Her lips were red and cracked like the world beneath her. Dry and arid like the dunes around them, her flesh was dust and her blood boiled until a sauce that weighed her down. Still, as her body fought itself, it fought off another demon, then another. A dagger would cut and blood would cake her, but another would come, and they'd move on and forward, back, and around until no ground was covered bu the ever circling skeletal family of dissonance and destruction.
The toes of her right foot would pivot her body as the left traced back and turned with her waist until she was fully around and behind her only dust and bodies, only a horizon too far to imagine a world where war wasn't the universal constant.
Sareena was too scared to breathe, not to ingest the dust that she had many times having been born in the Netherrealm, but to relax and be caught off guard. Could she stop now? Could she finally just breathe?
"Stop." Fujin's voice carried across the wind of sand that peeled layers from her flesh.
When it settled and the storm moved on, there was only them and the bodies now being swept away or covered slowly by the sands of time.
"What are we doing?" She could barely speak, but if she could make out any words, these were what she heaved to the Earthrealm God.
Scorpion, Nightwolf, Fujin, Ashrah, and Sareena all gathered around finally able to face one another without threat of death.
Scorpion, the only one among them able to fight for eternity without exhaustion, looked to her and his pale eyes, almost like that of staring into the sun, saw right through her. Fujin's white eyes cast into her as well, but his had a gleam of empathy where Scorpion's did not.
"What must be done to stop Kotal Kahn." Fujin answered, but she shook her head, exhausted and unsatisfied with his answer.
"How?" She leaned up and stretched her broken body, "how does this stop someone out of reach of us?"
"She's right, God of Earthrealm." A voice, deep and scarily familiar broke their circle.
Each turned save for Scorpion, that could see the figure of the man he had slain.
Quan Chi stood outside of the circle and as the sands built around him with a gust of wind, he watched patiently until Fujin realized that the all the dunes in the Nethrrealm wouldn't bury this kind of dead.
"Quan Chi! How?" Sareena, startled, dropped into a right stance, lazy, exhausted, but any time she heard that voice, or saw this man, she promised herself his throat was hers to cut.
"He is a spirit." Scorpion explained.
"There are many levels of hell, and you have cracked several of them in an attempt to make as much noise as possible, Fujin, but you cannot reach Kotal Kahn." Quan Chi added, "as Sareena said, he is beyond your reach."
"Explain." Ashrah glared, the power that still pushed back at her from the very spirit of this sorcerer was strong enough to cripple her spine with adrenaline.
"He has passed the gates. Our fate is now in his hands." Quan Chi responded, but his eyes remained on the God and only him.
"I had desired to incur the wrath of the wraith that claims to rule hell itself," Fujin continued, "only it could still bring us to him."
"The wraith cannot and would never help you." Quan Chi assured, "just as I could not."
"Then why bother us?" Nightwolf pushed forward, he was not amused by the vile spirit, and had to feel for himself.
He reached through the sorcerer's right shoulder and the energy that crackled and tingled around Nightwolf's bones burned him enough to recoil quickly and hiss with disgust at the dark spirit.
"You linger when you should have been returned to the Great Spirit."
Quan Chi finally addressed Nightwolf, "I will never rest, but my motives have changed."
"You tried to stop him?" Fujin pondered.
"Yes. When I died, I had seen everything I had done wrong and how I had done it wrong. I could hear everything from the living and the world above and around." He admitted finally, "I was wrong to seek the hour glass from Raiden to all existence. However, I am not the only one that seeks an alternative to Raiden's tampering with time."
This went over the heads of Ashrah and Sareena, unable to understand the depth of this conversation, but they understood as much as the others that glossed over the previous in order to rush to the immediate conclusion.
"Who do you speak of?" Fujin asked, but he could only think of Quan Chi.
"It is an evil as old as time itself, and that is where you will find Kotal Kahn." Quan Chi added, "as I said, our fate is now in his hands, God of Earthrealm, so return to your realm."
He was right. Nightwolf peered back at Fujin and Scorpion and in the whites of their eyes he could see that a fight here was futile and all they could hope was the warnings they gave Kotal Kahn could finally get through to him. If not, well, time itself would end.
"You are so right." Fujin approached Quan Chi.
A God, Fujin reached and clenched the robes of the sorcerer tight, able to pull him from the spirit realm into physical, but as Quan Chi felt the excitement of blood rush back into him, so to did he feel the fire not far behind and the wind rush through his veins as the power of this God infused the two as one and the same element.
Scorpion, grappled with the other hand had also felt the swirl of violence within his being. Quan Chi stared into those white eyes as they blackened and veined with life just as his did.
"However," Fujin leaned in, "your wish to end all existence shall come true. For you!"
The spirit began to waiver, wither, and spiral in the flame and wind that rushed around him and encased he and Scorpion together until all that remained as the last flicker and lick of flame was a man in Scorpion's attire fallen to his knees.
"It is done." Fujin glanced down at Hanzo, a hand drawn out to aid him.
Sareena pulled away from the flame and the wind, the violence and the volatile nature around them. She tugged Nightwolf and Ashrah with her.
As one man's rain became another man's famine, she pondered what exactly all of this meant for her and the fate of the realms.