Crossed from the demon Belokk as its throat slit over her robes, then a kick to Tremor, to give Geras an edge as they battled, Ashrah rushed forward into the dark void that swallowed the fog of war. Her heavenly Kriss brandished, she dropped into a right stance, dodged under Bi-Han's first strike, but the shadow entity pulled back her conical hat, which tied around her throat to choke her. Bi-Han was quick to dispense of the demon with her own weapon.
The wraith pried apart the second and third rib to reach her heart, then rang her jagged ribs down to split them in half. Once the body fell he turned to meet Liu Kang. The infamous kick the Shaolin Monk launched at Bi-Han with was simply dodged as he sucked into the shadow beneath.
As Liu Kang joined Geras with Tremor, Bi-Han moved on. He had his own goal in this, now that Ashrah was slain and the heavenly Kriss tossed aside like garbage, he felt the temperature rise and drop and sought out his brother.
First through the smoke was Frost. Bi-Han's shadow tripped her into his hands to crack her neck. Next was Smoke, descended from the particles that suffocated the fighters, he crashed down into the shadow entity as Bi-Han finally met his brother Kuai Liang.
Bi-Han pulled the sickle from his shoulder as his brother formed a hand-and-a-half sword of ice. In a burst of energy, both lunged forward to clash. Smoke held up the shadow as Sub-Zero came in with a thrust, only for the sword to be curved to the left by the sickle and a hard kick to his core push him back. Staggered, but not fallen, Sub-Zero knelt down to flatten his blade above his head to stop an overhead strike.
The ice shattered above him. Sub-Zero brushed it off, rolled back and used the remainder as daggers to catch the sickle when Bi-Han followed up with a left hip swipe.
Jacqui rushed in to double the wraith over, having struck him hard with the flat of her thigh to his gut. Sub-Zero closed the gap, grabbed his brother and pushed her out of the way.
"This is my battle," He yelled to her through the warfare, "find your father!"
She nodded and struck the Reiko as he charged them. A twist of her body and she was out of the way. Behind her, Ferra/Torr rushed Reiko to clear Sub-Zero and Bi-Han's fight circle.
She ran left and right, but only found herself between the two Shokan. Goro's father, King Gorbac latched onto her, his lower hands grabbed her biceps at each end as his other son, Prince Duroc came in to grab her legs. He reached down with his lower limbs and found a face full of the demon vampire Nitara.
She had swooped in fast like a hawk and with precision and speed began to peck out his eyes and jugular with a dagger before she launched off the dead Shokan to the next.
Gorbac caught Nitara, but released Jacqui in the process. The King of the Shokan squeezed the vampire tight at the waist. Her dagger carved out his eyes as they had his son, but he was bigger, and more resilient.
"I can bring you to your father!" She screamed for Jacqui beneath them.
Jacqui yelled back an order lost in the wind, but Nitara got it. The vampire pressed her feet on his knees to give Jacqui the space to crouch under and with one shot shatter his groin up to the skull. Another shot struck the brain to drop the Shokan. She swiped out his leg so the giant tree of a beast would not fall upon her, nor Nitara.
"Take it." Jacqui reached down for the pale woman to take her hand.
Her left wing injured, she couldn't stretch, nor jump. Unable to pull herself from the Shokan, Nitara took the human's hand.
The vampire took her collar and dragged her with her bare strength across the field. She pushed men and women aside as they fought, until her senses brought her back to the one man she had obsessed for years over.
Jax, free of his bonds, had quickly turned against Daegon's forces. Here he fought two of the old guards of Shao Kahn until Nitara and Jacqui joined in.
The world burned down around them. Skarlet ducked against Ferra/Torr's body for cover as the disfigured Black Dragon member, No Face let his flamethrower flare into around him with reckless abandon. Taven rapidly approached behind him to crack his ankle, drop the slender man, then pushed quickly away as the man's head fell in front of the flames.
Head down and crunched to protect as the brunt of the flames now encased Ferra/Torr's body, Skarlet couldn't tell who, but someone had torn her from the corpse and threw her onto her back.
As she faced up and did her best to absorb the blow, arms out, knees ready to pull herself back up, she cast a glance through the dust to find Rain stood over her.
"So, what's a nice place like this doing 'round people like us?" He jested before an attempt to stomp her skull in.
She rolled and in as quick a motion as she could, used her dagger to cut at his achilles tendon. Rain pulled back and dissolved into water that rushed her like a tsunami into the dirt.
Caked in blood, soot, and mud, Skarlet struggled to pull out of the muck. He dropped onto her, a fist full of hair, and the other hammered into her skull.
Skarlet wailed her arms to protect her self and to block his strikes, but he would hold her in place again and grind her face into the mud until she could only breath and spit blood and earth. Lost in his violence, she found herself close to unconsciousness and needed to fight back fast.
His hand gripped her jaw and crushed her flesh in, her lips squished and the mud spilled out like spit until he brought his lips down for her to listen as one ear was buried and her body squirmed violently beneath him.
"I don't regret anything I did to you!" He spat in her face, "I am a God! I can do no–"
A spike of blood shot from her mouth into his. He pulled away fast as he choked on her dagger-like spit. In an ugly pause he pulled that hardened needle of blood from his throat and spat more out. He began to choke on his own blood, but only enough to piss the God off further.
Rain chased her down in the mud for another attack. Skarlet rolled from another stomp, pulled herself up to her knees and dragged him down with her. Both covered in the muck and blood of others and themselves, she had lost her dagger into the earth.
Skarlet's hands around his neck, he broke the lock and punched her back down. She retaliated with no strike of her own, but to pull back as he staggered. What lived inside him, what gave him life, and made him hard and real now solidified and expanded within each and every vein of the vain God.
The half God stiffened as the blood hardened within him and soon shattered the body into a muddy firework around Skarlet. The taste of the Gods covered her and she let a deep breath out of bloody satisfaction.
Finally she had rid herself of the vile creep and nothing of him left could be recognized as the arrogant prick.
Prick.
She hung on the word as her abdomen began to sting. She reached for her left side and found blood rush like wine through a hole of her own.
Behind her, Kia had impaled her with a sword.
Bitch!
Skarlet swung around to retaliate, but Kia kicked her down before being taken over and decapitated by Kotal Kahn.
Not this again–
Her thoughts wavered and her legs trembled beneath her until the mud and blood of the fallen God slapped her face.
The world around her stopped. It froze in time as finally Daegon and Taven raised the pyramid of Argus and awakened the elemental Blaze. All of this, so violent, so important, a haze and daze in Skarlet's head.
She collapsed and bled and as her eyes blinked slow as the world faded around her, she saw two feet stand at her and kneel down.
Skarlet herself knelt down before her and smiled at the sight. The First Evil, the Entity mused at the sight.
"Ouch, mommy, this mortal wound is all itchy." It mocked her.
Skarlet rolled onto her back, hands on the wound to stop the bleeding as best she could with her powers, but she gasped, and the light dimmed above Edenia.
"Congratulations, you killed him. You pulled a nice trick. You came pretty close to smacking me down. What more do you want?"
Though her wound itched and burned, and her body weakened, her will was as enraged in flames as the elemental high above the pyramid. Skarlet rolled to pull herself back up. The image of her backed away to watch the human falter.
"I want you," she spat, and through the pain pulled herself to her staggered feet, "to get out of my face!"
In an act of defiance toward the entity that had revived her, Skarlet drew her own fallen blood and that of Rains into a solid scythe. She turned fast and cut through Tanya who had charged in for the coup de grace on her.
At the foot of the pyramid all of the fighting ceased. At the top Daegon and Taven had begun their war with Blaze. As expected, Raiden knew the combatants would be drawn like moths to the flame and races up the pyramid.
With him, Fujin rode the wind high and swirled those that tried to ascend beneath him.
The true battle had finally begun as all that could leapt for the pyramid of Argus.
Skarlet fell to her knees. The wound had already ceased its bleeding, but she was out of the fight. She felt warmth and another person catch her mid fall. The warmth heated like the sun as she looked up to find Kotal Kahn wrap around her to ease her down safely.
"You going to live?" He asked
"Go help them. Stop this, Ko'atal."
She'd live, but her part in this was over. He let her down with grace and pulled his weapon from the mud.
It wasn't his destiny to beat Blaze, as Jade's words echoed through him, but he would ensure Daegon didn't either.