That was... weird. And I had no idea what most of it meant, though I was eager to start grinding again later and find out. I absently swirled my index finger through the cooling sack of intestines, hugging Arrol's body close to me, as I pondered.

Anatomy +1

Shit. That actually startled me. Now that my skills were a bit higher, I wasn't used to getting random notifications - not when I wasn't actually doing anything, after all. And that type text, it seemed different somehow. A little bit more... heavy... than my skill-up font had before.

With renewed vigor, I took a small claw and I started cutting into the cold organs. Tearing apart the heart, liver, brain, eyes, and checking the identification text as I went. It wasn't five minutes before I got a new series of notifications.

Anatomy +2

Scavenging +3

Spell recipe: Roll the Bones (Restricted)

5/5 ingredients discovered.

New Spell!

Roll the Bones (Witchcraft)(Scavenging)

Cast: Material Component, five human finger-bones. Action, rolling components along the ground. Incantation, "Blood and bone of those, before; Help me out, this little chore; for Tiamat sleeps, not dead but drawn; Whom Hel does guard, sad and lone; We hold the line from times long gone; With sword and wand, our flesh and bone."

And... while it gave me a new spell, it didn't tell me what it did. It seemed... a bit foreboding to me, to be honest. Yes, by that time I was somewhat desensitized to gore, you could say. But a spell requiring human parts, not for rebirth, but presumably for some selfish purpose -one that was otherwise marked (Restricted) and unavailable? For some reason the thought had unquieted me. 

Still, while I wasn't sure if I could grow the components myself (being innately elfin and all), I had a... pretty much infinite supply of said components at my current location. So, after a little work to cut and clean the parts, I gave it the old college try.

Throwing the bones out across the dirt, I chanted under my breath quietly. I was careful to take a few, large steps backward, and to cover my head just as I finished the incantation. 

Whew. No fireball. For some reason I was half convinced that I was going to witness my first atomic explosion, all up close and personal like. Though I knew that really should have been the last thing that I was worried about.

I stepped closer, checking the area where the bones had been thrown. Nope, they were still covered with blood and gore, with a little bit of wilting grass underneath. So, you know, no change there. Next I checked the actual bones themselves. I quickly noticed that a single letter was burned clearly into the white enamel, a single tiny glyph per bone, 'GetMirror.'

I cast the spell and... it told me to get a mirror. Great. I knew my hair was a bit tangled and matted but, fucking Lucifer, everybody was a critic. 

I went ahead and cast it again. By my count, I could cast the spell twice per hand... maybe even thrice. But my efforts were rewarded with the same result. "GetMirror." Apparently, I wasn't going to be getting anywhere with this until I had found an actual mirror. Whatever.

I went ahead and grabbed the remaining hand parts laying about in front of me, storing them in my inventory. The screen flashed, telling me I had 8 spare hands. So, it seemed, I wouldn't be low on components any time soon at least.

I looked around for Fuzzykins, who was currently darting playfully through the boroughs of the Birch trees. Seemingly having some small amount of fun. Leave it to a cat to find a way to make Hell into an amusement park, after all.

I called to him as I stood, beginning the process of melding my flesh back into my current favored, catgirl form. It took a few moments before it felt like everything was where it was supposed to go, but I was getting a lot more confident in my shifting after the last couple of days.

I checked my ears with my fingertips, and I ran my hands down the soft white fur on my legs. It was actually, I thought, surprisingly soft. And I felt the chill of the night fading as my body regrew it's feline coat. I paused, then left the pawed feet alone. The light was fading, and the last thing I needed, really, was to be trampling through the undergrowth like a flailing horse. 

Fuzzykins darted around me as I walked, like a kitten, frolicking back and forth in front of her mother. It was really cute to watch, I considered, as I padded my way through the moonlit forest. Listening closely for sound of any approaching danger.

We traveled quietly, enjoying one another's company. For, despite the annoyances, I had in fact been reunited with the spirit of my childhood cat. The fact that her strange voice and the creature I remembered were one and the same was slowly starting to settle in. To become real in my mind. And, God, I had loved that cat.

I made it back just in time to scrape a final bowl of cooling porridge from the pot. It wasn't bad, I decided, and the tasteless mush was kind of growing on me. The sticky sensation of it coating my throat as I swallowed, and warming my belly as I ate, was actually becoming somewhat comforting.

I had found the boys, though they had already finished or skipped dinner from what I could see. Fr33ze was arm wrestling in a nearby camp, doing pretty well even, when I checked in on him. Bushwar was still playing a strange game of dice with a man and a woman, their cheers or their curses, respectively, echoing from just behind the line of tents.

I realized, as I finished my dinner, that they would probably be at it for a while longer. I, myself, had quite a lot to think about after today. And so I decided that the best thing to do, all things considered, would be to crawl into bed and let the rest of the night play out in peace. 

Absently, I played with my hands as I drifted off. Thickening the fur, elongating my thin fingers. I mostly did it to enjoy the sensation of my skin tingling and pulling. There was something comforting, too, in the control. Being the mistress of my own body. And I fell asleep that night with beautiful words, dancing in my vision:

Wicked +1

The first thing I did after breakfast was to tell the boys I needed to do a bit of shopping. They were, as expected, somewhat less than interested. Especially Bushwar, who frowned like I had just mentioned a diseased retaliative. 

It didn't take a genius to read between the lines there. "I take it gambling didn't go too well," I smirked at him. Hoping to lighten the mood with a bit of friendly ribbing.

Of course, it didn't seem to go the way I had hoped, as he just gave me a grunt. "Hurmph." And he stalked away.

Insight +1

I had glanced over to Fr3 and raised an eyebrow, blinking. "That bad huh?"

He shrugged and frowned at me. 'I think we should just leave it alone."

I was a bit annoyed at that, I'm not going to lie. But if the boys were going to circle the wagons, it was fine. I had things to do, after all.

My walk over to the tent market was refreshingly uneventful. The little stalls of the market proper were more like tables, thrown haphazardly in front of your standard-issue tents, on the edges of the encampment.

It vaguely reminded of a lawn-sale I had once went to in college. My friends lived in a trailer park, while they were working through school, and, occasionally when I visited, their neighbors would be having barbecues or 'lawn sales'. 

When someone got it in their mind that they were going to clean out some old stuff, it seemed like the neighbors all were just too happy to jump on the bandwagon. Taking advantage of the added traffic down their street to set up their folding tables, throwing a bunch of used, unwanted items haphazardly in the grass around their feet. Each sprouting a little white price tag with amounts that seemed more fanciful than serious.

Here, it was much the same - with tables and rickety chairs propped outside of the tents. Goods spilling off of desks, out of trunks, and even sometimes just spread in the dirt. Each merchant had a theme, it seemed like, but it wasn't always clear as to what it was. With patched dresses and suits piled next to frayed rope and dinnerware. 

I stopped and bargained for a few more items as I went, now that I had an extra-dimensional space to shove whatever I liked in. I loved how, when I opened my pouch and hovered my fingers over the folds, it seemed like whatever I held warped and darted within. It was an experience quite unlike anything I had known in the world before, owning a little pocket-dimension. *cough* Literally.

I picked up a couple of plates, a bowl, a few more water-skins (more than a few, actually, for I was a mind to top off the stack in my inventory), and a few other useful odds and ends. After I had picked up something akin to a sleeping bag, lined tightly with animal fur (that I hoped furtively had not come from other catgirls), I noticed that I had gone through over half of the funds left to me by our dear, departed Arrol. So, I tried to focus more single-mindedly on finding a small mirror, before I no longer had enough left to even buy it. 

It took another half an hour of searching before finding something. It was a small, six inch diameter hand-mirror, with a tarnished bronze handle. Yet I wasn't looking for anything impressive - no, I was only of a mind to satisfy the riddle of the bones, and to discover what, if any, purpose the message had had.

I was charged five silver for it, which wasn't cheap but wasn't too extravagant either. I then bargained the lady down to four, though I knew to be satisfied with that. The look she was giving me was shrewd, and at was clear that she had far more skill at merchanting than I.

Insight +2

Shit, ya, I had thought. Probably as good a deal as I was going to get. My hand hovered over my pocket for a second, and I remember it shocked me when the mirror didn't spin off into the folds as had the rest of my stuff. It took me a second, in fact, to glance down and realize that my Inventory was now full.

Even still, before I could cuss about it or try to figure out what to remove, the mirror suddenly darted out of my hands and into the dark folds of my leathers. Wait, wha...

Would you like to allocate 100 Points to: Increase Storage Capacity?

Y/N

Response confirmed. You have chosen to allocate 100 points to: Pan-Dimensional Storage, four bonus slots unlocked.

3299 Soul Points remaining.

Would you like to allocate 100 Points to: Increase Storage Capacity?

Y/N

Response confirmed. You have chosen to allocate 100 points to: Pan-Dimensional Storage, four bonus slots unlocked.

3199 Soul Points remaining.

I blinked as the words flashed in my vision. And I blinked, again. Well, I'll be. Good kitty. 

For the first time, in fact, I was kind of grateful that I had given in, allowing her free reign over my equipment. It was a convenience that, I thought, one could get quite used to in fact. Quite used to indeed.

I told her as much, though I'm sure I looked absol-utely insane talking to myself - yammering on to no one as I walked down the street, strange broom flying along beside me. But, I thought ironically, Lady probably enjoyed my embarrassment almost as much as she did my praise. And, you know, there was no way I could just let it slide that she was actually doing a good job. I had a distinct feeling that she wouldn't have let me, one way or the other.

When I got back to camp, the boys were nowhere in sight. I found it disconcerting, as it was time and past time for us to go. Still, while I had the mirror, the meaning was still a mystery to me. And I sat near the now dead campfire, absently pulling it from my Inventory. 

The brass was cheap, you know, for this world. On earth, it would have been 'Handmade' with 'real silver backing' and 'rustic'. But here, it was enough to get the job done and little more.

Welp, I looked at my face, I looked at my teeth. I even looked up my nose. My ears were maintaining their kitten-softness just fine, my teeth were as clean as could be expected (given the lack of toothpaste), and I quickly removed a few stray nostril-hairs with my blossoming Wicked skills.

Still... I didn't see what was so... oh. Wait. There was... something.

I glanced over to the right of the mirror, as I would glance away from someone's face to read their Nameplate. Forming, next to the silvered surface, I could see words fuzzing, slowly into view.

Authorization.... granted. 

Credentials... verified.

Identification key... missing 

Generating administrative I.D.K.

......

That was odd. Wait. I saw something start to flash in front of me. 

Boom, status update:

Administrative access granted: Level 5 (Restricted)

The mirror swirled in front of me, colors shifting and clearing as the status bar faded. In it's reflection, I could still my face. Eyes too wide, face frozen in a shocked expression. God, I supposed I actually looked like that. Well, that wasn't the interesting part. What was interesting was that, now, words in much the style of my status updates, they were flashing on its surface.

It looks like you are attempting to scry on: Bushwar. 

Would you like to see Bushwar now?

Y/N

I reached out, hesitantly, and tapped the 'Yes' option on the mirror. Rather than the surface changing, however, my world itself started to spin and darken...