Sophia ran out of water before she ran out of fire sprites to capture.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. Her waterskin was empty, but it wasn't even close to the only water she was carrying; that would be foolish when the plan was to collect a lot of fireflower tops. The sprites took more water than the fireflowers because she had to be fast, but she still had almost half of her water left, but that was because she kept it, not because there weren't enough sprites. Sophia had a feeling there was something stronger if they went farther into the Hollow. That wasn't always true, especially with monsters that had only recently arrived, but there was generally more mana deeper in and that usually meant stronger monsters.

Sophia managed to capture six fire sprites before she ran out of water she was willing to use on the nearby fire sprites. Maybe she was wrong about there being better ones farther in, but there were definitely more. If she was wrong about that, too, she could always harvest the fireflowers they came for. In fact, she should probably get some more of those no matter what they did.

Sophia shifted from capturing the fire sprites to killing them. Collected Knowledge told her that they were vulnerable to both True Death magic and to Death's Embrace, which meant that her Force Bolts would work well on them and her True Death bolts would work even better. She could probably kill them by touching them, whether that was with her hand or with a feather, but using magic was far safer; she wasn't immune to their innate fire.

The more she fought them, the more Sophia knew that the fire sprites were weak. A few of them were past the first upgrade, but the majority weren't. It was almost sad the way they kept mindlessly attacking, but Sophia didn't let that affect her too much. They were monsters, after all; if they could think enough to even try to preserve their lives, she'd try, but they had no more sense of self preservation than mana constructs. Maybe that was what they were, too; she couldn't tell. The difference between a mana construct monster and a monster that could have reality if released was beyond her ability to differentiate magically; she had to do it by how they acted, and these acted completely mindless.

Controlled.

Sophia frowned at that thought. In a dungeon, she'd know who the controller was, but there wasn't supposed to be a controller in a Hollow. At the same time, Hollows were made by the plants. Maybe there was more to that than she'd thought. Plants could communicate, couldn't they?

They cleared out an arc that was probably four or five hundred feet in any direction from where they'd started before the fire sprites simply stopped rising from the fireflowers. The stop wasn't sudden, but it still made Sophia wonder. Had they stopped because it was too far for the ones on the edges to tell what was going on and therefore they didn't see any reason to come fight, or had they stopped because they were told to stop throwing their lives away?

Dav shimmered as he returned to the real world. "That was interesting. It was almost more like a workout than a real fight. They were not very creative."

They also weren't very powerful," Sophia added as she turned towards Jax. He was the most knowledgeable person here and the one who recommended the Hollow, so he was the most likely to know if there was a point in heading farther in. "But I did pick up some Collected Knowledge off them, so if we want to go deeper and see if there's something better, we'll have that advantage. Should we?"

Jax shook his head. "We're going to end up with a team name that has feathers in it at this rate."

"Is that such a bad thing?" Sophia grinned at Jax. She was pretty sure he was right, at least if someone else picked their team name. Everyone carried feathers and had them bonded to their weapons, their armor, and even their clothing. Sophia had done her best to make them look like decorations, but they were weapons in their own right as well as allowing Sophia to share many of her plume-based Abilities with her allies. "One of these days I'll figure out how to share the rest. I ought to be able to, there's no reason for it to pick and choose."

Jax chuckled. "If that's what you want to dedicate your Grand Talent to, go for it. It sounds like a good one; I never expected I'd find a shared-knowledge buff from a lower upgrade to be impactful, but yours is. Maybe you can make the rest work, too. If you do, I can put up with the feathers."

Sophia was pretty sure he didn't actually mind, that he was teasing her more than anything else. She was also pretty sure he didn't intend to stop teasing her about it, whether or not they became known as the Feathered Friends or something equally silly.

"As for going farther in, maybe." Jax frowned. "I didn't expect there to be monsters here; this was supposed to just be a gathering stop. If they're this easy, maybe we can pick up enough Wisps to get Dav his upgrade and skip the Underloam. Hey, Dav, how many Wisps do you still need?"

"Uh." Dav paused and checked before he answered. "Seven. It was eleven before we got in here, so I'll get there if we do that two or three more times. Probably."

Sophia nodded to herself. The diminishing returns from repeated kills in the same Hollow had bitten them more than once. "I'm a little surprised that this was worth a full four Wisps. They really weren't that tough."

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"That's because you have an easy way to kill them and Dav doesn't take the hurt from their explosions that he should. Oh, and he can get into their realm so that they can't just escape him and burn him without being hit. Sprites are nasty if you don't have the right tools and they're especially bad for settlements. Mother has a couple teams specifically set up to fight spirits, I'm pretty sure that if we went back to Izel that's where we'd end up during the next monster incursion. Well, you would; I really couldn't do much to them." Ci'an shook her head. "Which is exactly why we should go deeper. Not only will we get the Wisps Dav needs, there's a good chance of a Feat here."

"Why would there be a Feat here?" Jax objected. "This place is visited regularly and no one's reported a Feat. Most Hollows don't grant Feats."

"Only the ones that haven't been fully cleared of monsters in years," Ci'an agreed. "And didn't you say that people rarely ever mention fire sprites here? I'm pretty sure we're close enough to Mazehold for the monsters to get there if they left, so this should count."

"If there's any chance to avoid the Underloam, I'm in," Xin'ri contributed.

"I guess that's the answer then," Dav said with a laugh in his voice. "I don't think the Cord will keep me in the spirit realm for long when we get in closer; it knocked me out after what, an hour this time? Less? So I'd like to save it for when we find something nastier than these small things."

"Then let's go," Sophia nodded and set off towards the area with more mana. It was a tiny increase, but it was possible to tell. It was directly away from the edge of the Hollow where there were no fireflowers, which helped.

They weren't attacked as they moved through the vegetation. Fireflowers were common, but a number of other plants also seemed to thrive in the warmth and mana level. Some of them were probably valuable, but Sophia wasn't a herbalist; she didn't even know where to start. Jax, Ci'an, and Xin'ri each had the group stop when they saw something particularly notable. Sophia kind of understood the flame iris; it was another fiery flower. She didn't know anything about "heatwort" or "steelfriend," but she figured she didn't have to.

The Hollow was larger than Sophia expected and the change in the level of mana was slow enough that the only real guide was watching the fire flowers grow. About a half mile into the Hollow, there were four fireflowers as tall as Sophia's shoulder. All of the fireflowers around them were at least six inches shorter.

They stared at the four for a moment before Sophia broke the silence. "Do you think the giant fireflowers or any fire spirits they hold will be more valuable? Which should I try to capture?"

"Both, if you can, but I can get the flowers. I can't get the sprites," Xin'ri answered easily. "These are going to need the big boxes, but I should still be able to manage it. Get ready to defend me; I'm going to start with this one."

Xin'ri laid out her tools. She gave one last look at the group to make sure everyone was ready before she leaned back, keeping her head well away from the top of the fireflower, and snipped the first part of the stem that held the flower in place.

A fire sprite rose straight up from the fireflower. Sophia didn't wait to see what it did; she splashed it with water and concentrated on trapping it in a Firewater Plume. It resisted her, but Sophia's attempt pulled its attention away from Xin'ri and towards Sophia.

It dove towards Sophia, only to be met by Dav's sword.

Twice.

Flame spilled from the cuts Dav and his reflection gave Sophia and she frantically tried to grab the water she'd spilled and use it to encapsulate the fire sprite. It resisted once again and darted towards Sophia. She swore at it and reached for an Ability she hadn't used very often.

Death's Embrace

There are those that walk the line between life and death. Many are difficult to harm, yet you know the way to bring them to the sweet embrace of death as easily as the living.

She'd only picked it up recently, but she'd tested it enough to know that the Guide's interpretation of "walking the line between life and death" was different from Sophia's. The sprite didn't have a physical form and it lived primarily in the spirit world; either of those was enough to make the Ability work.

If it was dead, it couldn't resist. Sealing it in the firewater plume would kill it anyway.

Sophia felt her fingers redden as her hand passed through the sprite, but a moment later the water finally swirled around the sprite. Less hissed away as steam than she expected; the plume that remained wasn't just blue and red; it gave off sparks as it floated where the fire sprite once was. Sophia started to reach out towards it, before motion in the corner of her eye made her turn.

The fire sprite wasn't alone.

The good news, such as it was, was that there were only three of the larger, stronger fire sprites. The rest were smaller, though none of the ones Sophia could see were as small as the ones they'd originally fought. From their feel and from Collected Knowledge, Sophia could guess that the three big ones were more or less at the same point as Ci'an, Taika, and Sophia: the very beginning of the second upgrade. The next largest were probably where Dav was, right before the second upgrade.

The bad news was that there were dozens of the smaller sprites. Individually, they weren't a problem. All together, they might be.

Sophia grinned anyway. This would definitely get Dav to the second upgrade. They'd be able to head directly to Mazehold after that. All they had to do was get through this, and so far Sophia hadn't seen anything to really worry about. Not when Dav could fight them in their own realm and Sophia could capture even the large ones.

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