The Apprentice

By: ChocolateEclar

Chapter 1: The Shape-Shifting Teenager, The Guardian, The Little Girl, and The Geek

My name is Kimberly Lamarra Fara and I once was the Apprentice of Orko, the Guardian of the three dimensions. I will tell you the tale of my first adventure in the journey of my coming of age…

One day, I crept on padded feet silently in the fresh snow. I'm a shape-shifter and I was currently in the form of a pure white wolf. I perfectly matched my surrounding, shape shifting was my specialty after all, and so I had by then perfected my abilities. You could say I was kind of like a chameleon.

My golden eyes scanned the nearby trees for my current canine-formed nose could smell something just beyond them. I lifted my head and sniffed deeply. 'Yep,' I thought, 'She's over there alright.' I went through the tress and smiled internally at what I saw.

Before me, on the other side of the trees, in an open clearing, a beautiful woman stood. The woman's hair was long and golden brown with blonde highlights. She had on a strange gold chain mail halter top that shown brightly in the setting sun. Her knee-length gold colored skirt revealed bare feet in the freezing snow.

'Of course an old witch doesn't need shoes,' I thought spitefully. (She actually wasn't much older than me at the time, but I was one hot-tempered teenager.) I mean I was after all the apprentice of the Guardian of the three dimensions. Each of which had one planet in them with human life. Orko, my master, was eight hundred years old then and for seven hundred and eighty of those years had held his important job. The three planets were titled Jeraci, Tankaru, and of course Earth.

Jeraci was a planet that's specialty was technology. Their civilization was highly advanced and had the best in computers (and for that matter 'techno-geeks')

The planet of Tankaru was a primitive place of very little modern inventions. It was the planet we were on now.

Each planet was really in a totally different dimension. Confused? Well I sure was when I first met Orko. I met the old geezer when I was eight. He had long white hair and a beard just as long. He just came up to me in the park of the city I lived in and exclaimed, 'A powerful descendent of Arthur Pendragon himself, a little girl?! Who would have thought?"

I was really confused. 'What was he talking about?' I wondered. I was an orphan and the next day Orko came and adopted me! I was really surprised, but more so when the old man brought me to a castle floating on a cloud high above the Earth. It was huge and gray with a strange, large room on top with no windows, a railing surrounding it, and a domed roof. That was the day I became the apprentice to the Guardian.

There was a problem though. I find it's hard living on a cloud when you're petrified of heights! Orko didn't realize I was scared until I cried when he brought me to that top room. I had looked down and felt instantly sick to my stomach. So Orko made me take control of my fear. He would 'force' me day after day to sit in the top room by the railings. I was really terrified but I knew he wanted to help me so I did as he told. It took three months but it eventually worked and then Orko began training me in the art of magic.

I looked up to Orko. He was an awesome sorcerer and amazingly wise. Over time he taught me almost everything he knew, but well, he also was getting senile. Don't get me wrong he was great and all but boy could he be weird sometimes.

I remember the time… Oh never mind, I've gotten off track…

Anyway, the woman before me was called Marcella Maxell. She was a powerful witch of the dark kind. Only twenty-three years old, she was born on Earth. (At the time I myself was eighteen.)

I could feel someone else's presence coming. 'Please don't let be Tit. Anyone but her again!' I thought.

Tit always ruined my plans. Guess who suddenly appeared in front of me. Tit of course. Tit may have been a cute four-year-old with little cat ears, but boy could she get in the way! Her two red braids were bobbing up and down with her occasional bounces.

"HI, KIMMY!" she screamed. Just great. Not only did Marcella have to be deaf not to hear that, but I now had a little squirt to deal with.

So I decided to do the only thing I could do on short notice. "ORKOOO!" I yelled. I didn't care if Marcella heard that it was to late now.

It took about twelve seconds until my old master transported to my side. "You know what happened last time Tit followed me, Orko! I told you to watch her!" I screeched.

Orko looked calmly back at me. He didn't care anymore if I called him 'Master Orko' or 'Sir.' I was as good as an adult after all. He was used to my temper and retorted, "She's your responsibility."

"Well I'm doing something important over here and I can't have her messing things up again. If you haven't noticed Marcella Maxell's over there!" I shouted pointing behind me to the clearing with my paw.

"Correction," explained Orko, "She's right behind you."

Well that sure made me shut up. I whipped around sharply and saw Marcella floating directly behind me.

I growled, my tail standing on end, and my teeth bared. I pounced and Marcella dodged. I resolved to transform into my forte.

My specialty was in the form of a dragon. Not just any dragon though, a dragon with bluish white scales, yellow eyes, and blue flames. I changed into that dragon and charged at Marcella.

But everything went wrong! Tit had bounced over to me and was suddenly floating directly in front of me again. 'Oh no, not again,' I thought. I put on the brakes and pushed Tit out of the way, but it was too late.

Marcella knew I couldn't react in time now. She smirked and said, "Foolish girl," and threw me back into a tree. My head hurt and my ears were ringing but I bounced back up.

Marcella had transported out of there though and I couldn't stop her. Someone else was here in her place though.

It was Adam.

Let me tell you a few things about Adam Fara. First of all, he's one of those 'techno-geeks' from Jeraci. Second, he's got glasses, blue eyes, and brown hair. He's also got some powers of his own, nothing too special though. Just things like mentally being in a computer and levitating. He didn't have any other powers I knew of.

Wincing in pain I detransformed to my normal human form. I was about five feet, six inches at the age of eighteen and had shoulder length ginger colored hair. My eyes were always golden no matter what form I took.

Grabbing Tit and holding her in my arms, I transported us back to our home, Guardian Castle. Orko of course went by himself, as did Adam because he used his high-tech watch thingy to transport. Don't ask me know it works; I'm technology deficient. We all met at that big windowless room on top.

"Had fun?" inquired Adam sneering slightly.

I glared at him, my yellow eyes flashing, and he abruptly shut up. I turned to Orko then and roared, "I told you to watch her!!!"

"I was watching her," answered Orko innocently.

"Old man, you know you should have watched her AND stopped her from interfering." I yelled.

"You didn't tell me that," he stated.

"Orkooo," I said growling deeply.

The old man just simply looked at me. I pounced playfully at him and suddenly (well maybe to Adam and Tit's untrained eyes) there were two wolves snarling at each other. One of the wolves was gray and the other was white. The white one had managed to pin the other down with one strong paw.

Adam was scratching his head, totally confused. "Which one's which?" he asked. He peered closely at the wolves, but since our eyes were closed he still couldn't tell the difference.

The pined gray wolf lifted his eyelids to reveal grayish blue eyes. "Of course," Adam exclaimed, " 'Dragon-Girl' would never become a gray wolf."

"Definitely not," said the white wolf, which was I, letting Orko stand back up. We detransformed and stood back up on two legs again.

Orko stretched and said, "You may be able to beat me, ya whippersnapper, but you wouldn't have been able to win against Marcella, you know."

"What do you mean?! I could have beat her hands down," I replied angrily.

"No you wouldn't of. Now come with me, Kimmy," he said firmly, but with an underlining hint of affection. I may have been a little hot-tempered pest to him sometimes but he still adored me like a daughter no matter what.

"Alright, whatever."

Adam watched us go and then turned to Tit. He picked her up and questioned her, "Time for bed, Tit?"

Tit nodded her head sleepily and replied, "Okay, I go beddie-bye." Adam took Tit to her room among the hundreds of rooms in the castle, tucked her into bed, and went back upstairs.

Meanwhile, Orko lead me to a room I knew well. It was totally devoted to magic. Shelves were covering three of the four walls, piled with books. On the back wall of the room there were huge maps of the three planets and their dimensions.

Orko looked out his window at the surrounding puffy clouds. He had on the look I knew from his years of training me in the art of magic. I will never forget that look. He said quite seriously, "You know one day you will take my place as Guardian, right?"

"I thought so. I didn't really think you've been teaching me magic for a good ten years for nothing," I told him.

He chuckled at that and said, "I'm glad you understand. Soon I'll need to teach you something new. It will be something you will definitely need as Guardian. Now, why don't you get rid of Adam for today?"

I nodded and went back to the top room. Adam was leaning forward on the railing, looking outside. I felt my stomach lurch slightly, you see I wasn't totally cured of my fear of heights and I probably never will completely. "Time to go," I told him.

Adam turned around quickly. "I can't go home now, Kim. I'm late," he claimed.

"Only by about a minute," I stated, "Now time for you to go."

"But Shannon will kill me for sure!" he whined. Shannon was Adam's big sister and for some reason he was deadly scared of her.

"Whatever," I replied grabbing him by the collar of his shirt. Adam was the same age as me but he was pretty scrawny and easy to throw around.

"I can't go!" he complained as usual.

"Orko says it's time for you to go and you know you don't belong here. Besides it's privilege enough just to be here at all, let along during the day." I snapped at him.

I lead him over to the center of the room. There, there were four lidded holes in the floor. Each led to a different place and were bewitched to be easy, always ready, instant transport spells.

They were set to places we went to a lot. All of them were labeled. One said 'Mollo City (Jeraci).' That was a direct transport to the City Hall in Jeraci's capital city. Another was labeled 'Hunnawee Village (Tankaru),' which was a link to the most populated place on Tankaru. The third was 'Washington D.C (United States, Earth),' obviously lead to the United States of America's Capital on Earth. Earth is the only of the planets that has countries.

The last hole was labeled 'Adam's House.' It was so we could get rid of Adam easily (usually either to train or get some privacy). I held Adam over that hole, lifted the lid off, and dropped him in.

He looked angrily back at me like I'd betrayed him. He kept falling until the spell picked him up and threw him home.

I didn't know what him and his sister's problem was, but at the time I didn't really care. I later would regret doing that to Adam.

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A/N: I may not be writing my other story, 'Blue Moon Rising,' for a while. I will though, be trying to update this one as much as possible.

Anyway, did you like this chapter? Please, review so I know what you like and dislike so far in this story. I plan on writing this story till I finish it.