Is it selfish to sacrifice all of Outworld just to see your face again?
The walls of Motaro's keep were built with heavy stones and pillars of wood that has never fallen. These stone walls let our enemies perceive the strength that must beat within its heart. It's that perception that must be maintain, even when it is broken inside my own walls. No, not broken, but redirected.
In my chambers, on the second floor of the stone keep that overlooked the peaks of the walls and down through its machicolations, I had sought audience with the Edenian Tanya and creature Syzoth.
As I waited for one to arrive before the other, and to see which did first, my eyes cast far beyond the Centaur Hills to a new dawn that rose over the horizon like Gods that awoken the people of the sun back in Earth Realm where I was regarded as a deity. How far I have fallen.
In Earth Realm, they sacrificed those among them to appease the Gods, but this one is yet to be sated. No blood offering, or sacrifice will bring Jade back, and the march toward the Royal palace was still months off from now. Blood would spill, but as Skarlet and Rain unified this land in my stead, I realized that an Osh-Tekk is not meant to rot in a castle, but to take action.
What can I conquer of not death?
The Sorcerer spoke to me in a vision that made made it seem, though improbable, not impossible.
Tanya was first to arrive. Adorned in royal yellow and block robes of her Edenian culture, she bowed in deference and then approached once given permission. Syzoth, on the other hand, had waited for me at the stone window, seemingly there the whole time.
"One might misconstrue that is an attempt to assassinate your superior, Syzoth." Tanya snapped at the last Zetarren.
"One might find herself in my stomach tonight." He bit back.
"I did not seek you out to hear you fight." My voice broke all skirmishes within these walls, or my blade would cut the necks of the mouths that continued. "I sought you both because both of you have experience traveling between the realms. Specifically you, Syzoth."
"Under Shao Kahn, I have travelled many realms." He nodded and finally bowed in deference as he descended from the window.
"I have only traversed through the portals between Edenia and Outworld, but I know how to travel through others."
"The Nether Realm?"
Both of them flashed white and their eyes cast down blank gazes beneath mine, unable to speak the truth, they made an excuse for why they hadn't.
"It cannot be done, Kotal Kahn." Tanya believed.
"It can," Syzoth challenged her beliefs, "but it has never been done by any creature not from the Nether Realm."
"I have heard of a Sorcerer that has escaped this hell dimension."
"Who told you this?" She pondered, but again Syzoth knew slightly more.
"The Sorcerer known as Quan Chi. A free-roaming sorcerer that Shao Kahn once tried to enlist in his army."
"Why didn't he?"
"One does not simply tame a demon, nor a man that has clawed through the fires of hell to seek freedom, just to be enslaved by a mortal like Shao Kahn."
"I am a Demi-God in Earth Realm, and Kahn of Outworld."
"You are the same as Shao Kahn. You will die and quickly be replaced." Syzoth, though blunt and perhaps too much so, was right. Though life in Outworld and Edenia lasted far longer than the beings of Earth Realm, and we Osh-Tekk and our warrior spirits lived and died faster than even a lone wolf in the jungles of Earth Realm where the big cats rule.
"Syzoth speaks out of turn, my Kahn." Tanya hissed and glared at the reptilian.
"He is right, Tanya, life is too fickle for mortals, and I could not hope to tame a man who has tasted freedom from the jaws of hell." That was all good, and they nodded in kind, but how does one seek this Sorcerer? The answer came to me in a vision. "Shang Tsung spoke to me and told me that his island would be our battleground for the coming war, but he also told me that there was a way to return Jade to me."
"He is a bound-sorcerer," Tanya cut in before Syzoth could speak with personal history, "unless he absorbed her soul, he does not have the power of resurrection."
"Not even Quan Chi has the power of resurrection. It is a power that does not exist." Syzoth hissed at Tanya, then turned and gazed deeper into my eyes than I had ever wished to look into his black and green orbs. "Quan Chi could explain, but he would do nothing without a price."
"What was the price for his loyalty when Shao Kahn demanded it?"
"Outworld." His response was grim. There would be no exchange of power between myself and this sorcerer, but I must seek him out, I must have Jade back. He stared deeper and his fangs bared, almost with empathy if such a cold creature could feel my pain and in a low voice, almost saddened, he spoke, "it cannot be done, Kotal Kahn. The dead cannot return to the realm of the living."
What an interesting choice of words. Syzoth clearly knew far more than he would ever let on, but there was a small spark of hope in the back of my mind that told me where I might find the meaning behind these words he had spoken. In Earth Realm, just north of the Aztecs lived the Native Americans of whom had a deep connection to the Earth and the spirit realm. The Aztecs did not believe them, and I at the time did not either, but in a time like this, as my heart shatters and my walls tear limb from limb, stone by stone all for the love of another, am I willing to look past my own beliefs and perhaps ignorances and seek desperation in another's.
With little to no further information to be gained from Syzoth, I had excused him. He had places to be anyway, and if he didn't, I would make sure he did. Tanya, however, was not dismissed.
"Do you know how to travel to Earth Realm?"
"Of course, Kotal Kahn, you yourself should too."
"I would risk being consumed by the Portal Sea just to hear her voice again, but the turmoil within its eye is far too chaotic to trust that it would take me to Earth Realm safely."
"Opening portals in Outworld, or Edenia is easy, but opening one in Earth Realm is tricky." She replied, but she seemed confident as she turned toward the sky, the sun peered back with hope, "I could get you there, but I can't bring you back."
"I have travelled to and from before, I will find my way."
"When?" She hesitated, she didn't realize the resolve burned so brightly in my eyes that it singed her very will to assist me.
"Now."
"Where will you go?" She had never been to Earth Realm before and this trick not an easy feat for her, and my boldness seemed to almost frighten her. An army without it's leader? That sounds like a king without his queen.
"I will seek the lone wolf beyond the jungles of the big cat."
There was no denial of this moment. No means to tear me from my path. This is what I had chosen, and as Kahn of Outworld, she had no choice but to obey. She knew should anyone question, Skarlet and Rain would lead in my stead. She turned and pulled from her waist pouch a small athame that cut into the very fabric of time with a clean slice down from Outworld into Earth Realm.
The portal cackled and cracked with power and light. It sizzled and sparked like the fires that licked at the skin of the sun. Maws that reached out from its molten core and bit the space outside just to feel the cold death of the universe with its fiery maw and that's just how it felt as my feet entered the crack in the space between realms.
"Return to us, Kotal Kahn."
"Only when I have sought the answers I need."
Her hand caught in the flesh wound of the portal until I pushed her free of it. She hesitated, but my resolve was stronger. This giant step needed to be made if I were to leap into the depths of hell to see Jade again.