I Only Summon Villainesses

My heart was doing something strange, and I couldn’t shake it. It fluttered harder than I could handle, hammering faster than it had any business hammering, and it wouldn’t be an overstatement to say I was pumping out twice the usual blood. I could feel my pulse ticking away in my throat.

’Am I nervous right now...’

To be honest, it was more than that. I was nervous, yes, but nervous about what would happen between Kassie and me.

About what I would let happen.

’I don’t want to have sex with her... not at a moment like this...’

Maybe it was just my lustful, perverted nature, which I feel entirely unapologetic about, by the way. Either way, I could already see myself filing this under one of those, that time I fucked one of my villainesses moments.

I didn’t want that. I wanted this to be more special than that.

It felt like I needed to do things differently to get a different result. And so, even though the thought of Kassie’s bare body had me viciously turned on, I kept my hands moving in slow circles and made no move for anything more.

And it wasn’t difficult to do.

Maybe because I loved her? Because she was that special to me?

I kept giving her those back rubs.

”I don’t want to fuck you... at least not here, not now. Maybe when we trust each other enough to be that vulnerable, then I can pounce on you like some predator.”

”Are you calling me prey?”

”Definitely said nothing like that.”

Kassie hissed. Which was strange, because I’d never really seen her hiss before.

After that, silence. Then the fact that she’d hissed started gnawing at me, and it just wouldn’t leave my mind. Eventually I asked.

”Kassie... did you hiss?”

For a moment there was silence. Then she whispered to me.

”Shhh, we have company.”

’Oh crap, no!’

Maybe it was a good thing I hadn’t had that sex after all. For once, I felt like luck was on my side.

”What are we dealing with here?”

I whispered it back to her.

”Snakes... a lot of them, pooling right next to us. I think we’re on the edge of some pit. I can’t fully make it out in this dark.”

I lay there and thought about my leg and my hand.

”Kassie... I’ve got no leg and no hand. How am I even supposed to run?”

”Why do you think I’m half naked, you bald brain?”

”Come on, we’re back to those names?”

”Quiet. They seem blind, but they’re sensitive to vibrations...”

For a moment I stayed quiet. Then I muttered again.

”Then I think we’re fucked. If that’s the case, the beat of our hearts, even our whispers, they all put out vibrations. Subtle, sure. But continuous.”

Kassie went quiet after I said that.

Then she said:

”Cade, stand up... and run.”

My first instinct was to argue.

’How the fuck am I supposed to run?!’

But the moment I lunged up, to my surprise, both legs answered. The dark was near impossible to see through, though it got better once I flicked on Enhanced Sight. Shapes came clear. My uncut leg. And beside it, a black, lustrous, metallic one.

And Kassie, standing there in what amounted to a bikini top and pants, black and lustrous like the leg.

’Did she use most of her armor to substitute for my hand and leg? When?’

Even as the thought landed, I’d already lunged up and shot forward in the same breath. Kassie whizzed past me, grabbed my hand, and together we tore through the darkness.

At first we couldn’t tell whether we were even being chased. Then a mountain of hisses rose up everywhere, behind us, to the left, to the right. Even beneath us.

And Kassie poured more speed into those legs, blasting across the floor of snakes and shooting past before any one of them was quick enough to catch her heel. Most of them missed by a hair’s breadth.

’I’m definitely going to hate snakes after this. I promise you that.’

After losing Tristan to a damn snake, this was what I got. A whole flood of them trying to kill me too. Was that this season’s theme? Snakes?

’Damnit...’

Neither of us stopped running. The snakes were gathering from all over, and with Enhanced Senses I could see them piling toward us like a tsunami. Worse were the ones already coiled beneath our feet.

[You have killed a Savage-tier, level 3, Dark Viper]

[You have killed a Savage-tier, level 3, Dark Viper]

[You have killed a Savage-tier, level 3, Dark Viper]

[You have gained Dark Silk]

Neither of us stopped, even as Kassie’s heels burst the skulls of the ones she came down on, each one going with a wet, popping crunch. And that was when I realized I had to do something.

They were only Savage-tiers, but the numbers were overwhelming, and there was no end to them. Especially since we couldn’t even see where the darkness stopped.

Still, as far as Enhanced Senses could reach, the snakes covered all of it. Nothing but black bodies and glossy skin, out to the last inch we could measure.

”Kassie. I need to fire at them...”

Kassie swung me around without question. Shameful as it is to admit, she hauled me to her front and lunged even faster, crushing every snake she came down on.

First thing, I called up Emperor’s Aura. Well, Emperor’s Dominion now.

It had reached advanced tier, and its effects had grown right along with it. Now Emperor’s Dominion could cut an enemy’s stats by 50% while lifting an ally’s by 40%. A big step up from Emperor’s Aura, of course, and it still pressed that same weight of authority onto anyone I willed it against.

It was more malleable now, too. I could shape it, move it around at will.

And so I shaped it into a wall. The snakes slammed into it and couldn’t push past. They stayed stuck behind us while Kassie darted forward at a frightening speed.

Before they slipped out of my reach, I snapped my fingers, and from the wall I lit off a chained detonation of explosions.

Maggie’s white flames raged across the whole of the dark, dragging light into a place that had none, and the reek of scorched scale rolled back over us. The snakes thrashed and scurried in agony, hissing on and about.

For a moment, Kassie and I stopped. And glanced around.

”Wait... I’m not mistaken. Kassie, that’s the sky, right?”

Kassie nodded.

”It seems to be so...”

Even she wasn’t sure, and she looked as lost as I felt.

The only reason we could see anything overhead was the white flames, and what they showed us wasn’t sky. It was a flat black expanse hung above us, still and depthless, an ocean of obsidian where the sky should have been. Not air. Water. Black water, and something about it was wrong.

I stared up until my throat went dry.

”Kassie, I think we’ve come to hell. Or the place the gates go when they’re defeated.”

Kassie stared up with me.

”I don’t know where that is.”

I smiled. The occasion didn’t call for it, but I did anyway.

”Aren’t you, like, eight thousand years old or something?”

”For me, I’ve only spent a few years alive. I’ve been dead for the rest.”

I nodded, saying nothing.

’That does make sense...’

I let out a breath.

”Maybe we focus on finding the others first. I can’t feel White Feather or Maggie in the soul sanctum. And Ilse, Brunhilde, that Light guy... they’ve got to be here somewhere.”

Kassie answered flat.

”Right now, best to focus on yourself.”

And so we bolted again.

Running, I could see the black on the move, overtaking the white, snuffing it out patch by patch. The white guttered thinner, then thinner, and then there was none of it left.

”Kassie, we need to go faster.”

A dangerous spark lit her eyes. For a moment she did the opposite of faster. She stopped, sank low into her stance, and the snakes unlucky enough to be under her burst apart in a single flash. The ground split. Then Kassie was gone into the sky at a speed that had no business being possible, and me dragged along with her.

One leap, and we crossed a distance no leap should cross. Even I was thrown.

’What the hell?’

”Since when can you jump like that?”

Her answer came just as flat as the last one.

”Pretty simple, when you can control your weight.”

She came down and everything under us quaked. I could feel the snakes farther off now, but she didn’t stop. She took to the sky again, and again, and again. She wasn’t running anymore. She was leaping clean over the world, a city’s width at a time, landing only long enough to launch off it.

Every place we landed still crawled with snakes, and Kassie carved through a fistful of them each time we touched down. Then, somewhere far ahead, we spied a flicker of flame.

It wasn’t Maggie’s fire. I knew that much at a glance. Even so, it was fire, and fire pulls at anything lost in the dark. It was the only light we’d seen since we got here.

We ran toward it.

’I keep getting a bad feeling about this.’