There is nothing more alien than the eyes of an insect staring back at you, and not being sure which one of those many, blank orbs, actually harbors a soul behind it.

D'Vorah was vigilant and always very close behind me as we descended through the Kytinn tunnels. She looked human, but that was nothing merely a disguise. Being a construct of the Nether Realm, it is not uncommon to be disturbed by the sight of grotesque things, but D'Vorah unsettled me.

Behind the queen, long past and nothing short of a husk of carapace, the Kytinn had dug tunnels deep into the Earth beneath Shang Tsung's island. No doubt he knew of this, and I'd like to know his opinion of it if ever we cross paths, but trapped alone in the realm of the alien was not where I expected this journey to take me.

As a free roaming Sorcerer, there's this feeling you get when you travel between realms. This almost jiggling of your bones, the jostling of your flesh, and the squishing of your very being. Your body feels as though it has been reformed to configure to this whole different form of existence.

That feeling, like a footstep in blood, rippled through my body as the cackling carapace of D'Vorah's shell etched across the earthen tunnel around us. She was cold, and she was apathetic. She was certainly alien, but she offered something I desperately needed.

Answers.

My body had been deeply disturbed by this rippled effect for a very long time. Since I was child, but only recently has it somehow expanded and is less like a simple ripple in a great sea of disturbed, but as now become a tsunami the waters of my very being.

Something is wrong with this world. This feeling has followed me to every Realm known to man, and beast. It scratches down my body and gags my throat.

At first, I thought it was Onaga. The power needed to return death to flesh, and great flesh and power as his was impossible. Onaga needed to do more than just seek the power of the Kamidogu to return, but even then, there is a fine line between life and death and nothing crosses it.

This is different.

As my hands caked in mud and bled as the tunnel narrowed with stone walls around us, and then dried as it widened back to dry earth, shivered with every grasp. My body was visibly shaken, but yet D'Vorah behind me moved with precision. Cold and calculated.

She clacked and clicked her mandible teeth together to get my attention and spoke, though her voice seemed almost drowned by the pressure that pushed down on us. "This one can feel it near."

"How much further?"

"Not long."

It was obvious to me at this point that D'Vorah may have never come through these tunnels. That was unlikely however, as she was the only Kytinn capable of still moving freely through the island. She would have explored all of its depths and surfaces. She would have tested and tasted all of its magic and mundane. The spot behind the Queen was buried by dead flesh, dried slime, and caked earth, so it is entirely plausible this tunnel had not been travelled for as long as D'Vorah had been alive.

That could very well be near eternity.

She was right, though, I could feel it. There was a strange balance in the force around me. I had been so used to the torture and hell of the Nether Realm where I had been born that this strange feeling that found me grasped to the tunnels for dear life was almost pleasurable. My muscled loosened and my jaw dropped to enjoy the air of silence and peace. That jagged tsunami that rocked my body suddenly became a serene lake of stillness.

What is beyond us?

To feel my body for the first time still and able to move without that sensation was incredible. The closer we got, the wider the walls grew and then suddenly my hands that grasped in the darkness found nothing but ledge. This was when I let D'Vorah climb over me, my body flat for her to cross. The feel of her hard shell in that nearly human husk made my skin crawl, but perhaps that's just because I've never felt her so closely.

"What do you see, bug?" She stopped just at my shoulders. A moment passed after she stopped to look at our surroundings before she climbed off.

I could feel the wind of her wings. There must have been quite a drop before me. Dirt pierced my eyes and her hard fingers grabbed at my wrists to pull me from the tunnel with ease. She had great physical strength for a creature of slime and shell.

"This one does not know."

There was darkness behind us, but this tiny room, just four meters around, but the drop to level ground was ten meters down, and every glance at the floor revealed a dull, dim white light that grew as we got closer.

She dropped me onto my feet, my boots sprung to action on the earth beneath, but I was not prepared for what lay before us. At the center of this cave was an orb of white energy. It was made of glass and metal that twisted around it so elegantly, you might describe it as a protective curve over this possibly fragile sphere. There was a band that stretched around it and then arch that jutted beyond it about a foot, and curved around in spires.

This sphere, beside description, was beyond words.

"This one discovered it many moons ago. This one has already forgotten about it until you asked." She narrowed her eyes at me, which seemed worse in the pale white light, "how did you know this was here?"

"I didn't." My hands stretched out, after a quick scratch at my sides to clear the blood and dirt. "I've felt this strange force inside me for a very long time."

"Explain, Sorcerer."

"That is difficult, bug." It really was. "Perhaps the best I could explain it is like being trapped in a storm, or a place you know you shouldn't be in, but yet somewhere deep inside you, like the back of your mind, or somewhere in your, well," it was hard to compare it with her, as she did not have one, I presume, "heart, that if you could just move forward however much more, you'll be okay. That everything will be fine, that this screaming, this storm will pass."

"This one does not understand."

How could she? She wasn't even mortal.

My hands touched the perfect sphere. It was glass, the cleanest work I had ever seen, and smoothest I had ever felt. This was not the work of any mortal or beast. Not the work of an god, or even elder god. This was truly alien.

This did not belong here.

Or, did we not?

There was a strange peaceful, almost sexual tremor that coursed through my body the moment my flesh touched the glass. That essence of bliss that causes your brain to short circuit for a second before coming back down to earth, except I felt it all over and it lasted for as long as I held to this glass.

It just felt right.

"I am Kronika, Keeper of Time." A voice echoed through my ears. It was clear as a gong banged in front of me, but yet something about it seemed alien. This woman's voice felt as though it were revealed to me from beyond the grave. Had I chanced upon the impossible?

"I am Quan Chi, sorcerer of the Nether Realm." Perhaps futile, but could this be a channel to another existence? An existence beyond the realms? Beyond time?

"A conduit," it spoke again, but the voice less clear, "I have hidden many within the very fabric of time."

"What does this do?"

"I will show you."

The light brightened and though this dead voice echoed through my head, it was a taste, a smell, a touch of something I had never deemed possible that sent my mind into overload. My body disturbed beyond repair, beyond even D'Vorah's presence.

What this voice showed me was a vision, but not just that, it was as though I had been transported into this brand new world. What it showed me was the answer to it all.

Why are we here?

What is our purpose?

What is the fate of the realms?

Where do I fall in the fabric of time?

Who was to blame for the world we live in?