Mortal Kombat

by Jeff Rovin

  There was no choice, even though his decision might well result in losing more than just the tournament. What Kung Lao was about to do might well cost him his life. And with his death, the age of enlightenment that Rayden hoped for might also come to an end.

  Walking across the ledge to the cliffside adjoining the entrance to the temple, Kung Lao cocked his elbows at his sides, faced the rock, collected his thoughts, and with a flashing burst, sent the knuckles of his left fist and then his right fist driving against the gray stone. Shards of rock went flying in all directions as Kung Lao’s expression remained unchanged, the flesh of his hands unbloodied. He cocked his elbows again and once more his fists flew out, blasting away more pieces of stone.

  A third series of blows completed the task. When Kung Lao was finished, he gently removed the amulet from around his neck, lay it in the niche had had opened, picked up the pieces of rock, and carefully replaced them so that the precious talisman was completely hidden. He looked at the rock for a long moment, said a silent prayer, and then slowly – very slowly – he walked to the temple.

  Feeling as though an essential piece of him had died, but knowing that he had done the right thing, Kung Lao began to gather his few belongings for the week-long journey to Mt. Takashi.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Shimura Island was a strange place, hidden behind fog that seemed to keep bright sunlight, seabirds, and even the turbulent waters at bay. A forbidding mass in a glass-smooth sea, Shimura was lit by the hazy sun and seemed always to be cold. At least, that was how it appeared to Kung Lao. He never bothered to ask what the other participants thought, since it was a bad idea to talk to them at all. These were people he had to fight. Getting to know them as individuals would only make it more difficult to attack them as opponents. When he had to strike someone’s wrist, possibly breaking it, he didn’t want to know that that was the hand the person used to earn his living as a tailor or to create beauty as a painter. People came here to compete in the greatest tournament in the world, to pit their skills against worthy opponents, and that was all Kung Lao needed to know.

  During the tournament, the master of the island, the curious Shang Tsung, sent paddle-driven junks to shore to collect the participants. The boats came twice each day for the two days prior to the beginning of the matches, and temporary huts were erected with food and drink for the combatants’ use while they waited, as well as a stable for horses and mules.

  Kung Lao arrived on foot the night before Mortal Kombat was to begin. He had made the journey thirteen times, and knew the roads well – though he found it more tiring this time to keep up the pace. He knew why: it wasn’t that he was older, for the victor of Mortal Kombat did not age for the intervening year, and Kung Lao had not aged for a dozen years plus one. He experienced this unusual fatigue because he had left his amulet behind. That did not bode well for the contest ahead, though Kung Lao resolved to fight harder than ever against mostly familiar adversaries, all of whom were older than ever.

  But this year it was the unfamiliar adversaries that worried him. In his spectacular but curiously veiled way, Rayden had come to Kung Lao just two days before. Appearing in a burst of lightning that shot from a clear sky, the Thunder God had said only, “An image of T’ien will be present on Takashi, and not as a friend.”

  Since the only images of T’ien showed multi-limbed creatures, Kung Lao wondered if more than the usual black magic would be afoot – if the mysterious Shang Tsung had something new in store at his sprawling and resplendent temple. It wouldn’t surprise him. For thirteen years, Shang Tsung had faced Kung Lao in the final round of the Mortal Kombat, and Kung Lao had won each time. After losing, Shang Tsung would present the winner with the Shaolin benediction of victory, and then leave without another word. And each year that Kung Lao returned, their host seemed considerably older – leaner and much more wrinkled, his eyes less lustrous and his hair whiter.

  Kung Lao sat on the shore, first under the setting sun and later beneath the stars, and waited for the boat. He looked at the white band he’d tied around his wrist – the cloth he had found in the village square so many years ago. If he couldn’t have his amulet, he wanted this token, the invisible message that had sent him on his journey to Mt. Ifukube.

  He looked out at the moonlit fog, rolling and gleaming on the sea. It had never bothered Kung Lao that he won the Kombat with the help of the amulet. So many of the participants came armed with magic, some in the form of talismans, others in the form of blows powered by otherworldly strength, that the amulet was necessary just to stay even with them. Shang Tsung himself had reserves of energy that were formidable and not of this world, with flame and fog at his command. Without the lightning and blinding sunshine of Rayden stored in the amulet, Kung Lao could never have defeated Shang Tsung once, let alone thirteen times.

  You mustn’t think like that, he warned himself. Though he would be participating without magic for the first time, Kung Lao still had his skills and his own inner resources. And that had always accounted for a great deal. If he couldn’t tire Shang Tsung, or outlast his blasts of fire and blinding mist, he would have to defeat him quickly, before those powers could be brought to bear.

  The prow of the junk with its distinctive dragon head eased through the fog and came toward the shore like a sea serpent. It bucked and bobbed on the waves, the sea seeming to hiss each time the sharp stem of the vessel sent it spraying upward, the foam rising up past the nose of the dragon, like wisps of smoke.

  Kung Lao rose and collected his leather suitcase, neither acknowledging nor looking at the two other combatants who had moved from the huts to the shore. When the boat neared the shore, it turned starboard side in and a pair of black-cloaked figures lowered a plank to the sand. Their faces hidden beneath hoods, the figures worked quickly while seeming to move slowly – as though they were outside our time frame, yet somehow inhabiting it.

  Though he was closest to the plank, Kung Lao permitted the other two men to board first – a courtesy he had never been able to shake. As soon as they had boarded, and even before the plank was raised, the vessel started back toward the island. The tournament was nothing if not efficient, from the moment the first guest arrived at shore to the instant the last one had departed.

  After six days of travel, it felt good to sit and be carried. Kung Lao sat on a mat on the heaving deck, enjoying the motion as the junk approached and was swallowed up by the fog, then quickly settled down and sailed swiftly and evenly on the calm seas when it emerged. The vessel eased into a semicircular wharf that, when seen from the top of the temple, suggested the dragon-head motif on the bow. Or maybe it was a trick of the light from the lanterns that lined the dock. Kung Lao had discovered that the island was full of illusions like that, though he was at a loss to explain them.

  Upon reaching the shore, the crews of the ships didn’t disembark, though they appeared to vanish. The new arrivals were met by young men in white cloaks, who carried their bags up the long, winding mountain road to the temple. The combatants rode mules in front of them, and noted that the road didn’t seem to wind quite so much in the ascent as it appeared to from the shore. The animals knew the way and didn’t need to be prodded – something that always amazed Kung Lao, for mules weren’t especially clever or cooperative. He suspected enchantment here as well, for one year he had asked Rayden to send a lightning bolt during the climb and he’d seen, in the flash, not the head of a mule, but the likeness of a dragon.

  The recurrence of the image didn’t surprise Kung Lao. The nation honored many kinds of lung, or dragons. There were imperial dragons, which symbolized the Emperor and were the only ones which were allowed to have five talons on each paw; the rest had four. The celestial dragons stood guard over the abode of the gods, the spiritual dragons helped T’ien and his deities tend to the winds and rains, the earth dragons looked after the soil, the rivers, and the seas, and the ferocious treasure dragons guarded the wealth that belonged to gods and demons. The dragon of Shimura
Island, with its horse-like head and sharp frills that curled up from its long neck and head, was a treasure dragon.

  As the temple and palace came into view, perched on the edge of a low cliff of the mountain, moonlight gave it a ghostly cast and Kung Lao felt a chill.

  Something was different this time, and it wasn’t just the absence of his amulet. He felt an ominous presence that he had never felt before – a new combatant, perhaps. He looked toward the two tall pagodas that were the palace living quarters, his eyes searching the open windows and looking for shadows on the drawn shades. But he found nothing out of the ordinary. His gaze shifted to the imposing marble-and-gold palace between them, with its torchlit crowds of life-sized jade princesses and ivory treasure dragons, its alabaster bowmen and giant onyx steeds and war chariots, and then to the older, darker, lowlying temple in front.

  Nowhere did Kung Lao see anything, but something was most definitely there. Something powerful and something dangerous.

  Something not of this world.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Outwardly, Shang Tsung was calm as ever as he uttered the words that kept the door to his laboratory locked. Inwardly, however, he was in agony.

  His long, dry, white hair hung in a sheet down his back, and his skin, once as smooth as the seas that surrounded his island, was a mesh of fine lines and fragile creases. Though his posture was still ramrod straight and his eyes were as clear as ever, it was obvious that he lived under a great weight.

  “I am to be admitted,” he said in the gentlest whisper. “Open, open, open.”

  A row of bolts clacked open on the inside of the door, and the massive stone slab moved inward, slowly, on hinges the size of Shang Tsung’s forearms.

  Shang slid inside, turned, and said, “I am inside. Shut, shut, shut.”

  At that, the door stopped opening and began to move in the other direction. When it was shut, the row of seven thick bolts slapped shut by themselves, one after the other.

  Shang Tsung turned and faced the brazier that burned without burning in the midst of the old circle he’d created on the floor in the center of the room. In there, in the portal between the Mother Realm and the Outworld, time stood still. The flame was frozen, like a red frond, still providing illumination though no fuel was consumed. The powdery circle was also where he’d made it, though it was covered with a crawling, greasy, and dull amber film, the essence of the poor demon that Shao Kahn had sent there thirteen years before.

  Shang Tsung approached the circle, and as soon as he came near enough for his body heat to activate the powder, time there resumed. The flame crackled anew, motes of dust that had been suspended in the air began to move… and the room was filled with a moan that was both miserable and mad.

  “Shaaaaaang!”

  “Good evening, Ruthay.”

  “Whennn? Wheeennnnn?”

  “Today, Ruthay,” the wizard said as he reached the circle. “Thanks to you… today.”

  “Toooodayyyy,” the voice sighed, then cackled, then sobbed. “I can… go baaaack… today?”

  “I hope so,” Shang Tsung said solemnly as he stepped inside the sacred portal. “I do hope so.”

  For thirteen years it had been a matter of the most stubborn pride. After remembering who he was and vowing to serve Shao Kahn, Shang Tsung had gone to the mainland, used a bamboo splinter to slit the throats of lone travelers, and with a magic spell provided by Ruthay, snared their departing souls and brought them to the island to begin enlarging the rift between the worlds. But much to his surprise and disappointment, the breach could not be widened.

  In this time before isolation, imprisonment, and homesickness had driven him quite mad, Ruthay had told him that not every soul could be used to open the doorway sufficiently to accommodate Shao Kahn and his hordes of demons and furies. Only some of them would work.

  Why wasn’t I told this before? Shang Tsung remembered snarling at the demon.

  Because only experience teaches some lessons, Ruthay had replied.

  The fool of a demon wasn’t right about many things, but he’d been right about that. Even Ruthay hadn’t known that only selected souls could be used. Not until Shang Tsung went ashore, waited months to find and kill a warrior, a teacher, and a holy man, and sent their souls through the doorway, did he and Ruthay know that only the souls of great fighters could be used to expand the portal.

  Alas, he realized that finding them would take time. Using an explosive powder, Shang Tsung destroyed a floating kitchen that had been making its way along the coast, and captured the souls of the seven drowning cooks. Cloaking them and making them his slaves, he put the supernatural entities to work rebuilding the ancient Shaolin Temple on the island and then enlarging it to include a palace and the twin pagodas.

  While they worked, using magic to excavate, cut, and place the stones, Shang concentrated on finding a means to bring the world’s boldest fighters to him, to get them to Shimura Island, where their souls could be hurried, still fresh, to the temple and used to weaken beyond repair the barrier between the dimensions.

  He came up with the idea for Mortal Kombat, and it should have worked.

  Through dreams, Shang contacted warriors in lands both known and unknown – summoned them, guided them to the East China Sea, and pit them one against the other to find the strongest souls in the Mother Realm. The idea was that he would win and, in winning, take the life and soul of the warrior who had survived the other matches and emerged victor, the second most powerful, second only to him.

  But then he met and faced the accursed Order of Light high priest Kung Lao, just as Shao Kahn intimated he would.

  Just thinking the name, as he had now, was enough to make his heart fill with rage, his ravaged and incomplete soul to burn.

  Their first match had been their fiercest. Of course it had been, Shang Tsung thought back. Kung Lao had not known of Shang’s special powers, his ability to throw spears of flame and coils of smoke, and Shang was also younger then – thirteen years younger – and more powerful. Kung Lao had struggled his way through ten increasingly more violent and difficult matches before finally facing his host.

  Shang Tsung could still vividly see the bruised but almost insufferably proud Kung Lao standing there, with his left foot facing left for support, his right foot pointed ahead, ready to strike out, his right hand fisted and cocked at his side, his left forearm angled in front of him, hand rigid.

  And Shang remembered how the fight evolved in the splendid Hall of Champions, in the newly finished palace. He remembered every move and every nuance.

  Kung Lao had taken a step forward, and as he did so Shang had spun and clapped his hands together. Blinding white light had exploded between the men, sizzling in the air for several long seconds.

  Shang shut his eyes. Even today, thirteen years later, he could still feel the wonderful heat of the burst, the glow that was going to light his way to the championship –

  Kung Lao had jump-kicked blindly, and Shang did a standing flip to the left, out of the way, his hands still smoking from the fireball. Still unable to see, Kung Lao had crossed his forearms defensively, in front of his face, but Shang had leapt above them and driven a heel into his opponent’s temple. Kung Lao then fell on his back, and Shang had landed with a knee on Kung Lao’s chest.

  You can’t block what you can’t see! he remembered laughing, confident of victory. Before his foe could recover, Shang had crooked the fingers of his right hand and drove his palm into the base of Kung’s nose. The young warrior’s eyes had rolled up as his precious, holy man’s blood splashed onto the hard marble floor. And as he watched it spray in all directions, Shang could feel Kung Lao’s soul coming free of its moorings.

  Shang had risen then, glaring down at Kung Lao as he tried to raise his back from the ground. With a sneer, Shang then stomped once on his foe’s belly, knocking the wind from him.

  Don’t move again, Shang had said. Savor the blindness so that you don’t have to watch as I take your
misbegotten life.

  Then, as Shang had come toward him, Kung Lao reached out suddenly, grabbed his adversary’s left leg behind the shin, and thrust his left palm hard into Shang’s right knee. The attacker’s leg had buckled and he went down, Kung Lao simultaneously rolling to one side, throwing both legs into the air, and catching Shang in a scissor-lock as he fell. Kung Lao then hooked his feet together and squeezed as Shang hit the ground and tried to pry him loose.

  Shang Tsung winced as he relived the pain –

  The faces of both men turned red as they lay there, locked together.

  Shang Tsung shuddered, now, as he recalled the words Kung Lao had uttered. Some men with sight are still blind, he’d said, crushing them tighter. There are always things one doesn’t anticipate.

  Kung Lao was a little goldfish who enjoyed swimming in the pool of his own piety and righteousness, but he hadn’t been wrong about that. After what Shang had thought would be a quick victory, he lost as that amulet – the damned moon-sun trinket – sapped his strength while he lay trapped in that hold. And it was a quick victory… though not for Shang.

  Kung Lao and Shang Tsung had met in each of the succeeding twelve tournaments. Shang Tsung would sit on his throne in the Hall of Champions, watching each match as Kung Lao progressed to the inevitable showdown. And then, fresh from not having to participate, Shang Tsung would face his tired foe. Each year, Shang Tsung was confident of victory, for he had used herbs and roots to make his magic stronger, had worked hard to toughen his flesh and sinew, had given himself a reason to win by assuring Shao Kahn that this year, at long last, the great soul of Kung Lao would be used to widen the breach.

  But each year, Kung Lao defeated him. Sometimes swiftly, as he had in their first match; sometimes in battles that lasted fully a day and night, plucking victory from what seemed like certain defeat. The amulet helped, of course, yet Shang Tsung knew it was more than that. Though both had the will to win, Kung Lao had the heart of a god. Shang was on a mission for one, which wasn’t the same thing.