It was dark, every sound muffled, each instant was painful, every part ached. Ethan found himself out of breath, but not able to let any air in... And he really wanted some air. His lungs demanded it.

-Bweeeeagh!

He gasped pulling his head out of the foamy mud he was resting into. Immediately this action of his was punished by a razor-sharp, hot pain in his chest and the poor boy ended up coughing out several spoon-fulls of slimy blood. His face was also quite a gross dripping mess, speckled in hot blood, cold mud and lukewarm drool.

And yet he wasn't too unhappy: he was awakening! He was still alive!

He rolled on the side, instinctively hugging his rib-cage and tried to breathe again.

He coughed a little more, but it was better, all things considered: he had several broken ribs, bruises to his entire right side, a gash on the back of his head and blood in his eyes. All he could think though was:

“Why am I not dead?”

Again, not really complaining... just, positively surprised by his sudden “luck”.

Getting to a sitting position, with no little pain and effort, he saw a very angry Gobbler staring at him. It was frantically attacking “something” and getting a lot of punishment for it in return.

Ethan blinked quickly, again and again, trying to cry the blood out of his eyes. When he got to look at his surroundings again, he realized he was inside a pillar of light, which went up sky-high, leaving no chance for the Shadow Gobbler to get in: the animal was actually shrinking with every attack due to the light burning away the mass of its body.

-What the hell is happening?

Ethan finally got to ask. The young man knew he had to keep on moving, but stepping out of that god-sent golden cage, was not an option. He hadn't run until now just to offer himself as a meal after getting well tenderized.

He looked around one more time and, after some good searching, he noticed a small craggy entrance on a rocky hillside, which looked just like a gray mouth in the shape of a surprised “o”. Ethan carefully stood up, not really able to put weight on his right leg, nor use his right arm, and half hopped, half stumbled toward the cave. He looked at the darkness in front of him with keen eyes, suspicious of what that place could hide, shaking a little, due to an equal mix of fear, cold and pain.

Before venturing forward though, he turned around to throw rude gestures at the increasingly smaller Gobbler

-Y...

He coughed again, with some more blood. It wasn't a good thing, no. What he would have wanted to say to the animal was something in the lines of:

-You are a bastard and your mother was a very bad snake-like thingy, and I wish you to eat something rotten and to wither away!

Which was kind of a failure as an insult, and very inappropriate, he knew, being that creature just a hatchling.

It probably didn't know any better... Still he didn't really feel all that friendly or compassionate at the moment: he angrily flipped the now horse-sized Shadow Gobbler the middle finger and then he wobbled towards the cave.

He stopped just one step away to smell the air, but from inside the hole came nothing, not even a whiff of rot, moss or animal musk, like it was unnaturally empty...

He had just gotten a bash with unnatural, and he hadn't liked it one bit: no sir.

He swallowed hard, looking back, wishful... but there was no other way. He didn't know where the surrounding pillar of light had come from, nor for how long it was going to stay active, but he knew he couldn't remain inside that small circle forever.

He slammed his tail to the ground, resolute, and braved his foot into the sinister hollow.

Ethan, among his many talents, could count some sort of night vision, so he didn't stumble on the stone steps going down, getting some support with his left arm on the wall... It was dry, like the floor, like everything else in there.

“How can't the rain be able to cross over the entrance?” he wondered. It was indeed really odd.

Only a couple of meters inside and all the sounds from the the rest of the world had disappeared too. He sighed his dislike out, almost bursting in another coughing shoot-out.

He resisted the urge and kept on going though, slowly and purposefully. After a while, the dusty floor started being less and less steep, opening up to a scarcely lighted room, with a strong echo. As he entered, he saw a gigantic hooded man standing in front of him. His back was really wide and he was busy looking at the statue of a tall woman, surrounded by inscriptions in a language Ethan didn't understand. Before Ethan could make his presence known, the other one turned around and looked at him with a questioning, angry gaze.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

-Who are you?

He asked with his booming, husky, calculating voice.

Yeah, who was Ethan R. Samhal? Well, stating the obvious first: he wasn't human.

He was a Rokian, a humanoid that earthlings could compare to a mix of lizard and frog, yet bipedal, small in stature but surprisingly resilient and strong.

What were Rokians useful for?

Rokians, it was common knowledge, were a creation of man, not of a higher power, with the sole purpose to serve and revere the mages of planet Havenrock: human mages.

The same humans which were indigenous of planet Earth. They had been a reality of the magic world since a long while back, and had spread all across the universe. Like many others, they had become magical at the time of “The Awakening”, many centuries before our story. But “The Awakening”, which had indeed ignited in all the sentient and semi-sentient beings their potential for magic, was a thing of the past that only involved creatures and species that were around back then... supposedly, not Rokians.

About this “Awakening” stuff: it was the result of a not so friendly bet some magical creatures forced upon Death.

Death had wagered the future of the universe that giving people a potential for immortality and magic powers was too much, being sentient beings irresponsible and too selfish to handle all that. In his idea, they were going to not just screw up, but destroy all creation. He had been proven wrong by the people he had bet against, several times, until now. The result of the bet had been a massive incantation, which gave all the universe the same chances at magical powers. This mass-magic was very originally called the “Awakening”.

So, back on Havenrock, a planet colonized by Earth's mages... These mages' life was, in their eyes, meaningful, hard, and full of mental labor: they were usually too busy being lost in a twisting nether of thoughts to care for mundane things such as laundry and groceries. Someone, or something, had still to take care of all of that though, since they clearly couldn't.

With selfish precision, they had created Rokians, creatures with barely enough brain to understand orders, barely enough free will as not to be an annoying nuisance, and barely enough good sense as to fulfill those orders just the way their master liked them.

A rokian's life, wasn't a fun life.

And lots of good having Rokian servants had done to them mages...

First of all, not all mages were equals: there were poor people on this planet; extremely poor people. So very poor in fact, as to not really being able to qualify as mages at all. They couldn't study for it, and they were unable to get a job, because all the menial, day to day jobs on the planet were handled by unpaid rokians. All these people could do was getting their “monthly princely allowance” at one of the prefect's court, which was enough Thalers for eating, paying rent, and nothing more. The amount they were given, was calculated precisely for being just so.

In a sense, poor people's life, was even worse than rokians, on Havenrock. At least, rokians were not aware of the way they were treated...

The owners kept their rokians all over the places: cages, cellars, dungeons, kennels, really everywhere.

In the wild it was even worse though. Since rokians really didn't care for danger, bad weather or such “mundane” aspects of life, they nested really wherever. They were not an element of nature, and as such, they stuck out like a sore thumb, without even the faintest spark of survival instinct... which came in quite handy when ordered to protect someone.

The problems with their race were rooted deeply within their artificial DNA, chosen just to make them the perfect slaves and nothing more.

And no matter how many times rokian couples reproduced, they could never really fill in those genetic gaps: doomed to be unnaturally “unable to”.

The following story, we could say, tells us how Ethan R. Samhal changed it all.

In order to see how it all started, we need to go back at when Ethan, still hadn't earned his name, met his destiny or found his path.

Thusly from here on after, we will call him not Ethan, but simply “the Rokian”, because, as already stated, We are going back to the day life really begun for him. To the day he still had to become... many wonderful things...