CH8: A Hollow's Power

Sounds of steel slamming against wood resounded through the sounds of falling ice as a tall African slave cut indentions in a post more akin to granite than wood. Light flared each time the ax hit the stony bark under the mundane crop-killing icy downpour. If the crops from neighboring farms weren't already harvested, they would be ruined, worsening the already desperate famine. Yet in the ice that any man with sense would seek shelter in, the slave continued to rip up the floorboards to their lifeboat, heedless of the shark circling them.

He doubted they would remove his protections before contacting the town. No horses were gone from the stable, and on foot, it took nearly 3 days to go from his homestead to Low Delaware town. On Dotty's back, he might make it in half a day, while hauling a full wagon took a full day of travel. There was no advantage to showing their hand instead of leaving to warn the town. Their actions led him to another hypothesis.

Silas thought the people may have been brainwashed by the hollow, or religious fanaticism might have claimed them. But, on the other hand, Silas didn't know if he could truly trust believers in made-up deities.

By the hollow's own words, at one time, chief hollows restricted the hollow's attacks on living humans. Those protections were lifted, or the Grande Vasto Lordes were no more. That wasn't surprising in the bleach universe, with heavy hitters like the head captain existing.

Silas approached the men as Cletus, the overseer, tied the leather straps to the post, but the donkey refused to move. Cletus lambasted the donkey with his horsewhip, but the stubborn animal refused to move as if it had more sense than the man trying to uproot one of the few objects protecting the farm.

From their actions, Silas couldn't comfortably leave them at the farm. At the same time, he delivered crops and couldn't trust them to deliver such precious cargo. The post they risked their lives and the life of one of Silas's animals to uproot was redundant. There were a few redundant posts to alleviate the fence's strain if the bear hollow attacked again.

Under the constant icy rain, Silas wasn't heard approaching the group. They couldn't know he could sense their minuscule spiritual pressure or see the whites of their eyes even through the falling ice. He wasn't sure if he actually saw them or if that was his interpretation through his spirit sense.

Mortal limits were slowly coming undone, and Silas could feel his veins drinking the spiritual energy in the air. Yin aligned with ice, snow, and winter, letting the land rest. Silas felt his body relax a little as he absorbed the feminine energy. While there wasn't enough to cultivate effectively, it gave his body a much-needed boost to accelerate the process to reach the first stage.

"How now fair worker and freedom seekers has my generosity robbed thee of sense. None of thee I hold as cousin, but I am still thy master and boss. So answer me when I ask why art thou stealing my sealing post?"

The slave turned and swung his ax, and Silas caught it. He felt the man push with all the might of a body used to backbreaking farm work with a height much greater than Silas's. By all accounts, a man of a mere 5'10" shouldn't be able to match a man like the ax-wielding African. By the black god's might, all things being equal, Silas should have been killed quickly by the man.

Cut off and isolated, no posse would go after the group after they took the post and fled to wilder lands. Unfortunately, their esoteric knowledge was lacking, and Silas hadn't taught them. It was similar to a rich man in a bunker with his bodyguards. The strong would use their power when the capital no longer held sway. To put it bluntly, they thought they could steal from him and get away without a chance of reprisal. After all, the monster was prowling, and the puritans would assume Silas had summoned it by the markings they would find on his fence.

Or that was his assumption upon catching the ax and stopping the slave dead. It would fit, except there was nothing in the man's eyes. Instead, bumps emerged from the man's skin until they moved just under the worker's flesh, exposing itself as a parasite.

Cletus rushed him, but Silas used his aura to trip the man before planting a knee in the overseer's face. Then, he swung the ax shaft and smacked the dutchman across the side of the head before punching the first tall man in the throat.

One of the other workers started laughing as the worms poked through the slaves' and overseer's skin. Together they spoke.

"Thy slaves have been commandeered by a more worthy master. Do marvel at my new power; it was a gift given by thee. Father always spoke of evil spirits and possession; he would roll in his grave if he saw my power. Soon thou shall join the ranks of my army of living men, and then the souls of thousands will be mine." The bear hollow said.

It was not abnormal for hollows to have strange abilities. Possessing and modifying worms to puppet people was impressive unless it could only be used on living people. Suppose the ability worked on spiritual entities like other hollows. In that case, the bear hollow could set itself up to quickly evolve.

A child becoming a hollow might be the reason for its poor planning. Silas smirked at the thought, even if it wasn't the time. The hollow didn't know he felt relieved by its admission even as he began pondering a plan involving chickens and the worms. If he could extract the worms and determine their life cycle, he might have found a cheap source of spiritual energy for his chickens.

One of the men tackled him, and he felt spiritual pressure rise from one of the worms. It was doing some delicate work to commandeer the man's body. Still, he wasn't worried.

Silas brought an elbow down on the man's neck, and he fell like a weight. While the worms were interesting, they were ultimately hollow-based and limited in the fence. Outside, things would be far scarier. Unlike the hollow, they weren't melting on the spot thanks to being in the bodies of men, but that didn't mean they could use their power with impunity. Seals were powerful tools, and the worms, even possessed by hollow spiritual energy, couldn't fool them completely.

The man fell like a ton of bricks, and Silas's aura-powered blow stunned the worms in his body. It was shocking that the hollow would gift-wrap a situation to increase loyalty with his men.

He would have to use up some of the few spiritual herbs he was able to cultivate on his farm to make a cleansing potion. From there, he would put the evacuated worms in a quarantined box and feed them mushrooms.

Silas gripped his wrists and tried to work his joints. The cold was starting to get to him. He didn't dress warmly in his shack because the active distiller kept it warm. Even his over 60% cultivated veins weren't enough to fight the cold mixed with spiritual energy. A little yin was good but too much made his joints hurt.

After knocking the rest of his workers out, he inspected the donkey. While there were worms inside of it, they failed to take the beast of burden over. The biology of a donkey was very different from a man, so it made some sense. He would still have to feed it a cleansing draft and collect its worm-filled shit to add to the others. Silas didn't feel any worms in his body but would take a draft, too, just in case. An ounce of preparation was worth a pound of cure.

"How?" Cletus asked, but it was clearly the hollow.

"Thou art a child. No matter how clever or malignant thy spirit, thy mind is an open book. Thou art obsessive and consumed thy mother; what else will thou do than attack my holdings. Methinks the next time we meet, I'll subdue or destroy thou." Silas said with a playful tone at the end.

While he wasn't high on mushrooms, he was inebriated on life. His people weren't traitors, only wormy; he was over the hump in cultivating his veins, and the hollow gift wrapped a new method to increase his spiritual gains in a pleasurable way. Eggs filled with spiritual energy would make a great breakfast.

Silas cut the leather straps used to pull the post free and used them to bind the bodies of his workers. He waved his hand, and the donkey followed him to a shack on the edge of the homestead, where he kept some dried spiritual herbs. He was glad they had a second outhouse dug but wished they had more.

"Thy mind is riddled with holes and foul like a rotten corpse. Thoughts bubbled up from thy head foul as carrion fowls. Whether it's the worms in the dirt or birds in the sky, I can control them. After the storm, prepare thy self for death upon feathered wings and an empty belly." The hollow said through Cletus.

"Methinks, thou bluff to bolster thy courage in the face of annihilation. Thy fur is ratty and matted, and thy guts art full of carrion worms. Chips cover thy mask from my musket's wrath, and I will destroy thee when I strike next. Run to the edge of the earth and board a ship to new lands; only then can thou hope to escape me. Flee to the Shinigami if thou desire an easy death; when I strike, thou down in my will, thou shall be forever more." Silas said with a smile.

He saw the beast as nothing more than another animal. Cultivators have dealt with spirit beasts, and he would gladly deal with the hollow. Moreover, the worms would allow him to figure out how to handle malignant spiritual energy for later.