Heroine Creation: All My Summons Are Custom Made

But then came Espel, swooping down to the field with her butterfly wings.

She marched towards the threat and pushed both arms forward. Her wingblades flew from her open palms, dashed through the air and slashed against the harsh red back of the Demon Head.

Each cut was small and superficial at first, but the entropy magic activated instantly.

The flesh around each wound began to blacken and crumble. The decay spread outward in ugly, creeping spirals, eating through his hide, his muscle, the outer edges of his corrupted soul.

”Aarrrrghhhh!!” Braavas wailed in pain.

He stumbled. He clawed at his back, trying to stop the pain. But it was impossible. The entropy was spreading fast, and Braavas could feel his own skin peel away from his bone.

He turned with vehemence.

Espel stood at the edge of the crater, her hands raised, more wingblades pouring from her palms.

Braavas tilted his head at her. ”Who are you people?”

Espel said nothing.

His face contorted into rage and he spun, forged his hand above the other and summoned a dark crimson ball of Gloomfire.

Unlike Spectra’s which was elegant and controlled, Braavas’s was a wildfire. He raged it at her and it screamed across the courtyard toward Espel.

Espel abandoned her attack and dodged, the Gloomfire passing close enough to singe the edge of her sleeve.

Braavas kept firing, blast after blast, forcing her to stay mobile, to stay defensive. The entropy on his back slowed its spread as his giant body was too large, however, its entire back and half of its left arm had been completely blackened, rotting.

The cold air could touch his bones, his spine.

Braavas diverted his pain and anger to the assault.

Astensia suddenly appeared, shattering all his demon teeth with a thunderous punch that sent him flying to the side. She sped at him again and attacked a flurry of strikes.

The Demon Head blocked two, took a third across the forearm, and responded with a backhanded swing of the blade-staff that she caught on her shield. The impact rang like a gong.

”Fallstorm!”

Braavas looked up in time to see the Lightning Mage come down at him like heaven’s judgement. Her hammer struck him right at the base of his skull, causing a detonation that pushed Astensia backwards.

When the smoke cleared, Braavas was on his knees, groaning. But, with a surge of Gloom, he recovered and swung his blade-staff at her. Thor somersaulted out of the way, then surged forward again.

She struck low, aiming for his legs, and when he jumped to avoid the swing, Kestrel appeared and struck high, both swords biting into his raised shoulder.

”Arggghhhh!”

Thor struck him right on the face, sending him over to where Astensia was.

Astensia hurled her shield at his flying body, shattering its chest bone and sending it over to where Espel was.

”Urrgghhhh!!”

Espel pushed out one hand. Moth wings appeared on the palm and an entropy blast struck the beast, sending it over to where Kestrel was.

Kestrel crossed both swords then slashed. The blade energy caught the Demon Head dead center, hurling him straight into the path of the oncoming Lancet.

Lancet spun Radiant Guillotine, then slid through the ground and swung a giant arc.

”Aakkkkkk!!!” It collided with the Demon Head’s torso, slashing right through its center and sending it bouncing and crashing on the unforgiving ground.

Then it stopped.

Braavas lay lifelessly on the ground, pain in every corner of his body. The blade-staff had long fallen from his grip. His body was a ruin of wounds and entropy and exhaustion.

The Heroines closed in. Slowly.

Lancet looked down at the big red beast. It was half-buried in rubble, chest heaving, black ichor pooling beneath it in a spreading lake. Its bulging eye was dim. His sunken eye was barely visible. The coral growths on its shoulder had crumbled away entirely.

It was half-dead but still breathing.

Thor stepped forward, the Hammer of Force crackling with final intent. She raised it above her head, aiming for the Demon Head’s skull.

”Wait!” Lancet stopped her. Thor paused, her hammer still raised, and looked at him.

He moved his shoulder out of the way and revealed Spectra standing there, behind him.

Her white hair was disheveled, her clothes torn, the bruise on her ribs still fading under Espel’s lingering magic. But her crimson eyes were clear now, although rage still simmered inside.

Lancet looked at her eyes. She looked at him.

”Do the honors, Spectra,” he said.

Spectra slowly moved her eyes from him to the Demon groaning in the center. The Heroines understood and watched silently as she walked, her heels crunching on the rubble.

She stopped a few feet from Braavas, looking down at him with an expression that was impossible to read.

The Demon Head stirred, struggling to kneel.

Spectra raised her hand. Gloom energy in the form of dark crimson tendrils coiled around her fingers and extended outward. It wrapped around Braavas’s throat, tightened, and his head was forced upward, his mismatched eyes meeting hers.

Spectra looked down at it for a while.

”You will not be here to see it,” she said. ”The day I kill Baal.”

The Demon Head gaped at her, horrified.

”But before you go, I want you to do something for me,” she added.

The Gloom tendril tightened further. Braavas choked, his claws scrabbling weakly at the stone.

”Look into my eyes, Braavas.” Spectra leaned closer, her crimson gaze boring into his. ”Tell me that you think I will not do it. Tell me that you see any uncertainty that Baal will die by my hands.”

Braavas stared at her. Terror shone in his eyes and he felt an uncontrollable urge to bow before this woman... this human. To fear not just her power but her potential.

No words left his mouth.

There was only certainty, cold and absolute as a blade of frozen Gloom.

Spectra’s scowl deepened, hatred was all over her face, tainting her dark beauty.

She thickened the Gloom. The tendril around Braavas’s neck solidified, becoming more physical like a coiling tree root. Then she closed her hand into a fist.

Giant thorns the size of daggers erupted out of the tendrils and punched through the Demon Head’s neck from the inside, piercing through hide and muscle and the last remnants of his demonic armor.

They burst outward in a ring of crimson violence, each one dripping with black ichor and the fading essence of a centuries-old monster.

Braavas’s body convulsed once. His mismatched eyes went wide, then dim, then empty.

A sound like a dying star filled the air. From the wounds in his neck, from his mouth, from his eyes, a powerful torrent of Gloom, the last of his demonic essence, escaping his body in a column of crimson light.

It rose into the sky above Deathrock, a beacon visible for miles in every direction.

And then it exploded outward on all sides.

The shockwave swept across the battlefield, across the corrupted streets, across the red-rooted buildings and the slime-choked alleyways.

Where it passed, the Gloom dissipated. The red roots shriveled and crumbled to ash. The miasma evaporated. The demonic rot that had festered in Deathrock for so long was scoured away by the death of its master.

Above them, the crimson sky began to clear. Patches of blue appeared, the color of a healthy sky, the color of a world that was not drowning in corruption. Sunlight, true sunlight, streamed through the gaps, falling on the ruined city in golden beams.

Deathrock was no longer a half-citadel. The mountain town was free.