Constantine arrived at Wayne Manor. Batman claimed that Red Robin had been kidnapped and sacrificed by a bunch of cultists, but whatever was now possessing his body was being strangely cooperative unless you messed with his hands. It was cupping them like it was holding something, but they had no idea what.
By some miracle, they decided to be sensible and call him before they made the situation worse.
“So what exactly did these cultists try to summon?”
“It was someone called the Mighty Conqueror Phantom, Usurper of the Ghost King.”
“Ghost King? Odd choice.”
If you wanted power from a questionable source, you summoned demons. Spirits were a whole different beast. Neverborns or Embodiments were basically deities and had their own agenda, but the ghosts were mostly dead humans. Powerful, sure, but they didn’t work like demons.
A high-ranking demon could give you power and whatever you wanted in exchange for souls, but high-ranking ghosts were all just bureaucrats.
Except for Pariah Dark. Dark before he was a Pariah was a warlord in life, and somehow got himself promoted up the web of administration to Ghost King where he could do minimal damage. Then he was imprisoned for proving that the damage he could do was anything but minimal. Constantine heard Pariah briefly got out and was imprisoned again, but why think whoever did that could grant them power?
And forcing them into a sacrifice was even stranger. It made sense for demons. Lower-ranking demons needed it to remain in the material plane, and for high-ranking ones it doubled as a precaution to keep them from assuming a more powerful form. Powerful spirits didn’t need it. That kind of sacrifice meant nothing to the Neverborn/Embodiments.
“This room. Nightwing’s been keeping an eye on them.”
He opened the door and Constantine saw whatever was inhabiting Red Robin’s body sitting on the couch with Nightwing in the corner.
He swore as a bunch of things clicked into place. Not about the cultists, they were even more nonsensical, but about the entity they summoned.
“Red Robin’s?” asked Batman.
“No, the Queen of England’s,” he snapped, “of course it’s Robin’s soul.”
There was no reason why some malicious entity would still be holding the soul of whoever was sacrificed to it, except maybe to eat it. A demon would’ve done so by now, so he wasn’t dealing with one of those.
Whatever they summoned, it was probably a ghost, and probably not Pariah Dark. Meaning whoever it was, they were probably once human.
And most humans would be horrified to be put inside someone else’s dead body.
He sat down next to the entity while Batman stayed back. The spirit was just staring at the soul in their hands.
“Hey, what are you doing with that boy’s soul?”
“I… I don’t want him to die…” Constantine’s eyes widened. They spoke in Red Robin’s voice but with their own voice layered on top of it. They sounded like just another kid, probably one Red Robin’s age. “I don’t want to be in his body but… they killed him, and I don’t know how to give it back… I just… I don’t know what to do…” The spirit was on the edge of crying.
“Hey, hey, it’s going to be okay,” Constantine tried to sound comforting. “Don’t worry. I’m an expert in magic. We’re going to get you out and we’re going to put him back. You’re doing a good job by keeping his soul here for now. Is removing you from his body going to hurt you?”
He shook his head. “No. It shouldn’t. I don’t know why they gave me his. I’m not even completely dead. I still have my original body.”
“You do?” Constantine focused on looking at things not in the material plane and oh. Yeah. That was definitely another kid. He didn’t look dead at all. Had those cultists put another living human in Red Robin’s body? No, the boy’s soul had all the marks of a being that crossed over. What the hell was he dealing with?
“That’s either going to make this harder or simpler. Do you know what you are exactly?”
He nodded. “I’m… I’m a half ghost or a ghost hybrid. The other ghosts call me a halfa, but I don’t know if that’s supposed to be a slur or not.” Bloody hell if that wasn’t depressing. “I died and my ghost formed inside my body and… fused with it? And brought me back? I tested if I could separate my ghost from my human half once, but when I tried it on my hand, the human half started degloving and my ghost half started melting.”
Okay, that would make this more complicated because he would have to make sure his spell kept track of both bodies. The spirit’s hold on his own body was stronger than his hold on Red Robin’s, but if Constantine put in too much power to force the spirit out, it could force him out of all the bodies he was inhabiting, and he couldn’t risk that.
“Yeah. I couldn’t feel it for a while, but it healed up fine.”
Healing suggested the kid’s real body was still alive and he wasn’t just inhabiting his own corpse. Fuck. If he healed that meant he probably aged too. He wasn’t dealing with a kid who could’ve died 100 or 1000 years ago, but a kid who still a kid by every metric.
“Uh… Phantom.” That was definitely a pseudonym, but fine.
“Okay, Phantom. We’re going to need to work fast so that Red Robin’s soul isn’t damaged from being out of his body for too long. I’m going to prepare a ritual that should put him back while removing you. Do you think you can keep a hold of his soul while I work?”
Phantom nodded. “You... are you sure you can do it? They cut his throat. He’s dead.”
“That won’t be a problem. I can work with that.” Bloody hell. Who bloody summons a kid into the dead body of another kid? Bastards, that’s who.
He stood up and walked back to Batman. His Bat’s normal stoicism was breaking with concern and worry. “How’s Red Robin?” he asked as they exited the room.
“Dead for now, but he’s lucky Phantom doesn’t want anything to do with the whole sacrificing business. Just don’t try to mess with the kid’s grip on Red Robin’s soul. If we lose that, there’s not much we can do. Now what in the bloody hell were those cultists thinking!? Spirits don’t work like demons.”
