I leaped towards the demon I could barely see, despite the several spears of lightning around me, the darkness was a thing that I could not cut through. There was a massive chasm between the magic of an Adept, even one as powerful as me, and the Law controlled by a demon with the power of a Sovereign.
The darkness resisted my movements. It pushed against me, trying to smother my light and extinguish the storm I had become, and my forward momentum began to slow, as if I was travelling through thick tar and not air.
The demon reached for me, its long arm tipped with disfigured claws, and despite its lower face that was filled with tentacles, I could tell that it was grinning. But I had died too many times to be extinguished by a little dark.
I poured more of myself into the lightning, and I roared as I became a Titan.
A moment before, I was a small figure streaking towards a corrupted demon twice my size, and in the next moment, my height had reached nearly fifteen feet, matching the demon.
The lightning spears around me multiplied, a dozen, two dozen, a hundred, each one a fragment of my will made manifest, and before I slammed into the demon, I saw its yellow eyes filled with surprise.
A moment before I touched him, I became Lightning Incarnate, and with all the Anima pouring through my enlarged channels, I became as bright as a star... but only for a moment.
My hand, made of lightning, closed around the space where its heart should be, and a net of darkness drank all my momentum, my lightning, and the power in my body. A massive shockwave and a weird droning sound erupted from my clash with the net of darkness, but even that sound and all my powers were swallowed by the darkness.
The lightning I had become was pushed back into my body, and my Titan’s Marrow was crushed into my bones, and I shrank. I pulled for power inside of me, and I froze in place as a single claw from the demon landed on my forehead, and a thin film of darkness bound me in place.
The demon laughed, and its voice was like breaking glass, and this sound was not just coming from its mouth, but the entire facility itself... it was as if the entire place was laughing at me.
"Close," it said. "But you are forgetting something important, Elric. Have you cut someone open and seen their organs come out into the light? One thing I have noticed is that most focused on the blood and the internal organs; sure, these are delightful, but did you all forget that before those lovely internals were shown to the light..." the demon leaned down until its twisted face stopped a few inches from mine, "... they were inside darkness."
The darkness inside me erupted . I had been so focused on the darkness outside that I had not noticed the darkness inside of me.
And this darkness was not normal, because the shadows in this place, unseen, had been seeping into my channels for three months, the corruption that the Soul Flayer had been planting in my soul while I slept... in my corrupted dreams, the essence of darkness was planted inside my body.
I screamed in anger, breaking out of the shackles of darkness by combusting all the powers in my channels in the exact moment that the darkness inside me erupted, and I barely took my Lightning Incarnate form before the darkness exploded from my chest, and I was thrown backward.
Lightning Incarnate shattered, my body rematerializing in the hallway, broken and bleeding, the remnants of the spears of lightning I had summoned dissolved into nothing, swallowed by the dark.
I lay on the cold metal, gasping, the darkness crawling over my skin like ants. The ground shook as the demon walked toward me, its yellow eyes bright with delight. The tentacles around its mouth were writhing, tasting the air, as if savoring my agony.
"Oh, what you have become, and you are just sixteen years of age," it said. "Better than most. But you are still just a boy with a twisted soul and a dead god’s title. And I am the law that makes the dark."
It raised its hand, and the darkness began to invade my body. "Do you think I was going to allow you your death? Why would you even want to die, knowing that there is something much worse waiting for you when you return? You cannot beat me; how do you hope to defeat my master?"
I reached for my lightning, and it did not answer. The darkness was too thick, and I could feel a cold inside me invading all of me, including my Anima Depth.
The demon’s voice came from everywhere at once. "No, no, no, I am not going to kill you, Elric. I am going to put you back in the vat. I am going to feed on you for another three months. And then another. And another. Until there is nothing left but the echo of the boy you used to be."
I smiled, and even if my smile was broken, it was real.
"You are not the only one who understands darkness."
My Anima Depth was being corrupted by this darkness, as chains of laws I could not understand were suppressing it, even moving through my channels, and although this darkness could not seize my channels, it could flood it.
There was a time when I thought all of the soul was just my Anima Depth, but I was wrong; beneath my Anima Depth, there were deep mysteries, and one of them was the Hollow Room.
I allowed my mind to fall into that room, and for a moment I was shocked... the room had grown. I could see its edges, but it had extended, almost tripling in size.
My perception stepped into the room, and it took the shape of my body, and as I stepped deeper into the room, I walked upon the pool of darkness that was at its center.
I looked down in the pool, and I saw my reflection, but I knew it was not my reflection because its gaze was cold.
I bent down, stretching one of my fingers towards the pool, and Hollow reached up to me, and the moment our fingertips touched... we swapped places.
"I cannot win," Hollow said.
"I know, but I promise the Moon Fox, it needs to hurt."
"That I can do, Elric."