Serenity looked down, confused. This was supposed to be just the first step in temporarily stopping the Hollow One. If he couldn’t cut them up fast enough, he had to do something else. Something else was supposed to be disabling the Hollow One for long enough for Daryl, Gabriel, and Zanzital to lock it down the way they were handling the other two, then repeat for each one he came to. Gabriel could block off the corridor repeatedly.

It wasn’t nearly as good a strategy as killing them, but it seemed more possible and would still get them to the ritual. Probably. If it didn’t work out, they could definitely find a room and barricade themselves in it for long enough to be evacuated by Ita’s portals. That wouldn’t let them get to Legion, but it would save their lives if the situation got too risky. Maybe Legion would eventually recover enough to set out his token so they could get him out as well.

Serenity didn’t think that would be necessary, but he had to plan for it. Not planning for disaster led to the incident with the vampires in the Tutorial; he couldn’t afford that overconfidence, especially when he was fighting something he couldn’t kill fast enough.

Only this one wasn’t even twitching. In fact, Serenity felt a faint wisp of Death mana from it; had he actually killed the Hollow One in one blow?

Serenity reached for his mana again and winced. He felt slightly scorched, but more importantly he felt an internal emptiness where his mana should be. A quick glance at his Status revealed the horrifying truth: he was at just over half of his mana capacity. Whatever he’d done, he couldn’t afford to do it again until they were nearly at the ritual or better yet inside the ley line that probably powered the Hollow One ritual; without a serious mana recharge, he’d get one more shot like that before he got so low on mana that he passed out.

All of which meant he needed to know exactly what the hell he did. The effect was clearly to kill the Hollow One, but how? How could he not do it next time?

Serenity bent down to examine the body, but before he could get a good look he was interrupted by Zanzital. “If you could always do that, why didn’t you start with it?”

Serenity sighed but tried to keep his irritation to himself. Wasn’t the answer obvious? “I didn’t know I could. I’m still not sure how it happened; that’s why I need to check the body.”

He suited his actions to his words and bent over to examine the body. It was cut in half horizontally through the chest, just like he’d thought it was. There was a little burning at the edges of the cut; that was probably the Solar Affinity, it must have some similarity to Plasma after all.

Serenity really needed to figure it out. His complete lack of a Concept for the Solar Affinity was positively embarrassing. In this case, it was worse than that; he didn’t have the theoretical understanding to know WHY this worked.

The Sun was supposed to be antithetical to certain types of creatures, mostly shadows or undead. Sometimes evil in general was countered by the Sun, but Serenity didn’t know what “evil” meant in that case. No matter what, the Sun wasn’t antithetical to Life and Hollow Ones were Life-based. It didn’t make sense.

Without some sort of understanding, he couldn’t stop it from happening again unless he stopped using the Solar Affinity, and it was by far the most effective of his Affinities. He didn’t have to understand why to recognize that much. He also didn’t have to understand why to look for how; if he could figure out how he’d triggered whatever it was that happened that pulled so much mana out of himself, he might be able to avoid doing it even if he didn’t understand why.

A deeper inspection of the wound showed something odd: there was a section of the torso on both sides that was significantly more crispy than the area around it, at a void in the Hollow One’s body. There were deep fissures in the surrounding tissue, as well. Serenity frowned; it looked like he’d hit the area where the Hollow One’s heart once was. If he read the situation correctly, whatever was there somehow interacted with the Solar Affinity to burn or explode.

It was probably what kept the Hollow One “alive” and able to heal. Given the tingling he’d felt when it touched him, it could probably also spread something by touch, but Serenity couldn’t be sure if that was the Hollow One curse or if it was “just” trying to steal his mass. Either way, it must be focused on the spot the heart had once occupied, which meant this particular variant of Hollow One was “vulnerable” to having its heart removed.

Serenity chuckled grimly. That explained why it stole a heart to kill and why carrying another heart to remove could fool it. It didn’t really require much explanation, rituals could be oddly specific like that, but knowing that it needed a place to contain the energy made sense.

He’d have to make sure he didn’t cut through any more hearts, at least not with his Solar Affinity running through his manablade. Another Affinity might work. Arcane would probably be the best, since it was the second-best at affecting the Hollow Ones, but it was still risky. It might well pull mana out of him to power whatever happened to kill the Hollow One just like this did, and he couldn’t afford that. Even if the increased efficiency of using his Arcane Affinity came into play, it would still cost too much to use as many times as he expected there to be Hollow Ones between them and where they were going.

No, he’d keep that possibility in mind. It could be right next to the option of using his ax; that might work, but it might fail to penetrate or - worse - damage the ax. The nonphysical manablade could tolerate far worse conditions than the ax could, after all.

Now if only he had the ability to lock someone in place. He’d skipped the Paths that would give him that and focused on the ability to directly deal with his enemies partly because it was his preference and partly because it was generally more effective for dealing with invasion portals, but it was rather limiting right now. He was going to have to depend on the three Silver Blades to get the group to the ritual. Once they were there, he’d have to figure out how to take it down and hope that that would be enough.

“Look out!” Gabriel called from behind Serenity. “It’s up again!”

That wasn’t the most useful thing he could have said, but it was enough to get Serenity’s attention on the middle Hollow One instead of the dead one, and just in time. As Gabriel warned, it had reassembled itself after Zanzital’s explosion; Daryl’s arrows didn’t seem to be accomplishing much anymore, either.

The Hollow One no longer looked even remotely human. Unlike the one that had once been the Viper, it wasn’t a mass of hands and arms; instead, it was more like a huge ball of flesh with legs and a head that seemed tiny in proportion. Its arms weren’t even visible, though Serenity thought he saw a hand sticking out of one side of the fleshy mass.

It filled about two-thirds of the hallway and was clearly intent on stopping Serenity the only way it could: by running him over. Fortunately, it seemed even slower than normal and was taking ponderous individual steps instead of actually running. Serenity suspected that he should credit Daryl’s arrows with that change.

Its presence did answer one thing: simply nicking or damaging the area that once held the Hollow One’s heart wasn’t enough to stop them. Zanzital had definitely achieved that with his attack. There had to be something about Solar Affinity that was anathema to the Hollow Ones, even if Serenity didn’t know what.

Nihility might work since it was pure destruction, but Arcane probably wouldn’t. Unfortunately, he’d probably have to remove the entire area with Nihility, and that was likely to be significantly more expensive than the Solar slash despite his far better Affinity and his Concept. Nihility was expensive to begin with and a heart was far larger than a simple slash; the manablade wasn’t very large.

Serenity needed a way to deal with the giant mass of flesh that wasn’t killing it. He also needed to clear some room in the corridor and only one way sprang to mind immediately. “Zanzital! Can you repeat that explosion?”

Zanzital’s answer was obvious when another small bead whipped past Serenity. It penetrated only a little farther before a second explosion tore the Hollow One apart again. “There you go.”

Serenity ignored Zanzital’s grandstanding. “Gabriel, can you cover this one, hold it down? You can let the last one go. Make a floor if you can, the body’s toxic.”

“I’ll try.” Gabriel sounded doubtful, but Serenity watched as bands of ice grew out of the floor and covered the Hollow One, starting with its legs. It was good to see; Gabriel was clearly getting a lot of practice with his Ice Wall spell that he hadn’t had before. His touch was more delicate, creating wide bands of ice that were shaped like restraints instead of a single giant slab of ice that wasn’t fitted to what it held.

Serenity triggered his footwraps; however much he wanted to conserve mana, getting past this Hollow One quickly was worth the small cost of the footwraps. The others would probably have to wait for Gabriel’s floor to finish, but Serenity only had to wait until there was enough ice to vault over what was left of the Hollow One. His footwraps meant that he wouldn’t skid on the now unfortunately well lubricated floor.

When he landed, he was only five feet from the short wall that blocked the last Hollow One in this group. As he approached, it threw itself over the wall. An arrow struck it solidly on the top of the head as it went over the wall and it collapsed, supported by the chest-high wall. Serenity took advantage of its lapse to remove its head and both arms; the Solar Affinity would slow down its healing for long enough that they ought to be able to get by before it was capable of fighting again.

With its arms no longer providing a balancing weight, the weight of the Hollow One’s legs pulled it back over the short wall and it collapsed on the far side.

Serenity turned to look back. The Ice Wall over the exploded Hollow One wasn’t finished, but it was finished enough. “Come on! Let’s get past these two before they stand up!”

Daryl slung his bow over his shoulder then picked up Gabriel and carried him across the pair of icy obstructions. It would have been funny under other circumstances, since Daryl didn’t even seem to think about whether or not he could trust Gabriel to make it on his own, but Serenity knew Daryl was right. Gabriel sucked at acrobatics to begin with and he was currently moving slowly and carefully; helping him only made sense.

Zanzital made it look easy, just like Serenity had. Admittedly, Daryl would probably have been just as graceful if he weren’t carrying Gabriel.

“You’re not going to kill them?” Zanzital sounded just as calm as his motions were smooth and graceful.

Serenity shrugged and admitted the truth. “I can’t afford the mana cost. Killing one took more than a third of my mana; I need to save it in case we really need it. It’s not required here.”

Gabriel set up an Ice Wall behind them in the corridor as they moved on. The next place they needed to be wasn’t far, but they still couldn’t afford to be attacked from multiple directions.

Lillene

Is it obvious why Solar works on Hollow Ones? Serenity hasn't figured it out.