"What is the meaning to all of this?"
Kotal Kahn stared back into the white eyes of Raiden as those thin lips cracked a wry smile.
"Walk with me." In that tone of voice of an elder long beyond Kotal's years and wisdom, just as Raiden does, the entity took Kotal Kahn with him, down to the tournament ground.
In silence they walked until the blank purple nothing of a false Outworld stared down at them like it were a sky to behold.
"You find yourself here, every day, every night. Don't you?" Raiden inquired.
"Every second." Kotal looked out to the battlefield where all hell had broken loose and chaos took Jade from him.
"She died a warrior's death, and Shao Kahn died with her. There is nothing you can do." Raiden stopped at the center of the field and turned back as Kotal met him.
"Nothing I can do, but you can?"
"You're right." The Thunder God reached out to pat Kotal's shoulder, though no pressure was felt and as his hand passed along the crease of Kotal's shoulders, the image transformed into Goro.
"It is redemption you seek, not Jade." Goro admitted, "you want to redeem yourself for failing her, not reverse her death."
"Yes, and I am prepared to offer myself in her place."
"Bold of you, old friend, but the Shokan believe in honor above all things and though you are the most honorable partner I've ever served with under Shao Kahn, I cannot grant you this redemption."
"Can't, or won't?"
Goro stood back and watched as the stain of Jade's blood filled the squares where Shao Kahn had crushed her skull. The brain matter, the shattered pieces of flesh, hair, eyes, all things that comprised her human body so frivolous and easy to mangle. It all formed and slowly pieced itself together, but as the last fragment of flesh began to close over her, the death replayed itself and began to repeat again and again before Kotal Kahn's eyes.
"Do you take me for a fool, mortal?" Shao Kahn wielded the hammer high above him and presented it for the new Kahn. "Flawless victory. Her brain crumbled beneath my hammer like buttered bread."
Kotal Kahn swung, but the form only stood in place as he passed through it. Skarlet turned to meet him and her eyes seemed so pathetic with scorn as she stared at her former master, and savior from Shao Kahn.
"I was your right hand," she approached, "I did everything you asked of me, but this is what tore use apart."
The sight before them, just the mangled mess of Jade's body.
"I would still be alive if you had just let her go."
"Enough riddles, and no more illusions. Do it, or I will end you."
Skarlet covered her lips as she snickered and stood back to take in the sight before her. It was truly a pathetic one and that snicker became a deep laugh until her body was laughing, but the sound was gone. Her voice echoed throughout the sky and cast down upon the Kahn.
With gravel that rolled in her voice, she responded.
"I am the first evil. I cannot be ended. I was there at the beginning, and I will be there at the end." She added, "you are nothing. Jade was nothing. You're just a blip in time that will pass and eons will pass beyond you, and I will still be here."
"Yet you lack the power to bring her back?"
"I wield the power and then some." Skarlet continued, "but Raiden has deformed reality, Kitana and Liu Kang have deformed reality to the point that the realms. Themselves are now coming apart."
"I don't care."
"Through the ages of mortal kombat, all of you combatants have waged war for years. All of your powers, all of you testing and bending the fabric of the universe for your own selfish needs." She narrowed it down, "then Kronika decided to restart time into a new era that would fix this nonsense."
"I don't care."
"Well, here's the point then. Since time has been torn and folded, ripped and bent again and again and too many times over, there are now consequences to what you done, and what you do."
"I've seen the dead rise before. Scorpion!"
"Revenants are not dead, but taken. Death is the end, to undo that now could be the final straw that breaks the camel's back and undoes all of reality."
"I don't care."
Skarlet's snapped back to herself and Raiden stepped forward. He smiled, those wise eyes gazed up from the conical hat to meet Kotal Kahn's.
"I do." He assured, "perhaps it is best to let time take it's course from now on, Kotal Kahn."
"No."
As Raiden motioned to reply, Kotal Kahn passed through him, then Goro, then Skarlet, and Shao Kahn. He refused the entity its moment to speak. He would have Jade back until finally the image was her.
Without a moment of reflection, the palace filled with the Brotherhood of Shadow. With little time to react, Fujin shoved Rain into the first three that chased them down. The half-God, caught in their grasp had quickly melted, having taken one into the watery portal with him.
At capacity, the meeting hall was too cluttered for the battle. Bodies began to spill out, Sonya and Bo' Rai Cho first to be pushed out with several of the shadow Lin Kuei upon them.
"It's him." Kia recognized immediately the markings on the men and otherwise would have fled, or joined, but as she was now under servitude to Kitana, forced herself to fight.
Sareena joined her, like old times, but even with nearly the entire alliance at the palace ground, more and more bleed in from the windows, and the walls.
They were cornered.
Stuck in the great hall, those that could not teleport and those too busy to were herded. Fujin and Rain had spilled out onto the courtyard with Kitana, Mileena, and Reptile. Sonya, Kung Lao, and Nightwolf shoved inside and nearly barred in by bodies.
Sub-Zero and Smoke expelled as much as they could of their ability to form a barrier. A moment to breath for the group.
"Those are my men." Sub-Zero noted, their skins like shadow, and their attire drained of all its color. He couldn't fathom why.
At the edge of the tower, where the guards still held, Cyrax was joined with Kenshi and Ermac to retrieve Liu Kang. The guards parted for them, but the doors widened with a violent crack. Out poured Hotaru and the wraith itself. A near spitting image of Sub-Zero if he were consumed with darkness, the entity buried its sickle into Cyrax's shoulder and used the metal plated chest to kick off and dissipate above the battle, of course to leave Hotaru to the rest.
Unable to handle them all, Hotaru stepped back into the tower, the doorway now able to give him some form of cover for him to rip a portal to his realm and before any could reach in, rush through to safety.
Kitana and Mileena had been forced with Reptile back to back to back, forced to work together and to be defeated together if things did not change. It was Mileena however that broke rank. She lunged forward as a strange sight caught the corner of her eye. Her sais buried into the neck of one Lin Kuei, she pulled one out and stabbed into the next behind him, then her great maw widened to tear into the third behind him. This allowed her the only chance to catch the shadow wraith that moved fast past the courtyard.
With the speed of a the Tarkatans, she had easily caught up to the wraith and ducked the first sickle swing and came up with a jab to its abdomen. Her knuckles cracked the armor, and the flesh behind was cold like the dead, then viscus and then nothing. The wraith had dissipated forward and continued to the meeting hall past the courtyard grounds.
She could see the great windows that allowed the sun to stare into the many meetings and courts held in the hall. Her hand bleed between each crease of cracked knuckle, but she moved fast to catch up.
Behind her, Kitana desperately tried to break the ranks of the Lin Kuei as Mileena had. With Reptile's muscle and her cunning, they were only able to take down one barrier, just in time to be met with another, as if the dead could not be killed, nor the shadow itself.
She, like Mileena, had begun to spill her own blood on the courtyard ground. Soon it would be her life.
It was nothing for the wraith to pass the first line of defense. With Sonya and Kung Lao down, and Bo' Rai Cho chased down by more of the shadow than the monk could handle on his own, he was forced to call on the others. The wraith stepped into the great hall with little resistance and continued its b-line to Kuai Liang.
Kia and Sareena barricaded Sub-Zero with Tanya and Smoke, but they were no match. It wasn't until the entity of shadow had passed through the ice barrier that it stopped.
"Get over here!" Hanzo called out as the spear pierced through the flesh of the wraith. It's oily blood splashed onto Smoke and Sub-Zero.
Behind it, Frost tried to freeze the wraith within the barrier, but Hanzo had pulled it too soon. The ninja was quick on his feet even as a human and slashed across the abdomen of the wraith, spilling its intestines. This had little effect however when Hanzo stood to see his work.
The wraith fell into a pool of shadow and appeared above the ninja with a high kick that knocked Hanzo across the room, his back cracked against one of the great pillars that held the roof above them.
"Bi-Han." Sub-Zero, even as he stared into the void of the wraith's eyes, could see his brother. The attire also was Bi-Han's.
"That name is dead." The wraith, with a voice like the wind course over jagged stone creaked into the depths of Sub-Zero's rattled ribs.
"Down!" Frost warned.
Bi-Han turned toward the wall of ice, the center shattered apart and the woman had slid through, her hands out, her power great, and the ground at his feet fast frozen.
The ice shot like daggers from the floor. Sub-Zero and Smoke ducked and pulled back as it would otherwise pierce them. Before it could reach Bi-Han's hips, however, he had just fell into the void beneath.
"Don't the chase the dead, brother." Bi-Han's coarse voice rattled Kuai Liang's ears and only his as the others rushed forward to him.
Once the shadow had faded from him, the demons around them faded as well.
A warning shot.
A message.
You're it, brother.
Nothing with all his strength and will to succeed could Kotal Kahn defeat the entity before him. Raiden watched and waited as first after fist, kick and grapple and all attempts to scream and fight passed through him.
Raiden taunted, "it's easy for me to bring her back," and warned, "but the moment the dead return, the realms themselves will shatter. An evil I may just see through for my own amusement." He stepped back from Kotal's efforts. "Enough."
Kotal Kahn, exhausted, unable to breathe nor kick, nor force the image of Jade to return, let alone her life, sulked down to his knees.
"If the dead rise, it is my choosing who, and with the intent to destroy all of you. Is that what you want?"
Finally, he shook his head.
Skarlet lowered down with Kotal Kahn. She tried to cradle his head in her arms, but her fingers just barely within reach of his beaten flesh.
"You need the sun, my Kahn." She coddled him, "you are the greatest Kahn to have ever ruled Outworld. You defeated Shao Kahn, Kitana, and you held the power of Gods in your hand."
She watched the man break down. Unable to hold it in, the river flowed from his eyes and his muscles fell slack, his body crumbled. If she could hold him, he'd let her.
He needed her to.
"With all my strength, I still failed the only thing that mattered to me." He admitted.
"We're all human, Ko'atal." Jade replied, "you failed no one but yourself."
She tried to hold him, but her arms passed through him, he reached for her, but his past through her. Never to touch, never to again feel her. Still, though it wasn't Jade, it was her voice, her mannerism, inflection, even down to her scent. The entity had reflected a part of Jade that he never thought he'd know again.
"You poor man. All of you." She tried to pull his chin up, he took the cue to raise and stare into Jade's eyes.
"I will make it stop." She smiled.
Perplexed he sought the answer of the entity behind Jade's eyes. Finally he could see the shroud of flesh, rather than what he desired, no matter how hard it was, and no matter how much he desired it to be her.
"All this fighting, all of you trying to tear the realms apart just to save yourselves." She begged to touch him, she reached for him, his chin, chest, hands, nothing would meet.
"What?"
"I can't go back, Ko'atal. Do realize that?"
"Yes."
"Then it's time to go home." Jade leaned in to kiss, an empty motion, then looked back withe the same smile she gave him the day she died. "It's time for you to be the Khanum of Outworld."
He leaned back and above him the ceiling of the great hall met his eyes with blank white cracked stone until faces peered down at him.
Frost rushed to fetch Fujin and soon the hall filled again with the alliance, and this time, Liu Kang at their side, though Kotal Kahn could see he was guarded by a yellow and black adorned robot.
All of these images and people flushed and forced their way into his sights, the sounds all shattered his ears until Kitana rushed to him and shooed them away. She helped him up and guided him to the throne where he could rest and see them all at once.
"My Kahn, what do you need?" Kitana addressed him. She barricaded herself from the others, with only Fujin allowed to close the gap.
A long pause followed before he spoke. She smiled, Fujin waved for the rest off as the Kahn of Outworld had returned.
"I have what I need." He replied.
Ten years had passed.
At the steps that lead to the ruins of the White Lotus Clan, monks in orange and yellow passed unaware. The sky blue, and children laughed. The great steps, ten in total began to bleed.
Lightning struck once. The clear sky remained and the monks that noticed gathered. Old and young. Before them formed the figure of a woman, nude and bathed in blood. Her hair a sunken mess of red and her flesh though bare, covered head to toe in her life's essence.
Crack!
Thunder struck this time as the lightning shattered the clear sky and burst just a step above the bloody form.
Raiden was back.
Beside him, the agent of Chaos, Havik to his left, and Taven on his right.
The woman peeled the blood from her eyes. The film so thick it sloshed and smack the stone with a loud plop. She heaved for breath as her lips finally cleared the viscus fluid from her through and vomited out at Raiden's feet.
She looked up, a staff landed beside her hand so the old wise man she saw before her could step down and reach with one hand to guide her up.
Though his eyes were white, they were wide and lightning flashed within them faster than they could strike the ground from the sky above. She felt the same sense of panic and uncertainty as she took his hand and with a careful step, Raiden guided the woman to her feet.
Monks rushed in, clothes were dropped over her and one long shroud of red cloth covered her face so she might wipe the remaining blood off.
Finally cleared, at least her face, Raiden looked upon her almost with horror. Havik amused, and Taven leaned in to guide her at Raiden's request.
"How?" She begged him to answer.
"I don't know." Raiden looked her over, the horror in her eyes matched his, but her name finally spilled from his lips which he had thought would never be uttered in this timeline again. "Skarlet."