Darkness is not just a void, but a state of being. It becomes us, dictates who we are, and when are consumed by it we are riddled to nothing. What flicker of light she found, Mileena could barely see and she knew her sister could see far less. Tarkatan's had low-light vision, but this was close to none.
"Where are we?" She let creep into the darkness, with the only response being Kitana's hand in her. A soft hush followed and she was forced to let this more beautiful form of her lead her into the true unknown of the pitch black void.
If her mind could tell time in the emptiness of nothing she would think it had been hours before a solitary stream of moonlight reached into the abyss with curiosity. her eyes adjusted enough to see more tiny cracks of light that followed her as they passed. Stones, boulders, bodies even all piled to create a barrier to keep the light out, or perhaps the darkness from a bold escape.
"Kitana." She pulled away and moved closer to this barrier. The closer she did the better she used that low-light to see their surroundings.
"What is it?"
Her bare feet crunched over the bodies of what she thought were skeletons like theirs might be, but upon further inspection were the burnt and broken carapace of massive insects. Spiders, insectoids the shapes of humans and some with exoskeletons nearly burned off from what should have been the mush that was held within, now just hollow and dust.
"Who did this?" She couldn't fathom who could have such power.
"Shang Tsung and Quan Chi, the deadly alliance." Kitana answered, but added, "a necessary evil though."
"Why is that?"
A cackle stunned Mileena. Kitana turned to face the darkness as a the sound of stones crackling like a fire down the crevices and corpses of the Kytinn chambers echoed all around them, but dim like a dull whisper.
"There's a reason Quan Chi sealed the dead in." She grasped her sister and with quicker steps pushed back into the void of the caverns.
Their hands met jagged spikes against the wall, and burnt corpses that prickled with hairs still left on them where the magical fires hadn't quite singed fully and as this lead them down a winded wall of torturous sensations and turns through a cavern of otherwise nothingness, Mileena began to feel as though they would never escape, or never again see the light, nor even one another.
She couldn't tell if her vision was going bad, because she none. Kitana couldn't tell her not to slip on the skull of an insectoid for neither could feel it until the bumped, scraped, and tripped. It was only until the light grew down the end of the thin wiry tunnel that seemed to burrow deep into the earth of this mystical island that she was relieved to see the hand in hers again.
"Can you see it?" Mileena called out to the darkness, even as Kitana was right to her. "A torch."
In the dim light where the smaller rocks had broken through to let the moon peer into the abyss of a forbidden realm, she noticed it too. Just up ahead they managed to scavenge a relic of the light, but with no means to light it, there was no use to cherish such a gift.
As if the gods had answered them, a bright flash of luminous energy crackled with electricity before them. As the light dimmed to just two white eyes that peered through thatching, Kitana hid herself from it, from him.
"Raiden." She recognized that particular light.
"Princess Kitana." he acknowledged her, but soon turned away after a quick throw of clothing to their feet. "Reptile serves you well."
"He's foolish." She came back to that thought as she found herself able to get fully clothed with his findings, "and I appreciate that."
"You've met this timeline's Johnny Cage and Sonya, I hear."
"What happened to Cage?"
"Quan Chi got to him first."
"How could he?"
"We're in the right place to find the answer."
Mileena listened to their interaction, her eyes captivated by the Thunder God. How could he find them so fast with such dim light able to break through? She didn't fully grasp the idea of him being a higher power, but his voice did carry deeper through the caverns than Kitana's. The cackling in the darkness responded as well.
The half-blood sister of Kitana appreciated the luminous presence of Raiden, if only to ensure they could see the ground or corpse in front of them as they moved. The tunnels turned and twisted and contorted, the three forced to climb, to crawl, and squeeze as they passed the hardened corpse of a Kytinn brood mother.
The last hurdle, a long climb over a deep crevice that looked down into an abyss neither Raiden nor Mileena could see to the bottom of.
"Here?" She looked over toward her sister.
"Yes." Kitana shuffled from her knees to sit over the side of the pit. "Raiden, can you go down safely?"
"My powers are muted here, but I can still teleport some distance." He shifted as well to hang over the ledge and in a flash of energy dissipated downward.
"How deep do you think?" Mileena pondered, and before Kitana could respond, that crackle of electricity grasped their feet and pulled them down into nothingness.
"It's not so deep." Raiden illuminated the tight square space they now filled almost completely. "Look, Kitana."
Beneath their feet were glass shards that glistened in the electrical energy of the Thunder God. Pieces of gold metal and silver also scattered around them. Pale gold, seamless glasswork, perfect even when shattered.
"One of Kronika's spheres?" Kitana was horrified and the whites of Raiden's eyes matched her shock. "What could this mean?"
"It means Quan Chi knows too much." Raiden tried to ponder just how much, but with this time piece shattered, there was no telling.
"This must be why the Kytinn were eradicated." She added.
"Sealed in with their secrets. Exactly why." He concurred.
"What happens now?" They turned toward Mileena, she had survived Kotal Kahn's rise to power only through imprisonment with Kitana. She only remembered the green spirit that lied and cheated her.
"Can you take us to the spires?" Kitana knew where to go.
"What's are you planning to do?" He hadn't quite caught on.
"Talk to our favorite actor." She revealed and he nodded.