Mortal Kombat

by Jeff Rovin

  He had set sail late in the morning, and it was late in the afternoon of the next day before hard rowing and mercifully cooperative currents carried Shang into view of his new home. When he reached an almost supernaturally clear eye in the fog, the sun was already behind the central peak of the island, and the jagged mountain’s shadow threw the rest of the island into a deep, deep darkness. As he came ashore on the strange, hot, ruddy sands, Shang experienced a sense of isolation deeper and more disturbing than any he had ever experienced. It wasn’t only that the island seemed uninhabited – no birds circling its shores or insects on its dead tree trunks or fish near the surface – it also had an air of what he could only describe as wrongness. The shadows were not just dark, they seemed to drain the color and health from everything they touched. The air was damp and cold, and at times – a trick of the fog-diffused sunlight? – Shang Tsung could swear that the perspective was non-geometric and at times liquid. Things seemed closer or farther than they actually were, even objects at his feet. Trees that seemed straight from a distance were crooked and gnarled when he stood beside them. Rocks and cliffs that seemed lumpy and jagged from afar were smooth up-close. Only in the ruins of the temple did lines and curves and spaces appear correct and accurate. It was as though the place had been built as a fortress, a spiritual bastion to fight some corruptive influence – though, from the condition of the place and the Chou dynasty style of architecture, the battle had obviously been lost or given up many centuries before.

  Shang Tsung took a deep breath. The time for reflection and research had come to an end. At once elated and frightened, he stretched a spindly hand to his right and wrapped his fingers around the ivory handle of the poker. Dropping to his knees, he touched the glowing metal tip of the powder, and as a wall of flame rose around him he uttered phrases that the reliable Am-ho-tep claimed to have used:

  To the land beyond, beyond, I wish to go.

  From the dismal world of this and now.

  To the timeless realm where chaos is order,

  Where darkness is light and demons dwell.

  Open your arms, Lord of the nether-reaches

  To embrace your subject. Hear my prayer.

  The moment the last word had passed from his lips, Shang saw the flames quickly spread from a wall to a sea. They churned with a fury he had never imagined possible as they rolled on and on into the distance, not consuming the temple but erasing it, burning past where the island itself would have ended could he but see land instead of fire. Within moments, the fire stretched not only as far as he could see, but as far as he could possibly imagine.

  And then Shang Tsung didn’t just smell a rank, wet odor in his nostrils – he felt it. He felt a presence, looked up, and saw masses of yellow and red, clouds or mountains of it. And in the midst of them, somewhere far off, he saw a pair of white spheres that grew large and then disappeared, leaving only blackness above the flames.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Another one?”

  “Yes, Lord.”

  “Not one we have already seen… not another failure.”

  “No, Lord.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, Lord.”

  A nearly invisible hand reached out and grabbed the little yellow demon by one horn. It lifted the portly, struggling imp in the air, his little feet and sharp-nailed toes kicking out from under his red robe.

  “Very sure?”

  “Yes, Lord,” the demon said with all the authority he could muster – which wasn’t much, at the moment. His big, cloud-white eyes opened wider, reflecting the fires that burned on the rocks and waters, in the caves and pits around them. “Lord, I saw him and believe that this is the one. The one you sent… not one of the deluded pretenders.”

  The fierce, unthinkably old Shao Kahn, Lord of the Outworld, master of the Furies, and the king of the dark arts, brought the writhing demon nearer. “Ruthay,” he said in a voice that was deep and searingly hot, “the son of my sister, do you know what I will do if you are wrong?”

  Beads of bloody sweat erupted on the demon’s parchment-thin yellow flesh. He folded his trembling hands together and held them out in supplication. “Yes, Lord. You will… will…”

  A blast of white came from the mouth of the dark shape that was the demon lord. The thin, fair cloud touched Ruthay’s long-fingered hands and turned their skin blue. The hands stopped shaking as the icy breath froze them together.

  “I will freeze you, Regent Ruthay, and then cage you over a slow flame and allow you to melt. When you are a puddle, I will take away the fire and leave you a spineless, immobile mass for all eternity.” Shao Kahn bent close, his black eyes glowing the dullest, deepest red. “I repeat: are you sure?”

  “He… he… he…” Ruthay swallowed hard. “…He is in the t-temple on Sh-Shimura, L-L-Lord.”

  The demon king’s eyes blackened again. There was a hint of pointed, yellow teeth as he breathed hotly on Ruthay’s hands, thawing them – and the trace of a smile as the giant monarch set his regent on the ground. The sound of a massive but unseen cloak rustling filled the titanic valley as the evil lord sat back. Red light from the countless fires dimly lit a throne hewn from the face of the valley wall.

  “Get out of the way,” Shao Kahn commanded.

  Ruthay nodded vigorously and bowed as he stepped back. Red perspiration ran in long, raining rivers as he watched the hard, cracked ground in front of him. The king of darkness stirred, raising an arm that was silhouetted against the red flame behind it and was fully thrice the size of Ruthay’s body. A powerful finger was extended, and a tongue of flame flew from the long, hooked nail. It struck the ground and a pool of flame appeared, the size of Ruthay’s fat, terrified face.

  In the midst of the flame was a tiny, kneeling figure, dark dust of a man whom Ruthay could barely see. The regent looked from the mote to the demonic ruler, whose dark eyes were once more reddening. Ruthay’s robe was drenched with sweat and twice as heavy as before. If Shao Kahn didn’t speak soon, the regent would be a puddle even if he were right, even if this were the mortal form of the demon who had been sent through the rift five centuries before. That breach had been created by some fool named Am-ho-tep, who stumbled upon the right words but not quite the right formula after a lifetime of trying.

  Mummy dust instead of bone powder, Ruthay thought with a shake of his round head, the bulging red muscle of which was visible beneath his tight flesh. The foolishness of humans.

  The sleek, blue-black lips of the devil king pulled into what was now most definitely a smile. “Shang,” he said. “I wondered what became of you. You were sent away ten human lifetimes ago.”

  Though the tiny figure spoke in an even smaller voice, Ruthay turned a small, knoblike ear toward the ground and was able to hear his answer.

  “I – I remember nothing–”

  “You remembered,” Shao Kahn rumbled at the still-kneeling bug-man. “In dreams. Each time your mortal form died, you took some of what you he had learned with you. This learning came to you while you slept, as I planned.”

  “You… planned,” Shang said. “Am I–” He paused, as though he couldn’t quite grasp what was happening. “Am I in the Outworld… Lord… Kahn?”

  Ruthay smiled, partly because the little being was so pathetic, but more because the creature had remembered the master’s name. He was the one; the Lord wouldn’t punish him. Ruthay had already been contemplating what eternity would be like on the bottom of a cage.

  Shao Kahn’s dark eyes reddened. “You are at the foot of the throne of Outworld,” Kahn boomed, “before the Master of Death and the Shokan regions of magic. You were my regent, Shang, a bold and trusted figure sent on a mission.”

  “Yes,” said Shang. “A mission to open a portal between the realms. To enable you to send the demon hordes through and… conquer the Mother Realm.”

  “That is correct,” Shao Kahn said, his smile widening, the sharp teeth glistening with bloody spittle. “P’an Ku never intended fo
r things to be thus, for there to be two realms. His body formed the one, and the death that left his body formed another – our realm. Life and death must be joined so that all dualities may end. There must only be one way in the cosmos. There must only be my way.”

  “I remember everything now, Lord,” said Shang. “But I have failed you. This portal,” he spread his arms wide, “is not large enough. I – I made it for this miserable human form I inhabit.”

  A laugh bubbled from somewhere deep inside the titan. “You haven’t failed me,” Shao Kahn replied. “Using your small human mind and form, you have made a beginning. A late one,” he said, “but a good one.”

  “What must I do?” Shang asked.

  Shao Kahn bent closer. “You must collect souls. They are remnants of P’an Ku’s spirit, divided and weakened but reparable. You must find a way to gather them on the island, use them to enlarge the portal.”

  The demon king’s eyes were a swirling mass of black and red as they shifted and fell on his regent. The chubby demon bowed again and quivered.

  “Come here,” Shao Kahn commanded.

  “Yes, Lord.”

  The smaller demon moved on flat, thick feet toward his master. As he neared, great, unseen hands grabbed him around the waist and held him above the small circle.

  “Shang,” said Shao Kahn, “I will send Ruthay through the opening you have made, to show you how to use the souls you collect. He will dwell inside the circle you have drawn at your feet, and will be able to help you in other matters as well.”

  The giant released the demon, who fell into the flames and roared with agony as he became one with them. Then, the dark lord opened his hand and passed it over the sea of fire that blazed around Shang Tsung. The flames writhed and died and the smoke rolled away from the demon in mortal form.

  “Five centuries ago,” said Shao Kahn, “I sent you that island in a sea of fire, and it has been shrouded in fog ever since. Now the mists are thick again. Let them hide what you do there… hide it from the eyes of the children of the Mother Realm.” The ends of the devil king’s mouth turned down. “I will always be watching, but you will not be able to see me. However long you take, there will be those who try to stop you. The monks and priests of the Order of Light will oppose you, as they did me when they constructed that temple. The god-spawn of T’ien, my brother, will try to stop you. And one there is, a mere mortal, who has been taken in by the Thunder God to spread lies about the dignity of worms and humans… and to oppose you.” Shao Kahn’s eyes burned fully red as he gazed down at his servant. “If you fail me… if you allow them to stop you, my retribution will be as bitter as it will be everlasting. Do you understand, Shang Tsung?”

  “I understand, Lord Kahn, and I am determined to succeed. Not to preserve myself, but to serve you.”

  The giant’s mouth smiled once more. “I did right to select you, my onetime regent. Do what I have asked and your reward will be a princedom – rule over the Shokan regions and all the magic thereof.” And then Shao Kahn frowned again. “Remember, though, that to keep the portal between the realms open, as I command you must, it will cost human souls. If they are not souls you have won, then a piece of your own soul must be sacrificed to keep it from closing. Time has very little meaning to me, and I will be patient with you – but not forever. You have only until this mortal form dies to succeed.”

  With that, the hand passed once more over Shang Tsung, and the giant sat back, a still but living shadow in a world of flame.

  CHAPTER SIX

  How strange it was, Kung Lao thought as he finished his morning prayers and sat cross-legged on the cliff, savoring the cold air of predawn, his hands pressed together under his chin, thumbs up, his eyes shut. To have been brought here because of my mind and spirit, yet to be renowned for fifteen years because of my strength and martial arts skills.

  There it was, as always: the duality of things. Though in every way, this one had turned out stranger than most.

  It didn’t seem as though it had been a decade and a half since he had first set eyes on Rayden – or, at least, the seven-foot-tall human shape the fearsome thunder god assumed when he descended from the clouds around Mt. Ifukube to move among mortals. Kung Lao used to wonder what Rayden must look like in his normal form, whether it was the single great lightning bolt that had first carried him past the caves of the priests to the realm of the gods, or whether it was all lightning, everywhere. Now it didn’t seem to matter. What was important was not how Rayden appeared but how noble his spirit was – the character and strength that showed itself each year at this time, when he came as flesh and blood to fight.

  And fight he did, Kung Lao thought, with his famed Lightning Throws, his airborne Torpedo Attack, and the ability to teleport – the same talent that had enabled him to come and go, and watch over Kung Lao for all those years back in Chu-jung.

  Opening his eyes just moments before the red orb of the sun rose over the distant horizon, the Order of Light monk, the most honored priest of them all, rose smoothly from the ground without using hands or knees but just the strength of his legs. His pure white robe stirring in the gentle breeze, he held his arms toward the rising sun as it shaded from bright orange to golden to yellow. He remembered the gold of Rayden’s eyes the first time he’d seen them, how there had been warmth and then icy fire in them: the sun and the moon in one being.

  The duality.

  In this case, though, they were the legacy of P’an Ku, the god whose body became the earth, sun, and moon. Alone among the gods, Rayden carried the memory of the parent-god; even T’ien did not have the knowledge that Rayden did.

  And then Rayden passed it on to him. At the spot just behind him, the Temple of the Thunder God on the eastern peaks of Mt. Ifukube. For nearly a year, beneath ceilings of frozen lightning, they sat on chairs of solid gold, behind pillars carved from the mountain face by ancient monks, and the god had passed on all that he knew about P’an Ku. In the event that anything ever happened to him, the Thunder God wanted the origin of the world to be known to someone. Someone who would grasp the magnitude of the tale and who would teach it to others. Someone who would elevate the monks and priests who heard it, and inspire them to carry the tale to others.

  If anything ever happened to Rayden, Kung Lao mused. It was possible, wasn’t it? Especially now that the horror was upon them. The horror of evil that had to exist wherever there was good.

  When the sun was fully up, it warmed the head from which Kung Lao had long ago shaved his youthful queue. It warmed the cheeks that still felt his aunt’s touch, despite the years they had been apart – years during which he’d yearned to go to her but knew he could not, for his old life was dead. She would only have wanted for him to stay, and that he could not do.

  But most of all, the sun warmed the amulet Kung Lao wore around his neck, a smooth white orb set in a gleaming, ever-changing golden shape suspended from a simple leather necklace. The amulet had been forged by Rayden ages before and given to him by the high priests of the Order of Light, who told him that it was a piece of the sun and a piece of the moon, the two dichotomous parts of P’an Ku. The high priests had presented Kung Lao with the amulet when they brought him to their caves and took over his training when Rayden was through. He spent his second year on the mountain among them, subsisting on broth and bread in the fire-warmed caves and learning that these holy men were not like their brethren in villages like Chu-jung. They were genuinely spiritual, interested in study and knowledge, not in controlling the populace through fear and ritual.

  That second year was devoted to Kung Lao’s indoctrination into the ways of the Order of Light, his first exposure to the collected writings of scholars and holy figures from different eras and from around the world, and his introduction to the daunting, exhilarating, mystical ordeal of Mortal Kombat – the great tournament held in the Shaolin Temple on the slopes of Mt. Takashi on the island of Shimura in the East China Seas.

  At the beginning of his third yea
r, Kung Lao had come back here to the Temple of the Thunder God to ponder one by one the writings of philosophers and martial artists collected by the high priests; to reflect on and write about the saga of P’an Ku; and to record his own thoughts on scrolls. Through the priests, he disbursed these writings to the pilgrims who came to worship, advising them on everything from spirituality to medicine to art. They, in turn, brought them to the temples that had become corrupted by local politics and petty disagreements, that had lost sight of the goals of the Order of Light.

  There was also another task Kung Lao would have, one which Rayden had mentioned but never explained, and Kung Lao knew better than to press him. When the Thunder God was ready to tell him about it, then would he know…

  Only once a year did Kung Lao venture from here, and that was to pit his increasingly formidable physical skills against fighters from around the world. And that time was now.

  Kung Lao breathed deeply. Each year, before every battle, he thought about defeat but never about death. The amulet gave him strength and protected him from destruction, and advantage only he and the immortal Rayden had. But this year was different. This year, it might not be possible to hold on to the title of Grand Champion. This year there was a new competitor; and from all that Kung Lao had seen and heard he knew that this year it was possible he might lose.

  Kung Lao turned and faced the temple. It would bother him to be beaten, but it would trouble him more deeply if the amulet were to fall into the hands of someone evil. He wished he could return the amulet to Rayden, but he knew that wasn’t possible: what a god has given to mortals can never be returned, for it is no longer deistic. Even to touch it would make the god no longer a god, but a mortal.