CH3: Hallow and Mushrooms.

Disaster struck upon returning to his lands, leaving him in a dower mood. Tracks from the beast encircled his fence and found a weakness. Buster, the brave dog, had tried to fight the creature, but his faithful companion's body lay cold in the muddy black dirt. Chickens were mutilated, his hogs gutted, and even his lone milk cow hadn't been spared. Dotty wasn't safe in her stall, and Silas hadn't checked his cave, but the rock remained in place.

Silas took his iron carving tools and some hog's blood before it dried. If Silas knew what he was fighting, maybe something less noticeable could have been built to protect his land. Unfortunately, his lack of information made a general protection necessary.

He carved as the crows and buzzards came to feed on his livestock without even the time to bury his friend. The symbols glowed after the hog blood filled them, hardening the post he carved from a wooden support beam meant for his house. The shack would be his home for the foreseeable future, and Silas wouldn't even have Buster to keep him warm.

By sunset, he drove the posts in the ground connecting the fence around his homestead to his cave. Soon he planned to build another fence around his property line. Once the posts were in and the sun had finally crept under the horizon, he went to work burying his friend. Buster deserved a better friend than Silas, someone who would bury the good boy instead of worrying about his own skin.

The overly warm winter was great for keeping his crops growing well past their season, but he hated the bugs. Silas killed a mosquito that could be what finally killed him if the monster didn't first.

He felt it when the monster tried to get through the fence. Silas felt a ripple as the monster that killed Buster tried its luck again. All he could see was his posts slowly flashing as they struggled to keep the monster at bay.

Silas made his way to his immortal's cave and barricaded himself inside. Even if the monster managed to break through the fence, the cave would buy him time. He pulled a knife from one of the leather bags on his tool shelf and cut a piece off one of the smaller mushrooms.

Cultivation was a slow process that could take decades before it showed any signs of progress. Mystical herbs were rarer than gold, and the competition over them was cutthroat. As a mortal with no spiritual talent to speak of cultivation, the normal way was impossible. He had to be clever if he wanted to get anywhere. With that in mind, he built his immortals cave with the idea that normal cultivation was impossible. Since breathing in spiritual energy wasn't possible, consumption became the best option to push the spiritual energy into his blood for cultivation.

Gathering spiritual energy without much spiritual sense was mostly guesswork, especially in a new world with low levels of the stuff. If the symbols Silas carved didn't glow, he wouldn't know they activated. Likewise, someone with even less spiritual sense than him might not see a thing. As for the mushrooms, they were the easiest thing to grow in the dark cave where his spiritual energy experiments took place. His mycology wasn't very good, but he knew by the look of them that they were a little on the poisonous hallucinogen side.

Plan A had been to buy a new cow, have it consume the mushroom, and then drink the animal's pee. Plan B was to take microdoses of it and cultivate it over the next year. But the wolves were at the door, so it was time for plan C.

Silas shoved a piece of mushroom in his mouth and fell into practiced cultivation. His technique had been carefully modified while he waited to reach adulthood. Using the parts of the technique to breathe in spiritual energy was a waste of time. Even in the cave, the spiritual energy was too thin for someone with low spiritual sensitivity. Digestion naturally pushed parts of the mushroom into his bloodstream where he wanted it anyway. With that in mind, all he had to do was the back end of cultivation. He took the spiritual energy from his blood and pushed it into the cells lining his veins.

His body started cramping, and spots started appearing in his vision. The world started spinning, and a squaw with a long short chain hanging from her chest started yelling gibberish at him. Silas tried to ignore it while pushing the dense spiritual energy into his veins with his cultivation technique. Only after all the veins have been transformed by the spiritual energy could he reach the first stage of cultivation.

Silas drained part of a jug filled with distilled water. He wasn't risking parasites and bacteria if he could help it. While his body cramped all over, he wasn't dying for the most part. Blood wasn't pouring out of his mouth; there was only an annoying spirit with a chain yelling at him in what he guessed was Algonquian.

"Hark thee squaw shut thy mouth, or my hand will cut short thy afterlife," Silas said before cutting off another piece of mushroom.

A wave of something flowed from his body before he could subdue it. His cultivation process had been greatly shortened by focusing only on the process's back half. It would be considered a cheat, except the world he lived in scarcely had any spiritual energy.

Silas looked the spirit over and paid careful attention to the chain attached to the woman's chest. He narrowed his eyes before nodding slowly. The woman shrieked when he grabbed her and slid open the cave entrance much easier.

"Mercy cousin, thy wrath has made me see sense. A boon, I beg thou can't throw me from the cave, or the monster will surely rip me to pieces." The squaw said.

Silas looked the teen native up and down before sighing loudly, so she knew he was giving up a lot. The girl wasn't unattractive, only dead or a hallucination brought on by the mushroom. Her speech made him think the latter; few squaws bothered learning the king's English. He was certain more red-Indians knew Spanish and French than English.

"Methinks, thou beg without an offer of payment and expect looks to be thy currency. What can thou do to earn thy keep?" The beating against his fence had grown, but the beast hadn't managed to break the new seals on the fence. His immortal's cave might be less than a year old, but it has had more than a growing season and half a harvest to collect spiritual energy and store it in mushrooms.

"Thy fields are vast with few hands to harvest, and the beast is scarce when the sun is high. I am no great spirit but methinks my form is sturdy enough to harvest turnips, spinach, and tobacco. I beg of thou let this mistress be thy cousin and work." The spirit said.

"Methinks thou art trying to trick me. If spirits could work the fields, thee would toil under dead masters. Why spend thy time here?" Silas asked, and the spirit looked troubled.

She pulled at her braided hair before looking down at her chain. In the end, it was faint, but Silas could see it slowly dissolving. That's when it all clicked. He knew where he was and what was happening. The squaw would become a monster, just like the beast who attacked his farm and the carriage full of people. The woman might even know the hallow.

The woman took the first step by lifting his water jug and putting it back down. Silas himself likely lifted it if this was a hallucination.

Silas thought about ripping her from his immortal's cave until the woman spoke. "The pain is gone here. Thy secret dwelling has properties to soothe the spirit." In other words, she stole some of the spiritual energy in his immortal cave. So letting her stay could only become a problem.

But he had crops that needed harvesting, and spirits didn't need to be paid in food or coin, only time in his immortal's cave. He would have time to devise a fence for malevolent spirits if she harvested his crops.

"What's thy name squaw?" Silas asked.

"My husband was a pale skin like thou. My name is Awullsu, but my husband called me Su." And like that, he had his first landlocked servant to work his fields while he did more important work.

Silas felt his guts twist and knew the mushroom was definitely poisonous. He struggled to cycle his cultivation and strengthen himself. Plan A was looking better and better as his body cramped and a painful knot squeezed his guts. He felt a mad gathering of screaming souls appear on the edge of his senses; nails on a chalkboard hurt his ears and made him cringe. He felt the tiny dots of spirits on his farm slowly get sucked into the malevolent mass like a tumor spreading to the rest of the body; it took spirits. Only his fence kept the beast back, and the night was still young while the monster beat away at Silas's protection.