Silhouette

Ugh...

To say that James felt battered and bruised was an understatement. The magical exhaustion after casting multiple high-power spells alone would have been enough to justify passing out, the same went for the sheer exhaustion of dealing with an actual demon or of dealing with a powerful creature, but the thing that currently made James feel the worst were the numerous wounds on his body. Turned out that physical attacks did work on him, with the right tool.

Even now, still barely conscious and hidden away in the shadow of Sydakors' corpse, he could feel all the tears on his own body and the black liquid that flowed out of them like blood. Which didn't make sense, James knew for a fact he didn't have blood normally and in his shadow form he didn't even have a physical form so how could he still be bleeding?

Note to self... No more demons... Or invest in exorcism spells...

He didn't know how long he spent in that semi-conscious state, completely unaware of his surroundings and barely able to have lucid thoughts, but despite how hard it was to feel anything, the atrocious pain was all too easy to notice. And yet, strangely, James welcomed it.

Feeling pain means feeling something, feeling something means death isn't coming... Eh, I never thought I'd choose agony over death...

Had James still been a human on Earth in a similar situation, he was certain he would have already given up. He never was that great at handling pain, and it probably would have blinded him too much to realize what he would lose if he truly let go. Now, however? Now he knew what it was like to die, to miss all that you knew, but he also had a much more obvious reason to hold on.

If I don't make it, Goliath will... And if he cries David will go to the depths of the underworld to claw my face...

James chuckled in his mind before a spike of pain calmed him down.

Alright, it looks like my mind has recovered enough to think useful things. Is my body ready too?

James tried to leave his shadow state and get up, but all he managed to do was reopen some of the wounds that had managed to heal - or at least that's what he felt like, given the lack of physical shape to have wounds in the first place.

Ack! Alright, not doing that again for now... So, my mind is healed, my body is not, that's two out of the self trinity covered... What about my soul? Can I meditate?

James tried to ignore the pain and focus inward, and while he slowly managed to settle down into a meditative state the pain never went away, quite the contrary actually, for the closer he got to introspection the greater his agony grew. When he finally reached the point where he could properly maintain what he would call his "soul space", the great nothingness where his soul roamed and could interact with the hollow sphere of black threads that symbolized his numerous connections, and do so without having to focus on it actively, he took the time to observe things. And oh boy, were they bad.

Gashes floated in the nothingness, red and blue marks that tore away at the abstract reality James' soul floated in and revealed hints of an all too familiar purple realm of impossible fractals, making James panic. After quickly gazing into himself he was relieved to find that his soul was intact, though the shadowy film he had created to cover and protect it was damaged. Red and blue ruptures ran all over it, and in some places, the damage was so bad the darkness of the covering fell apart in patches that turned into an inky haze or black droplets floating around after some time.

So that's what felt like bleeding... I'm glad I did this in the first place... Well, while I'm here, might as well start fixing what I can.

James first tried to reform the broken pieces of his soul covering but found it impossible to expand shadows from the cuts left behind by the demon, the red and blue glowing and denying his attempts. After that, he tried to gather the shadowy floating pieces in the various states of matter and put them back where they belonged, but once again the wounds glowed and drove away everything he tried to attach to them.

So, just putting things back like it's just slime like I do with my body doesn't work... Ok, plan B.

James pulled at the threads of the hollow sphere, idly noting that the way they connected to his soul currently made him look like the silhouette of a genie with a very odd lamp. Disconnecting the threads - the incarnations of his metaphysical and magical links to infused objects - was incredibly hard. Even once he had managed to take out a single one from the rest it kept trying to plunge into him, to return to normal and fix itself. It was exactly what James needed.

Carefully James took the thread and approached it to one of the smallest of the numerous demonic cuts covering his "soul shell", and he slowly drove the tip into its black existence, trying his best to force it to emerge back on the other side of the cut instead of simply merging with the shell. All at once, the thread stopped struggling, seemingly understanding what he was trying to do, and let James manipulate it as he wished. Without an unruly thread, James was free to work with no worries, and he continued to sew the red and blue wound shut as his mother had taught him. She used to sew his torn clothes to repair them back when he was a kid and even a couple of times as a teen, and when the time had come for him to move out she had insisted he learned at least the basics, and he was very thankful for that right now. He missed her.

Now is not the time for that.

Slowly but surely the sides of the cut met one another and began to blur together, the various red and blue parts moving and morphing and changing and shrinking until they popped out of existence, leaving only a smooth black surface behind that the thread merged into now that its task was done, and James could feel it twitch and slither beneath to merge back into the main bundle that formed his soul's tail.

Great, it works. Now I just have to do the same... A lot more times. Sigh, guess I better get to it.

James pulled another thread from the rest much more easily this time, as though it understood what he planned to do with it, and got back to work. He continued the trend of working on the smaller wounds first, none of them looked like they were expanding so there was no rush, and without any constraint, he preferred to work his way up. Practice makes perfect, as they say, and as much as he wished he never had to do that again James knew better than to assume this would be his only time dealing with this sort of work, even if it was only to repair the ratlings' clothes once they got up to shenanigans once they were on the surface.

To think they were so close. Once James was done fixing himself, he could head straight up there and find a new home for them. Would he need to find them a school? They didn't exist in the eye of Zalcien's administration, and neither did he. Getting fake IDs and documents would probably be some of his first objectives along with finding a place to live, or at least a rudimentary outpost to plan their future and serve as a link back to the sewers' team and the orphanage. Should he try to make himself a citizen of the ASC? Or a foreign visitor? Should he try to imitate his original identity or create an entirely new one? What about finding a job? Should he stick to being Silhouette to make a living or-

Just as he was getting ready to pull another thread James realized his soul shell was completely healed. There were no more cuts or missing parts, the black flesh-like component of the shell apparently perfectly able to regenerate itself when it wasn't obstructed. The patches that had already fallen and transformed still floated in different states of matter in the ambient nothingness, but James had an idea for that.

Taking the first shadowy blob that he could find, James repeated his sewing technique on the large open gashes in the air, closing the red and blue cuts and sealing away the impossible purple fractals behind. The sheer size of the wound in the fabric of non-existence made the process longer than it needed to be, but it worked. One by one the gashes disappeared, only leaving behind floating black scars. Once James finished sewing shut the last one, he could feel a weight drop off his shoulder, a phantom pressure disappearing, and he sighed.

Finally done... I need to be ready for the next time something like that happens. I can't evade everything, I need better defenses AND better offenses to deal with tankier stuff. I relied too much on beating my enemies by constricting them with my tentacles or infusing them with my Shadow Balls, without that all I could do was run...

James sighed once more, going back over all the ways he could have handled the fight better. Objectively there wasn't much he could have done, Sydakors' wings of veins were a nightmare to deal with, though now that he thought about it maybe a spell or technique to cut them off might have helped. Really, he had just been lucky that the demon wanted to play with him and completely ignored his infusion attempts. Though the fact it was confident it wouldn't work against it was... Worrying. If he had listened to it, or worse if it turned out to have been right, he didn't dare to think what it would have done to the Commando and Sam... And him.

Let's try to wake up and get up again... I don't think they can handle themselves if I'm gone for too long.

James' astral self took a deep breath and ignored the few remnants of pain that still plagued his body, much more manageable than the constant agony he had been in previously. He emerged from his meditative state and slowly began to perceive his physical surroundings again. They were incredibly blurry and he couldn't see much further than what his body was in direct contact with, but it was already an incredible improvement over his first attempt before his little healing session.

He chose to wait for more of his senses to return, it wouldn't be very comforting for his men if he suddenly stood up only to be completely deaf and blind after all. Still, what little perception he had regained was slowly growing to be enough to realize he was indeed still hidden within the shadow of Sydakors' corpse and that said corpse was currently stored in the basement of the orphanage, if he recognized the walls and floor correctly. Considering the fact that he still had the image of dozens of children's and nuns' bodies spread out in this very basement engraved in his mind - probably for years to come - James was fairly certain that yes, he could recognize them.

Since he was alone, James figured he might as well try to stand up now. As he began to rise from the shadow of the demon's body as a black lump, a blurry black transparent head passed through the wall and looked down at him before the rest of the specter's body passed through the wall and floated down to look at James, forming a small nubby appendage to poke at him.

"Hello there. I'd appreciate it if you didn't poke me."

The ghostly child retracted its ectoplasmic arm and tilted its head.

"Thank you."

James finished returning to his usual Silhouette form before stretching and bending and turning, trying to work out the phantom kinks he could feel in his non-existent spine.

"Say, why are you alone down here? Shouldn't you be with the rest of the children and the nuns? They must be worried about you."

The ghost raised its shoulders before dropping them. Now that his senses returned to working properly, James began to feel some familiarity with it. Wasn't that the one that he had talked to first in the basement? Wasn't her name Trixie?

"Of course... You wanted to look at the demon didn't you?"

The blurry form of the ghost formed a foot to kick at an invisible pebble as arms appeared only for her to put her hands in imagined pockets.

"I understand you're curious, but it's dangerous. Had it been still alive, it would have been able to hurt you - even though you have no body."

She slumped her shoulders.

"Come on now, let's go back up. If hanging out with the other children and the nuns is so boring, you could just stay with me. I have to check on what everyone has been doing while I was busy, but after that, I have other children to take care of. I'm sure you would all have fun together."

She cheered up and began to bounce.

"Let's go. Staying down here can't be good for either of us."