Agents of Chaos Read online

  Agents of Chaos

  Book 2 of the Divinity Seeds Series

  Copyright Des Pensable 2016

  Published by Des Pensable at Smashwords

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favourite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  About the Title

  A divinity seed is a small piece of divine knowledge forbidden to mortals.

  Cover Design

  Cover design by Renee Barratt, www.TheCoverCounts.com

  Table of Contents

  Overview of Divinity Seeds Part 1

  Chapter 1 The Dream Potion

  Chapter 2 Miranda’s Bad Day

  Chapter 3 The Suggestion

  Chapter 4 Trouble With Snowbelle

  Chapter 5 Some Home Truths

  Chapter 6 The Crossroads

  Chapter 7 The Wolf People

  Chapter 8 The Trixie Outcast

  Chapter 9 Shopping at Gnome World

  Chapter 10 Fen Fang Fate

  Chapter 11 Tactical Games

  Chapter 12 The Trixie Unmasked

  Chapter 13 Friends and Relatives

  Chapter 14 Guests at Darkmantle Estate

  Chapter 15 Featherdown’s Trap

  Chapter 16 The Gateworld

  Chapter 17 Welcome to Astaria

  Chapter 18 Quab’s Revelation

  Chapter 19 Garret’s Nightmare

  Chapter 20 Slivver and Adonis

  Chapter 21 The Prison Bottle

  Chapter 22 Chamber of Horrors

  Chapter 23 Swapping prisons

  Chapter 24 Mistaken identity

  Chapter 25 The Divinity Seed

  Chapter 26 Warden of Moonmist

  Chapter 27 Terror Tactics

  Chapter 28 Missed Reunion

  Chapter 29 Secret of the Throne

  Chapter 30 Garden Parties

  Chapter 31 Dress Parade with Appetizers

  Chapter 32 Furry Fear

  Chapter 33 Time of Testing

  Chapter 34 The Divine Aquitain

  Glossary

  Other Books by the Author

  Connecting with the Author

  Brief Overview of Divinity Seeds Part 1 - Visions of Chaos

  Rob Theolaur a shy, young mind wizard and magic equipment artisan is excited but scared when a dormant ability to shape change in him appears. His grandfather a powerful merchant wizard called Sol Theolaur gets the help of a Logicon wizard friend named Facit Decoid to help Rob adapt to his new ability.

  While swapping spirits between bodies, Rob and Facit are separated by an archon searching for the political criminal Facit and Rob is trapped in Facit’s slime creature body. Rob is jailed and manages to escape before he can be charged with the offence of shape changing which carries a death sentence in his home city of Panmagica.

  Rob changes his name to Aquitain, a name given to him at birth by his father and flees Panmagica to another world called Mudrun with his cousin Zephira where he meets a young druidess called Miranda. He makes contact with High Wizard Featherdown, a friend of his grandfather who gives him a job repairing magic equipment in the basement of the wizard’s tower. The High Wizard is very suspicious as to why he is there as there is a prophecy that mentions a person with his unusual name.

  Featherdown gives him a tricky quest to fix the town of Twin Towers’ magic fountain. He fixes it and makes friends with both the air and water elementals that use the magic node under the town as a source of food. The High Wizard is worried about Aquitain’s reasons for coming to Mudrun so asks Quab, a druid colleague to teach Aquitain more about shape changing in an endeavor to find out more about him. Quab is called away during their training on an urgent mission and passes the job on to the druidess Miranda who normally has an aversion to men.

  Aquitain goes for a swim at a local beach in his newman male form and is attacked by a giant squid. Miranda comes along during the fight and helps Aquitain kill the monster. They are both hungry and decide to barbeque a part of the monster. Miranda is at ease with Aquitain as she considers him a shape shifted slime creature rather than a man. During the barbeque they discover that they have some common interests and are interested in each other.

  Aquitain learns that he has been falsely charged with the murder of Facit Decoid his shape change tutor on Panmagica and an archon has been sent to Mudrun to arrest him. Featherdown offers to hide him in a safe house in the basement of a ruined house in the jungle well away from the town. Miranda decides to go with him to ensure the area is safe.

  While checking the area around where they were staying, Miranda discovers that something strange is happening. Aquitain talks her into investigating the problem and in a huge leap in trust she allows him to form a mindlink with her. They find a tribe of peaceful reptilian little people has been slaughtered in their temple devoted to their spirit totem cat Jacintra.

  They discover the spirits of the dead are unhappy and decide to carry out a ritual to cleanse the area and help the spirits pass beyond. Aquitain is possessed by the spirit of the Cat Lord Jacintra but manages to help Miranda complete a complex ritual. Jacintra tells them that there is a treasure hidden in the temple. They seek and find a magical item called the Mask of Chaos, which is haunted by the spirit of a dangerous chaotic wizard.

  A jungle cat tips them off that the people who murdered the little people have set up an ambush for them. They decide to ambush the ambushers and succeed; however, one of the enemies manages to escape. The escapee sounds the alarm and they are targeted for retribution.

  In their hideout Aquitain and Miranda celebrate their successful adventure and discover a lot more about each other. Miranda reveals the reason for her aversion to men, a lethal magical protective tattoo. Aquitain vows to help her remove it. Each gets a new more positive impression of the other and they become much closer. Miranda is more attracted to Aquitain seeing him now as a newman like her trapped in an alien body rather than a slime creature. Unfortunately the Mask of Chaos they found dominates Jaztrix an apprentice wizard of Featherdown sent to help protect them.

  Featherdown’s second-in-command Curbut is revealed to be a spy and assassin. He cunningly finds out where Aquitain and Miranda are hidden and goes there. He succeeds in killing Aquitain but Miranda escapes. She uses her mother’s magic pendant to reincarnate Aquitain as a bear and hides him with the Crin, a race of sentient giant ant-like creatures then dramatically announces to the town that Aquitain is dead in order to shake off the archon after him.

  While hiding with the Crin, Aquitain discovers that he is somehow still connected to the Jacintra the Chaos Cat Lord. This gets him thrown out of the Crin city. He travels to the kingdom of Miranda’s mother Snowbelle, the nymph Queen of Argenta. After a psychic duel with Snowbelle he learns of the conditions to eliminate Miranda’s magical tattoo. His bravery in confronting Miranda’s dangerous mother about the tattoo wins Miranda’s heart.

  The Mask of Chaos with the help of Jaztrix attacks Featherdown’s town of Twin Towers with disastrous results. Aquitain and Miranda flee together to a purple little people’s village only to discover that the Mask of Chaos has killed most of the little people in a nearby Barra village. Aquitain agrees to help in a ritual to bury the dead in the Barra village and discovers some interesting secrets about the little people.

  Aquitain solves a riddle posed by the spirits of the dead ancestors of the Barra tri
be of little people and deduces that the Mask of Chaos will next attack the Jeti tribe of little people. With the help of Miranda and the Jeti little people they defeat the Mask of Chaos and spirit of Jacintra in a mind battle.

  Miranda is severely hurt by an overload of magic power when she acts as the focus of a mind concert during the fight. Aquitain tries to heal her but discovers that her mind is trapped in a sexual fantasy caused by the magic overload. He creates a unique passion flower for her and successfully induces her out of the fantasy and discovers how passionate she can be.

  After the battle they discover that many of the Barra children from the attack on the Barra village are being held hostage in a strange temple not far away. They launch an assault on the temple with a combined force of fighters from the little people, the Crin and newman guards from Twin Towers.

  With the help of the special magical songs used by the little people Aquitain manages to defeat the magical defenses of the Temple of Elements and after a brief but bloody fight in which Zephira is captured by the enemy, they succeed in entering the temple.

  They find twenty Barra children and Zephira held captive inside. Aquitain bargains for the release of the captives and successfully releases the Barra children but loses both Zephira his cousin and his memcrystal containing a part of his mind. He is very upset but Miranda rallies his morale to the cheers of his attack force. After everyone else has left Aquitain searches a hidden room in the temple and finds a rare magic scepter and a powerful druid scroll.

  He takes the weapon and scroll to Quab the druid’s sanctuary where he shows them to Quab and Miranda. Not long after they are attacked by a large number of druids and wizard Curbut in the sanctuary, an act considered a heinous crime. Curbut and his band manage to kill Aquitain. Miranda, with the help of Featherdown, exacts revenge by killing all the attackers except for one druid, which they intend to interrogate.

  Miranda is overcome with grief at Aquitain’s death and forces Quab to use the powerful druid scroll found by Aquitain to resurrect him in a newman body like hers. To her surprise he is resurrected as a strange type of spider, a Llanllean. This casts doubts upon her ancestry. She takes him to the Jeti tribe of little people and asks them to hide him while she seeks her mother to find out if she is really a Llanllean spider woman rather than a newman.

  Chapter 1 The Dream Potion

  Aquitain awoke in a darkened area surrounded by rainbow coloured candles arrayed in a circle around him. He looked out through his six eyes and marvelled at the clarity of his vision.

  Even though it should have been quite dark inside the cave he could see exceptionally well almost as if his eyes were adapted to seeing in dimly lit places. Then he remembered that he had died again. Yesterday he had been a Newman spirit reincarnated in the body of a large ferocious bear. He didn’t know what he was this time but it wasn’t the Newman body that he had hoped for.

  Miranda his beautiful druidess partner had asked the Goddess of Nature, The Lady of the Jungle to grant him life again. This time it was different, there was no chanting and pleading with The Lady like last time, just a simple request, almost a demand.

  Please grant him life again! She wanted him to be a Newman again like her so that they could be lovers. At least that was the general idea but first he would have to remove the lethal magical chastity belt tattooed into her skin from her waist to her knees.

  He smelt something appetizing. He looked around and saw two, no three reptilian little people sitting nearby. They hadn’t realized that he was awake yet. He could catch them by surprise. Pounce on them and overcome them and eat them.

  Wait a moment said some inner voice, what are you thinking? Little people are friends. He looked at them closely and recognized all three. There was Kami the wise old shaman of the Jeti tribe, Rori the courageous young shaman of the Barra tribe and a female. He had seen her before but couldn’t quite remember her name.

  ‘Kami, is that you?’ he said hesitantly using mindspeak, ‘Where am I?’

  All three little people suddenly stood and stared at him. They resembled lean deep purple coloured, scaly, medium-sized dogs standing on their hind legs. Kami began shaking with big, tremulous shakes as if he was shivering in an icy cold room and he gave off a particularly appetizing aroma. Rori was pale and tense.

  ‘Why are you shaking Kami? It doesn’t seem that cold in here.’ he said a little confused.

  The female bravely walked over to the edge of the circle of candles. ‘He is being afraid of you Spirit Lord.’

  ‘You all know me. Why is he afraid and not you?’

  ‘It is being your body shape Spirit Lord. The little peoples have been conditioned to be fearing large spiders. I am the Most Fearless. That is why I am being here.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ he said. ‘May I mindlink with you so that I might see myself through your eyes.’

  ‘I would be being most honoured Spirit Lord.’ she replied so he formed a mindlink with her and asked her to concentrate on him so that he might see through her eyes. He was shocked! He was some type of spider. His body was about the same size as the little people but his powerful legs spread out two paces on either side of his body.

  He was a dark brown colour and hairy all over like an ape with a multi-coloured patterned abdomen. He had four eyes pointed forward, two large and two small ones, which if he remembered from his nature studies, meant that he was a predator.

  ‘By the Powers, what has the goddess done to me?’ he said aloud.

  ‘The ... the ... The Lady was the cause of this being done to you?’ said Rori. ‘But why Spirit Lord?’

  ‘I have no idea.’ replied Aquitain trying to recollect what had happened the previous evening and slowly it came to him.

  ‘I remember now. Miranda, Quab and I were in Quab’s druid sanctuary at Twin Towers. It was just after sunset and wards suddenly went down then Curbut the wizard and countless angry druids attacked us from all sides.’

  ‘I fought hard but there were just too many of them. I couldn’t teleport away as my teleport rings were depleted. They surrounded me and struck me down with their blue flaming weapons. It was very painful. My bear body was destroyed. A little later I woke up in this body and Miranda teleported away with me. The rest is a little fuzzy.’

  ‘We are being very glad that you are coming back from the world of spirits again Spirit Lord Aquitain but we are not being so pleased about your new body. We would be liking the big bear body much more.’ said Kami.

  ‘So would I Kami. I was getting quite fond of being a spirit bear.’

  ‘When you were being a bear you were changing your shape to other bodies. Is there being a possibility of you changing your shape to another being less frightening Spirit Lord.’ asked Rori. ‘The village people are being too terrified to be looking at you.’

  ‘Of course Rori my young friend.’ said Aquitain and he thought of what he would change into and as he looked at them he knew somehow that he could change into a little person without much effort.

  He vaguely recalled Miranda saying the previous evening that he was some type of shape-changing spider. He concentrated and changed shape ending up looking identical to the female little person.

  Shastritara was shocked. ‘You are looking like me.’ she said. ‘Why are you wishing to be looking like me?’

  ‘Oh. Sorry.’ said Aquitain ‘I didn’t mean to look exactly like you. I was just trying to look like one of your people.’ so he changed and this time looked exactly like Rori.

  ‘You are looking like the twin brother of Rori now.’ said Kami.

  ‘Oh. I think that I need to see more of your people so that I can work out how to make small changes in my appearance so that I am not a copy of any one of you but slightly different and unique so that you and your people can tell me apart from the others.’

  ‘Why are you wishing to be like us Spirit Lord? Why are you not being a bear again like yesterday?’ asked Kami.

  ‘I cannot change my body size Kami.
If I change to a bear I will look like a baby bear. If I change to a Newman then I will look like a small child. Would your people rather see me as a child or one of them? I can also look like a snake or a slime creature if you wish but that’s all the body shapes I know.’

  ‘I am seeing your problem Spirit Lord. If those are being your choices then being one of us is likely to being the most acceptable. There are some warriors camped outside I will have Rori bring them in here so that you can see the differences.’

  While Rori was collecting the warriors Aquitain stood in the circle of candles and used his power to detect magic to examine his immediate area. As he had suspected the area inside the circle of candles was a magically warded area.

  ‘You have me in a warded area Kami. Why is that?’ he asked.

  ‘When the druidess Miranda was bringing you to us last night she was asking that we be giving you protection as you were being hunted by a rebel group of druids. I was thinking that it would be being best that you are being hidden to their special sight.’

  ‘Your lore continues to amaze me Kami. No one would have guessed that you could ward an area from scrying. That is very sophisticated magic.’

  ‘We are losing much of our lore as we are not being allowed to practice it.’ said Shastritara suddenly. ‘The druids are forbidding us to be using it.’

  ‘Quiet Shastritara, it is not your place to be speaking badly of the druids.’ said Kami harshly.

  She defiantly glared back at him but said nothing more. Aquitain used his mindlink with the female to ask her what she meant when she said that she was the Most Fearless. She looked guiltily at Kami and then realised that he couldn’t hear what Aquitain was saying through the mindlink. She gave him a toothy reptilian grin and sat down submissively behind Kami.

  ‘You are a cunning one, Spirit Lord. I am now seeing why the druidess has been telling us that you are being her favourite. I am being different from the others in the tribe. My skin colour is being red. It only has the purple coloration like the other Jeti as I am having to dye it using blue berries.’