Edenia.
A lush realm of planets, stars, a universe all its own much like all other universes and dimensions, realms as the Gods call them.
Far from the capital and lost along the thin line of the planet's equator, a desert laid out much like on Earth(realm) that would be considered Africa. Here, different continents, but where the heat goes never changes.
Here in the orange sands where only the heat grows, sparse remnants of ancient civilizations still reached for the Edenian sun and slowly over time continued to be buries by speck after microscopic speck of sand.
At one of these last bastions of a culture suffocated by the dry heat, a man adorned in simple white linen and silks, a hood and cloth wrap to protect his face found himself at the foot of ancient columns and ruins of a long dead culture.
He was told it was a city that once worshipped the protector of Edenia. What that meant to him was nothing, but all the signs pointed to this one spot that he must dare travel to find.
Cracks and crevices, jagged cuts and smoothed stone all awaited him as he slowly began to climb the first column of three remaining. The third one, the middle one still adorned a statue at the top whereas the others had cracked and fallen at some point in time. One of those statues still reached out of the sand like the hand of a God desperate to find humanity as it was buried in hell.
Crack after crack, nook and cranny he climbed and the heat baked his dark flesh and the linen blew with the faint wind, like the planet itself could barely breathe. Still he moved further up and higher along the column until the dunes of the desert looked like ripples in a woman's veil as she laid before him.
At the halfway point, his fingers bled and his flesh cracked. The skin that traced up to his elbow seemed as parched as the fabric that loosely fit him. The light purple silk around his face to protect from the sand and wind hung off one side and with one slip of his foot flew off into the wind.
It took minutes to regain his footing on the crevice of the almost roman like column of white stone that had been yellowed and chipped away at by thousands of years of the planet simply moving on past civilization. He glared up at the flat surface, the pillar had two outcroppings that would allow him to either jump up or maneuver somehow to reach and pull himself over onto, what appeared to rival a plateau above him, the statue itself at the center.
His thoughts moved to the sweat that beaded down his body and faded with the sun almost as soon as it pulled free from him. All water would evaporate, and he took this as a warning that the most difficult path forward was the only one he could take.
One arc past, the reach for the edge was nearly too long a stretch to keep himself attached to the column, but by the pale straining of his knuckles he was able to swing outward and then grasp for life for it meant death to fall.
Once atop the column that stood nearly a hundred meters out to the sky, he peered out to the others. The middle statue, still mostly complete was that of a woman adorned like he, in robes head to toe and her face covered heavily to protect. From the harsh light of day.
Here, though the statue had been cut half way and only jagged edges remained of a man's back, the feet alone were the size of him and he moved between them where the statue stood on sandals and its robes still hung heavy as if the God were still wearing them.
Beyond the columns only traces of stones that made ruins of the past civilization still peered out from the sand. What was left had long suffocated, now as he looked out to the world around him all he could see were tiny dunes and tiny cracks in the earth of orange and yellow with no sign of green or blue save for the sky itself.
As he turned from the edge of the column's flat top, a shadow emerged from atop the old statue's right foot and two figures formed from it.
Tanya, the Edenian, and Kia of the Netherrealm.
"You couldn't help me up?"
"Why would we help you, Rain?" Tanya hopped down from the foot of the statue and looked out beyond the Edenian. "Quan Chi told me a place like this existed, but didn't tell me where."
"Quan Chi is gone, and rightfully so."
"No arguments there. Piss off all the realms, and you get what's coming to you."
"So what am I to find here?"
Tanya gazed at the broken statue, at the one slowly chipped away at and the far end even in worse condition than the first. Her glance back to Rain and Kia were hopeless and all she could do to respond was shrug.
She had an inkling, he could see it in her eye, but perhaps her disdain for him would be why she had kept it hidden for so long. There were no answers to gain from her, nor Kia. All of the questions thrown at him would have to be answered here among the absolute ruins.
If it were possible, he felt a rumble beneath his feet, and not just from the stone column, but it stretched all the way down to the ground itself. Faint at first, quite subtle and he nearly ignored it as just being unsteady, but Tanya and Kia acknowledged it as well and together they moved to the edge to peer down as the dunes themselves did ripple.
Suddenly as if the column were a mere tooth pick, it began to move like something beneath the blanket of the hot desert moved under it and shifted each column, each stone. The yellow and orange ripples that stretched out as far as the eye could see started to burn red and white beneath the column and after a moment of disbelief a white hot and red flaming hand with eagle-like talons scraped at the foot of the column.
Kia and Tanya were quick to dissipate into the shadow. Rain, left behind, dropped down to brace himself atop this great pillar and watched as the sand itself burned into glass as a red dragon of pure heat and fire emerged to climb the column. The body stretched half the size of the column and climbed with ease. Rain rushed to the foot of the statue's toes and waited as the flaming head of the dragon peered over and its white hot maw parted until even the sun had been swallowed by its greatness.
In a flash the heat that now threatened to peel and pick away at his flesh faded into a the figure of a man adorned in red and black, in what must be hot leather and linen. Unscathed by the harsh heat, the man approached, bald with a blackened goatee and a red dragon symbol etched on the cloak that swayed when the wind finally picked up between them.
"I've waited many years for you, brother."
Perplexed, the man was of tan, but lighter skin tone than him and looked nothing like him. He wore leather boots that reached almost to his knees and beyond that, breeches that were loose fitting and black, a red tunic of linen and the cloak was black and red of linen and leather. He was big and his shoulders broad.
"I've awakened earlier than expected, Taven, and now that I've found you, I will kill you."
"I am not Taven." Rain, uncertain spat back, and remained at the foot of the statue.
"You don't fool me, I am a half-god, just like you. You can feel it, can't you? We are bonded in blood."
The burning in his flesh was not the sun though he originally thought, but a strange pulse that he had only felt in the presence of this man. He shook it off, unamused and ready to leave this entire useless journey behind him.
"This has been a waste of my time it seems," Rain remarked as he finally stepped away from the statue and toward the man that had stopped half away to meet him. "If you want to fight, then we can do that."
"That's what I've waited seventeen years for."
"I am Rain, Prince of Edenia, and your executioner."
Rain reached for his right arm, unarmed and otherwise with no means to hide a weapon until what little liquid he pulled from his body forged a punching dagger, known as a katar. With the hot metal gripped and that arm weakened by the melting sun, he dodged the first few strikes before he'd consider an offense.
"You are my brother, though you may not be Taven." The man couldn't land a single blow on Rain, something he'd never expect of a mere mortal. "I am Daegon, of the Red Dragon Clan."
"Red Dragon? What, you ripping off Kano?"
Rain spat and stabbed up with a right thrust that would have pierced anyone else, but Daegon had covered, a defensive maneuver that pivoted him around and then landed the first blow to Rain with his the club like bone of his broad elbow.
Rain was forced back, staggered and nearly found himself at the edge of the column, but he returned and recovered to slash at his enemy yet again.
The Prince of Edenia lunged again, but in his reach to pierce Daegon's heart with the katar, he pulled himself too far into measure and Daegon was ready with a big black boot to the gut, then a punt to the head when Rain went down to a knee. The dagger was lost to him, fallen off the column and dissipated as the water that forged it evaporated before it could even fall a foot down.
"You have our father's blood, but not my mother's." Daegon stepped on Rain's chest and instead of a simple kill shot, he peered down at the body that writhed beneath him to understand it, even just for a moment. "You are the Son of Argus though, that of it I can feel."
"So, your father was an unfaithful God! Means nothing to me!" Rain grabbed at Daegon's boot and breeches, but the force the half-God pressed down on him with was greater than he could use to trip him.
"Do it. Turn into water and let the sun swallow you whole." Daegon teased. "You'll do me a favor."
"You wish!" He spat up at Daegon's face, the saliva smacked the goatee and the man then wiped the stone surface with Rain's body and kicked him off the column entirely. Rain could only think of how stupid it was to do that as he began the long fall to the sand and his death.
He turned around in the air, watched as Daegon peered over the ledge. Dissipate into the sun? Let the ground swallow him instead? Choices.
A third one he did not consider was the shadow that opened like a nightmarish maw with blackened fangs that devoured Rain moments before death. When his eyes could see any form of light, Kia had emerged from the shadow formation and backed herself against Tanya.
He was in a small room, dirty and still somewhere in the deserts, but safe.
"Find what you were looking for?" Tanya pondered.
"So it seems." Rain responded, uncertain and caught in the headlights of adrenaline.
The half-god Prince of Edenia.
"So it seems." He repeated with a thin stretch of his lips as he came to a slow realization.