killing this bastard.’

And I meant it. My hands were so tight around his neck that he clawed at them, hauling, throwing his whole strength into prying my arms off and none of it did a thing. I wound around him like a dying animal that had decided to take this one down with it, life be damned.

That was when I felt it. And he felt it too.

Both of us went still without meaning to.

Cold sweat broke and pooled wherever it could find me. What I’d felt has no honest word I can hand you for it.

It was the certainty of death.

A moment later a thunderous howl tore open the sky. Stormwhite’s voice, except this time it came out as a cry of pain rather than rage.

Before either of us could so much as turn to look, the whole land bucked beneath us. The charge in the air changed. We were both still pinned under debris when the huge slabs of stone above us began to come apart, disintegrating into dust as something started to warp its way out of space itself.

It started as a small dot. The dot swallowed everything near it in a blink, and in doing so it chewed through the rubble holding us and set us loose.

Light’s eyes went wide. He felt my grip slacken and ripped himself free by force, only this time he didn’t turn to fight me... He ran.

He bolted from the spiraling wind, yelling back at me over his shoulder the whole way.

”Foolish vermin! Get up and run!”

My eyes froze wide as the dot ballooned open right on top of me. I threw my weight up to launch myself clear and couldn’t even lift my leg.

Then I dropped my gaze to find out why.

...

...It was a mangled ruin of flesh and bone.

’What?’

A churning pool of violet waves roiled in front of me, dwarfing the broken debris and the shattered wall of the castle both.

I stared at it, my gut sinking, refusing to believe it.

’What the... motherfucking coincidence. Just how much worse can one night get?’

A Spirit Gate. A Spirit Gate had to go and tear itself open right on top of me.