The Fox and the Fire Chicken
Prologue: City of Death

    The air was too quiet and still. There was a sense of wrongness in the air, a sense of hostility. And yet, at first glance, everything seemed normal. The sun was shining; the wind was swaying gently. But there was absolutely no sound. All the animals had fled from the vicinity, terrified of something. But the stranger took no note of this. The figure’s sex was indeterminable because of the dirty brown cloak, which hung on its gaunt frame. It’s face was hooded in shadow as it walked along the well-beaten dirt path, only a pair of golden-amber, cat slitted eyes noticeable; the rest of it’s face was cloaked in shadow.

    The cloaked figure soon came upon a city, deserted and in ruin. What was once the proud capital of Konan, and the stronghold of the phoenix gods; the city called Kasei, ‘force of flames’, by the Youko Lords, was nothing but a scene of carnage. What was worse, was that there more dead civilians than anything else. Ordinary humans caught up in the madness and chaos right in the middle of performing daily chores.

    There were bodies everywhere. Most of the bodies had been completely burned, but there were a few people who had seemed to survive the blasts...only to meet their end with the debris. There was a middle-aged man, his face pale and ashen as he stared up at the sky, his bloodshot eyes staring accusingly, his black hair ringed in a wide halo of blood. He had been gorged in his stomach by what was once probably part of a roof beam. The blood from that man and the blood of others covered the stranger’s feet, an eerie warmth penetrating its skin even as it shivered.

    Everywhere the stranger turned, accusing, unfocused stares followed it. It seemed as if they knew what it was, who its mother was, and all they could do was ask why. A mother draped over her child, a fallen sword from a nearby rack piercing the mother’s heart through her back, only to pierce the child's heart through his chest. A lasting bond, even in death.

    A young couple lay nearby. The young male's body tarnished and burned beyond recognition, and draped over his lover's lap. The female's legs were crushed underneath a heavy piece of roof. The fall had broken her neck, and it fell at an awkward angle. There was blood everywhere, the young woman's skin had been pierced by the jagged edge of her spine, and her head only hung on by a bear thread of skin. But even in death, her head met her lover's for one last kiss. A kiss that would linger after death.

    The stranger started to trot around the bodies, and yet it couldn't help but glimpse at the bodies. A white horse, his coat stained with the red of blood, his tongue hanging out and his eyes wide with pain. He had been cleaved in half when the roof of his stall collapsed. A young housewife, impaled by the blade she was using to cook dinner with. And the young baby strapped to her back, it's skull and body completely crushed by the weight of its mother. There were little bits of an unknown substance floating around in the blood by its head. And being curious by nature, the figure glanced at it again, and blanched. The little bits were part of the child's brain that had escaped its holding, little bits of white sticking into it. Little fragments of its skull.

    And still the stranger walked on, toward the only relatively intact building in the city, a shrine. 'Stop acting like a child!' the figure scolded itself. 'You've seen worse than this, so why should something as small as this phase you?!'  And yet the figure answered its own question just as quickly. 'It's because it reminds you of that, isn't it?  And it had to be civilians too.'