Heroine Creation: All My Summons Are Custom Made

She raised the hammer high. The sky, already dark with the red haze of Deathrock’s corruption, grew darker still. Storm clouds materialized from nothing, black and heavy and shot through with veins of lightning.

They gathered above the Head in a churning vortex, and at their center, a single point of blue-white brilliance began to form.

The Demon Head looked up and its mismatched eyes widened.

The lightning pillar descended, focused directly on him. A needle of electrical fury no wider than a spear, but carrying enough energy to turn a mountain to glass.

It struck Braavas square in the chest, and the Demon Head screamed. The sound was swallowed by the thunder. Its body convulsed, every muscle locking, every nerve firing simultaneously. The coral growths on its shoulder cracked and split. Smoke rose from its hide in thick, acrid columns.

But he did not fall.

When the lightning faded, Braavas hung in the air, its chest plate of natural armour blackened and cratered, its breathing ragged.

Its bulging eye had rolled back in its socket, but the sunken one still glared at Thor with undiminished hatred. It was wounded, but it was not dead.

After all it was a Demon Head, and Demon Heads did not die easily.

Braavas took a deep breath and forced Gloom to pump through his channels. ”I can not die that easily, woman!”

He sped at her. The blade-staff, still clutched in his claws despite everything, swung furiously. Thor raised her hammer to block, but the strike was a feint. Braavas’s other hand, the one with the blackened claws, shot forward and closed around her throat.

His grip was monstrous. She felt her armour creak under the pressure. The lightning around her sputtered as her air was cut off. Braavas drew her close, his snout-like jaw opening wide, rows of yellow teeth glistening with black saliva.

”Lightning Mage,” he growled. ”I will enjoy—”

Golden chains wrapped around his legs.

Braavas looked down. The Blessed Chains had shot up from somewhere far below, blazing against his skin. They coiled around his ankles, his calves, his thighs, tightening with divine purpose.

Astensia stood on the broken edge of the citadel wall, the chains extending from her outstretched hand. Her bright blue eyes were cold and focused. She pulled.

Braavas’s grip on Thor’s throat broke as he was yanked downward. He fell, accelerating, the wind screaming past him. The ground rushed up to meet him.

KABOOM!

He struck the earth with a quaking collision, causing cracks to spiderweb across the stone courtyard and creating a ten feet wide crater.

Astensia immediately leaped into the air and came at him. Braavas watched the Blessed Chains transform in her hand into...

”Blessed Blade form! Blessed Axe!”

A massive two-handed weapon with a blade of pure golden light that hummed with the promise of judgment. She descended like a comet, the axe raised above her head, her battle cry ringing across the battlefield.

The axe came down.

Braavas, still dazed from the impact, rolled to the side at the last possible instant. The axe blade struck the ground where his head had been, and the stone split open, a line of golden fire racing across the courtyard.

He scrambled to his feet, summoning the blade-staff to his hand, and swung it in a desperate parry as Astensia pressed her attack.

Steel and obsidian clashed again and again. With her instant comprehension of every weapon, Astensia wielding the Blessed Axe like a seasoned Viking, each swing she did could carve open a giant bear.

But this giant bear was a fighter itself. Braavas matched her, his blade-staff deflecting and counter-attacking. They circled each other in the crater, the air around them shimmering with the collision of Grace and Gloom.

He managed to catch her axe on the haft of his staff, lock the weapons together, and then, with a surge of brute strength, shove her backward. She stumbled, and in that moment of imbalance, he raised the blade-staff for a killing blow.

Thor hit him from the side.

BOOM!!

The speed blitz was so fast it seemed to happen in three places at once. The first impact was her hammer connecting with his temple, and that sent him flying to the left.

Before he had traveled ten feet, she was there, having blitzed across the battlefield in a streak of lightning, and the second impact was an upward swing to his jaw. That sent him spinning into the air.

She appeared above him, hammer raised, and the third impact drove him straight down into the earth like a nail being hammered into a coffin.

Braavas bounced. His massive body struck the ground, rebounded, struck again. The blade-staff flew from his grip and skittered across the stone. He came to rest in a broken heap, his asymmetrical shoulders twitching, black ichor pooling beneath him.

Kestrel descended.

She leaped from her dragon spectre, both Dragonswords drawn, the white and emerald serpents coiling around her arms as she fell.

At the last moment, Braavas’s hand shot out, and the blade-staff flew back into his grip as if called. He swung it upward to meet her descending strike, and the weapons clashed with a sound like a screaming choir.

The force of his parry pushed her back, but Kestrel was never one to retreat. She flowed around him like water, her swords carving patterns in the air.

The emerald dragon bit into his coral-plated shoulder, tearing away a chunk of the scarlet growth. The white dragon slashed across his ribs, and where it passed, the wound smoked with consumed soul-essence.

She ducked under a horizontal swing of the blade-staff, spun, and opened a gash along his spine where the jagged spike jutted out. Another spin, another cut. She decorated his body like her blades were paint brushes and his demon skin a canvas.

Braavas, bleeding from a dozen wounds, roared in frustration. He activated Gloom Burst.

A wave of crimson energy erupted from his body.

The Gloom Burst expanded outward like a dome, carrying corruption with it, dense and toxic and overwhelming. It struck Kestrel mid-spin and hurled her backward, her dragon spectres shrieking as they were dispersed.

It hit Thor, who had been closing in for another strike, and sent her tumbling. It reached Astensia, who raised her shield but was still pushed back, her boots sliding across the stone.

It washed over the entire courtyard, and everyone caught in its radius felt their Grace channels flicker, the corruption trying to find purchase in their souls.

When the blast faded, Braavas stood alone in the center of a scorched circle. His chest heaved. Black ichor dripped from his wounds. But he was still standing, still fighting, still refusing to die.

”Insolent Humans! Fear me, Head Braavas! Fear the Second World that shall swallow the first! Fear my Lord Baal! Fear the Demons!”

He stepped toward Kestrel, who was struggling to rise, her swords planted in the ground for support. The blade-staff rose above his head as he prepared to kill the Swordsmaster.