Chapter 15: CH16: Hollow Hunt

Dotty repeatedly shook as Silas tightened her loaned saddle. The straps were easy enough to put on her, and he liked the saddle bag for his flintlock rifle, powder, paper, and ammunition. He brushed the nag beforehand, and she was excited when he mounted her. The mare trotted forward in front of the other horses in the town stables until she reached the end, turned around, and galloped down again to make sure a beautiful pure white mare saw them before galloping up to a mounted John.

 

“Mayhap I should have loaned thou one of mine. Thy nag seems spirited if stubborn against commands, cousin.” John said as if they were going for a mere ride instead of tracking down a hollow able to hide its presence among possessed animals.

 

They were alone, so Silas decided to speak his peace while the guards were outside the stable. “Methinks Dotty is more reliable than thee. Binding a seated officer of one of the 13 court guard squads was a fool-hardy move. Did the hollow pour worms in thy brain? Where did this madness come from? We don’t know if we can even find the beast.” Silas said.

 

Silas was unsure if the hollow needed a proper spiritual body anymore. The method of evolution it chose to use was more akin to a demonic beast than a hollow. He could blame himself or the thief who stole pure spiritual energy from his cave. That type of pure yang concentrated in a liquid form in the dark carried with it several great paths of cultivation. Rebirth was the nominal theme carried from the dark womb of the cave to the immaculate mushrooms transforming the pure concentrated spiritual energy borderline in the realm of yin. The hollow, in a sense, gained a new power from devouring the one who birthed him in a violent act. Ritually speaking, it was an act of a demonic sect and would have tons of concentrated yin-based spiritual energy in it. As malignant spirit yin-based spirit energy was what it wanted.

 

He needed a secretary to keep up with all the ritualism in his formations to get a handle on what happened. Silas decided to get some paper on his return and start making a list.

 

 John’s reply was remarkably calm. “Don’t take that tone with me, son. This is for the best. Shinigami are trouble; letting them train savages will quickly be our undoing. If they had taken good English souls from Sheol and trained them, I would understand; instead, they plucked the wild Aztec souls still pouring from,” John stopped himself. “This is a conversation with good wine, our pipes, and perhaps my daughter playing the ivory keys. Did thou know she could play thou expressed an interest for such music before?” John said.

 

“Mary is a fine girl, and if she wishes to play for me, I would be delighted to listen. But it seems my spiritual education tis not only lacking but practically nonexistent.” Silas said.

 

“After we bring Oscar to his senses, we’ll correct this ignorance. My daughter can help if thy pride can take being educated by a woman.” John said. 

 

John kicked his horse forward, and Silas followed the man’s black stallion surrounded by twelve guards wearing the Grisham family crest, a feathered blue dragon with golden horns shaped like a crown. Silas recognized the dragon as Cinderella but didn’t know what significance the family played back in Reverse London, if any. The men looked strong and, by their spiritual pressure, also wizards. Silas felt good about their chances but clung to his staff if they found more trouble than the guards could handle.

 

…

 

They traveled fast in the country, riding down the frozen and familiar road toward his lands. John hadn’t turned back to him while they rode out towards the mass of malignant energy. The forest was silent and felt congested like the lungs of a man dying of pneumonia. Birds flew overhead, gathering in ever greater numbers; as the wind blew harshly through the trees, icy branches sounded like windchimes as they rattled while the light of day dwindled. A sudden flurry stirred up colder than he had ever felt as they rode into the heart of the malignant power stuck to the horizon like a tumor. His staff in hand burned hot as they traveled into the dark.

 

Small globes of magic appeared, lighting the way while Silas kept his staff’s abilities secret. Howling crept through the wind until it was all he could hear. No amount of spirit sense helped him count the number of shining yellow eyes surrounding them as they rode fast and hard. The panting breaths of wolves sounded behind him as some broke from their howls to give chase.

 

He gripped the shaft of his staff as the men pulled cavalry sabers and hacked at any wolf that came too close while keeping a column protecting John and himself from the wolves. On the scale of spiritual pressure, the guards were superior to any score to the wolves, but the beasts kept coming, some almost the size of ponies.

 

The situation would only worsen if the hollow was allowed to persist. Manpower was almost as important as spiritual power at Silas’s current stage. It was a terrible situation to have an enemy that could control swarms of animals and make them more powerful.

 

A shout ran through the guards, one of them had an arrow sticking out of his chest.

 

Silas looked up to see red Indians alive but possessed, and he knew the situation had become far direr. It was like the entire new world had turned against them, like a tumor commandeering blood supplies in the body.

 

An arrow whizzed by his ear. If they were going to get out of this alive, they needed those archers dead.

 

Silas pulled his flintlock, fired it, and watched one of his great lead balls light up before it blasted a softball-sized hole in the chest of one of the warriors. He had three rifles in his saddle bag, and there was one less man to shoot them.

 

“Methinks we no longer have the element of surprise.” One of the guards shouted.

 

“Magic allowed instants only,” John yelled.

 

Magic, from blue lightning bolts to whips of fire, cut through the red Indians while the riders never stopped. Worms poured out of the poor men’s bodies, but they weren’t Silas’s concern. Even if a nearby tribe would lose some of its fighting men, Silas couldn’t afford to stoop and go help them. The most he could do was come by after and bring the women and children back to his land. To do that, he would have to conquer language and culture barriers; it wasn’t incredibly likely.

 

…

 

The woods came out into a clearing surrounded by splattered body parts. Mishappen sacs of flesh bulged about, sucking what meager amounts of spiritual energy existed from the air. Towers covered in familiar symbols thoughtlessly erected covered the clearing pulling the meagers to spiritual energy. Knowing the symbols didn’t mean the hollow knew the math behind them or the symbolism needed to get spiritual energy to react. That didn’t mean the hollow hadn’t tried to build something for itself in the world of the living. When the towers failed to do what the hollow wanted, it moved to the wiggling piles of flesh.

 

Malignant energy poured out of the clearing in waves leading to a deep hole in the ground. Fleshy lumps covered the ground leading to it somehow alive despite their conditions. Silas stopped his horse, and the others slowed before stopping.

 

“Silas, what art thou doing?” John asked.

 

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He stepped down from the saddle and pulled free his knife.

 

Grey flesh covered the outside of the moving mass except in a few places. Silas used his knife to move the flesh lump until an opening emerged with the foot of a bear sticking out between a red swollen labium. He saw two flaps and lifted them with the stick to see they were cancerous ovaries. No wonder the monster had left him alone; it had found a method to breed malignant animals faster. It was rudimentary and barbaric. 

 

Possession allowed spiritual energy to keep organs alive. That thought terrified him in ways he couldn’t put into words. The hollow was more like the alien contagion from the thing than a spiritual entity.

 

Silas pulled the bear from the birth canal to see a malformed thing half devoured by fleshy grey tumors. Whatever the hollow was doing, it was unsophisticated and in its earliest stages. Somehow it could keep organs alive outside bodies, only feeding on spiritual energy. Possession came to mind but used in ways impossible before.

 

The creature had to die and all it had built with it. If Silas left the tumorous organs to continue producing, eventually, something may be born viable. Such strange creatures born from rampant cancerous cells would be abominations. The only thing he could think of to get rid of them was fire.

 

“My lord, they look like the beast was making itself pleasure holes.” A guard said.

 

The other men laughed, and John along with them. “Whoever used that fireball spell before, do it again on these things. Burn it to the last bit. We can’t allow them to exist.” Silas said.

 

The guard in question looked to John, who nodded his accent. Soon the flesh mounds were burning bright while the hole in the ground loomed in front of them. Malignance like he had never sensed before poured from the hole, and the odds were good; even more flesh mounds pulsated inside.

 

Silas pulled Dotty away from the fire because her saddle bag had plenty of gunpowder. The last thing he wanted was to blow up his loyal spirit beast. She shook her head at the hole; that was all he needed to know her opinion.

 

“Tis a dumb idea to brave the depths in an enemy's territory, but what choice do I have,” Silas said, and she looked away from him.

 

“Quite an intelligent beast, a byproduct of thy own spirit techniques,” John said.

 

“A happy accident, will thou unleash hell upon the enemy base and call it a day?” Silas said.

 

He felt a growing malignance from the pit. He would bet all his potatoes and delicious spirit yams next harvest that something had been born viable in the pit.

 

The power continued to rise while the birds flew overhead; millions had to be infected with the same malignant hollow spirit energy as the wolves and men. When of the men stepped out of the light, his eyes were completely yellow and slit.

 

“Trespassers and rapists, the lot of thee. My people were here; first, we are the ones who settled the land long before thee.”

 

Birds cowed at the man’s words, and thunder boomed across the sky. Ice fell in earnest as the temperatures took a dive. Chill bumps appeared on the possessed man’s bare skin, and Silas noticed the Red Indian’s fingers were black in some places.

 

“Thy father was English and my cousin by blood. Don’t talk to me about rape when he traded a few bushels of corn and a donkey for thy mother. A comely mistress she might be but thou art a bastard; thou art the one who killed thy father.” John said.

 

The boy froze at the accusation, and then his attention fell on Silas.

 

“Thou promised to be my end upon our next meeting. Methinks thy words were empty as the air. Thou art not mighty; thy land and secrets will be mine.” Oscar said.

 

“An interesting claim. But I have had time to think over how to best thee. Methinks, I have many answers, and thy chaotic den tis no defense from me. Observe and see thy doom.” Silas said.

 

“John, before we assail the beast's den, could thy men procure twelve posts. It will only take a moment to deny this enemy his resources and bar his escape.” Silas said.

 

John was a great guy when he wasn’t working against Silas. The Red Indian only crossed his arms.

 

“I know thou and have seen thy works. If thou had a way to stop me, thou would have.” Oscar said.

 

“Oh, and someone will capture that savage I will need some of its blood to power my spell,” Silas said before John used the same binding spell on it, he used on Soifon.

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