Heroine Creation: All My Summons Are Custom Made

The team rendezvoused exactly where Lancet had asked them to. It was a little bit far away from the old citadel tower, where the broken streets widened into a broad, fractured terrace of stone that overlooked the lower district of Deathrock.

It had once been some kind of civic square or quarry overlook, though the town’s original shape was now difficult to distinguish beneath years of rot, smoke, and the claw marks of the Second World.

Everyone looked like they had been through a fight. But no one was harmed or tired.

Lancet’s clothes were streaked with grime and dark demon blood, and the Radiant Guillotine was still damp at the edge from the last thing it had cut down.

Astensia stood beside him with a few smudges of soot on one pauldron and a thin line of black rot on the lower edge of her armor, but she was otherwise straight-backed and composed, as if the ruined city itself had simply failed to make a lasting impression on her.

Espel didn’t have a speck on her.

Spectra, of course, looked as though she had arrived from a particularly entertaining dinner party.

She drifted toward the gathering atop her crimson cloud, one limp figure trailing behind her through ribbons of red smoke.

A Demon Scout.

The creature hung slack in the air, its grotesque body bearing the unmistakable aftermath of Spectra’s interrogation. The flesh looked like it had been rebuilt one time too many. Muscles sat unevenly beneath the skin. Sections of its body appeared subtly warped where Gloom had destroyed them and Grace had forced them back together.

The scars of that unnatural cycle remained etched across its frame, leaving it looking like a creature that had survived an artist’s cruel experiment.

Spectra let the body fall on the ground like a worthless old piece of luggage.

”There,” she said with quiet satisfaction. ”I thought you would all appreciate seeing my little discovery.”

Thor stared at the lifeless demon. ”By the Elders, what did you do to it?”

Spectra shrugged. ”Merely interrogated it. That’s all.” She then noticed that Astensia was holding on to something that wasn’t her sword. It was a Demon.

Another Demon Scout?!

”You found one as well?” her eyes lit up. She looked at Kestrel and Thor. There was a Demon flat on the floor beside them. ”You too?!”

Lancet let out a half-breath half-laugh. ”So we all had the same idea.”

Astensia looked between the bodies and the others. ”We all found Scouts.”

Espel’s attention shifted from the corpses to the group, her expression calm but alert. ”That means there is no truce.”

”Correct,” Kestrel said.

Thor planted her hammer against one shoulder and gave the dead Scout slumped on the ground beside her a look of open contempt. ”The things are hiding under a political lie.”

Spectra smiled. ”How romantic.”

Thor looked offended on principle. ”That was not romantic.”

”It was for me.”

Lancet rubbed the back of his neck and crouched briefly to inspect one of the bodies, though he already knew what he was looking at. ”You know what I’m thinking?”

Astensia looked down. ”What, Master?”

”We should round them up. Maybe take two or three of them back with us to the Academy.” He got up straight. ”When we inevitably get interrogated about what we did here, we’d use these bodies as proof of what we uncovered. That we actually saved the world from a demonic ambush.”

Spectra smiled secretly, her eyes glistening at those words. ’Ah, Master Lancet,’ she thought to herself. ’What a wonderful plan. Almost like you thought it out before we even came in here.’

Astensia’s eyes moved to the bodies once more, then stopped at her master. ”You’re right. This is no longer speculation. From what Espel discovered when we entered here, and now this? It’s undeniable that this Demon Break is still very much active.”

Espel nodded slowly. ”The Gloom changed when I moved through the lower streets. It was not just lingering corruption. It felt... directed.”

Kestrel folded her arms. ”That’s because it is directed. I can assure you the Demon Head is exhaling Gloom from that citadel tower as we speak”

Spectra’s smile thinned by a fraction. ”Yes. It is.”

Thor glanced sideways at her. ”You sound like you already knew that.”

Spectra let that hang in the air for a moment, then looked at Lancet with deliberate, dangerous amusement. ”Maybe our Master did.”

Lancet stared at her. ’Spectra. Always one to stir things up.’ Then he gave her a small, innocent-looking shrug. ”I had a gut feeling.”

Spectra’s eyes narrowed with delight. ”A gut feeling.”

”That’s right.”

She drifted a little closer, red smoke rolling around her ankles. ”Just like the gut feeling you had about the Second Demon Head in Hebthej?”

Lancet froze for the smallest fraction of a second. Then with confidence, he said yes.

Astensia stepped in for him. ”Did you not hear him back then? Lancet has a sense for these things. He couldn’t explain it back then and he can not explain it now.”

There was silence for a while. Everyone glanced at everyone else.

”Mm,” Spectra eventually said, clearly unconvinced. ”I have nothing against gut feelings. They are quite useful.”

She winked at Lancet. ”Especially when they happen to be right.”

Thor folded her arms and gave Lancet a side-eye. ”Were you really expecting Scouts?”

Lancet spread his hands. ”I suspected there was something off.”

Espel, who had been looking toward the tower and the red roots climbing its walls, spoke quietly. ”The air has changed.”

That immediately brought Lancet’s interrogation to an end and he was very happy for everyone’s focus to switch to the Healer Mage.

Astensia lifted her head, eyes narrowing as she looked up into the sky. ”Yes,” she said. ”I can feel it.”

Slowly, the feeling spread to the rest of the team. It was the Gloom, there was a darker shift to it. Strong and thick.

Lancet looked at the buildings around him. The rot in the walls were pulsing continuously. The wind that had been drifting through the ruins went still for a moment, and a strange wrongness settled over the square.

Spectra went still in a way that was very unnatural for her, red smoke tightening around her like a warning. Her eyes moved toward the old citadel tower in the distance, and every trace of playfulness drained from her face.

”No,” she whispered.

Astensia glanced at her. ”What is it?”

Spectra did not answer immediately. Her smile had vanished entirely now, replaced by an expression of shock and disbelief. She seemed to know exactly what was about to happen.

”Unbelievable.”

The words came out flat and disbelieving, and for the first time since the day Lancet created her, the Mother of Demons looked genuinely unsettled.

”It can’t be.”

Thor’s grip tightened around her hammer. ”What can’t be?”

Spectra’s red eyes narrowed toward the tower, where the roots and corruption were moving more visibly now. ”They’re bringing Purgatory.”