Southwest Truths (Semiautomatic Sorceress Book 3)

by Kal Aaron

  There’s isn’t much time, Lyssa. A convergence of rare events allows this. I can reverse what was done and seal the spirit back in the weapons using a small portion of my power after lending him your power.

  And I should trust some random voice in my head? Lyssa thought. Regalia aren’t alive.

  Nektarios is not yet at his full power, but when he reaches it, he’ll be far more dangerous than a mere emptiness spirit. You have no chance against the enemy by yourself, but you will with Jofi. I can fuse him with you temporarily and then reseal him. It’ll cost me, but it can be done.

  Lyssa had no idea what the hell was going on. She didn’t believe the Night Goddess had decided to start talking to her, but the voice in her head wasn’t the one who was threatening to swallow her soul.

  I can’t get to my gun, Lyssa thought. And I brought a lot of ammo, but not showstoppers. I’m not sure it’ll be enough.

  Then let me help you. All you have to do is agree in your soul.

  Yeah, Lyssa thought. That doesn’t sound creepy at all.

  Choose quickly. The moment is passing. Something worse than death awaits you.

  Lyssa closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She didn’t need to be an expert in spirit sorcery to think agreeing might cost her dearly in the future, but her choice was to die and have Nektarios eat her soul now or agree to this strange pact with something claiming to be the Night Goddess.

  More servants rushed into the room with swords, spears, and halberds. Nektarios’s power knocked them back into the other room or pinned them against the wall.

  The last vestiges of humanity abandoned Nektarios. He was now a tangled mass of legs, limbs, and eyes. His unearthly keening churned Lyssa’s stomach.

  You will die, the voice sent. And he will take countless victims.

  What do you get out of this? Lyssa asked. Why do you care?

  I gain potential. A possibility for the future. But we don’t have much time left. You must choose.

  Lyssa grunted. But you want me to let a grand emptiness spirit possess me with the vague promise that you’ll somehow seal it back?

  Yes.

  Lyssa couldn’t tell if Nektarios was watching her with any of the eyes covering his twisted form. Just looking at him nauseated her, and it was difficult to stare for more than a few seconds without her head hurting.

  It was just like six years ago. She didn’t have time to consider the implications, and there was no other choice. Maybe the whole thing was a clever ploy by Jofi, but given the strange ranting and noises earlier, she doubted it. Taking half a chance made more sense than giving up. She closed her eyes and concentrated.

  I agree.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  All sensation and pain left Lyssa. She saw nothing. Felt nothing. Heard nothing. There was only the void. Only emptiness.

  A gnawing, ravenous emptiness spread through her, making her desperate to consume everything around her. A hole ran through her soul.

  Her senses returned, but the gnawing hunger remained. She needed to eat. Drink. Feel joy. Feel sadness. Destroy. Build. She needed everything and anything to fill the hole, the emptiness.

  Lyssa screamed, her voice as alien as the transformed Elder. Her pain and uncertainty vanished, consumed by the void in her soul. Nektarios’s power kept the others pinned, but she broke free and dropped to the floor.

  She sprinted to her guns without a thought, picking them both up, and jumped back, the gale-force power not pushing her. Instead, it faded near her, the dust and debris settling in a small bubble near her body.

  “You cannot stop me, human,” Nektarios said in his chorus voice. “It’s too late. I’ll consume every last soul in the Heart, then I’ll descend to the city. It’s too late for your kind to stop me.”

  Lyssa held up the guns, her hands shaking. “I can’t make it stop,” she said, shivering. “I want everything, everything, everything. It’s ravenous. Overwhelming.”

  “Your guns wouldn’t stop me even if you had your precious special ammo.” Nektarios laughed, the sounds coming out unevenly from different mouths. “You desperate, pathetic girl. You didn’t even remember to reload.”

  Lyssa pulled the trigger, knowing somehow she could push the emptiness into the guns. Black orbs left both barrels and ripped through Nektarios’ body, leaving clean holes. He screeched from all his mouths. The wounds sealed seconds later.

  She kept firing, blasting more and more holes. Each shot intensified the longing and hunger in her soul. More. She needed everything and anything to fill the agonizing space inside her.

  Lyssa screamed again and kept pulling the trigger, alternating between her left and right guns. The black orbs continued to pierce Nektarios but didn’t stop his regeneration.

  “I won’t let you win,” she shouted, cold seeping into her head. “Whatever you are.”

  He laughed, each mouth contributing a different pitch or quality, an overlapping monstrous clatter. “You can’t win even with the spirit helping you. All you can do is prevent the inevitable.”

  “Jofi, what do I do?” Lyssa asked. He was allegedly fused to her now, so maybe that meant he’d returned to being her partner.

  He didn’t respond. She kept firing. Numbness returned to her fingers and spread into her hands, then arms.

  “Jofi!” Lyssa shouted.

  There was still no response. Her entire body was now numb, and it took all she had to keep standing.

  Lyssa dropped one gun and concentrated, reaching into the gaping maw of her soul and the emptiness swirling around her, threatening to suck in her thoughts. She imagined the sigils and chants associated with a showstopper. A voice in the back of her head whispered the truth. The showstopper was nothing more than the concentration of the void, the primal emptiness that could never be filled, the hunger that would consume everything.

  An opaque dark sphere formed in front of the gun. She dropped the weapon and held the sphere in place by concentrating, feeding it more of the desperate, grasping hunger afflicting her before releasing the attack.

  The sphere struck Nektarios. Black strands spread over half his body, disintegrating it. It flaked away into nothing, leaving only the soft glow of the ritual chamber. She’d blown away about a third of his body, but new flesh formed, growing from the wounded side.

  Lyssa fell to her knees and conjured another sphere. She pushed it forward, and it carved through the center of the monster but didn’t end him.

  Icy numbness suffused every part of her body. The emptiness spread even farther, now threatening her thoughts and memories. Lyssa was having trouble remembering her name or anything other than that she needed to defeat the creature in front of her.

  A flash of clarity cut through her darkening mind. She understood what was happening. She was feeding her soul into the shots. There was no panic, no sadness, only resignation.

  Something prodded the back of her mind like a muffled whisper from across the room she couldn’t quite make out. A sensation passed into her, not something she heard or even a thought, but a feeling that went straight to her soul. A cold feminine presence mixed with another that was familiar, chaotic, grasping, and masculine.

  Lyssa understood what they were sending. It was a simple message. They wanted to help her: Jofi and the Night Goddess. Whatever had been done by the regalia must have brought back his old personality. Or maybe it was a simple desire to destroy his enemy.

  Barely understanding what was going on, she reached out to their presences with her mind. Darkness edged her, and she had no idea why she’d not collapsed on the floor. She drew upon the offered power, and four massive void spheres of impenetrable darkness formed in front of her.

  They shot forward and struck Nektarios at the same time. The darkness covered his entire body and took much of the floor with him before flowing into non-existence, leaving nothing behind but empty space and a huge hole in the floor.

  Lyssa fell forward, groaning. Deadness gripped her body, but she didn’t feel nearly a
s awful as she had after firing three showstoppers at the giant monster.

  “Thank you, Night Goddess,” Lyssa whispered with a smile. “Thank you, Jofi, for all you’ve done for me.”

  Tired and cold, Lyssa passed out.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  When Lyssa opened her eyes, she was staring at the now-familiar ceiling of her guest room on Last Remnant. She grimaced and pulled her blanket to the side. She was in her regalia, though her coat was missing. Tears, rips, and holes covered her garments. She rolled onto her side, surprised to see Samuel sitting in a chair at the table. Her regalia’s jacket hung on the back of the chair.

  He offered her a polite nod. “Good morning, Miss Corti.”

  Lyssa peered at him. His regalia had a few tears and he looked pale, but he lacked the blood-splattered appearance she’d seen in the ritual chamber.

  “Did we win?” she asked. “Or are we dead? No offense. I don’t know if I’m ready to spend eternity with you.”

  Samuel let out a bitter chuckle. “Did we win? That depends on how you define the conditions of victory. If you mean, did we defeat whatever it was Nektarios turned into, then yes, we won, thanks to you.” He offered a weak smile. “We were worried about you. Given the strangeness of what happened, it was unclear if you would wake up.”

  Lyssa sat up and groaned. Her head throbbed. “I’ve been better. How long has it been?”

  “Several days,” Samuel replied.

  Lyssa licked her lips and looked at a table in the corner of the room. Her holsters lay there. “Can you leave me alone for a few minutes? There’s something I need to check.”

  Samuel stood and nodded. “I’ll be waiting outside. We are curious if your spirit survived, given the oddness of the day.”

  Lyssa waited until he stepped out of the room to take a deep breath. In the desperation of battle, the Night Goddess or whoever it was had claimed she would fuse Jofi, then reseal him.

  “Jofi, are you there?” she asked.

  “Yes, I am,” he replied, his voice calm and even like before. “It’s unclear to me what happened, but I’ve not been around other people enough to hear their conversations. I do know there’s been a change in me.”

  “What change?” Lyssa's heart sped up.

  “I believe our link is stronger,” Jofi replied. “And my power is stronger. I suspect this will mean more damage from the guns and more power.”

  “Huh.” Lyssa scratched her eyelid. “But you don’t remember what happened?”

  “I don’t remember much after entering the ritual chamber,” he replied. “I was also not fully aware for some time. You could say I awoke only a day before you. My understanding is there was a battle, and you used me in an unusual way to destroy Elder Nektarios.”

  He could be lying, but the snarling, inhuman grand emptiness spirit she’d heard when his seal broke didn’t seem like the type of entity who would rely on cheap lies. He would have swallowed her soul and been done with her.

  “Yeah, that’s accurate. He was something.” Lyssa looked sad. “Maybe Samuel could explain that.” She looked at the window, but it’d been tinted black to block out light. “Jofi, do you sense anything special or weird about my regalia?”

  “Other than our normal link, no. Should I?”

  “I’m fairly sure the Night Goddess somehow helped us fight Nektarios. She powered us up.” Lyssa swept her legs off the bed, amused that they’d left her boots on. They must have wanted to maximize her healing potential.

  “That doesn’t sound like regalia,” Jofi replied. “You might have been confused by another spirit taking the opportunity to interfere with things.”

  “Maybe.” Lyssa furrowed her brow.

  Her recollection of the fight after the fusing was hazy, but she remembered the mental conversation well enough. Enough strange things had happened lately that she wouldn’t dismiss anything.

  Night Goddess, she thought. Are you there?

  There was no response.

  “Samuel,” she yelled. “Come back in.”

  The door opened and he stepped back, glancing at Jofi. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah. He’s still here.” Lyssa stood and stretched. She ached all over. “I was telling Jofi how I think the Night Goddess powered us up. I don’t know how to explain it, but I had some sort of mental conversation with her.”

  “What?” Samuel asked. “While regalia have a unique compatibility with individuals and their essences, they aren’t spirits, Miss Corti. They have neither will nor intelligence.”

  “I know what I heard. Or heard in my mind. And dreamed.” Lyssa shrugged. “I know that doesn’t sound compelling, but you were there. I’m not a spirit Sorceress. I couldn’t have pulled it off without help.”

  “Are you sure?” Samuel peered at her.

  “No, but I figured you should know.”

  “Is the Night Goddess still speaking to you?” he asked.

  Lyssa shook her head. “Nope. No dreams, and you said I’d been here several days. I thought at her and got no response.”

  Samuel stroked his beard. “Seeing a valued Elder turn into a monster makes me more inclined not to dismiss your story out of hand, but it’s been a difficult and confusing time. We can arrange a time to talk to the Elders and vault tenders to explore what you’re claiming.”

  “What kind of casualties did we take?” Lyssa asked. “I know he killed a few guys, but it wasn’t clear how many people died that day.”

  “Not as many as you’d expect,” Samuel replied. “I went out of my way not to kill any of the guards during my raid. I was only forced to attack so fiercely because they seemed determined to kill me.”

  “You were kind of breaking into the Heart of Remnant at the time.”

  “True, but it’s clear Nektarios had given extreme orders. Unfortunately, the other Sorcerers involved in the ritual were killed, as you might have witnessed. Tristan survived. You obliterated Elder Nektarios.” He let out a too-mirthful chuckle. “His regalia, if you’re curious, hasn’t returned to the Vault of Dreams, but we believe he’s dead.”

  “Really?” Lyssa asked. “Are you sure this time?”

  “The identifying script above the alcove for his Traveling Sage disappeared,” Samuel explained. “Any attack powerful enough to annihilate a regalia would be enough to kill the owner. It’s been a long time since a regalia’s been destroyed, not since 1945. You should apply caution when using your most powerful attacks. There would be more concern if you hadn’t stopped something far more dangerous.”

  Lyssa shrugged. “Sorry, but I had a weird thing to kill and not a lot of options.”

  “Mysteries upon mysteries, Miss Corti, especially if your claim about the Night Goddess is true.”

  “Well, damn.” Lyssa sat on the edge of the bed. “I’m sure you have a long, boring explanation about all the last-minute investigation you did, but I’m less interested in that than knowing what and who Nektarios was.”

  “Mr. St. James, along with others, including the other two members of the Tribunal who weren’t involved in the ritual, have been investigating that since the incident. It appears Elder Nektarios didn’t want the other members of the Tribunal involved in the ritual, perhaps because he feared their power or that they’d realize what he was attempting.” Samuel shrugged. “Our tentative hypothesis is that a powerful entity possessed the Elder, along with several Shadows on the island, and a miniscule number of other Illuminated.”

  “Wait, what?” Lyssa protested, “I don’t get how it possessed everyone. You’re saying there was more than one?”

  “It’s complicated,” Samuel replied. “Nektarios was under direct control as the primary host, along with a handful of other Illuminated who are not on Last Remnant and numerous Shadows. Once he was killed, his control vanished. A specialist will be talking to you about this soon. He can explain it better.”

  “So, Nektarios was a spirit?” Lyssa asked.

  Samuel shook his head. “No, not a spiri
t. Something else entirely, something different. An entity from a different plane of existence, not one overlaid on ours like the spiritual world. Our kind has had minor dealings with them in the past, these Far Ones, but their appearances have been sporadic, and we don’t have good methods of dealing with them. Spirit sorcery is only partially effective since they aren’t spiritual entities and are foreign to our reality and its laws.”

  “Why haven’t I heard about them?” Lyssa asked. “It might have been nice to know about the possibility.”

  “They are spoken of among a select group of trusted Elders.” Samuel looked embarrassed. “But it’s generally been felt that these incidents were so rare and fleeting over the centuries as to not be worth adding extra concern to other Illuminated. They are different types of creatures. Nektarios was rather conventional compared to some that appeared in history.”

  “In other words, since no one has a reliable way of dealing with them other than obliteration, you pretended they didn’t exist.” Lyssa groaned. “Do the Shadow governments know, at least the highest levels?”

  “It’s not useful to worry them about something so rare.” Samuel shrugged. “He was destroyed.”

  Lyssa scoffed. “One of these things almost took over Last Remnant. In a sense, it already had, at least partially. They need to know. Maybe sorcery might not work, but if push comes to shove, I bet they could have nuked him.”

  “That’s what you want them to think? They should be prepared to drop nuclear bombs on Sorcerers?” Samuel gave her a tight smile. “The Tribunal will consider how best to proceed in the future when this incident isn’t so fresh. We’re still doing follow-up now, including interviewing all the Shadows who were partially possessed. They kept most of their memories, though there are gaps. From what we can tell, the control was relatively recently established, judging by the people we’ve been able to interview. Our evidence from our available victims suggests they were affected shortly before M-Day, and we believe the primary host was changed at some point in the last few years.”