"Where is Kronika?"
Geras awakened from the sands of time, an infinite nothing lulled him to an eternal sleep. His eyes scanned the world around him to find the ruins of a once graceful home to the Keeper of Time herself. Shattered platforms, broken glass and metal all now jagged teeth stuck out from the cogs of fate. The only thing to remain intact was the hourglass.
Bound and held up against the mashed mesh of white and gold steel, Geras turned his gaze to Bi-Han, the wraith that stared back up at him, Reiko at his side.
"You cannot kill me." He confided to them.
Silence from them was all he got. Beyond the two there were two women he had not seen before, and two distinguished Shokan. They had a similar appearance to Goro, perhaps related, but beyond that, even Kronika had no use for the four-armed species. He returned to Bi-Han, the only one of the bunch he knew at any length.
"You cannot hold me, Bi-Han." His clubbed hand speckled with sand and sprinkled down from the robust, amorphous shape to his wrist and up until he was free of his bonds and emerged from the dune before them. "Where is Kronika?"
The name was a blank statement to them. A name to throw around like any other relic of the past before their time. Geras quickly realized these were not the same individuals as the timeline he recalled. Instead, he'd find a different route forward.
"How did you find this place." He moved for the hourglass, and Bi-Han cut ahead of him through the shadow.
"You've only been salvaged for one purpose." The wraith acknowledged. "Retrieve the crown."
"I do not know whe–"
Reiko cut him off, "the Chaos Realm."
Before Geras could speak, Bi-Han thrust him forward into the shadow and through the portal of the worlds between worlds.
His night thought cut off, his next sight was the vastness of the world of Chaos. Giant pyramids of metal hovered above clouds and what appeared to at the time like marshes and swamps of Earth. He realized that he had been brought on a stone platform that shattered and lifted with little regard for gravity up into the air piece by piece, chuck of stone by chunk. Spires of earth rose up around the platform and found the way off, to simply jump, before the pillars of chaos broke around him.
A puddle of sand on the ground, he pulled and formed himself back up from the earth only to see he was wrong about the sight before him. It had not been the marshlands thousands of feet down, but volcanic rock and creases where the earth would pulse with lava flow.
His throat burned and suffocated until it killed him, until it no longer fazed him. Once adjusted, was unsure what his part to play in these games were, but if it was to restore the crown to Kronika, he'd better start.
With only one step forward, he emerged in what appeared to be like feudal Japan. He had expected crags and stone, and death and fumes, but instead found himself amongst the lush mountains of Japan and followed a small dim blue fox spirit that seemed to have caught his eye.
Soon amorphous, the blue spirit faded into a Yorishiro tree. The spirit could reside within that tree, but Geras was none the wiser.
"Geras." Kronika addressed him.
The fixed point in time turned to see his master hover high above the forest canopy and slowly glide down with grace.
"You are not Kronika." He could sense it immediately.
She touched the ground, revealed a wry smile and her skin began to peel and grow as she spoke.
"You are right. So clever, Geras." Raiden spoke, but his form too was too fragmented to remain as it was. Raiden became Liu Kang, and then Kitana, and then Geras.
Unimpressed, Geras stopped the morphing of the entity with a tight grip around its neck as it stopped in transition between Raiden and Kronika. Their eyes widened with shock, when Geras was able to close his fist around their neck and throw them in unison to the ground as one entity.
"This is the Chaos Realm, everything and yet nothing is possible." Geras explained. "As a construct of time, you should have known that."
"Then all pretense is gone." Kronika peeled her flesh in half. The entity emerged in its truest form.
Geras was forced back as the blob hardened and the figure of Kronika grew until it was very nearly the size of the Japanese forest's tallest tree. A demonic, near unspeakable voice echoed down at him but he could no longer understand its ancient dialect, nor could he truly comprehend its absolute alien appearance. How does one describe time and space itself collected into the very concept of evil?
Unaffected by its gruesome and fearsome appearance, Geras charged the mountainous demon-like entity and lunged to attack. It mouthed words he could not understand and swatted his tiny frame out into the open air. Having cleared the entire forest, Geras shattered into a million little specks of sand onto the pavement of an open concrete desert.
As the entity tore through time and space to reach him, he pulled himself up one speck of sand at a time and dropped into a right stance, ready to continue. He couldn't die and neither could a Primal Power, but he'd certain enjoy the fight.
What he interpreted as a hand reached down for him to crush his being into dust, but before it could press down on him or grab him off the pavement, a long fine string of metal sliced the hand clean off. The entity reeled back and shrunk down into the form of Kronika.
Havik, in the same motion, swung around to cut Geras in half.
"This is my realm!" He charged Kronika.
Unmoved by the slice, Geras reformed and charged behind the Chaos Realm native. Kronika had little to do with Havik, unable to control him, unable to trust him. There was no place for the Chaos Realm in the New Era, but that didn't mean she did not take her part in ensuring he stayed clear of the aftermath.
Together they took turns to strike at her. Now corporeal, the entity could strike back. It would jump back into the form of Kitana to block with her fans, then lunge forward like Scorpion and send the spear flying toward Geras.
Johnny Cage kicked Havik back and Cassie Cage used that momentum to crack Geras' ankle. Steady on its feet, the entity stalked Geras before he could reform a fixed ankle and using Shao Kahn's form, shattered the body into the arid desert beneath them.
This allowed Havik the chance to leap onto the back of Shao Kahn. Once formed into Goro, then Kintaro, then Motaro when the entity couldn't shake Havik off, the Chaos Realm native cracked the entity's neck and jumped back off with a hard kick to the face to aid his launch.
Geras emerged beneath the waned beast with a hard uppercut that thrust the amorphous body as it rapidly formed into Kano through the ground until their knew stage was a subway train station.
Kano was livid and leaned in his with eye to blast through Geras just as Havik, no ally to the fixed point in time would kick him into the oncoming train. His body collapsed between the tracked and tore limb from limb until only sand remained.
He watched once his eyes formed again and his body rose from the dust, there was a gentle blue light that emanated from the back of the train. Much like the fox spirit in the Japanese forest. He chose to chase it instead of the entity.
His speed was encumbered by his size, and he was detected long before he could move forward. Liu Kang dropped down to the train tracks and formed into a fiery red dragon that breathed down upon the sands of time until all of Geras' figure was solid glass. When Havik struck the entity into Kitana's form, it dropped the statue of Geras and shattered it along the tracks.
The fight would continue forever if they had the chance. Geras knew it needed to end. As the train reemerged from the hollow darkness, it crushed and crashed into the entity and Havik, but Geras leapt up to shatter through to the conductor's seat in the subway train.
He marched from cabin to cabin to find that blue light.
A bright light emerged behind him, it was the open world as the subway train dropped from the tunnel from thirty thousand feet above the ocean. His body froze in space as was forced to crash with gravity, having to hold anything he could to maintain his position. He let the great metal monster explode and crash into the sea, the back of the train finally as close to him as the front as it shattered and crunched, then sank.
His eyes opened to the darkness of space. Chunks of the planet remained and drifted off into starlight. The stars looked like millions of capsules and the chunks of earth asteroids without a planet to strike. Stationed on one such chunk, Havik urged Geras down to the platform of grass and dried river. What remained beside him of the Yorishiro tree.
Once he touched down, gravity pulled on him like normal, despite no gravity nor sound being rational in the vastness of space.
"The crown is here." Havik confirmed.
He wiped his chin, cackled the teeth of his lower exposed skull and drew up his black and red hood. His blue radiant eyes narrowed on Geras.
"It is belongs to Kronika." Geras insisted.
"It belongs to no one." Havik argued.
"Are we to fight for eternity for it?" Geras dropped into a left stance, ready to continue.
"We are not." A left turn for him, Havik reached into the tree beyond the rope and pulled the crown from it.
Unexpected, the creature of the Chaos Realm held it out for Geras to grasp. Unsure of the trick, he made a move for it.
Inches from the metal, the white V like arches and silver and gold accent all within his grasp, Geras touched the crown just when Havik rescinded the offer and with a loud cackle cracked it in half.
One piece of the crown floated up into space, and the other was thrown at Geras' feet.
Time itself seemed to stop for him. There could be no order, no means to move the sand within the hourglass without the crown complete. Desperate, he jumped to reach the other piece, but gravity dragged him down to his feet. The earth beneath him cracked, and he could feel the rumble of a quake until he was swallowed whole and dropped back before Bi-Han's feet.
The Wraith plucked the broken crown from Geras' cold, dead grasp.
"Well, that's half of it." Reiko remarked.
As his reward for having retrieved the crown, albeit damaged beyond repair, Geras felt it cut his throat with its jagged edges and then the shadow realm pull him under.