The temple was calm, and summer was close. Raiden could feel the warmth hidden in the wind and it creased his lips with hope.
Leaned with staff against the temple gate where a shishi-odoshi gently tapped the water to ward the deer from the temple, he quietly composed his thoughts until the red witch tapped along the trail from the threshold of the Lin Kuei temple.
As she was close, he could feel a ripple in the air was was nothing like the warmth of spring, but the cackle of magic and chaos. A portal beyond the gate pierced the normality of Earthrealm and through it came Sonya. He expected Ermac behind her, as Cyrax could not crack a portal of Outworld magic, but instead stepped through the crack of space and time was the sorcerer Shang Tsung.
No longer leaned against the gate, Raiden clenched his weapon and reached for Sonya to pull her away from him, to protect her as a father should.
"Hold your venom, Lord Raiden." Shang Tsung bit and smiled with such smug grace the Thunder God staggered back with anger.
"Why have you come to Earthrealm, sorcerer?" Raiden snapped back.
Sonya put herself between the two and reached for Raiden as though he were elderly and could fall. Shang Tsung snickered at the thought this human could even hold a God back, but he paused and crossed his hands behind his back so that his body was open to Raiden should a strike be imminent.
"It's complicated, Raiden."
"Uncomplicate it."
"I have seen the past, Raiden, and I know the future." Shang Tsung spoke, "the only way way we can survive you and I, are with each other's help."
"Basically." Sonya added.
"I know of Kronika and Geras, the timelines and Armageddon."
"Then you know too much!" Raiden's eyes lit and crackled with lightning, but Sonya would not move and would not dare strike her. Not like he had Liu Kang.
Raiden too had learned from the past, but the thought that Shang Tsung could too? Impossible to believe.
"Quan Chi has shown me a great many things, all of it to control me, but none of it was illusion." Shang Tsung continued, "make no mistake, Thunder God, I am not your friend, and we will never be allies, but I know what you face, and I've realized the only way forward is with you leading the way."
"I don't believe you."
"A God not a fan of blind faith?" Shang Tsung snickered to himself. "Amusing. Then let me show you what I know."
Peeled from his back his right hand emerged and a green aura burned his flesh until a blinding white light pierced Raiden's eyes over Sonya's shoulder. In it he could see only darkness. In fact all he could see was nothing.
Shang Tsung's left hand turned over his right like it were an hourglass being reversed, or the hands of a watch that her forced to tick backwards until that nothing became the sight of the a great battle on the pyramid of Argus beneath fires of blaze and the blood of all that fought to reach it.
He could see only Daegon as the beast of a half-god cracked Blaze's skull with a mole almost as impressive as Shao Kahn's. The moment the magma consumed the flesh of the wayward deity, the world itself turned to ash and the nothing consumed all.
Such a vision to show, but Raiden couldn't believe it. He pulled from Sonya and approached Shang Tsung. His eyes dark and glowered over the sorcerer's frame until their eyes met and the daggers between them struck like a snake locked with the mongoose in their eternal struggle.
"Sonya Blade?" He refused to look away. "Do you vouch for the sorcerer that dare manipulate you?"
"I will kill him myself if he steps out of line."
"My beautiful S–" Raiden interrupted Shang Tsung.
Raiden cursed him, "you heard her. If this vision of yours is true, you're the first to die."
"We share a common goal, Raiden. If only this once."
At the gate, Skarlet and watched and listened to the pangs of the three squabble, but the sight of Shang Tsung made her own blood boil just as much as she imagined it did for Raiden, and could see it in the eyes of the blonde officer. Raiden passed her with no word to be spoken. Certainly he'd have to warn Sub-Zero and Scorpion, as well as any others that desired the death of the sorcerer himself, but for her?
If what Shang Tsung claimed was true, though the vision was beyond her eyes to see, they would need everyone and anyone. If it meant spitting on their pride to save the realms, so be it.
Sonya passed with no acknowledgment, but Shang Tsung paused to look her over.
"I did not expect your return, Skarlet." He mused.
"You and me both." She was not amused, but as looked away and followed behind Sonya just a few steps more, she grabbed him, if only with her voice. "Thank you."
Shang Tsung paused for just a beat before he continued his path to the temple.