We Stopped for lunch after we had crossed into the desert of the Neutral Grounds. It was amazing to me - you never quite realize the convenience of modern travel until you have to go without. I remembered how it took me a month to walk from Oak Village up into The World Tree, scrounging for food, pushing on with aching, tired feet. Yet, now, in a little over three hours we had covered, from what I remembered of the maps, approximately the same amount of distance.

By my (extremely) rough calculations, that meant that we were flying at about three hundred miles an hour. I couldn't recall, not without looking it up, but it struck me that traveling that fast on an unenclosed vehicle, I should probably have been bleeding out of my eyes.

While I sat in the sandy wasteland and munched on my jerky, I asked Lady that same question. Her intelligence was higher than mine, as she was so ready to point out.

*Why do you think we had to buy you the hat? Have a little trust, Molly,* was her purring response. It sounded reproachful, but I was starting to tell, from the tone of her voice, that she was teasing me.

After lunch we rested there for a few hours. I let the blood return to my chilled skin and basked in the warm, dry air. It felt good to have the sun on my fur, baking into my dark leathers, and I was hesitant to leave. Still, we were being hunted. And when you are hunted, it does not pay to stop until you are safely back in your den. 

I took some time to lengthen my fur coat before we left again, ensuring my face and hands and legs were well protected before I hopped back on my broom. Now that I had taken the time to do some (somewhat frightening) math, it seemed wise to protect myself from the elements as much as was Wickedly possible.

Wicked +1

She spun me through air, leaving me light headed and clutching at my hat as she barrel rolled us into the sky. I could hear, vaguely, the sound of her quiet laughter, and I smiled in spite of myself at her sheer, exuberant joy.

As we flew, I considered my situation carefully. I had no party, no friends save Lady (it was like old times, really) - but what really struck me was that having 5 healing spells slotted into Fuzzykins wasn't really what I needed at the moment. So, as we flew, I worked to expend and replace four out of five of the maximum stored spells.

Spell Foci +1

We approached mountains some few hours later, snow capped and barren. I had been raised in Colorado and, despite the foreignness of this world, there was something inexplicably comforting in seeing that range in the distance. Even in the chthonic depths of hell, I think, there are some sights which will always exist. Because they are too majestic and powerful to ever be overcome or enslaved.

I saw the lights of a city ahead of us, as the world grew darker and twilight twinkled into early darkness. We were about out of time. And the lit, busy world below us seemed to beckon at me, invitingly. What I wouldn't have given, in those moments, to swoop down so grandly - to land in front of some nice inn, which I now had money to afford, and announce that I would take their finest room. 

I'd eat my fill, hear the local news from other travelers, maybe even make some new friends. There would, of course, be a warm fire, a jubilant, grateful inkeeper, and his beautiful daughter or son who would be quite taken with exotic beauty. 

Oh, that would be heaven, indeed. But, this wasn't heaven. This wasn't a place of heroic knights and innocent maidens; of soft hearted princes and happy endings. And I wasn't some golden haired princess.

I was a motherfucking witch. With hair of ice and a heart of stone. And I told myself this as I, finally, swooped into the city. Alighting lightly, crouching down. Watching the life below me from a distant rooftop, biding my time while hidden, well and truly out of sight.

Level 1 elf. Level 1 human. Level 2 human. Level 1 elf. Level 1 goblin (well there was something new). Level 2 dwarf...

I ignored the locals - watching and waiting patiently, oh so patiently. For I was not here to socialize - I was not here to make friends, or eat mutton, or charm an innkeeper's offspring. I was here on business.

Local, Local, Local, Level 1 human, level 2 elf, level 1 human... there we go. Level 3 dwarf. But... no. This one had on a plate of shining, soulbound fullplate. 

Level 1 goblin, level 1 dwarf, level 2 human...

There! I couldn't believe my luck, really. For, walking into the Inn across from where I perched, there was a Level 3 elf with no discernible soulbound equipment.

It wasn't what I had wanted: it wasn't a tentacled beast intent on devouring my friends; it wasn't an evil zealot intent on murder in the name of some insane religion. It was just a girl, walking into a bar. And, I knew, I was planning to send her in my place in the netherworld, for no reason other than that she was weak and she was here.

I waited some few hours, letting the temperate air swirl warmly around me. Tasting it silently, with my recent anatomical inclusion of a feline tongue. She did not leave the inn.

Still, I waited until the moon was high overhead. And then, only when the air started to cool and the wind began to rise, did I hop back on my broomstick. I absently found myself stroking fingers along her grain the same way I had softly scratched Lady's ears when she had been alive, and I pushed off into the night's air.

I slowly, quietly, checked every window. Vacant; closed; human; vacant; vacant; dwarf... there. She hadn't even bothered to close her windowpane. Amateur. 

As I smoothly floated in from the dark night's air, as I hovered over her sleeping body (careful not to touch a thing), I quietly read her status bar:

Ellie Nightsorrow

Level 3

Elf

It struck me, in those too quiet moments, that not only was I contemplating murder in the first but, also, I was about to perpetrate it against an innocent...ish member of my own race. It would be my first time meeting, let alone killing, another elf. And I had been fully intending to do it with my knife in her back and my broomstick in hand.

She was beautiful, lying there. Sleeping so peacefully. Her shoulders rose and fell with every, quiet breath. Seemingly so relaxed and happy in this sprawling little town. There were little bits of metal that protruded from her skin, looking almost cyberpunk in their little gleaming movements. There was something shiny and cold peaking out from around the arch of her eye and the brim of her nose; a finger seemed to whirl and buzz as it twitched in her sleep; and there was some sort of tiny light shining from the side of her pointed ear.

It moved, as I watched, slowly pivoting to shine directly... on me. Oh...

Shit.

I heard a soft buzzing, coming from her ear, and she stirred in her sleep, eyes flickering. "Hurmh...?" she questioned the quiet night's air.

Without hesitating, I shot a bolt of frost toward her. It hit, directly into her shoulders, and frost-coated whiteness shot across her torso and arms. I already had my Hellfire chat at my lips, half complete, when I heard the groaning and cracking.

With a crack and a hiss, impossibly, she spun to her feet and her arm shot out. She took me with an elbow to the diaphragm, using her frozen arms to impact like a weapon.

My breath whispered out of my lips and I fell, hissing and sputtering for air as I thumped to the floor. In no time at all the arch of her foot was pressed against my neck, muting my voice and choking me all in a single motion.

My hand groped and found my razor, raising it even while she struggled to work her arms, twisting her shoulders as the frost coating them groaned and creaked. I tried to finish my incantation, but I couldn't force a single breath of air out of my crushed throat. And so I settled for spinning open the blade in my fist and ripping my razor blade against the soft flesh of her Achilles tendon. 

But... something was off. The blade did not sink into the flesh but, instead, slid across. I could feel the blood dripping down onto my face, so I knew that I had cut her - but I knew also that I hadn't managed to cut deeply into her tendon or artery either. Her body had, impossibly, resisted the blade.

She stood on my neck, leaning her entire weight onto my screaming body, as she kicked out with her other foot. Her kick caught and disarmed my hand of it's weapon in less than a second's time. 

I saw stars then, blood vessels popping, thin neck bruising visibly under her weight. I focused, extending my claws, but as my arm moved my vision spun, and I found my clawed hand dropping helplessly back onto the dirty floor.

*Looks like you are in a bit over your head,* came a haughty, teasing voice. I couldn't see, but I twisted my claws into one final, violent message - balling up my fist and, achingly, extending my middle finger.

Laughter tittered into my head, then, and as the world faded away I heard a distant voice. *Here, allow me.*

Heat washed over my face as I distantly heard the 'boom' and felt the crackle of a tiny little sun. The weight fell off of my neck and, with a halting, smoke filled breath, I passed out. The last thing I saw, a new notification dancing against the darkness:

Congratulations! Level up!

*Soul le....