The night sky swirled like a portal sea and threatened to swallow my mind with it. Every drop of thought that dripped down into the vacant hole of my maw evaporated up into the galaxy above me, snatched by the delicate hands of our ancestors. Their voice carried in the wind, but the words they spoke I was not ready to listen, or I could not hear it completely.
"You are not mortal, Buluc, God of War. You are a beast. Ancient, primal." Her voice filled my head with the background of drums beating, and a string wailed outward toward the night sky.
The voice of the Nide people hollowed out my being, veins flowed with their shouts, and my heart beat with their buffalo skin drums. The drug of of their culture imbued into my spirit and the wolf lingered on in guidance.
"Listen to the ancestors, the spirits that live within the rocks, the trees, the bear, and the big cat."
A low growl, the howl of the wolf, the claws of the bear on the bark of the trees around us. All of it wormed their way into my ears, through my eye sockets, and down my throat. Every little noise, every little beat of paws on dirth, even the worms in the worth as they writhed and chewed on the planet echoed like the drums in my soul.
"Feel your Spirit, become the animal you really are. There is no man, there is no woman, only the big cat, only the wolf. We are the kin of the others. The creations of Ussen."
This deity that even the Nide did not truly understand, was the hardest to feel. So much of their time spent in cleansing, preparation for war and survival, but the low hum of their god still rippled through the ground, on the surface of the rivers that flowed through this land. Fujin, Liu Kang, and so many other Gods known in Outworld could not compete with the whole being of Ussen, with the title of creator. To Nide, these individuals were merely spirits, like their ancestors, that came to watch over and guide them, but they were not gods, much as I was not truly a god in Earth Realm. However, they were easier to conjure, to understand, and to feel their energy.
My body resisted. It could not differentiate the deities I knew from an all encompassing god that guided the motions of this world into the painting it had become, into the people that now whispered their song to me to become the animal I knew I truly was.
"Only Ussen can answer your questions, Buluc. Only the big cat has the ears to hear it."
As the shadow grew over the world and the stars, those dim fires in the sky became our only light, my body twitched and broke. Twisted bones, and then the back. My body writhed in pain as it contorted and stretched, pulled and pinched. Flesh grew fur and teeth cut into my lips as fangs grew and barbs covered my tongue.
"Listen." Nightwolf's voice faded as the big cat emerged from my being.
"What do you seek?" Another voice filtered through the large folds of ears. They perked and turned toward the direction of the galaxy, but the voice had come from all around me, as though the noise was merely the cosmic hum of the universe itself.
I seek a missing loved one. The one who holds my heart in the depths of the Nether Realm.
"We can see everything, and we can find anyone."
She was taken from me. Now her screams fill my soul. I am empty without her.
"Death is your gift, Ko'atal. Death is how you will love her."
Death is not a gift. Do you mean to receive it? To give it? She is already gone.
"Death, is your gift."
How do I get her back? How do I give this gift?
"The dead cannot return to the realm of the living."
She was torn from me, her life stolen from a horrid beast! She is locked away in the Nether Realm, I can find her and bring her back!
"It cannot be done. It was her time, a natural death."
Natural? How is any of this natural?
"A mortal death by mortal means. She cannot return to the living, Ko'atal."
You are lying! You claim to be a deity and cannot bend the fabric of reality? Are you not omnipotent and omniscient.
"Ussen is all encompassing."
Then you are an evil God.
"It cannot be done."
I will do it myself!
The fog of the universe lifted like a veil from my eyes and the sight of the foul creature Nightwolf still sat in place focused under the light of the full moon. My body, larger, longer, and filled with grief and anger pulled itself from the traitorous Earth and as such, Nightwolf backed away a step. The eyes that glowed along the tree line lurched forward as my claws dug in to scar the planet that had betrayed me, and my fangs bared as Nightwolf lowered her posture, ready to defend against the big cat.
"We will tear you heart from flesh, should you step any closer, Buluc." She warned and the howl of the wolves broke through the bark of the tree, the hollow air around us thick with the war drums of the Nide people.
"I will tear your people apart, mother from child, child from the living, and warriors from their hearts." My threat pierced through the barbed forest of my tongue and the fingers that opened wide to bare completely toward the pack.
As my body lowered, ready to strike, and Nightwolf's mirrored in defense, a strange green energy, like a lightning bolt, shot past my right shoulder. It formed a skull in the thick air and devoured a wolf to the right of Nightwolf with its skeletal teeth that chewed the body until the energy dissipated and all that remained was a lifeless corpse.
We looked behind to find a man, painted in black and white three meters from me, spikes on his shoulders, an another skull that formed between the circular motions of hands. This time, an skeleton had raised from the earth in the form of light, and then another, and another and each, as soon as they emerged, charged the wolf pack.
Nightwolf lunged for my throat and my great claws swatted the beast from the air. My own maw clenched down on the pregnant stomach of the giant wolf, then as she reached from my leg with her teeth bared, my maw met her neck and clamped down. Around us, two wolves nipped at my tail and my hind limbs, but my focus was on Nightwolf.
The free-roaming sorcerer moved forward a step as his skeletons met the wolves in battle and charged past the trees toward the tribe's village. One wolf lunged past a skeleton with a sword that came down with an overhead strike, but before it could reach the scrawny white sorcerer, a wall of skulls cracked open a fissure in the earth and erected a barrier that then collapsed on the wolf.
"Our spirits will seek vengeance on you!" Nightwolf screamed and gurgled as my fangs dug into her neck, and my claws ripped open her stomach.
"Death is my gift!" My maw twisted and contorted the meat and bone between it until the neck had snapped and the wolf fell to the earth a lifeless human corpse, baby torn from mother.
The next wolf lunged for my tail, but the sorcerer had plucked the beast with skeletal hands from the very Earth and flung the beast into the bark of the nearest tree where it bent and cracked on impact.
"Come with me, Kotal Kahn, and I will help you find Jade!" The sorcerer approached with haste and knelt before me, my body still shaped as the big cat.
"Who are you?"
"I am the sorcerer Quan Chi"
"From the Nether Realm."
"The only sorcerer to escape hell itself."
My eyes scanned the horizon. The skeletons dissipated one after the other as the wolves targeted them in packs. Soon they would be on us and the war drums grew louder and louder, the screams of their people scratched my ears and filled the night sky with anger and grief. There was nothing left for me here, the Spirit Walker had failed me, but the sorcerer may yet prove to be reliable.
"I will do anything you ask of me, Quan Chi," I kneeled as my human form broke from the fur and the bones of the big cat. "Just bring her back to me."
He nodded, and began to groan a strange language and as his hands moved, the green energy formed a sphere that quickly encapsulated us and as it shrank, I believed our bodies might be crushed, but instead, pulled us from this realm.
Death is your gift. Ussen said to me.
Death will be my gift to all whom stop me from reaching Jade.