Elemental Knights

Chapter 7: New Beginning

Keith woke up to find his mother's necklace around his neck, the orb containing his spirit beside him, his room empty. He looked at the orb and a determined look appeared on his face. 'It's me and you', he thought, as he sat cross legged with the orb in his hands. He channeled elemental essence into the orb via his essence channels from his elemental spark and allowed the new essence containing the fox flame spirit to flow into his body and into the spark. In about an hour, Keith finally absorbed all the elemental essence and the fox flame spirit into his spark. After absorbing the spirit, Keith checked his spark for any changes. At first he didn't notice any changes much to his disappointment, but then he noticed a separate presence in his spark, almost like something else was living in his spark. The fox- flame spirits presence.

Keith ran downstairs and met Kaitlin her parents and brother eating breakfast, with Aiden and Clarissa absent.

"Oh, Keith", said Alan, Kaitlin's dad upon seeing him first. "Sorry about Aiden and your mom's absence, they had an emergency call to look into rather urgently", he said giving a slight shrug.

Keith sat down with a smile on his face and said "it's okay, I already know".

After eating, Keith looked at Kaitlin and said "hey, I'll be going to the orphanage down the block, do you want to join?"

Kaitlin's eyes lit up at the offer as she hastily agreed. The orphanage was one of the few places Keith enjoyed being apart from his home. He usually stopped by there to check up on the children and help in activities whatever way he can. It was pleading on the owners part that actually made him decide to get a part time job there. He only be Kaitlin from time to time when she asked or if he invited her and she agreed. His mom also came when she wasn't busy with her duties as an Elemental Knight. He and Kaitlin dressed casually, Keith wearing a red t-shirt and a pair of black shorts, and Kaitlin wearing a pink blouse and with white flowers embroided on it with a pair of sandals. "Take care!" Said Derek as he watched them both run off in the direction of the orphanage.

They arrived at the orphanage at around 7:00am, while the children were getting ready for their breakfast. A slight knock at the door drew the attention of an elderly woman in her late sixties. On of the children who looked to be about Keith's age ran to answer it.

"It's Keith!", the boy yelled excitedly as the rest of the children instantly jubilated upon hearing who it was. "Oh," the boy suddenly added, "Cole, he's with your crush", he said with a mischievous grin. The boy whose name is Cole instantly blushed and said, "just open the door for them will you".

Keith and Kaitlin helped around the orphanage in whatever way they could, talking and playing with the children in the process. When Keith finally took a break from working around the orphanage, he sat down to cultivate. Children were only allowed to cultivate after getting their elemental spirits. Cultivation was divided into planes, and the planes were further divided into stages. Each plane has 10 stages, the early stages consisting of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd stage; the mid- stages consisting of the 4th, 5th, and 6th stages; the late stages consisting of the 7th, 8th and 9th stages and the final stage consisting of only the 10th stage. A person's plane can be identified by the color of the shell surrounding the elemental spark which can also manifest itself as an aura around them. The cultivation Planes and their color's from the lowest to the highest are as follows:

Beginners Plane- Bronze

Intermediate Plane- Silver

Advanced Plane- Gold

legend plane - Azure

Demi-god plane - amethyst

Asura Plane - Ruby

Titan Plane.- Diamond.

The shell surrounding Keith's spark was a dull bronze color, and he could clearly sense the fox-flame spirit's present inside the shell tangled up with the ball of flame in the spark. Keith began to cultivate. Having continually absorbed elemental essence for two years to develop his essence channels, he found this task rather easy. He watched as the shell filtered out the impurities and left only the pure essence which was only about 1/10 of what was absorbed. He sat there for almost an hour, even though to him it felt longer. After doing this, he went back downstairs to find Kaitlin waiting for him. Since it was the end of the month, the woman who owned the orphanage have Keith his monthly pay of ten silver pieces, which considering the fact that he's already a noble, is enough for him. The time was about 2:00 pm when they began to head back home, completely unaware of the pair of eyes watching them.