Snarling, Mileena closed her eyes and batted at the insects buzzing around her body and face, swinging with almost wild blows in the jungle heat and humidity. How dare D'Vorah, that monstrous creature in thrall to the usurper, come here? To fight against her? The buzzing ceased and she opened her eyes, ready to fight the Kytinn -
Only to find the insect-woman gone. The Kuatan Jungle vanished in a swirl of sand and dust. Now she stood in a strange chamber that looked out onto an expanse of night sky. It was achingly white and grey and silver; it held nothing of Outworld's vibrancy and life. This room stank of death and nothingness.
Mileena drew her sai immediately and dropped into a crouch as she surveyed the room. The weights of her weapons were comfortable and reassuring in this strangeness. The chamber glittered and shone with bright lights, shimmered with strange undulating things along the walls. They almost hurt to look at. She hunted out something still and static in the ever-changing room. Her eyes settled finally on the monstrously large hourglass that demanded pride-of-place in the center. It had been cracked in dozens of places, sand ready to pour out onto the floor. She blinked, letting her eyes and mind adjust, and then resuming her survey of the chamber.
There were figures near the hourglass - cold and grey ones, but warm and living ones, too. One large and broad and glittering in the cold light of this place, the other sleek and slim and shining with another kind of cold beauty.
"Father?" She couldn't keep the words from her mouth, leaping up from her crouch. She saw the massive figure turn, holding a massive war hammer, long sweeping horns on its helm all too familiar. It was him, it was - but he was dead, but now he was not? Was this the realm of the dead? Had the Kytinn struck so boldly, so true?
"Mileena?" His deep voice seemed startled, and he held the hammer before him almost menacingly.
"Father!" She nearly skidded to a stop in front of him, flourishing her sai and sheathing them. "How are you here? What is this place?" She pulled her mask down, looking up at her father's helm and his visage hidden behind it. It was her way of proving her identity - that she was truly Mileena, and not her wretched fool of a sister, Kitana. Shao Kahn let out a short, surprised sound.
"Full of questions, isn't she?" A woman's voice, rich and throaty.
"And - Mother?" Mileena tilted her head, feeling the quickening of her heartbeat as she tried to manage the confusion. It was her, dark lips and long pale hair and a knife-sharp beauty. They were dead, slain long ago. It was how she had become Kahnum of Outworld. "But you're both-"
"It seems shattering the crown - and Kronika - did more than we expected, husband." Sindel hooked a slim arm around Shao Kahn's, her eyes examining Mileena from head to toe in a thoughtful way. Mileena noticed Mother was careful to keep Father between them, and felt a curl of satisfaction low in her belly. So Mother realized how dangerous she was - good. "If it brought Mileena back, what else did it do?"
"Kronika's crown is lost, and the Hourglass is useless." Father swung his hammer up over one shoulder with ease, the faint thunk audible as it connected with his shoulder armor. "Whatever it is, the change is permanent. Neither she - nor Shang Tsung - will ever have the chance to manipulate time again. How many times was my victory thwarted because it was not her will?" He snorted. "Now all will know me as I conquer my way across the realms."
"Manipulate time?"
Mileena loathed how foolish she sounded as she asked the question. Too like Kitana.
Father and Mother stepped aside, revealing the sprawl of bodies. A number of them were grey - and some looked like her sister and her sister's former allies, though clad in armor she could not recognize, skin gone dark and cracked and mottled with black lines. The Revenants? They had spent most of her reign in the Netherrealm - she'd encountered them but rarely. She stepped closer, heels clicking on the floor, and taking a deep breath.
Of the others, one of them - a hairless woman in strange garb - smelled wrong, not like any creature she'd scented before. Under the wrongness lay the familiar, reassuring stink of fresh death.
The other was Shang Tsung, sprawled and bleeding on the floor, one side of his ribcage caved in. There was a slow pulse of green energy around his torso, the bright red and white hole slowly reassembling itself. His eyes were barely open, and he smelled of fear and hatred and anger and pain. Her tongue slid out between her teeth, and she sensed the fear and hatred heighten. She tried for a smile, knowing what it did to her face, and watched the green glow swell for a moment. He was afraid of her, the Kahnum of Outworld.
Good.
Wait. If Mother and Father -
Manipulate time? The words echoed in her head again.
This was all wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The Revenants were dead - that's what they must be, for certain - and Shang Tsung alive before her, and the still-warm corpse of the strange woman. Tanya would have known how to advise on this... or even Rain. Mileena padded to the hourglass, watching the sand slowly begin to trickle out through minute cracks, before turning to Father again.
"What has happened, Father? Mother?"
"That is Kronika," Sindel said, gesturing to the corpse of the woman. "Time titan. She held the power over the Hourglass, the sands of time. She held the ability to manipulate time itself. Shang Tsung had hoped to take that power." She glared at the sorcerer prone on the floor, and he tried to bare his teeth in response. It reminded Mileena of nothing more than a dying beast's rictus of pain. "Your father was perhaps a bit overenthusiastic in putting the dog in his place. Kronika's crown has been shattered, and the hourglass with it. Time will - must - flow in this new state. She was able to change things… and I dare not think what she wrought, how many times she allowed things to come to pass that we abhorred." Mother tipped her head sideways slightly, still calculating. "I wonder if it was with that blow that you came back - and what others may have returned as well. How the board has shifted. Whatever has happened is permanent, now that Kronika is dead."
"You were dead!" Mileena spoke unthinkingly. "How are we here, then? What has become of my empire?"
"Your empire?" Father looked down at her, and she fought the urge to back down. She found the steel in her spine - the steel she'd earned as rightful Kahnum - and met his gaze.
"You and Mother were dead. I ruled Outworld. It is mine. You abdicated with your death."
"It was yours, daughter," he corrected her. His mouth pulled sideways, frown wavering into something darker and more foreboding. "But I am back. You will be a good heir, I am sure." His voice went lower, sharper. "Perhaps you will not lose it to another one of my former generals."
She snarled with anger. So he'd learned what had happened with Kotal - and whenever this was, whatever had happened, she hadn't managed to get her throne back after her fight with D'Vorah.
There would be time to prove herself.
"So what will we do now, Father?"
"Take this cur back with us, and set him to use. I have new trophies for my arena, and your sister and her"—Shao Kahn's lip curled up and back with distaste—"plaything require my attention. And we must see what else has changed." He looked at Mileena. "Come, daughter. There is much to do. And bring the sorcerer."
⁂
The palace was - well, Kotal Kahn had clearly gotten his wretched Osh-Tekk hands all over it, and Kitana had already begun to make some changes. Mileena felt her nose wrinkle and didn't bother to hide her distaste. Neither did she bother to hide her visage, keeping her face unmasked as she prowled the halls from top to bottom, mapping it and noting what had been altered from her reign and would need to be repaired. It looked too Osh-Tekk, reminded her of too many years in the Kuatan Jungle. Greenery everywhere, water flowing. The air was thick with the heady scent of flowers and rich soil. Beneath it all still lingered the metal tang of blood, almost etched into the tiles and between the stones, and the scent was reassuring. She would strip the plants, the soil, replace it-
After Father approved, of course. The realization rankled and she snarled to herself, the sound rippling through the hall ahead of her. This was back to being Father's palace, now.
There were Earthrealmers in what had once been Goro's lair, in the dungeons and the Koliseum. Mileena recognized two of them, the cocky Cage girl who had come to steal Shinnok's amulet, and what looked like a younger version of her father. A younger version of the whelp's mother had been taken by Father as well as a trophy for his arena. Somehow, the oily sorcerer Shang Tsung had acquired her for his own amusement, keeping her hostage for the good conduct of the Cages.
The other Earthrealmers - soldiers all - were part of the new waves of warriors for her father's arena. Their blood decorated the sands, and her father's redheaded sycophant Skarlet savored every moment.
None of this was as it should be.
She'd been brought back from the dead, brought through time, for what? Kitana was here, alive. And her toy, too - who had sought to bring Father down. Mileena snarled again at the thought, startling a servant into abject cowering. She snarled again at the man in pique, just to watch the fear ripple through his body before she prowled onwards. What right did Kitana have to be Dark Empress and still be the favorite?
Something still nagged at the back of her mind. The last that had happened was a fight - one of the Earthrealm children and D'Vorah had come, and they had fought with Mileena's allies.
So where was Rain?
And more importantly, where was Tanya?
⁂
The chambers had not changed - Mileena herself had never touched them, and it seemed the Usurper had never deigned to, either. The same stone and blue decor, curtains and couches and low cushions. An armor stand in one corner and an array of war fans displayed on the wall were the greatest nods to her training; there was a set of shelves, one full of books and the others scattered with trinkets including several masks and veils. The high arches and gauzy material made it look luxurious, almost decadent. Nothing like the privations Mileena had endured in the camps as she tried to regain her stolen throne. It was also nowhere near as glorious as her own chambers had once been - as if Kitana was making some statement about austerity and simplicity with it.
Kitana herself sat on a low couch looking out of a heavily barred window, the metal bars recently installed, haphazard chips of plaster and the faintest scent of hot metal still lingering in Mileena's nose. Dressed in a diaphanous blue robe, hair up in a bun and spiked with a hairpin, she looked tired and pale.
She looked weak.
"Sister." Mileena proffered the least vicious of her smiles to Kitana, one tooth away from a sneer.
"Mileena." Kitana's dark eyes fixed on her, and Mileena was certain she caught a hint of nervousness there. Kitana had always been the weaker one - now she was caged. An elegant cage, but a cage nonetheless. "Why are you here?"
"Only to see you, sister dear. It's been so long - for me, anyway - since we talked." Mileena's heels clicked on the floor as she closed the distance between herself and her clone-sister. "When you became Dark Empress of the Netherworld you weren't interested in visits. Or talking."
"How did you get in past the Shokan? They said Shao Kahn forbade all visitors."
"I have my ways." Mileena ran a talon-like fingernail along the back of one of Kitana's couches. "They are afraid of Father and I both. No matter what Mother has done, they know where the true threat lies." She felt the textured fabric beneath the pad of her finger, and picked delicately at it, hunting for a loose thread. "They are not afraid of you. If you'd earned their fear, their submission, then they would defend you from others. As it is - they only keep you for Father's amusement."
Kitana looked at her, once-warm eyes seeming faded and hollow. "They betrayed us - betrayed me. Sheeva sided with Sindel, voided our treaty, the agreed-upon arrangement for rulership of Outworld. They will be dropped back down like servants - like slaves!"
"Oh, come off it, sister." Mileena dropped onto the couch heavily. "The Shokan know their place, like the Tarkatans. If they were strong enough to take the reins of Outworld, they have had ample opportunity. They knew better than to push against me, and they know better than to do so against Father. They allied with you because they thought - no," she corrected herself, "they knew, that you were weak enough to guide."
"Weak!" Kitana's eyes flashed with indignation. "I am not weak. I want unity for Outworld. Kotal Kahn destroyed the Tarkatans, the Shokan were driven underground - all for what? His own pride. Even-" She clamped her mouth shut.
"Even I did not do that?" Mileena leaned back and smirked, crossing her legs at the ankles. "I worked to secure my reign, and it worked well until that Osh-Tekk fool overthrew me, and that Kytinn turncoat went to his side. Now you are trapped in here. They feel you so weak they've left you your armor, Kitana. Your fans. And you make not a single attempt to escape." Mileena let the full sneer cross her face, as haughty as Kitana had ever been. "That is weakness."
"I can't risk it." Kitana's voice was low in the room, carrying barely beyond Mileena's own ears.
"Why?" Mileena leaned forward, elbows on her thighs. "You don't know where you'd run to, who you would hide behind?" Her voice took on a slightly singsong tone with her mockery. "The Princess' allies all captured?"
"I won't put Liu Kang at risk," Kitana said sharply, jerking her chin up. "They won't let me see him - no one will tell me anything about him. I am sure I would know if he was dead - Mother would come in here and wave his head at me if she could, or parade his corpse past my window. But otherwise, I know nothing about him."
Mileena picked at the upholstery again, finding another loose thread and tugging it free. She knew what that was like.
"I will go find him for you," Mileena offered, and saw Kitana's chin rise up again, her shoulders pull back as if she expected a blow.
"What do you want in exchange? You have never been charitable, Mileena. You have always hungered, and I can tell you hunger still, no matter what has happened. Time has only made you more ravenous."
Mileena tipped her head back and laughed, and laughed further as she met her sister's eyes.
"I want the throne, Kitana. I want what was rightfully mine. Father was dead and I was betrayed, and I want the throne. I want what I had before."
Kitana tilted her head. A ghost of a smile slowly crept across her face, hovering in her eyes and weakly twisting the corners of her mouth.
"And what do you think I will do, Mileena? If I am as weak as you claim." She shifted on the couch.
"You'll bring the Tarkatans - who still hold to your pact - to my side. You will fight by my side to reclaim Outworld from Father, for his time is gone and I will have it back. And then once he has ceded his authority to me - in life, or by his death - you will step aside. You will give up Outworld to me, and I will let you live."
Kitana's eyes had widened slowly as Mileena spoke, and now Mileena watched her sister's face. It was a mirror of her own, save with Edenian eyes and an Edenian mouth, and both of those twisted in horror. Mileena did not need to know Kitana would refuse her - she could see it in the way her skin paled, the way she recoiled, the way her eyes went sharp and her lips pulled down.
"I will never let Outworld fall into your hands if I have the power to prevent it, Mileena."
Anger overwhelmed her at the gall and cold arrogance, the defiance. Mileena lunged forward with a roar, fingernails curving forward, mouth gaping wide in a snarl. Kitana did not recoil, pretty lips setting firm. Mileena stopped herself a handsbreath from her. The door burst open behind her, the heavy metal screeching with the force. Kitana did not move.
"You have no power, Kitana. Not anymore. You serve no purpose." Her tongue licked out, and she inhaled the sweet scent of fear, savored the sound of Kitana's heartbeat pounding against her ribs. "I will have my empire back! If you do not aid me, you oppose me!"
Four hands grabbed Mileena, yanking her backward, and she hissed and snarled at the Shokan dragging her out. Mileena could see Kitana's face, the palest hint of a smile on her face again.
"Clearly I do have some purpose, or why would they have stopped you?"
The smug look on Kitana's face haunted Mileena for the rest of the day.
⁂
She stalked Shang Tsung that evening. She considered invading his suite, but decided against it after a few brief moments of consideration. It was almost certain Earthrealm woman would be there. If Mileena remembered anything, it was that she was an excellent warrior - and if Shang Tsung had bent her to his will, then the last thing Mileena wanted was the risk of being set upon by the two of them if things went awry.
Mileena found him in his workrooms in the bowels of the Palace. They stank of chemicals and blood, a dozen lamps hanging overhead and along the walls scattering light across the chambers. This was not the Flesh Pits, no - but a place closer, easier to scheme from. She'd turned it upside down in her reign, anything for a hint at more power and what he had managed to do to secure his position as Shao Kahn's advisor and most trusted lackey. She had been most desperate to find the repository of blackmail evidence she was sure he had.
She'd found nothing, and destroyed the rooms in her anger. They seemed in far better repair now; he, or some servants, must have set to tidying them at some point. Or maybe that blue-skinned Osh'Tekk usurper had done it.
She couldn't keep the snarling expression from her face as she walked through the doorway into the first of the sconce-and-magic lit chambers.
"Princess Mileena." Shang Tsung's smooth, rich voice greeted her the moment she set foot inside. He granted her a title, but managed to make it a mockery even as he spoke it. "We haven't spoken since your return. How is this timeline treating you?"
"Sorcerer." She tried not to let her utter loathing of him come through in her speech. "I have been adjusting to the changes. Not all of them are to my liking."
Shang Tsung let out a half-laugh. "I'm sure, Princess." That jab of title again. "Not all of them are to my liking, either."
"Father says you tried to wrest the titan's power for your own."
"Perhaps I acted a bit rashly," he allowed, his eyes flashing warning signs she recognized. "I am not as deep in Shao Kahn's favor as I was."
"And I am." She tipped her chin up, eyes pinned on her creator. "I am here because I want answers, sorcerer. And you have been good at providing them to my father, so you will provide them to me."
"You forget your place, Mileena." His fingers curled and then flattened in a slow motion. "I do not owe you any answers. We are both Shao Kahn's creatures, and it was my hands that made you. You are my child as much as his."
She lunged forward, only to feel the abrupt connection of a low-set workbench as it caught her in the stomach. Shang Tsung let another one of those smug smiles cross his face, eyes crinkling slightly at the corners in genuine amusement.
"What is it you are after, Mileena?"
"I want to know where Tanya and Rain are. None have mentioned them. And you seem to know everything, including the secrets some wish to keep." Her fingers curled around the workbench, talonlike nails digging into it. "They have said they are both dead, but I was also dead. And I am not."
"I can only tell you what I have been told, since I predeceased you all. They tell me that they are both dead. Tanya betrayed Rain to save her own skin, and then was eventually put to death as well by Kotal Kahn." His shoulders rose and fell in a slight shrug. "Kotal Kahn is dead - I have seen his head myself. Rain and Tanya have been long dead, their bodies lost to time."
"Lost to time? As you and I were?" Mileena felt her eyebrows draw together as she scowled at him. "Lies, sorcerer."
"I speak only the truth. I do not know where either of them lies." Shang Tsung gave her an oily smile, tipping his head down. "Princess."
"You know. I can smell it on you."
"She is dead, Mileena. Even I cannot resurrect the dead." He arched a brow and looked at her sidelong. "I could, perhaps, make something like her. She was Edenian. Something from Kitana, something from you… I need only find another pyromancer, or perhaps even simply train her to pyromancy if there is the chance."
"I will have her back!" Mileena lunged for him - around the table, this time - and the sorcerer stepped out of the way, pivoting on a heel. She turned and reached for her sai at her back. "I will not be defied by you! You brought back Sindel. I have heard it!"
"Her soul was still… attached… to her body." Shang Tsung gestured with his fingers lazily, a gesture Mileena couldn't read. He seemed to have no fear of her or her blades. "Earthrealm's jinsei healed her body, and I was able to use the Soul Chamber to revive her soul. But Tanya has been dead for years. I doubt even the jinsei could heal what is left."
Mileena's ears almost perked at his words. Her heart stuttered in her chest for a moment before it began to race like a beast on the hunt.
"What is left. So something is left." She advanced on him step by step, feeling her mouth open of its own accord, her tongue licking out, scenting his fear. "Tell me, sorcerer, and I will let you live."
"I do not know." His voice was still slickly bland, unafraid and uninterested. "It is not as if you can go to Earthrealm and acquire jinsei, regardless. And then you would need me - as well as her body - and the Soul Chamber here." He paused, eyed her, and then chuckled. "Stop looking as if you would kill me, Mileena. You won't, as long as you hold any hope of resolving this." He reached down and adjusted one of the long cuffs of his robe. "You might speak with Kollector."
"Kollector? That Naknadan wretch Father keeps around?"
"The very same."