In Blackest Night

[Shang Tsung]

With a scowl, Shang Tsung stepped into the storage room and found himself staring at what was undoubtedly supposed to be another sort of puzzle. The shelves that lined the walls were mostly bare, with only a few empty bottles and musty books. The medicinal smell didn’t linger in this room, which made for a pleasant experience as the sorcerer scanned the shelving units. He knew that there had to be something to find in this room, but he didn’t expect it to come jumping out at him.

After making a loop of the room, Shang found himself staring into the room from the door once more. The sorcerer tapped a finger on his leg as he mulled over everything. Certainly there had to be something here other than a bunch of empty jars and smelly books.

A few minutes passed, and just before he started to smash things, he spotted something amiss.

Walking toward the far wall, Shang dropped into a squat and looked at the spine of the book. It was a leather-bound copy of ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ and while that in and of itself didn’t make it stand out, the fact that it had a few fingerprints did. None of the other books had been moved in the room, but this particular novel had been opened.

Shang reached out and grabbed the book from the shelf. As he did, he took a step backwards as his eyes went left and right in quick succession. When nothing shot out at him and the ground beneath him remained stable, he turned his attention back to the book. Grabbing it where the last person had, Shang peeled open the cover and let it fall open. While the first page of the book was blank, the inside of the cover had a message written on it in what seemed to be black marker.

“We fell down the rabbit hole a long time ago… May we all Rest in Peace.” The sorcerer leafed through a few of the pages until he swiped one away to reveal that most of the book’s interior had been hollowed out. In lieu of Alice’s adventure through Wonderland, someone had left a small skeleton key. “And where do you go?” Shang mumbled as he grabbed the key, discarded the book, and took a closer look at the wall. Most of it was unpainted cinderblock, but there was little split in the seam between two blocks.

Sliding the key into the tiny crack, Shang gave it a twist and smirked as he heard the noise of antique gears grinding behind the concrete. As he rose up to his feet, he watched as the nearby corners of the room started to sputter ash and dust as the wall before him split apart. The metal shelves shuddered violently as the wall behind them slid apart to reveal a plain-looking wooden door. With a snicker, Shang grabbed the shelf and yanked it out of his way, allowing the random stuff to topple onto the ground as he swung around it and grabbed the doorknob.

Despite its hidden location and the appearance of being older than anything else Shang had seen in the town, the door opened smoothly. A glanced showed that the hinges were so new they almost sparkled in the dim light of the storage room. Making his way over the threshold, Shang entered the dark room and walked into the blackness. He made it a few steps before he heard the door click shut behind him, and as he glanced over his shoulder, a series of lights clicked on overhead, bathing the room in a bright white that contrasted every other single source of illumination in Alchemilla.

As his eyes adjusted to the light, the sorcerer stared around the room. From what he could see, it was just a tiny metal square with a door on the other side. The exit to the room was little more than a metal sheet—a stark contrast to the antique wooden door on the other side. Shang mashed the button next to the exit, and with a pneumatic hiss, the metal door slid down into the floor. The sorcerer smirked as he stepped through the doorway and entered into what appeared to be a lab.

Shang made his way up the center of the room, his fingertips dragging along the pair of two chrome tables that flanked a little walkway that bisected the lab. When he reached the end of the tables, he glanced at his fingers and saw that he hadn’t picked up any dust, which implied at least some form of cleaning in within recent history. Glancing to his right, Shang took note of several refrigeration units. Everything appeared to be in pristine condition, and even the small workspace near the back corner of the room had the look of organized chaos.

Noting the location of the two exits, the sorcerer approached the desk and jiggled the computer mouse. When the screen failed to illuminate, Shang scowled and reached for the monitor’s power button. The piece of equipment started to hum as the display slowly appeared, revealing that whoever worked at this station hadn’t logged out of their previous session. The sorcerer’s eyes skimmed the icons on the desktop before opening up an explorer window.

So much garbage… The man mused as he sifted through contents of the machine’s hard drive. Most of it appeared to be personal information or bland reports about hospital and ‘facility’ (was that where was now?) operations. It wasn’t until he found a buried folder filled with security footage that Shang felt a grin spread across his visage. Clicking the icon, the sorcerer stepped back and watched the video.

”This is bullshit, and you KNOW it is,” a scrawny man screamed as he slammed one of his hands down onto the counter of the lab. The vials and testubes rattled, causing the other person, a woman in a pantsuit, to glance nervously to make sure nothing broke or tipped over and spilled.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Birkin, but we just don’t have the capital to keep funding your research if you’re not going to provide us with any sort of timetable for when you will produce anything.”

The man in the lab coat growled as he turned around and took a few steps away from the executive. His hands ran through his short brown hair as he glanced up at the camera, revealing a face dotted with sweat and bloodshot eyes with deep bags under them. Whoever he was, the man was putting in too much time and not sleeping enough. He turned back around to the face the woman. “You want results?” Birkin shouted, his voice taking on a manic energy as he started to glimpse at all the chemicals that surrounded him, his brain working through dozens of experiments in his head. “Come back tomorrow.”

“My pleasure,” the woman muttered, her tone deflating as the scientist ran off to the computer terminal that Shang was standing in front of.

After that, the video was just Birkin and a growing number of assistants working in hazmat gear. At one point, they pulled in a few mice and injected them with some green substance. Shang closed the video and glanced through the remaining recorded feeds. He picked the second one, which was just a week after the first recording, and watched as it played out on the screen in front of him.

”What happened to them?” The woman in the suit asked. She was sitting in an office chair across from the scientist, who was seated at the terminal.

“They were exposed during a routine test,” Birkin sighed as he massaged his temples. “Someone had failed to properly sedate the BOW, and it lashed out at the workers the moment they were through the quarantine locks. They were able to pump in enough sedatives to make the creature groggy enough to get out the workers.”

“My god,” the woman whispered. “How many fatalities?”

“Only the one, but the other four were injured, and the two workers who pulled them out were likewise exposed to the virus.”

“How?”

“The blood. Even just a scratch from an infected creature is enough to transmit the virus. Blood is also a viable carrier, which is what doomed the other two. They got splattered with the blood of the dead man… the eyes, nose, and mouth are excellent ways for disease to get into anyone’s system.”

“My god, William…” The woman shook her head, but her tone was morose rather than inflammatory.

“I know,” he muttered as he handed her something from his desk. “They’re all still lucid, and while it remains that way, I’d like to transfer them to Cedar Grove. They have the proper quarantine facilities there to make sure they don’t hurt anyone as the virus progresses.”

“You want me to cover this up?”

William Birkin chuckled. “If this gets out, we’re sunk, and I’m sure you and the board understand as much. You need to do what you’re supposed to do and sweep this under the rug. We’re making breakthroughs, and we can’t stop now. Need I mention that you’re the one who pressured me to advance the research, Alice?”

“Bite your tongue, Birkin,” the woman snapped as she grabbed the clipboard from the scientist. She skimmed whatever documents it contained and then rested it on her lap. “You want to record these people as they suffer?”

“Don’t grow a conscience on me now,” William laughed. “We won’t have another chance to see how the T acts in humans, so we can’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

Alice thought for a moment and nodded her head. “Just make sure you keep producing results. The Board was a fan of that last ‘BOW’ you produced.”

“The Hunters?” William asked with a grin. “Yes, they are very interesting. Just fertilize a human egg with some reptilian DNA and add the virus. My god, the results. The science alone is enough to fuel a few careers worth of papers.”

“Where do you get the eggs… actually, I don’t want to know,” Alice replied as she stood up and excused herself from the lab.

The sorcerer smiled. “Science is wonderful,” he muttered as he went to the last recorded security feed. The timestamp indicated that it was about two weeks after the last one he had watched.

”Why did you do this?” Alice screamed at Birkin, who was hunched over at his desk. The Umbrella executive was still wearing part of her pantsuit, but her clothes were sparkled with blood and tattered. All around them, the pristine-looking lab was derelict. Most of the storage units had been smashed open, and a handful of corpses could be spotted. Smears of blood dotted the walls and most of the surfaces in the room, and one of the long tables that ran the length of the lab had a few deep claw marks.

Birkin, the scientist, turned away from the computer and drew a handgun on the pantsuit. “You wanted this right? You wanted me to produce something, right? Well here you go!”

“You’re a lunatic, William,” the woman replied as she started to back away. “You know how many lives you destroyed? This facility had hundreds of workers!”

William Birkin let out a sharp laugh. “Their lives are on you, bitch. What the hell did you expect to come of this research? You asked me to weaponize a virus… you got it!”

“I didn’t want you to test it on our employees!” She screamed.

“I’m not a mad scientist,” Birkin screamed as the gun shook in his outstretched hand. “It was an accident! I didn’t know the virus could become waterborne!”

“And yet you don’t drink the water here, do you?” Alice spat, growing increasingly confrontation despite the gun a few feet from her face.

The scientist laughed and gestured to a clear fridge on the far wall of the room. It was filled with bottled water from the spring in the Arklay Mountains. “I always drink the bottled stuff, because I hate the taste of the metallic shit this city produces, and that’s something you can check your little purchasing book for if you want some real proof.”

“Well I hope you’re happy,” Alice barked as her eyes turned to a door in the corner of the lab that, for some reason, was a wall when Shang glance over there from the screen. When the sorcerer turned back, he watched as the automatic door slid open and a group of moaning, bloodstained employees spilled into the lab. “You’ve doomed us all.” The woman screamed as she ran out of the camera’s field of view.

Birkin turned his gun on the group of virus carriers and fired. For a scientist, his aimed wasn’t terrible, and he managed to down two of the five before having to turn and flee himself. The groaning group followed the man and only their moans could be heard before more gunshots rang out through the lab.

There was a silence then, and Shang was about to turn off the video when Birkin stumbled back into the camera’s view. The man’s labcoat was red with blood, but he didn’t seem to have any visible injuries. He lurched toward his terminal and turned to look up at the security camera, his head shaking as he lifted the gun. “Run.” He screamed as he pulled the trigger, causing the feed to turn into a bunch of static and whitenoise.

“Fun,” Shang muttered as he pushed away from the desk. As his eyes moved from the screen, he actually felt his stomach knot up in his gut. The wall in front of him was dirty and caked with dry blood. The shelves that had once been filled with books and bottles of chemicals were mostly empty now, with some of their contents still strewn on the ground or in bits. Turning around, the sorcerer looked out into a poorly lit laboratory that looked like a bloodstained hurricane had torn through. Much like in the final feed, there was now dried blood everywhere, and nearly two dozen bullet holes marred various parts of the lab. The tables that he had touched on his walk over to the computer were bashed and smashed, with their intricate assortment of lab equipment vanished.

At the far end of the lab, the door through which Shang had passed was gone. In its place, a steel wall with the phrase ‘Never Forget’ smeared across it in blackened blood.

More unnerving than the blood and destruction was the collection of rotting corpses that dotted the room, including the small pile of three bodies near a seemingly new doorway in the corner… the same doorway that existed in the series of security feeds. Or was that doorway always there? Shang shook his head, trying to dispel the second guessing as he sat down on the desk and scowled.

For once, Shang Tsung had no idea what was going on.

[Atelos]

The Shadow Dragon emerged from the black portal, it’s red eyes looking down upon the town. It got a good look at the family of three as they were running away. The giant monster began to walk over towards the family and the children’s screams became more frantic as the giant monster began to walk over to them. It seemed to lick it’s snake-like tongue over its lips in anticipation for its first meal in this new world. It began to walk faster until it was almost upon the family, the mother shielding her children, offering up herself to feed the dragon’s hunger in order to save those that she cares about. The dragon opened up it’s jaw and uttered a primal growl.

A shield hit the creatures eye and the thing cried out in momentary pain and it’s new target was the Spartan that had pissed it off. Atelos retrieved the shield that had bounced off the eye and now lay a few feet in front of him.

“Run! I’ll take care of this foul beast.” The spartan motioned the the parent. Tears rolled down her face in appreciation as she ran off. The monster turned it’s head and watched helplessly as its meal ran away to safety. It faced Atelos and opened its jaw before letting out a deep roar. It’s blood red eyes stared deep into the Spartan before it took in a deep breath and letting a blast of fire out of his mouth. Atelos raised his shield and felt the warm flames attack his arm.

Atelos peered open his eyes to see the flames subside and he lowered his shield for a second before a giant claw rammed into him and he was sent flying. He saw the lamppost ahead of him and raised his shield for impact. His body hit the floor with a loud thud and his skin began to peel on the concrete. He looked towards the area of the street where the street light had been...but it was no longer there.

A ferocious roar came from the large beast that lay beyond his gaze. It’s empty eyes stared into Atelos’ and they began to breathe life. Fire began to crawl up the beast’s throat and it let out another breath of fire. Atelos grabbed his shield that lay above his head and tried to block himself but the fire had consumed his lower half before he had the chance. The spartan grit as he felt the flames eat his legs. He finally got it to block his legs and the flames stopped. He looked upon his legs and saw the charred flesh and the utter pain he was in. Why wasn’t Hades here to help him?

He got upon one knee as he saw the Dragon take another deep breathe and he wobbly stood as his legs stood in pain. He tried to form the three swords but failed horribly. He staggered and the Dragon finished drawing in its breath and let out an onslaught of fire. The Spartan dashed to the right to avoid the blast but he felt himself be slower and weaker. Was Hades truly gone? Pain flared up in his legs as the fire followed him.

He felt the fire get hotter and he knew his shield wouldn’t last long. The metal was turning red as if it were coming fresh from the forge and he ran towards the Shadow Dragon. It’s roar pushing him back slightly but he forced himself on. He saw the Dragon’s head peer above his shield and he leapt forward and smashed the shield onto the Dragon’s jaw. He ignited his gloved and followed with a solid uppercut and the Dragon swiped at him, catching him in the leg causing some deep cuts. The Spartan’s back hit the wall and blood trailed down his mouth as he tried to get back up. The beast let out another roar before he got up and tossed his shield straight at the beast, hitting it in the eye.

Atelos jumped to catch the shield mid-air and ran behind the large beast. He jumped onto the creature’s leg and crawled up towards the top, holding on while the beast thrashed around and blew fire everywhere.

“Return to Tartarus you foul beast!” He smashed his shield into the Dragon’s head repeatedly as it clawed at him before it stopped all movements and it’s brains was permanently stained onto his shield. The corpse dissolved into shadows and fled into the sky.

A white figure giggled at the corner. Atelos’ eyes darted to it and it appeared to be a smile child before it ran away. He slumped onto the ground, he saved the city. He redeemed himself and helped citizens who were in danger. He began to laugh, and laugh, and laugh. And he didn’t stop.

[Shang Tsung]

From somewhere in an adjacent room, Shang heard a low moan. More than being scary, it sounded depressing, as if someone was lying in a pool of their own blood as they made the noise. With the way he’d come now a steel wall, the sorcerer knew that the only path out would be to delve deeper into the installation. Even with that knowledge, it didn’t make him any more willing to exit the pseudo-safety of the laboratory-turned-crimescene.

Reaching down to his side, the sorcerer retrieved the handgun, checked to ensure the clip was loaded, and slid the weapon back into its holster. The less he had to rely on his actual powers, the better off he would be in the long run. As he pushed off the desk, Shang’s eyes caught something in one of the many refrigerated storage units that ran alongside the walls of the lab. Beneath the dirt, dust, and dried blood, he spotted something just barely illuminated in the dying white light of storage. The sorcerer walked over to the case and wiped away some of the grime with his sleeve to reveal a glass tube that contained a double helix of green fluid.

When more examination revealed the case was otherwise empty, Shang grabbed the handle and wrenched open the storage unit. He recognized the substance from the security feeds. It was the same stuff they’d been testing on the rabbits prior to the outbreak that ultimately consumed this facility.

“T-Virus,” Shang muttered as he reached in and removed the glass tube from the rack. While the tube had metal caps on both ends, he wasn’t trusting the glass itself to hold up to any scrutiny. Fortunately for the sorcerer, he spotted some metal containers that would slid over the large vial. With a grin, he grabbed one and slid the green virus inside. “I’m sure you’ll be of some use,” he muttered as he slid the metal capsule into his satchel.

Turning his focus back to the exit, he grabbed the pistol and walked over to the door. Although it seemed like most of the facility was running on emergency power, there was still enough juice to open the door’s pneumatic mechanism. The machinery rattled as the door slid up into the wall, revealing a corridor stained with blood and marred with claw marks and bullet holes. Shang stepped forward and poked the gun’s muzzle against the blood to verify that it was dried, and after that, he continued down the steel hallway.

The sorcerer traversed the corridor, his leather boots the only sound beside the faint hum of machinery. At the other end, he pressed another switch and stepped back as the door slid up and into the ceiling. All at once, a grotesque stench flooded through the open door. Shang, who had seen a lot in his many years, found himself gagging a little as he stumbled into what had once been some sort of a mess hall. His eyes immediately found the source of the odor--in the far corner of the room, some sort of tank had ruptured long ago. While it looked like only a type of water tank, the water had found a stack of corpses piled up in the room and turned them into a moist, fetid mass of pestilence and decay.

Shang had no problem with burning corpses… he’d smelled plenty during the Boxer Rebellion and during a stint in Germany in the 1940s, but the odor exuded by water-logged bodies was something far more unpleasant. Making sure that nothing was going to jump out at him, the sorcerer jogged across the mess hall toward the pair of double-doors on the other side. Moving shoulder-first through the exit, he made it a few more steps before he slipped in the nearly knee-deep water and fell onto his backside. In a panic, his hands went to the package in his bag, which remained undamaged.

Rising to his feet, Shang grimaced as he spotted a nearby door. He made his way through the water, which sloshed around his boots before he managed to smack open the metal door and slip into the little side-lab. It took him only a moment to see that someone was sitting in the old office chair in front of him. Although they weren’t facing him, Shang saw the back of their head peeking up over the chair.

“Hello,” the sorcerer muttered as he slid the door shut and glanced back into the hallway to make sure his sounds hadn’t attracted anything. Turning back around, he saw that the person hadn’t moved or turned to look at him. “Excuse me,” Shang added as he stepped forward. As he came in line with the person, he caught a whiff of the stench and quickly realized that he was looking at a seated corpse. Not just any dead body, but one with a knife plunged through its chest.

Leaning forward, Shang grabbed the knife by the handle and pulled it out of the decomposing flesh. The sorcerer, holding the weapon by the base of the blade, brought it up to his face and glanced at the strange runes etched into a handle that seemed to be a tusk or bone of some sort. The main image was that of a trio of circles contained within a ring filled with runic letters and an eyeball. As the sorcerer looked at the weapon, it seemed to radiate a faint heat, and the images gave off a faint red hue.

Without a second thought, Shang tucked the dagger into his belt and turned back toward the door. The little room had no other exits, which meant he’d have to continue his path into the installation if he intended to find an escape. WIth the gun in his hand, he twisted the doorknob and leaned into the door. Once back in the hall, Shang squinted and started slowly down toward the end. He made it a few feet before something nudged his ankle, causing him to wrench his foot away and aim the gun at the water. It was then that he saw the corpse slowly drifting passed him.

“At least they’re not walking,” Shang mumbled beneath his breath as he made his way down the corridor until he reached another door. Unlike the rest, this one had been ripped off its tracks after being scraped and pounded into oblivion. With the water still drowning his knee caps, Shang maneuvered around the fallen door and glanced into the new room, which was some sort of generator room. Dominated by a large piece of machinery that had long since stopped functioning, the rest of the room was a network of tubes and pipes that fed up into the ceiling and into the various vents and other slits in the walls.

Shang scowled as he waded forward, his eyes scanning for an exit from the power room. High overhead, parts of the generator were sparking, but there didn’t seem to be any danger of the machine falling down into the water.

Somewhere on the other side of the generator, Shang heard a barely functioning pneumatic door shamble up along its tracks. The sorcerer stopped dead in his tracks as he heard the sound of heavy boots smack down through water against steel. Scowling, he crept closer to the central generator and fell silent as the footsteps circled around the machine. The lights in the room left much to be desired, but it was enough for him to see as he lifted the gun and waited. The moment he saw the dull glint, he squeezed the trigger.

WIth a ping, the bullet hit a shoulder guard made of enchanted plate mail and deflected away, lodging itself into the wall after ricocheting off toward the ceiling. The armored man let out a grunt as he stumbled backwards and slumped against a wall of dead machines, his free hand reaching to ensure his pauldron hadn’t been compromised.

“Sorcerer?!” Argento declared after his eyes found Shang, who furrowed his brow at the sight of the paladin so deep in the installation.

“What… How did you get here?” Shang inquired, still holding up the gun.

“I was directed to the hospital by a young woman in military attire, and then a shabby-looking youth pointed me in the direction of the elevator. You haven’t responded to my attempts to hail you with the voice box.”

Shang glanced down at the walkie-talkie and scowled as he used his free hand to remove it from his belt. A glimpse showed that it had been turned off at some point, perhaps when he fell or during one of his earlier scuffles in the hospital. The sorcerer twisted the knob and slid it back onto his belt as he turned his attention back to the paladin. “How long have you been down here? Where’s this elevator you took?”

Argento shook his head. “It’s a few corridors back, but it’s not there any longer, my friend.”

“Vanished? Turned into a wall?”

“How did you know?” The paladin asked, his own brow creasing as he glanced around the generator room.

“This place plays tricks with the mind, Paladin,” Shang said as he tapped the gun against his own temple. “Have you run into anyone else? Alive or dead?”

The other man shook his head. “Just a lot of fallen men and the scenes of great wars fought here in the recent past. Do you know what befell this installation?”

“Some sort of virus outbreak,” Shang responded as he motioned toward a door on an elevated platform over their heads. “To put it simple… it turns people into zombies.” Without needing to convey instructions, the two men proceeded to help one another up onto the platform. Shang hoisted the heavier, armor clad man up first and was then hoisted up next to his ‘comrade.’

“That is a shame,” Argento declared as he tried the door. When it failed to open, he bashed it open with his shoulder before turning to face his companion. “There’s some foul sorcery afoot here, if you’ll pardon my use of the term.”

“No magic. It’s just science,” Shang corrected as the two made their way down another corridor. “We need to find a map of some sort… it’s the only way to find an exit from this infernal place.”

“I fear the only exit will be from this verse entirely,” Argento spoke, causing the sorcerer to stop and glance at him. “Do you not think we are here for a reason? Certainly there must be some preordained reason why the malicious forces in this town corralled us into the hospital and then down into this crypt.” The paladin placed a hand upon the other man’s shoulder. “It’s what we came here for, Shang. The path to Omni.”

The sorcerer furrowed his brow but suppressed an urge to laugh in the man’s face. Did the paladin really believe they were here for some ordained purpose? Was he truly that delusional? “Then let’s press onward, Argento.”

In silence, the two made their way into a giant, well-lit laboratory. As the door clicked shut behind them, they both found themselves staring across a sea of shattered containment cells. that lined the walls and a central aisle. At the far end, there was one undamaged cell that loomed high over both men as they approached it.

“In the name of the Sun,” Argento muttered aloud as Shang and he walked around the central aisle toward the back of the room. Within the ten foot tube stood something that could have once been a normal human being, but whatever experiments had been performed upon it had turned it into something altogether different. The sexless being bobbed around in whatever cyan fluid filled the tube. A large organ on its chest, fed by large fleshly tubes, beat slowly, resembling some sort of external heart.

Aside from handfuls of scars, boils, and various signs of surgeries performed in the past, the creature’s flesh was pallid and almost sickly. Instead of a left hand, the creature had three massive clawed digits. While its eyes were closed, its gums were missing, so it had a permanent and garrish grin upon its bald cranium.

“What is that?” Argento muttered as the pair approached the computer terminal and various machinery at the base of the containment tube. “Is it human?” He asked as he turned to the sorcerer for answers.

“I’m not sure,” Shang muttered as he joined the paladin in front of the terminal. “Some sort of living weapon, I’d wager. It seems they were researching these types of things at this facility.”

“Despicable,” the paladin spat as he looked up at the inert creature. “Is it alive?” When he received a nod in response, he scowled. “Is there any way to put it out of its misery? No one deserves such a fate as this,” he spoke as he clenched his gauntleted fist around his hammer.

Shang lifted a hand to stop the paladin from doing anything too hasty. “There might be controls that will cut off whatever life support it is receiving… let me see.” The sorcerer’s associate nodded his head and walked away to examine the rest of the room for any signs of an exit or another path to take. Now alone with the computer, Shang leaned over the terminal and started to sift through the options. His options weren’t that bountiful, as the operating system had no GUI and was little more than an advanced version of MS-DOS. Most of the information on the screen was computer jargon, but it did state the creature’s name: Tyrant-003. After trying a few generic lines, Shang scowled and leaned away from the machine, but as he did, a new command prompt flashed onto the screen.

The only way through the Darkness is to leap headfirst. Execute? Y/N?

The sorcerer took a step closer and looked up at the eight foot monster inside the tube. His eyes then fell back to the terminal. With a frown, he found the Y button and mashed it down, which prompted a few hundred lines of code to rush passed the green computer screen as a series of beeps came from the nearby machinery.

“Were you successful?” Argento declared as he jogged over and smacked a hand against Shang’s shoulder. When the water started to slowly drain from the tube, the paladin let out a gasp and turned to look at his associate, who did his best to feign horror and surprise. “What happened?”


“I-I-I thought I had found the right command,” Shang mumbled, his voice thick with fake shock as he rushed up to the machine and tried to smack a bunch of buttons. “Infernal machine must have been sabotaged or something!” He declared as he pushed away from it and turned his attention to the rapidly draining holding cell.

The paladin remained resolute despite the other man’s reaction to the situation. “Do not fear, Shang Tsung,” Argento boomed as he lifted his warhammer. “We shall slay this monster, just as we have defeated all those that preceded it. We shall show it the purifying light of the Sun!”

As the last of the fluid drained out of the tube, the pair of men stepped back as the creature’s eyes opened and its fist struck the glass, causing it to splinter outward. When a second smack failed the break the material, the creature lashed out with its claws and glass exploded outward, showering upon the two warriors below.

“Fall back!” Argento roared as Tyrant stepped out from the broken tube and dropped into a crouch in front of them, its hunched over body still towering over both of them.

[Shang Tsung]

Swinging up the handgun, Shang pulled back on the trigger with hapless abandon. He watched with mounting frustration as bullet holes opened up along the creature’s chest and shoulders but otherwise had no visible effect.

“Duck,” Argento boomed as he tackled the sorcerer to the ground as Tyrant’s claw cleaved through the air where they had once stood. When the pair hit the metal floor of the lab, the paladin was up to his feet a moment later and bringing his hammer to bear upon the beast. With a shout, he swung, catching the bioweapon in the gut with the Day’suis. Tyrant stumbled backward, its previously unused legs wobbling as it struggled to maintain its balance. It caught itself against the monitors and quickly lashed out with its bladed appendage, raking the organic weapon against the heavily fortified armor of the paladin. The armor screeched as the raked across its surface, ripping through it but failing to bite at the chainmail layer that lay beneath it.

The paladin stumbled backwards, his eyes wide as he looked down at the wounds in his armor. From the expression on his face, he’d never seen it sullied in that manner, but before he could retaliate, Tyrant backhanded him with his clawed appendage, throwing the heavily armored warrior of the Sun backwards. Shang grimaced as Argento crashed through two already broken containment tubes.

“Come on,” the sorcerer growled as he placed the handgun on a table and held up his fists. Tyrant, its beady eyes conveying no real emotion, turned to look at him and started toward him. There was no hustle in the giant weapon’s movements, and Shang didn’t know if that was because it was still groggy or if it didn’t feel threatened by the twosome. Either way, the sorcerer could show it the meaning of threat.

With a schnikt, the tarkatan blades slid up out of the sorcerer’s forearms. As the Tyrant lumbered toward him, he fell back into a defensive pose and pulled back his right arm, his eyes trying to line up the perfect shot. The creature swung, and Shang threw up his left blade to intercept the claws. What may have been a nicely orchestrated plan in the spur of the moment fell apart as Tyrant’s own blades ripped through Shang’s weapon and scraped down his chest before screeching against the metal floor. His gi in bloodstained tatters, the sorcerer grit his teeth and thrust his remaining blade at Tyrant.

The tarkatan blade hit the exposed external organ of the creature and sank through the tissue. Instead of faltering, Tyrant grabbed the blade and proceeded to pull it out of his body. The virus-infused monster then proceeded to lift Shang up off the ground by the weapon, prompting the sorcerer to frantically retract the blade before he was pulled too close to his foe. Stumbling backwards, Shang threw out a hand and released a fireball up at Tyrant’s chest. While the explosive impact was usually enough to blow apart a strong man’s ribcage, it did nothing to stop the bioweapon.

Tyrant lumbered forward and lashed out with the backside of its clawed appendage, throwing Shang head-over-heels into the far wall of the room The sorcerer hit the steel wall near the door and settled into a heap.

As Shang tried to regain his bearings, Argento groaned as he pulled himself free from the metal, glass, and machinery. Watching as the powerful sorcerer was thrown backwards like a ragdoll, the paladin grabbed the Day’Suis from the heap behind him and turned the mighty relic to bear on his adversary.

“Your pale flesh has never known the love of the Sun.” Argento boomed as the weapon began to shudder and glow in his hands. “You shall repent!” There was a brilliant flash of white before a concentrated beam of sunlight erupted from the head of the hammer and smashed into Tyrant, forcing the creature back and through the concrete wall near to its former cell. “Sorcerer!” The paladin cried as he immediately turned his focus back to his wounded teammate. Rushing to the other man’s aid, Argento grabbed hold of Shang’s shoulders and helped pull him up to his feet. “Are you all right?”

The battered man nodded his head but didn’t waste breath on voicing the obvious discomfort he felt. “You killed it… just like that?”

Argento nodded. “I have yet to see something survive a direct Sunlight Burst from the hammer,” he explained as he removed one of his gauntlets to reveal a hand covered in a glove made from some sort of soft-looking fabric. The paladin scowled as he traced on the claw marks that now marred his suit of armor. “That was a formidable creature indeed…”

“At least you had armor,” Shang grumbled as he tore away most of the top half of his gi and let the bloody and tattered remains drape down over his sash. If not for the tarkatan blade, the blow would have torn open his ribcage. “What’s our next move?” He added as his eyes fell to the dagger still tucked into his sash. The runic-filled shapes were glowing, and he felt a strange tug toward the object that he had to suppress as both men heard the sound of rustling debris on the other side of the lab. “Please tell me that’s just a lost researcher,” the sorcerer muttered as he reached over his shoulder for the sword. It was one of his more last-ditch tools, but this was certainly shaping up to be a ‘last-ditch’ situation.

“I fear it is not,” Argento declared as he stepped out in front of the sorcerer and narrowed his eyes at the jagged hole in the wall. “How could such a fel beast yet live? Surely its body must have limitations.”

“Science.” Shang spoke beneath his breath as the pair readied themselves. With a gurgling roar, Tyrant smashed out through the concrete chunks and lab equipment in front of the hole it had made. The bioweapon set its eyes on the two men and came rushing at them, its clawed hand scraping and screeching along the metal floor. The sorcerer dove, hoping to clear the equipment in the center of the room as Argento stepped forward and tried to line up another sunburst. A scream and the sound of metal slamming against metal told Shang that the other man’s efforts had been fruitless.

Hitting the ground on the other side of equipment, Shang planted the jian in a slit in the grated floor. As Tyrant turned to face him, the sorcerer started to bombard the monster with fireballs. Each burning skull found a mark on the creature’s body and exploded with enough force to shatter the broken remains of the nearby glass equipment. Despite the punishment, Shang’s adversary merely glared into his eyes and made his way around the long way, seemingly unwilling to test its own agility.

As it rounded the corner, Tyrant flung down its claws and charged. More dextrous than Argento, the sorcerer dodged out of the way and rolled up into an upright position. Spinning around, he grimaced at the distance the sword was from him, but even as he stared at it, it started to jiggle and wobble. The sorcerer held out his hand, and with a final jerking motion, the sword ripped free from the grate and returned to his grasp.

Steeling himself as Tyrant turned around and started toward him, Shang started to back up in an attempt to figure out a plan. Before he had a chance, he had to duck and roll to escape another lethal claw swipe. On this occasion, Tyrant stopped himself just a few moments after the evasive maneuver and turned to lunge at the nearby sorcerer. In a fit of desperation, Shang lashed out with the sword, smacking away the massive bladed ‘fingers’ of the monster. Jumping backwards, the sorcerer threw another fireball at the towering creature’s face.

Somewhere behind Tyrant, Shang saw a glimmer of light. “I have you, fel monster!” The booming voice of the paladin resounded as the armored man threw himself at the bioweapon. As Shang watched, Argento grabbed hold of the creature by its waist. The paladin’s arms and hands squeezed tightly around Tyrant as it struck his helmeted skull with its elbow.

When that yielded no results, it slung back its clawed hand. Plate mail screeched and tore, but before it could achieve the ends it wanted, Tyrant was picked up off the ground with the huffing and puffing paladin and flung into the wall. A rattling groan escaped the monster as it sagged against the now ruined lab equipment.

“Quick,” Argento rasped. A look showed that blood was trickling down his forehead from a few rather serious dents in his helmet. “FInish it before it rises once more.”

Shang didn’t need to be told twice. The sorcerer glided forward, swung the sword up, and brought it down against the monster’s back.

With a jarring clang, the jian shattered as it hit the creature’s pale, sickly flesh, but even as the broken blade hit the ground, a gruesome wound opened up across the back of Tyrant’s shoulders.

Tyrant let out an inhuman roar as it shoved away from the sparking equipment. Its human palm slammed into Shang’s sternum, driving the sorcerer to the ground as if he were a small child.

“Fiend!” Argento roared as he thrust forth his hammer. “May you be purged in the light of a new day!”

There was another flare that blinded Shang, but unlike the previous occurrence, this one didn’t fade away. The sorcerer clasped his hands over his eyes, but even then, he still felt as if the heat and light was burning through his eyes. He bit down on his lower lip to hold back the screams, and before his resolve faded, he felt hands grab hold of him.

A voice barked at him to stand up, and a moment later, he was half-stumbling through the lab. He heard a door slid open, but it wasn’t for another half minute that the light faded away and his vision gradually started to return.

“My apologies,” the paladin spoke softly as he reached up and had to almost pry off his impacted helmet. As the headgear fell to the ground, Shang saw just how badly the wounds were that Argento had sustained. The parts of the paladin’s face normally covered beneath steel were shades of red and purple, and part of his scalp had nearly been torn away when the helmet had been compromised. The man quickly undid a series of buckles and stepped to the side as his chest and back plates dropped to the ground. Both pieces of armor had been shredded and would have probably created more areas of concern for him. “I fear that this creature may be beyond us… that sun flare will only keep it stunned for so long before it pursues us.”

Shang winced as he rubbed his eyes, hoping to make the circles and flashes subside. “What’s our next plan? If we try and backtrack to a different route, we might box ourselves into a hole.”

With a nod, Argento discarded his remaining gauntlet and picked up his still shimmering hammer. “I fear that you are correct, but I’m not sure what our next move should be…” The paladin seem flustered for the first time in forever. “Part of me wonders if this creature is just another means to test our resolve.”

“You want to go back there?” Shang laughed. “It’s suicide. We’ll be torn to pieces.”

Argento shook his head, which only caused the sorcerer to grit his teeth in mounting frustration. “Do you not see? This whole town is about testing those souls unfortunate enough to be caught inside the fog. What better way to test two gallant warriors than with a seemingly unstoppable monster forged by mankind?”

Complete and utter fool. Shang struggled to maintain his composure as Argento stepped passed him and back toward the lab.

“If we come at the creature from two separate angles, we may be able to wear it down enough to land a fatal blow. That sword strike may have broken your sword, but it certainly dealt a grievous wound to the monster.”

Behind Argento, his ‘companion’ was shaking his head, but the stalwart paladin seemed caught up in his own designs. The sorcerer scowled as he tried to figure out how to escape from this situation. He was still running through ideas when Argento turned and placed a hand on his shoulder. “We shall have a glorious stand against the fel designs of this town, my friend, and even if our strength fails us, we shall be with the Sun.”

As the paladin turned to head back to the lab, he made it half a step before he felt a sharp, almost blinding pain shoot through this neck. With a grunt, Argento dropped to a knee and reached up, his hands fumbling around the handle of a knife buried into the base of his neck.

“W… what is,” the paladin fell forward but managed to catch himself on an elbow and roll onto his back.

“I’m not going to kill myself,” Shang muttered, crouching down over the man’s chest. The sorcerer grabbed the enchanted blade and tore it out of Argento’s neck as the light faded from the paladin’s eyes. “Plus, I think Darkshire deserves a new Champion.”

[Shang Tsung]

As Shang watched, a circular symbol not unlike the one on the handle of the dagger appeared beneath the corpse of the paladin. A dull red light shined off the symbol as the body burst into flames. A few moments later, it crumbled into ash and was blown away by a gust of wind that had no purpose existing several stories below ground. The symbol on the ground faded away, and as the sorcerer looked down at the dagger, he noticed that the handle was likewise barren.

Shang didn’t have long to ruminate on what had happened. A guttural roar could be heard beyond the door at the end of the hallway. Discarding the seemingly useless dagger on the ground where the corpse had been, the sorcerer grabbed the dead paladin’s hammer and made for the other exit. He glanced down only once to see that the weapon had lost its unnatural glow. As long as it could still be used to smash in someone’s skull, its luminosity mattered little to Shang Tsung.

Leaving behind Tyrant, Shang stumbled his way back toward the room with the giant generator. If the room was symmetrical, that meant there had to be at least one other possible route for him to take. As the door into the generator room slid shut behind him, Shang nearly threw himself down to the watery floor below, and although he knew there might be other terrors lurking in the installation, he rushed to the other side of the room and looked up to see what he had hoped to witness.

After hoisting himself up onto the platform, Shang forced the metal door open and slid into the adjacent corridor. Once the door was shut behind him, he let himself breathe out, and with a sigh, he collapsed against the wall and slid down onto his haunches. Although he was trying to calm his breathing, he found himself unable to breathe too deeply for fear that he wouldn’t be able to hear movement in the generator room.

Once a few minutes had passed and his heart rate settled, the sorcerer let out a faint grunt and pushed himself up into a standing position. A glance at where he had been sitting revealed more of his blood on that ground than he ever wanted to look at again. Limping slightly, Shang started down the hallway, his eyes glued on the poorly illuminated corridor and anything that might be waiting to pounce upon him.

He made it to almost the opposing end when he heard a man’s laughter in an adjacent room. Coming to a stop, Shang stood still and listened for a few moments to make sure he hadn’t been hearing things. When the man continued to laugh, the sorcerer walked over to the nearby door and peered through the little window. Through the dusty, dirt-stained glass, he saw a bearded man sitting in a straightjacket on the floor of the padded room.

...Is that?

When the doorknob didn’t turn, Shang bashed it open with the hammer and stepped into the room. Setting the hammer down, he walked over and dropped into a crouch next to the babbling, laughing Spartan, who stopped just long enough to flash him the expression of a man lost in his own mind.

“Spartan?” Shang muttered as he set a hand on the man’s shoulder. Atelos responded by laughing and trying to bite his friend’s hand like some sort of chuckling hyena. “Damn it! Come to your senses!”

[i}THWACK{/i]

The blow from the sorcerer’s palm knocked the Spartan onto his back. With the laughter gone, there was a momentary silence before a groan escaped the bearded man’s mouth.

“Where… What is going on?! Why can’t I move!”

The uncharacteristic laughter was gone, and in its place, the Spartan’s normal demeanor flooded back to the surface.

“Calm yourself,” Shang snapped as he slid around to help the man into an upright position. “What the hell are you doing down you?” He asked as he started to undo the knots that kept the man’s limbs bound.

“I was fighting a great monster in the fields of the Pale Moors,” the Spartan muttered, his eyes still trying to soak in the strange surroundings. “Then… then I was in the streets of Silent Hill. I rescued a family and defeated a mighty shadow dragon…” The greek-born warrior trailed off, as if he was already starting to doubt the words as they left his tongue.

“I think you sustained a head wound,” Shang shot back as he looked at a bloodstained patch of hair on the back of the man’s skull. “You’re bleeding still, and I doubt smacking this padded floor did it.”

Atelos shook his head as he felt the bindings loosen around his body. “No, I remember it clear as day, Sorcerer. I swear it…” Yet even as he spoke it, it was clear that the fire had left the other man’s spirit. As he tried to replay the memories in his mind, he began to see the discrepancies and all the places where things didn’t quite match up. In many ways, it felt more like he was trying to recall a dream rather than reality.

“You’re free,” his comrade replied as the straightjacket went limp around him. Shrugging off the infernal cloth, Atelos rose shakily to his feet and touched the wound on the back of his head. He brought the fingers around to his eyes and knew he was looking at his blood. “You’ll survive,” Shang rasped as he rose back to his feet and offered his hand to Atelos.

“What happened to you?” The Spartan asked as he finally turned his attention from his own confusion and to the sorry state of his partner. “You look like shit.”

“...You’re not aware that you’re several stories underground in a laboratory where they created biological weapons using an experimental virus, are you?”

“None of the words that just came out of your mouth made any damn sense, Sorcerer,” Atelos replied, eliciting a rare grin from his beleaguered associate.

“We’re below the surface, and there’s a monster hunting me. It killed the paladin.”


It almost seemed like the Spartan had to suppress his own smirk. “A shame.”

Shang nodded and lied flawlessly. “Something like that, yes.”

“How long do you think it’ll take him to be back in town? I’m sure the town crier could use a day off.”

“There was something different… symbols and fire. I’m not sure if Argento will be back. It’s possible that the town took him, or there might be a worser fate that awaits him.” Shang Tsung shrugged his shoulders as he retrieved the paladin’s weapon.

Atelos frowned. “Where do we go now? I have no desire to die down here.”

“I’ve been trying to find an exit, but there’s only one door remaining. If it isn’t there, than we’re screwed.”

“Lovely,” the Spartan muttered as he gestured for the bloody sorcerer to head out first. “You know the way, after all.”

With a scowl, Shang Tsung returned to the hallway and quickly slipped over to the final door. Once inside, he found a tiny room with a large and jagged hole in the center of it. A glimpse down revealed nothing but darkness for as far as either Spartan or sorcerer could see. Only a nearby sign decorated the otherwise plain room.

“The only way through the Darkness is to leap headfirst,” Atelos read aloud as the two men stood on the edge of the circle. The Grecian glanced over at his associate. “What do you think it wants us to do?” Before he got a proper response, both men heard a vaguely human roar in the corridor they’d just exited. “Is that the friend you made?”

The sorcerer nodded his head as he glanced down into the dark pit. “We’ve come this far, Spartan… what’s one more plunge into the unknown?”

Atelos nodded and extended a hand over the pit. “What’s one more plunge?” He repeated as Shang reached out and shook hands with the only individual in the Omniverse he’d consider close to an equal.

With that, the pair jumped into the Void.