Author's Note: This chapter kind of is jarring and bounces around a lot because I wanted to try to recreate how a dream feels. In other words, it's deliberately written like this. I didn't make a mistake or get sloppy with my writing. Well, maybe I did, I don't know. But I assure you, I made it disjointed on purpose.

Blood tainted his dreams.

"I will not allow you to do this," Kuai Liang whimpered in his sleep, oblivious to the fact that he was talking out loud on his couch in his office.

Do it? a voice whispered back. I've already done it.

The pathway that cut through the forest was dim and shadowy in the twilight, the darkness made deeper by the bowing tree branches above his head. There was a faint light ahead, but even from afar, he could tell that it was where the trees abruptly ended. The air was still and dank, and somewhere in the distance, he heard an eagle screech loudly. It seemed familiar, but when he tried to remember why, his head ached and his thoughts were hard to hold on to. Something about...an old Temple? It was gone, whatever it was.

Kuai Liang blinked and now saw a man standing in the middle of his path. He had not noticed the man when he first appeared. If he had not known it was impossible, he would have said no one had been there until he actually looked at him. Dressed in polished armor and maroon robes of a fine cut, bearing black diamond tattoos around his intense green eyes, he exuded the aura of a fearless warrior.

Once more, Grandmaster, we meet face-to-face, Reiko told him, and, just for an instant, his mouth and eyes became openings into endless caverns of flame.

With a startled yell, Kuai Liang hurled an ice ball at him so hard that he stumbled forward and awkwardly ran past the General's rapidly freezing figure. The light beyond him grew larger as he drew closer to it, but he flailed his arms like a bird when he reached the end to keep from falling over the cliff that waited there for him. Somehow, he caught himself - and found himself staring wide-eyed at the craggy rocks below him painted with old blood and littered with tiny human bones. In the distance, snow-capped mountains stood silent.

You cannot get away from me that easily, Reiko said behind him at his shoulder, practically whispering into his ear, but Kuai Liang refused to look. He couldn't look behind him; he mustn't look behind him.

"What do you want?" he cried, again in his dreams and from his couch in his office.

You know what I want, Grandmaster.

"No," he whimpered.

I'm going to use you to take Shinnok's amulet.

"No!"

And I'm going to use you to destroy Raiden's Champions one by one.

"No!"

Starting with your children.

"No!" he wailed both in the dream world and the real one. "I won't let you do it!"

I've already done it.

Kuai Liang now saw the Hydromancer glyphs and runes glow on the walls of Massilia, the sacred pool consecrated by the Elder Gods, rich with the scent of jasmine and lily. The waterfall roared over the rocks, its noise peaceful, its water pure and clean. He held Anya in his strong arms, and his hand stroked her and opened her and woke that hunger in her that belonged to him alone, and the stars smiled down on them. "You are my home, and I am yours," he whispered to her as he entered her and filled her, but suddenly the stars were gone, and the glyphs wept blood into the water as the world around them turned to flame. He screamed as Anya's body turned into a rotten corpse in his arms.

I've already done it.

He was back at the cliff's edge. Breathing hard, he looked up the mountain's side to his left and saw the old Temple where he'd lived as a child nestled in the dense woods high above the rest of the world.

Did you really think you could have a normal life, Grandmaster? Reiko jeered from his right, and then pushed Kuai Liang over the edge.

He howled in terror as he fell into the jagged Himalayan abyss...and then landed on his feet in a hospital room where a plastic bassinet sat in the corner close to the window. He walked to it, his feet heavy like they were dragging through molasses, and looked down. A tiny face - his face, were he a newborn - looked back at him. A shock of walnut brown hair curled over her forehead and in between her eyes. In disbelief, he twisted it around his finger and closed his eyes in delight at the downy texture.

The nurse's face was drawn into a smile. "Do you know what you're going to name her?" she asked, her voice fading away as Kuai Liang slowly withdrew the bundle from the bassinet and pulled her to his body.

"Her name is Olivia," he muttered, his voice strange to his ears as he cradled her against him and adjusted the pink-striped blankets to see her face better. "I never knew I wanted her as much as I did until now," he murmured as she cooed and sleepily closed her eyes. He began walking again - this time with her nestled tightly in his arms - through the forest and towards the cliff's edge.

Love is forbidden to the Lin Kuei, Reiko reminded him, ever-present at his shoulder. Why did you break with centuries of law and tradition, Grandmaster, when you know what the consequence is?

Now, a coldness settled inside of him when he looked at Olivia, a terrible ice chilling his blood. His daughter would be strong and proud, smart and beautiful, with skin and walnut hair like his, and sapphire eyes shaped like almonds. She was his firstborn, and the only Cryomancer he'd sired. But still, there was no warmth for her, even when she smiled for him and waved a tiny baby fist at him. Love was forbidden in the Lin Kuei, and he knew what the consequence was. He took it with his much larger fingers, and then abruptly jerked her forward and threw her over the edge. He felt nothing when her little body exploded onto the rocks below. Unfeeling tears trickled from his eyes and turned to blood on his cheeks.

"Livy," he whimpered and sobbed in his sleep, thrashing, unable to wake from this nightmare.

A man with a family can easily become compromised.

"Kuai Liang," Anya now said with a smile as she took him by the hand and led him to the couch in his office. Before them, a fire roared in the hearth and warmed them, and glowing orange rays crept up the walls, casting shadows around them. "I have something to tell you. It was pretty unexpected."

"Is the baby okay?" he asked. He anxiously rubbed her belly as if that would make any problem go away.

"Look," she beamed as she pulled her free hand from her pocket and revealed the tiny black and white ultrasound picture she'd gotten from her appointment earlier.

"What am I looking at?" he murmured, unable to decipher the jumble of cloudy blobs. He strained to see the picture, but as it always was in dreams, he couldn't discern a pattern.

"There's the heart," she said as she pointed to tiny shapes with her fingernail, "and there's the brain. There's two arms and two legs, and ten fingers and ten toes." Now she pointed to another shape, her face split in two with an infectious grin that made the Grandmaster want to laugh. "And right there, between the legs? There's...a thing." She looked up at him. "It's a boy."

"I have a son?" he gasped, the swell of pride in his heart choking his words in his throat. He pulled her close and kissed her all over her face, not knowing what else to do. "I have a son," he breathed, trying to convince himself this was real.

"There's more," she said, squeezing his hand tightly. Once more, she pointed to the picture with her fingernail. "There's another thing." She met his confused gaze with a serene but amused one. "We're having twin boys, Kuai Liang."

He remembered the way his heart leaped with joy at the word, how the tears unexpectedly sprang to his eyes at the news, how much he loved his wife for giving him that gift. He had two sons now, and wondered what he'd done right to deserve such a treasure.

A man like you has made many enemies.

He was walking slowly towards the cliff again, this time cradling Tommy and Jamie in each arm, his blood frozen, his feelings numb. Love was forbidden in the Lin Kuei. He knew what the consequence was.

He balanced each newborn boy on either palm as he extended his arms over the side. A simple twist of his wrists cast each one down, and soon they joined Olivia's shattered remains on the rocks below.

And those enemies will use your family to punish you.

Now he was back in the Temple, in his quarters at the end of the day, undressing in his closet, and he heard a loud thump coming from the bathroom where Anya was getting ready for bed.

"Ahn?" he called out, wondering what she'd dropped in there. There was no answer. "Ahn?" he called again, this time more urgently, now walking towards her to investigate.

He found her unconscious on the bathroom floor with a puddle of blood spreading between and beneath her legs. "Anya!" he'd cried when he saw her lying between the toilet and the tub, her joints at odd angles like a bird with broken wings, her color pale, her breaths coming shallow. He didn't remember lunging to her side and scooping her in his arms, shrieking into his wrist communicator for Tomas to come help him because she'd miscarried what they later discovered was an ectopic pregnancy.

"Even if we can salvage some of her reproductive organs, she'll almost certainly never be able to get pregnant again," the doctor's voice echoed through his mind.

You knew the consequence...

"You are the closest I will ever come to magic," Kuai Liang whispered to Anya's swollen belly as she lay sleeping in her hospital bed, deathly ill with what the doctors called preeclampsia.

In spite of all the odds, he mused as he rubbed that beautiful bump, in spite of all the experts telling him he'd have no more children, his wife had somehow defied them all and gave him one more daughter. It was not so much a prayer as a longing of his soul to have just one more baby, but even still, in that moment, he knew her name must be Samantha because the gods had heard his plea.

You knew the consequence...

Kuai Liang began to sing very softly to Sammie in her incubator, a month premature and twisted in unearthly tubing and wires, almost not singing at all, just breathing a whisper of a tune. He sang to let her know he was there, begging her to stay anchored to the earth, to keep from laughing or crying in amazement that he was even sitting there with her in his arms when she was never supposed to be born to begin with. He sang as if his music could keep her alive, as if it could feed her soul, as if it could weave a protective spell around her to survive these days and these weeks. He sang as if he could give her a piece of himself, which he hoped would ring inside of her like a bell, giving her hope whenever she needed him. And as he sang, he promised her every single thing he wished his own father would have promised to him, even just once. He loved her, his littlest girl.

Slowly, he lifted Sammie's body from the strange bassinet and pulled her free of the tubing before he carried her down that forest path to the cliff's edge. She was so small, her body barely longer than his hand, and so helpless right now. It was a miracle she had been conceived and a greater miracle still that she had survived long enough to be born. But as she squeaked out anguished noises - her vocal chords were far too underdeveloped to cry - the ice settled on his heart once again. As if she was nothing but a bag of trash, he casually tossed her into the abyss where she joined her brothers and sister in death.

You knew the consequence...

"Kuai Liang, please let me go," he heard a woman's voice whimpering once Sammie was gone, and he turned his head to the right and saw Anya tightly tied to the tree. Tears streamed down her swollen face, but her words fell on deaf ears.

You knew...

"I will send you to meet your children in the afterlife," he told her, his voice unnerving to his own ears. And then, he kicked a rushing line of penitentes at her bound body. They impaled her in seconds. A particularly large ice shard pierced her skull and pushed her eyeball from its socket. Swiveling madly, unaware it was dead, the beautiful lavender eye was skewered on the point like a kabob. Blood gushed from her mouth.

You knew why your Elders forbade you from falling in love, don't you? Reiko's haunting voice jeered into his ear behind his shoulder.

"Why?" Kuai Liang whimpered out loud on his couch, tears streaking down his face as his nightmare persisted.

Because they knew love is the greatest weapon of all.

At last, Kuai Liang dared to turn around and face the General. "Just kill me and be done with it," he defiantly replied.

Reiko's face erupted into a wicked, wolfish grin. Kill you? he said without saying, speaking through his mind. I'm not going to kill you, Grandmaster. I'm recruiting you.

"I won't let you do it!" he cried once again, both in his dream and in his office.

I've already done it.

Finally, he woke to the taste of blood.

As he knelt in the ancient sigil he etched in the snow in blood, at last feeling the predawn chill snap its sharp teeth at his exposed skin, Reiko slowly looked up at Rain and Havik, who waited expectantly at his side. Above them, ribbons of colorful energy rippled across the starlit Arctika sky, putting on a beautiful light show that dazzled even the stupid Tarkatans they traveled with. It was almost a pity that such a wondrous gift of creation would have to bear witness to what was coming next.

"Well?" Havik urged.

"It is done," Reiko grinned. "Sub-Zero is infected with Blood Magik."

alwaysdoubted, he could and he will turn against everyone ;) And I agree, Frost needs to become Frost again before it's too late.

MKDemigodZ-Warrior, dude, you've been reading my work long enough to know I'm not strictly following anything LOL This story is only loosely based on the comics, but I'm definitely telling my own story here. ;)

The Titan's Shadow, I agree. There's going to be a lot of trouble in paradise real soon.

Daniel Barga, first of all, I don't ever want you to apologize for not having perfect English. I'm flattered that anyone wants to read my stuff. Of all the stories out there in the world, you read mine, and for that, I thank you. I don't care if your grammar is a little off. As long as you're enjoying what I do, then I'm happy. Secondly, I'm just as excited as you to have Sub-Zero be bad for once. It's always fun writing him as the hero, but I definitely think I'll have a blast writing him as a villain for once. And don't worry, Bi-han is here to stay for this one. I've kind of missed him hanging around ;)

ROCuevas, well, eventually, it will be LOL

Obelisk of Light, well, like I told you in PM, I made Takeda act like an ass too before he became full-blown possessed. It was just more subtle because that chapter was from Olivia's point of view and not so obvious. Well, Anya and Raiden did detect something, they just didn't know what. Since the spell wasn't there yet - getting stabbed with a kamidogu was only a rudimentary step - they didn't know what was happening. But if you'll remember, Raiden did ask if Sub-Zero was stabbed with the kamidogu and Xinyi mistakenly told him no, that it was just an ordinary knife. So if he'd been given the right information, he'd have solved the problem right away. I'll go into that more in later chapters.

Westcoast Witchdoctor, maybe get a couple of crosses while you're getting the holy water LOL