The red haze of the sun peeked through the cracks and crevices of the dense forest to peer into the eyes of the creature that stood, exposed, and lost on the island.
Kitana grabbed Mileena's right arm and pressed her forward to march on. With what little left they had, they had to press on and Mileena had to trust her sister in blood.
"There's a way in up ahead." Kitana assured her, and kept her feet one ahead of the other.
Mileena kept silent.
The jungle was thicker than the spires, and had more twists and turns than the caverns that held them prisoner. Arms twisted around her and fingers of vines and bark slapped at her bare flesh and tugged on her tattered hair. Kitana kept a hand on her, as if to let go meant to lose one another, and Mileena believed if she did let go, she just might get lost in this horrid foliage.
They already bared the scrapes and caked on blood from their climb out of the ground floor long beneath the teetered bridge that looked down toward a see of jagged spires that grew with layers of skeletons.
She felt the teeth of vegetation rake and taste her flesh, the pale nude form of this torn female a delight to the carnivorous forest, but she scraped and tugged and pushed forward with Kitana to escape it all as best she could until her body pressed into her sister's with a soft thud.
"Here?" Mileena searched for an answer as to why they stopped.
"Here." Kitana let go of her arm and moved into a small earthy clearing with a round metallic seal at the center.
"What is here?" Mileena moved to inspect it, but Kitana insisted they remain distant of it.
"The grave of the Kytinn." Kitana could see that Mileena did not understand. "An ancient race made extinct by Quan Chi and Shang Tsung."
"Like us?"
"Not yet." Kitana surveyed around them, the trees and vines seemed to close in on them, but they held their distance from the seal in the ground. Even the forest dared now disturb this dead.
Mileena's body shivered with an eerie feeling that they had been followed, watched, and even now scrutinized by some other being than the forest. She looked for it even as Kitana, oblivious approached the seal of the Kytinn.
"Something here." She vocalized, harsh, and not as eloquent or elegant as Kitana, but her sister had taught her well enough over the course of five hundred years.
The Edenian Princess stopped and waited in an ugly pause that held her over the seal like the dead could reach out and drag her in, but the threat of the forest was just as great.
Kitana looked back as she heard Mileena take in a deep breath of hair through her jagged maw, but her sister's mouth was closed. The hiss now echoed from the forest.
"Reveal yourself!" She demanded.
The two stood and felt even the forest glare at them, smug and sinister. The vegetation seemed to ruffle in laughter at them, but before Kitana could step away from the seal, a break in the tree line caught her eye and she lunged for it.
"Syzoth!" She held the reptilian against the hard bark and peered deep into those narrow pupils.
"Goddess Kitana." He responded.
She had no weapon, he was his own weapon, and she could not hold him for long.
Kitana let go.
"I've relinquished that power." She stepped back, and he held still like the air around them.
"I have served you still." Reptile bowed.
"Rise you up, Syzoth, I am only Kitana now."
"A name means more to me still." He rose with her command, and glared over toward the ill made copy. "Shang Tsung's flesh golem."
"She has a name. Mileena."
It may not have interested him, but it didn't go over his head that the two woman were naked before him, what little clothing they had was old and tattered and hid none of the scrapes, bruises, and blood they earned to reach this forest.
"I will seek new clothes for you."
"That would be nice." Kitana grinned, amused at the cold nature of the creature before them, what little interest he had, but knew full well the foul beast Reptile could be toward his enemies. "First thing's first though."
"You wish to defile the grave of D'Vorah?" He too refused to approach. "The killer of all things?"
"No, but it's the only way to find what we need to get out of here." Kitana approached the seal and knelt before it, braver than Reptile, who still kept his distance.
"We can't lift it, not in the condition we're in." Kitana insisted he approach, and slowly he did. For her.
"What in there lies for you?" He pondered, unable to grasp her intentions, what ever image burned in her mind could not smoke out from her eyes and let his senses bath in to understand. He could not grasp beyond his reptilian brain her human desires.
"Something I've lost a long time ago, that will begin to make things right."
"What things?" Mileena asked, she approached as well, but felt as clueless as Reptile.
"We'll have to get in to find out." Kitana took one side, Mileena the other, and Reptile joined to lift the seal.
An old stale breath coughed from the Earth into darkened night around them. Mileena recoiled her finger tips from the edge of the seal, just in time for Kitana and Reptile to slide it far enough to leave a gap for the two to enter one by one.
"There is another way." Reptile held himself over the blackened maw of the dead and gazed deep into her eyes, he would not let her go quietly into this foul night without a fight.
"Not for me." Kitana pushed through and delved into the abyss.
An ugly pause held Reptile's breath in as his eyes peered into the emptiness that had devoured the Edenian, and then he turned toward Mileena, equally unsure, but entirely powerless to deny her sister their freedom.
"Go." He assured her. "Do not make the Goddess wait."
"Right." Mileena nodded, stared back down that black eye and with what strength she had left, Reptile pushed her in without hesitation.
He didn't wait for a response.
The tomb was sealed with the two within.
The only ones that could see them now, were the pale eyes of the dead.