I Only Summon Villainesses

This was a pitiful way to come awake.

Everything had happened in a blur, and the next thing I knew my vision was dark and swimming. One detail did cut through, though: I was gagging, and a steady weight of fluid was forcing its way down my throat.

My eyes shot open onto a boundless dark of water. The cold hit all at once, callous and total, and I didn’t have the room to so much as shiver before I felt myself drifting... slow, but certainly deeper into the ocean.

Somewhere in the murk of my own head, I fought to get a sensible grip on what was happening to me.

First: one of my legs was shattered. Second: a very large gate had opened above me. And third — the part I liked least — I had most likely been sucked straight through it.

And it was a peculiar gate.

’What kind of Spirit Gate just dumps a man underwater?’

I shifted my heavy, waterlogged weight and hauled my arm through the black as hard as I could, clawing toward the surface. It was the hardest fight against plain distance I’d ever had in my life, and it was harder still with only one leg left to kick with. The surface hung there, far and close at the same time; every stroke made it look like I’d reach it, and every stroke after made it look like I never would.

’Damn it. This is so unfair. I hate water.’

Eventually, after a string of grueling pulls, my head broke through.

There was light. That was the first good thing, and I couldn’t help being stupidly grateful for it. Sky and cloud had bled together into one near-seamless white, and for a moment it was almost restful to look at.

I turned in the water, once, twice, three times, trying to read where I’d landed. Nothing answered. No coast, no rock, no sail.

Just water, running flat and pale to every horizon, hundreds of kilometers of it spread out in every direction.

’Ah. I’m so fucked.’

The words didn’t come close to the despair sloshing through my chest. For about the longest stretch I could remember, I was simply afraid.

And alone.

I could call Kassie. But what would that change? She had torn through one battle after another in the space of a few short hours, and so had White Feather, and so had Maggie. We were all of us scraped down to the bone.

The bigger problem was that the free window I had to keep them summoned was probably winding toward its end. Kassie and Maggie had been out a long while now, and to call them again I’d have to feed them Spirit Essence — of which I had exactly none. At the same time, I had to weigh the small matter of floating in an endless expanse of water. Summoning Kassie here wasn’t a solution, it was just leaning on her because I was scared. At least that was how I chose to see it.

I breathed in and out, in and out, trying to talk the fright in my chest back down.

’I’ve got this. I can do this. I will survive.’

Never once did I think I’d be the kind of man who tried the affirmation thing.

I looked down through the water at my mangled leg, still trailing a thin red thread into the dark.

’First. Let’s stop the bleeding, if I want to live.’

I grabbed the sleeve of my shirt, tore it loose, and ducked under, holding my breath. Quickly, I tied the cloth around the little lower limb I had left and cinched it tight, then tighter, until I was certain nothing more was leaking out into the water around me.

There was no telling what kind of horror lived down here, and bleeding into it would be exactly the worst of the luck I’d been having.

It wasn’t as though I’d never summon Kassie or White Feather again. I just had to find a way out of the water first, and put some essence back in the tank.

I stopped on that latter part, and let it sit.

’Is masturbating in open water... a little extreme?’

It felt vaguely eco-unfriendly, doing something like that out here. Then again... did I really have a wealth of choices right now? As far as things went, it was the only reasonable plan I could come up with.

But then I stopped again. And thought it through one more time.

It was the strangest of ideas. Strange wasn’t the same as impossible, though — this was a metaphysical world, and it had to be that for a reason.

I drew a breath and dove. Not into the ocean this time, but into my Soul Sanctum.

And yes.

I was going to have sex here.

I surfaced in the Nave. White Feather rose from the pews she’d been lying across and dropped to her knees the moment she saw me.

”Lord Cade, I’m sorry, I—”

I held out a hand and cut her off.

”Now isn’t the time for that. Where’s Kassie?”

I glanced around the pale stone as I asked, looking for her.

”She’s somewhere up front. She’s been in a deep sleep since.”

’No wonder.’

I’d half-started to wonder why she hadn’t spoken into my mind through any of it. She must have been wrung dry.

I turned back to White Feather and said the most perverted thing I could with the straightest face I owned.

”Lily. I need to have sex with you.”

Her head tipped back. ”Uhm. I certainly wasn’t expecting—”

I closed her mouth gently, led her over to the pews, sat, and drew her down to sit on me.

She hesitated there, eyes going everywhere but to mine.

’I know.’

I felt the same way, honestly, which was the whole reason I wanted it over with. It was shaping up to be the most frustrating sex I’d ever had. The timing, the situation pressing in around us, everything the three of us had dragged ourselves through—none of it supported that kind of atmosphere.

But I couldn’t afford to care right now.

My body was still out there in the ocean, and I didn’t even know if the current had begun pulling it back under. I could be drowning. Something could already be circling. My body went vulnerable the instant I stepped into the Sanctum, so whatever this was, I had to do it fast.

With Lily settled on top of me, I brought out my cock and, slowly, lowered her onto it.