Being alone in the apartment without Cay or Aiden around for the first time was strange.

When you were home in your own place, you could just kinda do whatever you wanted, and being alone was like a nice, peaceful moment.

Being in someone else’s place alone felt like being in a museum. Don’t touch anything, don’t do anything that might cause damage or upset them when they return.

Chris found himself standing very, very still in the center of the living room, afraid to sit on the couch (‘What if I scratch it up?’), and unable to reach the counters to even consider helping clean up any of the mess from breakfast.

He’d spent so much of his life being independent, striking out on his own at a young age, getting an apartment by fudging the paperwork with magic, and getting a job at the Underground to pay his bills, all by the time he turned 17.

Now he was a completely dependent stuffed nightmare doll thing. It was maddening. 

‘Crush, rip, tear, burn!’ the voice echoed in his head fluff.

‘Shut up!’ he thought back to it.

‘Crush, rip, tear, burn!’ it repeated helpfully.

‘Stop! Who are you? Why can I hear you in my head!?’

Sinister laughter was the only response he got, and it chilled him to his core - whatever that was, at the moment. 

The worst part was that the laughter was coming from his mouth, not inside his head.

Whatever this thing was, he needed to get rid of it, fast.

=====

“Chris, I’m back,” Aiden called as he shut the apartment door behind him.

“Oh, thank the goddess,” Chris exhaled, finally free to leave his statuesque vigil in the middle of the living room. 

“Nate said he was eager to see you. Gave me this to help me get you there.” Aiden held up a simple bronze pendant on a short chain.

Chris recognized it as the promised glamour necklace. It would help hide his form from non-magical eyes. These sorts of things were pretty commonly used to help unusual beings from passing unnoticed in normal human society. The fancier ones could even be ‘programmed’ with your own customizable illusory form. 

“Thanks, Aiden,” Chris stepped forward, holding out a clawed hand to take it.

“Here,” Aiden said, “let me slip it over your head so you don’t claw up your uh, face.”

Aiden knelt down and deftly placed the chain around Chris’ neck.

His close proximity brought up those warm feelings again, and Chris immediately shoved them back down. Whatever was going on with his Knot Thing had to be the cause of this stupid feeling.

“There. Why don’t you go take a look at yourself in the hall mirror. Sorry for the glamour, it was the only one Nate had to hand that was ready to go.”

Chris walked out of the living room area and down the apartment’s entrance hallway, stopping about halfway at the mirror mounted on the wall.

A little girl with raven hair stared back at him, her hazel eyes flitting about as they scanned the image in the mirror. She looked to be somewhere between four to six years old, and wore a cute light blue sundress with matching mary janes and white stockings.

“Is that… me?” he asked, his voice filtered through the glamour to sound like a sweet little girl, sending that strange warmth through his chest fluff again

“Yeah. Sorry again,” Aiden said. “At least it’s only temporary until we get you looked at, and back home safely. Hope it doesn’t freak you out too much.”

“No, no, I uh, I kinda like it, actually.” Chris smiled at his reflection, happy to not see the hideous thing he had really become, but a charming, cute little face smiling back.

“Oh, really?” Aiden asked, raising a brow. “Alright then. You ready to go?”

“Huh?” Chris tore his eyes away from his reflection. Right. Leaving. “Y-yeah, I’m ready!”

“Hey,” Aiden said as they left the apartment building onto the streets of Charlotte. “Maybe you should hold my hand while we walk.”

“What?!” Chris squeaked. “Why?!”

“Uh, because you look like a little girl, and people would think it’s weird for you to just be walking on your own unattended in the city.”

“Fine,” Chris conceded after a moment of pouting. “But if you ask me to call you ‘daddy’ I’m shouting for the cops.”

Aiden laughed, shooting Chris a smile. “How about just ‘dad’?” he joked.

“Pushing it,” Chris laughed, the sound coming out as a bubbly childish giggle. He really liked that sound. ‘Too bad my usual voice couldn’t sound this cute,’ he thought.

He took Aiden’s hand as they began the walk to the bus stop, trying to prevent his little claws from scratching him. 

Very few people spared a passing glance as they made their way, for which Chris was grateful, at least until they made it onto the bus.

A little old lady that looked as if she had wrinkles older than sliced bread smiled as they passed her to take a seat.

“Oh my, she’s such a cutie,” she said, the creases around her smile deepening.

‘She? Cutie? Me?’ He blushed at the compliment she had gotten - she being the girl he was. The girl he looked like. She had gotten the compliment. Not him. He was a horrible sack puppet, and a guy. Still, he wished he could get compliments like that.

“Thanks. She takes after her mother.” Aiden said by way of a cover story.

“She must be lovely,” the old lady said. “I’m sure she’ll grow up to be just as beautiful!” 

For a brief moment, the idea of growing up, going through life again as this girl, growing into a teenager, and finally into a grown woman played in his mind.

He shoved the weird imaginings aside. Whatever was messing with this knot thing had to be messing with his thoughts.

The sinister voice had been suspiciously quiet since Aiden came home with the pendant. 

=====

Chris was all too happy to escape the old woman and her praise and small talk with Aiden. The Underground wasn’t a terribly long walk from the bus stop, but still enough that he was asked to hold Aiden’s hand again for the walk there.

“Wow, you two are adorable,” Cay teased as they entered the shop.

“Fuck off,” Aiden said in a jovial sibling shit-giving tone.

“Seriously though. Mega cute look, Chrissi,” Cay said, ignoring her brother.

‘There it is again. Cute. Fuck, why does that make me feel so weird? I know compliments are meant to be nice but… damn.’

“Woah, are you blushing?” she asked.

“Wh-what? No!” Chris said, blushing harder.

“Awww, she’s so cute and innocent!~” Cailyn teased.

‘She. Cute. Crap, knock it off, people!’ Chris thought, folding his arms.

“Is Nate ready for us, or would you like to keep pestering Chris?”

“Yeah, yeah, he’s ready for you. Don’t get your panties in a bunch. Especially you, Chris.”

Chris pulled a face at her, almost wishing he had his horror muppet face for it. Almost.

With the initial hazing out of the way, Chris walked around the counter and into the back hallway.

Moving around the shop at a significantly shorter height was certainly a novel experience. He could barely see into some of the class front counters, much less see on top of them, or up to the higher shelves.

He couldn’t even reach the handle for the door back to the real employee area.

“I got it.” Aiden reached over him to turn the latch, revealing the white marble hallway.

“Thanks,” Chris squeaked. He was really hoping that when he got bigger again, Aiden’s looming presence stopped having this weird effect on him. 

“Good morning,” Nathaniel said with a smile.

“Morning, boss,” Chris and Aiden said in near unison. 

“Aiden tells me you’ve been having some problems since your last check-in.” 

“Yeah, I’ve been hearing voices in my head, and having these crazy nightmares, and they’re getting worse, and then there’s the weird feelings I keep getting in my chest and… it’s a lot, sir.” Chris slouched forward, sighing breathlessly.

“I see. I took the liberty of setting up some more advanced methods of analysis for your knot. Please step into the circle when you’re ready. Oh, and you can take off the pendant since you’re away from prying eyes.” Nate said with his usual businesslike demeanor.

“Oh, right,” Chris mumbled. Obviously he knew he had it on, based on the harassment from Cailyn… but he’d also sort of forgotten he had it on, in a way. He reached up and pulled the pendant off, feeling the magic of the illusion fading. 

“My… your knot has certainly grown no less menacing.” Nathaniel furrowed his brow, visually inspecting it as Chris walked into the circle.

“Yeah,” Chris agreed as he shuffled into the spell circle.

Nate went around the circle lighting candles and incense, then prepared the spell itself.

Chris felt a chill run through his body, and suppressed the urge to shiver. 

“Oh,” Nate said ominously.

“Oh?” Aiden asked from his place near the doorway.

“I missed this in my previous examination. Some sort of seal in this knot thing has broken. I’ll keep digging to see if I can figure out what it was containing… but it is very likely the source of these mysterious voices, if nothing else.”

Chris couldn’t suppress the resulting shiver. There was something dark inside of him. Inside of his knot thing, with him.

He swore he could feel something burrowing into him. The real him - his soul, not the fluff and fabric.

“Ah… Hm. Aiden, my boy, bring me file 23992 from the cabinet.”

“Sure,” Aiden said, hurrying over to the filing cabinet and pulling out the drawer labeled 2300-2399. He plucked the file in question after a moment of rifling, and brought it to Nathaniel.

Nathaniel cracked it open, reading over the pages within. “...Ah. Memory did serve me well. This knot was created to imprison a dark entity. Placing Christian’s soul inside must have awakened its secondary function as a knot thing… and weakened the seal. I will have to transfer the entity to another source of containment.”

“Can you do it? Is Chris gonna be okay?” Aiden asked.

“I can, and he will. Bring me one of the soulcatchers from storage room 436.”

“Right,” Aiden nodded, heading out of the office and down the hall.

“Don’t worry, Mister Gray. We’ll have you sorted out in a moment, and your Knot will be working as intended. Everything will be okay”

Chris smiled at the older mage’s words, comforting as they were. Nate’s tone of voice had always settled his nerves, for some reason. Probably magic. Nothing could go wrong when Nate told him it would be okay. Right?