The world is forged in the mind, overflowed with a lifetime of experiences and it is each of these experiences that play the role of influencer toward every decision.
A lifetime of images and feelings, movements, moments played over the black screen of her mind. Outside, she could hear the footsteps of bare feet on wet stone after the rainclouds had swept over the city and drenched it. Inside, she could hear her own breathing as she took in each breath between still lips and a nose filled, like the room, with humidity and heat, thick and claustrophobic.
Her eyes opened to find the darkness welcome her back into awakened world where no true thing sleeps. Her body was uncomfortable in its own skin, pressure poked at her flesh and the moisture in the air covered her like a thick blanket that held her down in the makeshift bed the older man had provided her.
She tilted her head to the side, away from the dried mud that was a wall the bed was pressed against in a tiny corner of the hovel, and found him quiet, still, almost too still.
Her breath had the weight of metal and clumped between her breasts, fell down her body like a ball of mud that slapped onto the ground. She feared the thick air would make her movement too loud as she tried her best to slowly move her feet to the floor and pull herself up into a seated position. The bed was barely raised two feet, just a couple of wooden crates stuck together from a few alleys away, covered by a thin, shredded cloth. It stuck to her flesh and peeled away the moisture as she sat up. All too loud, all too wet, and much too uncomfortable for the effort she had to provide to remain as silent as she thought she needed to be.
She glanced back over to him, in the other corner of the room, laid out on the floor. She wasn't certain of him. He had spent the day with her to teach her footwork, and hand-to-hand combat. Grapples, punches, kicks, falls, and rolls, all the like. Her flesh had become burnt in the sun, but he didn't burn.
Heat was tangible and something she could understand, even when there were no words to form in her mind to describe it. He had not begun to teach her words, but she did begin to pick things out and try to move her tongue and lips in ways that defied the great Tarkatan maw within her. Sure, Tarkatan's could speak, but it would take a childhood to perfect the common tongue.
She was a construct, a mind forged by a creator that had developed her well beyond the point of a natural lifetime of experiences. She had nothing to draw from and no one to teach her, until now. Still, Quan Chi had taught her not to trust anyone, including himself. That lesson she learned herself.
She had not learned trust yet.
Her feet felt like wet bags that slowly slapped one ahead of the other the short distance to look down at the older man that had taken her in. The air around him was cooler than her own flesh, than even the wind that blew in from the streets. She wanted to reach down and touch him, but feared waking him. Instead, she just stared down at the man, his sunken eyes almost like a corpse that caved inward from bony cheeks. Cheeks that seemed full when she saw him in the daylight. He appeared younger under the harsh life of day, but now, as he lay, without seemingly without the breath of life, he was more like a corpse than man.
The dried worms that carved a straight line across the crease of his mouth allowed a thin whisper of cold air out and cracked as he suddenly flushed with blood and energy and his eyes popped open like a cork from the keg had taken from the tavern several alleys down.
She couldn't move, couldn't think, there were not thoughts like, "run", or a need to apologize. She just stared, uncertain of how to react out loud.
"Thought I was dead?" His voice pierced the thick swamp of air between them like a frozen dagger that rolled down her flesh from forehead to feet in a cold chill. "You wish."
She pulled apart a wry smile, nervous, unsure, but then frightened as she remembered the box Quan Chi had sent her with.
"Crate." He pointed.
She rushed back to her bed and pulled the dirty cloth, then the peeled the thickened wood from its tomb like grip on itself to find the smaller box still inside, locked and untouched.
"Rest, the sun will rise soon enough."
At day break, she stood outback behind the buildings that nearly crushed his hovel if they were to be moved any more toward one another. The long thin alley stretched like a bony finger toward a point, pressed into the wall of the city. At the end of this small, fragile world he had carved for himself, she noticed a strange etching in the wall. It looked to her like a great green eye with golden lids and silver hooks that jutted out from each side, like horns atop and below. She leaned closer, took a careful glance, and then felt a cold presence stab her gut an press her into the wet slop of humid stone.
"Your eyes were not made to wander, girl." He jabbed the wooden staff into left side. "Come, distractions are many, and you are but one."
She peeled herself from the stone wall and followed him back toward the hovel where it opened just enough to allow him to hold the six foot staff comfortably at width length.
"You are an animal." His words carved into flesh that knew not its meaning. "You need to focus, to pretend to be like one of them," he indicated behind him, where the streets resided, then caught her eyes in a stern glare, "to fight, and survive. Half-breeds do not last long beyond the city."
"Half?" She mouthed. Her fangs cut down into her bottom lip as she breathed the word through.
He pushed her with the staff and forced her back its entire length from him.
"This is a range weapon, but it can also be deadly up close. The idea is to get close when you fight someone with it, and stay far away when you are using it." He could not fully display it's potential in such a small space, but jabbed her in all the points he had showed her with a sword the day before, even though she herself could not wield one.
He poked her again, pushed at her ribs, stuffed it against her collar bone, pushed her back and soon her anger flared and the great maw widened.
"The One Being himself should fear you." He jabbed at her.
She lunged, but he stood his ground and the staff was tilted to block her right grab for his flesh. She curved around, but he moved back with a swift step drag and the staff was still in her way. He smacked it against her skull and then lifted it between her legs.
"We will not need this." He laughed with dry breath in a pool of thick air. It caught her off guard how cold his breath was and he struck her again.
She stepped backward from a right stance to left, her left foot being forward, feet at an angle and her body made to imitate the slender target of the staff. He came in at a five, an overhead strike, which caused him to pull the staff into measure, just enough for her to evade to the right, but he used that momentum to swing it and clear her the entire distance of the staff until the next hovel jabbed its stone edges into her back, the ragged cloth he had provided her torn even further when she peeled away to evade his strike.
"Forget it. Clearly we were not created equal." He pulled the staff in and set his body in neutral stance, she knew this meant she should too, but instead she charged.
The animal in her threw her body to the ground, he swung for her hip, but she was faster. Behind him, she could either lunge again, or flee. She chose to strike and reached for her target. The staff came behind him, butt end toward her center, only to find thick air and his shoulder to find her maw widen over it.
As she clamped down, her fangs were met with tough, almost dried meat. It was hard to break through, and harder to pull back from. The feeling was like she had bitten into wood. He made no noise, only pushed her back and held the staff at length between them.
"Clever girl, but you are dim all the sa–" She would not let him finish. She had learned not to trust those that struck her as they claimed to guide her through this world. She lunged forth, but found only pooled water and mud beneath her on the wet alley.
As she pulled her body to rest on her back, her hands held her up as best they could, the older man stood above her, eyes sunken, flesh dried, and eyes as green as the marking on the wall.
"You are a failed creation. Not even worthy to be within us." As he spoke, his voice became two, then three, then too many to count, and too much to hear the old man somewhere within the hollow echo of his corpse lungs.
She ran. The blur of the man that had taken her in lowered to the ground in a green haze, but she dared not look back. The door swung open and she had frantically threw the hovel apart to retrieve the box Quan Chi had entrusted her. She had a mission, and he had distracted her. To her, he was no different than the Naknada, if not worse. He doubted her.
The hovel became a small dot in the distance as she raced down the streets of the city beyond the palace with the box in her arms, cradled with fear and filth. The city devoured her before she could realize that the older man had never followed.
Inside the box, she saw the satchel, and stuffed crudely to the side were the blue and black clothes she was to wear. Now, it was all she had, that, and determination.