Heroine Creation: All My Summons Are Custom Made

The crystal-blue plates lit up beneath their feet as Min Tu and Frieda charged at each other.

The hundreds of spectators leaned forward as one, and they all saw Min Tu’s attack reach first.

Her right dagger carved upward, tight and vicious, aimed at Frieda’s throat. Frieda jerked her head back and the blackened steel missed her chin by a finger’s width.

The Necromancer flowed into the miss immediately, her left dagger already driving forward toward Frieda’s ribs.

She wasn’t wasting a single motion.

Frieda answered with her fireballs.

A concentrated burst erupted from her palm, directed at the ground between them. The explosion kicked up a wall of flame and shattered crystal that forced Min Tu to break off her attack and pivot sideways.

”Castleloft opens with a defensive burst!” the commentator’s voice boomed across the colosseum. ”Smart move! She knows Akaran wants to close the distance, and she’s not giving her an inch!”

Frieda pressed her advantage. Both hands came forward, and from her palms erupted a continuous stream of fire that roared across the arena floor like a horizontal inferno.

The flames burned white-hot at their core, tinged with blue at the edges, which was typically the mark of a Fire Mage whose power outpaced her control.

Min Tu warped through all of it, the fire passing through the space where she had been.

She rematerialized ten feet to Frieda’s left, already sprinting, her daggers leaving trails of shadow in the air.

Frieda tracked her and swung the fire stream sideways, but Min Tu was faster. She dipped under the arc, planted one hand on the ground, and launched herself into a spinning kick that caught Frieda across the jaw.

The crowd erupted.

”Direct hit from Akaran! And what a kick! Necromancers are backside commanders, but she’s a fighter!”

Frieda stumbled sideways, her flames drying off. Min Tu attacked harder, daggers flashing right... left... right hook, left lunge.

Each strike easily flowed into the next.

Frieda parried what she could, dodged what she couldn’t, and took a shallow cut across her forearm.

She hissed at the pain and her flames spluttered away as a cause of her loss of concentration.

”Keep going Min Tu!” Maecil’s voice rang out from the Summoner section.

Professor Phiodor said nothing. But his eyes tracked Frieda’s every movement like a hawk.

Frieda could feel it where she stood.

Losing wasn’t an option.

She planted her feet. Her jaw tightened. And then she stopped holding back.

The temperature in the arena spiked by twenty degrees in an instant. The air around Frieda began to shimmer and warp as heat radiated from her body in visible waves.

Her eyes ignited, the irises replaced by swirling pools of actual fire. The flames at her palms expanded, growing from orbs into roaring spheres the size of cannonballs.

”Uh-oh,” Lancet muttered. ”She’s opening the valve.”

Luke gave him a questioning look.

Min Tu, knowing danger was coming, quickly warped away, but Frieda had anticipated it.

Instead of aiming where Min Tu was, she aimed where Min Tu would reappear. A fireball the size of a boulder screamed across the arena and detonated exactly where the Necromancer materialized.

The explosion shook the colosseum.

Min Tu was hurled backward, her body wreathed in smoke and embers. She hit the ground hard, rolled, and came up on one knee with her daggers crossed before her.

Her uniform was singed. Her cheek bore a red mark where the heat had kissed her skin. But her expression had not changed. If anything, she looked more annoyed than before.

”She took that hit and she’s still standing!” the commentator shouted. ”Incredible resilience from the Summoner representative!”

Frieda didn’t let up. She hurled fireball after fireball, each one a miniature sun that screamed across the arena with devastating force.

The crystal-blue plates beneath her feet began to glow orange from the ambient heat. The protective barrier surrounding the arena — an invisible wall of Grace energy designed to contain stray attacks — flickered with each impact.

Min Tu warped between fireballs, her body dissolving and reforming in quick succession.

Left. Right. High. Low.

Each teleportation brought her closer to Frieda, but the Fire Mage was learning very quickly.

Her fireballs began to land closer to Min Tu’s exit points, forcing the Necromancer to warp faster, to push her dark energy to its limits.

”Castleloft is adapting!” the commentator yelled. ”She’s reading Akaran’s patterns!”

Lancet leaned forward, his eyes narrowed. ”She’s not reading her patterns,” he muttered. ”She’s carpet-bombing the whole field. There’s nowhere to warp that isn’t on fire.”

Luke gave him another look. ”You seem to know a lot about Frieda’s powers.”

Lancet took that as a cue to shut up.

Nevertheless, he was right.

The arena had become an inferno.

Pillars of flame rose from the crystal-blue plates like the bars of a burning cage. The heat was so intense that the spectators in the front rows were sweating despite the protective barrier.

The drone cameras had to pull back to avoid having their lenses cracked by the temperature.

Min Tu’s options were shrinking.

So she changed tactics.

She stopped warping and planted her feet. Dark energy erupted from her body in a swirling vortex that pushed back against the encroaching flames.

Her eyes, usually flat and unreadable, now blazed with more passion to win this match. She raised both daggers and crossed them before her chest.

Her lips moved, silent words directed not at Frieda but at something only she could hear. Somewhere in the space between her soul and her summons, a connection activated.

From one of her soldiers, she drew fire. It kindled along the edges of her daggers in a purple-black color.

From another, she drew wind and from another, she drew lightning.

The dark wind launched her across the arena floor in a blur, her daggers trailing streaks of purple-black fire and crackling lightning.

Frieda hurled a fireball directly at her path.

Min Tu slashed through it this time rather than warping. The dark fire on her left blade split the fireball in two, both halves exploding harmlessly to either side while she kept running.

”Akaran just cut through a fireball! What is that on her blades?!”

She closed the gap in a heartbeat. Her right dagger, wreathed in shadow lightning, drove toward Frieda’s ribs.

Frieda blocked with a forearm sheathed in white-hot flame. The collision of spectral lightning and roaring fire sent sparks spraying across the crystal-blue floor.

Min Tu didn’t relent. Her left dagger, burning with cold purple-black fire, came around in a slash aimed at Frieda’s throat. Frieda jerked back, but the tip caught her collar and seared through the fabric.

The crowd roared.

Min Tu pressed. Dark fire slashed high. Shadow lightning thrust low. Dark wind spun her past Frieda’s counter and into a flanking position where both daggers came down in a brutal cross-slash. Frieda barely twisted away, the blades missing her shoulder by inches, the cold flames singing the edge of her sleeve.

But Frieda’s eyes had changed. The flame was darkening, shifting from blue to violet. The air around her grew heavy, pressurized, as if the atmosphere was being compressed into something volatile.

Her flames no longer looked weak and began to deepen, to concentrate, to transform.

Lancet’s pupils became small. ”She’s charging something.”

Luke glanced at him. ”What?”

”Look at her hands.”

The commentator noticed too. ”Wait, wait, what’s happening to Castleloft’s flames? That’s not normal fire! That’s...”

Frieda released everything she had.

”FLAME BERSERK!”