This book is dedicated to Tommy and May Ingeborg, Stewart Gabriel, Richard, Catherine, Mark, Chad, Ana, Wojciech, Kamil, Christopher, Adrian “Yami”, Anna, Carmelo, Rina, Angela, Stefania, Giusy, all of my family and all of the people that, knowing how hard I tried for more than a decade, didn't laugh in my face when I called myself a writer.

Chains Saga – “Hidden” Arc - Book 1: Shedding Skins

Chapter 1: Covered in mud

It wasn't a day for anyone in their right mind to be ambling about... it was far too dangerous.

The sun had not shown its face since the morning while clouds were terrorizing the sky. Flashing and boiling within those clouds, ominous thunders gave the sky a violent, persistent glow.

Nature was seriously up to no good.

The wind wasn't strong or high enough in the sky to move the storm away either, the lazy thing, but sure it was cold enough to make the living chill to the bone and make the brown dead leaves brush soundly. Just to complete an already gloomy picture, it was raining too.

Since earlier, under such a sky, Ethan had started feeling uneasy. He was just there, without really knowing how he had gotten there, where he was going... or where “there” really was, if he had to be perfectly honest with himself.

He had tried looking around for signs, answers, or someone, yet the only thing he had come up with were a few jump scares due to the lightnings. He hated being scared, which he thought was fairly normal. Really, who does like being scared?

All of a sudden the young man, which had been skipping from one scaly foot to the other trying to keep himself warm, froze in terror like he had been struck by an arrow to the back. Rain was still hitting him hard all over, dripping from his face and pooling up to his ankles, but he didn't notice, as he tried hard to swallow his saliva and breathe normally: Ethan was almost sure he had heard some rattling noise come from a bush behind him, to the left.

When he finally managed to swallow all of the sounds around him were turned on again. It wasn't like he didn't know if the rustling noise was real or not, but he had to decide if it was worth checking it out or... not. Maybe pretending it never happened. A few complicated breaths later, he decided he had to keep it cool, stay positive.

Ethan turned around and slowly started inching toward the bush, keeping himself slightly slanted backwards, cautious of a possible attack, wishing and praying it was nothing.

Leaving claws marks in the mud with every step, after a long while, he had finally got to the bush.

To his memory, that had been the scariest and longest minute of his life. When he could almost touch the leaves with both hands though, the bush shook again, giving him a start:

“Why, in the name of all that is sane have I decided to go towards the creepy noise?”, he wondered.

He was sure it made no sense at all! If what he was going to find behind the branches was an animal, it could easily jump at him, from that close. Was it a human, it could still be there to attack him and if it was neither... He really didn't want to know!

Still, he had gone that far... He closed his eyes and slowly shook his head with a groan, while a concert of “dumb!” was loudly going through his ears. He started leaning in again and finally, he opened the bush with his talons to look inside: sticks and bark were in there, aplenty. Scary indeed. He half smiled with relief, although, before he could finish, he asked himself

-What is that...?

Something had caught his eye. There was indeed something black and yet shining with its own light swelling up at the bottom of the bush.

It looked to him like some kind of bubble: in waves, like breathing, it was growing, bigger and thinner, making Ethan weary.

Slowly getting closer, so close in fact his face was surrounded by leaves, he clearly saw something was inside of the bubble. He decided he had been brave enough and finally stepped back.

As he did so, he couldn't help but hear a loud pop: whatever the bubble was, it had burst open.

Ethan didn't stop, cursing in his thoughts, silently and carefully backing off, while huffing the rain away from his eyelids.

In spite of Ethan's inner prayers, something soon came out of the bush, of course: a small snake-like animal with the head of a crocodile. It was looking at Ethan with curious eyes, which rapidly switched to pissed off as soon as it realized he was trying to walk away.

In an outrage, the little creature opened its mouth as wide as it could and bit into the shadow beside it like it was a steak, gulping it, slurping it loudly.

Ethan felt that was his chance to get lost. Turning, he started to run as fast as his scrawny legs allowed him to, trying to make less noise that he could at the same time, staying on the tips of his feet. He was weary of his prints in the mud: following them couldn't have been easier, but he really had no time to stop to confuse them or delete them either.

Besides, for all he knew, snakes had an amazing sense of smell too. It was still raining though, and the animal he was escaping from was a newborn... and he was running fast...

...

And yet, for some reason, he couldn't shake the idea that the animal would immediately bounce on him, had he even dreamed of slowing down. A thunderbolt suddenly made him jump as it webbed crazily in the sky. He swore under his breath.

When a moment later he caught some nasty noises at his back, he couldn't help but look over his shoulder, where loud crashes were roaring.

The creature had become big enough to trample over trees. He knew that thing was fast, at least as fast as he was or maybe even more, considering it had to slither while he was running.

He was just going though, aimlessly. Hisses and roars grew taller behind him, while he jumped over puddles and dangerous plants. A thicker group of trees was right in front of him, making him almost hope, when he noticed the shadows of all things around him were getting unnaturally longer.

They were reaching for the Shadow Gobbler's mouth, which he could see had a collection of ugly, pointy teeth, on several rows.

Devouring and growing as it was, the ugly creature would soon be fast enough to overtake Ethan... No matter how close the forest was, it was still too far for him. The young man was rapidly growing out of breath, thanks to the slippery, heavy, muddy ground. And yet, he understood in a moment, that could have been his saving.

He started looking for a strong rivulet of water going downhill and soon found it on the left side of the road, while yet one more powerful lightning whipped the sky, making his scaly skin crawl, but not slowing him down.

He looked one more time behind, to the source of devastating rustling that was the reptile, uglier and bigger than it had been a few short moments before, and then Ethan jumped on top of the water stream, sliding on his belly, fast as an avalanche, which, he hoped, the snake was not going to send after him somehow. The beast stopped, angrily watching him grow smaller, as he went, yet not daring not follow him, for fear of not being able to stop sliding, and it started backtracking instead.

Ethan dared to think he was safe when he couldn't hear the Shadow Gobbler any more.

After not even a minute, Ethan had reached the bottom of the hill, where a big puddle of brown water stopped his very fast and very dangerous descent. He went in deep, head first.

Feeling the slimy and astonishingly cold embrace of the water, the young man kicked and swam to the surface, fighting to keep his breath in.

As soon as he surfaced, he pointed himself at the closest border, while shaking hard, feeling his muscle resisting his will, hard and tight due to the cold. He eventually reached the slippery ground and pulled himself out, having to count on his talons for a good grasp. He planted the hard curvy nails, hands and feet, deep in the mud and working his legs hard, he got himself out. He coughed several gulps of dirty water out, before dragging himself up to a tree where he finally hoped to catch up his breath.

He sat, wheezing, trying not to drink more rain while inhaling, still coughing out some more grey-brown fluid. Before long though, before he even got to reopen his eyes, he heard some heart stopping thrashing, followed by a massive explosion as the beast landed almost on top of him.

Thrown a good twenty meters south-west, he crashed in the middle part of another tree. Ethan's brusque landing's impact had shattered several of his bones. The pain was telling him so.

Yet, he knew he didn't need worrying about that: he was already fainting before falling face first on the ground. Which meant, the last thing he was ever going to see was the freak beast “smiling” at him, sure feeling happy it was going to have lunch with Ethan's broken body.