Heroine Creation: All My Summons Are Custom Made

Astensia’s gauntlet closed around the Blessed Blade’s hilt and she drew the sword in one clean stroke. The sound it made was like a choir’s song.

”We must intervene now,” she said.

Lancet agreed with that sentiment. ”You’re right. The Gloom is still thick over there, but if we fly above where Spectra and the Purgatory Demons are fighting, we’ll face the Demon Commander and his forces head-on. We protect her.”

Thor was already rolling her shoulders, arcs of blue-white electricity jumping between the plates of her armour. ”Then there’s no time to waste.”

Lancet looked at her, and despite the chaos unfolding in the middle distance, he smiled. ”You’ve come a long way from wanting to kill her. Spectra is a Demoness, you know.”

Thor’s eyes narrowed as she watched the distant figure of Spectra, still tearing through the last of the Purgatory Demons with savage, draining swings of her Hellstaff.

The Lightning Mage’s jaw tightened. ”Demoness or not, she risked her life to save us. She’s our sister now.” Her hammer crackled. ”And she needs our help.”

Lancet felt the warmth of that settle in his chest. His Heroines had come a long way indeed.

He held the Radiant Guillotine tighter, preparing the magic within it. ”Alright,” he said. ”Let’s go stop those Demons.”

He ran forward, and as he ran, and with a burst of intent, he activated [ Golden Leap ]. A charge vanished from its reservoir, and he felt the Skill crystallize in his legs like a second heartbeat.

”With me!” he shouted, and launched himself skyward.

The ground fell away. A torrent of Astensia’s golden light sheathed his body as he arced into the red-tainted air, clearing the churned battlefield and the carpet of bodies Spectra had left in her wake.

Beside him, Astensia mirrored the leap, her own Golden Leap carrying her in perfect tandem, a comet of holy fire. Below and to their left, Thor became a thunderbolt, lightning cocooning her body from head to toe as she blasted forward in a straight, humming line.

Kestrel drew one Dragonsword and slashed the air beside her. The dragon spectre coiled out of the steel and manifested fully this time. As it roared, she vaulted onto its back, and it flew.

Espel’s pair of enormous pink butterfly wings unfurled from her shoulder blades and she joined the others in the air.

They soared over the battlefield. Below them, Spectra stood in a crater of her own making, surrounded by the motionless husks of Purgatory Demons and the fading red wisps of her own spent Gloom.

She looked up as their shadows passed over her, her burning Demon eyes looked rather confused, or maybe irritated.

”What... are you doing?” Her voice came out strained, ragged, the demonic resonance cracking at its edges.

Lancet looked down at her as he began to descend. ”Buying you time!”

They landed in formation between Spectra and the oncoming horde. The ground shook with the impact of their arrival, dust and Gloom-ash billowing outward in a ring.

Ahead, the Demon Commander’s army filled the horizon like a black tide, their howls blending into a single, deafening roar of promised slaughter.

At their head, the Commander himself raised his massive red axe and bellowed, that one bulging eye fixed on the five figures standing in his path.

Astensia planted her feet and the ground beneath her lit with a mandala of golden scripture.

”Blessed Blade form!” She exclaimed. ”Blessed Buster Sword!”

The Blessed Blade shifted in her grip, its form flowing like liquid sunlight, elongating into a greatsword even taller than she was.

She held it point-down, both hands on the hilt, and the light radiating from her intensified until she didn’t even look like a human anymore. She looked more like a lighthouse at the edge of a very dark sea.

Thor spun the Hammer of Force in a lazy circle above her head. Storm clouds, black and heavy, materialized out of nothing in the sky directly above the Demon horde.

Lightning threaded through them like veins, and each rotation of her hammer made the clouds pulse brighter. An egregious scowl was on her face as she was more than ready to burn these monstrosities better than Hellfyre ever could.

Kestrel drew her Dragonswords and both dragon spectres erupted from the steel simultaneously. The emerald dragon coiled around her right arm, the white around her left, their serpentine bodies slithering ever so gracefully.

She settled into a low stance, swords crossed before her, and the spectres hissed in unison.

Espel raised both hands. From her left palm, a cloud of pink Bloomwings spiraled outward, scattering across the group like a gentle snowfall, settling on shoulders and hilts and brow.

From her right, she summoned wingblades glinting with that entropy effect, ready to slash the Demons and send them to eternal rot.

Lancet gripped the Radiant Guillotine in both hands. He let his Grace flow into the blade as Kestrel has taught him and the Guillotine answered, spinning its own energy around him.

He didn’t have a great speech or a battle cry. Lancet simply set his stance, aimed the point of his sword at the approaching horde, and waited.

The Demons came.

The Commander roared once more, and the black tide surged forward, a wave of claws and fangs and chittering, hateful things. They covered the ground like locusts, the sound of their charge as irritating as a mosquito at night.

Lancet initiated the attack, throwing himself forward and swinging the Guillotine as well. The blade caught the first rank of Tainted Demons—gaunt, grey-skinned things with too many joints—and passed through them like a scythe through dry wheat.

Five bodies came apart at the waist, their torsos spinning away while their legs took two more stumbling steps before collapsing. The Guillotine drank their souls on contact, pulling thin red wisps from the wounds and swallowing them into the dark metal.

Then the Heroines unleashed.

Thor’s hammer came down, and the sky answered. The storm clouds she had gathered erupted, sending a pillar of lightning as wide as a castle tower screaming into the centre of the Demon formation.

The impact obliterated even the damned sands. Demons in the epicentre simply ceased to exist, their bodies vaporized so completely that not even ash remained.

The shockwave flattened dozens more, and the electricity didn’t stop there. It chained outward, leaping from Demon to Demon, each jump leaving behind a smoking, twitching corpse.

Thor jumped into the fray, hungry for slaughter. A Descending Demon, larger than the rest but stupider, made the mistake of charging at her.

She took its blow square on her shoulder, and the impact charged her. Thor simply absorbed the kinetic energy and transformed it to electricity.

Her eyes glowed. ”Scum of the earth,” she whispered, and then she pressed the Hammer of Force against its chest and released. The Demon detonated from the inside out, its ribcage becoming shrapnel.

Kestrel danced into the carnage.

Her blades moved in patterns too fast to follow, each swing releasing a dragon spectre that bit deep into the enemy. She cut a Tainted Demon across the throat, and the emerald dragon lunged through the wound, its spectral fangs sinking into the creature’s very soul.

The Demon crumpled not just dead but empty, its essence devoured. She reversed the white blade into the gut of another, and the pale dragon coiled around its spine, biting at the root of its life force.

Both swords glowed brighter with each kill. A pack of hound-shaped Demons tried to flank her, and she simply stopped being where they were aiming.

Her body flowed between them, swords extended like the arms of a whirlpool, and in the span of a single breath all five were on the ground, their souls already halfway down the dragons’ throats.

A Descending Demon swung a massive bone club at her head. Even though she was responding to its attack, her reaction was faster than its action.

She crossed both swords at its neck and as the Demon was beheaded, the dragons bit into it and snatched its soul away.

Espel stood at the rear, and from her position she orchestrated death.

The wingblades cut through waves and waves of Demons, and with each cut, the entropy effect activated instantly. The wound spread and the flesh blackened and crumbled. Then the bone turned to dust.

Meanwhile, Bloomwings fluttered to Lancet, to Astensia, to Thor and Kestrel. They kept their channels pumping with Grace and instantly healed every minor injury before it could fester.

Astensia was the wall.

She advanced into the thickest concentration of Demons like a glacier. The Blessed Blade, in its Buster Sword form, arced through everything that came in the way.

Demon flesh was flying into the air and falling like bouncing rain drops. But she was not merely swinging. She was judging.

Astensia’s anger drove her through every strike so her intent was at its peak. And this meant her Ironwill was even more focused than usual. She wanted these things dead, and so the world’s physics and mechanics twisted itself to respond to her will.

If a Demon was out of range, the world moved it to make sure her slash killed it. Everything she willed, came to pass.

Moreover, her shield was her body, and her body was wrapped in holy light that seared Demon flesh on contact.

They leaped at her from all sides, and she simply pivoted, the greatsword becoming a spinning halo of gold that left a perfect circle of corpses around her.

The way she fought made slaughter look like liturgy.

The Demon Commander saw this and believed she was the greatest threat. So it attacked her.