I Only Summon Villainesses

The two of them, Uio and the snake, glanced back at the ruined cathedral heaving up out of the sea behind them, streaming seawater from every arch, and the color drained out of both their faces.

”How in the... this...”

Uio frowned as he watched the castle climb, and at the same time he turned to me. A lady in a black habit stood beside me. And even though my essence was draining out of me fast, a cold hollow opening under my ribs with every second that passed, and even though I still couldn’t work out why Maggie had shown up so annoyed, I found I still seemed happy about it.

They were going to die here.

Give or take.

’She activated her strongest ability right off the bat.’

Strangely, as the cathedral came on, I felt rejuvenated. The heat rolled off it in a wall, and where it touched me the ache went out of my limbs, the fatigue burning away layer by layer. Borrowed strength. It fed on my essence to manage it, of course.

The moment the cathedral tore all the way clear of the sea, water sheeted off its black stone in roaring falls, and the sea level dropped away hard. Everything within and across the ocean was burning, and all I could hear was:

[You have killed a level 5 Apex Beast: Sharkmeister]

[You have gained Fins]

[You have killed a level 5 Apex Beast: Sharkmeister]

[You have gained Fins]

[You have killed a level 4 Apex Beast: Sharkmeister]

[You have gained Sharktooth]

[You have killed a level 3 Apex Beast: Sharkmeister]

[You have gained Fins]

[You have killed a level 4 Apex Beast: Sharkmeister]

[You have gained Sharktooth]

[You have killed a level 3 Apex Beast: Sharkmeister]

[You have gained Fins]

[You have killed a level 4 Apex Beast: Sharkmeister]

[You have gained Sharktooth]

[You have killed a level 3 Apex Beast: Sharkmeister]

[You have gained Fins]

[You have killed a level 4 Apex Beast: Sharkmeister]

[You have gained Sharktooth]

[You have killed a level 3 Apex Beast: Sharkmeister]

[You have gained Fins]

[You have killed a level 3 Apex Beast: Sharkmeister]

[You have killed a level 3 Apex Beast: Sharkmeister]

[You have killed a level 3 Apex Beast: Sharkmeister]

[You have killed a level 3 Apex Beast: Sharkmeister]

[...]

The voice of the lodestar layered over itself again and again, one death folding into the next faster than the words could keep up, until the whole thing dissolved into a wash of nonsense mumbling.

But that wasn’t the spectacle of it.

Maggie was no longer standing beside me. She stood at the very edge of the cathedral now, right on top of its highest spire, her black habit snapping around her in the updraft, her silhouette carved thin and delicate against the sudden darkness that had swallowed the gate.

Then she raised one hand to the sky, and a white light kindled up there. It grew brighter and brighter, gathering the whole sky into itself, the clouds tearing into shreds as they spun around it, the sky itself looking as though it were being drawn down into some drain in the roof of the world. The wind turned furiously hot, dragging grit and steam across my face.

I could feel all of it in my body. It just wasn’t at the point where I thought I was going to die.

Then the light let go, and fell.

For a moment the sky looked like it was straining to hold the thing back, to keep it from coming down at all. It stretched to do it, going strange and elastic, the flames pulling it taut to the very limit, and then it snapped. Shattered. Let the white fire out like a tremendous rainfall.

Little specks of white flame caught and kindled across the exposed ocean floor, hissing where they met wet rock and dead coral. I wasn’t even sure what we were standing on by then. The whole ocean was shrinking fast, and at the same moment a sheet of ice went skating past beneath my leg. Far behind me, Brunhilde and her Summoner stood their ground.

She watched warily, and there was something fearsome in it too, all of it fixed on Maggie in particular.

”As much as I hate to... that witch is powerful. If I had met her, I wonder who would win.”

Kassie muttered it, right beside me. Then she turned to me, folding her hands, a small smile playing at the edges of her lips.

”Who do you think would win?”

I heard the question. I just had no response to give it. Even so, I couldn’t shake the vague suspicion taking shape in me, about why Maggie was so angry.

’It couldn’t be...’

”Hey! This is madness! You have no idea what you’re doing, this is insane! Stop this before something worse happens.”

I turned to Uio, who was screaming as the flames came down, slowly covering the entire world in a white explosion.

Through it, I smiled.

”Why should I? You are going to die, I promised you that.”

Uio’s face set into a dark, troubled frown, and that in particular made me feel good about all this.

”Ahh, don’t worry, I will handle it. We can’t fail, master, we must either take this boy back up, or we must merge the gates and release the new specimens.”

The snake wriggled out of his hands and, in an instant, swelled up colossal again, its scales straining apart until the fire showed white in the seams between them. No, it was bigger than any size I’d seen it take, big enough that when it opened its mouth it swallowed an incredible swath of the light that lay over the whole scene, the way a wide sword cuts a clean gap through smoke.

The flames it couldn’t swallow streaked off toward the edge of the horizon and boiled the waters away. Some of it burst right in front of us, blowing apart the island and everything past it, throwing up a curtain of smoke and steam.

’Light...’

The damn bastard. If he’d just listened and stuck close to me.

’Since when did I begin to care...’

I lifted my gaze to the enormous snake. Having swallowed the whole flood of fire, its body had ballooned out, the skin gone tight and translucent, and now it was struggling to digest what it had taken in.

’Who told you eating fire was a good idea...’

The snake’s belly swelled more and more and more, and the creature clung stubbornly to its life. Even though it thrashed and wriggled, hurling itself into the sea beyond and sending up geysers of water that came down again as warm rain, it would not die.

It let some of the fire back out, and a beam of white flame tore up into the sky and crashed against the wall of the gate.

Then I saw something strange.

The wall peeled back like glass, and beyond it lay a darkness, one full of many eyes. Then the eyes turned, all of them, and looked at us. A chill went straight down my spine before I could stop it.

Uio turned back around, sweat running all over him.

”Oh shit... what have you done.”