Smaller fire sprites dove towards the group while the large ones backed away. That made Sophia frown; she couldn't easily capture them if they ran away from her. Firewater Plume didn't work outside her aura, her domain, and it also didn't work if there wasn't enough water nearby. More water was needed for bigger and hotter fires, which meant the Hollow was not even close to humid enough to capture a single fire sprite without the water she'd brought in. Even a small one would be too much.

That meant she had to fall back on other Abilities. She already knew that she'd get the same comment from Jax that she'd gotten on several previous Hollows, that this would be a lot easier if she could summon her monsters. She wasn't certain if Cliff couldn't or if he just refused, but either way the result was the same: he'd only summon his collected monsters when it was in defense of an area.

The restriction wasn't important when they were defending Tiwaz's complex any more than it was when they were dealing with the assault on the ruins back in the Skylands. It wasn't even important when they camped overnight; Cliff was happy to summon monsters he now called gestalts to defend their campsite.

It mattered a lot when they went into a Hollow. Sophia expected it would matter in the Maze, as well. She was pretty sure that the problem was that Cliff was a dungeon core; he really, really wanted to set up a proper dungeon, and sending monsters wandering over the countryside was bad form unless the dungeon was full. She could sometimes talk Cliff into summoning one Echo, but that was generally it.

An Echo would be really nice right now. They might be faux dragons, but even a fake dragon was useful. It would be limited since it was defending her rather than their territory. Sophia was fine with that. The Echoes were second upgrade now, if Cliff summoned the strongest one he could, and that meant almost as much as having another person. The fact that she could pick what they were strong against helped, too. "Cliff, can you let me have an ice Echo?"

"One," Cliff answered firmly. "And it will have to stay within our domain."

"Sounds good." Sophia carefully set her current waterskin at her feet; she shouldn't use it now, but she was going to want it later. A moment later, she poofed into dozens of feathers as a white dragon whose shoulder reached at least a foot higher than Sophia's head with horns and wings translucent like ice stepped forward from her former location. It took a surprising amount of practice to make it smooth enough that an onlooker would think it was a transformation rather than a summons and a defensive Ability, but Sophia expected it to be very useful at some point in her future.

It was just in time.

A trio of balls of fire headed directly for where Sophia had been only moments before from the three larger fire sprites. One sailed through the spot where she had been without hitting anything, one impacted cleanly on the ice Echo's chest, and one ran into a feather that happened to move in the wrong direction at the wrong time.

The ice Echo roared, but Sophia could tell it would take more than that to truly harm it; at the most, the fire had melted its outer scales. They would refreeze soon enough. If two or three hit in quick succession, that might not be true but one could be managed.

The one that hit Sophia's feather was both more and less effective. It was more effective because when the impact with the feather halted it in place, it set the feather on fire, leaving only a burnt quill that floated to the ground. It was less effective because Sophia had dozens of similar feathers and the loss of one meant nothing. If she had to, she could return to her natural form unharmed as long as a single feather remained.

Overall, she felt lucky. Sure, she'd have been fine if she hadn't shifted; that was what Shield did. That didn't mean she wasn't grateful to avoid it.

"Get the small ones," Dav called out mentally. "I'll herd the big ones over to you once the small ones are gone." He untied the Cord of Spirit Ice from his shoulder instead of using it to shift into the spirit world. That made his plan obvious; he was going to use it to capture one of the spirits instead of directly fighting them. That was what the cord did, after all, and it ought to work well on fire sprites.

"I have the one behind Sophia's dragon," Ci'an answered coolly. "It won't attack again."

That left only one of the huge fire sprites unaccounted for, but Sophia couldn't worry about that right now; she'd have to trust Jax to handle it until Dav could get to it to help. She needed to handle the smaller fire sprites and the best option she had for that was a Force Blast. She called on Death's Embrace and carefully shaped the spell to strike the largest concentration of fire sprites she could see.

It hit four of them. Sophia wasn't particularly happy with that; they were too spread out. Worse, it dissipated none of them. They all looked a little smaller and moved a little slower as they charged towards her, but they weren't stopped or even greatly harmed, at least not as far as she could tell.

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What it did do was slow them enough that there were seven fire sprites in range when the ice dragon Echo reared up on her rear legs and flapped her wings to create snow that blew directly at the fire sprites. They melted the snowflakes, but that created water that they had to fly through. It hissed into steam and they shrank even more. The four that were hit twice were suddenly smaller than the ones at the entrance to the Hollow.

That made them easy pickings for Xin'ri. She raised her staff and dirt rained from above each of them, dragging tiny bits of fire with itself as it fell. None of the four made it closer than a dozen feet from where Sophia started.

Sophia took on the other three with True Death Bolts from feathers. Three was possible, as long as she could get a good angle; she had to aim them and trying to aim from a moving feather wasn't always the easiest thing in the world. Trying to aim from three moving feathers at three targets that were all moving differently was much, much worse.

That was what training was for, and they were all charging directly at Sophia. As long as she picked the right feathers, she had an easy shot. It was still a relief when all three hit and the fire sprites evaporated.

It was great that the first wave was gone, but the second wave was closer. They also weren't as bunched up as the first wave; instead, they were all spread out. "Echo, keep covering that area. I'll take the area to the Echo's right if you can take the other third, Xin'ri?"

"Maybe." Xin'ri didn't sound confident. "My Earthfall staff's about the best thing I have for this and I didn't build it for combat. I made it to put out a raging fire. It'll work until it doesn't, and I'm not sure where that is. I'll yell if I need help."

Sophia hoped this was another time where Xin'ri underestimated herself. She knew she'd be more confident in that if she'd ever seen the staff used before; as it was, she had to believe Xin'ri's worry, which meant she needed to keep an eye on Xin'ri's area as well as her own. It was probably just as well that Sophia was actually just "seeing" through her aura and not her eyes; she couldn't see as far, but she also didn't have any areas that were completely blocked.

A soft explosion in the distance told Sophia that Jax, or maybe Dav, was busy dealing with the third of the large fire sprites. A second, softer explosion was close enough that she could actually see what caused it: her ice Echo had decided to see what happened when she bit a fire sprite. The answer was that the sprite leaked fire everywhere as it deflated and disappeared. It definitely wasn't good for the Echo; her icy teeth looked partially melted. Sophia was certain she wouldn't try that again.

Not that Sophia had time to deal with that. She had five medium-sized ones headed for her instead of the Echo or Xin'ri.

Well, they were probably really headed for Xin'ri, since they couldn't actually see Sophia, but she wasn't going to let them get there.

Five was too many to hit with individual True Death Bolts and they really weren't grouped up enough for a Force Blast. Sophia had to pick something, so she picked True Death Bolts again. The more she could put down, the better, and those seemed to be working better. She picked out the closest three and struck at them with her spell.

Two of the spells hit cleanly; the third grazed the bottom of the fire sprite as it rose a little in the air while she expected it to dip down. Even the two good hits weren't enough, so she immediately recast the spell. This time, all three connected and two of the fire sprites fell.

The others stopped in place, The one she'd hit poorly the first time seemed to turn itself into a ball of fire and rush towards the feather that hit it. A moment later, Sophia had one fewer feather, but one of the sprites was also gone.

If she could have blinked, Sophia would have. That was a great trade. Was it one she could force?

Sophia sent several of her feathers outward, towards the smaller fire sprites. The first one that reached a sprite almost passed though it without a reaction, but at the last moment the fire sprite seemed to notice it and flared. The feather almost instantly turned to ash.

Clearly, that wasn't the answer.

The next closest feather was almost to its sprite, so Sophia did the only thing she could think of: she concentrated on the in-between nature of the fire sprites and Death's Embrace. She could feel wisps of True Death gather more strongly around the feather.

This time, when the feather touched the sprite, it was some of the True Death-touched mana that connected first. Instead of passing through or exploding, the feather seemed to stick to the outside of the fire sprite, wrapping around it. As it did, the fire sprite dimmed slowly, like a dying fire. It took longer than Sophia liked, but both the sprite and the feather fell to the ground as ash.

It was a trade she could make after all.

It took time, but Sophia was able to clear her third of the area without being overrun. It helped, somewhat, that the fire sprites concentrated on Xin'ri and the ice Echo; they didn't really even know Sophia was there. By then, the ice Echo was clearly in trouble, with one wing melted and a number of nasty-looking watery gashes, but Sophia chose to help Xin'ri first. She'd held them off with her Earthfall staff, then swapped to a Windstorm staff when there were too many.

When the ice Echo fell, there were only a handful of the small fire sprites left. Xin'ri was able to push them back while Sophia killed them. That let Sophia turn her attention to the larger fire sprites.

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