Kuai Liang found himself paralysed under the scrutiny of two empty, hollow red eyes.
"I knew there was something off about you. I put the stink of life about you down to Noob Saibot's recent return from Earthrealm. But now here you are... bleeding red." The oni either side of Quan Chi shifted eagerly and turned their crumpled faces toward Sub-Zero. He felt the hunger emanating from them, palpable and heavy, like dogs straining at a leash. "Come my dear friends!" Quan Chi opened his arms wide, his melodious voice ringing loud. "Let us give a proper Netherrealm welcome – we have the Grandmaster of the Lin Kuei in our midst!" Furtive imps, harpies, and devilish horned creatures crawled back up to line the barrage of bodies and peer down into the curious arena made of the hilltop summit.
Sareena glanced sidelong at Kuai Liang. While she knew he was not his brother, he had never revealed his identity as Grandmaster to her. Quan Chi took a step forward. His ghastly pale skin picked up the red hues from the burning sky above and offset the twisted circles of old enchantments tattooed into his flesh.
"And I suppose I should have expected the treacherous duo to make a comeback." His eyes narrowed on Sareena, then passed on to Noob Saibot.
The wraith and his shadow knelt in the earth, fingers tracing patterns in the dust, a low chant still passing from him in a continuous drone. There was a desperation in his posture and a foolishness to the urgency of his scrabbling in the dust.
"Not as easy as it looks, is it, Noob?" Quan Chi laughed. The wraith ignored him. Quan Chi stepped forward. Kuai Liang moved and blocked his path. "An admirable effort, Grandmaster. But I'm afraid all your efforts have all been in vain. Surely you must know that Noob Saibot cannot leave this place? He cannot be saved. He is reborn as a wraith. Surely, you are not fool enough to think that the undead shadows that serve me in Netherrealm bare any resemblance to their former selves? That is not your brother. Your brother burned alive."
Kuai Liang said nothing. He merely held his ground, curled his fingers into fists set Quan Chi's with a chilling, steadfast stare.
"You are looking stronger, Grandmaster. When I saw you last, you were barely out of youth, running around Shang Tsung's Mortal Kombat tournament trying to challenge my spectre Scorpion to a death match. My poor, foolish servant could never quite understand why there were so many Sub-Zeros and why they were all out to kill him. Not the brightest one, but unstoppable in his fury, as dear Noob Saibot here found out a little too late... So sad that Scorpion managed to wriggle free of me, I would dearly like to have seen him finish the two of you off."
Kuai Liang gritted his teeth but kept his peace, standing rooted and immovable between Quan Chi and his brother. When he was again met with silence, Quan Chi's face lapsed from humour into its usual sour lines.
"Come, Sareena." He said coldly, "This charade has gone on long enough. You belong at my side. Return now and your punishment will be much lighter."
Kuai Liang glanced at her. There was something hopeful in her eyes, almost as if she was considering the proposal.
"Sareena." Sub Zero said gently but firmly. She looked to him and he saw the fear in her. She drew from his quiet strength until her face was set and stubborn again.
"No more, Quan Chi. I will no longer be under your power! I will be free of you!"
"Very well!" Quan Chi said brightly, and much to everyone's surprise, "I shall cease to exercise all power over you, Sareena. I will lift all my magics that lie on you, and you will be free to-"
"Wait!" Sareena broke in suddenly. She shot a sidelong look at Kuai Liang. Her fear was back, but it did not seem to stem from the same place it had before. Kuai looked at her in confusion. "Wait!" She turned back to Quan Chi. The necromancer had a lethargic, knowing look to his face.
"Sareena," He drawled slowly, "Did you forget to mention to your new friend about your... condition?"
Sareena looked panicked. She licked her lips, then curled and uncurled her fists.
"What do you reckon, my dear? Would these two bold, stoic men allow you to keep their company if you did not wear this... alluring form? Let's test it shall we?"
"No!" She cried suddenly, "Master, wait."
Sub-Zero baulked at her change in terms of address,
"Sareena-" He said again,
"I-I'm a demon." She said brokenly, turning to him. Quan Chi stepped back with a smile and let the encounter play out.
"I know." He did know, even if he did not entirely know what that meant.
"I... I don't look like this in my natural state."
"That doesn't matter to me."
"It would! It would if you saw me! If you knew what I really was!" All her posture had curled inward in shame and her voice was becoming hysterical. She looked back to Quan Chi, "Please don't! Just let me stay like this. I'll... I'll come with you."
"Sareena!" Kuai said in a sharp voice he usually reserved for dealing with his fierce apprentice, Frost. He pulled back his hood and took off his mask, revealing dark cropped hair and pale skin where the grey strip of paint across his upper face stopped. A thin scar straggled from his brow down through one eye. "The things we present ourselves as... and try to appear as..." His eyes strayed to Noob Saibot who was cupping purple flames in his hands and whispering madly. "... Do not define us. The things we choose to do, the people we choose to trust... these things are more truly us." He stepped closer to her, "I know... I, of all people, know."
Her eyes thinned to slits,
"You do not. You do not see the way I am looked at in my true form. I need this. I need this beauty. Bi-Han and you both would have killed me if I did not have it. You judge with your sight even without thinking of it. When you see something you are attracted to – you give it the chances that something hideous never would have had."
"That's not true-"
"It is!" She insisted fiercely. "I have to be this way! I have to appear this way! And its not for me... its for people like you!"
"No!" He Kuai could feel himself stalling, "Bi-Han, help me-"
"When Bi-Han first came to our domain, he left a trail of slaughter in his wake – demons and beasts of all sizes fell to him. Only once did he spare someone – someone with the appearance of a young, beautiful woman..."
"So you would fault him for his mercy now?!"
"You seduce me with the fractions of emotion you let slip through your cold, cruel exteriors, dangle freedom before my face and bait me with it. I keep falling for you, and suffering for you. Sometimes I wish I had never met you, Sub-Zero."
Bi-Han and Kuai Liang both stared at her. Neither knew who she spoke to, but that did not seem to matter for the present.
"This time will be different," Kuai Liang said earnestly, "We-"
"You will what – take back a full formed demon to your Lin Kuei Temple?" She stalked forward proudly, holding high her head with flowing black locks streaked with artful white. "Beauty in Netherrealm looks the same as beauty in Earthrealm. Until that changes, I know where I have to be. She offered an elegant hand to Quan Chi who kept his laughing eyes on Sub-Zero as he brought her fingers to his lips.
"Go collect your sisters' remains, Sareena. It's going to take some time to piece them back together." She bowed low to him and walked on.
"Sareena!" Kuai called, "Don't go! We need you! Bi-Han and I... we cannot do this alone!" She looked back once with all the torn agony of one riven in two. Then she left.
Sub-Zero swallowed and held his ground between Quan Chi and Noob Saibot. The necromancer tilted his head,
"And then there were two." He smiled thinly, "It was good of Noob to bring you here, Sub-Zero. I would have had a hard time bartering your soul with Raiden. Much easier to take what's already here, as Noob well knows." Sub-Zero was adamant and unfazed in the face of the taunts. He knew that Quan Chi meant to shake his resolve, but his determination and certainty were one of the few things that rarely failed him. He heard something stir behind him. He paused, glancing at the sorcerer and unwilling to let him out of his sight even fractionally. The necromancer looked strangely sedate however. Kuai chanced a glimpse behind. His brother had stopped in his long ritual and was looking past to Quan Chi. Kuai found it hard to read him with the mask, the hood, and the white eyes, but there was a cornered, uncertain fear to his posture.
"Bi-Han," Kuai whispered. The wraith's eyes swivelled to him. "Keep going. I have this."
There was a long pause, then the wraith nodded and bent to his task again.
"I rarely have to resort to physically destroying my servants when they disobey me," Quan Chi offered the explanation matter-of-factly, as if speaking to Kuai of the weather. "It's much easier to hold their greatest fears to ransom. Tell me, Sub-Zero, did you ever ask your brother what temperature fire has to be to burn a cryomancer alive?"The sorcerer took another step closer, pushing into Kuai's personal space. Sub-Zero flexed his shoulders, pulled himself taller and stared down the sorcerer. The necromancer carried on oblivious, "Let's see... It has to be hot enough to take all the moisture out the air first, otherwise the cryomancer reflexively summons ice in layers that are not quite enough to stop the burning, but are enough to delay death by... quite some time. I'm surprised he did not mention that to you. He must have known there was high likelihood that his exploits would see you incarcerated in one of Netherrealm's more infamous planes... But perhaps that does not concern him... Perhaps you were merely a tool to his ends." Kuai realised that Quan Chi's eyes were not on him at all, and that his words were aimed straight at the wraith. Sub-Zero did not look back. Instead pulled back his head and rammed his skull down straight into Quan Chi's chin. The necromancer staggered back clutching his jaw. The oni beside him stirred to life. Quan Chi threw out an arm to stop them. The reluctantly obeyed.
"And I was being so civil, Sub-Zero!" He brought his fingers away and wrinkled his nose at the blood that came too. "But if you really insist on violence... that of course can be arranged."
Kuai Liang glanced around him for anything that he might use in his favour.
"Let's see how long you last... an earthrealmer in the Netherrealm against two oni."
Kuai knew that the necromancer was signalling to the beasts beside him. This was going to be a very short match given all the current conditions. I don't want to end up here. Not Netherrealm. Better nothingness – an eternal stillness of nothing than this place. He raised his eyes skyward in desperation. Dark purple clouds curled spirals above the bleak standing stones. In the slowed down moments that come with resolute acceptance, he founding himself wondering what Netherrealm clouds were made of. He reached his arms wide and leaned back, fingers rigid as he sought for water caught in the skies above.
Air moved about him. It twisted and funnelled, struggling hot and dry toward him. He strained his reach, willing the moisture from its tormented, stagnant confines. Puce clouds writhed, dragged by a thin twist of air. A distance boom sounded out across the sky. He was reminded that this realm was not his realm, that he did not belong here, that people and places far away awaited him, and that there was no ice in the Netherrealm, just as there was no Thunder. A tornado of dark cloud sped down to him, dissipating into a thousand water droplets as he summoned the vapour to him. He drew it to him until there was nothing left. The sky was bare and empty lit by the eternal ember of distant fire. Sub-Zero released ice from him an enormous explosion that froze the very air before him. He could not see for the raging blizzard that blasted forth from him. He could not hear for the sound of the arctic wind roaring in his ears. He could not feel for the numbing cold soaking all around him.
When he open his eyes there were snowflakes. They turned light upon the air. A glittering blue iceberg with perfect lines of deep aquamarine stood before him. He stepped in this new scene like a child caught in wonder. He reached out to touch the glass cold surface of the iceberg. Within he saw the enraged, stunned faces of the oni, one with its armed club raised high to crush him, the other with ball and chain caught mid-flight. Between the two stood Quan Chi. Despite being frozen, his eyeballs followed Sub-Zero.
"Impressive." Noob Saibot looked up from where he knelt. A rim of light snow collected on his mask.
"Yes." Sub-Zero agreed. He would take a compliment from Bi-Han whenever it was offered. "I have a feeling this is a very impermanent solution though."
The hand he brought away from the ice was wet. The snowflakes had ceased and a pool of water was seeping from the ice before evaporating with a soft hiss on the hot earth.
"If you could hurry up with this portal..."
"I am hurrying."
"It's not noticeable."
"Stop distracting me, Kuai Liang. I'm nearly done."
"Very nearly I hope." The dripping ice was steaming. It began to tremble, under the convulsions of its occupants. Cracks split the deep, pure surfaces a flat white. The cracks spread, darting and jolting in random directions like rats in gutters. "When you said nearly... are we talking another hour nearlyor a few seconds nearly?" Sub-Zero watched the cracks split into fissures. The fissures ruptured further, shooting shards of ice as they did so. He backed away. He could think of nothing more. His ideas were run as dry as the picture before him was becoming. He summoned a kori sword of ice to his hand and again positioned himself between the shuddering iceberg and Noob Saibot. He let his posture relax into a strong steady stance, like old ice. He breathed deep in through his nose and out through his mouth. He centred his mind, recalling the meditative stillness he had felt in the midst of that momentary blizzard. It would be good to see home again. To feel that true stillness that only comes of deep, silent winters. One day it will happen. You and I will stand in the dead of the midnight sun on equal terms. There will be no need for words, because we will speak the language of the cold, and that will be enough. Elder Gods, is that too much to ask?
Ice cracked open. Bursting like a newborn from its shell, the two oni roared and beat their chests to the sky. Quan Chi blasted away the remains of the ice with green flames. All signs of conversation were gone from his face, instead his shoulders hunched with rage and menace as he gathered himself, eyes ignited with fury.
A jarring grated through the air with a sound like liquid being sucked violently into one place. A perfect silence followed for all of a fraction. Then an explosion of light and noise burst from behind Kuai before retracting and stabilising itself into massive swirling black and violet portal. Kuai had enough time to be startled by the churning anomaly before his vision started to swim green and he felt his limbs snap to his sides. His will buffeted down to a small thin voice screaming inside his own skull.
A blur of frantic energy sheered all about him. Out the corners of his eyes he could see strange new figures – humanoids with faces wrought by twisting, aimless tattoos laughing as they leapt and ran past him. Their bodies moved with an odd freedom, contorting easily to dodge arrows and stones. Their joints bent in impossible directions even as their warcries ran backwards. They jumped upon and swarmed the enormous oni, their unique, customised weapons flashing across the grotesque demonic hulks. Others danced past altogether to run nimbly up the wall of corpses and drag off Netherrealm creatures lurking there. All was a wash and buzz of movement, but noise was somehow distant and far away. Kuai Liang could look only straight forward where a green tunnel of energy dragged his unwilling limbs into staggering steps ever closer to Quan Chi. The necromancer had a bloodless pale hand contorted in an invisible grip as he summoned Sub-Zero forward. All ease and aloof leisure were gone out of the necromancer's expression. His true colours of raw loathing and twisted hunger were hideous upon his face. Sub-Zero could see the future the necromancer intended for him written behind the crimson of his eyes. The earthrealmer struggled against the hold, desperately trying to regain control of his body as it walked with a lethargic stunted steps to its doom. He could feel his heartbeat galloping in his chest and his throat drying and his helpless amble neared its termination. With his free hand the sorcerer pulled a wicked, ornate, sacrificial blade from a scabbard. Sub-Zero tried to keep his eyes on the weapon, but they would not obey. As he drew close, his field of vision narrowed until the sword vanished from his sight, raised high off somewhere to his right. He heard its swing through the dead air. He did not have any thoughts as he waited with tunnelled sight and immobile limbs, myopic attention captured by the vision of eternal hellfire and torture lit in Quan Chi's eyes.
Time seemed to slow and his mind was dragged forth to a scene as sharp and real as the vivid dreams that had burst into his sleep every time he had laid down to rest in Netherrealm. This time when he looked down, however, his arms were pasty white and inscribed with old red runes and circles. He was laughing. There was indescribable malice and emptiness fuelling that manic laughter. Before him was... himself – Kuai Liang, dressed in the garb of the Grandmaster of the Lin Kuei. The front of the Grandmaster's garb was held in the grip of one white hand. The Grandmaster's back was to a precipice. Below, a river boiled. It was a coagulated, congealing, curdling red. Each bubble burst left thick bloodstains on the bare cliff rock. A sky on fire blazed mad red and hot screaming orange above. Flames fell like burning arrows in the horizon and set ablaze a long, empty desert, upon which grey bodies writhed and twitched.
"Come, Grandmaster Kuai Liang. Time to meet fate." He heard the dark, melodious and unmistakeable tones of Quan Chi issue from himself.
The boiling blood gurgled and babbled below. He watched from the sorcerer's vantage as his white hand let go of the blue robes and the Grandmaster of the Lin Kuei fell. He felt the sorcerer's erupting vindictive hatred when he caught sight of the terror in the Grandmaster's eyes as he disappeared below.
Green and black split his vision into a riot of confusion. The river of blood jolted and jarred and was suddenly disrupted into a shadowy, hazy scene.
It smelt real. And the way the light fell... this did not have to be fine-grained image for him to know it. He had spent most of his life in this room. It was the sleeping cell he and his brother had shared all their life under the old Grandmaster of the Lin Kuei. It looked different though. He had not seen it from this angle before. He was looking at his bed from a low angle on the other side of the room. He could just make out the bamboo mat and thrown-back cover in the dim light of night. Rain pounded on the thin wooden door and thunder growled and boomed beyond. A small child stood in the centre of his room. The child had bare feet and curled his toes against the cold stone of the floor. He did not recognise him. He looked very young, much younger than any child Kuai Liang had seen at the temple before, and certainly too young to be admitted to the school under his watch as Grandmaster.
"Go back to bed." He told the child.
The boy's arms hugged himself and he shook his head.
"Do as you're told. You must be brave from now on. Be brave and strong and everything will be alright."
Another boom of thunder set the door rattling and a bright flash of light ignited the room. The child flinched, but otherwise did not move or speak. Wide eyes stared straight at him.
He felt a surge of compassion well within him. His sternness faltered and he tried to swallow down the pity he felt for the child. He fought with himself for a long moment before saying more gently,
"Come here, Kuai Liang."
The small boy did as he was bidden. He pulled the covers over the child and let him curl up against his chest. He folded his arms around the cold, shaking body and let his embrace be a shelter from the dark shadows of the night.
Tight arms wrapped around Kuai Liang. There was an agonising war for his body that lasted all of half a second but left him a battleground of pain as control was wrenched from the necromancer. Sub-Zero felt himself constricted through the sudden suffocating blackness of void and shadow. When he burst free into the hot chaotic world once more he thought for a moment that he had forgotten how to breathe. He gripped tightly onto the arms before him, lurching and retching for air, mind still ploughed up by the hypnotic flames of hell seared into his thought from moments before.
"You are safe." He let himself be brought out of dark places by that familiar voice. Even the sound of it quieted wild storms in his mind. Air soared into his lungs, and he gasped it in desperately. His shoulders heaved as he breathed in and out, restoring movement and freedom to his muscles.
"I thought- I thought... In the end there will be so much fire... so much pain, so-"
"It will not be your fate. I swear it."
"It was – I was already there, I was half a second from-"
"Kuai Liang."
Sub-Zero looked up to his brother's face. He faintly recalled it lit by the monochrome of a thunderstorm. The way lightning had carved the shape of his eyes, cheekbones, and the sharp angle of his brow.
"I'm sorry. I wasn't there for you." Kuai started, "I'm sorry I couldn't save you."
"Breathe. You're not thinking clearly. It's a result of breaking Quan Chi's mind control over you."
"You were there for me all my life, and the one time you needed me, I wasn't there."
"It wasn't your fault, Kuai Liang. It was nothing to do with you, and everything to do with the path I-"
"It was to do with me. You are my brother. I should not have let you down. I should have been at your side."
"You are at my side now."
The exchange was so quick that words came and went like sharp changing winds without thought for things like pomposity, pride and deliberation. Sub-Zero breathed more slowly and regularly. His mind cleared.
He was standing on the edge of the hill top, with molten magma slithering away as a thin river below him. He realised he was still holding fast to Noob Saibot after the teleport. He released his grip quickly and straightened up, drawing back his shoulders and standing tall. The roving swirl of an indigo portal stood between them and Quan Chi. A cackling overflow of chaosrealmers were leaping in sprightly, quick advances from the wound rent in the sky. Their tattooed torsos flooded the hillside, littering the air with the screams of Netherrealm creatures. The frenzied sounds and smell of war were beginning to start up in earnest now that there were two sides the battle.
"We must leave here quickly," Noob said, and set his grip on Sub-Zero again, ready to teleport.
"No."
Noob stopped and looked at him,
"We must go. The turn of the tides is yet to be determined. Whether Netherrealm falls or not, you must return to your Earthrealm portal. Your task is done here."
"I have a debt yet unpaid. I mean to stay here and help you win this war."
"It is not a debt, Kuai Liang! It is just who I was! Now, this is who I am. And you are who you are. And you must go."
Kuai Liang ground his teeth and turned away sharply. As he did so he felt acutely the recent harrying assault on his mind, the teeth punctures he had acquired earlier in his calves, and the taught lacerations about his throat from claws and nails, the raked open wounds across his back and the bruises on his chest from the crush of creatures that had piled upon him. Beneath all this was the underlying constant heat and foul dead air always tugging apart his strength and stamina. He was standing on adrenaline and sheer willpower, he knew, but that did little to curb his pride.
"If I go, let me go alone. I know the way. Your fight is here. All will have been for nothing if you do not win here and now. This was your plan all along, was it not? If you get me to the other side of that river of lava down there and I will find my own way."
"I'm taking you to the portal."
"Stop ignoring me and for once in your life and listen to what I am saying!" He snapped, his voice finally deadly cold, "I am grown man and will not be treated like a child by you! You will respect me for who I am and let me make my own choices!"
The wraith paused, perhaps taken aback. He replied more carefully,
"I'm not ignoring you. But I am taking you to the portal myself. By my own choice. I will make good on our deal before I proceed to the next stage of my plan." There was a slight hesitation, before the wraith slowly added, "Will you let me do this, Kuai Liang?"
"I appreciate your attempt to humour my request for respect, even if it is all superficial, but-"
"Sub-Zero." Kuai Liang stared at him. A faint blush crawled painfully up his face. Noob Saibot had never called him that before. "If you insist on going alone," The wraith continued, "I will do as you ask, and leave you on the other side of that river. You are Grandmaster of the Lin Kuei. I do not doubt your ability to get out of Netherrealm alive."
Kuai was stunned into silence. He also, now that he looked, saw that the horizon bent and tilted in such away that he was not at all sure where he had come from. He looked back to his brother and thought he saw something glittering in his eye, as if this situation was playing out somewhat according to his design.
"Take me to the portal." Kuai said gruffly.
After the first portal jump, Kuai seized Noob's arm and pointed back up to the hill top. They stood now beyond the river of fire and Kuai was pleased to see that the scale of devastation he had wrought was making all movement about the fell difficult. Bodies were stacked on stakes or piled up in pits or rolled down the still unstable earth where he had torn up the ground with ice shards. It was not at this that he pointed however. An imposing man, face partly worn down to the skull beneath, stood in semi-centurian garb, surveying the scene as he stood before the churning portal. When he moved, his limbs possessed a fluidity of their own, bending at impossible angles, as if all his joints were backwards. Kuai could not even see a consistency in the way that body moved. The sight unnerved him in a way that even the most gruesome Netherrealm sights could not. Noob nodded beside him,
"The agents of Chaos certainly live up to their name."
"You allied with that? What even is he?"
"There are no true alliances in the Chaosrealm. I opened a gate and let in a people who despise ordered death and structured afterlife. Havik and I have an agreement that serves both our purposes for the present. Let us go."
Kuai watched as the cleric of chaos let fall the chain of a morning star. His body contorted out of the way as he swung the steel full circle, breaking what would have been his own spine merely to extend the reach of his weapon. His body tilted back up with no injury as he changed the angle and sent another circle of bodies flying in multiple directions.
"I hope you know what your doing..." Kuai murmured,
"I always do."
Noob seized him and pulled him down into another portal.
They moved quickly over the tormented landscape, sometimes with Noob Saibot's short distance teleport, and at other times by foot. Each proved difficult for Kuai Liang. The scars of recent battle were beginning to feel very present, combined with older half-healed injuries that took the opportunity to pain him as his adrenaline slumped. He could feel the burn in his soles from the molten lava the day before, and the consistent dry heat and poor diet coming to a crashing climax in his body. Each teleport only added to this pressure, squeezing him as if through a thin, suffocating tube only to exacerbate the conflicting pains trying to tear him apart. He summoned his muscles to obey his will and set his teeth hard.
"You have spent a long time in this realm – longer than I did when I was alive. It is not good for the living to linger among the dead."
"Master of the obvious." He meant that to sound casual but it came out forced and textured with the warring agonies within. Noob Saibot looked at him, but Sub-Zero did not bother trying to gauge what was going on in his brother's head.
The last stretch took them by the same rickety path they had first arrived by. Its faintly familiar image wavered before Kuai's tired eyes. When they passed the gully where he had first seen Sareena, he paused. Guessing his mind, Noob said,
"She made her decision."
Kuai nodded slowly,
"I really thought she would stay and help us. She seemed so sure of what she wanted..."
"Everything in Netherrealm is sure of what it wants. But we must weigh up those desires against our fears. There is very little worth attaining here that makes risking insurgence a viable option. Sareena is a creature from this realm who is always trying to break free. Where she places her trust says more about those she encounters than it does about her. She is always resilient, but she will not fight loosing battles. That she turned back to Quan Chi means that we failed her, not that she fell short."
"Not like you to be so gracious in your assessment of others."
Noob Saibot gestured for them to continue,
"You know nothing of demons. That she fights what is in her nature is an impossibility she is constantly trying to hold out against. Only as a wraith bound to the Netherrealm do I understand at what cost and with what difficulty she first betrayed Quan Chi for me. When others no longer bind her to her nature with their assumptions – only then will she be free. Until then she is doomed to be the trickster – in all sincerity moving between freedom and captivity, betraying both sides in an eternal cycle. Quan Chi knows this – and uses it against his enemies."
"If you knew all this... why did you not tell me? I would not have... misplaced my trust so foolishly."
"Truly?" Noob Saibot sounded tired as he looked up toward the sight of the bright vortex of the Earthrealm portal, reflecting and consuming light as it blighted the landscape with its anomaly. "I did not think she would make the same mistake again of allying herself with my cause. I know the cycle of her betrayal is inevitable, but I did not think it would be me who was be involved in it again."
"Maybe she likes you."
He'd said that in all light heartedness, but the stare he got back made him swallow his humour very quickly. He winced and looked away before the moment got out of hand,
"The Earthrealm portal," Kuai said with all the brightness he did not feel either mentally or physically, "I've survived Netherrealm and a week in your company, though I can't say which caused me more consternation."
"Indeed." Noob said dryly, still moving on slowly from the comment about Sareena.
"Can Quan Chi be killed?" Kuai kept the conversation steered on.
"He can be imprisoned. And subdued." A fell light ignited in Noob Saibot's eyes at the thought of this.
"And what... you'll start rearranging the Netherrealm furniture to suit your style? Can you maybe turn down the heat – I'm not coming to visit until this place feels less like Scorpion's back yard."
"Humour does not become you."
"Nor world domination you."
The wraith raised an eyebrow, but then looked out over the cracked red land and its burning sky. His thoughts seemed to wander again from the present into a future where he was his own master. Sub-Zero wondered if he might take the moment to ask his brother to return with him; to ask him to let all of this go; to fight the cruelty of the Netherrealm and its hold over him. His heart fell as he thought on how little progress he had made in trying to help his brother see the error of his ways. He looked away with downcast eyes.
"You did well today. You fended off an entire army alone." The wraith considered, matter-of-factly, then added, "I'm proud of you."
Kuai covered his surprise with a stoic silence. His glance slid warily and cautiously to watch his brother, steeling himself for the put down that must come next. There was quiet and his brother did not make eye contact. Kuai blinked in confusion. He could feel his insides curling as if he looked over the edge of a precipice.
"Don't toy with me," His throat was dry, but that might have been from the air. "I don't want to hear any more falsities from you. I want you understand that my being here, and everything I have done here, has been of my own volition. I want you to know that, and respect that, and stop trying to manipulate me by telling me what I want to hear and leading me from one charade into-."
"I was being honest."
Kuai was so blank and speechless that he could not form words, let alone an expression. He stood there stupidly. He looked away suddenly into the horizon and initiated a default emotionless slate to hide everything surging within him.
"What you did back there was impressive. I knew I made a good decision in choosing you to aid me. You are much stronger than the young man I left behind when I voyaged to Shang Tsung's Island. But you still have much to learn."
Kuai looked at him, for once able to meet that gaze on an even term and take both the compliment and the advice.
"You do not yet understand your true strength. Remember my mistakes. Learn from where I went wrong. Don't be me, Kuai Liang. Be you. That is what I wanted to protect from the Grandmaster. You have something special. Something I could never understand or emulate. Now go. Be free. Like you always wanted."
The wraith turned back toward the way they had come.
"Wait, Bi-Han. What do you mean 'like I always wanted'? I've... I've never known what I wanted..."
Noob Saibot gave him a familiar, scornful look,
"Kuai Liang, must you always ask such stupid questions? It is blindingly obvious to everyone that meets you that you have absolute conviction in your beliefs and never have or will be swayed otherwise. Why do you think Smoke and Cyrax rebelled against the Cyber Initiative? Why do you think I continually stepped between you and all the consequences of your rebellion? Why do you think Sareena remembered her old familiarity with me? You catch people up in your passion. They do ridiculous things because you make them believe that they can be something better than the dregs of life that have been handed to them. Both of us wielded ice, Kuai Liang, but only one of us burned fire inside. You spent so long looking up or behind that you never seemed to notice that the rest of us were looking to you. We never understood what was going on in your crazed head, but we knew it must not be snuffed out by the Lin Kuei."
Kuai Liang pulled off his mask and pushed down his hood.
"Brother... what? What are you-?"
"Quiet. We have talked long enough. I have a war to win. I believe your price for this venture was a conversation. In an uncharacteristic act of charity I will exclude this trip down memory lane, and grant you one more audience at a time and location of your choosing – provided I am not being tortured for eternity for a failed coup."
Kuai Liang watched him with silent but intense eyes, concern written in his posture, but never spoken. A sudden thought flashed across his mind,
"Wait, Bi-Han, there's something I meant to ask you." He saw the wraith's eyes narrow, "On the first day I was here in Netherrealm, when I..." He took a deep breath, "When I collapsed – you gave me water to drink. Where did it come from? I've not seen any at all in Netherrealm, and I was unconscious so could not make the ice myself..."
Noob Saibot regarded him inscrutably, then pulled his arms across his chest.
"Goodbye, Kuai Liang."
He plunged down into a dark oily portal and vanished.
Kuai watched the place he had left for some time afterwards. An emptiness formed up around him and he felt something ache within – as if he had again lost something integral to him. He focussed on his quiet breathing – the only breathing in all Netherrealm. Then he turned and walked through the gateway between hell and earth. He felt old gnarled hands falling away from him and strength flow through his limbs like rich rivers. Distant voices snapped and clamoured, howling at his departure and escape. He brushed past them like wreathes of fireflies, his will bent on singular forward movement. Then there was silence.
Light firs shifted noiselessly in a slight wind. Their needles glowed red with the dying light of a bright white sunset. Brooding clouds murmured in corners of the sky and in places shed tears of tumbling snow. He exhaled and saw his breath distil into great cold plumes. He felt the bites and scars of another world's war dull and fade into dimness. A sudden gust of wind shook the still firs and ruffled blankets of deep snow to thud to the floor. He felt the chill brush over his arms and set his hair on end. The air he breathed in was spiked with cold and sharp in his lungs. Light and shadow stood in sharp contrast, black and white, each knowing where one ended and the other began. When he looked up he could see the roots of ancient mountains, bellies lost to thick white mists shot through with the later gold of the evening.
Home.