Each body lay as still as a garden through the temple grounds of the Lin Kuei. Limbs slack and eyes up to the sky or the stained ceilings, each with a blank expression glossed over pale faces. Some, the snow had already begun to reclaim, and the ones inside, only their shadows moved in the flicker of candle light.
Beyond the mountain gate, past the courtyard and the many stone steps into the temple, a shadow moved swift and swerved from body to body as a clear path was for it. In the grandmaster's room, where Sub-Zero lived and would entertain guests, expound teachings upon the Lin Kuei, the shadow finally reached for the light of the real world and began to shape itself.
First to emerge were the claws of a sickle that aided in the dark creature's push up from the depths of the void. Almost resemblant of the dead behind it, the shadow beckoned forth into the candle lit room and stepped from the pool of oil like viscus shadow that dripped and steamed off its very being. Once the portal had closed, the sickle was suck deep within its left shoulder as a place to rest as it searched the grandest room of the temple for the greatest of prizes.
Its entire being was a dark as a black hole, the very void of time and space itself come to claim the Lin Kuei's grandmaster as it had his followers. However, one glisten of moonlight and fire in its eyes helped to see that Sub-Zero had long gone from this place that very evening.
Without hesitation it turned back to the sliding door of bamboo and rice paper and opened to the hall that contained the shadows of the dead risen in its wake.
The newest members of the Brotherhood of Shadow.
Far away in another realm, Kitana pushed Mileena into a private hall far from the barracks and the guests in the palace. Mileena hissed and brandished her newly obtained sais and pushed back.
"What is wrong with you?" Kitana spat. "Haven't I given you everything?"
"You have done nothing for me!" Mileena hissed. "Nothing but hold me back with lies and treat me like a child!"
"I've done none of the sort!" Kitana added, "you are my blood!"
"Like Sindel was?" Mileena contended.
Kitana could feel her blood boil. If only she could strike her with no recourse. How was it in this universe everyone's first reaction to anything was to fight. War and bloodshed was the norm in Outworld, seemed like it in Osh-Tekk and Earthrealm too.
The eyes of her sister, no, she stared back into her own eyes above the red line of Tarkatan rage that was her great and fearsome maw and tried desperately not to see the Mileena of a previous timeline. The Mileena too many pasts.
Before she could speak Kitana was pulled from the privacy of the small hall between the training ground and palace by yet another commotion.
"This conversation isn't over." Kitana could only hold this moment on pause, but for how long? She knew as well as it did in her that Mileena's blood boiled with rage, and even more so perhaps for her with the twisted Tarkatan rage that coursed like blood through her sister. Could she contain this construct? Could she contain herself? Was it time all things began to topple not just for her, but for Outworld itself?
Kitana hoped for news of Kotal Kahn's return.
Mileena watched her sister in blue leave her yet again alone in the pit of her own confusion and insanity.
As he passed through the empty space, Kotal Kahn felt as though the sun had bared down upon him brightly overhead and his strength surged, blood coursed, and his eyes deceived him.
The old throne room of Shao Kahn awaited him on the other side. The bones melted into stone and iron, the misshapen construct of power he sat upon and the demon lord himself sat upon it. Those red eyes gazed down on the flesh of Kotal Kahn, baked in the radiant sun cast down from seemingly nowhere as the ceiling above them which would otherwise be a large arch of stone was just darkness, save for the single ray of light that illuminated the Osh-Tekk.
"Shao Kahn." Ko'atal addressed him, though deceased for many ages, he was still once a holder of that title and should be addressed as such.
"Ko'atal." Shao Kahn did not return the gesture.
For a long pause as Kotal Kahn stepped further from the ray of light and toward the center of the throne room where he and Goro had knelt many times before Shao Kahn, the former ruler of Outworld stared and measured the current one.
Almost still as a the throne itself, Shao Kahn's glare penetrated the Osh-Tekk like a sword through his ribs. No twitch of his fingers, no kick of his feet, no pulse of blood or motion of breath. Shao Kahn sat like a statue to the past.
"Where am I?" Kotal Kahn looked and realized this room, despite the shadowed ceiling was not entirely as he remembered.
There were changes to the walls and structure itself. Stone pillars that were never there, art that depicted the tournament that had lead Kotal Kahn to this very moment with Raiden and his Earthrealm warriors defeated with Shao Kahn, Goro, and Shang Tsung victorious, Kitana and Mileena at their side.
"You're in hell. The Netherrealm to be exact." Shao Kahn was frank with him, and Kotal Kahn grimaced at the plain, but obvious response.
"I have fought my way through hell and back, passed the oracles and gates of hell and time to reach this place! I demand to see Jade." Ko'atal too raced to the point as bluntly as Shao Kahn had with him.
Shao Kahn twisted his lips into a wry smile and like Kotal Kahn remembered many years ago, bellowed a great hearty and laugh at the Osh-Tekk's expense.
"You're still trying to win?" Shao Kahn pondered.
Kotal Kahn boiled over and lunged for the throne. No guards stopped him and no movement from Shao Kahn urged him to change his course. As he reached for his great nemesis, the murderer of Jade, he fell and planted his own skull against the throne. His body toppled over itself and he peeled back the flesh from iron to see Shao Kahn at the center of the room.
"It's official, you suck." His nemesis folded those massive arms and relished the sight of failure.
In the meeting hall of the palace Kitana pushed through the great portal doors into chaos. Discourse amongst her army and the guests, with the three traitors at the center of it all.
She rushed through and pushed past body after body until she was at the center. Fujin held Rain by the collar and handled him like a child as the Tarkatans, Osh-Tekk, and Shokan screamed for blood. The other two, Kia and Tanya were barricaded by the alliance, Nightwolf, Hanzo, and Sonya Blade.
Ermac widened the gap for Kitana as she pushed her way through, Outworld and those of the alliance alike were pressed by a force manifested in green light so that Kitana could hold the stage.
"Explain this Fujin?" She bypassed Ermac for the Deity behind it.
"He is my prisoner now, his fate will be tied to mine." He gripped Rain's collar tighter and pushed him like a bad dog before Kitana. "Do you have any qualms with that judgment?"
She couldn't. She could't speak immediately and she couldn't even bare the sight of the Edenian prince. She looked at the other two and the eyes of the alliance, then back at her collective and threw her arms in defeat. Mileena, Fujin, Rain, all of this crumbled around her and now the cracks began to form. It was like the tournament all over again, but this time, was her only chance to make the right decision.
"No." She chose, at the disgruntlement of her allies, but Rain's pain beneath Fujin's grasp was not an unpleasant sight. "I know you'll reform him."
"Or I'll break him." Fujin jested and squeezed the Edenian prince at the neck until Kitana's forced were satisfied with the decision.
As for Kia and Tanya, a good question for another time.
"Return to your stations, I will deal with all of this." She ordered and though hesitation flared, she still had the presence to pull Outworld beneath her.
As bodies began to pile out of the meeting hall, she gestured Reptile forth and together stepped up to the throne where she'd sit and a great and disturbing conversation would begin.
"Have you met with Liu Kang?" She asked, her temple rubbed raw with frustration.
"No." Bluntly, Fujin replied and the mere thought that the deity would seek Rain over Liu almost pushed Kitana from the throne.
As the palace emptied and the soldiers, generals and followers fled to their respective rank and holds, a hole opened like a widened maw at the center of the courtyard. It took only moments before being noticed by a small horde of Tarkatan. They gathered, hurried and one rushed past to warn the others, of what they didn't know.
The hole was a shadow in the ground itself, like a black hole that absorbed all light and no matter nor energy could enter nor escape alive, only darkness and only shadow. What did eventually spill was a smog, a sort of miasma that bleed like fog from the edges of the void. Those that turned away to escape it found only the shadows that awaited them quietly from behind.
The fallen, the shadow soldiers struck quiet and fast and as quickly as the void had erupted, so too had war within palace. The noise now like a storm that bellowed from the ground and shook the highest top of the towers.
From the floor of his cell, Hotaru peered down through the only thin line of a window allowed to that floor and watched as the darkness culled and order was established amongst them. The door was opened, not just for his cell, but the tower staircase was now his to descend and quickly he did, the shadow fast ahead of him.
Kotal Kahn approached Shao Kahn. He reached through the old ruler of Outworld. His hand passed through the illusion of life like it would through a ray of light. Once retracted there were no lasting effects, just his hand, and Shao Kahn before him.
"What kind of sorcery is this?" He dwelled on this thought and Quan Chi came to mind, but Shao Kahn quickly dispelled.
"I am no spirit, Ko'atal." Outworld's past answered.
Shao Kahn reached for Kotal Kahn's chin in an almost delicate gesture to touch him. Kotal Kahn recoiled in disgust, the concept of the illusion still not ingrained in his mind as the fingers never touched even as they passed along his flesh and blended Shao Kahn down into the form of Sindel.
"Pathetic Osh-Tekk, I am beyond your understanding." She shared Shao Kahn's arrogance and smirk. If she could squeeze his chin she would, but her fingers passed through and instead, her form circled him. "You call yourself ruler of Outworld? I've ruled two realms and returned from the dead, you couldn't even save your lover."
Kotal Kahn reared his elbow into the chest of the figment and as he turned toward her, the entity was behind him. Again, unable to touch him, and he unable to touch it.
"If you've done it, then Jade can." He caught the words, and found his opening. He would press this entity for knowledge. He would not leave until Jade was pulled from the Netherrealm.
The Osh-Tekk, convinced of this, reached with eyes for the illusion and saw that Sindel no longer stared back at him, smarmy and condescending like the vile queen she was, but instead, found Raiden before him.
The conical hat lifted and the electricity pulsed within the whites of the old Thunder God's eyes. Hands folded into the old shredded beige robes and adorned like the pauper he'd appear as at the tournaments, he stared back and with no arrogance, replied with with a voice etched with gravel and age, "I don't think so."