Heroine Creation: All My Summons Are Custom Made

Chapter 250: You Do Scream So Well

The Demon Scout came at Spectra with the hammer lifted high, its thick arms bulging beneath scarred, warped muscle as it tried to bring the weapon down in a crushing arc meant to flatten her where she hovered.

The air shattered around the swing. Red-black energy rolled off its body in ugly waves, a brutal pulse of Gloom that made the street stones tremble and the broken windows around them rattle in their frames.

Spectra shot out an aura of Grace-blessed miasma, but the Demon used the giant hammer to shield itself. It attacked ferociously after, but Spectra drifted around on her crimson cloud, baiting the scout into multiple attacks that she enjoyed dodging.

The scout struck again. Then again. Hammer first, shoulder second, then a violent surge of demonic force ripped from its throat and burst outward in a shockwave designed to throw her from the air and crush her balance against the street.

"Oh. You’re a feisty one."

Spectra lifted one hand and easily made the shockwave bend around her. That amount of force should have shoved her back, but it did not. It slid around her like water forced past a stone and instead struck the ruined wall behind her, cracking the masonry and sending a spray of dust and stone chips into the street.

The Demon Scout paused for the smallest fraction of a second, surprised by the failure.

Spectra smiled. "Stunned? Don’t worry. I have a habit of doing it to everyone."

Red smoke snapped outward from her palm in thin threads, then thicker cords, then a lattice of dark, luminous lines that lanced into the scout’s chest, shoulders, and throat.

The creature roared and tried to wrench away, but the threads tightened instantly. Spectra’s eyes glittered.

"Oh, no," she said softly. "You don’t get to leave yet."

The Demon Scout yanked hard, hammer swinging again, but there was no escape, it belonged to Spectra Hexerra now and she had plans for it.

Spectra used Gloom to destroy its body, then used Grace to rebuild it.

It was a very sick thing.

First, the shoulder locked. One knee buckled. The scout snarled and tried to rip the force out of itself, but Spectra only tilted her head and smiled as if the effort were charming.

Then she dragged one hand lightly through the air.

The Demon Scout screamed.

The flesh at its shoulder folded inward, then split apart, then reformed into something crooked and wrong before collapsing again. Bone cracked, healed, and cracked again.

The hammer arm swelled with unnatural pressure until the muscles distorted, then shrank down to a thinner and weaker shape, then swelled once more as if her power were testing how much the body could endure before it became unrecognizable.

The scout thrashed in agony.

Spectra’s smile widened with obvious delight.

"Oh, that’s lovely," she purred. "You do scream so well."

She brought her other hand up and the air around the scout’s head rippled as if it had been plunged into a fever dream. This time the torture was not physical.

The Demon Scout jerked violently, its eyes bulging as Spectra forced it to relive pain that was not happening in the real world. Memories of crushed limbs. Skin split by flame. Joints torn by unseen hands.

Every imagined wound echoed through its nervous system as if the body itself could not tell what was memory and what was happening now. The creature bellowed, then gagged, then roared again, its hammer slipping from one hand only to be caught by the threads wrapping around its wrist.

Spectra leaned forward slightly, resting her chin in one hand as if she were watching theater.

"Now then," she said brightly, "let’s try this the easy way. Tell me what the Demon Lords plan to do with this town."

The scout spat a burst of foul black spit at her.

She sighed, almost disappointed.

"That was not the answer I was hoping for."

The red smoke behind her thickened and reached into the scout’s body again. This time the threads were finer, more precise.

They slipped through the creature’s chest and around the core of its Gloom like surgical stitches. The Demon Scout convulsed, eyes blazing as Spectra tore through the channels that fed its strength and then rewove them into shapes that belonged to her instead of it.

It screamed so hard its demonic voice cracked.

Spectra watched the body bend under her power and tapped one finger against the air.

The scout’s left arm suddenly became too heavy to lift.

Then too light.

Then heavy again.

Its ribs tightened inward as if an invisible fist had closed around them. Its vision blurred with phantom heat.

Its legs gave out and then, just as suddenly, its spine straightened against its will. The creature’s own body became an argument it could not win. Every time it tried to summon force, Spectra used Gloom to twist the result and Grace to guide the torture.

It must have been the worst thing the creature had ever experienced. Undeniably.

Yet, her voice remained soft and cheerful the whole time.

"Are you ready to speak?" she asked.

The scout answered with a furious roar.

Spectra’s eyes half-lidded.

"Oh, that is adorable." Her hand moved once, and the scout’s skull was suddenly flooded with a burst of imagined pressure so intense it dropped to its knees. "Let me ask again. What plans do the Demon Lords have for this stone city?"

The creature growled, jaw clenched, hammer dragging against the stone.

Spectra sighed again and leaned back on her cloud, her red smoke drifting around her shoulders. "You know, I really do hate repeating myself."

She pressed two fingers together.

The scout’s body jerked as if hooked from the inside.

Its back arched. Its mouth opened in a raw, choking cry.

Spectra let the agony linger for a moment, then changed tack entirely. The threads in the scout’s body shifted, suddenly forming precise little pathways of wrong sensation. A fire that wasn’t real raced through its muscles. Then ice. Then crushing weight. Then a sensation like its bones were being pulled apart and restitched in the wrong order.

The scout howled.

Spectra’s smile sharpened.

"Mm. Better."

The creature pounded one fist against the ground, hammer trembling in its grasp. It tried to force more Gloom out, but her threads were already inside the emission points.

The dark energy came out in broken spurts and she caught each one, twisting its shape before it could gather. She wrapped the scout’s own power around itself and made it bite inward instead of outward.

The Demon Scout began to understand, probably too late, that it was not being restrained by force.

This woman, this witch, she could somehow manipulate Gloom on her own. And she was using it against him. On its own, the Demon Scout had no power over her.

Defiance was useless.

Spectra’s eyes brightened.

"There we go," she murmured. "Now you’re learning."

She rested her chin again on one hand, legs crossed as she floated above the broken street, red smoke licking beneath her like a throne made of bruised fire.

"Tell me what I need to know, Amarkor," she called the Demon by its own name. "What are the Demon Lords planning to do with this world?."

The Demon groaned the response with a grudging tone. Spectra squeezed her arm, tightening the muscles of the creature’s heart. It cried in pain until several seconds later when she released it.

"Now," she said, "say it properly."

The Scout groaned, then growled the answers to her.

Spectra listened in growing delight, her head tilting a little as one revelation after another crawled out of the beast’s mouth.

By the time the scout finally collapsed into a gasping heap, Spectra had learned enough.

She sat back on her hovering cloud and smiled down at the broken creature with calm, satisfied wickedness.

"Well," she said softly, "isn’t that interesting?"