She laid within the confines of her mind as the wooden ceiling above her slowly rotted away. The blood stained her palette and the taste of horror in the eyes of those that saw her murder still trickled down the soft curves of her flesh like a hot bath that burned your flesh. It played over and over in her head, the feel of the dagger against another person's throat, the bumps and ridges of bone and muscle, the parts the body you don't see or think about all pressing back against the blade, or giving way like butter.
She was intoxicated by the murder, by the heat of his blood and the performance of it all, but now she lay alone in the dark of her chamber unable to let it go as if something went wrong, or some final note in that beautiful orchestra of a serial killer's piece fell silent, or on deaf ears.
How many men, women, children, and animals had she murdered for Outworld? Some more impactful than others, but every time there was a small vacancy within the deep recess of her mind she couldn't fill. Not with a man, not with a kill, not with her position in the army of Outworld.
There was something missing about her, perhaps a soul, or like a piece of her had been chipped away and stolen. Somewhere in the realms it hid from her, but she could not put a finger on what it was or where it could be.
So many years had past before she had given any thought to that tiny little hole that pulsed in the back of her mind.
Why now?
Why after murdering the Earth Realmer did it suddenly peak, or was it really that which sparked this tumor of thought?
Her eyes felt as though a great weight had slowly descended upon them and she allowed it to close her off from the world, but her thoughts remained. The pulse of her flesh and the course of her blood, run hot within her still trickled like a river over her flesh. She could not quell it.
Was it in her mind, or the crease between her lids that a figure so small stood at the opening where light should have broken through the carved window into the chamber?
She thought it was Rain, leaned over, or knelt, whatever he was doing.
She closed her eyes again.
What little remained of the waking world as she began to feel that murderous high finally subside only grew as if that boiling within her masked the world around her and how truly urgent it felt to her.
The bed began to crease and she could feel it at her feet, then slowly up beside her left thigh, hip, stomach. She reached down to find nothing, but small prints indented in the fabric.
Skarlet awoke.
Eyes wide, the world darkened but the entire chamber was within sight, crisp and vivid she could make out the ornamentals of the room from her personal gear. She remembered that hazy sight seconds ago by the window and it was still there.
Small and blended over curtain and wall like a shadow.
Blink! Blink!
Still there.
Once her feet touched the cool floor and a light chilled traced up her legs opposing that warm comfort of bed, the figure faded. It wasn't like the blink of an eye, but the blur of reality.
It was a shadow, but the window was closed, and the door shut.
Outside the chamber the halls were long and narrow and empty. She wore only the essentials of a black shirt, and pants and slipped into her boots as best she could in a hurry to check outside the room. No Rain, nobody at all even.
Just a voice inside her head.
Have you forgotten me?
She had forgotten that voice and who it belonged to.
Without any weapon, even the vial of blood to draw her magic from, Skarlet traced the veins of the hallways of the the spire she resided in until she had reached floor level. Naknadan guards stood at various posts, and she noticed a heightened presence of Lin Kuei and Black Dragon members. Some covered in blood, others armed for battle. She ignored them all and pushed through to the outside world.
The harsh light of day greeted her with a hard glare. It was noon and the height of the sun's hatred for her pale flesh bore down on her like a thousand knives. She squinted and shaded her eyes with a hand to find the path to the courtyard.
Did you think I'd forget you?
The voice scratched away at the inside of her skull like a spider that wouldn't flee.
Once she reached the courtyard walls she could hear the sounds of combat. The tournament was still at hand and Kotal Kahn could be heard over the dull roar of a small crowd.
There it is!
The shadow appeared along the wall, small, like a child, and began to move with haste as if to escape the sun, or her.
She followed.
The actual portion of the island dedicated to the tournament and chambers of the host were not as big as she would have expected. The walls, though in some parts in ruins, were tall and seemed to wrap around only a small portion of what would be the tournament grounds. The palace where Kotal Kahn would rest and subsequently watch the final fight, which gave way to a small corridor with a light prison, and a side exit toward an cliff overhang with a gong that would look over the spires. Beyond that, just the tournament grounds themselves, the pit and the warriors shrine. She was close to the shrine, having traced along the thin wood that lead to an old Naknadan statue once plated in gold, not spoiled over with foliage.
Quan Chi refused to maintain the island.
She followed the shadow until the forbidden forest edged against the walls of of a torture yard that had been crumbled and succumbed to the wilds of the evil forest. She could see the old statue to Goro that was the centerpiece of the warrior shrine, but he was only half a body. The wall she peered over to view this ruin that overlooked the courtyard followed further into the forest, but she had lost sight of the shadow.
In a frantic glance she searched for it, even pushed herself onto the crumbled dent in the wall to look over and and under, but there nothing.
Nothing but a voice.
"Keep an eye on Kotal Kahn." She heard travel like a strange whisper in the wind.
Somewhere in the forest she should not hear, but reached out to her, she followed it instead of the shadow. Slowly along the rubble and ruin of the wall that grew and sank as the destruction varied and the forest chipped away at it, she was careful to remain low, and to keep her back to wall. The voice came from the forest, a forest even with no voices, one does not put their back to.
"You have been loyal to this point, Syzoth–" a few stones of rubble fell as she slipped and scraped her flesh across the bark and crags of ancient bricks. The voice ceased and the world fell silent.
It was in this moment, this dire need to remain still and silent she peered through the divots in the branches and vines to find two bodies blue and pink was all she could make out. There was certainly another, but she could only see the two. Rationality betrayed Skarlet as she carefully moved forward toward a wide tree to listen, to watch and to get a better view.
Before her eyes she witnessed two Kitanas, the God that should have been locked away in the confines of the forgotten cells within Goro's Lair. Kitana spoke to a creature, humanoid, but Skarlet could not make out the being's identity. The other Kitana, the one in pink, she could not see well, only the backside of her. The hair and flesh identical, almost down to the stance, but it was a strange aura that surrounded this one. She could sense something different or off about her.
Then she turned.
To Skarlet horror the second Kitana craned her neck quick like a predator that has just detected the blood of its prey in the air and her maw widened to reveal a long row of fangs, too closely akin to the Tarkatans of Outworld.
No, those were Tarkatan fangs.
She had not seen something like this since–
The figure became a blur as it raced into the forest toward her. She reached for her dagger, but it wasn't there, and then for the vial of blood and that too she realized was missing.
She cursed under her breath for being so naive. She could only run now. run as fast as her feet could carry as she had suddenly become the prey.
The boots saved her from the spikes and edges of bark and stone as she traced the wall with little hope for an opening, but the moment she found another part of the wall that caved in, she raced for it.
The Tarkatan-like creature was in hot pursuit, undoubtedly with Kitana behind her and Sakrlet could sense the blood rage of her very essence. She had that felt that presence before, but had forgotten it as days become hundreds of years.
The cave in would be difficult to climb and likely easier for the predator to catch up to her. She remembered as her fingers clawed at the edges to climb that she had scraped her shoulder against the stones and bark and blood stained down her back. It stung, but it needed to be pricked and scraped again to produce enough to teleport.
Into Goro's Lair.
The voice scratched inside her ears and she listened as her body gave way to the blood portal just as the two women her just about on her.
In the darkness Skarlet found relief. Her breath stabled after a needed moment of rest and the sting of her back was all she could feel as the racing of her heart subsided.
She recognized where she was, though the light was minimal she could see the twisted turns of cave that lead to the entrance of Goro's Lair, or formally his lair. Quan Chi now utilized it as his prison, torture chamber, and hideaway when the dark schemes boiled in his greedy mind. She knew he'd be occupied with whatever had gone on in the spires earlier in the day, but that did not mean the caves were empty.
In the low light she figured the shadow would be hard to see, but as she searched left and right, just ahead where the lone corpse of Goro would await her, she eventually found it. A black mass darker than even the shadows that surrounded it, like a void, or black hole.
It wanted her to see it.
One turn, she'd find herself in the chamber where Quan Chi held office with his generals and the Naknada that overlooked the bottom of the pit beneath the bloody bridge. The other a small twisting, winding cavern that ended in small prison cells that were protected by flames long since ceased when the island's former owner was captured and long forgotten.
Of course, she realized, this is where the shadow would take her.
The empty confines of a hollow world forgotten and barely used if only to remind the dead that the living still control it, she followed the shadow in. The pits where flames once spat against the charged stone walls now dead and dry. She travelled past one cell, so old the bars nearly rotted away, but the small carving that would hold the prisoner in was empty.
The next also empty, and the next, and then a fork in the path. One would lead to where the deadliest of enemies would be held behind the flames and bars, and the other where no man could go past, as the flames would encase them. With no flames, she checked the first, but the shadow had faded.
"Do you hear me?" A voice bounced off the curvature of the tunnel.
"Yes." Skarlet caught the voice and reached out with her own.
Her steps were slower, her eyes narrowed and focused to find the source. This was no longer a voice in her head and the shadow no longer played tricks with her. The final cell within the cavern locked and cleaned. This, though old and rusted, had been somewhat maintained and if she paid attention to the ground beneath her, she would have realized the footsteps she erased with her own.
"Do you see me?" The voice, more brittle in person and almost faded like a ghost that it sounded in her head had reached out from the back of the prison cell.
She closed the gap between herself and the bars, but dared not touch them, she had no clue who was behind them until the voice clicked inside her head, not with another vowel, but who it belonged to.
Withered and old, his body near death as it laid like sticks against the cave wall, she finally saw him and her blood curdled at the sight. His corpse like body worn out against the floor of the cave cell, Shang Tsung watched the horror and the anger play out in her eyes as she recognized him.
"Skarlet, my old enemy." He reached for her with his voice and then coughed.
"Shang Tsung. You're still alive?" She reached out with the hand that had not bathed in the blood of her injury and leaned in to see him better for he hid in the shadows like a cowered cur.
"Only by the grace of a few souls left within me." He replied, and she believed it. He looked older than dirt, and worse than death.
"Then I will kill you and finally see vengeance for what you've done me." It all flooded back. The memories of this cruel man having torn her body and blood to create the creature known as Mileena in her image and then to so boldly gift Skarlet the only blood she could hold as her own, he took away. The rape of her mind and the control he took from her as he used her like one of his many experiments in the flesh pits that used to be bear the screams of victims like her in these very caves, she watched the memories flood away as anger and blood boiled over inside her. She was about to reach for the bars with her other hand, the bloodied hand dried of her own essence but he stopped her, almost pleaded.
"I need you." He continued, "I have been the voice inside of her your head, and the vision you have seen to this moment."
"Why?" She was going to kill him anyway, why not find out the answer to this foolish charade and spit it back in his face?
"To save your life." He caught her in her throat, then added, "Quan Chi is going to kill us all. No, not just me and you, Kotal Kahn, the Half-God Prince of Edenia, and Raiden with his allies." After a cough and a choke, and a moment of pause as what little life he held onto tried its best to escape, he spoke, "he means to end time as we know it."
She couldn't grasp this. Shang Tsung was a manipulator and this moment she knew he was doing just that, but to what end?
Before she could respond a green light sparked like an ember in the distance and she felt the cold rush of the dead reach out for her.
She looked out for the eyes of the undead entities known as Ermac race toward her in a flash of green energy. No blood would let her escape this, and no words would stall the entity.