I Only Summon Villainesses

Everything looked out of place. What gnawed at me worse, what made the whole thing suspicious, was this: Light, of all the faces in six continents, was the damned one I always wound up beside whenever I gambled with my Soul Sanctum.

For one, I was brimming with energy. My shattered legs had knitted back whole, even if the rest of me still looked like I’d been hauled out of a well of dirt by my ankles. Alive, at least. Alive, and flying, and squinting down at the strange gate below.

I craned my neck around as best I could, since Light’s wyvern had me clamped in one fist of talons, the claws biting cold straight through my coat. I’d gotten over the fear of him dropping me to my death. What I couldn’t shake was how he’d ended up here at all.

I had watched that gate swallow me and only me while he turned tail and bolted for his dear life. I was certain.

’Did he jump in to save me?’

The thought didn’t survive a full second. It popped under the sheer weight of how impossible it was. No way in ten lifetimes this guy dove into a gate for my sake. He hated me more than the stool he passed every morning, of that much I was sure.

Then my eyes caught it. A dark smudge sitting low over the sea, far off.

So I shouted.

”Hey! Pretty boy! Over there!!”

He glanced down at me, followed the line of my pointing finger, then steered the wyvern toward it.

We crossed the open sky without the beast so much as straining, and I couldn’t help the jealous little twist in my gut. Imagine owning a thing that could just fly, endlessly, whenever it pleased. Cindy was impressive enough, sure, but she bared her teeth at me on principle, and she only ever listened when Kassie told her to.

’Oh well. Not like I’ll keel over without one. Aren’t these things basically walking deathtraps anyway? I don’t need it.’

As we dropped lower, the smudge sharpened into something real. A wall of dark-emerald trees, and beneath them a long stretch of pale sand.

I gasped with pure joy.

”Land! Finally land!!”

The wyvern answered by flinging me off. I hit the sand and rolled twice before I stopped, spitting grit, while the beast set itself down beside me with all the grandeur in the world.

I scrambled up, furious, half a curse already climbing my throat, and then it snorted, twin jets of steam punching out of its nostrils, and my legs folded right back under me. Traitors. Weaklings!

’Come to think of it... this is the first time I’ve seen that thing up close.’

Up close, the wyvern stood deceptively tall. Its hide was pale and stone-like, the grey of old riverbed rock, sheeting unbroken from snout to tail. The horns swept back, and yes, fine, they were majestic. Handsome, even. But it was the eyes that put the cold in me. That beast looked like it would peel the limbs off me at the first excuse, and take its time about it.

Light and his summon moved like one creature wearing two bodies. He’d been raising its fortitude a long while, I figured. Years, probably.

Same went for Ilse. For Brunhilde to manage actual speech, her fortitude had to sit at least as high as Kassie’s. Aside from her, I’d never met a summon that could string a sentence together.

Light swung down from the saddle and took the measure of the place with that permanent scowl of his, raking his gaze across the sand, the treeline, the water.

Then he brought that perpetually sour face around to me.

This guy looked like the entire world tasted of vomit.

”Care to explain... why... you’re here?”

He pulled off his helmet and shook his head loose, and his hair spilled out, full and wavy, lifting in the sea wind. I frowned at it.

’I’m certain I left a third-degree burn right there. How in the worlds does he have hair over it?’

The scar had shrunk to a thin seam across his temple, reaching toward one eye, and somehow the hair around it had filled back in like nothing had ever happened. It annoyed me far more than I had any right to be annoyed.

’I put in so much work to make you ugly, and you went and used it to come out cooler? More handsome?’

I wasn’t going to lie to myself. He looked heroic, intimidating even, and the scar only helped.

”Why do you keep glaring at my face?”

I tilted my head and swallowed the venom out of my voice.

”And why do you keep staring at my leg.”

He took a moment.

”Those were clearly gone...”

I forced a grin, working hard not to sound like a complete fuckass.

”And so was your scalp... I’m honestly surprised your hair has the audacity to grow back there.”

He spread his arms and grinned.

”The Radiant Judge is ever generous in his grace, ever loving toward me.”

I glared at him suspiciously.

”You didn’t get a hair transplant, did you? Or is it fake? Are you wearing a wig?”

Something flustered flickered over his face before the grimace clamped back down.

”Shut your stinky mouth. We have more pressing matters.”

He glanced around as he spoke.

”This open shore is the worst place we could be standing. I wouldn’t bet on those fish-things being unable to crawl onto land. We need to make for the forest, quickly, and find some leverage.”

He started to step off, then stopped and looked back at me.

”Will you not summon the red-haired woman?”

I folded my arms.

”Even if I had been planning to, now that you’ve gone and said it, I never will.”

He frowned, puzzled.

”And why is that?”

I gave him a look of flat disbelief.

”Are you serious right now? You’re the second most hated person on my entire list. Why would I do a single thing you tell me to?”

He shook his head.

”That is just childish.”

I chuckled.

”For you? If being childish is what it takes to spite every last shred of your existence until the bitter end, then so be it. Why the fuck are you even like this?”

’Something is off... something has to be off.’

Light turned to face me fully, something genuinely confused working behind his eyes.

”Like how?”

’Is this guy playing with me right now?’

”You’ve got every means to kill me right now, and you’re just going to stand there. Like we weren’t trying to tear each other’s faces off a few months ago. Like I didn’t nearly put you six feet in the ground a minute ago.”

Light’s eyes stayed on me a couple of seconds, flat and unreadable. Then he turned away.

”If I kill you. My chances of leaving this place are low.”

I scoffed... smugly.

”Oh? Would you look at that!”

The next thing out of his mouth, though... shut me up completely.

”This is an S-rank Gate. Even with the two of us, I can’t promise we make it out.”

’Huh?’

”What?”