What is reality? Is it the thoughts in our head, or the world we allege to perceive? Is it a cold blank expanse beyond our very being that we'll never truly understand? At the root of his madness, Kotal Kahn planted himself firm on his ideals, right or wrong, no matter the perception.
The portal raised like an idol-capped monolith that beamed with bright light and flashes of lightning as Raiden's army turned to Edenia. He watched from the high tower at his chamber with the great stone window to look out upon with his the dark thoughts swirled like wind into his mind.
What felt like years, he thought, how could Skarlet return with seemingly no-one to look for her, and yet during the great trials and tribulations that nearly tore his soul asunder, Jade could not return.
BANG!
Night fell faster in an arid Outworld and the noise that shook the wood beneath his feet banged against the wall behind him.
BANG!
He turned, but there was nothing there. His bed of furs and silk almost like Jade could lay there as she had before, was as clean and smooth as when he came up to the chamber to rest.
The chamber was connected by two rooms. One was like a trophy room to Kotal Kahn. The armor and weaponry and trophies he had acquired that he loved more than anything were squared away in the small room to the left of the main chamber. He checked that room first, but it was as empty as Outworld.
Ko'atal.
Jade's voice reached him, almost through a strange audible hiss, like microwaves through the galaxy, or as Nightwolf and Erron Black described as radio.
The only light in the chamber was the great purple haze of a dim and darkened Outworld. The sconces at each side of the door yet to light, so he chose to do so. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness will never understand it.
Illuminated and the heat curled across his bare chest, he heard a ripple and a tear behind him. The bed was occupied.
He turned, but all he could see was the formation of tattered lines and ripples where something lay on the center of the bed. He raced to reach at it and tore the silk from the fur, but there was no sensation, no body.
Ko'atal!
Her voice echoed again and drove his madness further. He scanned the room frantic for her, for anything. He almost missed it as his eyes scanned past the great long window that creased the full size of the chamber, but just beneath was a shadow that scurried away like a dot in your eye you only thought you saw.
He moved to the window and as his last step touched the stone wall, another bang crossed him and the bed rumbled like wood banging and scraping on wood and stone.
At the center, a darkness fell on the bed like a shadow that hovered over something. He blinked and shook the image from his mind, but only the shadow faded. He believed he saw, even for a just a second, the mangled remains of Jade sprawled out bloody and broken on the bed. Her face crushed by Shao Kahn's hammer, and her lips torn like fabric from her skull whispered his name.
He turned away and balled his hands against his face and scraped and clawed the madness from him. His next vision, as he stared down from the tower to the tournament grounds where the chaos once took place, he saw a shadow move in the night.
This time, Kotal Kahn raced to it. Down the tower and on his way he pulled Erron Black with him to make sure he wasn't truly going mad and the two darted from room to room, staircase to staircase and across the grounds until the arena surrounded them. Here was where Sindel was murdered, Jade, Shao Kahn, all the others with blood still stained into the ground like a curse.
Erron strayed from his Kahn, shotgun aimed and his trigger finger ready. He creased his brow and kept his eyes focused, but for the life of him, couldn't find a damn thing.
Kotal Kahn, on the other hand, darted to the spot where Jade fell as he saw her flash before him, almost fully pieced together again, but sprawled out like a woman being tortured. The flashes of her, and the split seconds of the shadow lorded over her, he yearned for her voice again, to confirm he wasn't mad, but once his foot touched the spot she fell in, only the silence of Outworld's night surrounded him.
"What is this?" He called to Erron, to anything that could hear him.
He pivoted his body left and right to find Erron, but the assassin was far behind him, aimed at the seats as if a secret entity watched them from above. When he turned back, he watched as the sand flooded with blooded, Jades blood he assumed. He pulled back fast, and the words that etched across the hot sand read, 'my blood is on your hands'.
Kotal Kahn staggered back, silenced by the sight and unsure what monstrosity chose to torture him this night, he wanted to reach for Erron. He'd find Shao Kahn's hammer and break it in half in this very spot!
"Stand back!" Another voice warned him.
This was the wolf in the shadow, Nightwolf to be exact. Having heard the commotion, he appeared to have run to the arena, nearly out of breath, but with eyes better than Kotal Kahn and Erron for the spirit world, he'd have been a better fit to grab than the assassin. Kotal Kahn rushed to him and together they peered upon the signed in the sand that had soon faded.
"What do you see?" Kotal Kahn pondered.
"It is Jade!" Nightwolf seemed horrified at the sight that Kotal Kahn could not see. "Her spirit is trying to reach out to you, but something is holding her down."
"What is it?"
"A great evil, something I do not know." Nightwolf pulled back. Though he could sense it, he could not fight it.
"Let her speak!" Kotal Kahn demanded as the entity appeared.
A great black figure like a spider sprawled over the shattered remains of Jade flickered in and out of reality. Its grotesque face blackened like the devourer that pulled all things beyond the event horizon. Its claws wore her face like a glove and clung, and scratched at the muscle and bone of her skull, barely held together.
"I will chant!" Nightwolf began to hum, to yell, and to echo the sound of his tribe, for it was all he knew to do.
Kotal Kahn shrugged it off, but even a bullet from Erron Black's shotgun wouldn't pierce the image that flickered before them.
The shadow howled and Jade struggled. She cried and her voice hissed in the wind as it bellowed like an earthquake. Their bodies flickered with light and darkness, there and not.
Baffled and helpless, Kotal Kahn could only watch. Erron held him back, and Nightwolf chanted, but the scene played out before them as if they weren't even there.
"We shouldn't have turned the Gods away." Erron remarked.
"We need Raiden and Fujin! Get them now!"
"The portal has closed." Erron reminded him, "they would be in Edenia by now."
Nightwolf's chant peaked, his voice roared like the storm that swirled angrily above them. Kotal Kahn and Erron staggered as the lightning struck around them with reckless abandon.
The image faded. Seconds that felt like minutes passed into minutes that felt like hours and the shocking horror before them never revealed itself again. Kotal Kahn burst past Erron and kicked the sand, screamed for Jade, and turned every which way to find her.
When the panic died, the storm calmed and Nightwolf stood to survey the scene around him. Erron had holstered the shotgun and tipped his hat, there would be not fight for him.
"The dark energy has faded, but I feel this is not the last of this strange occurrence." Nightwolf's omen reached deep into Kotal Kahn's mind.
Was Jade trying to reach out him like Nightwolf suspected? If so, what was the shadow that refused her? He gripped the sand where had died, and could swear her blood was still scented and stained in the sand he held tightly.
As it sprinkled in a jagged line back down to the ground, he had realized the madness had finally taken him.
Defeated, he submitted to a higher power, "send Mileena to Edenia and have her bring Raiden back. Only the Thunder God."