“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 as 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
