Where is the leadership? Where is the direction and the answers that my people need to move toward a better world for the Osh-Tekk? Have the Elder Gods forsaken us? Have the two Gods forsaken me?
Tonight we rest, the ancient people of my fallen realm may look down upon men that dawn their paint, their warrior spirit, but these men that I will take with me to battle are not Osh-Tekk. Outworld is not Osh-Tekk. It is only Ko'atal that remains.
What happens tomorrow? Dawn approaches and the hooves beat hot sand, our flesh laid bare for the sun to cast its light and power upon us, but is it enough, these few men, to lead us to victory against the centaurs? Is this truly what the Kahn wishes of us? Fodder for more power?
"Who were you just now?" Her voice has lured me back to the land of the living, the present, and yet all the same, the future.
Her skin, still bare beneath coy silk after we had become one as the Gods would approve. Jade, my warrior spirit encapsulated into the body of a woman too beautiful to be called mine, to fair to call my name, but too hindered by her love of the Kahn to see my ways.
Though I had cast my sights upon the Centaur Hills not several miles out as the sun sets on Outworld, the camps of my men and fires that warm us as the world cools, I could only think of what could have been, and what should be. These men will die tomorrow, I could very well join them, all for a Kahn I do not trust. Not the way Jade does.
"I was thinking of the battle ahead." My voice seemed to calm her. The weariness in her eyes faded as mine met hers, but the worry did not fade from mine.
"Lay with me, Ko'atal." She let her delicate fingers stretch the veil of fabric against the bed of fur and silk as though it were an omen of things we could do together, and not a remembrance of what had already passed.
"How well do you trust your Kahn?" Not the wisest words to speak of in her presence, for her fire burns bright and stubborn much like mine when it is about her dear leader, but the boiling of my stomach could not provide any other word. It is as the Gods plucked them from me.
Much like everything in this world, I had no choice.
"With my life, Ko'atal. You should as well." These words were hollow to me when they shouldn't. After all, did she not trust me with her life as well?
"Kitana was at the side of Shao Kahn when he claimed that title from Onaga." This would become our tangent. A slippery slope of nothing that could find no end, no means of either of us understanding the point of the other. The gods do not dwell inside my Jade, only the fire.
"She defeated Shao Kahn to claim his title before he could do worse than Onaga." Jade continued our loose strings, like fractals of light lost to the sun, escaped into the earth, never to be witnessed, its radiance never to be felt.
Her eyes, like daggers that tried to focus on me like a fine point and blade themselves into my heart the way she had not an hour ago with her body, mind, and spirit. I hated her in that moment, no, not her, Kitana. I despised the Kahn when Jade spoke of this exploit and that boiling in the pit of my stomach rose like a great bear at Jade.
With gravel in my throat, and fangs for teeth, I responded most bitterly, "and your Kahn watched as my realm, my people, and my culture were destroyed by the Kahn she appointed! As Goro tore men, women, and children limb from limb? What worse did she prevent then?"
A moment of silence came upon us, not for the dead, but the response I never heard. That boiling burned like the burst of the angry sun and shouted from deep within the hatred of my heart at her. "Tell me!"
Nothing. This is where our tangent would always end. She would defend her friend, whom I do admit had done great things for Outworld, but for the Osh-Tekk, nothing. How many realms did Shao Kahn conquer before it was Kitana's love of Edenia that forced her to step in? Mine was not the first, nor the last.
An Edenian could never understand what it is like to lose everything. They never lost their realm to Shao Kahn, nor to Kitana Kahn.
A moment of understanding had caught me off guard in the eyes of my Jade. She looked at me, strong, but caring, but with the eyes of a woman that did not hold a barrier before her beloved Kitana, but wished to climb the stone pillars that kept us so distant.
"What would you have me do, Ko'atal?" She spoke, soft, too much so for any ear beyond this tent to hear, and yet deep to reveal her true resolve laid within the heart she then reached out to touch.
"Help me seize Outworld." These words formed an empty cut between her lips, but the shock of such a wound faded with her next breath.
"Kotal Kahn?" Did the thought cross her mind before as it had for me? I could see it in her eyes, together at the great palace with our eyes to the world that belonged to us. She pulled back however and spoke with shame, "that would be treason, Ko'atal. I could not betray my friend. Edenia's Goddess."
"A Goddess that claims to be good, does not leave the realms in ruin." This felt as the ground cracked beneath us and the stone layers of earth broke and screamed outward between us to part the way and distance us further. I could see her further and further, my hands never able to touch her beautiful dark skin, my lips to seal with hers, and our hearts to burn each other's like the tue God's demanded.
"Ko'atal," she whispered, but her breath crept back between the healed wound of her lips as a messenger entered.
"You do not announce yourself?" The Osh-Tekk would never perform such disrespect upon their leader as this Outworlder had.
"From the Kahn." He passed a scroll of vellum to her, a royal blue seal stuck to the center to hold the scroll tight.
The tent we resided in was not small. As Jade began to unseal the letter, I had prepared to reach for my weapon to threaten our intruder, but a crackle and crinkle of paper gave way to the ominous cackle and buzz of a large insect that leapt from the page at Jade.
With one strike she was able to crush it. Cut in two it collapsed upon the earth beneath her feet, but as it had, a louder buzz and the screams of my men filled the air of our encampment. With weapon in hand, we both pulled back the curtain of our hidden eden to the horrid night of a swarm that had descended upon the encampment.
A blade as large and heave as mine can cut through anything, but it cannot destroy a thousand poisonous insects in one fell blow. Our eyes became witness to one man fall, then another, then a camp torn, then a fire that burned with the blood of these creatures as those that were crushed kindled like wood and cackled like the laugh of an ancient evil. These were Kytinn assassin bugs.
The sun could not save us now, but this swarm swept up into the night wind as fast as it had descended upon us. There was no time to discern why, what, or where they had come.
"See to the injured!" Jade called out.
Inside the tent, locked away in a chest was a vial of antidote, the only one I had. Not much, and even a small bit as a rare as the Kytinn themselves. It would not save anyone tonight.
Jade pulled back the curtain, her words lost in the wind as she commanded the living men, but as she turned to me, she would certainly have seen beneath my feet as I had become so lost in the moment to notice that scroll with the Kahn's seal.
Our eyes had met, and the hands that tore the very plates of this world apart seemed to stretch their hardest to push us further and further until you would dare call it two separate worlds we lived on. I cold see it in her eyes, the intentions in mine, and she knew the fierceness of my heart, the resolve of my spirit.
Was this the doing of our generous Kitana Kahn?