I Only Summon Villainesses

”About what?”

She turned to look at me, that insidious small smile camping on her face.

”Ara? You don’t seem to know?”

She glanced at Maggie and Kassie too.

”Didn’t you guys walk this place? Did you never try to find out?” She did not let them speak before she added. ”Then again, you have to be informed of this sort of thing, and make preparations against it, to care.”

She placed her hands down and was silent for a moment, letting the tension squeeze the air dry.

’Come on, don’t make me say the word...’

Before I had to hurry her up though, her voice came.

”This is a thin world between the spirit world and the living world. But you see, the significance of such a place is not just that. This place literally does not exist. It’s a limbo, a world that is inexistent to the spirit world and to reality. But what makes it significant is that this place is where it is...”

I glared at her, like a housewife hungry for tea.

”What? Come on!”

”The sin of the gods.”

I frowned.

”What sin of the gods?”

Celestine started to pace, her heels finding every loose flagstone in the dark and clicking off them.

”I studied the gods for a long time, and used an artifact to integrate the memory, to hide it from the gods themselves. So when I died, it was one of the few things I could still remember. But even then, most of my memories did not survive it. I perambulated this place before I was able to retrieve a little of the memory I integrated.”

She sighed and said:

”The gods committed a grave sin. One they hid in the Precipice. When I was summoned here, by someone with an evil nature like you, I thought that was what you had come here to find. But it seems I was wrong.”

I scratched my temple. Her voice came with a disappointed edge, so sharp that I almost felt the need to say, ’no, actually, we were looking for it,’ even though we just mistakenly fell inside this damn darkness.

”Actually, we came here because there was a purpose for us, and then I needed a villainess, and now that you’re here, I think that purpose is shaping. I’m a visionary person, you see.”

At once, her eyes lit up, and she looked at me with a semblance of respect.

”Oh... have you been acting on a hunch? You’re one of those... aren’t you.”

I gave a smug grin and nodded.

”I have no idea what one of those means, Celestine, but I acted on a hunch, and now, the full picture is coming in place.”

’Nice branding, Cade!’

She nodded, and smiled.

”Good. I have no memory of what the sin is. But I know it’s here.”

I sighed.

’Of course. The information never comes in full package.’

”That’s enough. With you around we should be able to navigate this place... the Precipice, better.”

I glanced around, studying everyone.

In the dark temple, White Feather was the closest to me, standing at my right, holding Wren’s ear but gently. Celestine was opposite me, leaning on a slightly broken stone pew. Kassie was right behind my left side, and Maggie was farther behind.

And I studied all of them and thought to myself.

’I’m not alone.’

I remembered feeling so alone on Earth. I remembered entering this world alone and being singled out of everyone. But from the moment I met Lira, it’s never been the same. I was slowly finding myself with people, and even though there were pains, and betrayals, and more pains, I grew.

And I grew to have a family. A family of drop-dead gorgeous, stunning women.

’And I’m gonna have more.’

At least two more. That was certain. I didn’t know what was to come after that.

I inhaled and exhaled.

”Let’s rest a little more, then in a couple hours, we’ll set out. We still have to find Ilse, Brunhilde and Light...”

’As much as I hate to admit it, I had to rescue that son of a horse.’

***

Nobody rested.

That was the thing about saying the word rest out loud to this particular group. You said it once, and then you stood there and watched five separate interpretations of it unfold in front of you like a badly run market day.

Maggie claimed a corner and began sweeping it with the side of her boot, pushing a few centuries of grey dust into a tidy ridge. She did not ask anyone’s permission. She simply decided that a floor was going to be clean, and the floor obeyed her, the way most things eventually did.

”There’s no water,” she announced.

”There’s no anything, Maggie.”

”Then I’ll boil the no-water,” she said, and set two stones down anyway.

Meanwhile, Wren kept glaring at me like she wanted to jump me if she got the chance..

It got to a point that the stare became daggering, at that point, I called.

”White Feather.”

White Feather already had the ear.

She took it the way a farmer takes a gate latch, without hurry and without malice, and then she lifted, and Wren rose onto her toes with all the dignity of a fish being landed.

”Ow. Ow. Ow, ow, ow—”

”Apologize.”

”But I did nothing!”

”Apologize.”

Wren stubbornly refused and the two kept having this back and forth.

While Kassie sat behind my left shoulder, in exactly the spot where she had been standing, as if somebody had picked her up in that position and set her down without adjusting a single thing. She did not lie down. She did not lean. She watched the dark past the pillars with her sword across her knees, and every so often her thumb moved along the hilt.

”You can sleep, you know,” I said.

”I am sleeping.”

”Your eyes are open.”

”That’s how I sleep.”

’...Sure. Naturally.’

Celestine, from her pew, made a small pleased sound, like a woman being served a dessert she had not ordered.

”Ara. You’ve gathered obedient ones.”

”Say that louder.”

”I’d rather not,” she said. ”Two of them are armed.”

Afterwards I did what any exhausted man does when surrounded by capable women in a haunted temple that officially does not exist. I lay down on a broken stone pew, folded my arms over my chest like a corpse at a very cheap funeral, and closed my eyes.

For a moment, it almost worked.

Then I felt it. That specific, unmistakable weight of being looked at.

I opened one eye. Celestine was leaning over me, close enough that a strand of her hair hung between us, her chin propped on her knuckles and that small smile still camping there, rent-free, permanent.

”Do you always watch people sleep?”

”Only the interesting ones,” she said.

”That’s worse. You know that’s worse.”

”Mm.”

’Ah, damn...’

Kassie said, without turning around, ”Move back.”

”I am admiring.”

”Move back.”

Celestine moved back exactly two inches and stayed there, which I decided to accept as a victory, because I had learned a while ago that with villainesses you take the two inches and you go to sleep.

So I went to sleep.

For maybe half an hour.

Then a fine grit landed on my face.

I brushed it off without opening my eyes. Dust. Old temple, old ceiling, old world, of course there was dust. Then more came, heavier, and something small and hard bounced off my forehead and clattered onto the flagstones, and above us, high up in the black where the dome should have been, the darkness cleared its throat.

That’s the only way I can put it. A sound like a mountain deciding to speak.

Maggie’s fire went out.

Kassie was already standing. So was White Feather, one hand fisted in the back of Wren’s collar, dragging her off her feet and behind a pillar in one motion.

”Cade,” Kassie said, very calmly, ”get up.”

I got up.

The dome came apart.

It burst viciously, stone spraying inward in a sky-splitting rain, and something came down through the gap and landed in the middle of the temple hard enough to lift me off my heels and drop me back onto them.

Dust rolled outward. The pews went over like teeth being knocked from a jaw.

And out of that grey churn, a long neck lowered itself toward me, and two eyes the size of shields opened, one after the other, and a wing unfolded and unfolded and kept unfolding until it scraped both walls at once.

Celestine breathed out beside me, and for the first time since I had summoned her, the smile was gone.

I stared up.

’That’s a dragon.’

’That is a dragon.’