Stuck together in the hot tomb of the Shokan Prince, Shang Tsung tugged on the soul bond that formed between he and Ermac. As the devil they knew struggled to pull back the screaming souls from the demon they don't, Ermac lifted to put distance between them and Shang Tsung. How connected they all truly were was even beyond Ermac's comprehension as a thin string of green light spiraled like a helix into the sorcerer's eyes from Ermac's.
"You may be many, but there need only be one."
The entity tugged back on the string, it's energy comprised entirely of the souls bound to it, and all the warriors and lives that failed to defeat the very being that now pulled to reclaim them. Unfixed to the Earth, Ermac lifted higher and higher until the stalagmites pressed against its leather attire and corpse shell.
What is the soul, and how could such a thing be so necessary for the vitality of life? Shang Tsung's flesh began to tighten, the specks of discolored flesh melted into uniformity and became stronger in the ability to even hold his ground as the entity he had lassoed to pulled harder and harder from his grasp.
If it's eye sockets could narrow, and its maw pinch in pain, Ermac would have as it allowed the souls to siphon between the two and the DNA like strand of life struggled to flow into the veins of Shang Tsung or the rotted shell of the corpse Ermac. On high, Ermac stared down on the hunger of the sorcerer as he freely fed upon him without realization that the entity had begun to lift him, gently at first, so as not to pull attention, but the moment Shang Tsung realized, Ermac shoved the body of his enemy into the stalagmites above them.
The string of souls ceased and the screams of the thousands of deceased died to a whisper until even Shang Tsung's own agony was eclipsed with a thud and then silence.
They stared, energy dull, but focused on the motionless pit of flesh beneath them. Blood dripped down onto the fallen Shang Tsung and after an ugly pause where it was ready to strike the final blow, the entity deemed the body a corse. An object to obtain its souls from.
Ermac lowered with a satisfied mind and over the gaping hole that bleed out from Shang Tsung's right shoulder blade where he had been imapled by a staggeringly sharp blade of earth, the entity began to siphon the energy back into itself.
The dust had yet to settle. The blackening pool of blood recoiled from the earth beneath Ermac's feet.
"You fool!"
Shang Tsung latched to the foot of Ermac and raked the corpse to the ground to climb and the soul bound between them strengthened in their closeness. He lodged his fingers into the eye sockets of the entity and split wide the jaw like a cracked egg and began to freely pull the souls from it. This healed Shang Tsung quickly, even as Ermac's hand tugged on his life force as he reached for the souls within it.
It could see with the eyes of those it had absorbed. The wilderness of Shang Tsung's own eyes burned across the very being of Ermac and threatened it with complete extermination. Its life force being rapidly depleted and the breath of death like dust across its whole being, Ermac reached out with its mind, not to attack, but to think for the first time on its own.
Why do I demand to live when I know I do not?
I want to.
Like the great force of gravity, Ermac repelled Shang Tsung back and hoisted itself upright. The sorcerer could not be bound by its force, this staggering ability Ermac itself could not understand for no spirit within it held such power, only Ermac itself.
He watched Shang Tsung, his hands performed the ritual of power over peace and then reached like the talons of the eagle to draw the final breaths of the life within the entity.
Ermac realized this was about Shang Tsung's need to live too, but only one could make it out alive.
Only one.
"Given up already?" A smug grin stretched across the youthful sorcerer as he neared with each step and the link between them grew ever in his favor.
It could speak any language the souls within had ever uttered, but in this moment, he dared not speak at all. He broke the link and pushed back to scour within itself one final time before a great white light burst from the eyes of the entity.
In his heightened frenzy, Shang Tsung pulled back on Ermac as it expelled hundreds of life forces in a seemingly last ditch effort to escape. When the light settled and the dust beneath him caked with his own blood, Ermac was gone.
The sorcerer paused, the energy that now revitalized the blood that coursed through him, the spark of life that ignited his brain and the will he felt to live returned in full force, almost better than before.
He wiped his mouth clean of the caked blood from the fall and smiled.
"Now you understand what it means to be alive." adding, softly as if to himself, "when you're ready to finish this, I'll be waiting."
As music played within the soul of Shang Tsung, outside the beat of Skarlet's drum pumped from her heart and her steps ached, her bones cracked, and her flesh suffered, but her resolve was never stronger.
Outside on the tournament grounds, the area where Kotal Kahn would watch with Quan Chi from the comfort of the pagoda, she stepped onto the raised stone platform that played arena to thousands of lives lost.
The moon glanced back down at her, full and rising, just like her heart beat.
The Naknada were in an uproar and battle could be heard in the distance, but already covered in blood, she didn't pay the world around her any heed.
There was only one person she wished to bleed.
She knew he could see her, if not at least hear her.
"Ko'atal!"
The bloody mess of Skarlet stood at the arena, in the center of a war around her, but Rain marched with Kia and Tanya through a bursted hole in the palace wall that lead straight into the forest.
"We need to find Kitana and end her." He ordered.
"She had been spotted by the tomb of the Kytinn." Tanya added, "let's start there."
Kia nodded and together they slipped through the forest as a horde of the Naknada rushed in all directions to meet the many combatants that spilled from the spires.
He no longer cared about the Queen to be, or the tournament that never was, but the kingdom that would come. With the brotherhood of shadow behind him, Rain would seek and destroy the last remnant that could end his claim to power in Edenia.
Her eyes watched the six arms beasts pass around her, none at her. She was a blood witch and though beaten and broken, the blood she spilled just to reach this platform would be enough for her to end them. The chairs that held the likes of Quan Chi, Kotal Kahn, Shang Tsung, and Shao Kahn now empty and ready to fall to ruin. She was too, but a sound behind her snapped Skarlet awake.
She turned to see a vial of blood, the vial she carried around with her as reserve and even her dagger tossed at her feet.
Tossed by Kotal Kahn.
"The traitor." He shot first.
"I never betrayed you, which cannot be said of you to me." She bit back, and could see the hurt in his eyes, hidden behind the fires of rage and fortress of arrogance.
His hand clenched the crescent mace, a smaller weapon to match her dagger even as it dwarfed Skarlet's weapon still.
"I did what I must for–"
She cut him off quick and her words sharper than the blade that raised from a pool of blood to her hand. "Jade is dead!"
This cut him and she could feel him bleed, and the anger rise, and the fortress crumble ever so slightly.
She wasn't finished though, and Skarlet cut further as she spoke, "nothing will bring her back."
"Shang Tsung has corrupted your mind, Skarlet!"
"No. No one's corrupted me." She smiled inside, the blood that dripped down her face a mess to behold on as her inner beauty scarred the beaten form of the witch. "I don't need anyone anymore. Unlike you, I believe in myself for once."
At the peak of his boiling point, Kotal Kahn charged his former right hand. She met him, though smaller she was able to drag step left and slice him at the lower ribs. He covered and met her eye to eye again with that crescent mace come to meet her face as well.
The blood on her face split from flesh like a parasite escaped from the chest into Kotal's. He spat and recoiled, then as he missed her, she pushed herself back to create as much distance between the two.
She would not win against his strength, but if she were smart, she could beat him.
"Shao was a Kahn, you are just Quan Chi's bitch!"
The beach was beautifully lit for Raiden and his army to march across. Raiden, Nightwolf, and Sub-Zero at the helm, with Johnny Cage, Sonya, Smoke, and Jax close behind. The spires had erupted in combat and the war zone had pushed them from the confines of them to the open area where they could see the walls of the tournament grounds and palace better.
Raiden was surprised to find Liu Kang close the gap between wall and sand to meet them.
"What have you done, Liu Kang?"
"We must find and stop Quan Chi!" Liu Kang did not answer, but his words were spoke with great urgency.
"What is going on?" Sub-Zero demanded.
"Shang Tsung is free, and he is our only chance of getting out of here." Liu answered, but Raiden's ire only grew.
"That snake? You have acted on behalf of that revenant soul within you!" Raiden couldn't believe this.
"Again with your nonsense, Raiden!" Liu couldn't either.
"Okay, so let's just find some way out of here." Johnny Cage intervened, only to pull back from the cold stare of both men.
"Liu Kang is right, Raiden." Nightwolf did not fear that anger. "Though his path was not the best one to take, it may have been the only one to choose."
"I believe Shang Tsung has your human soul, Liu. He is the one we're after." Raiden continued, "not just Quan Chi."
"I will do what I can to cease the chaos." Nightwolf turned from the two, "we must act now."
"He understands, why don't you?" Liu shot at Raiden, but the eyes of the God shot back with anger.
"I trust you more than anyone, but I cannot abide the freedom of a snake like Shang Tsung." He added, "we must cease the battle first, then I will deal with him myself."
"Raiden!" His eyes reached out to the God as best he could, this madness within them that compelled them to bicker, to fight, and whether it was the darkness in him he felt in the presence of Shang Tsung, or the arrogance of a God unable to understand human plight, he needed this entity to listen. "Let the past die, kill it if you have to. I don't trust Shang Tsung anymore than you, but right now our only way out is through him. Trust me, not him."
He could see through Liu now, the revenant spirit still burdened in his mortal coil of flesh and bone. The version of Liu Kang he had murdered in a moment like this. He swore when they faced Kronika together not to fight again, and though he felt the rage build within him to strike Liu Kang, he felt his own darkness creep into him.
"I trust you." Cage offered.
"Likewise." Sonya added.
"We'll find a way together, but only if we trust each other fully." Sub-Zero warned. "Raiden, you must follow his lead."
"So be it." The god nodded, and reached for his friend beneath the skin of this timeline's Liu Kang. "I must let the past die, and let us forge a new future together."
Together, they marched, only to separate when the broken walls granted them entrance.
Inside the walls, the moon watched the battle closely with interest. Its great eye now stared as Skarlet had been caught and pinned by Kotal Kahn against the palace inner wall. With a forearm across her throat that pinned her against the red stone, and the other braced against it, he pushed tighter and tighter to squeeze the life from her.
With each gasp she lost the words she thought, the thoughts she grasped and the life she yearned. The moon watched her and she watched it, but as his breath fell upon her, and his rage beat from his heart like a beast, she tried desperately with her fingers scraped across his arm to escape.
A futile effort.
In her final moments he took this to answer her remarks, if not to her, for himself.
"I am not Quan Chi's slave." He pressed tighter just to hear her gurgle and croak. "I am a slave to my heart, something you never had!"
He shot her down, bang bang. Oxygen became a distant memory and the moonlight dimmed for Skarlet. Her struggle to survive scraped down from his arm and fell to her side with barely a lift to grasp.
She thought a howl creased the air and pierced her ears, but perhaps the delusion had begun as death crept into the hotels of her eyes. Only until a shadow mass swept Kotal Kahn and raked him across the tournament ground.
She fell into a mess of blood and bones. Her hands scraped across the rocks to collected at her throat and wipe the life back into them as she gasped for air.
The massive beast leapt at Kotal Kahn, whom had met it in the form of the panther.
Should she help Nightwolf as the two locked fangs into furred flesh?
Though he betrayed her, she couldn't help. Skarlet took her chance to slip away into the palace grounds where instead she would find Shang Tsung and Liu Kang to help take down Quan Chi, the reason for Kotal Kahn's madness.
He was already dead to her. That was good enough for now.