This is no film. No third act full of misery to rain down rapist werewolves, or God pissing down on you. No matter he sharpened his boys, he knew he'd never be good enough to even look upon.
Is it better to push something when it's slipping than to risk being dragged down?
Two heartbeats ahead of hell trying to break his fall, Rain sank into the muck and mud of the earth until the drenched sea of the watery realm consumed him and spiraled into an abyss to drag others down with him. At the edge of the conflict, the half-god emerged immersed in the dispersed Black Dragon, cursed to drown in the hearse the watery realm.
Along the corner of combat, he could see down the valley. Kitana was in the middle with Liu Kang, but disappeared as quickly into the mob as he saw them. The others? He scanned for Taven, Tanya, anyone.
A hundred dwindled for both forces and rapidly. Each individual told not to hesitate to kill to protect what they believe in, and yet each person murdered someone's something sacred.
Beside him, to his left, Rain tore the veil from his face as his father gave him just the slightest of nods.
"Argus, Protector of Edenia!" Rain staggered, almost stuttered. "Father."
"Are you winning son?"
"Are you kidding?"
"I'm disappointed. You should be working alongside your brother Daegon."
He eyed his father and reached for a shoulder to touch. Rain's fingers slipped through the vacant embodiment of Argus and returned without a trace of heat, pressure, or humanity. The God was made of nothing but air.
"You're not Argus."
"No."
"Is she alive?" Rain peered back into Jade's concerned eyes.
"Your mother?" The entity returned. "I can only turn into the dead.
"Don't waste my time if you don't know, my allegiance is to Edenia."
Unable to grasp him as he parted from her, Jade tried to clench onto the veil that hung from his face.
"I do know." She threw to the wind, but he had sunken into the crowd.
It was easier to strike bone, to bruise muscle, and see the faceless in the faces he was told to deface with death. Still, as the mindless motions of violence took hold like the ageless dance in his bones, his thoughts couldn't help but downward spiral until her face plagued him. When he turned back to the crest of the hill, the entity was gone.
The entity had haunted him before, but kept hidden from the rest, he dared not to speak of it. It would come to him as Jade, Jataaka, or even Delia, but not as his father, and never as his mother.
Each time it would whisper for him to seek out Daegon, or to break Kitana's neck. To break his bond to Fujin, and his servitude to the Queen of Edenia. Now, as he did as they told him to the Black Dragon, a needle that dug into their grooves, scratched them up, and put them away, he pondered what this entity could tell him that he never asked until this moment.
The entity cannot appear as anything outside of death. Though the likes of Raiden and Fujin were still alive, their deification required sacrifice.
Was this a question worth fighting for?
His mother?
Bodies shrank and men crumbled. Throats cut and blood stained the planet. He could taste the metal like it were cotton candy, and the blood flowed like a carnival or state fair.
With the remainder of the lives left to be dealt with by the Edenian army, Kitana approached with no mercy. Rain watched the Tarkatans descend upon those with no return.
She had changed as a ruler, just as he was forced to change as a person, but to what extent do you change on the inside when all you can do is pretend on the outside?
Did she feel like he did? Was there a worm deep inside her soul that ate at the edges of her universe just as his mother did for him?
Did her demon carry the face of her sister, or her past?
Half-way and one step forward, Rain rejoined the group. Bo Rai Cho embraced him to clean his face of the blood and share the mead in his gourd. He heard the loss was only thirty for them to their near entire army.
"Kabal?" He pondered.
"Escaped, with the rest of is lackeys." Kung Lao answered.
"No doubt to face the wrath of our brother for this loss." Taven added.
Just because you're famous doesn't mean you're worth anything. No doubt he would see Kabal offer the Black Dragon's head for his own loss, but not his. Would Rain have done different though?
Would he know more if he could see what the other side of the hill had to offer?
Once you've inhaled death everything else is perfume. However, he pondered if there was still a piece of light in the garbage dump of his heart, that being the possibility of one person still alive amid this chaos.
Though sick, messed up and complicated, that thought gave him hope, like the answer could be all he need to be fixed.
Was there anything for him beyond the madding crowd or can chaos not be cured?