What is it we truly, as living things, desire? Is it merely to exist? Life is meaningless, the cycle expects us to grab a shovel and dig our own graves, but it is merely an autonomous cycle that cannot be broken, never, and never can it be given meaning.
As he stared back at her across the fire, he pondered that question deeper and deeper within the dark confines of his mind, and where he'd say his heart resided. Why did Kotal Kahn feel the passion to find and restore this one person, one, but not the only to have gripped his heart so?
As he looked into the fire he could see the irises of Shao Kahn stare back at him and laugh. Come the day he would have slain Ashrah and Jade for Shao Kahn, but now he would slay himself just for the chance.
Or could he really?
"Who were you just now?" She broke his concentration and the flame cackled as his eyes lifted up from it.
"When does the portal open?" He stared back, all he could do to wait was to sit and stare, and think.
"The first gate into the deeper planes of the Netherrealm must be opened with a ritual." She answered and continued, her voice low, the fire almost drowned her out. "I must call upon the spirit guide in my native tongue and if the oracle believes you to be worthy, it will show itself and guide you to the first gate into hell."
"When?"
"Close your eyes."
Around them looked like desert, just red cracked earth and dunes of red and tan sand that formed hills and valleys. If he didn't think any better, he'd have thought he was in Arizona, Utah, Nevada, anywhere in the desert of Earth Realm. He bit his tongue and nodded, then leaned back against the warm sand as his feet burned next to the fire and his eyes drifted shut.
She began to whisper, a mantra, a chant, he didn't know the native tongue of the Netherrealm, but not far into her vocalizations it began to drown in the flame and the two were one and the same.
What felt like forever weighed on him as he grew more and more impatient as she cackled with the fire at him, or so he began to think. His lids bunched and he pulled himself from the dirt to glare at her, but Ashrah was gone and the fire ceased into sand.
Kotal Kahn stood and peered over the dunes. Several days journey behind him would be the village they left, and several days ahead, he knew nothing of what awaited him. All he could see was sand and the red haze of hell's atmosphere.
No guide.
No spirit.
Impatient, he stomped from the vacant camp that dissipated like a mirage, Kotal Kahn chose to move north, the direction they had been traveling, or at least the direction Ashrah assured him he should travel in.
The dunes fell as wind, like hands, brushed over the petty fragile sand, but no spirit, and no guide reached out to him.
Still, unmoved by rejection, Kotal Kahn marched through the wind and the sand.
You think you know who you are, what's to come–
Kotal Kahn slashed the thoughts from his head as the foreign voice broke his concentration and forced him to look around with impatience. No eyes started back, no lips whispered through he wind at him, and no silhouette held still against the red backdrop of hell.
A thousand steps he could have taken, and willing to take a thousand more, his feet carried him as far as his body would allow. Dune after dune and speck of sand in his eye after tiny little speck until his feet, sore and muscles tense pulled him down to one knee like a hand in the wind that grabbed him and threatened to swallow him into the petty red dune he stood upon.
He looked around one last time and could see no one. As his body collapsed he awoke to the fire still at his feet, but Ashrah was nowhere to be seen.
Sat in her place a Jaguar sat. Out of place in his mind yet even here in hell it blended with the yellow and red of the fire, the haze of the world around them, but the black of its fur, like eyes stared back at him and drew him to them.
His first instinct was to rush to his feet, for though he was the big cat, this was no big cat.
The Jaguar sat, patient, and watched as he pulled himself to his feet. Once satisfied with his posture, the Jaguar took his eyes in to its own and began to move across the desert, Kotal Kahn could only follow.
So his feet marched on, just as it did as his eyes were shut. The big cat's shoulder blades moved like the dunes as its body swayed to and fro with each step. Fluid motions and a grace Kotal Kahn admired, but could not replicate.
Step after step, dune after dune the Jaguar carried Kotal Kahn's feet forward day after day and night after night with no rest, and no promise to stop. It was only when he had reached his limit and could move on no further did the big cat turn to look at him for the first time in almost a week of traveling and stopped.
I can bring you no further.
Ashrah's voice spoke through the wind.
The Jaguar sat silent and kept Kotal's eyes deep within its own. Never stray, Kotal Kahn, or he would lose himself.
Our time together ends here, for I cannot meet you at the second gate.
"Where is the first?" He asked, but the cat would not answer and the wind fell silent.
You must look away. No alien to this realm may see the way through.
He turned, and sought the dunes behind them as the big cat let out a low growl and moved onward. As the haze settled and the blurred vision that scraped his eyes from days of heat and exhaustion, Kotal Kahn began to form an image in the distance.
He blinked, focused and realized that this was no mirage of his own concoction, but a silhouette cast against a dune a mile out from them.
Jade.
"No." A growl turned him from the silhouette.
The Jaguar was gone and no door had opened. No portal, no magic, and no way forward but sand. What did appear before him was a woman, dark of skin and panted along her body with the woad of her tribe. Fabric stretched loosely to cover her and her dark hair fell like the sand beneath her feet, knotted and tied like the dunes the sand formed.
"Take me through."
Her eyes would not meet his, but she stared upon him and her presence pressed harshly on his shoulders.
"Death is your gift."
"Death?"
"Is your gift."
He motioned forward, she stepped back and growled like the Jaguar.
"No! No forward, only back."
Behind him, the silhouette appeared again over the horizon, but this time the dunes faded into a red abyss of nothing. It beckoned him. The silhouette as he moved closer with each painful step began to form the shape of the one thing he sought more than anything else.
"Jade!"