The cold river's maw was blackened with the lies thrown into it. The city we left behind had an angel in the lobby that waited to put me in line. She had a beautiful description, but a head filled with songs she shouldn't hear. All the lies she spewed, from the crib of her mouth into the water this old ship sailed across.
South of this ship, the Portal in the sea, and ahead, Lung Hi Temple. Behind was Kitana's palace and Coliseum. The only smiling are the dolls that she's made, but they are fickle, and so were her brains. As this old structure aimed for the Centaur Hills, the moon above reflected jade highlights in the river below. An illusion in my eyes, that took me away.
Though it is necessary that Shao Kahn did not service the battle that erupted within the coliseum, it should not have been Lord Liu Kang. It should have been me, Kotal Kahn. The loss of Jade broke the bonds that hold my heart together and the strings that tugged on my will greater than I would have thought.
Instead of using isolation as an oxygen mask to breathe in to survive, a Kahn must stand tall. The tower we build must overlook all of Outworld and overcome all of its problems. So, as I cast my gaze to the land far behind then horizon, ignore the storm clouds above and tense my heart for the ride ahead, why is it that my soul falters and escapes through my breath in the form of Jade?
How would father lead in this moment?
Then it struck me, though I have suffered a great loss in this battle, so too have others on this ship. Her presence sucked me in like a psychic vampire. For a moment, I could feel every vein in my body pulse as though a magical force plucked them like the strings of a harp. The presence of Blood Magic.
Along starboard she leaned against the wood rail and stared up into the stars. Did she see the blood of her enemies stretch across the galaxies, or the arrow in that stuck into her throat that I could tell held the tip of another's name.
The stars glossed over in her pathos as I approached and she turned over from eyes to the sky, to the river.
"Kotal Kahn." She greeted.
Soon all of Outworld would sing that song.
Her ruby lips were valleys of the death and the spit between them a bitter sea that swallowed passed the arrowhead in her throat. The winds of change scratched the walls of her maw and passed through the valleys to the river beneath us. She felt loss too.
"What is your name?"
"Skarlet" She threw it to the wind.
"Look at me." There was magic in her, but it was wild-eyed and free. It needed to be harnessed, strengthened and disciplined. "The girl was a fabrication of sorcery." This was the only sight I could believe attributed to her. Skarlet had a smaller girl near her that, if you looked into her eyes, had that same spark as hers, but it was not natural.
She stared back at me as I touched the chin of her soul and pulled her up to me with a pierced glare. She could tell I had sized her up in my eyes. It was not her current state I had scrutinized, but what she could be become.
"No. She was torn from me and beaten into shape with magic. Shang Tsung created her from my blood." She seemed to bite her lap at the mention of his name like her teeth were daggers that stabbed into his flesh.
"I am sorry for your loss, but she was a creature of magic. All magic comes with a price."
"Shang Tsung will pay his." She turned away again, her eyes lost into a scenario where she had the sorcerer by the neck.
"There's blood in your nose."
A warm drip began to flow down from her brain storm that rained out into this dry, windy air. She glared up at the storm clouds above and before she could rub it clean, I had reached out and tugged it from her flesh with the magic within me.
The drops of blood began to form an orb, a natural configuration that then cast down into the river like a lure for the beasts beneath.
"I will teach you better than Shao Kahn ever could." She touched the dry flesh where blood once waited to crease those valleys and those eyes, unwashed and somewhat slightly dazed, gazed back at me.
"You kn–"
"For your loyalty, no matter what the circumstance."
I could see the thoughts in her eyes like the electricity that formed in the sky and rumbled low among the clouds. These little moments of thunder were scenes in her brain I knew she played out before her where she would tell me no, or if she had the strength to say yes, but perhaps it those valleys of death betrayed her thoughts, or her heart's blood just needed to respond immediately with a clear answer.
"I will serve you."
Has these words settled like a calm wave down her flesh, I had begun to turn to seek the thoughts of others on this wary situation, but she stopped me, a hand on my flesh, a sting of humanity.
"You feel it too?" She didn't need to say it, as she felt the same.
"Too strongly." Then I added, as a Kahn should, "but we must set those feelings aside and be the leaders we were born to become. Be the person you needed the moment the world was taken from you."
You're not a ghost, Skarlet.