I awoke to the sound of mailed feet stomping around outside the door. Someone was pounding a fist against the last and I quickly realized the only reason I hadn't yet been caught was because Ellie had the forethought to lock the door. 

I saw the fading glow of a spell and I looked up, Lady hovered above me, trailing sparks of light behind her in the air. *We're out,* I heard her breathy voice in my mind, *Time to go, Molly.*

I shook my head - a quick back and forth to clean out the cobwebs. Despite the tingling from being healed, I could feel a massive headache growing. Lady flew to me and I leaned my hand against her, letting her help me stand shakily. I slowly lowered my weight against her and held on tight - but, even as the guards stormed in, I kept feeling like there was something I had forgotten. Something I needed to do.

Lady had us half-way out the window when it struck me and, despite the guards sprinting toward us ten... no, five feet away now, I screamed, "No wait, stop. Stop damn you."

A sad voice sounded in my head, even as a hand closed on the air where I had just been moments before, *No time, Molly. Later.*

And as we flew straight up into the night, putting as much distance as we could between us and the sad little town below, I could only gaze forlorn at the scene of my crime.

I didn't have her finger, I didn't have a hand. There was no way I that could bring Ellie back from the grave I had stuck her in. 

Or... wait. Was there?

I didn't have time to scroll through my notifications. Rather, I opened my ability panel. There, in the corner, were points as before. Waiting to be distributed. I didn't stop to look at them, once I saw that they were there, instead, I simply worked my menu.

Do you wish to increase your Intelligence attribute to 20? (4 Ability Points invested) 

Y/N

I slammed the 'Yes' button as fast as I could and pulled up my spells, watching them spin as the Cooldowns updated. The other spells I ignored, focusing only on the one that mattered:

Restitution of the Damned (Witchcraft)(Wisdom)(Affinity)

Cast: Action, spilling one's own blood upon the body of fallen creatures.

Cooldown: 23 Hours (-1 Intelligence)

Up to 4 creatures resurrected over a 10 minute period at 50% health

As I watched the ground spin further and further away below me, I leaned over and whispered to Lady, "Ok now, how many hours left until we can resurrect her?"

There was no response for some seconds but, when my answer came, the voice sounded more refined, more thoughtful maybe, *Eight hours, forty-two minutes and twelve seconds."

I gazed at the ground below us looking for a... there. Within walking distance, there was a church. The steeple rose up into the sky and, toward the very top, was a lonely bell. I guided her toward it. "We can't stay up here then, Lady. Let's go, there." Pointing, "We can watch from the belltower."

We swept down, sweeping through the night's air to hover beside the bronze bell. It was high up in the stepped tower, with ropes holding it and linking to it from below. So far as I could tell no stairs led up this way and, all in all, it was exactly what I had been looking for.

I tried, for the thousandth time, to shift my eyes into those of an eagle. But where every time before my attempts had been met with blood and burning pain, now I met with a different result. It was like zooming in on a camera, things far, far away suddenly zooming in. The sight made you think that you could reach out and touch the cobblestones, the grains of wood on the buildings down below. 

It was then, pulling my head back in shock and blinking furiously, that I really understood that something had changed for me. That I was now... better.

I couldn't see any movement in the Inn but, just in case, I darkened the shade of my fur  - shifting into a shadowy black figure crouching in the bell tower, shrouded from head to toe in the darkness. I knew it would be no good in the light, I would be easily spotted and shot down from the street below. But, for now, I felt like the silent watcher. Free to observe and to see all the sights below me as though I were seeing a silent sitcom play.

Keeping my attention half focused on the guards, who were coming in and out of the inn, I made sure the men and women weren't carrying a body. I turned to my interface. I opened the status interface to see what had changed:

Congratulations! Level Up!

"Soul Level 3!"

New Traits Unlocked!

Enhanced Skills (Lvl 3):  Skillcap raised from 50 to 100 for all applicable skills. Skill advancement penalties likewise reduced. 

Secondary effects unlocked. 

The following skills currently known have received additional secondary effects:

Witchcraft - Increased chance of learning or discovering new spells and abilities. 

Wicked - New abilities now discoverable. 

Enhanced Trait:  Born Witch

Witches' Masquerade size and shape restrictions lessened. Witch is no longer required to remain humanoid in form. 

Champion: Level 3

Level 1 & 2 characters meeting applicable pre-requisites may now level up by killing you. Have fun out there!

New Ability Points Available! +15 (current ability cap: 25)

It was somewhat less impressive than last time. Still, raising my skills from 50 to 100 was a pretty huge leap and it was going to take some time to max these, even for me. The Ability Points were nice too, though I was, admittedly, kind of hoping that the increases would have doubled from the last time. Still, I considered the fact that I had received more than ten a pretty good deal, all in all.

I had eleven points left, I realized. And having already boosted Intelligence, the next two were kind of gimmies:

Do you wish to increase your Wisdom attribute to 25? (5 Ability Points invested) 

Y/N

Do you wish to increase your Dexterity attribute to 16? (1 Ability Point invested) 

Y/N

I went ahead and locked these in. Wisdom appeared to be my primary attribute and, while I wasn't entirely sure what it did, I had decided from day one to do whatever it took to keep it maxed. 

Dexterity, on the other hand, was somewhat less critical. What I noticed with intelligence, however, was that the only seemed to have an effect when I allocated in even numbers of points. In a hellishly Gygaxonian fashion, I had decided to try and keep my totals away from odd numbers whenever possible.  

Well, except vitality. I wasn't even going to waste a single point in that stat. Not when I had healing spells available at my fingertips. 

That left me with five additional points. I considered my options: Strength? No. Vitality? No. Not interested in those at all. Especially if there was a chance they would affect my frame or girth. I had invested too much into Dexterity to be stumbling around like the jolly green giant, with a larger hitbox as well as the target currently on my back.

Which left Dex, Int, or Charisma. Dexterity was nice and it seemed to be helping me a bit, but it didn't feel right investing much more in it. Almost all of my spare Level One points had gone there, as well as one from Level Two already. 

Intelligence was likely to be a decent stat, but I needed to be sure that it actually affected my personal ability to strategize and plan. I had the seen what a boost had done to Fuzzykins, turning her into a bored house cat to a mad, spell slashing familiar, but I was having a hard time coming to terms with the idea that intelligence wasn't innate to my soul - rather, instead, being a manipulable aspect of my Avatar. 

That left Charisma. I admit, of all my attributes, it was the most tempting to me. I am fundamentally a girl. And the idea that I could pump a few points into a stat and, suddenly, I would make Prom Queens look like uncultured hicks? Well my instincts, every single one, told me to hit that fucking button and sign my ass up for that shit.

So... I did.

Do you wish to increase your Charisma attribute to 23? (5 Ability Points invested) 

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

Y/N

Hell ya, yes, please. Get it, daddy.

This time, with the large increase to Charisma, I actually felt something. My bones seemed to move slightly, reforming themselves after a few seconds. I wouldn't say that it was unpleasant, only that it felt... strange. Like I would expect it to feel when the baby kicked in your womb, except here you felt it in your neck and shoulders and face. 

I ran a hand over my fur and it struck me: even my animalistic Wickedness was softer, sleeker, firmer. Caught with my own indulgent vanity, I spent the next hour crouching in the bell tower, attempting to create a pair of angel wings from the skin of my back.

Every time I came close, however, every time I felt that I had grown... something. Yet when I went to check the growth, the only wings I seemed to produce were the stumpy, hairless appendages of a bat. Leathery wings with long, finger-like digits, moving the web of skin.

Wicked +5

Well, I told myself, at least I was leveling my skill. Still, I had no desire to walk around with the ugly things. And every time they appeared from the folds of my leather jerkin I stuffed them quickly back away.

What was quite nice, however, was that the Living Leather of my armor seemed to move and meld with my transformations. No matter where the wings ended up on my back, no matter how much I accidentally grew my spine or shoulders while I was straining, I always remained immaculately covered in the armor. As if it has been fitted just as exactly to the new, twisted proportion as it had to my old.

I glanced down, gazing at the ground around the church as I worked on my wings, and I discovered something interesting. There was a small graveyard behind the building and, somehow, the graves seemed to me to glow.

"Lady," I nudged her, "Lady?"

She sounded a bit confused and annoyed at the sudden attempt at conversation, *What?*

Whatever, I didn't much care, "Are those grave sites, over there, glowing to you?"

Her voice came back, somewhat more concerned, *No. Why do you see something?*

I had a new pair of wings mostly formed at that point. Of course, they were ugly bat things yet again. Still, I stretched them out behind me and, for the first time, I focused on growing and extending the wings of an imp.

Then I jumped into the air. I trusted Fuzzykins to catch me if this didn't go well, after all. Spread a full five feet on each side of my body, great wings of red and black billowed around me. I didn't dare to try flapping them, I simply focused on catching the air, as I glided to the ground.

In the dirt, I took a knee as I hit the end of my fall. Checking, manically in my mind, for anything dislocated or broken, after several seconds I finally took a breath. Lady, however, was less than impressed.

*I'm still cashed, you idiot! I've got no spells! You could have died!* she yelled to me as she caught up with my winged body, obviously concerned. It was kind of annoying, really. Especially since she was sort of right.

Before I moved or did anything else, I fed her a spell of healing, a spell of fire, a spell of frost, and a spell of Cure Affliction. Now that she had found a way to cast herself the spells that were stored within her, I wanted her to have as wide a breadth of selection as possible.

Witchcraft +2

Spell Foci +3

Ya. Also, I was really liking how fast skills were coming along as a Level 3. At this rate, I would become fairly powerful in no time at all.

Oh! Speaking of which, I still needed to check the cooldowns on my other spells. Let's see...

Hellfire  (Witchcraft)(Wisdom)

Cooldown: 3 minutes (-4 Intelligence)

Nifhelm's Breath: (Witchcraft)(Wisdom)

Cooldown: 50 Seconds (-10 Intelligence)

Belial's Hate (Witchcraft)(Wisdom)

Cooldown: 40 Minutes (-20 Intelligence)

Eternal Pact (Witchcraft)(Wisdom)(Affinity)

Cooldown: 15 Seconds (-35 Intelligence)

Restitution of the Damned (Witchcraft)(Wisdom)(Affinity)

Cooldown: 23 Hours (-1 Intelligence)

Remove Affliction (Witchcraft)(Wisdom)(Affinity)

Cooldown: 40 Minutes (-20 Intelligence) 

Devour Enchantment (Witchcraft)(Wisdom)

Cooldown:  40 Minute (-20 intelligence) 

Wow, that had actually made a bigger difference than I had expected. I regretted putting points into Charisma for like, half a second before I came back to my senses. 

Approaching the glowing mounds next to the gravestones, now that we were all powered up, I glanced over my shoulder. I was now exposed and vulnerable, I realized on an almost primal level. And as I pawed my way over to the glowing patches of earth, I kept my ears peeled and focused on the world around me.

I really shouldn't have worried about the glow, though. Well, not in that way at least. Either my new points in Level, Int, or Wisdom had, apparently, unlocked a hidden effect. As I approached the glowing patches of dirt I carefully reached over and picked up a handful. To see if the glow was coming from the dirt or from something below.

Immediately, as I touched the earth (Well, maybe not earth. 'Helldirt'? Whatever) the glowing effect disappeared. Instead, a status notification flashed across my vision. 

Discovered: Graveyard Dirt

Discovered: Consecrated Graveyard Dirt (Rare)

Scavenging +10

Spell recipe: Rage of a Dying God (Advanced)

1/1 ingredient discovered.

New Spell!

Rage of a Dying God (Witchcraft)(Scavenging)

Cast: Material Component, consecrated graveyard dirt. Action, blowing dirt into the air from palm. Incantation, humming in A Minor while blowing.

Cooldown: 6 Days (-1 day, Intelligence)

Curse: Every living being except the caster is cursed with a time-dilution effect. Radius of 1/2 mile. Caster and physics of inanimate objects will appear vastly accelerated to cursed creatures. 

Spell recipe: Poison Mist

2/3 ingredients discovered.

Ya, I didn't waste any time. I went ahead and scooped as much graveyard dirt as I could into my pockets. I was relieved to see, when I had finished, that the total load I had desperately shoveled in my bag only was taking up two Stacks - each with a counter of 99/99.

Of course, yet again I had allowed myself to become distracted. And again, it was only barely that I managed to grab Lady and spin away (by my the skin of my fingers) to screams of "Graverobber! Graverobbers at the church!"

So, I was developing something of a reputation in this town, I could see as we darted up. Hell, it was only my first day here - not even that as the sun had yet to have risen. You would think there would be some clemency or something until a person could get used to the local laws, not everyone could adapt instantly to all of the fine customs.

You know, like 'no murdering' and 'no graverobbing' and little subtleties like that... 

Meh. Or not. Whatever.

We moved over to a local hilltop, maybe a mile or two away. It barely even took us a minute to get there. I could still see the inn, distantly, in the slowly brightening dawn. So I waited, biding my time and staring single-mindedly into the sprawling city.

I still had one last crime to commit before I could depart. In the blooming light of the sunrise, I waited silently for my cooldowns to expire, feeding the final spell into my Boomstick.

Spell Foci +1