Christian had seen soulcatchers before, obviously. In principle, it was like a Native American dreamcatcher, but larger and much, much more complexly woven. It also wasn’t something as nebulous as dreams being passed through it. It was your soul, as the name implied. 

“Now then, hold still, Christian. This won’t take but a minute.” Nate took up the soulcatcher and approached the border of the ring within which Chris found himself standing.

“Is it going to hurt?” Chris asked timidly.

“It shouldn’t, my boy. The ritual is meant to separate whatever darkness is possessing your spirit, and trap it within the spiritual matrix of the soulcatcher.” Nathaniel gestured at a tome laying open on his desk, and it quickly flipped through to a specific page some hundred pages in of his magical accord. 

“Are you ready?” he asked.

‘Am I?’ Chris wondered, taking a last look around at the office, at Nate, at Aiden by the door. If this failed, he’d never see them again - nor Cailyn, or his family (not that he saw them often anyway), or his few friends down at Three Card Monty.

“I’m ready,” he said unsurely. 

“Be brave, Mr. Gray. You will come out of this all the better.” Nathaniel smiled reassuringly. 

“You got this, Chris,” Aiden offered, giving him a thumbs up and another of his charming smiles.

Those damn smiles. Chris stilled the fluttering in his chest fluff and prepared himself as best he could.

Nathaniel began reciting the spell from the book, infusing the words with mana as they left his mouth, imbuing them with power.

The force of those unintelligible arcane words slammed into him like a car hitting a brick wall at eighty miles per hour, sending his conscious awareness whirling away into dark unconscious.

‘Where am I?’ Chris wondered, his thoughts adrift in the shapeless void.

The shadows around him creaked and groaned, like the iron hull of some old ship struggling to survive the pressure of the ocean as it sank into the depths.

‘Chris… ti… an… Chris…ti…an…’ A voice rattled through the darkness, sharp, metallic consonants and wheezing, dry vowels. 

‘Who’s there?!’ he demanded of his thoughts.

‘Chris-ti-an… he-re…’ it rasped.

‘What do you want with me? Why are you doing this?’

‘Rip-and-tear, rip-and-tear! Chris-ti-an, rip-and-tear!”

Fear bubbled over at the core of his being. This thing was going to kill him. It was going to rip his soul apart and kill him permanently.

‘Please, leave me alone, please! I don’t want to die again!’

‘Leave me a-lone, leave me a-lone, I do-n’t wa-nt to die!” Its voice sounded mockingly similar to Chris’ own.

Despair threatened to consume him as he felt the smothering presence of whatever this thing was pressing down on him from all sides.

‘Cai-lyn, Ai-den, I’m co-ming for you!’ it rasped again.

‘Stop…’ His plea was weak, and if he could cry in this place, he would.

Despite being unable to see the speaker that tormented him, he felt the sensation of sharp, cold, steely claws closing in around him.

The thing in the dark let loose a wailing screech, like silverware caught in the garbage disposal it pinged all over the darkness, constantly changing directions.

Christian felt like his head was splitting apart - like his body was splitting apart.

His consciousness was pulled, kicking and screaming, back into the light.

Part of him wished it had remained in the darkness. The office looked as it had before, but Aiden looked terrified, and Nathaniel was grimacing with effort as he pulled–

‘Oh goddess, what is that?’

A cloud of darkness was swirling into the soulcatcher, full of metal shrapnel whirling around like a satanic blender. The sounds emanating from it were horrible, confined in the small office.

Just before the final dregs of the shadowy storm swept away, Chris swore he could see an eye peering back at him, full of hate.

‘Can-not run, can-not hide, you are ju-st li-ke me,’ its voice rasped in his mind.

Then it was gone.

Nathaniel held the soulcatcher as it finished absorbing the dark entity. The entire process seemed to have tasked him greatly, as evidenced by the sweat darkening his collar and beading on his forehead.

“Boss, are you alright?” Aiden asked as he approached. 

“I will be fine. Christian, how are you feeling?” Nathaniel asked, trying to recover.

“I…” Chris looked down at himself, seeing the jagged metal fingers and the tatty sackcloth body. “I thought I would look normal after this?”

“It may take a day or two, my boy,” Nate said.

“Don’t worry, Chris. It’ll work out now that that thing is out of your Knot.”

Chris smiled, despite the turmoil he felt at his continuing creepiness. “Thanks, Aiden.” 

“I will lock this in containment with the other dangerous artifacts until it can be destroyed properly. Chris, I would like to keep you overnight for observation of any residual effects.”

“Okay,” Chris nodded slowly.

“Can I stay too?” Aiden asked.

“No, Aiden. It is for the best that I observe him in solitude to eliminate any external influences on his personality.”

“Alright,” Aiden sighed, looking defeated.

“I will send for you to pick him up in the morning if all is well,” Nathaniel said comfortingly. 

“Thank you, sir,” Aiden said, taking hold of the door. “Can I still stay here in the shop with him for a bit?”

Nathaniel shot him a mischievous look. “If you plan to laze around the shop I can certainly find work for you to do, Aiden.”

Aiden cleared his throat and shook his head. “No, sir. I’ll be going.”

“I thought as such. Goodbye, Aiden. Enjoy your day off. Trust that Christian is in good hands!”

Chris smiled as best his Knot could. “I’ll be OK, Aiden. Catch you tomorrow!”

Aiden smiled at that and waved. “See you then, Chris.” With that, he turned and left the office. 

=====

If being alone in the apartment was weird, being at work as a Knot was even weirder. He had no tasks to accomplish, nothing to fill his time… just the stark white office. He started counting the ceiling tiles, then moved on to drawing patterns in the marble floor swirls.

“I apologize for the lack of anything to entertain yourself with, Christian. You are welcome to avail yourself of the contents of room 93,288.”

Chris stood, stretching his limbs. “Really? Thank you, boss!”

“Of course. Only room 93,288, mind you,” Nathaniel said firmly.

“Got it,” he smiled. When Nathaniel opened the office door with a flick of his wrist. Chris took off down the hall as fast as his stubby legs would take him.

Doors blurred by as he searched for the navigation index at the nearest intersection of hallways. 

That was about the time he realized the problem. He’d be unable to reach the panel without help.

‘Help, or creativity!’ he thought, looking around for anything he could use. He remembered how he’d picked things up, even though there was no way his feeble claw fingers had the strength to do so. There was discussion that Knots used a weak residual magical force around the limbs to grab and manipulate objects in the absence of proper dexterous fingers.

He placed his hands against the wall, focusing. ‘If I can just… change the way it grips…’

His hand held fast as he placed it, gripping the wall. He experimentally lifted his legs off the floor, hanging from his arm. It worked. He was hanging off the wall!

‘Success!’ he laughed and began his climb, one determined handhold at a time.

The climb needed epic music, so he began to hum some to himself.

It had to look completely ridiculous, but he was loving it. For the first time he actually felt decent in this weird Knot body.

Finally, he came upon the directory board, and pressed one clawed hand to the entry for “Rooms 93,000->93,999”.

The world shifted as he found himself now standing in a new hallway, identical to the last, but with vastly higher numbers on the doors. He hurried off down the hall toward the room in question, eager to see just what was in room 93,288.