As the dust began to settle I took in my surroundings. I seemed like I had crashed into someone’s bedroom. Knowing that the noise of breaking through the roof would have attracted the more intelligent undead in the surrounding, I quickly left the room.

Two of my arms had become unusable, so I had to rotate my body by 90 degrees in order to walk properly once again. The weakness from casting the spell still slowed down my movements.

I had been too distracted with my imminent destruction to have paid much attention as to where exactly I would be landing. Therefore, I only knew the general direction of my flight, but a little bit of disorientation wouldn’t be much of a problem.

At least I didn’t have to deal with the spectres hunting me, since they were in a different part of the castle. And even if, I figured that I would now be able to would one of them if he was alone. It went way out of hand last time, but without the circle to mess it up, I should be able to do it.

My only concern was the cost of the spell. Did the feeling of weakness mean that it consumed the power I worked so hard to amass by collecting crystals? If that really was the case, then I would have to be very cautious in its use. I decided to investigate this matter as soon as I returned to my hideout.

The time until my arrival would be spent on trying to piece the spell fragments together, that I gained atop the tower. The explosion spell was nice and all, but its uses were still limited. A fast moving target would be able to avoid it.

Content with this plan I headed where I believed the known part of the castle to be. Unlike my previous habit I didn’t look into the rooms I came by unless I had to evade a patrol, because I wanted to return home as soon as possible. Despite walking by some interesting looking rooms, including a library, I just made a mental note to return at a later date.

 After continuing like this for half an hour I finally found a place I had already been to. It was one of the marks I had left on the walls to guide me, before my memory became as good as it is now. I still didn’t know my exact position, but I simply followed the markings until I managed to figure out where I was by comparing the surroundings with my memories. From there, I returned to my hideout as fast as possible.

 The area around it was still seemed devoid of undead activity, but that only meant that I hadn’t encountered any. With the undeads wandering the castle in groups, they were bound to come through here at some point. I couldn’t afford to be careless just because I had cleared the area once.

Finally, I arrived at the staircase to the basement. Now I only had to go down, reach the door, pass through it and then I was at home. Only when the built up tension was released, I realize how much of a strain this trip had put on my mind.

The long search, being hunted by the spectres, the fight in the tower, the explosion with the following flight, the crashlanding and finally the long journey home without knowing how to get there.

It was by far the most dangerous and lengthy adventure I had been through in my short life. But now that it was over I felt satisfied with what I had accomplished. It wasn’t perfect, but I still like to think that I did well enough.

 Anyway, now that I had come home it was time to experiment with the magic I managed to acquire. A human might have needed rest, but exhaustion was unknown to me.

On the way back I had also pieced together another spell. This one just created and sustained a flame at a point close to my body. It wouldn’t be very useful against an undead, but for the experiments I had planned it was perfect.

 I began by touching the stone tablet, which showed the number 391. This confirmed my fears. The spell I used on the tower had permanently reduced my power. But my investigation didn’t end here.

For the next step I created a small flame in one of my claws and let it burn for an hour or so, while checking the tablet every few minutes. The number remained constant. Then I increased the flames size and tested again. I repeated this until the expected result occurred: the number decreased between two measuring’s. From this, I concluded that using magic wasn’t a problem, until the scale got to big. Then it would sap away my power.

This knowledge was a large relief, because it meant that I would be able to fight spectres without wasting the work I had put into gathering crystals.

Since the problem of magic usage was resolved I went to replace my arms. There were plenty of spare parts in the room, so finding a replacement wasn’t hard. But before doing anything else I had to remove the bent arms. First I receded my influence from them, then I pulled them out of their socket.

 It was surprisingly quick and painless. I had expected it to be more complicated, but I was lucky. I put two new arms in their place but only activated one of them, since I lacked the power to operate all eight of them effectively. After doing so I began planning my next steps.

Getting a spectres crystal seemed more attractive than ever before. They could fly, speak, shoot projectiles and protect themselves. And that are only the spells I knew about. There might be even more that I just hadn’t seen yet. I could now use magic, so fighting them was possible. It would be nice to be the hunter instead of the hunted for once.