With an angry grunt, Kuai Liang threw the katana towards the trees and staggered to his feet. "It's not possible!" he yelled, furiously pointing at his best friend. "That's not my brother's sword! That does not belong to Bi-han!"

Tomas inhaled deeply, wincing in his own disbelief. "Yes, it is," he insisted sadly. "My pr̆ítel, you know it is."

"No!" he snapped. "No, I am not going to let you stand there and tell me that my brother was a...a..." he trailed off. His words failed him. He couldn't bring himself to say that his brother had been a part of genocide, that he was a butcher.

"That's not the only thing I found," the other quietly said. "There were other weapons in that cave, and many of them belonged to the Lin Kuei. That cave was the foundation of a much larger structure, of a building on par with our own Temple. I found a few timbers, some pots and pans, and God help me, children's toys, but it was otherwise completely burned to the ground."

"Are you actually suggesting the Lin Kuei systematically exterminated the Shirai Ryu?" Kuai Liang's emotions snowballed inside his heart, rapidly swirling out of control.

"That is what the evidence is suggesting," he replied. He looked at him sadly.

"First of all, you're out of your mind," the Cryomancer hissed, dismissively waving his hand at the other. "Secondly, an operation like this would have required every single one of us. I don't know about you, but I don't recall wiping out our mortal enemies!"

"Your brother had been sent on a secret mission. Maybe he contracted a small army. Maybe he was working with the Black Dragon. You heard Oniro. We've been working closely with them lately because of the Cyber Initiative."

"Do you know how insane you sound right now?"

Tomas raised an eyebrow at him. "What about Himavat?"

"What about him?" Kuai Liang growled.

"He said Bi-han had done things you wouldn't want to accept. He said his soul was in jeopardy. Maybe this is what he meant."

"You're going to listen to that crazy old man?" he yelled. "You said he was a liar." His friend started to say something, sighed, and then shrugged. The Cryomancer scowled, feeling the anger roll over him like a spreading fire. "My brother would not have done something like this," he adamantly insisted. "He's being framed. Somebody stole his sword."

"My pr̆ítel-"

"He wouldn't have just left it here!" he yelled. "It's priceless to our family. He knew that as well as I did."

"What if he was mortally wounded here?" Tomas countered. "What if his body is in that pile? And remember that fisherman and his family? They knew us. How would they have known us if they hadn't seen us before? That man called us butchers."

"You knew Bi-han! He was your friend. You know he wouldn't have killed helpless women and children. You know he would've buried these people. He may have hated them, but he wouldn't have left them to the wild animals."

"He would've if he was trying to curse them somehow."

Kuai Liang whipped around and stalked towards his friend, his blue eyes blazing madly. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You know as well as I do what it means." He met his friend's expectant gaze, initially refusing to elaborate, but finally giving in. "They were our mortal enemies. Maybe he left them like this to make sure that their souls never find peace."

Kuai Liang breathed deeply and acted as if he were going to walk away. But unexpectedly, he whirled around and punched Tomas squarely in the jaw. The other fell backwards into a tree and hit his head, but immediately sprang back and tackled the younger warrior. The two immediately began wrestling in the dirt. The Cryomancer blindly punched at his friend's face, but Tomas, clearly not wanting to fight, deflected them. He struggled to pin his friend, who, enraged and full of adrenaline, was stronger than normal.

"My pr̆ítel, calm yourself!" he cried.

But Kuai Liang was having none of it. He clawed at his best friend's wrists, but the other kneed him in the groin. Sudden fire exploded from his crotch and stole his breath away. Groaning in pain and gasping for air, he was distracted long enough for Tomas to put him in a headlock and pin him to the ground.

"Get off of me!" he yelled, though his words came out strangled, but the Czech man clamped down harder. He started to feel woozy.

"You're not the only one who knows how to knock a person out," the other said firmly as the Cryomancer's vision blurred. In a matter of seconds, darkness overtook him.

When Kuai Liang regained consciousness, dawn was breaking and he was tied to a tree near the remains of the Shirai Ryu Temple. In the distance, where they had made the grisly discovery, a tall column of smoke billowed into the air; Tomas, superstitious about the afterlife, was probably burning the bodies to ensure their eternal rest. In the pale light of morning, the remains of the village were more apparent. He saw the ruins of minka huts burned all around him. Dried blood stained many tree trunks. Lin Kuei weapons, mingling with Shirai Ryu weapons, littered the clearing. But he still couldn't bring himself to believe that his brother had been responsible for the carnage.

"Oh, good, you're awake," Tomas said from the nearby staircase. His friend had dark circles around his eyes, not from their fight, but from exhaustion.

"Untie me," Kuai Liang growled.

"First, my pr̆ítel, let's talk. We're assassins. It's not outside the realm of possibility that your brother was here."

"He wouldn't have-"

"Shut up," the other snapped. "I'm sickened by this too, Kuai Liang. This is all so...senseless and stupid. These people...they didn't have to die." He sniffed and quickly averted his gaze, wiping his eyes. "But...we are killers. Bi-han was a killer. That's all any of us has ever been."

"But we're not mass murderers," he argued.

"One life or a hundred," Tomas sighed, sniffing again. "Is there really a difference?"

Kuai Liang started to argue, but stopped. "We have to get to the bottom of this, Tomas," he said. "I have to know for sure."

"And if we do, and you find out he did slaughter all these people, what then? Will that change anything?"

"Yes, it will!" he yelled.

"How so?"

"If my brother could do such a thing, if he could butcher women and children, civilians...that makes him evil. Evil, like our father. And if he's evil, then I could be too. Look what I did to that boy." He surprised himself when he said that.

Tomas rubbed his face in his palms tiredly. "I think evil is a choice, Kuai Liang," he stated. "When you killed Oscar, you were defending yourself. You didn't go out looking to hurt him. On the contrary, he went looking to hurt you."

"It doesn't make him any less dead."

"Kuai Liang-"

"I have to know, Tomas," he repeated urgently. "I have to know what happened here."

The Czech man sighed. "Fine. I'm with you. What do you want to do?"

"When Cyrax and Sektor came back to the Temple and told Oniro that Bi-han was dead, they said something about fighting a Shaolin monk named Liu Kang in the Tournament. I got the feeling my brother was at this Tournament as well."

"He may be in Outworld now, depending on the outcome of the Tournament," the other said as he knelt by his friend and started untying the rope that secured him. "Maybe we should track him down and make him tell us everything he knows about Bi-han's fate. You can use the amulet that Himavat gave you."

"Did you get my brother's sword?" Kuai Liang asked.

Tomas produced the weapon from a very old scabbard strapped to his back. The blade was clean now, with no traces of blood or gore remaining, and his friend had sharpened and oiled it during the night so that it now gleamed with a deadly smile. "Of course I did. I figure now that he's dead, it should go to you."

"Thanks." He clutched it in his hands while grief and anger swirled inside him. He struggled not to let the waters, which lingered just below the surface of his exterior, break through the dam. Then he slid it into the scabbard Tomas gave him and fastened it to his back.

"Now get up," he said. "I want to get out of here. This place...this place is haunted."

Kuai Liang gave him a disbelieving look as he stood and pulled the orange amulet from the pocket sewn on the inside of his blue tunic, the same pocket that housed the picture of him and his brother. "I'm not sure how to work this," he admitted. He looked at it closely but saw no apparent catches, releases, triggers, or anything that might force it into action, so he handed it to his friend.

With a cocky smirk, Tomas thrust out his arm and held the amulet rigidly over his head. "By the power of Grayskull!" he shouted.

"Oh, give that here!" Kuai Liang snapped as he grabbed it out of his friend's hands. Then he scowled at him. "What is the matter with you? And where do you come up with this stuff?"

"Remember that year-long stint I did in America? Well, I got to watching this TV show there, a cartoon, and-"

"Really?" he scowled harder. "A grown man, an assassin, watching cartoons? That's it! You're no longer in charge!"

"Haha, you're cute," the other chided. "Too bad Himavat didn't leave us any instruction manuals." He paused then smiled again. "Open, sesame!" he said as he waved his fingers magically over the amulet.

Shaking his head, Kuai Liang rested it flat on his palm and straightened his arm. "Outworld?" he spoke uncertainly. Nothing happened.

"Okay, I have an idea," Tomas began. "It's a long shot and really stupid-"

"Because everything you've tried so far has been intelligent," he interrupted.

"-but Himavat obviously has a thing for ice and snow," the other continued without skipping a beat. "You saw his house, cave, whatever that place was. What if that amulet only works when it's frozen? Maybe you should try freezing it."

Kuai Liang raised his eyebrow. Maybe Tomas had a point. If he was Himavat, he wouldn't want something that could create portals to other dimensions to fall into the wrong hands. And if he was, in fact, a sorcerer, it stood to reason that he had the power to put some sort of a charm on the amulet that only allowed a Cryomancer to use it.

"Well, that's not the dumbest thing I've heard you say since we left home," he conceded. "It's worth a try anyway."

"That's the spirit," Tomas said as he patted him on the back.

"Here goes nothing."

He closed his eyes and summoned his power to the surface, channeling it directly into his outstretched hand. Dense, cold fog wafted from his skin like a cloud, the heat of the morning making it thicker than normal. The ice in his blood crept through his pores and bonded to the metal and glass amulet, and as it did, it began to glow. Then, as Himavat's gigantic mirror swirled like a pinwheel, the dragon began turning in the pool of bold orange light, slowly at first but rapidly accelerating until it exploded in a splash of energetic color on the cliff wall. There, an orange vortex twisted violently, spitting out tiny bolts of lightning, and through it, the two warriors saw a landscape veiled by the blackness of night beyond.

"Hooray for our side," Tomas smiled.

Kuai Liang shook his head yet again, frowning and rolling his eyes at the same time. "Let's go," he muttered impatiently.

He led the way, bracing for the same unpleasant ride he had experienced just yesterday. The powerful wind generated by the cyclonic movement battered his face, and shielding his eyes, he stumbled towards the event horizon. In seconds, he felt it; like passing through a gelatinous membrane, first it slurped around him and then it drowned out all sound and air. Then, as if a bungee cable were attached to his waist, something yanked hard on him and ripped him through time and space, launching him at the speed of light towards the world ahead of him. A split second later, it angrily spit him out onto a beach. A half second behind him, Tomas tumbled through with a startled yell.

"Oh, God, that was worse than Himavat's portal," he mused as he rubbed his temples. "Hey, what is this stuff?" he asked a moment later looking at the sand.

Kuai Liang understood what he meant. The sand felt strange beneath his fingers, tar-like, but it was hard to tell why until his eyes adjusted to the overwhelming dimness of Outworld. The sand, they quickly realized, was saturated with sticky gore. A towering pagoda burned so brightly on a hilltop in the distance that on this beach several miles away, the two warriors now saw that the ocean was scarlet red and foaming over thousands of skeletons. Around them, even more bodies, now skeletons as well, had been impaled on eight foot tall posts. Close by, a man-o-war had run aground.

"Wow. Club Med doesn't have a thing on this place," Tomas drily remarked.

"No kidding," the Cryomancer agreed as he tried to wipe the sandy blood off his hands onto his pants. "It looks like there's a path over there," he said. "Let's follow it."

"We need to stick together, my pr̆ítel ," the other declared in all seriousness as they began walking along a narrow path. "We are enemies in a godforsaken land."

That was the last either of them spoke for about half an hour. Kuai Liang thought that this place must've been born from the pages of a cheap horror novel. There was the uncanny sense of danger in the air, and that was reinforced by the dead bodies – some half-rotten and some fresh – strewn about everywhere through the crumbling town. Once, it seemed to have been a large and thriving city, sprawling in all directions across the plains, but now, the city was mostly gone, leaving nothing but ruins to indicate anything had been there at all. Bizarre and lifelike statues of tortured men with hollowed out torsos hung on tall crosses along the roads. By the occasional flash of lightning overhead, he saw thin, twisted vines binding pygmy-looking people inside the gaping orifices. Though dead, these smaller people's eyes remained wild with terror and shock, and he shivered, certain they were staring at him as he walked. The lightning also revealed a new spectacle, a Gothic fortress towering high above the flat landscape much like the Tower of Barad-dûr from The Lord of the Rings, the evil Sauron's home. Erected beside it was an equally dark arena reminiscent of the Roman Coliseum.

Eventually, the sandy pathway that skirted around the city led the two fugitives into an ancient grove that glowed sickly green from somewhere deep within. The ground beneath him was packed down, indicating it had been trampled on frequently, but they saw no other travelers on this road save for a peasant man with a coolie hat sitting against a gnarled tree and babbling incoherently to himself. Kuai Liang and Tomas exchanged a look.

"Hello?" Tomas asked timidly. Though he knew his friend would never admit it, Kuai Liang sensed that he was rattled by this alien world, somewhat afraid. He'd be lying to himself if he didn't admit he felt the same way. "Do you know where we can find Shang Tsung?"

Without warning, the crazy man flew at him with a maniacal yell. Frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog, he grabbed Smoke by the arms and pushed him to the ground. Then he turned on the Cryomancer, but the latter, who was momentarily stunned by the sudden attack, blindly threw a punch that broke the man's nose. Even still, the peasant barely seemed to notice. He attacked again, and this time the two sparred in a frenzied battle of kicks and punches that lasted maybe fifteen seconds. Finally, Sub-Zero flipped backwards, powerfully swinging his legs upward and into the peasant's chin. As expected, the man stumbled backwards into a nearby tree and then began screaming in terror.

Kuai Liang righted himself and rushed to Tomas, who was now standing again and set in a defensive stance. A crunching sound drowned out the man's desperate shrieks. Squinting, the two warriors realized with horror that the tree was alive, and not in the sense they had come to believe of trees. It had a face that looked almost troll-like in the darkness, with a long, gnarly nose and thick, warty lips. It was alive. It grunted in satisfaction as it chewed on the peasant. Bones snapped loudly and a fine mist of blood sprayed into the air as the man's cries were silenced by one final gurgle. The tree swallowed, and then burped loudly.

"Hovno," Tomas mumbled.

"You got that right," Kuai Liang agreed.

"What the hell is this place?" he asked.

"I don't know-"

"Intruders!" a high female voice yelled. Both warriors whipped around to face the woman stamping towards them angrily.

She wasn't dressed like any woman Kuai Liang had ever seen before. She wore an elaborate blue and black catsuit with a tight bodice, and black gloves that stretched above her elbows. Her glossy black hair was pulled back into a bun and secured with decorative chopsticks, and her full lips were painted a deep mauve. The Cryomancer couldn't help wondering what she was doing in a place like Outworld.

"Guilty as charged," Tomas replied, throwing his hands up in deference. He flashed his brightest smile at her, flirting.

"You will leave Outworld now!"

"You're going to have to ask us nicer than that," he shot back, now crossing his arms.

She stood about three feet in front of them. "How dare you speak to me like that," she hissed. "Do you know who I am?"

"Should we?" Kuai Liang interjected.

"I am Kitana, Princess of Outworld, and you are trespassing, Earthrealmers!" She said the last word like it was a profoundly offensive swear word. Her amber eyes certainly harbored deep enough contempt for the two of them to match her tone. "You will leave now. You are not welcome here!"

"We're not going anywhere, Princess," he said defiantly.

Tomas took his lead. "Yes, I'm sure that lovely tree over there wouldn't mind having dessert," he added.

Kitana narrowed her eyes. Then she quickly ran her gloved hands down her trim legs and pulled a long, wavy piece of metal from either boot. Sub-Zero initially thought they were long knives, but she gracefully waved them before them and both sprang open, revealing large blue Chinese war fans. Without a word, she tossed one at Smoke, and it flew at him like a circular saw spinning through the air. It caught him in the chest, its sharp blades chewing through his flesh, and with a startled cry of pain, he tumbled backwards.

Sub-Zero glanced at him as he fell, and then quickly looked back at her. Her hard eyes fixed on his, daring him to move. He inhaled deeply as he summoned his powers into his hands and then lobbed a large ice ball at her. With catlike reflexes, she leaped out of the way and landed several feet away, crouched on the ground.

"You're a Cryomancer," she said in surprise. Her eyes now bulged with shock.

"And you just made a huge mistake," he shot back.

Quickly, she cartwheeled towards Smoke and retrieved her fan blade. Then, as if they were extensions of her arms, she swung them both at him and came dangerously close to slicing open his throat. Sub-Zero jumped back just in time, then leaned onto one hand and used his momentum to kick her in the chest. With a grunt, she fell down but immediately sprang back onto her feet, directing a fan at him. He grabbed her fist, but she came down on his shoulder with the other one, which was now closed, and drove it into his flesh like a dagger. He howled and then shoved his palm squarely into her throat. Kitana staggered back, stunned and choking, dropping her fan and clutching her throat. As she struggled to breathe, Sub-Zero yanked the fan blade out of his shoulder, feeling his own blood cascade down his arm, and throwing it to the side. He looked around to see his friend, but he did not see Smoke anywhere.

He faced Kitana once more and saw she was rapidly recovering. She cleared her throat one last time, and then seeing the astonished expression on her opponent's face, sneered. "If you want to kill me, traitor, you're going to have to do better than that!"

She leaped into the air to dive-kick him, but something caught her mid-air and threw her to the ground. Now shocked herself, she tried to scramble to her feet, but before she could, a thick cloud of smoke encircled her and gradually revealed Smoke's figure crouching over her. He pinned her to the ground by the throat. Then he raised his fist above her and smashed it into her temple. Immediately, she stopped struggling, unconscious.

"Sleep well, Princess," he hissed at her sarcastically.