Yay, story editing is working again! Anyway, to answer a question from one of my anonymous reviewers (and for anyone else who may have been wondering but didn't ask), no, the guard Reginald is not a Titan character... Just a guy I made up to fill the role. Remember, don't be afraid to ask if you're unsure about one of the characters!

By the way, if anyone is able to recognize where I got the name of the town in this chapter from, you get extra brownie points. And possibly a cookie.

Chapter Four: The Sorceress

The first thing Richard noticed was the sharp pain at the back of his head.

The second was that he wasn't on the hard ground anymore. The squire opened his bleary eyes to see that he was inside somewhere, lying on a small cot. Glancing around, he saw that the walls of the room were lined with shelves – most of them filled with books, but a few housing bottles of liquid and strange items that he couldn't quite recognize. He frowned slightly. What is this place?

"I see you're awake."

Richard turned abruptly (wincing as the motion shot new waves of pain into his skull) toward the source of the unfamiliar voice. At a small table across the room sat a young woman, about his age and dressed in a dark cloak. She had very pale skin, short black hair and eyes that were a deep, almost indigo shade of blue. She regarded him with a somewhat bored, yet attentive look on her face.

Richard sat up, suddenly remembering how the monster had been chased off just before he had lost consciousness. "You're the one who saved me," he guessed.

The girl nodded silently. She reached over to a pitcher of water and poured a little into a glass.

"You've been out for a few hours now. You should have something to drink," she said as she stood up and walked over to offer him the glass.

Richard hesitated for a moment, not certain if he should trust this stranger. But then again, he had just been unconscious – if she had really wanted to harm him, she would have done so already. He gladly accepted the water, only now realizing how parched he was.

As he drank, the girl rested a hand at the base of his skull and muttered something. In an instant, the throbbing pain in his head receded to a dull ache. He looked up at her in surprise.

"Who are you?"

The girl took a step back and regarded the squire in that same emotionless manner, and he shifted his position so that he was sitting on the edge of the bed. Finally, she shrugged.

"My name is Rachel. I'm a sorceress here in Dorad. That's all you really need to know."

Richard nodded. It made sense… Dorad was the town he'd been heading for when he had been attacked, and after that display, he didn't doubt that Rachel could use magic. He noted that the deep scratch on his arm was now gone – she must have used another healing spell on it while he had been unconscious.

"Well… Thank you for helping me," he replied, not knowing what else to say.

"I did what I had to. Nothing more," the sorceress dismissed. She raised an eyebrow. "Now it's your turn. What were you doing alone out there?"

Richard took a deep breath and quickly explained who he was and why he had come to Dorad. Rachel didn't seem very surprised by the nature of his quest.

"Yes, I heard about Princess Kori's disappearance," she mused. She paused, thinking for a moment. "It's gotten late by now, so we'll have to pick up again tomorrow morning. It will give you some time to finish recovering anyway."

Richard stood up. "We?"

"You said you wanted to look like a simple traveler. Most people travel in groups, so you'll only look more conspicuous if you continue to go alone. Besides, between the dragon and those wraiths wandering around, you won't last long by yourself. Gar!"

Before Richard could ask what she meant by "wraiths" (or respond at all, for that matter), a small brown monkey hopped out of the next room and onto Rachel's shoulder. He looked the squire over curiously and then said, "You've been out for a while, man. You okay?"

Richard blinked. "Your monkey just talked to me," he stated numbly, wondering if he had suffered more head trauma than the sorceress could fix.

The animal erupted into peals of laughter, and even Rachel smirked a little at the boy's surprise.

"Gar is a shapeshifter, actually," she explained. "And yes, he does have the ability to speak. Unfortunately, he is also my familiar."

"Aww, come on, Raven! You know you like having me as a partner!" Gar countered, undaunted by Rachel's blunt manner.

"Right, of course I do," the sorceress replied unenthusiastically. "And stop calling me Raven."

"So, I take it he's coming with us?" Richard interrupted.

Rachel replied with a brisk nod and turned back to her familiar. "Gar, we're going to help Richard rescue the princess."

Gar's eyes widened. "WHAT? Nuh-uh, there's no way I'm going up against a rogue dragon! I prefer life!" he cried. He then turned into a sparrow and flew up into the rafters as if to run away from them.

Rachel rolled her eyes. "We don't plan on fighting him. And aren't you always complaining about how you never get to go on grand adventures or whatever?"

The bird seemed to consider this for a moment. "You promise we won't get eaten?" he finally twittered.

Richard and Rachel exchanged a brief glance, and she shrugged. "We can't promise anything, but we aren't going to run blindly into danger like idiots either. So, are you coming or not?"

Gar was silent for another moment as he thought the matter over, but then he fluttered back down and shifted back into a monkey. As he looked back and forth between the squire and the sorceress, his expression turned from apprehension to an almost mischievous enthusiasm as he asked, "What do we do first?"

All right, before I get a ton of reviews asking about this, I'll just explain it all now. Yes, some of the characters look a little different from how they are in the show and/or have slight differences in their powers in order to fit the world of this story; yes, Gar's normal form is of a monkey rather than a human; no, neither this nor the fact that he is Rachel's familiar makes him any less significant or otherwise "beneath" the other characters (as he indicates in the story, he and Rachel consider each other to be partners rather than master and helper). And while I'm at it, I may as well also ensure anyone who may not be certain that no, the fact that Kori is the kidnapped princess here doesn't make her any less able to hold her own under normal circumstances – as was mentioned, she has been trained well for combat, and she was merely caught off-guard by Malchior's betrayal in this turn of events. That is all ^_^

So anyway, sorry for the slow and kinda-boring chapter here. Characters need to be introduced and make their way into the group somehow, heheh. Don't worry though; the story will pick up again next chapter.