He could see the sundown of a blank stare through the eyes of everyone in the room. Cracked, uncertain, and doubtful, all reflections that clawed at the walls of his own heart. All but one stared back, Raiden, arms folded in his cloak and head down in a pensive moment waited as the stale breath of the room responded to the war cry of Liu Kang.
"I'm going to challenge Quan Chi to Mortal Kombat, end all of this." He had declared.
What little room they had, he was surrounded by the contestants of the twisted ritual of Quan Chi's corrupt tournament. Ahead of him, Nightwolf and Raiden, but the group grew outward from them, seeming day by day with Sub-Zero, Smoke, Johnny Cage, Sonya, Kung Lao, Jax and yet day by day it dwindled.
"Look into your heart, Liu Kang, do you really think you're ready for this." Raiden pondered beneath that pensive posture.
"You are not ready, you are not even whole." Nightwolf added.
"What does that even mean?" Sonya couldn't grasp it.
"The sorcerer will kill you. You find yourself, undo what has been done to your soul." Nightwolf stepped forward into the circle, eyes on him, "you cannot win."
"He's right, Liu Kang," Sub-Zero chimed in, "Quan Chi is corrupt, and he will not fight fair. If you are absolutely certain of yourself, he will take advantage of that."
"How do I find out what happened? How do I find myself?" Liu Kang looked to Raiden, but Nightwolf replied.
"Only you can know yourself and only you can repair your spirit, but there are ways to help."
"He's right." Raiden finally spoke up, eyes on Liu. "Liu Kang, I have faith in you as I do of everyone in this room, but no one in this room is capable of defeating Quan Chi alone."
"There is a ritual my people perform to walk through the spirit realm, there you may find answers." Nightwolf warned, "but there, you may also lose yourself completely."
"What do I do?" Liu Kang was ready, he needed to be. Himself as the offering, he demanded knowledge.
"You can not do this alone." Raiden warned.
"No, you must have someone to tether you to the real world." Nightwolf then eyed those around him, but none spoke up. "Someone must risk themselves to keep Liu Kang grounded, or we will lose another to this sorcerer."
"And another," Sub-Zero added, "until this false tournament is revealed to be the quiet massacre it really is under Quan Chi."
"I'll do it." Johnny Cage stepped in.
"Perfect." Raiden spoke under his breath, a curve of content tucked against the corner of his mouth.
"So be it." Nightwolf adjourned the meeting.
When the room had cleared, Liu Kang rested on the makeshift bed of wood and the thinnest fabric. The least comfortable he had ever been to match the uncertainty of the situation. Johnny Cage sat beside him on a stool as Nightwolf slowly began to hum and chant. Raiden stood at the doorway, arms folded, hat downcast and eyes closed to absorb the energy of the room.
Neither Earth Realmers could understand the ritual, the noises that grew from Nightwold no doubt the language of his tribe, both Liu Kang and Johnny Cage were ignorant to, but they waited with deep breaths for anything to happen.
Broken. Johnny Cage began to think about how he had reached this point. The meeting with his manager, and if that person wasn't Quan Chi the whole time. Everything since, the downward spiral and the shattering of his world all the machinations of one person with the goal of destroying him from within. Only now had he begun to piece those broken remains together.
He understood what Liu Kang must have felt, even if Liu could not recognize it.
Silence fell over the room.
Nightwolf's mouth moved, but neither Liu nor Cage could hear him.
"Do you think it's working?" Cage asked and When Liu tilted his head to scold him for his interruption, Johnny wasn't there.
The room was empty, and the silence thickened until even his own heartbeat fell on deaf ears. One leg at a time he cautiously pulled himself from the discomfort of the bed and pushed up to his feet. Not creek of the boards, no breath from his lips.
"You must find your spirit." Johnny Cage's voice filled his ears like a whisper, as if in imitation of Nightwolf. "Your guide will find you and tell you what you must do."
"How will I know what it is?" Liu wondered, but the answer never came.
"Do not lose yourself, Liu Kang." Raiden's voice cracked though the veil of darkness that began to flood into the room.
Raiden's voice, the sound, the hiss-like breath and wisdom in each inflection tugged him into a bright sunny Earth. He looked around to find children running, men all around in the adornments of the monks of the White Lotus. All marched toward a single point and followed Liu Kang as though he had just arrived to save them from something, or someone.
He followed them to a narrow path beyond the Temple of Light. Bowls of incense, monks stood in prayer and candles lit around and alter where three of the Shaolin sat in judgement of Liu Kang.
He looked down, tan pants, brown boots, black jacket and the air around them caked in a slight red haze. The temple beyond the alter was white and curved like an arch toward the sky with many windows and adornments the lower each level went. He looked further, cloth made covered the cracks between the walls and monks blocked every entry way but the exit.
"Why have you come back?" A cold voice echoed from the monks at the alter.
Words forced from his lips, unable to form them, unable to break them. As though written to speak, he let it go.
"I want to represent the Order of Light at the tournament!"
"For what reason?"
"The man who killed my brother will be there."
"That cannot be your only reason for going, or you will fail."
"Oh, yes, I forgot. We're fighting for the fate of the world!" Liu Kang cast out his hollow maw, unable to stop the words.
"That's why you left the temple and ran away, isn't it?" Raiden's voice filled the temple grounds. All of the monks lowered to bow before the God as his shadow cast behind one of the cloth walls. "The great tournament was too much responsibility, but vengeance? That's so much simpler."
The man before him, the dark grey robes, the conical hat, all of it appeared to him as Raiden, but something was off. It gave him pause and the words no longer forced themselves through him.
The eyes of the man before him still pierced through Liu Kang, but the face was wrong.
"This is not your god of thunder and lightning, he's just a beggar!" He broke the spell of words and the imposter stood in posture, paused, eyes on Liu Kang.
"So, you're going to win the tournament?" Raiden's voice spoke to him, but he man stood still, his lips unmoving, his eyes still as death.
"Yes!" Liu Kang spat.
"Show me how."
Liu Kang rushed him, his chest felt as though hands should stop him, but he moved freely and the being the others knew as Raiden tossed him effortless onto the stone ground, onto his back, and his eyes lit with lightning.
He looked up to the sky, the cloudless blue gazed back down at him. Around him, bamboo shoots with red flags adorned with gold Chinese symbols waved in the light wind.
"If you won't fight with all of your heart, there is no hope." A female voice pulled him up.
"What do you care?" Liu shot back, his body contorted and held beneath her.
He countered her, pushed her off. She spun over and returned to a defensive stance. He finally got a view of her as a man, older, and bitter shouted at her from his bamboo throne behind them.
He looked back to find a man adorned the attire of the Lin Kuei. His face resembled that of Kuai Liang, though a red scar now etched itself down his right eye.
"Kahn want's you to go after her."
"Listen, without Kitana it's over, we've lost." Liu Kang urged.
"What's happened here should prove you alone are not ready for what's ahead." Sub-Zero met his words with a calm, but stern demeanor. He could feel the wavering in Liu Kang, and his eyes, though cold, Liu could see were much wiser beyond his youthful appearance.
Liu Kang understood. He wasn't sure what he understood, but something about it connected in him.
"Raiden, what is wrong?" he looked down at his mentor's chest to find the amulet on the blue and white cloth had cracked. "Your amulet!"
"It is nothing, Liu Kang, the tournament begins."
Together they stood and watched the procession of monks in white and gold march together and kneel before old man stood at the alter of the island's courtyard. At his side the woman that had spoken him, referred to as Kitana, and the other of darker skin adorned in a green attire of the same style as Kitana. Jade.
Their eyes cast upon him like stone, the old man stared bewildered and soon he realized that all eyes were on him. Raiden, Nightwolf, the Lin Kuei, Sonya, all but Johnny Cage.
"What's going on?" Liu Kang looked around, unable to understand. He checked his hands, his outfit, his hair, everything but they all stood and stared.
Cage, his deep, dark shades an impasse between the eyes Kang fought to look into, and the cool suave suit he wore clean and pressed unlike the unimpressive Cage he knew, approached him.
"You think you know. Who you are. What's to come." His voice echoed as Liu Kang slowly stepped back, "you have no idea."
The room was empty, dark, and the red haze of the sun shunned from the inside, barely a slit on the blades of thick blinds. A darker shadow cut like a crease across the room and the air filled with the must of poverty. Liu Kang was back in his apartment in the stacks, the high towers of nothingness hidden within the dissonance of Hong Kong.
The shadow like a mirror reflected the same side of the room back at him in only a slight lighter shade. No bed to relax on, no stand or television, nor light to illuminate. He sat in the corner of the darkest recess of the room his thoughts barely collected like tacks on the floor to stick ideas into him of what might happen, unable to ever really pin down and answer.
Raiden did this.
The name repeated in his voice and soon coated the walls like dust, caked with anger and bitterness. Liu couldn't understand why, only the darkness of flesh, the grey tone and the cracked lines that he mistook for veins were his only glimmer of light. His body was like the ash of a volcano that had just erupted and covered itself all over again, with the burning embers desperately lit beneath.
"What can be done? The past is the past, is it not?" Liu Kang stared up into radiant eyes of Kronika as the world around him became illuminated with the blinking eyes of the cosmos and the swirl of the cogs of fate.
"It need not be," She swiftly lifted toward a large glass orb that worked like an hourglass, the sands of time slowly spiral into the empty glass beneath. "I intend to wind time back to its beginning and restart history." She added, her eyes sought Liu Kong's, "but even with my vast power, I cannot create this New Era alone."
Beside him, where Kitana should stand, Johnny Cage watched on.
"How will this new era be different?" He pondered behind those thick shades.
"In many ways," she turned to Johnny, then to Liu, "but most importantly, there will be no Raiden."
Liu Kang turned to Johnny Cage, the flesh of his friend clean and lively, human and vastly different than his caked in ash hues and cracked like the ground ready to erupt.
"You weren't here before." He realized suddenly and searched for Kitana.
"I'm good at filling many roles, I'm an actor you know." Cage shrugged it off.
"I'm surprised you even remember this moment." Kronika lowered herself before them and reached out to touch Liu Kang, but he recoiled. "You failed to bring about the New Era."
"Kitana and I created many New Eras, none of them worked." He explained, "no matter how much you toy with time, fate is always the same."
"Yes, some things must always come to pass, in some way or another." She turned to Cage, "but you are still a revenant Liu kang, and Johnny Cage is here before me."
"I'm just holding down the fort." Cage mocked.
Still a revenant?
The legions of the undead, the demons and creatures born of the Netherrealm surrounded Raiden, his piercing red lightning scattered like veins through them as he and Kitana watched on from their castle.
"Excuse me." A voice interrupted.
Kitana and Liu Kang turned to find a finely suited business man, bald with sunken features hold up two slices of American cheese.
He shook it off and returned to the scene that played out before them. The pyramid of Argus decorated with the bodies of warriors that have torn at the realms for a millennia. At the first step, Raiden climbed slowly, his red eyes bright with rage as Liu Kang pulled the shackles of chains close to his decayed corpse and began to swing them in preparation.
"You did this to yourself, Liu Kang." Raiden could hear the words echoed off the old apartment walls. His hands clenched and curled to form a ball of lightning between them. The hot energy grew and the air crackled with electricity.
Unable to speak, his jaw torn from his corpse's skull, Liu Kang backed slowly up to the highest plateau, the chains a barrier between he and the Thunder God as they swung in large arcs around him.
"He wants to ask what you mean by that." Johnny Cage, his back split, and eyes glossed over in Raiden's pathos stared up into the swirling fire of the sky that was Blaze's energy and spoke for Liu Kang.
Raiden glanced down at the corpse of the Earth Realmer, then back to Liu Kang.
"I do not know what you did, but you are not who you should be in this timeline."
"I did only what I had to in order to survive Kotal Kahn's war." Cage responded for him.
"Yes, Kitana, Goro, myself all of us locked in the high chamber in expectation that Kotal Kahn and Quan Chi would kill or imprison us."
"Before then."
Raiden stopped. He gathered his memories of the events that lead to that moment. Kitana held Liu Kang as the Fire God created by Raiden unleashed his power back into the Thunder God with Kitana, but he couldn't remember.
"Enlighten me." Raiden reached out.
Shang Tsung, young, clad in black cloth and leather gazed up at the ceiling as the dragon emblem emboldened him to fight Liu Kang in the tournament. Kitana, Johnny Cage and Sonya to the far side all only able to watch.
Lui Kang, eyed the fire torches around them, the emblem of metal and stone beneath them and met gaze with Shang Tsung to watch as the world around them shifted into the courtyard and Shang Tsung's flesh aged, his clothing changed to a more lavish red and gold attire.
The sands of the arena baked in the Outworld heat, Raiden passed by Liu Kang and Shang Tsung. Raiden and Kitana's relationship had intensely soured since their last turning of time and despite how desperate Raiden was to patch it, the Kahnum of Outworld refused.
Liu Kang however, took this moment to meet with Shang Tsung in private.
"Fire God." Shang Tsung greeted him, eyes weary and suspicious of the deity before him.
"Shang Tsung." Liu Kang returned the gesture with the slightest of nods.
Shang Tsung was suspended over a stone table as Ermac pulled soul after soul from him under Quan Chi's watchful eye. Liu Kang watched beside Quan Chi, his flesh ashen, and his veins cracked and cackled with embers of fire and rage.
"What are you doing to him?" Liu Kang pondered, a glance cast to Quan Chi.
"Torturing him." Quan Chi stepped forth toward the two as the process continued with scream after scream from Shang Tsung. "Take this time to suffer every soul you've taken, old friend. Soon all of it will end."
"You cannot kill me." Shang Tsung couldn't breath, but the words needed to spill like blood from his lips. One last spit before the temptation to end him filled Ermac.
"I don't want to kill you. I want to end it, everything." Quan Chi revealed, "existence as we know it." Ermac reached down toward Shang Tsung's chest, the undead corpse clenched for the sorcerer's heart. "Somewhere inside you is the answer I need to do it."
"Do you know of Kronika?" Liu Kang asked, so passively, the screams of the sorcerer barely an inconvenience to him. "She meant to create the New Era."
"Yes, but she did not show me everything. Only a glimpse of what she managed to perform up to that point."
"How far?"
"She had not yet captured you in the Fire Garden."
"Then how do you know about it?" Liu Kang's eyes narrowed, but his voice pulled from Shang Tsung and reached up to Ermac.
"Because we can see it." Ermac echoed inside this one.
"How do you know?" Liu Kang turned to Shang Tsung. "Ermac, pull it from him, I need to know. Kill him if you must!"
"That's the Liu Kang Kronika promised me." Quan Chi approved.
As the fires licked at the heat around them from the pit Nightwolf had sat with Liu Kang upon, the two waited before the words must fall from their maws. The silence a decadent display as neither desired to be the first to reveal their secrets.
The desert was a deep dissonance of sand and rot that stretched for miles and miles. How these two souls managed to find one another amongst a rogue fire was beyond their comprehension, but the wolf was first to speak.
"You think you're ready Liu Kang, but if you were, would Kitana have been captured?" Nightwolf spat.
Liu Kang looked back at the scene of the two sat before the flames. His human form sat there with Nightwolf, silent.
"I know what's to come." Liu revealed, but admitted "but who I am, I am not yet sure."
"In order to know who you are, you must find your animal spirit. It will guide you back to your true self." Nightwolf stood from the fires, from the human form of Liu Kang that sat and stared blankly into the abyss of the flames. He address the revenant only. "We are here, Liu, Raiden, Johnny Cage, Sonya, Sub-Zero, all of us here to guide you, but you are the only one that can find yourself in all of this."
"I know I know where to start, but not how to get there." he pointed back, where Quan Chi watched as Shang Tsung was tortured beneath the entity known as Ermac.
"That is not your memory, but Shang Tsung's."
"How did it get inside me?"
"How did you get inside him?"
"Where do I find him?"
"Find your animal spirit, feel the strength of your animality, and you will know where."
"Can you hold these?" Cage loaded his suitcases into Liu Kong's hands and then approached the sitting corpse of Goro, the half dragon Shokan.
Liu Kang dropped the luggage and looked around. The stale dead air of Goro's lair, the dust and unsettling smell of decay overtook him.
"I liked it when I beat him better." Cage turned to Liu. "Broke my sunglasses, so I broke his everything."
"That's not how he died." Liu Kang returned, the memory of the blood that spilled from Goro's throat filled him.
"Does it matter? Since Kronika's time warp we've all died a million different deaths."
"What are we doing here?"
"Oh, Shang Tsung's in here. I saw him a night or so ago. He's caged up in one of the tunnels by the entrance."
"Let's go." Kang grabbed his guide and the two traced the caverns and empty halls of the lair unaware of the green energy that followed close behind in the tiny crags and crags of stone and earth.
By the entrance two paths split the way, one Cage moved down and the other was blocked by Kitana.
"Go, Liu Kang." She urged. "I promised you we'd meet in this timeline, but not like this."
The entrance, a wide cavern toward a wooden pulley was blocked by a grey suited man. Two slices of cheese tucked upon his bald head.
"I wear the cheese, it does not wear me."
"Here." Cage pointed to the cell he had encountered the ancient sorcerer. "There were two hot chicks behind me, got me to release them. I didn't get a good look at them though."
"Shang Tsung?" Liu Kang reached for the bars and peered into the blackness.
They waited for any sound to greet them, but nothing escaped the shadow of the prison cell.
"He's waiting." A voice met them from down the curvature of the Earth. Liu Kang and Johnny Cage leaned to look as a glisten of red light turned the corner. Skarlet, the blood witch met them, an orb of blood formed in the palms of her hands. "For me."
"This is getting a little too complicated, and pretty hot." Cage smirked.
"Foolish child." Skarlet snapped, then to Liu Kang she spoke, "he's got something I need too."
"What is it?" Liu Kang looked back into the shadow.
The shadows themselves hid as a green energy lifted from the dust of the earth and the form of Ermac broke between Skarlet and Liu Kang.
"I don't know." She backed away until Ermac reached out for her throat. "You need to find him!"
"There's too much to do. How do I find him and my animality? How do I stop Quan Chi and save the realms, and myself?" Liu Kang whipped to Johnny Cage.
"I'm just an actor."
In the end, as the darkness buried them within the caverns of the lair, Liu Kang felt his guide reach out and pull him by the wrist until his eyes opened.
"What did you find?" Sonya asked, the first to break the silence.
"Only questions." Defeated, Liu Kang leaned up to find Nightwolf and Raiden look back at him.
Raiden, in all his infinite wisdom smiled down at Liu Kang, arms folded in his robes and eyes cackling with electricity.
"All the best answers come in the form of a question. It's only a matter of how you choose to answer them."