Into the Dark

[Shang Tsung]

With a growl, the soldier lunged at his compatriot. The startled man managed to use his sword to knock away the oncoming blade, but in a moment, the pair was on the ground. Shang watched with a morbid fascination as the attacking soldier started to rip and tear at his comrade’s face. Hadn’t these two been friends for the last two years? In the corner of his eye, the sorcerer caught two other soldiers lunging at one another’s throats.

In a matter of seconds, the squad of eight—handpicked for their ability to cooperate under duress and withstand the stresses of the Moors—had disintegrated into a mob of animals. Steel shrieked into the dark of the night and ephemeral sparks dotted across the clearing for a moment. When the material weapons failed, they were replaced by flashes of erratic orange energy. From his horse, Shang continued to watch the scene unfold until he himself was drawn into the chaos.

Lifting his head from the now torn open neck of his dead comrade, one of the soldiers looked up at the sorcerer. There was madness and what seemed to be a faint tint of orange in the man’s brown eyes. The blood continued to drip from his bearded visage as he growled and rose to his feet. He pointed an ensanguined digit at the sorcerer and opened his eyes wide like a man seeing straight into the depth of madness. “You hide the light from us! You have it. GIVE!”

Shang smiled faintly as he tapped his ring finger against his thigh. “You’re not thinking clearly, Jacobs. You are sick, my young friend.”

“GIVE IT TO ME! I WANT IT!” The man’s eyes burned with orange embers as he rushed his leader.

With a scowl, Shang lifted his hand and send a bolt of orange hardlight through the man’s ribcage. The column of energy tore casually through flesh and bone before smashing into the ground behind the soldier. The unnatural glow of the man’s eyes vanished like a snuffed candle.

The sorcerer quickly turned and glared as the surviving pair of soldiers turned their focus from one another to the mounted warrior. They managed to get a few yards closer before both were struck with condensed bursts of hardlight.

In less than a minute, Shang Tsung was the only living thing in the area. His expression was a deep scowl as he slipped free from the horse and dropped to the ground next to one of the fresh corpses. While certifiably dead, the former soldier still had flecks of orange threaded into his formerly all-brown irises. Had the sorcerer’s picked the wrong individuals for this mission?

Lifting up his right hand, Shang looked at the orange Power Ring.

Maybe I’m the only one who is talented enough to wield this power?

The thought brought a mixture of confidence and frustration to the sorcerer, who had so hoped to use the rings to augment the defense force of the city.

Might still be a way…

A predatory grin spread across the sorcerer’s features as he looked at the fresh corpses that littered the area. If he was the only one capable of bending the orange light, then there was a simple solution to this problem. Holding out his hand, Shang Tsung focused on the bodies around him and centered on still lie within them. There were a few moments of resistance before the still forms twitched and relinquished their souls after a flash of myriad colors.

The souls flowed through the air and vanished into the sorcerer. After a moment of still silence, Shang breathed out an identical column of green, gas-like vapors that writhed and churned as they moved away from him. The expended soul broke apart, and as they snaked through the air toward their respective corpses, they started to shimmer with orange light. Once they had slipped through the flesh suits, the bodies shuddered on the ground, and when the formerly glazed-over eyes snapped open, the soldiers’ irises were orange.

“Nice touch,” Shang Tsung muttered as the reanimated soldiers sat up off the ground and shambled to their feet. “Welcome back, how are we feeling?” The question was rhetorical, since he could see and fell into each of the statue-stiff soldiers staring at him. While the window façade was the same, their battered forms were willed into existence by Shang Tsung and the power of the master Power Ring that glowed on the sorcerer’s finger. “I was always a bit of a micromanager,” the man muttered as he turned to his horse.

“Back to Darkshire. We’ll break you in on the way.”