A cold stare up into the sky. The soothing water reached up to gently wipe the salt from sunken eyes. A silhouette passed over the harsh light of the sun, undetected by the sundown of a child's blank stare.

Above, the God of Wind cast down his gaze toward the speckled sea of bodies and the makings of civilization. With him, the burning sun, Liu Kang began their descent from the heavens into the ill washed swath of decayed humanity.

It was difficult to tell where the sea ended and the city began. They landed upon a sturdy roof among the high quarter, where the ground began to raise and the water had only gently slapped. Liu Kang scrutinized the horizon for a speck, a shadow beyond the specks and shadows that washed in and out from a seamless shore.

His heart began to sink with the city and his eyes strained to remain open, to focus on that dim, distant horizon. When a shadow reached up from the depths of the sea, he reached out for the God of Wind and pulled his focus forward to sea.

Liu Kang stepped forward, his heel lifted in inch, but Fujin held him in place.

"It is the work of Gods that left these prayers to sink beneath the ocean."

Liu Kang pulled away and rose from the rooftop.

"It is the work of Gods to leave no prayer unanswered."

Fujin watched him sweep through the wind, a smile almost cracked his aged lips, but he stood in wait for Liu Kang to burn like the sun toward the horizon.

As that speck of light shimmered like a dim candle toward the horizon further and further, the God of Wind finally picked up with the air that flowed from him and cleared the distance between the sea and his fellow deity.

—

The distance between city and ship was vast. No doubt it would have been a margin shorter had it not been for the exhausted work of Rain under the urgency of Quan Chi. He couldn't see the damage that had been done by the sorcerer's enhanced work of Rain's abilities, but he could feel the torture Kitana must have felt the moment she watched her city melt away with the sea. It was his city too. This was to be his Outworld, now he will inherit her disaster.

The bowsprit stabbed forward and his eyes tried to focus as two orbs of light, just specks off in the distance began to glow larger, as if they travelled closer, and closer, at godly speeds.

"Quan Chi, come look." He called out, and Quan Chi pulled himself from his assassins to observe.

"That is nothing we cannot handle."

"What is it?" Kotal Kahn narrowed his eyes, but the flashes of light grew only stronger and the outlines he searched for faded within its radiance.

"The rallying of dead gods."

Quan Chi motioned Kotal Kahn back. Once he could clear three steps forward into the nook that branched out into the bowsprit and began to collect his arms together and form a symbol as his body breathed in as deep as he could. The air around him grew stale, but also grew restless.

Kotal Kahn stepped back, the winds around them had begun to violently swirl and the sun grew brighter and hotter. It seemed impossible, but he felt as though the sun itself had reached down with a finger to swirl the very winds into a violent froth around the ship and just as he thought it, so did it happen. The fire spun, the wind howled, and Quan Chi's spell was ripped from his cracked lips down into the eye of the tornado.

The ship jerked back, the bowsprit now pierced through the heart of the storm and down from the eye, a pair of feet slid toward Quan Chi. Liu Kang lunged forth from the storm, his body engorged with the fire that encased the winds around them. From on high, Fujin dived down like a hawk toward its prey.

Quan Chi jumped back, enough to clear Liu Kang and put Kotal Kahn between them. Fujin tore through the fabric of the topsails and broke the masts as he landed at the farthest end of the ship from Kotal Kahn and Quan Chi. His closest enemies, Skarlet, Reptile, and Jataaka.

At the head, Liu Kang engaged Kotal Kahn. As Kotal Kahn fought the fire god hand to hand, Liu Kang dulled his flame as he thought to leave Ko'atal to Kitana, and kill Quan Chi instead.

Quan Chi could feel the loose tension between them and pushed Kotal Kahn aside. He would end this game, and he would not allow his plans to fall before the feet of a God.

"You cannot turn back time if I kill you, false god!" He threw his words into the wind and the flame, but Liu Kang could read them. It gave him pause, but he couldn't let Quan Chi strike him, not with words, nor with sorcery.

He returned with only silence and combat. Kotal Kahn watched as the two engaged one another with few chances to break, and fewer for him to intervene. If he wanted to.

He could feel the betrayal sink into him, but he knew Quan Chi was not ally. That was obvious, and he shook it off. There was a feeling of dread that did come over him, but he couldn't quite put a finger on what that feeling was. It sank into him like the fire, but colder than ice and sharper than the wind that slashes at his flesh. It grew louder and wilder the more Liu Kang advanced on Quan Chi.

It wasn't loyalty he sought from Quan Chi, it was solace.

Jade.

Liu Kang watched as a piece of the wood pillars above them cracked like thunder and collapsed toward them. He lunged for Kotal Kahn to save him, but Kotal pushed him back and into Quan Chi. The Sorcerer slammed into the wooden rail of the ship with Liu Kang. Uncertain of his intentions, Liu Kang watched as the ship began to crumble above them, flames tore through fabric and wood splintered around them. It would doom them all.

There was an odd, dull void in the eyes of Kotal Kahn as he looked across the flames between them. There was no time. He turned toward Quan Chi and raised the sorcerer over the sea.

Before the the pale, scrawny sorcerer could fall to the sea in a whirl of flame, Liu Kang found his back cracked inward from the pain of Kotal Kahn's massive sword. It did not pierce him, to flat along the edge to cut, but it crumpled him to the floor. Quan Chi landed over him and rolled off to a small clearing. Kotal Kahn raised his sword over Liu Kang, eyes lit with the burning of desire, the flames of intent, and the pain of his actions as if he could see the dim light of the God beneath him flicker out of existence.

"Do it!" Quan Chi gasped and heaved through the jagged rocks in his throat.

The light shined in the darkness, and the darkness would never understand it.

—

Untouched by the devastation, the palace stood tall over the drowned city. It's solid foundation, like feet, dry on the land and stood on the precipice of uncertainty. One by one, a green and black mist leaked from the cracks and crevices of the earth, the air, and the palace structure itself. Shokan, Centaur, and Osh Tekk alike were pulled violently from the mist until hundreds nearly surrounded the palace completely. A body peered down from the highest window to find the strongest spill of green energy greet her.

Ermac's dead green eyes gazed through Kitana and her commanders with little interest. The entity looked down with her at the army that penetrated the fortress. At the bottom, a black shadow formed into the assassins Jataaka and Kia. An ugly reminder to Kitana, as she stared back into those dead eyes of the spirit entity, that the distance between her and the ship over the horizon was nothing more than an illusion.

At ground level, Shokan threw wide the gates and let the flood in. Kia watched as Jataaka took to the head of the army and stormed the palace first, she would enter last, and deal with the stragglers. She despised going last, and was told by her partner that it was to ensure the gates were locked behind them so that the tarkatan and the shokan still under Kitana could not surround them.

The storm had claimed the Shokan, and the Tarkatan were easily bested ahead of her. One glance out to sea, toward the city that once was was enough for her to realize that this whole operation had been nothing more than a mission to pick off the stragglers.

Inside, the meeting hall was full of bodies, but few alive and fewer worth the fight. She would have to reach the top before Jataaka, and just in time for Quan Chi to find her the victor over the Goddess Kitana rather.

As the horde marched, the centaurs remained below and the shokan and men moved up, she crouched back into the shadows to ascend to the upper levels.

—

Kotal Kahn watched as the flames in the god's eyes flickered bright before the sword came down through Liu Kang's chest. The fire god's eyes widened and the light dimmed.

Kotal Kahn was struck by that flash of light in Liu's eyes. He watched the battle at the coliseum play over again and again, he heard Jade's final scream, and the commotion around him, even the sting of the sand as it scratched it flesh. He pulled back, his sword stuck in place and he covered his eyes from the light.

"Finish him!" Quan Chi hissed.

When Kotal Kahn opened his eyes, Liu Kang had pulled the massive sword from his chest and let it fall into the sea. He would heal, no doubt, being a God and with little threat to kill him, but Kotal Kahn knew that this injury would hinder him and his powers greatly. It would take more than a flesh wound to kill Liu Kang, and so the answer came from Quan Chi.

The sorcerer met him from the side, and Kotal Kahn pushed him away at first, a fleeted moment of reprieve for the fire god. The sorcerer's bore deep into Kotal's soul and pulled the hopes of Jade's resurrection with him to dangle over the Kahn's eyes. This is why Kotal Kahn had suffered Quan Chi's cruelty and demands. Only he could bring her back.

"Kill him you fool!" Quan Chi smacked Osh-Tekk hard across the cheek, though his frail form barely able to leave a mark.

With no weapon, Kotal Kahn approached Liu Kang and pulled him from the pool of blood beneath them. He raised Liu's chin to stare one last time into his eyes, as if to seek the answers, or a different way around this, another path toward his goal, but it wasn't there. The light shined in the darkness, but it showed him nothing, and he could understand why. How could a God not save her?

Liu Kang took in Kotal's scent, fear, control, desperation. Before a moment more, he let his body engulf in flames and forced himself back to trip over the rail. Kotal Kahn reached for him but the God had fallen too far and the sea reached out to meet him.

"You will bring her back, or I will throw you from this ship too!" His hands reached for the nearest object, Quan Chi, and in Liu Kang's place, he pulled the sorcerer forward and his eyes burned with rage.

"Only when you sit on her thrown." Quan Chi reminded him, but the force her felt rattled his fragile bones, and raked his body across the coals of the ship. Kotal Kahn could crush him with little effort. "I can save her from hell."

His voice was desperate, but another broke between them. A cry for Ko'atal. They turned to find Skarlet bloodied, bruised, and barely able to reach beyond the fallen shambles of the ship around them.

"Take me to Kitana." Kotal Kahn clenched Quan Chi tighter and his strength suffocated the sorcerer's will.

In a flash of energy, he could see the black orbs of Quan Chi's eyes wide with fear, and he could hear Skarlet's screams around them like the wind that howled against the ship. As the maw of Fujin's storm opened, ravenous to devour the ship, Skarlet reached for Kotal Kahn, and Quan Chi's energy consumed them.

—

Kitana the water rise above her feet. In the war room Goro and Raiden waited for her to return to the table, but her body pulled toward the windows to see the storm over the horizon and the city flooded beneath her feet. She could see the specks that washed out and reeled in her thoughts of children, babies, mothers, peasants, beggars, nobles, warriors, all pulled under the water equally. All of this because of her.

"By the Elders!" Goro caught her attention.

She turned to find Liu Kang slack against the edge of the table, Raiden rushed to his side with her. Neither could keep him up, and it took the strength of the Shokan to pull him onto the tapestry of outworld laid, now soaked in the blood of a God, across the table.

"How long, Raiden?" Liu Kang breathed.

"Too long." His voice was grim. "I had never suffered a wound like that."

"But it will heal?" Kitana pulled Raiden's eyes to her.

He nodded, but with the thunder of feet and the cries of war beneath them, he was not as certain as she demanded him to be.

"We must leave." Raiden urged, he grabbed Liu Kang as if he could teleport them, but his mortal eyes stared into the only person that could still do so.

"I will not abandon Outworld to Quan Chi." She mustered what she could, but then pulled from Raiden and back toward the window.

"We will die with honor then." Goro added.

The storm beneath them grew louder and the thunder of war banged on the walls in the floor just under their feet. Goro's words sank into her, as did Raiden's. If she were Kahn, she would have to make a decision.

She stood in the stale air, Liu Kang's labored breath beneath the storm, Raiden's insistence, and Goro's declarations against him.

"Fuck it!" She cried out, forced herself to cradle Liu Kang's head and as the storm reached their door, she whispered to him. "We will see each other again."

He nodded. Their fingers laced. His fire, her light burned outward with the veins of light that cackled and popped in the air around them.

—

The door burst open, Quan Chi first to enter. Immediately he was blinded by bright solar light that rivaled the sun. His arms covered his eyes and the door shielded those behind him. He could feel the sizzle of electricity in the air as it raised the thin hairs along his arms and burned the edges. The radiation singed into his flesh from head to toe and only when he felt it subside did he feel comfortable enough to lower his arms.

Kotal Kahn pushed through, but Quan Chi had barred with an arm. Kotal squeezed his lids tights, twisted his lips back and bared the heat, the light, and the energy that met empowered his flesh like the sun itself, but burned with the radiation of a thousand storms.

"What is this?" His words fell flat in the light.

Like a wet finger to the flame of a candle, the light burned out in the instance of a breath and Raiden stood between Kotal Kahn and Kitana, who was crouched over the edge of the table, Liu Kang in her arms.

Jataaka crept past Quan Chi and Scarlet back behind her, only able to see through the crack of the door with Kotal's body between her and Raiden. Quan Chi motioned forth, a green energy lifted from the cracks of the floor.

Like a dense fog, the mist lifted up between them and started to form a skeleton, bone by bone.

"Enough!" Raiden let the veins of heat burn from his finger tips out toward the sorcerer as the lightning singed the air around them and burned the mist around his feet. In his eyes, the cackle and sizzle of electricity swirled.

Kotal shaded his arms and protected Jataaka, but felt Quan Chi pull from him with the force that rivaled Fujin's winds. His body crashed into the stone wall and crumbled at Kotal Kahn's feet. As Jataaka motioned forward, Raiden's eyes burned a hole into her.

"Raiden!" Kitana called out amidst the mist of heat and lightning. "Return to Earth Realm."

"Come with me." His hand reached out to her from across the room. She need only reach back and he would take her to safety.

Her eyes wandered to Kotal Kahn, then to Goro, then the body that lay within her grasp and shook her head. This would be her last stand as Kahnum of Outworld. These moments would determine who she really was and she chose to see it through.

That old conical hat tipped down and the Thunder God burst into what seemed like a million little sparks of light and electricity and all there was left was Kitana and Goro to face the usurper.

"Bend the knee." Kotal Kahn urged. "Relinquish the throne peacefully, Kitana Kahn, and I will spare you."

These words struck Goro worse than Kitana. He lashed out in a burst of anger, his arms raised and mashed the chairs between him and Quan Chi. Before he could close the gap, that forgotten shadow had formed into Kia and she stood on the shoulders of the Shokan, a sword at his throat.

"Swear fealty to me, Shokan!" Kotal Kahn spat.

Goro tried to throw the woman off, but her shadow would cloud him and the blade always present somewhere on his flesh to cut, to pierce.

As he fought defeat, Kitana approached it. Kia's blade finally cut the Shokan's throat as Kitana knelt before the new Kahn. She listened as her last trusted ally choked on her betrayal and spilled the last blood of his race around her knees.

"I bend the knee to you, Kotal Kahn." She held back for a dim present. Her eyes never met his, but his hand took her shoulder.