"He thinks he knows. Who he is, what's to come." She spoke softly in the darkness, "he has no idea.
Rain lead the march into the forest. The small patch of trees and swamp that cornered the palace and Shokan lair. From a distance, it could be seen that Tanya could outpace him, impatient, and needing resolve, but but her steps shadowed his. Kia behind them both watched all around, but she would never see what's coming for them. None of them could.
None of them knew what to look for.
"The seal isn't far." Tanya barked at Rain who had gotten several trees ahead and watched the burnt light of a pagoda crumble by the palace walls. "That's not the way!"
"This is the way." Rain demanded.
"How can you tell?"
"I can smell her perfume." He stopped to slip on the gold and purple veil, barely protective of his face, but good enough for the thick and thorny brush they must push forth to reach the pagoda across the swamp.
The trees cluttered and hugged together around the creases of viscous water. The path turned and twisted like a gnarled branch with only that dim fire light to illuminate the way, but how far it was and how long it would to reach could be two different things.
Close behind, perched from above, it could be seen that Tanya was hesitant to follow. She knew the way to the Kytinn seal and Kia followed her, but Rain kept ahead. If they were to truly consider him Prince, they'd follow blindly, but she finally stopped as they neared a broken bridge neither trusted to cross safely.
"You're going the wrong way." She hissed.
"You don't tell me what to do. I know she's here. I can sense it." He searched for the usurper Kitana, but though his senses did tell him otherwise, he began to feel Tanya may be right.
He dare not show it to her.
Blood and combat filled the air. The sounds of beasts roared and howled in the distance and all the same the hiss of the wind through the trees shouted into their ears. Even in the forest they were not welcome, but Tanya swore the true heir to the throne had been hiding here where no mortal soul dared venture.
"You were wrong." He snapped at her and closed the gap between them.
"You are stupid. Kitana is hiding amongst the dead. Not out in the forests." Tanya barked back, she would not be spoken down to. "You don't listen, Blind King."
Crack!
Hiss!
The idle wilds of the forest raised their voices as the two argued. it invigorated the forest to see them fight, the leaves shook and the wind screamed in rejoice of the violence to come. Tanya and Rain stopped to watch as though the wind swept above them, the cackling of bark and branches was lower to the ground.
"It's her." He was sure.
Kia turned her back to them and took the vantage point of the forest depth. Not too far off would be the entrance to the palace garden and just around that corner to it would be the Shokan's lair. Though not a long distance, the trees cluttered and seemingly moved and the scenery seemed different every time.
"It's nothing." She assured them.
As she turned to face Tanya, a mass swept her from her feet and knocked her against the cold bark of a large ancient tree with the carved face of a man that glared back down at her. She stumbled to her knees and screamed as the bark raked across her back, shredded cloth and skin like both were paper.
Rain and Tanya were now alert, but to what?
"There!" Tanya pointed and they raced to follow the nothing into the forest as brush and branches broke and pushed apart.
Kia was close behind, a cloud of black smoke faster than foot, but even as the shadow itself, could not decipher the creature they followed.
Faster!
Faster!
It moved with speed in the dense foliage and seemed to hop from to tree to tree, only showing itself in the form of claw marks that spat from the bark to their faces.
"Reptile!" Rain figured it out, but that knowledge didn't bring them any closer to the creature.
"He's trying to lure us into a trap!" Tanya knew better and tried to stop, but Rain wouldn't.
Forced to follow they lunged forth toward the creature in Kia's shadow cloud.
Lost in a wilderness of pain, all the trees stared on like they were insane. They've waited for so long to be stained in blood that they practically parted the way and unknotted the kinks to make something of a highway for the three. Let the Prince ride the King's Highway.
Free of the brush, Reptile manifested his true form only for the a split second. Enough for Rain to see him jump from the trees to the clearing ahead where, upon entry, they stopped dead in their tracks.
"Stop!" Rain demanded.
Before them, the seal of the Kytinn at the center of the clearing.
Get here. . .
They could hear the wind through the trees hiss to them.
We'll do the rest. . .
What the wind told them and rambled on, they could not hear but the seal too called to them.
"She's inside." Tanya urged and pushed ahead of the two.
Rain moved ahead of her and readied to lift the seal. "Watch out for Reptile. He's watching us."
Kia took watch, Tanya merely watched Rain, the impatient Prince as he slowly lifted the seal near forty five degrees wide to stare down the maw of darkness.
He stared back into the nothing.
This is the end of your elaborate plans.
What stared back was darkness, a void he wasn't as sure to enter as Tanya urged of him.
He didn't need motivation.
The only thing he saw before a hand snaked out to pull him into the void was a great maw of jagged, pointed teeth.
Swallowed whole by the seal of the Kytinn, Rain vanished within and the metal closed tight above him.
Reptile's form emerged from above the two vile traitors. From on high, the acid that raced through his throat would spill down on them like rain.
The pit below, the spikes that reached up for him, the ground stained in the dead, an all too familiar sight for Johnny Cage as he and Sonya, Jax just a step ahead of them reached the teetering stone bridge.
One each end a small cavern, a recess of safety, but the bridge itself was thin and wavered from the howling wind. One one end, Quan Chi finally emerged from hiding. Of all the places, Cage though, of all the people to appear before, why them?
"You're not a God." Quan Chi answered. "Nor a champion." He added with a smug grin, "neither of you equal to that of the Lin Kuei, or the Shirai Ryu."
"No one asked your opinion." Jax readied his gun.
"You're entire life is just wasted potential." Quan Chi always had to have the last say, but the screaming of the skulls that emerged from the sides of the bridge roared over him at the mortals.
"We're not that easy to kill." Sonya aimed with Jax and together began to fire upon the grey skinned sorcerer.
Cage with kick and punch after hit and strike knocked the skeletons into the pit and as the green vapor cleared, Quan Chi was nowhere to be seen.
"Do you or don't you want me to make you?" His voice echoed within Cage's skull.
The actor turned to find the frail form of the sorcerer behind him. Spiked armor on his shoulders, his flesh painted and dressed for combat.
One quick look back at the tournament grounds, Kotal Kahn and Nightwolf tore at one another in the form of their animal spirits. Scorpion fought to reach the bridge through the mob of Naknada by the fiery forge. Quan Chi would have little time to sweep the three off their feet and cut Raiden's forces in half before he could even–
Forget that thought. A bolt of lightning shattered the rocky recess behind Quan Chi and reformed as the God of Thunder.
"Well played." Quan Chi nodded to Cage.
"Can't take us all, little bitch." Jax capped, Sonya aimed.
"Of course not." He agreed, but his posture was not that of a surrendering man. He stood his ground and waited as Raiden slowly approached as he knew the God would.
As the specter broke the barrier of guards, Raiden engaged Quan Chi. Johnny Cage flanked him with the God as Sonya and Jax backed away to the recess at the other end of the bridge, the only stable pillar left.
"Get over here!"
Scorpion threw the chain and spear for Quan Chi and the point rapidly crossed the distance between them.
Clink!
Held in place, even for a moment, Cage was lodged between the spear and Quan Chi. His punishment for betraying the sorcerer.
Raiden reached out as the sorcerer vanished. Scorpion held the chain still until Raiden could stabilize his Cage. Once free, he pulled back and vanished into flame.
Jax let Sonya race ahead, following close behind, but too late to close the gap. Meters away, the bridge began to crumble.
Beneath them the jagged limbs of skeletal hands tore at the fabric of the bridge's stone pillars. It would take them with it.
"Get us out of there Raiden!" Sonya reached over the collapse of stone with her voice, but the howling of the dead lifted higher than she could.
Raiden slumped with Cage, and what could be seen from the distance, a deep and precise cut between the second and third rib.
The crumbling grew and the cracks reached from the God and the dying Johnny Cage just as fast as they darted like snakes to Jax and Sonya, Raiden had a choice to make.
Splintered beneath them, the pillars gave way to the grasping hands of the dead.
The light emitted from the God eclipsed the sight Liu Kang and Kung Lao had as they raced from the other direction of the forge to the bridge. Having come from the warriors shrine, they raced across the ancient wood steps barely secured to the cliff face of the island, but the sight before them, the light, the dust, and the stone that withered down into the green mist gave them no hint of where Raiden and the others had gone, assuming they survived.
"Rain. Prince of the bog of eternal stench." Kitana emerged from the darkness with a lit torch.
"Usurper!" He lunged forth but the maw closed fast at him inches from his face.
A mutilated version of Kitana pushed him back into a carapace corpse of burnt Kytinn.
"Mileena. My sister." Kitana handed the torch to the half-tarkatan, half-Edenian. "Heir to the throne should I should to take it after my father."
He couldn't believe his ears, his eyes, any of this.
"What do you want?" His hands were up quick as the fire was held in his face.
Kitana lowered Mileena's reach to pull the fire from Rain.
"The punishment for treason is death." Kitana remembered, save for her own. "but you serve under Kotal Kahn, don't you?"
"No! Yes!"
"Which is it?" Mileena aimed the fire closer.
"It's complicated." Rain preferred the middleground, but the flames chose for him, "yes! Fine, I have been serving under Ko'atal up until recently."
"When you chose to betray him for power, I'm sure." Kitana could figure it all out, the words written plainly on that arrogant face. "You just want something for yourself, but Edenia isn't it. Outworld isn't it."
A sudden scream jolted the flame closer. Above them they could hear combat and the breaking of the trees.
"Tanya will betray you just like you do everyone else. You don't exactly exude leadership abilities, Rain." Kitana moved past the flame to press his chin in her squeezing hand and scrutinize the once proud Prince.
"What do you want?" He gritted out, and she slapped that veil from his face.
"Leave my father alone. He made you Prince and you weren't happy with that. Grow up." Her eyes cut into his through the shadow of the fire behind them. She meant to kill him should he allow her.
No words need be spoken. She didn't want to hear another from him. He nodded and slinked back from her as the seal lifted.
"We're done here." Kitana turned to Mileena and together lifted with Reptile's help out of the dark hole.
Rain?
As he reached out, he was sealed back in with only the torch and the cackling of carapaces around him.
By the warmth of the forge, Sonya, Jax, Kung Lao, Liu Kang, and Raiden surrounded Johnny Cage. Raiden knelt with him, a hand on the wound to heal as best he could, but the wound to deep and Scorpion's aim too precise.
"I can't heal you completely here, I need to take you back to Earthrealm." Raiden pressed his palm against Cage's ribs.
"Take him. We'll get Quan Chi." Liu Kang knelt with Raiden. "Shang Tsung will get us out of here."
"We all get out of this alive." Kung Lao added.
Cage smiled. What little he knew of them, for all the hell he'd caused and been through, for anyone to look after him was all he wanted. To be good enough.
He took Raiden's hand as the God pardoned the group to allow them to travel through the lightning that slowly rolled in from the storm clouds above.
With no desire to let go, Raiden held this man's hand tight to save him from the hell that surrounded them and reached for the sky with his eyes as streaks of lightning reached up to meet the lines that cast down at them.
Raiden looked down into Cage's eyes, a knowing smile that this man could surprise him so, even in this timeline, but soon horror as the green aura of Quan Chi's skeletons reached out from the depths of hell to pull Cage into the forge with them. The others were quickly expelled with the explosion of the metal structure. The lightning strike only fuel for the explosion.
What remained of Cage covered them. What remained of the rest scattered around Raiden.