A Past not Mine

Amidst the fog of yellowish noxious fumes, a winged figure appeared a few paces away from a panicking yet frozen Alex, who could only see where his line of sight laid, as though watching through another's eyes.

One moment in the Mishakuji's stronghold, now he is in a place where nothing looked familiar.

Then again, Alex could barely make out anything in the thick haze. Deep within, he knew - this was not his inner soul realm. Was he stuck in a memory again, like his time in the Mirror of Truth?

Alex felt an overwhelming urge to run, but his feet were stuck to the ground. Even if he could run, he didn't know the area.

To make matters worse, his body disconnected from his mind, rendering Alex a prisoner. With each blink of an eye, and a turn of his head, all not within his control.

Alex wanted to scramble backwards, sending danger emanating from the approaching winged humanoid whose features he couldn't make out.

He could feel a thick sticky substance coating his feet amidst the gritty substance on the ground - was he even wearing shoes?

The noxious fog slowly parted like a shimmery curtain around the winged humanoid, revealing the face of a handsome young man with long plaited silvery hair and a deep crimson eye colour like the very red wings of a great span furling up on the man's back.

Adorned with clothing akin to a ceremonial sash across a matte white formal military-like uniform which didn't seem to stain from the ground or the air.

The young man's doe eyes twinkled merrily while his thin yet curvaceous lips curled up into a smile.

"Now, now, what has my Chongli done again?" The young man cooed softly with his arm stretched out.

Before Alex could answer, he could feel his body hopped onto the forearm as the flutter of wings followed. He felt the tender stroke over the body something trapped him in and the shivers running up his spine as the young man smiled at him without a care in the world.

Chongli, the very name of the fire primeval being, who gifted him an accursed energy wave of an elemental fire and whom the ancient Chinese called a god. Was it a coincidence or was this Chongli's original form?

Before he could think further, the bird turned its head to look from left to right, filling Alex's eyes with the sight of a wholesale massacre of once living beings as far as the eye can see.

What the fuck? All the swears and curses ran at full speed through Alex's mind as his neck turned looking around, causing him to force a scream at the gory sight before him.

Instead of a scream, a loud piercing screech echoed from his mouth as he realised the sound reminded him of a bird.

Multitudes of bodies laid across each other, charred, and some appeared to be in an embrace. All burnt to cindering black statues, with screams frozen in what's left of their melted yet contorted expressions. It burned them to a roast alive.

Hundreds, if not thousands of stuff blackened corpses laid with each turn of the head, forcing him to soak in the dreadful sight of destruction. Who killed all these individuals? Did Chongli have a part to play?

The blackened carcasses, while partially encased in ash, bore a human likeness. Alex could make out the semblance of arms, legs, and partial faces, with smouldering wisps of smoke still wafting from their warm bodies.

With each step Jinwu took, a body would crumble like ash.

"Jinwu! IN THE NAME OF THE VOID, WHAT DID YOU DO?" another winged humanoid shouted above him as the head he had no control over stared upwards at the shouter, a swooping figure who landed gracefully in front of him.

Jinwu? A creeping feeling of dread filled him at the mention of the name. Wasn't that the celestial crow in a human girl's body?

"Heiwu," Jinwu greeted the new arrival, who seemed like his direct opposite.

The new arrival, Heiwu, had ebony hair and wings of pitch blackness instead of silvery and with eyes which bore a depth of darkness like an endless, lightless pit. As good looking as Jinwu, but a bit grumpier, Alex suspected they were brothers from the resemblance.

Heiwu straightened his back to match Jinwu's height and tutted with displeasure at the surroundings until he caught sight of Alex now perched on Jinwu's arm.

Pointing to Alex stuck in the bird's body, Heiwu asked in a very stern tone with a sour expression. "Did your pet make a mess?"

Mess? Understatement of the year to Alex, who felt like wringing the heartless, conscienceless celestial crow for acting like the massacre was a mere 'mess'.

This isn't a goddamn parrot messing up a feeding area, but a genocide.

Alex figured that if Chongli was really a goddamn pet, why and how the hell did the ancient Chu kingdom, located within modern day China, designated Chongli as Zhurong the fire god and worshipped the pet with great reverence in the history?

Alex wished he could say something, but in his trapped and immobilised state in the body of Chongli, he could only be a bystander, watching a historical event play out like a horror show on a DVD.

"I made the mess," Jinwu replied, waving his hands to turn away.

Could this man be the very same Jinwu who taught him patiently? Alex wondered. And why did Jinwu assume responsibility for something Chongli did?

A sudden pressure built up in Alex's guts, distracting him from his thoughts. With each screechy gag of the bird, Alex could feel a certain pent up heat flowing upwards into his mouth.

Before Alex knew what happened, a burp escaped together with flames shooting out of his mouth like a fired up blow torch, nearly hitting Heiwu, who dodged in time by leaping just inches away.

Jinwu laughed but Heiwu snarled at him, then at Alex, irate at almost ending up like the dead bodies on the ground.

"Get a HOLD ON THAT FIRE-BREATHER!"

"Oh, come on, it burped!" Jinwu retorted in its defense with a shrug. "Do you expect me to stuff its mouth?"

Heiwu's outburst didn't faze the bird, who bent its head downwards, allowing Alex to catch of glimpse of its scrawny blackened claws as it pecked and preened its bloodied yellow-golden feathers like a peacock, while Alex stayed trapped in its body.

Great, Chongli was a bird pet of the celestial crow and a killing machine. What could be possibly worse?

Alex's eyes caught the sight of a nearby darkened corpse with its pale human-like face contorted from the pangs of death, revealing its sharp fang-like canines in a frozen snarl. That didn't look human. Did the memory take place in another world, which was similar to Earth?