The master was in a bad mood. That was never a good thing. Silently, Garth cursed the luck that had placed him in the main hall while Eigen, his fellow apprentice, was down in the lower dungeons tending to the horrors in the bestiary. At the time, the young would-be wizard had been pleased with the way things had turned out. Feeding and mucking out the pits was back-breaking and unpleasant besides, compared to waiting on the Master...at least when he wasn’t in one of his foul moods.

 “Where’s that summoning scroll, boy?” Master Ivarr slurred, the drink all to plain in his voice and the unsteady hands which handled the magical reagents and foci in the casting circle.Garth hoped he wasn’t seriously going to cast anything in this condition, particularly not a summoning spell which were tricky in the best cases. Last thing they needed was setting a pack of gremlins loose in the castle...again. And that’d be if they were lucky.

 “Just a moment, master.” Garth said, frantically brushing the scruff of light brown hair out of a gangly, slightly acne’d face. The apprentice was bent over one of the work tables, hurriedly picking through the clutter which spilled over it, and every other bit of furniture in the room, and onto the floors. A glass jar with a preserved fire salamander was shoved aside so he could get at a stack of scrolls.

 Garth flinched as, in the process of picking them up, he disturbed the thick spiderwebs joining them to a half-ground up tundra troll femur,  sending their residents scurrying to the cover of a basket filled with wilted mournmist blossoms he and Eigen had spent hours picking six months ago...not to mention most of the day it had taken them wading through the Grimpen Mire to reach the glade. They’d been left untouched since Master Ivarr gave up on that particular magical project.

 Garth sighed as he quickly glanced through the dusty and faded scrolls. Once upon a time, Master Ivarr had been a great court wizard, serving the Royal family with his own tower on the grounds of the palace, but those days were gone. Many evenings, when deep in his cups, the Master would rant and rave about the courtiers and the scandals which had caused him to lose that position and banished him to this remote and forgotten castle on the kingdom’s frontier.

 “Hurry boy, hurry!” The master shouted. “The stars won’t be right for this spell for at least six months!”

 “Coming master!” Garth called back, tossing scrolls aside in his haste. No, not that one; the wax seal on it was for a flight spell...not that one, he remembered it as one of the Master’s many attempts to place a curse on the king’s chamberlain. There! Snatching up the summoning scroll, Garth rushed back, remembering at the last second to go to one knee and offer it to his master like a proper apprentice.

 Master Ivarr snatched it up impatiently and threw open the scroll, scowling at the stains and water marks left on the old parchment from a leak during the spring rains. “Took you long enough.” He snapped.

 “Maybe if we had someone clean this place up…” Garth muttered under his breath without thinking. Hurriedly, he shut up, but he could see it was already too late. The Master was looking at him and with a sly expression that boded ill for the apprentice.

 “Oh really?” The Master said, in a tone of sardonic amusement. “Do you not find my hall to your liking?”

 Garth glanced around, the dusty, cobwebbed rafters, the holes in the roof letting in thin beams of light (and more of then not, rain) the clutter of sorcerous paraphernalia, not to mention dirty plates of half-eaten food and discarded, unwashed laundry. “No, no, of course not master. I just thought it could maybe do with some...tidying up?” It quickly dawned on him who was likely to have to do said tidying up and he hurriedly added, “Maybe there’s some magic that can do that?”

 He saw Master Ivarr’s expression darken and switched tactics. “Or we could get a maid? It’d be nice to have a girl around the place to do the cooking and cleaning?” He reckoned that would be a better tack. He knew from experience the Master was an old lech and would like the idea of having some female company besides his two gawky, teenage and very much male apprentices.

 Master Ivarr smiled and Garth relaxed. “Why yes...I think that would be a splendid idea…” He said. “A girl would be much more suited for that kind of work then an apprentice after all! Yes, that’s it!” With a sudden violent gesture, he swept a hand across the casting circle sending all the carefully collected and prepared components tumbling off the raised dais to join the clutter and litter of the room. That was the Master, with a new idea in his head all thought of his previous project was gone. Still, Garth willingly went to work, digging through the mess in search of the new items the Master requested, bringing them over.

 “What spell are you going to cast, Master?” Garth asked as Master Ivarr fiddled with the final foci the apprentice had brought him. At first, Garth had thought they were preparing a different summoning spell, to conjure and bind a spirit or fairy but apprentice though he was, he could tell this was not a summoning spell. Maybe a spell to communicate across distances? To call and request a maid from the city? Garth knew for a fact no maiden in the nearby village would willingly set foot within ten miles of the castle, since Ivarr’s reputation had gotten around, but somewhere there would be someone who hadn’t been warned yet.

 “Ah, yes…” Master Ivarr said with a grin. “I don’t think I’ve taught you any of this school of magic just yet. It’s not a field for apprentices after all. Could you step over here...that’s a good lad.” Garth shuffled over, standing in front of the table, still watching the proceedings with great interest, as he always did on those few occasions the Master deigned to show his apprentices some new bits of magical lore. “This is a spell of Transformation.”

 Garth had only a split second to realize the implication. The apprentice had only just opened his mouth to voice a complaint when Master Ivarr spoke the word of activation and set the spell in motion. The items on the table glowed with power for a split second, then shot forward to envelope the lad.

 As the glow of the spell faded, Garth became aware of a few things. For one, his clothes no longer fit him, his tunic was all too tight at the chest and his trousers were stretched at the hips. His hair was longer, he could feel it brushing against his shoulders. When he raises his hands to his face, the thin stubble the teen was quite proud of for finally growing was gone, leaving his cheeks completely smooth. In short, he was no longer a ‘he’.

 “Master!” Garth exclaimed, shocked to find ‘his’ voice suddenly an octave or two higher. “What did you do?”

 “Just what you asked, I got us a girl to handle the cooking and cleaning.” Master Ivarr said, favoring her with a leering grin. “Let’s get you into something more appropriate…” He raised a hand, fingers twisted into an odd, arcane gesture and summoned up some more power from the Transformation spell. There was a pop and Garth’s patched, stained apprentice clothes vanished. She was just enough time to give a shriek of embarrassment as her new body, perky round breasts, slender middle, curvy hips and all was bared before the clothes reappeared on her, now transformed into a dark black dress like Garth had seen other maids wear before...though there’s had a good deal more cloth in the skirt and about the top.

 “Please Master!” Garth protested. “Turn me back!”

 “Uh uh!” Master Ivarr said and, with a laugh, conjured a gag in Garth’s mouth. She groaned, chewing on the leather bit. It was a favorite spell of the master’s, used whenever he felt his apprentices, or anyone really, was giving him too much lip. The former apprentice knew the gag was magically sealed, so only the Master could remove it as well.

 “Now, you wanted the room clean...Clean!” Master Ivarr said, clapping his hands. “Be quick about it, or I’ll find ways to...encourage you.”

 With a glum sigh of resignation, the new maid turned and walked out of the circle, her movement awkward as she adjusted to the new sway of her body as she stumbled to one of the tables and got busy tidying up. Her only hope, she knew, was to finish quickly and hope the Master was in a mood to change her back...and he didn’t decide he liked his former apprentice better this way.

 “I only hope Eigen never finds out about this…” She thought.