Reality, the discordant nature of life as we know it is nothing more than the broken chains of fabricated memories tested over the fabric of time. Sometimes it holds as the weight on each side that pulls it apart is too weak to tear the chains link from link, but most times, the glitch of the real world hisses and slithers down the metal coil of spacetime link by link and poisons the world we know, with the world we desire, or others.
He wasn't sure what to believe, or what he wanted to believe. The violation of the visions that plagued his mind and the thoughts that twisted like burning cigarettes out of the mouths of vacant faces scratched at the lines that creased Liu Kang's. Raiden, Sub-Zero, and Nightwolf stared back at him as he awoke from the trance induced by the true American.
"Tell me something of what you've seen, Liu Kang." Raiden pressed, his eyes curious and cast through those of Liu as though the window to the soul could peer in and find the hidden remains of that trance spill out before the God's feet.
"I do not know. I saw many things I can't explain, many versions of me, of events aren't real." Dejected, he turned to Nightwolf, "but no answers to how we deal with Quan Chi."
"The Great Spirit shows us many things, much of it we cannot understand, but yet we begin to piece by piece as time goes by, when it is time to." Nightwolf responded, his words no better comfort for Liu Kang.
Frustrated he leapt from his skin through his voice, "but we need it now! That was useless then!"
"Useless? Not at all, but an inconvenient mystery, certainly." Raiden added, "what do you remember?"
"It's hard to piece it together, but there were different versions of myself, my skin was almost grey, dead, I think. I had a feeling of betrayal in the pit of my stomach for you," he stared blankly into the whites of Raiden's eyes, "like you had done this to me. All of it."
"There's a lot you don't know, about the past, about what brought us to this moment." He continued as his hands curled back beneath the grey weathered robes, recoiled from Liu Kang cold stare. "There have been many timelines before this, versions of reality that have been tested by a Titan known as Kronika."
"What does any of that mean?" Liu couldn't grasp it, as hard as he could. The visions that swirled like locusts in his mind and chewed away at the fabric of his skull gnawed too loudly for him to hear Raiden.
"My tribe has felt this before, there have been many Nightwolf, and I don't mean those that came before me, but me alone." He turned to Raiden, "we have felt them, each of them, as their spirits become one with The Great Spirit."
"Yes," Raiden addressed it with a nod, but his focus was to Liu, "before this, in order to reach this moment in time, I merged my essence with you and for a time you were a God too, Liu Kang."
"Then why aren't I now? How did you end up like this? Too many questions while people are dying out there! Why even bother?" Liu pushed passed them, "I'm going to find Sonya and Cage, and we're leaving."
"There is no escape." Nightwolf held him with his voice.
"This island is between realms. Not quite on Earth, but not entire in Outworld." Raiden explained. "The only escape is if Quan Chi lets you, or death."
"Then what do we do?" Defeated, frustrated, he stared back at Raiden with a strange sense of contempt he had only felt as that darkened entity within the trance. The creature with his face with skin like ash and cracked lava. "This is all your fault then!"
Raiden lowered the brim of his conical hat and his voice hissed like the low rumble of thunder that built over time.
"I don't think so." He stared back and could feel the revenant behind the flesh of Liu Kang. "You are the reason we are all here. Somehow you split your soul and the worse version of you survived."
"How?" Nightwolf stared, he could see the Liu Kang for what he was, the turmoil of his soul, and the bitter boiling in his gut that echoed from his crude tone as he spat back at Raiden.
"I don't care! We need to focus on right now! We need to get of this damn island! I don't care what you say anymore." Liu shot back at Raiden and swung the ancient wooden door wide open to find Sonya and Johnny Cage outside.
When it closed, Sub-Zero stepped forward. He remained silent, with little to say and little to do regarding the visions, but his curiosity had peaked.
"We must unite if we're to defeat Quan Chi." He urged the thought into their minds, but they already knew.
"Liu Kang is the answer to all of this, but we must find his human spirit." Raiden added, a grim weight in his voice as he turned to Nightwolf, "I am the reason the revenant existed at all, but when I merged the two souls of Liu Kang together, I did not expect this."
"As I had mentioned," Nightwolf explained, "The Great Spirit is connected to everything, the Earth, Time, Space, the spirit world. I have felt my spirits before, though never have I been able to understand it."
"What are you saying?" Sub-Zero was lost, and Raiden appeared to be as well.
"You can merge two people together, and even though they may look the same, that does not mean they are the same spirit. Humans are not like Gods, Lord Raiden."
"You're right. The laws of reality work differently to the Gods, and I should have consulted with Fujin before this tournament." He snickered, a slight hiss under his breath. "Perhaps Liu Kang is right. We should focus on what's happening right now and not worry about the past."
Outside the door Liu Kang had pressed beyond Johnny and Sonya when they offered little help to his situation. Smoke as well unable to console him. What little he gathered from the visions that played like random scenes in his mind all gave him at least one objective he that was clear to him.
He must find Shang Tsung.