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 Targeted Age Group:: 13+
Darren made a deal. A deal for a new soul.
In Agartha, you belong to people with the same your soul’s aura color, and Darren doesn’t belong, he can’t be a red.
But is he ready to pay the nefarious spirit he made the deal with, the price of a soul?
Darren has to travel through Agartha, seeking a way to end the deal he made. And even though he has the support of his friend Mara, fighting minotaurs, trolls and harpies pauses a horrible threat to their journey.
Would they survive enough for Darren to get free, or will they face a pre-mandated fate worse than death?
While Darren and Mara face the terrible challenges of Agartha, Ethan, the Green Boy, traveled to the surface world searching for a cure to his fatal condition.
Only one person can help him, Merlin the eternal wizard, a man believed to be a myth.
Darren, Mara, and Ethan are all hurtling through the world under the illusion of free will, but an ancient prophecy that foretold the destruction of two worlds might have them in its grasp, leading them to their doom.
The fates are watching, calculating, and judging…
No one has ever escaped their judgment — but could this change?
The follow up to the award-winning “The Green Boy”
Link To Red’s Soul On Amazon Kindle Unlimited
What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
Isaac Michaan my co-author approached me back in 2019 about an idea he had of a world where all the mythical creatures from all mythologies live.
He proposed the idea of Hollow Earth to be the place where this story can happen.
From that point, we talked for over a month to build this world and a story plot.
This gave birth to the chronicles of Agartha universe, where we have three series running alongside each other.
How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
When Isaac and I started to write the plot, we had a lot of characters to write. We started by first writing the secondary characters to be off with them, then we went on to the main characters.
We wanted them to be easy to recognize, memorable, and relatable. This gave birth to seven characters, three who appear in the first two books, The Green Boy and Red's Soul, and four more to appear in the yet-to-be-written books.
Book Excerpt/Sample
D
arren walked in silence, barely paying attention to the scenery. He didn’t even care for the smell of roses filling the air, something he once would have stopped for to compose a poem, but not today. Black, the enigmatic spirit holding his nefarious Deal over Darren’s neck, walked beside him or rather floated around one foot above the ground.
“I really don’t understand why you are acting this way.” Black floated a few feet ahead. “There is no reason to treat me as if I don’t exist.”
Darren sidestepped Black and went on his way. He once looked sideways at Mara, who carried the same broken expression since the week started.
Ethan’s departure was not how he expected things to turn, and the days that came after had little joy to ease the sadness in his and Mara’s hearts.
In the first days after Ethan left, Mara questioned him several times about who he was talking to. He couldn’t tell her about Black, not yet anyway, so, he told her he was in the habit of speaking to his inner demons, something shapeshifters usually did. He hoped she would accept his answer, as he knew that she was a surface worlder, and had little information about shapeshifters, or maybe no knowledge at all.
He thought his answer worked, as Mara stopped asking him about Black after that. In fact, she stopped talking altogether. They only spoke in the early morning hours as they broke camp and during the late nights when they prepared food or set up camp.
Last night he tried to change her mood. He gathered Kawava and cooked it with meat like they did early in their journey together, just after the three met in Zarzura. But Mara picked at her meal, and he couldn’t eat that much either.
To make the journey to the chronicler even harder, Black didn’t quit his pushing and nudging for a moment; not even when Darren went to sleep, his dreams were filled with the same ominous calls Black pushed on him in his waking hours.
He slowed his pace as they came by a small stream with water-washed rounded stones on its banks.
Mara suddenly sat and cried.
“What’s wrong?” Darren came close, but he didn’t dare to go too close to the crying Mara.
“Nothing, just some silly memories.” Mara continued to cry as she toyed with the round stones.
“Nobody cries for nothing.” Darren sat beside Mara. “Please, we are now alone. We only have each other.” He paused for a moment to get the courage to continue under her unfaltering gaze. “We have to lean on each other for solace.”
Mara looked strangely at him, then she threw herself at his shoulder.
Darren froze for a moment, then he touched her hair lightly. Her head was small on his shoulder, and he feared if he held her closer to him, he would break her thin neck. She heaved and shivered with sobs and torrents of tears.
After a minute, Mara raised her head from his shoulder. “I am so sorry. I just remembered my first days in Agartha. I slipped and fell so many times on rounded stones like those.” She held three stones in her hand. “This was before Ethan gave me the soft soles that helped me to keep my balance.” Then she kneeled and continued to sob.
“Hey, he is not dead.” Darren held her hand with the stones. “And he will be back.” He forced a smile onto his face. “I bet we will find him at the chronicler by the time we reach there. He is very resourceful.”
Mara’s lips curved into a weak smile. “He is that.” Her smile grew stronger. “He was also an excellent fighter, almost as good as you.”
“Nah, I just react.” Darren smiled and waved his hand in dismissal. “Ethan was a strategist. He planned his fights far better than I ever did.”
“Which left me as a burden on both of you.” Mara took a deep breath. “Double so now that it is only you and I.”
“Not true. You are a valiant fighter, although you do lack the skill.” Darren smiled widely. “But we can work on that. I will teach you how to handle a sword starting tomorrow morning.”
Darren took courage from the light shining in Mara’s eyes.
“That would be great.” Mara smiled back a similar wide smile. “At least it would ease my mind from continuously thinking of Ethan and how he fares.”
“Let’s make camp now.” Darren pulled one pack that contained their camping supplies. “And first thing in the morning, we start the training.”
***
“Hold it tight, but don’t squeeze it.” Darren held Mara’s arms as she gripped the short sword he was using to teach her.
“It feels awkward and ungainly.” Mara exhaled; a puff of air ruffled her bangs. “I feel that I am holding it too far from my body. It hurts my arms.”
“This is because you are taking the wrong stance.” Darren took the sword from her hands. “Here, let me show you.”
Darren stood holding the sword as he placed one foot ahead of the other, slightly bent his knee and the elbows.
“You have to balance your stance.” First, h thrust the sword, advancing with the forward foot, then he went back. “This is a simple thrust, but even for a guy my size, puncturing and penetrating a body takes a lot of force, so you have to use your entire body behind the thrust to match my force.”
Darren put the forward foot a step behind the other. “When you block, you need to be able to withstand the force of the opponent, so you use the traction of your feet on the ground to support your weight combined with theirs.”
He sidestepped and swiped with the sword. “When you want to swing, don’t just use your elbows and shoulder. You don’t have the weight nor the force for that.”
He pointed to his feet. “You have to use your whole body, and your lower half is always going to be the heavier and stronger part of your body, so use it to your advantage.”
“Okay, let me try again.” Mara opened and closed her hand, signaling for Darren to give her the sword.
Once he handed the sword to her, she imitated the moves and stances he did.
“This is far better.” Darren nodded with a smile. “These moves can let you sustain a longer battle. Now, I will teach you how to take an opponent down.”
For the next two hours, Darren went through his entire repertoire of Nafoura training in sword fighting. To his amazement, Mara captured the moves and executed them fairly well.
“If I didn’t know better, I would say that you must have gone through this training before.” Darren chuckled. “You catch everything quick; I am impressed.”
“I never attended any training for fighting before, but I was always a quick learner.” Mara jumped around like a little girl, waving the sword in the air.
“You’d better leave the sword for now.” Darren approached her; hands raised. “You don’t want to kill an accidental tree or the occasional spirit.”
“I can do that? I can kill a spirit?” Mara stopped, dropped the sword, and looked at Darren with wide, fearful eyes.
“No, not really, but a sword is not something to toy with. Playing around with one could hurt you or a friend.” He laughed as he picked the sword and placed it back in its scabbard.
Mara blushed and nodded.
Darren smiled and shrugged. “Don’t worry much. I am just repeating the words of my teachers, no harm done.”
“I want to learn more.” She jumped around maniacally.
“Now, we rest.” Darren went to the pack of food and pulled some out. “Tomorrow, I will teach you some combinations to disarm an opponent, turn a block to a thrust, and so on.”
“Great.” Mara laughed and sat beside Darren, and they both ate.
As the night came and both prepared to sleep, Darren knew he just couldn’t sleep. So, he waited to hear Mara’s rhythmic breathing before he stood and sat by the fire.
He thought of Ethan most of the time.
Three weeks had passed, and he was not sure his friend was even still alive, even if he assured Mara otherwise.
Darren hoped Ethan would be back from the mythical surface world by the time they reached the chronicler, He missed his friend, and he hoped they will end this quest together.
After an hour of reminiscing on what came before, he returned to his blanket and fell asleep to his usual troubling dreams.
***
Darren woke up to another bad dream and lay sweating for some time. Another night filled with terrors, just like the past two weeks.
After his heart calmed, he sat by the fire, watching over Mara. He smiled when he remembered their last training session. She almost knocked him off his feet, and he wondered how fast a learner she must be.
Darren looked at Mara’s sleeping form and sighed. She treated him as a brother, which was alright, but it was never equal to how she treated Ethan. Now that Ethan had been gone for over four weeks, he thought things would change with Mara, but they didn’t.
“You are too weak to make a move.” Black smiled a viciously as he stood beside Darren. “You will never have the courage to tell her how you feel about her, even if loneliness and the need for a companion brought it about.”
“How I feel about her is none of your business,” Darren said in a strangled shout. “Stay away from her.”
“Fine, let your darkness consume you.” Black laughed. “As long as we reach the chronicler, fulfill our Deal, I don’t care how you fare.”
“If I could only break it,” Darren whispered.
“The Deal?” Black laughed even louder. Even though Darren knew Mara could never hear the ethereal shadow, he was afraid his laughter might wake her up.
“Yes, the Deal,” Darren said with hatred painting his every word. “If I could break it, I would.”
“But it can only be broken by your death, dear Darren.” Black snorted.
Darren turned his back to Black and went back to his troubling sleep.
***
In the morning, Mara prepared food for the day’s journey, and she woke up Darren. “We have no more cheese, but I picked for you plenty of fruits.”
He thanked her, and they ate in silence.
As they finished their meal, a resounding roar came from the woods not far away from them. Darren jumped to grab his sword, and Mara pulled out her short one.
“What is that?” Mara passed the sword from hand to hand in anticipation.
They listened as the roar was repeated.
“That is an iron-clad Minotaur,” Darren said in a whisper. “They favor the hunt more than the meat, and we humans are the most coveted of hunts.”
Just as he finished explaining, the tree branches near to them rustled, and a great beast cleared them in one bound, it looked like an armored man, only it had a disfigured head with horns, and it was at least as tall and wide as two men.
The beast eyed them for a moment, then it charged with a roar.
Darren didn’t think; he shifted to wolf form in a second and roared at the minotaur. Even in wolf form, the minotaur towered over Darren by at least the height of two heads. It carried a flail in one hand and a long, keen dagger in the other. It wore a large helmet with its horns coming out of the top. The heavy armor of plate mail covered its entire torso; nothing but its thick matted fur covered its bovine legs and lower body half. But what really wasn’t hard to miss was the smell permeating from the minotaur. It reeked of blood, rusted metal, and, astonishingly enough, curdled milk.
Darren took the first blow from the flail on his arm, tried to grab it from the minotaur’s hand, but the minotaur was too strong for that kind of move, and instead pulled Darren’s entire weight and then threw him some ten feet away to crash into the trunk of a tree.
The minotaur roared as Mara cut a clean gash across his thigh, forcing the giant brute to fall to its knees. But before Mara could swipe her sword at the minotaur’s neck, it hit her with the flail squarely in the chest, sending her reeling twenty feet across the forest’s floor.
The minotaur made a strained noise from the back of its throat and pushed itself up. It then advanced on Mara’s unconscious form with the dagger.
As it raised the dagger for a final plunge into Mara’s heart, Darren crashed into it like a falling tree.
For a moment, both rolled on the forest floor, all limbs tangled. Each of the fighters sought purchase into the other’s flesh. It cut Darren three times across the chest and the arms as he tried to push his dagger into the space between the edge of the helmet and the armor.
Then the minotaur pushed Darren off its body just as Darren nicked it on the neck.
It paused for a moment as it held its hand to the wound on its neck, roared in frustration, and ran off into the forest’s thickness.
Darren kneeled on the ground, panting and shaking for a minute, and shifted back to his original human form.
He finally stood and pulled bits of his torn shirt to cover the cuts on his chest and arms. Then he searched around the battle scene for Mara. She was still prone on the forest floor. He rushed to her side and checked her breathing. It came slow and shallow. He couldn’t see any wounds on her body, but he suspected she suffered a powerful blow to the head.
Darren looked savagely around. He had nothing that could deal with such trauma, and Mara’s only hope was with a healer.
He rummaged into the pack of the Arcanos and brought out the magical compass, concentrated hard, and suddenly, the direction on its face changed.
Now, he had a new destination, and at its end would be a healer.
He pulled all the packs and tied them around his waist with vines, then he carried Mara’s inert body and walked fast towards the healer.
Author Bio:
Award-winning author of The Chronicles of Agartha – The Green Boy, is a fantasy fan and a history enthusiast as well. Originally a medical doctor who fell in love with the art of the word, and has since gone on to write several books in the various genres of fantasy. Some of his works include The Chronicles of Agartha Series, The Door, and The Eye of The Storm from the Esfah Saga series.
If he is not writing, he is most probably reading a fantasy novel, playing an RPG, or immersing himself in anything that seems to come from out of this world.
He is the proud father of two gorgeous girls whom he adores.
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