I Only Summon Villainesses

The journey to Ashara did not take much time. The terrifying difference in climate, however, made itself known long before we arrived.

Ashara was a blazing hot continent. Now I understood why it was called the Southern Sundered Waste — the name was not poetic exaggeration. It was a literal description. A terrible expanse of sand and relentless heat, stretching in every direction like the world had been left too long in the sun and simply given up.

Before the ship Baraka had offered us even set sail from port, I was already feeling the effects. My clothes suddenly felt far too thick, the fabric constantly slick with sweat that never seemed to dry. Even Kassie felt the increase in temperature and often showed more of her skin than usual — not that she had ever been particularly modest about it in the first place. She dismissed her armor entirely and stuck with a light linen gown that still looked uncomfortable.

We disembarked at Ashara’s port and ventured into the nearby city called Kamarun. The city had walls that seemed carved from red sandstone, baked so thoroughly by centuries of sun that they radiated heat even in shadow. The trees here were sparse and impossibly tall, stretching upward as if trying to escape the ground. Even the streets had surplus sand drifting across them, and water was nowhere to be seen.

The port itself was a scanty place. Other than our ship, there were only two other vessels docked — low-quality wooden boats, really. Actually, let us just call them big boats, because I was not sure it would not be blasphemy to Baraka’s memory to pass them off as ships.

’Few visitors to Ashara, then.’

At least I could deduce that much after experiencing the ports in Solarium and Crystalis. Those had been bustling with activity, crowded with merchants and travelers. This felt more like an afterthought. A place people left from, not arrived at.

Ashara had more free cities than kingdoms, I had learned at the Academy. They operated heavily on alliances and trust with each other.

Despite being a warring continent.

The contradiction had seemed academic when I read about it. Here, walking through empty streets where doors closed at our approach, it felt considerably less abstract.

We had wanted to find refuge at the outskirts of the city, but the people apparently were not fond of strangers. Doors shut. Faces turned away. The message was clear enough without anyone saying a word.

This caused us to push forward regardless of the need to rest. I returned Kassie to my Nave after a few more hours of walking. If it got to a point where I could not move anymore, I wanted her to be my backup plan.

Literally.

It was Tristan who finally broke. He exhaled heavily and stumbled forward toward the center of a small square, where a circular stone well sat. He leaned over the edge, looked down into its depths—

And immediately threw his head back, staggering away.

’Water!’

That had been my first thought the moment Tristan neared the well. We had been walking through this city for hours now. Levi had insisted we cover as much ground as possible before nightfall—apparently it was incredibly dangerous to move around after dark here. The kind of dangerous no one had bothered to explain in detail.

Levi frowned as he watched Tristan retreat, his own lips dry and beginning to crack.

“What is that?”

Tristan held his nose pinched shut and spoke through it. “A mess…”

Levi’s frown deepened. He hurried to the side of the well and looked inside, only to throw his head back with the exact same reaction as Tristan.

’Now I’m really curious.’

I stepped closer, as did Nisha. We managed to peek over the edge with caution, and indeed there was water.

But it was not the kind of water we would have wanted to drink.

Multiple bodies floated at the surface. Bloated. Pale where the sun had not reached them, darkened where it had. They were packed tight, fighting for space in the narrow depth of the well like fish in a barrel that had been left to rot.

The smell hit me a moment later. Sweet and wrong, like fruit that had gone bad in the heat.

I staggered back the moment my eyes registered what I was seeing and instantly understood why Tristan and Levi had reacted the way they did. Nisha had more or less the same response, though she composed herself faster than the rest of us.

“Goodness…” I managed. “How?”

’Who could have thrown people into a well?’

I glanced around. The silent atmosphere of the city. The people closing their doors at our approach. The empty port. It all suddenly made a different kind of sense.

“Whatever this is…” Levi said, his voice flat. “It’s not our business. Let’s keep moving.”

He turned forward without waiting for agreement.

“I would’ve loved to have some water to drink, though…” Tristan said with a wistful expression that seemed almost comical given what we had just seen.

But we all began to move. There was nothing else to do.

As we left the city closest to the sea, what we encountered was a vast desert of red sand stretching to the horizon. There was no shade or shelter. Nothing but heat and distance.

Even as evening descended, the sun continued to slap our exposed skin, and the sand dragged at our legs with every step, swallowing our feet to the ankles.

When night finally fell, the effect of the sun faded and the sand became surprisingly cool beneath us. A small mercy.

But I could not stop thinking about the well. About the bodies packed inside it like someone had been cleaning up a mess.

And about what kind of place we had walked into.

Just at that moment the dunes rose, it was almost as if the darn thing had listened to the voice of my concern and decided to validate them.

Sand spilled across the slopes and surged upward like a titanic wave — one that descended upon us, us who had been walking along the surface like little ants.

The ground shifted beneath my feet, and suddenly there was nothing solid left to stand on.