Kotal Kahn stepped foot into the circle. It was fast, perhaps rash to act so quickly in the immediate face of death, but perhaps he had something in mind when he did this.
Prior to, I had filled my vial with the blood of the strongest villager to fall, a bald soldier type that came with a steel sword, rounded edge, good to hack his opponents with, but not so much to stab. The new world had a point.
As the tip of the vial clicked tight, there was a commotion and cry of the centaurs. The Osh-Tekk and Centaurs gathered around a charred corpse. Old Motaro, as some called him. He was old, but he could have survived a millennia more, honestly. Life has a tendency to linger in Outworld, but when it's ceased, it's often harshest.
Kotal Kahn took note of this too, he was just on the other side of the circle, Tanya not far to his right. Rain collected himself behind me and together we approached the circle of the shocked and the downtrodden.
Motaro was a leader of his clan and had united all of the Centaurs in the hills under his banner. There were skirmishes, wars, treaties, broken promises, and invasion. So much one race could do to itself and then you add the whole other continent where Shao Kahn awaited the victor. He saw something in Motaro and aided him for his loyalty.
Though that loyalty was bought, it had not been earned. From what I know, Kotal Kahn had been risen from a warrior clan as well, from the Realm of Osh-Tekk. They were savages in that realm. Nothing but war mongers that fought and fought, and killed until the entire realm was ruin. The visual seemed much like Shao Kahn's Outworld.
When Kotal Kahn came to Outworld, he did so with his father and other Osh-Tekk clan. He was forced under Shao Kahn's leadership and most likely had a chance to meet Motaro well before being captured by the Centaur.
It's not sure if they did, or what relationship they may have had prior to, but as he spoke to the Centaurs, and I know this speech was only for the Centaurs, as their hatred of people can run deep and a hard river to turn, he revealed that the two shared a common goal of freedom for their respective clans. Unity in Outworld. Our World, he said.
Clever, Ko'atal.
The reason I will follow you is because you are clever, and you are dangerous, but I do believe, as you say these words to us, that you will unified all of Outworld to your banner. Kitana will bend the knee in fealty or she will die.
Under Shao Kahn, it is more likely that he would have raped and killed me when he was done toying with me than to have fully taught me all he knew about Blood Magic and kept me as his second in command, the spot previously held by Goro before the Great Betrayal. Maybe he wouldn't have, but we don't live in that timeline.
This is the real world, and my eyes cast around me to see the Centaurs, though bitter about the battle, and deeply sorrowed over the pyre their great leader has become, they can hear his message. They can feel it.
We are one.
That night, after another day of travel, with only three more left before we reached Motaro's Keep, now considered Kotal Kahn's first official Hold in Outworld, I watched from afar, as Ko'atal was more vigilant at night. The attack most likely would not repeat itself, but with our enemies all around us, there is nothing you can say for certain.
He was tense, like usual, but more so. At the battle, I had seen him mourn a woman in green, or jade, which ever shade you call it. Perhaps that woman would have been his Queen come the day. By that logic, two queens died in the Coliseum that day.
He scanned the skies with narrow eyes and refused to stop his watch, even as Rain took third shift. There was a ruler in those veins. As a peasant, Kitana forgot us. As the broken children beaten and abused in the streets of her Kingdom, Kitana did nothing for us, but Kotal Kahn took me in. He offered me a spot at his side, quite unlike Shao Kahn.
The sky darkened even blacker above us. Kotal Kahn dared not stare anywhere but out to the hills where the enemy could strike, but had he looked to the skies, as most of us had, a strange storm cell began to form.
Just as we noticed, Syzoth scrambled to Kotal Kahn. You couldn't even see him as he rushed to our leader. Kotal then looked up to find a white figure form in the clouds and then as we widened to make space, unsure of what would happen, it the figure lowered from the skies into the form of Fujin, the God of Wind.
"Kotal Kahn!" He commanded. "I demand your attention."
Kotal reached for his Macuahuitl, the heaviest sword I had ever seen. Fujin did not appear pleased by this gesture and reached out with the slightest effort as a great dust bowl formed from the long grass and swept up to encapsulate Syzoth and Kotal Kahn together. Our leader cut through, but was temporarily blinded. Syzoth had waited until Fujin dissipated the minor storm.
"Speak, Protector of Kitana." Kotal spat.
Fujin landed, perhaps his biggest mistake, but Kotal Kahn did not strike. He glanced to Syzoth, as the reptile slithered back into place with myself, Rain, and Tanya, then toward Kotal Kahn.
"I will protect Kitana, only when it serves the realm. Same for you. I serve only the Realms." Fujin added, "whom do you serve, Ko'atal?"
"I am the Kahn of Outworld, I too serve the realms, but I will not be made a fool by Mad Queen." His response paved little reaction upon Fujin's face. Those white eyes narrowed and then he pointed out down the great valley toward the forest line, which seemed so small from this distance, of the Living Forest.
"If you truly serve the realms, and seek to 'Unify' Outworld, then you must seek out the Shokan."
Madness! There are no Shokan in the Living Forest! It was too much to let Kotal handle this alone and though I stepped forward, Fujin and Kotal did not need to turn toward me to let me know that my place was not near them. A gesture of cold wind crept up across the blades of grass and cut my cheek.
"The Shokan have aligned with Kitana." Kotal stated the obvious.
"They align with those that uphold Honor." He added, "a wayward storm, not my doing, had captured a ship of Shokan, including the General Sheeva. They had come to take you back as prisoner before Kitana, but the ship had crashed at the shoreline of the Living Forest."
"You believe they wouldn't kill us at first sight?"
"Yes."
"You believe I won't kill them at first sight?"
"You won't."
Fujin began to raise into the sky, back into the storm cell he had created above us. Kotal planted his sword and stepped forward for one last answer.
"Why?"
Fujin's responded as his voice filled the skies like the thunder above us, "Our World."
Syzoth beside me and Tanya, Rain not far ahead, we all looked at one another and then as an army, toward the Living Forest.
Is this where the new world begins?