Elric settled into the deep, and we swapped places.
From his memories, I knew that Elric was becoming a bit used to this transition, but I erased mine from him because on my side, this transition was not gentle, and when Elric was an Acolyte, the memories of my transition would break his mind.
For me, this transition from the state of hollow to flesh was violent, as I was water being forced out of a broken jar, all at once, without choosing to, into a body that was already dying.
The darkness was everywhere inside this body, and I noted the broken ribs and the channels that were strained from the dense amount of darkness being pushed into it, enough darkness that a normal Arcanist would have exploded... This demon was not gentle, precisely because it knew how much damage this body could take, and above all of this was the Law of Darkness that I could now feel with the senses of Elric.
This was also a sense that I could not share with him, because such vast unneeded data would corrupt his path and make his road to the next level of power that much harder.
I noted all of the changes in the body, filed it, and set it aside. The Soul Flayer was reaching for me, but its grab missed since I had already moved out of the way.
This motion tore through flesh, causing my bones to ring out from the collision with the darkness essence that was meant to keep me fixed in place, without the ability to feel pain; everything else was data.
I left pieces of my flesh and blood hanging in the air, held by the darkness’s essence inside my body. I had lost a lot of body mass, but this act had reduced the number of darkness essence in my body.
There was not much lightning left in my channels, but there was lightning in the air, the faint, fading remnants of Elric’s last attack, the essence of his storm still clinging to the metal walls.
I reached for it. Elric had thought about the future when he switched to Storm Bearer, making my combat transition in his body more seamless, and even with the darkness suppressing this Title, the demon’s law pressing down on the body’s Anima Depth, I was still a source, even if it was a much weaker one.
The lightning answered my call, and threads of it, thin as a hair and barely visible, wrapped around the demon’s wrist, just above the claw that had been reaching for me, and I pulled.
The demon’s eyes widened. From Elric’s understanding of emotions, I knew this was not due to the thread hurting it, but rather because it was surprised, since it had not expected me to move.
I used that surprise, and I became Lightning Incarnate. I had torn myself from a lot of the darkness essence inside the body, but a portion of the darkness remained, and there was not enough essence to stop me from becoming Lightning Incarnate, but it was not a full transformation.
This body could no longer hold it after the damage it had suffered, but it was just enough to slip out of the darkness’s grip and rematerialize behind the demon.
The demon turned; the body of a Sovereign was incredibly powerful, and this made its motion so fast it was a blur to Elric’s senses. Its claws came up, and the darkness around it thickened, trying to swallow me again.
I did not try to fight the darkness, since I had no way to fight the power of Law.
I reached into the hollow place and crossed into the bond that held the fragment of the Moon Fox that was still tethered to my soul.
"Share your senses," I commanded.
The fox responded instantly. Her eyes were not my eyes, but they were better. Elric had been focused on the weightlessness she shared with him, and not her senses.
She could see the demon’s shape, and no matter how fast it was moving, she could also see its movements, even the way the darkness flowed around it like a second skin.
With access to this perception, I saw the gaps, and with the lightning I could gather, I flickered across the distance, and my hand, still wrapped in the last of Elric’s lightning, closed around the demon’s chest.
There was no way for me to hurt a Sovereign, even without the protection of Laws; their bodies were made up of a different material than the fleshy bodies of a mage. Instead, I was aiming for the anchor where the darkness connected with the soul of the demon.
A Soul Flayer was not among the most powerful of demons, and in many instances, they were no better than carrion who could only scavenge from the scraps that fell from the teeth of the more powerful demonic races, and most of them would never be able to reach the level of a Sovereign in their entire life, due to the nature of their bodies and talent.
However, what made them dangerous was if they were able to parasitize a body with access to laws. There were reports of this happening, but this practice was squashed by both demonic and celestial powers because a Soul Flayer could leap across power ranks with access to Laws.
This Soul Flayer had parasitized the body of this Sovereign, but its host was still alive, and for some reason, the seed of its parasitism was not buried inside the body of the Sovereign but was etched on its skin.
With the eyes of the Moon Fox, this weakness was my target, and I grabbed it and squeezed, causing the demon to scream at the violation and shock that I was able to find this weakness... There was a reason this demon wrapped this entire facility in darkness, and it was not just for intimidation.
I had not hurt it; I would need access to laws for this, but the sense of violation from touching its soul, where its power lived, would distract it, and I used this.
I poured the last of the lightning into the anchor, creating dozens of threads, and in that moment, I coated every thread with Soul Forge to see if I was able to unravel the anchor.