In Blackest Night

[Shang Tsung]

A scream followed the scalpel as it sank into the sorcerer’s shoulder. The mutilated nurse on the other end of the blade let out another vicious screech as she pulled out the ensanguined weapon and tried another swipe at Shang’s neck. Before she had a chance, a knee found her gut and staggered her, leaving her open for the arm-blade that tore through her chest a beat later. As the corpse toppled into a heap in front of him, the sorcerer clutched a hand to the wound in his shoulder. Just like the one’s outside of Silent Hill, the nurse lying on the ground was a ghastly shade of a person, with her bloody face wrapped tightly in something like cellophane.

Reaching down to his hip, Shang collected the walkie-talkie and clicked it on. “Spartan, are you out there?” The sorcerer released the button and set the device on a nearby countertop as he glanced around the infirmary for anything of interest. From the look of things, the room had been used for a lot more than surgery. Bloody hand prints marred the walls and cabinets. The linoleum floors were covered by puddles of coagulated blood and various footprints that marked the presence of a more than a few individuals.

Despite all the blood, there were no bodies other than the nurse near the doorway. There were signs that corpses had once decorated the gurneys, but someone had removed them.

“Sorcerer?” Atelos’ voice rang out through the walkie. There was something… gruffer in the Grecian warrior’s tone.

“I have some bad news to tell you, Atelos.” Shang spoke as he scooped up the handheld transceiver and made his way over to an old computer terminal in the corner of the room. A quick glance showed him that the machine was probably a few years old, which placed it in Shang’s version of the late 1980s.

“The people you took with you are dead, aren’t they?” If he didn’t know any better, it almost sounded like the Spartan was smiling on the other end of the walkie.

“Yes,” Shang replied. “We were ambushed by some of those nurses, and they were killed.”

“Pathetic.” Atelos rasped. “We were attacked by some… I don’t know what the hell it was, but it killed the people I was with. This place is more dangerous than the paladin thought. I’m left to wonder if he’s even still alive.”

“I’m sure he is… have you found anything?”

“Just a lot of dust, corpses, and monsters. This feels like a waste of our time, Sorcerer.”

“I agree. I’ll meet you back in the lobby in twenty, deal?” Atelos grunted and the line went back to static, prompting Shang to turn off the device and clip it back onto his concealed belt. Pulling out the old stool in front of the terminal, the sorcerer sat down and jiggled the mouse. When nothing happened, he glanced at the side of the monitor and found the switch that controlled the power. Once that was in the correct position, the old box hummed to life, revealing whatever the equivalent of Windows Explorer was for this operating system. A glance through the contents of the window showed nothing of real interest except for a handful of .txt files with names that seemed to correspond with journal entries. Opening one that appeared in the middle of the sequence, Shang glimpsed through to see if anything stood out.

‘Today we received a shipment of individuals infected with an unknown contagion. I checked their records, and they were employees of the Umbrella Corporation who worked at the nearby Alchemilla Hospital. When I went to try and learn more about their previous health, I was told that there was no record of them having worked at Alchemilla! My supervisor told me to forget about it and focus on treating them.’

The next entry’s time stamp was a few days after the first.

‘The patients from Alchemilla aren’t doing well. When they came here, they suffered only from mild headaches and slight fevers. Despite the fact that we’ve kept them on the best nutritional regime, their health continues to deteriorate. Blisters and sores have spread throughout all of the infected patients, and almost all the patients are suffering from uncontrollable itching and swelling of the flesh on the arms, legs, and face. Whatever disease they have, I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.’

‘Six days after they reached Cedar Grove, and I cannot believe the rate of deterioration among these patients. Most of them have lost their higher-motor functions, with only one of them still capable of communication. Even so, the man’s words are slurs and grunts that revolve around itches and aches. A closer examination reveals that their skin has actually been decomposing while they’re still alive. I believe I saw one of them actually gnawing on his arm the other day… I’m afraid that at this rate they’ll be dead within a few more days.

Shang snickered as he loaded up the next entry.

‘We had an incident two days ago… one of the orderlies opened the door because one of the patients was unresponsive. Said virtually comatose individual then proceeded to attack the orderly, biting through to the dermis and nearly killing the victim. We managed to subdue the patient from Alchemilla, but the Sanitarium administration demanded we lock up the orderly in the same treatment block. At the time, I was outraged, but since then, the orderly has begun to show all the signs of the disease as well…

I know my supervisors are willing to overlook this, but I think I’ll pay Alchemilla a visit tomorrow. A disease that is this virulent and has such a rapid infection rate should be higher profile. We need real resources if we want to try and create a cure or an antivirus. With any luck, I can get the wheels rolling on this. In the meantime, I’ve left the key to the Male Acute and Infectious Ward in the Admin office on the second floor.’

Sitting up from the terminal, Shang smirked and glanced at the small map of the facility on the wall. The office and the ward that the journal mentioned were above him, which meant he’d need to find some stairs. Once he verified that there was another stairwell down the hallway, the sorcerer turned on the walkie-talkie. “Sorcerer, you don’t need to respond to this. I found something interesting in an old computer, so I’m going to go investigate something on the second floor. Try not to get stabbed.”

[Atelos]

Hades got up, the blood spattered on his face and an evil grin forming. He saw the charred bones from his comrades fighting that thing and he lavished in the face of pain and confusion from the boy that tried so desperately to save his comrades. The blood drooling from his mouth as his eyes grew vacant and his corpse slid of Hades arm and fell into the ground. Hades wiped the blood onto his already red cape and cracked his neck. He had a kink in his neck that couldn't be fixed until this moment. Atelos' meat suit was tight, especially tight for fitting two souls. His breathing was heavy and Hades could feel the sleeping Spartan in the back of his mind.

"There there Spartan, Sleep peaceful. It's my turn to play." The grin on his face grew and the milkiness of his eyes contrasted the darkness of the room, but manage to resemble the same fog that left this place so isolated from the world. Hades felt the darkness but it contrasted nothing to Tartarus. He couldn't help but chuckle at the futility of this place's attempt to scare him.

Hades walked away from the smell of burning flesh and ashes and walked through the hallway. Another white door came up on the side. Hades thought of the Paladin and how…expectant he would be of the two…especially now that the squad "Atelos" had led had been killed with him the only survivor. He opened the door to see a pile of boxes and the horrible stench of rotting. Hades covered his nose and peered through the veil of stench in order to search for anything of worth. The brown cardboard boxes pilled high and he opened the top box to reveal moldy bread and rotten meat. He heard squeaks and glared at the corner, rats scurried across the floor.

How did these things survive? His eyes trailed across to rats scurrying through and climbing into a few boxes of the moldy food. Hades gave up on the boxes and walked towards the opposite side of the room where metal shelves decorated the barren room. Hades picked up a can, "Canned Corn." This stuff sounded disgusting…why would anyone want corn in a can? Hades would never understand mortals and their obsession with preserving things. He emptied a box full of the rotten, apples that fell on the ground, only increasing their bruises. He filled the box with the things that Argento would be at least satisfied with. Canned corn, refried beans, the works. Hades cleared the entire shelf and he noticed something plastic that hit the rest of the metal. He picked it up and noticed a label on the side.

"Janitor Colin Audible Diary" in bolded black. He put it in the box. The sorcerer would have to explain this to him, he was not familiar with technology but was at least more competent that the spartan. He looked over to the side to see the Janitor's Closet next door. He heard scurrying but he dismissed it due to the rodents. He opened the door to his, well not horror but to his amusement, was something bound together by barbed wire. A scrawny person was bound, with his feet to his head, with barbed wire, cutting into his eyes and heels. His hands were flying everywhere as groaned and tried to grab for Hades. His hands eventually found Hades leg and he pulled himself to it before his brain matter splattered the wall. Hades wiped 'his' shield on the floor getting rid of the grime that he had just been forced to endure.

His magic box came to life and the Sorcerer was on the other end of it. “Spartan, are you out there?”

“Sorcerer?” His voice revealed his nature and the gruffness of it seemed to cause a pause in the Sorcerer.

“I have some bad news to tell you, Atelos.” Shang spoke as Hades picked up the box and exited the door leading into the hall.

“The people you took with you are dead, aren’t they?” His smile revealed great satisfaction that he wasn't alone. The sorcerer seemed abruptly surprised by the sudden change in character.

Yes,” Shang replied. “We were ambushed by some of those nurses, and they were killed.”

“Pathetic.”Atelos rasped. “We were attacked by some… I don’t know what the hell it was, but it killed the people I was with. This place is more dangerous than the paladin thought. I’m left to wonder if he’s even still alive.”
His voice seemed hopeful, the sorcerer was the only person worth dealing with. He was the most competent out of all of the group and Hades needed him.

“I’m sure he is… have you found anything?”

“Just a lot of dust, corpses, and monsters. This feels like a waste of our time, Sorcerer.”

“I agree. I’ll meet you back in the lobby in twenty, deal?” The Spartan grunted and the line went dead. At least Hades knew how to use the damned device. The Spartan would have spent the twenty minutes trying to figure out how to even turn the damned thing on. Hades decided to return with the box in hand. I'm sure that the Sorcerer didn't mean if he found anything of use. Well…food was of no use to him.

Hades began to walk back to the lobby but the line came back on and Hades looked down questioningly.

“Spartan, you don’t need to respond to this. I found something interesting in an old computer, so I’m going to go investigate something on the second floor. Try not to get stabbed.”

Hades smiled for a second before frowning, he had reached the dining room that was just about to go back to the Lobby and he sighed. Damned sorcerer couldn't tell him earlier…he put his hand to his forehead in thought.

"Might as well chase after the sorcerer." He looked down in his box and saw the plastic device that Hades had so many questions about.

"Might as well take this…he might be able to tell me what this is…and even if it is useful or not." Hades picked up the mystery device and put it with the other magic box before he turned around and began to chase after Shang.

[Shang Tsung]

With a grunt, Shang dipped under an erratic scalpel swing. As he popped back up, his fist connecting with the nurse’s saran wrapped-chin. The impact staggered the screeching pseudo-human long enough for the sorcerer to impale her through the chest with one of his arm blades. A gurgling shriek more animal than human slipped through the woman’s lips as she went limp. Pulliing the corpse toward him, Shang placed an elbow beneath her jaw and shoved forward as he yanked back on his arm, tearing the blade from her ribcage.

Retracting the blade, Shang hopped over the dead nurse and continued through the hallway until he reached the double doors that led into room directly above the ground floor lobby. To his left, he heard what sounded like groans and the sound of nails scratching against metal. A look at the label next to the door indicated that the room was the ‘TB Ward.’ Tuberculosis was something that Shang had seen rise and fall, much like a Chinese dynasty or an imperial regime. How long had it been since he’d read something about ‘consumption’? Wasn’t the disease supposed to be something of an enigma in modern society?

Then again, the whole point of the original sanitariums had been to house people with consumption until they died. After that, they’d be carted along to a place where their corpses could be put to the flame. With a shrug, Shang opted to pass on investigating the TB Ward, and he made his way along the wall until he spotted a short hallway. At the end was a door that led to the administrative office, and to his left and right where Archives and the Library.

“Administration.” Shang muttered beneath his breath as he stepped forward and tried the door handle. When he realized that the room was locked, he took a step back and almost casually kicked the door just above its lock, shattering the wooden frame. The broken entrance swung inward to reveal a somewhat lavish boardroom.

Lavish, that is, if you could overlook the fact that all of the expensive leather chairs were filled with bloody corpses. The walls and ceiling were also splattered in dried blood and bits of cranial viscera that looked like something a psychologist would show someone as part of their diagnosis. Upon closer inspection, Shang noticed that the men and women all had handguns near their corpses on directly on their laps. Something had spurned an entire boardroom worth of people in Armani suits to blow their brains out… but what? This was something that Shang hoped he’d figure out, despite the fact that he imagined much of Silent Hill was comprised of random tableaus of senseless depravity and violence.

Their loss. Shang mused as he picked up one of the handguns. Like many things in the sanitarium, he couldn’t tell how long it had been sitting here, but there didn’t seem to be any dust or grime built up on the weapon…just some dried blood spatters. Either way, the .44 was probably capable of making anyone have a bad day, but even if it wound up being useless, he was certain the Spartan would get a kick out of it.

“‘What sorcery do you wield now?’” Shang had to admit that he was getting pretty adept at the gruff and almost snarling intonation of the Spartan when he was filled with ire.

Making his way around the table, the sorcerer made for one of the fancy-looking desks at the other end of the room. Before he started to search through the drawers, he found himself drawn to the large windows that dominating the wall opposite the entranceway. Outside the giant window, he could see as far as the bridge they’d cross on their panicked sprint from the fog-line. Creeping closer, Shang squinted and tried to see if he couldn’t spot the paladin out there in the ‘wilderness.’ How close had Argento been to the women and men who had died in this old building? Would their deaths cause the holy warrior to waver? The questions made Shang snicker, but he quickly moved his mind to more pertinent thoughts.

Key.

The sorcerer turned and dropped into the leather office chair. Reclining backwards, he put his feet up on the wooden desk and pulled open the nearest drawer. Aside from some old sticky notes, fancy pens, and a couple of paperclips, there was nothing of worth. The next drawer down revealed some outdated computer equipment and a pair of speakers that ran off of D batteries. After sifting through the wires, the sorcerer accepted that he wasn’t going to find a thing, and he moved onto the bottom drawer, which opened up to reveal seemingly nothing but random papers.

As Shang was about to shut the drawer, he caught a glimpse of the title on the paper—Transfers to Alchemilla. Scooping up the document, he glanced over the contents to discover that the dates lined up with the little electronic journal entries he had read in the surgical quarters. The only difference was that the report, which was supposed to be a document outlining the transit of goods, failed to include anything about the infected patients that the sanitarium had accepted from the hospital. In their steed, the paper indicated that the shipment from Alchemilla had been a requisition for medical supplies and equipment.

Cover up, eh? Shang set the paper on the desk and glanced down into the drawer once more. It was then that he noticed that beneath the document had been a small metal key. As he picked it up, the sorcerer knew immediately that it couldn’t fit into the infectious ward, because he’d spotted said door on his way up to this boardroom. The locks there were larger and not as shallow, which meant the key had to go into something much smaller… like a lockbox or a deposit safe.

Now where would your box be? He mused as he glanced around the morbid scene. It didn’t take him long to spot a small metal box nestled next to the bookshelf he’d passed on his way over to the desk. Making his way over, he found the keyhole for what was marked ‘Key Return,’ and with a satisfying click, part of the front panel slid open to reveal a handful of assorted keys. Fortunately for the sorcerer, they were all labeled, and it didn’t take him long to find the one marked ‘Infectious Ward.’ As he tucked the key into his pocket, he took a moment to brush some grime off the gun, but in that moment of fleeting distraction, the door back into the hall was thrown wide open.

It was almost instinct at that point. Without skipping a beat, Shang lifted the gun and squeezed the trigger, sending a bullet screaming into the wooden doorframe just a few inches to the right of Atelos’ head. The Spartan let out the closest thing to a yelp that Shang would ever expect to issue forth form his lips.

“What infernal magic was that, Sorcerer! ” Atelos raged, his voice raspier and a few octaves deeper than usual. “Do you not look before you release your damned fel powers?”

“Apologies,” Shang muttered as he lowered the firearm. “The atmosphere of this place has me on edge, especially after the nurses cornered my group and me.”

“We can weep for them later,” Atelos shot back, his tone a clear indicator that he wouldn’t be shedding any tears at the mass funeral. “I take it you’ve found something to make this worthwhile?”

“I believe so,” Shang replied with a grin as he walked over to join his associate. “I’d like to go check out another room, and then I think I may have our next destination.”

“Where?”

“Alchemilla Hospital… it’s on the other side of the nearby business district.”

Atelos scowled. “You want to go from one plague-riddled tomb to another?”

“Yes.”

“Just know that I don’t look forward to more of those screaming whores and their knives, Sorcerer.”

“I’m sure you can ma—“

Before Shang could finish his sentence, the window he’d gazed through just moments earlier exploded inward in a sparkling cloud of glass shards as a massive dark shape came shrieking into the boardroom. Spartan and sorcerer bit their tongues and found their weapons as one of the flying creatures from the bridge landed on the other end of the meeting table. For all intents and purposes, it looked like a large, skinless bat with a face too human to be any sort of coincidence. The creature let out another scream as it came barreling down the heavy oak table, each clawed foot sawing through the thick wood as the monster bore down on its intended prey.

With the gun in one hand and a Tarkaten blade projecting from the other arm, Shang felt very little fear. To his right, Atelos’ was focused singularly on their adversary and nothing else. This had happened before to the Spartan—these moments where the veil of composure fell away to reveal someone chomping at the bit to feel the blood of his foes.

These were the moments when the sorcerer most appreciated the company of the Spartan.

[Atelos]

The pink creature flew through the window, along with the broken shards of glass and the terrible screech come out of its mouth. Hades cringed at the abomination's horrid sound as he brought out his shield. A grim smile appeared on his face as the thing began to slice through the work desk it was perched on. It glared at the two for a brief second before letting out another piercing scream and jumping off the desk, flying towards the sorcerer. Atelos threw his shield towards the creature, hitting smack in the face. Shang Tsung had his blade out and his magic item that seemed so threatening, however his face showed relief. The sorcerer backed up towards Atelos, not long before the Spartan's fist ignited.

The creature got up and shook its head from the concussive blow, and glared its human-like eyes at Hades, its hate emanating from its body. The thing grabbed his shield with its mouth and tossed the shield aside breathing heavily before launching itself at Hades. A loud *bang* resonated through Hades ears and the creature stopped its path halfway to land at Hades' feet. Black bubbly blood flowed through a small hole that had just appeared in its head. Shang walked over and stabbed it in the neck, with his…bladed arm? The thing jittered its last attempts of vengeance upon the pair but to no avail before it gave its final breathe away. Shang's arm returned back to normal as Hades went to retrieve 'his' shield.

Shang audibly let out a sigh of relief as he joined up with Hades. They greeted each other with another smile before a loud screeching noise came outside of the window. More of those things were coming in, and Shang and Hades panicked and ran out the door. Hades kept the door shut as incessant banging started.

"Hurry sorcerer, find something to block the door!" His gritty voice whispered out, being broken only by loud bangs and screeches. The sorcerer disappeared for a second into the hallway leaving the broken god. Minutes passed and the door began to crack underneath the pressure and the screeches grew louder and more passionate. Shang returned at the absolute last moment with a metal shelf and placed it before the door, keeping those things out. The banging eventually stopped and black blood pooled underneath the door.

"I'm glad that you arrived when you did Spartan." Shang grinned as he put his firearm away.

Hades flinched and put his hands over his ears, "Looks like playtime is over Sorcerer." Hades fell to the floor, grunting in pain as the glossy look in his eyes faded. Shang turned to see Atelos on the floor.

"Spartan?!" He ran next to Atelos, pausing as if he was deciding a moral dilemma…if he was capable of that.

Atelos' eyes fluttered open and he was obviously confused. He looked around and backed away in panic.

"Shang? What in Olympus are you doing here! What happened to my regiment… the abomination?" His voice trailed off as he began to think about so many different possibilities that occurred.

[Shang Tsung]

Just like that, the Spartan had revealed that his increasing complexity would never cease to amaze the sorcerer. In a matter of seconds, Shang’s accomplice had gone from controlled and hardened to confused and lost. Atelos was the picture-perfect case of ‘never judge a book by its cover.’ Someone who at first site appeared to be a cookie-cutter soldier from the pinnacle of classical Greece had, overtime, been revealed to be an individual with power over flames and a tendency to suffer great mood swings.

“I… I ask again, Sorcerer,” Atelos stammered, his eyes wide with confusion as he pulled himself up off the ground. “What has happened?”

“So you don’t recall anything?” Shang inquired as he eyed the shelf to ensure that it wouldn’t be moving anytime soon. With the blood coming out from under the door, there was a slim chance it might slide around, and he didn’t want to deal with anymore screeching monsters for the time being. “You recall nothing that has transpired?”

“Only the nurses and the abominable creature that attack my group and I shortly after we departed the lobby. What has become of those men and women?”

“Dead, Atelos. You informed me of their deaths over the walkie about a half hour before we met back up in the boardroom prior to those creature’s ambushing us from outside.”

The Spartan shook his head. “I fear that I may have been compromised.”

What the hell does that mean? Shang furrowed his brow. “Do you care to expand upon that?”

“I’m not sure I can,” Atelos muttered as he looked down at his fists. It almost seemed as if the Spartan was confused by his own body. If it hadn’t been for the man’s previous bouts, Shang would have thought him to be a simple-minded lunatic. The nature of these episodes, however, seemed to point to a more complex issue lying beneath the surface—something that Atelos was probably already aware of. The real question then became whether or not Shang would discover the truth naturally or through other means.

“I am sorry to hear that, Spartan,” Shang replied amicably as he walked away from the barred door and fished around in his pocket for the key to the infectious ward. “I want to follow up a lead… are you of sound enough mind to accompany me?”

Atelos shook his head, which was enough confirmation for Shang to turn around and start toward the nearby Infectious Ward. With any luck, the room wouldn’t have any large windows…

***

“DAMN BEAST!”

With a flash of lightning, the Day’Suis struck home, crushing flesh, muscle, and bone as it smashed the skittering monster into the pavement. When the head of the glowing hammer struck the street, it splintered the old asphalt, denting down the immediate zone of impact and causing a spiderweb of fissures to spread out from there.

Wasting no time and wielding the heavy weapon as if it were a foam mallet, Argento spun and slammed the broader side of the hammer head against a second attacker—a four-armed abomination with the head of an infant. Without so much as a whimper, the creature took the blast full across the chest and crumpled into an almost unrecognizable heap of ruptured flesh and shattered bones. With the street silent once more, the paladin lowered the weapon and glanced around. Aside from the two beasts he had just slain, there were upwards of twenty other mangled and battered corpses within eyesight. After his first encounter, they just continued to shamble or swoop in from the fog. It was almost as if they were drawn to the sound.

A block or so away, his companions lay dead—their bodies torn apart when they were ambushed once more by the flying creatures. It was in that direction that Argento now strode—his expression stern despite the pain he felt in his heart. How had he not known the folly of attempting to force their way back toward the wagons? Surely he shouldn’t have taken more time to assess the situation. Perhaps if he had, he would have known how silly it was to believe that they wouldn’t be walking into yet another ambush.

The kicker? The wagons weren’t even there anymore. Only a few trails from the wheels remained in the grass to mark where they had been pushed from the road and down the nearby grassy slope. From the street, the bottom of the hill was concealed in deep fog. Before he could allow himself to brazenly rush down into what would have surely been his own demise, the creatures had swooped back down from the skies, tearing and slashing with their beaks and claws. By the time he had armed himself properly, he was the only one left on his feet.

“I’m truly sorry,” Argento whispered to no one but himself as he approached the broken forms that lay in ensanguined heaps upon the aged tarmac. “I hope that your spirits rest in peace within the Sun’s embrace, and that you shall permit me use of your mortal shells.” The paladin lifted up the Day’suis and looked upon it as it began to shimmer with the warmth of the one true Sun. Rays of twinkling light wafted from its magnificent surface, and for a brief and fleeting moment, Argento swore he saw the fog overhead part to reveal his god incarnate.

“Feel the warmth of the Sun!”

A shockwave of energy erupted outward from the man, flipping cars and shattering the windows of nearby buildings. When that subsided, the tendrils of energy emanating from his hammer shot forth as if they were alive. They vanished into the corpses of his fallen allies, and within moments, the freshly dead rose once more. Gone were their mortal shells of flesh and cloth. They had been replaced by the warm, glowing light of the Sun and encased within protective coats of shimmering armor. Although the sunlight entities possessed no facial features, Argento felt their gaze upon him.

“May we cast a little sunlight into this dark hamlet.”

***

Atelos still seemed a bit off, but Shang Tsung wasn’t the type of man to pry into someone else’s life. Or at least do so in a deliberate and straight-forward fashion. The Spartan kept his thoughts to himself as the pair crossed the second floor and made their way over to what was labeled the ‘Infectious Ward.’

“What do you hope to find within this room, Sorcerer?”

“I don’t know, but I was reading a journal kept on a computer in another examination room. Apparently they kept some secret patients here… they had some degenerative disease that was highly contagious. The board of executives here was collaborating with some people from the hospital to make the whole situation just fade away.”

“And you want to poke your nose into other peoples’ messes?”

“I want to know why people would do this… I want to know what’s so important that they have to cover it up.” It was a lie. A damn good one… but nevertheless a lie. To be completely honest with the Spartan would require a conversation about biological weapons, which was something that would require more than a sentence or two to explain.

“You have these strange bouts of altruism, Sorcerer.” A quick glance revealed the tiniest smirk on the Spartan’s face.

“And you have these strange bouts where you act differently and then forget all about it.” Shang likewise made sure his smug grin was present as he fished for the key. Once he unlocked the door, he cautiously twisted the handle and gave the door a gentle shove to allow it to swing open without making any noise. It was only when the door was already fully open that he realized Atelos hadn’t bothered to move out of the way.

“What? It’s an empty room, Sorcerer. You act as if you were expecting to find a Minotaur or Charybdis lurking inside.”

I wonder if I’m the only person in the Pale Moors who understands these references? Shang shook his head at Atelos’ remark. “Once bitten, twice shy. I had one of those nurses jump me because I wasn’t paying attention to what might be on the other side of a door.”

The Spartan shrugged his broad shoulders and walked into the room. As he crossed the threshold, his hands retrieved his shield and his sword. After a few steps, he turned around and shook his head once again. “Nothing here, Spartan.”

Shang scowled as he walked into the room. His finger found the light switch and threw it up, bathing the room in the pale yellow glow of dying florescent lights. It took him all of three seconds to confirm what the Spartan had said—the room was empty. It wasn’t just empty… it was immaculate. About half a dozen rooms lined the central hallway, and each of them looked as if they had just been built yesterday. After opening one of the containment rooms, Shang crouched down and could even see that someone had cleaned out the grime between the linoleum floor tiles.

“Someone purposefully did this,” Shang spoke as he stood up and walked to the back of the room, where a simple desk lay in the corner.

Atelos, who was poking around in the other room, glanced out of one. “Of course… is that not the purpose of slaves but to clean their master’s belongings?”

He couldn’t tell if that was more attempt humor or just the Spartan’s previous life shining through. Either way, Shang had to bite his tongue as he rifled through the little book that rest on the desk. As he could have imagined, it was missing about twenty pages that covered the exact timespan that the infected individuals would have been housed in the six nearby containment rooms. The most recent entry just stated—Rooms cleaned by maintenance staff. Outdated office equipment recycled. There was no reference to bodies being removed or any evidence at all that the Infectious Ward had been utilized for nearly a year.

“What is our next step, Shang?” Atelos inquired as the sorcerer shuffled to the end of the log. The Spartan watched as his associate tore out one of the last pages. “What is that?”

“A contact at the hospital… We’re going to head over there.”

“What of the paladin?”

Shang scoffed. “He can crawl into a hole and die if he hasn’t already. I couldn’t stand to listen to another stanza of ‘The March of Sunlight’. Argento can fend for himself.”

After stifling a laugh, the Spartan nodded his head. “All right,” he replied as the pair exited the room and started back to the first floor.

They managed to make it as far as the second-floor version of the lobby when the entire building seemed to shudder, causing both men to waver and nearly lose their balance. Shang opened his mouth to speak, but before he had a chance, the roof above their head started to crumble. At first, it was just chunks of plaster and wood that started to rain down on the pair, but after a few seconds, one of the many cross-beams that supported the roof came crashing down. The sorcerer dove as the heavy wooden beam slammed into the space between the two men and obliterated the floor. The hell? Shang was swift to his feet, but before he could get a bead on the location of his companion, the floor beneath his boots let out a heavy sigh as it started to tilt downward.

As the floor crumbled, instinct took over, and Shang threw himself forward onto the other side of the collapsing room. He landed on his knees, pushed down the searing pain that flared up in those joints, and launched himself toward the other end of the room. By the time he was back on his feet, he knew that the other half of the room was on the verge of collapsing, and a quick glance to the ceiling revealed another beam close to collapse.

“Over here, Shang!”

The sorcerer turned in the direction of the Spartan’s voice and saw his bulky form standing in one of the small corridors that led into the right wing of the building. With a grunt, Shang jumped as the floor gave way beneath his feet. A beat later—with an assist from the Spartan—the sorcerer was in the hallway and free from the now thoroughly collapsed room. The pair turned their attention to what had once been the lobby of the Sanitarium. What had once been a drab, unappealing room was now a heaping mass of dust, bricks, and wooden beams. A few pale beams of fog-choked light now shined down upon the twisted mess below them.

“Faulty building design?” The Spartan asked as he walked over and leaned against the wall. “Or do you think that was intentional?”

“I’m not sure, but this place is dangerous, even when there aren’t monsters around,” the sorcerer whispered as he noticed the wall start to quiver around Atelos. “Spartan!” Throwing a hand forward, Shang tried to grab the warrior, whose eyes went wide the moment the wall behind him suddenly stopped support his weight and instead moved to envelop him. The sorcerer got his hand around his ally’s deformed shoulder, but his strength failed to liberate Atelos, who sunk into the wall despite his own attempts to fight back.

With a final, defiant shout, the Spartan vanished into the wall, which reverted back to being a brick wall. Between Shang’s hand and the wall was the weathered skull of a reptile—the same one that rested atop Atelos’ shoulder. Unsure what it meant that the strange and ghoulish trophy had been left behind, Shang walked through the doorway to look at the other side of the wall where Atelos had once leaned against.

“Where are you, Spartan?” Shang asked aloud as he walked over to an open window and leaned his hands on the ledge while his eyes looked back into the fog-coated street courtyard.

He first heard the noise far in the distance, but in a matter of seconds, it spread across the entire area until it sounded as if he was standing in a room with the source of the horrible warbling.

It was an air raid siren.

[Shang Tsung]

Even after slamming the window shut, Shang could still hear the scream of the air raid siren.

With a scowl, the sorcerer backed away from the window. Something caught his attention from the corner of his eye, and he turned to see that the paint was beginning to peel away from the wall. Stripes and chunks of paint tore off, floated up, and faded into nothing. The siren grew louder as the air itself seemed to grow heavier. Beneath the sorcerer, the tiles cracked apart and withered to ash, leaving behind a floor comprised of rusted iron grates. All around him, the walls likewise eroded, revealing partially rusted sheets of corrugated iron and weathered frames.

That’s not all rust…

Blood. As the paint and tile peeled away, it revealed what seemed to be old blood stains along many portions of the walls, ceiling, and floor. Somewhere in the distance, Shang heard what sounded like nails screeching against a chalkboard.

The fuck is going on? Turning around, the sorcerer noticed that the glass in the window was gone, but in its place, there were thick iron bars. Outside, he could see nothing through the fog, which now looked more like ash-laden smog. Making his way to the door, he threw it open and immediately fell back two paces as his Tarkaten blades slid out of his forearms. Although nothing moved to maul him, he kept the weapons readied. Something had gone terribly wrong with the world, and he wasn’t about to suffer the same fate as the Spartan.

Entering the hallway, Shang noted that it looked just like the room he’d departed. The colors were gone, with the exception of rust and assorted bloodstains. Everything else was drab grays and shades of black. Somewhere in the distance, the sorcerer heard what sounded like… crying? It was a soft, echoing whimper that had a vaguely human ring to it. A small part of him wanted to succumb to the morbid curiosity, but he hadn’t survived for a millennium by giving into his more human nature. Oh no, he wasn’t going to follow the sound of a crying woman just moments after the world had degraded into some sort of hellish, rusted nightmare.

“I’m Shang Tsung.” He assured himself as he turned back toward what had once been the central room of the Sanitarium. With some luck, he could just climb down to the first level and make his way out through the front door. Unfortunately for him, he found himself staring at a repaired floor (albeit one that was a metal grate). Even more unsettling, the first floor seemed to be gone. Squatting down, Shang squinted and saw that the space below him dropped down to what was probably the basement of the Sanitarium. His eyes detected a slight flickering in the shadows below, but the lighting was too poor to see all the way down there.

Damn it, what is going on? Standing back up, Shang realized that the sound of screeching steel was drawing close—too close. The sorcerer retreated back into the near darkness of his former location and turned his attention down the hallway as he detected the resounding thud of heavy feet hitting the metal floors. Before pulling his head back through the doorway and gently shutting it, he caught site of what had once probably been a man. In the handful of seconds he had to glance at the figure, he saw hulking behemoth wearing a bloody leather apron. It seemed to be human, but he couldn’t confirm that because its head seemed to be encased within a triangular steel pyramid that drooped down its chest. Based on the screeching sound that followed it and its lumbering movement, it had to be dragging something, but he didn’t want to risk detection.

Shang held his breath as the man made his way passed his room. When the sound started to drift off into the other direction, the sorcerer cracked the door open and slipped back into the hallway.

[Shang Tsung]

Argento wasn’t impressed by the town’s demonic transformation.

He had stared down the hordes of Diablo. The run-of-the-mill monsters that festered in the town’s dark shadows paled in comparison to his conviction. “Back to the abyss with you demons!” He roared as the area around him shone with an unnatural light. From his flanks, his celestial followers flowed forth, their bodies gliding half a foot above the ground as they brought their light swords to bear upon the twisted, mutated beasts that lurched forward to prevent the spread the Holy Light. The unclean creatures fought viciously, but they were no match for the revenants who sawed them down in a flurry of sunbursts and rays of purifying light.

“Where do your masters dwell?” Argento bellowed, his voice augmented as his divine strength flowed through his veins and suffused his being. “Come out and be brought into the Light!” When no such response came, the paladin furrowed his brow and clenched his hand around the mighty hammer that he now used with only one hand, despite its immense size. “Then I shall hunt you down in this bastion of shadows and purge you.” He added as he swung the Day’suis forward and released a beam of concentrated sunlight that vaporized everything in the street before him—monster and random city debris alike.

***

A few blocks removed from the onslaught that was Argento’s divine fervor, Shang Tsung threw his shoulder against a wooden door. Aged beyond its years by whatever had transformed the rest of the town, the door broke apart, revealing another hallway that didn’t match up with the original map of the Sanitarium. “Damn it,” the sorcerer seethed as he clenched and unclenched his fists. This was the third time that he’d thought he had a route out of the building, and instead, he found himself looking at yet another hallway made of metal grates and suspended inside what seemed to be a giant air duct. Rusted fans spun slowly, their old motors wheezing as they tried to keep the devices powered. In the shadows, the sorcerer would occasionally have to do a double-take to ensure he hadn’t seen something scurrying around.

“You want to play this game?” He asked to no one in particular as he glanced behind him at what had once been an employee lounge. Now it was filled with overturned gurneys and abandoned wheelchairs. Glancing back at the hallway, Shang squinted and noticed something familiar near the center of the hallway. It was a circular grate. In any other circumstance, no one would have paid attention to it or believed it to be out of the ordinary, but Shang knew he’d seen that same unique shape in the other hallways he’d avoided.

This is the same damn hallway, isn’t it? The revelation made a grin spread across the face of the sorcerer who promptly slammed the door shut. “No. I am the one who plays the mind games! Me!” He screamed as he heard the familiar sound of something heavy and metallic scrapping against the floors of the building. It was that creature he’d spotted earlier—the one with the metal pyramid head and the impossible physique that was equal parts bodybuilder and Quasimodo. “I’m not playing these games.” Triggering his Tarkatan blades, Shang stormed out of the door back into the hallway and turned to see the behemoth on the other end of the hallway.

It was certainly the same ‘man’ he’d seen before (if it was really a man beneath that massive helmet). From head-on, he saw that it was dragging what amounted to a giant, person-length cleaver. With each lumbering step it took, it had to pause to pull the heavy blade across the floor, eliciting not just the familiar screeching noises but also a handful of sparks as metal grated against metal. “You want to threaten me?” Shang muttered as he extended a palm. “You’ve no idea who you’ve crossed.”

With a vooom, a skull-shaped fireball erupted from in front of the sorcerer’s hand. The projectile sailed across the corridor and exploded against his foe’s chest. An attack that would kill or grievously injury lesser men, the creature simply continued to lumber forward, oblivious to the small fires burning across its chest and shoulders. A second fireball found the exact same mark, but had the same exact non-effect.

“Fine,” Shang muttered as he lifted his arm-blades and glared at the slowly approaching behemoth. When it got within five feet of him, it stopped and stood fully upright, revealing a height of about eight feet. If the ceiling had been any lower, the top part of its steel head would have scrapped against it. After standing up, the sorcerer watched as it grabbed the handle of its giant weapon with both hands. A beat later, it lashed out—the ‘sword’ tearing clean through the wall en route to a meeting with Shang’s midsection.

Jumping, Shang retracted the Tarkaten arm blades in time to grab hold of the iron grate ceiling and pull the lower half of his body up out of the path of the oncoming weapon, which crashed effortlessly through the other side of the corridor. Before the pyramid-headed giant could wrench his weapon free from the mass of twisted steel, Shang dropped down nimbly to the floor, released his arm blades, and dove at his prey. Hopping off the ground, he drove his right blade deep into the creature’s chest, punching through the thick skin and muscle, and doing—

—No damage?

Although it had a three-foot blade buried into the right side of its thorax, the monster didn’t falter, roar, or make any sort of indication that it felt anything. Even when the sorcerer ripped his blade free and released a sputtering spray of blood from the ghastly wound, his attacker stood firm and unmoving. When Shang reeled back his arm to lash forward with another blow, the giant simply leaned forward and shoved him with a palm. Despite not seeming to put much effort into shoving the sorcerer, the force threw the smaller man from his feet and down onto his backside. As Shang watched from his haunches, the pyramid-headed monster tore its sword from the wall and lifted it for another strike.

I refuse to be bested. With his eyes narrowing and his lips curling back to reveal an almost animal snarl, Shang sprung up off the ground and started to slash with the arm-blades, much like a manic Tarkatan would if they had been cornered. Even as ribbons of flesh started to flutter amidst the flurry of blades, their intended target never stopped his slow and methodical movements, and with a firm and overwhelming motion, it slammed the ‘pommel’ of its cleaver-like weapon into Shang’s chest. As the sorcerer stumbled, his attacker lurched forward and closed its giant hand around the sorcerer’s jaw and mouth. With an ease that bordered on the supernatural, it lifted the man up off the floor and slowly began to squeeze down, prompting an increasingly panicked Shang to slash and tear at its exposed arm.

Something cracked inside the sorcerer’s mouth, but his focus was wholly on the exposed bone that he could see through his blurring vision. With a last burst of desperation strength, he brought one of his blades down onto the bone with enough force to fracture it, causing the grip on him to loosen enough to facilitate his escape. Without a second thought, he turned and limped through the door into the metal grate hallway, slamming the entrance behind him as he hobbled his way through the tunnel. It was only when he reached the other side and essentially fell through the doorway that Shang allowed himself to draw breath.

As he lay there on the floor, the sorcerer realized that it took a little too long for him to refill his beleaguered lungs. Even with the searing pain of a broken jaw, it shouldn’t be so hard to breathe…

Looking out, he noticed that his hand was different—the skin was shriveled and weathered. Shang slowly rose to his feet and already knew what had happened, so a glance into a nearby pane of only partially rusted steel revealed the obvious truth. The face staring back at him was old and withered—the by-product of a human lifetime of age and decay. In his mad dash to escape from the creature, he’d managed to overexert himself… he would need to restore himself or risk whatever happened when you died in Silent Hill.

Reaching down into his satchel, Shang’s arthritic hand closed around the gun he’d stolen earlier from the boardroom. He drew it up and took a moment to verify that the clip still functioned and that it had enough shots to prove useful. Once the safety was off, he kept it in his hand and tried to figure out his current location within the Sanitarium.

[Shang Tsung]

Pain.

It consumed the sorcerer. It made every part of his body throb, and it made it hard for him to focus his thoughts on what the fuck he should be doing to escape from the sanitarium. Could he escape? Would the rust-colored town, with its ash-stained air, let him get out of this decrepit, collapsing structure or was he wandering in his own sepulcher?

Dull thunks echoed through the hallway each time Shang took a step. For the last twenty minutes, he’d relied upon a steel pipe, which he found lying on the floor. With the pipe as a crutch, Shang had traversed the fan-lined hallway and emerged on the other side, where he found himself walking down a slightly nicer hall. When he reached the end, the door refused to budge, and try as he might, the sorcerer couldn’t find the strength to bring the pipe to bear on the wooden barrier that impeded his lurching march toward the unknown.

Need… need help. Shang let out a hoarse cough and slumped against the wall. Damn you, Spartan. Where the hell did you go? The fact that Atelos had probably lucked out in wherever he’d been delivered did not grace the thoughts of the sorcerer as he racked his burnt-out brain for a means to deal with the situation. Perhaps if he could tap into some of his remaining strength, he might be able to… generate a means to insulate himself against the town’s dangers.

After using the pipe to bar the door he’d just passed through, Shang slipped down to the ground and tried to clear his thoughts. Although his body had been ravaged and sapped of strength, he hadn’t technically lost his power… he was merely unable to tap into it at will. As he focused his mind, Shang felt a sensation of warmth spread across his ravaged form, which started to glow gently in the red-tinted light of the room. Staring forward, the sorcerer put in image in his head and willed what he saw into reality. The process took much longer than he had hoped, but eventually, the ground in front of him erupted in flames. Up from the burning wood, three figures crawled their way onto their knees before rising up to fully vertical positions.

They were tarkatan warriors—each of them clad in Eastern-themed armor with their blades already drawn. With their ever-grinning mouths filled with jagged, pointed teeth, the tarkata as a species were as hideous on the battlefield as one would imagine based on their appearance. Legend had it that they were the by-product of demons from the Netherrealm breeding with the native inhabitants of Outworld. Overtime, they had developed a loose tribal structure in the wastelands of Outworld, and despite their ferocity, the tarkata were easily manipulated and easily dominated. Shao Kahn had done so through sheer force of will, and after assuming the mantle of tournament host, Shang Tsung had ‘recruited’ the simple-minded killing machines to do his dirty work as well.

“Welcome,” Shang whispered as the fires beneath the trio of creatures faded and died away completely, leaving behind no burns or scorch-marks on the metal floor. “You are aware of what you are and why you exist?” The three tarkatan warriors nodded their heads as their arm blades retracted back into their forearms. Two of the creatures stepped forward and helped Shang back to his feet as the third went to retrieve the sorcerer’s makeshift ‘cane’ from the door. “Good,” the old man muttered as he accepted the pipe and gestured to the other door. “Force that doorway.”

With a schlikt, the warriors’ blades popped back out and were brought to bear against the door and its frame. It took barely ten seconds before nothing remained but a mass of shredded wood, laying clear the path for the sorcerer and his new retinue.

“Let’s go,” Shang muttered as he started to limp his way into the next room. If they didn’t come across an exit soon, the withered man wholly intended to have his slaves saw their way through the side of the building. Once they were back out into the street, he could set about finding some means to restore himself. If he couldn’t find any living people, he figured that some of the more humanoid creatures probably had souls of some sort. Hell, he’d settle for anything at this point that would assuage the searing agony that caused all of his joints to throb.

Traversing another hallway, the tarkatan paused and moved out of the way to allow Shang to spot what they had seen first—a double door with a broken ‘exit’ sign lying on the floor nearby. With a grin, the old man limped over to the door and pushed down on the bar, opening an exit that led to a small courtyard outside the sanitarium. As he stepped back into the outside world, Shang realized that the transformation hadn’t been limited to just the inside of the structure. The skies outside were just as dark and ash-laden outside the building.

I wonder who else still lives? The paladin had taken a few people with him, but how long ago had that been? An hour? A few hours? Days? Now that he stood there and dwelled upon it, Shang realized how vague and unclear the passage of time had been since they entered the fog. With a grimace, the sorcerer had his tarkatan bodyguards lead the way across the little courtyard and toward the gate which marked the edge of the property. Before they reached the wrought iron barrier, the quartet stopped dead when they heard the doors behind them swing open with enough force to send them crashing against the outside wall.

Shang turned to see what could only be a ‘goodbye’ party sent from the sanitarium. Five nurses and a pair of doctors stood in the doorway, their bloody, twitching forms a mockery of whatever humanity may have once resided inside the defiled shells. Without skipping a beat, the sorcerer reached for his handgun and fired. A red hole opened up on the forehead of one of the doctors, and with a damp thud, the corpse fell back inside the building as his peers rushed out like animals to assail the retreating Shang Tsung.

The sorcerer squeezed the trigger half a dozen more times as he stumbled backwards, but none of the shots hit vital targets. As Shang retreated, the three tarkatan warriors surged forward, their arm blades sliding free as they threw themselves at the scalpel-wielding nurses. While some of the small knives found skin and muscle, the nurses were outmatched and outgunned by the demonic creatures that now proceeded to tear into them with three-foot blades. Streaks of blood flew into the air in wide arcs as blades removed limbs and entire chunks of the feminine bodies with ease. In a matter of moments, the nurses were dead—their bodies strewed across about ten square yards worth of now thoroughly ensanguined courtyard.

Standing at the back of the group, Shang grinned as he snapped a finger, prompting the snarling tarkata to about-face and retract their arm blades.

[Shang Tsung]

Somewhere in the distance, the air raid siren started to scream once more. The warbling roar swelled until Shang felt as if he was standing right next to its source. Gritting his teeth, the aged sorcerer clamped his hands over his ears and clenched his eyes shut as he tried to do anything to drown out the horrid noise. When the siren fell silent, Shang opened his eyes and had to blink a few times to prove to himself that he wasn’t dreaming or hallucinating.

The ash and rust were gone, and in their place, the street and adjacent buildings looked as if they had a few hours earlier. Glancing over his shoulder, Shang saw that the tarkata were just as confused as him, which made him feel just a little better about the situation. “Stay on your guard… this place is rife with deception.”

Turning from his warriors, Shang continued down the street, leaning on the pipe as he tried to find any sort of landmark—street sign, address numbers on a building, or anything that would give him a clue as to his location. He would kill anyone for an idea as to where in this wretched town he was located. Just as he was about to swear, he noticed a broken sign lying on the sidewalk at the upcoming intersection. Limping over to it, he glanced down and noted that one of these streets was called Toluca Avenue. With a sigh, he leaned against a nearby car. A quick glance inside piqued his curiosity enough to try the door, which was unlocked.

Sitting in the vehicle, the elderly Shang leaned over and picked up the handgun clip lying on the chair. On the floor, he spotted what seemed to be another walkie-talkie, and after leaning over to scoop it up, he confirmed his guess. A twist of the knob on the side revealed that the batteries weren’t dead, but all of the channels contained nothing more than white noise.

I wonder… Setting the walkie on the car’s dashboard, Shang tried the glove compartment, which fell open to reveal a stack of papers and napkins from fast food restaurants. Unfortunately for the sorcerer, he couldn’t find what he was looking for, which was a road map. Damn it. With a grunt, the man slid out of the car as dexterously as a man in his seventies could. As he retrieved his pipe/crutch, he noticed something approaching from the other end of the road.

“Is that you, Shang?”

No. Of all the damn things…

Stuffing his ire down deep into his withered husk of a body, Shang turned to see a lightly glowing figure approaching him. With Atelos gone, that meant the only heavily armored warrior from the Middle Ages left in Silent Hill was Argento. To Shang’s amusement, the paladin was not only alone, but he was also sporting more than a few dents in his formerly majestic armor, and he even had a bruise on the right side of his face. The fact that the paladin had taken his fair share of bumps and injuries made Shang feel a little less embarrassed at his own situation.

“By the Sun, what has happened to you, my man?” Argento asked as he paused and glanced at the tarkatan warriors that moved to defend their master. “What are these creatures?”

“They’re from my world… they may look unsettling, but they are loyal.” Shang muttered. His voice was a hoarse wheeze as the paladin analyzed the tarkata. A lesser man may have been unnerved by the almost burning eyes of the creatures and their wide, teeth-filled maws, but Argento had glared right into the depths of darkness itself. The paladin merely nodded his head and turned his attention back to the sorcerer.

“What has become of you? Your light remains the same, but your body is…”

“Withered, I know,” Shang answered. “When the siren first sounded and the town grew dark, I was set upon by monster and demons. I fended them off, but it took much of my strength to do so. I will be fine… I just need time to regain my strength.” And I wish I could put a knife in your heart and devour your soul.

“That’s terrible,” Argento muttered as he stepped forward and placed one of his gauntleted hands on his ally’s shoulder. “What of the Spartan? Is he among the fallen?”

The sorcerer could only offer a shrug of his shoulders. “I’m not certain... the two of us were in the Sanitarium trying to find supplies when the building started to collapse. Right before the siren went off, Atelos was sucked into a wall, and I was unable to find him in my subsequent flight from the structure after the town descended into nightmares.” Saying it out loud made Shang start to consider the idea that maybe the Spartan was dead. How many people got pulled through walls and spat out somewhere in one piece? The reality that Atelos was probably gone was an unsettling one, because it meant that the sorcerer’s only viable option in an ally was standing in front of him.

“This place is worse than I ever imagined,” Argento spoke as the sound of something skittering in a nearby alley caused the man to spin and draw his weapon. When a pair of rats scurried out from under a dumpster, the paladin relaxed and turned his focus back to his associate. “I have seen the mass graves from the war with Diablo, and I have fought dracoliches… but this town is something far more sinister. It warps ones perception of reality, and I fear that the longer we remain here, the stronger the town’s grip will become on us. I believe it may be in our best interests to find the quickest way to escape, if such an option is still available to us.”

Shang shook his head and scowled. “I’m not leaving until this means something. We’ve lost too many friends and suffered too many setbacks to just cut our losses and run with our tails between our legs.” The remark was complete an utter bullshit. The Spartan was the only person that Shang considered worthy of something more than serving as a human shield, but the sorcerer wasn’t about to leave without finding out the town’s secrets. “We need to finish what we started… in their memory.”

Argento stood silent for a moment before giving a solemn nod. “Even in weakness and duress, you are a noble soul, Tsung.”

Idiot. “Thank you,” Shang said, tipping his head as he glanced once more at the intersection. “Did you discover anything to help navigate this town? These streets are poorly labeled, and I haven’t found a street map or even a bus stop.”

The paladin ruminated on that question for a few moments before gesturing back in the direction from which he had come. “There was a tavern at the far end of this street that contained the information you seek. Come, I will escort you there.”

The sorcerer held up his free hand and gestured that he wouldn’t require assistance. “They can protect me, Argento. It would be in our best interests to continue exploring this town separately, so we can cover more ground.”

“How will we remain in touch?”

At that, the sorcerer turned back to face the open car door. Leaning inside, he grabbed the walkie-talkie from atop the dash, turned it to the same channel as his own, and handed it to the paladin. “Twist that knob and then depress the large button on the side. We’ll be able to communicate using these,” he instructed as he pushed aside his torn robe to reveal a similar device strapped to his belt.

“Excellent,” Argento declared as he clipped the communication equipment to his own heavy belt. Nothing looked stranger than a man in full plate mail with a walkie-talkie from the 1980s strapped to his hip, but hey, the Omniverse had already prove itself to be a weird place. “If you find yourself facing great danger, call out for me. I will be there. Even in darkness, the Sun shines bright.”

“Be safe,” Shang said after choking down the bile that the paladin’s saccharine declaration caused to well up in his throat. “We shall talk soon, Paladin.”

[Shang Tsung]

The ‘tavern’ that the paladin spoke of was actually a roadside motel sandwiched between a main north-south road and a river that fed into Lake Toluca. Flanked by the tarkata, Shang’s journey to ‘Riverside Motel’ had been a quiet and uninspired trek through a street devoid of anything other than some debris and a handful of abandoned cars. When they arrived at the little reception area, the sorcerer limped his way over to the main door and gave the knob a twist before shoving it open.

“Find me a map and anything that can be used for self-defense,” Shang barked to the tarkata as he made his way over to the main reception desk. Using the pipe as a crowbar, he forced open the little half-sized door that prevented guests form accessing the area behind the counter. The first thing he noticed was that the cash register had been left open, and as one might imagine, it contained within it only dust and some scraps of coin rolling paper. Sooner, rather than later, Shang knew he would solve the mystery of what happened to this place, but for now, his concerns were on figuring out what this place looked like.

On the wall behind the counter, Shang spotted what seemed to be a display stand where someone would stock pamphlets, coupon books, and all the other mostly garbage documents they handed out at little motels like this. Unfortunately for the sorcerer, the wooden display’s many slots were all empty, and they seemed to have been that way for quite some time.

A grunt from somewhere across the room drew Shang’s focus to one of the tarkatan warriors. The sorcerer turned to see one of the creatures walking over to him with what seemed to be the business end of a bloodstained billiards stick.

“Where did you find that?” Shang inquired as he tried to glance at the other side of the reception area. Although he had an open line-of-sight, his vision had decayed to the point where he had difficulty seeing anything outside of ten feet.

Seeing that its master couldn’t see the crime scene, the tarkatan warrior turned back to face him. “Green table. Covered with blood. Bodies moved.” With no lips and a mouth that was mostly teeth, it spoke with a guttural lisp that probably would have sounded almost silly coming out of any other creature.

“This town holds many secrets,” the sorcerer muttered as the other two tarkata joined the first on the other side of the counter. One of them dropped a key onto the table, while the other produced what appeared to be a brochure about the hotel. The tarkatan warrior folded open the brochure to reveal a map of the establishment, with their location marked with a red star and the word ‘Reception’. Furrowing his brow, Shang scooped up the key and held it up to his face so he could read the words etched onto it. “…Storage.” He glanced up at his map-wielding servant, who promptly pressed his calloused finger down onto the part of the map labeled ‘Storage.’

It would seem that I gave them more brains than I had anticipated. Grinning from ear-to-ear, Shang pocketed the key and scooped up the brochure. He left behind the bloody pool stick and made his way out to the other side of the counter, where the tarkata fell into positions beside and behind him. Their destination was on the opposite corner of the complex, which meant they’d have to make their way through the middle of the place and pass the many rooms and suites. I wonder if there are any guests still at this place. The Sanitarium had been empty save the twisted remains of its caregivers, and while part of Shang didn’t want to run into anymore ‘almost people,’ part of him wouldn’t mind a human face.

…Or a human soul.

***

From the other side of the parking lot, someone watched through a scoped rifle as the elderly man and his three monsters started to depart from the reception area. As they walked away, the scope dropped down to reveal that its user was a woman in her earlier thirties dressed in loose combat fatigues. Slinging the rifle back over her shoulder, she reached down to her side and retrieved a walkie-talkie. “Still have eyes on him. Seems to be moving further into the Riverside... should I move to intercept?” The soldier let go of the button and waited through the white noise for a response.

“Nah,” a young voice responded with a tone that made it clear he was a source of opinion rather than orders. “If he messes with those two, it’s his own funeral, y’know?”

“I guess… I’m out,” the woman responded as she twisted off the communicator. Once it was secured, she let out a sigh as she pondered the situation. After a few silent moments, she settled on a course of action and shoved up off her haunches.

***

The trio strode from the reception building and passed under the elevated walkway that connected the pair of two-story structures that housed the motel’s suites and rooms. Much like the rest of the town, a light fog hung over the open area, and if it wasn’t for the large, LED lamps flickering overhead, the little courtyard/patio area would have been pitchblack.

Leading the tarkata, Shang walked forward until he noticed the pool that served as the dominating feature. The man was about to keep walking when a double-take piqued his curiosity. Although it made his joints scream, the sorcerer crouched down to get a better look at the water. Neither blue nor green, the liquid had an almost brown or orange tinged to it, as if someone had poured a bucket filled with ground rust shavings into the water.

He was about to dip his hand into the water when he heard a muffled groan. Turning his head in the direction of the noise, he found himself staring through the fog toward the south end of the complex. Shang rose to his feet and took a few steps toward where the sound had come from, hoping that it would repeat itself. When he heard nothing, he was about to gesture for his retinue to follow him toward their destination, but just as his head was starting to move, the quartet all heard the sound once more. It was a little clearer this time, and it was distinctly feminine. Rather than fall off, the noise continue—a staccato series of grunts and groans that didn’t seem to be the sound of someone being killed. In fact, it sounded more to Shang as if the individual behind the closed door was having a very nice time.

You’re kidding me, right? Motioning for the tarkatan warriors to hold their position, Shang limped forward until he was standing outside the door marked ‘Rose Suite.’ At this distance, he heard a second source of groaning and had little doubt that two people were putting the room to good use. Who the hell sneaks off to a motel to screw in this place? Try as he might, Shang couldn’t just walk away from this situation nor was he willing to barge in and start demanding answers to the dozens of questions he had about the city.

So he did the only ‘sensible’ thing and crouched in front of the keyhole. Despite the cataracts on his eyes, he had clear enough vision to see through the small hole. Much like its name suggested, the room was all shades of pink and red, with a giant bed currently occupied by two individuals putting it to its intended usage. For reasons that Shang appreciated greatly, the man was still wearing what seemed to be a form of battle armor that covered his torso. The woman, however, was stark naked—her toned, tan form irrefutably attractive.

Whoever they were, Shang didn’t know, and he already felt pathetic for thinking he’d gain some useful information by watching people groan and grunt as they ground their private parts together. Before he could move away from the keyhole, the woman’s head fell to the side and her purple eyes made direct contact with Shang. Despite the fact that it should have been impossible to see him, the sorcerer knew she could, and the grin on her face as she continued to moan with pleasure only confirmed his own displeasure.

Shoving away from the door, Shang collapsed onto his back and let out a curse. On the other side of the door, he heard the sound of sheets being shoved around. “What the fuck was that?” The man’s voice was harsh and angry.

“Get us out of here!” Shang rasped as two of the tarkatan warriors scooped him up and carried him toward the west end of the courtyard. By the time they were around the corner, the sorcerer heard the distinct sound of a door being thrown open and slamming against a wall. Fortunately, the sound of angry footsteps didn’t follow them around to the other side of the complex, and after pausing for a moment to regain his bearings; Shang was placed back on his feet and pointed toward what seemed to be a wooden wall.

“There’s no door,” the sorcerer rasped as he walked over to the wall of the storage room and knocked on the wood. “And this isn’t hollow…” He glanced back down at the map and saw that there wasn’t supposed to be a door here. In fact, the access was inside the southern structure, which meant backtracking all the way to reception and then through the interior. “No… Break that window and be quiet about it!” He barked as he pointed to a single pane window with metal bars on it that was designed to prevent people from sneaking into the maintenance room.

Without complaint, the tarkatan warriors stepped forward, popped out their arm blades, and started to methodically tear apart the window and surrounding wall. Despite the surgical precision with which they saw and tore through wood, steel, and glass, Shang couldn’t suppress the uneasiness he felt at being out in the open. Luckily, the tarkata didn’t need more than a few minutes before they had reduced the window to a jagged hole in the wall. One of the warriors leapt inside the building, and his peers motioned for Shang to come over.

After he was lifted into the maintenance room, Shang made a beeline for the nearby storage room and gently opened the door. The room was dark, but he quickly found a cord connected to a pair of incandescent lights that proceeded to bath the room in a pale yellow glow. Once his eyes adjusted to the poor lighting, Shang couldn’t help but grin. “That’s what we need,” he whispered as he walked over and grabbed a thick pamphlet from an open cardboard box. Although the colors were a little faded from age, it was unmistakable that the document was a foldout map of Silent Hill, complete with smaller sections dedicated to the town’s various areas. At first glance, it was obvious that Silent Hill was a collection of small towns, with none of them dominating the others in terms of size.

The Riverside Motel was located in a neighborhood called South Park, which stood between a spattering of tourist sites on the lakeside and ‘Central Silent Hill,’ which seemed to contain a rather high density of businesses and was across the river from ‘Old Silent Hill.’ On the other end of the lake was an area called South Vale and ‘South Silent Hill.’ If one traveled further along the south shore of the lake, they would come across an outlet stream called the Pleasant River and the districts of Hillside and ‘Port District’ nestled next to the river and the surrounding Raccoon Mountains.

The highways that connected the little neighborhoods were dotted with various attractions—manmade and natural—and there were plenty of small motels and piers to keep anyone entertained. If anything, it was obvious that this place had been designed to make people want to come here. As he examined it a little further, Shang had to wonder how the town had been before the fog. Before he allowed his thoughts to wander too far, he spotted the entire reason why he’d come to this motel—Alchemilla Hospital. Much to the sorcerer’s amusement, the hospital was just a few blocks up the road from their present location.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Shang whispered as he folded up the pamphlet and stuffed it into a pocket. The sorcerer started to lead the trio back toward the entrance they’d carved into the outside wall when he was startled by the sound of static hissing out from his walkie-talkie. Plucking it off his belt, he checked the frequency and saw that the channel had been changed. Had he been so clumsy as to smack the device off of something? No… maybe that would have been possible had it moved from ten to nine, but the knob had twisted all the way to seventeen, the last possible channel.

Before he could change the channel, the sea of static parted long enough to allow a female voice through. “Can you hear me?

Pressing down the talk button, the sorcerer lifted the device up to his mouth and spoke in hushed tones. “Yes, I can. Who is this?”

“Probably a friend,” she replied after a short pause. “You’re going to want to avoid traveling back out through the courtyard. He’s still huffing and puffing out there… you’ll want to take the hallway inside the building and leave through the side entrance.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Shang asked as his eyes moved to the other end of the maintenance room, where he spotted the single door leading out into the interior of the southern structure.

“Because my friend out there has enough to live with, and I don’t want him to have to add your life to the rest of it. Just trust me, and I’ll talk to you later.”

“I gue—”

“And try and avoid her… you’ll know who I’m talking about.”

The device went back to spewing out static, and after a few more moments, Shang changed the channel back to the previous setting and killed the power. “That way,” he muttered to the tarkata, who took up their positions as the sorcerer started toward the door that would lead into the interior of the motel.

[Shang Tsung]

Inside the motel, Shang crept through the poorly lit hallway, flanked by his tarkatan warriors. As they made their way down the hallway, his eyes remained locked on the wall to his right. Eighty percent window, the wall was a glaring threat if anyone wanted to get at him. On the other side of the grime-stained glass, the fog was thick enough to prevent the sorcerer from seeing anything, but even so, he didn’t want to leave himself open in case something came crashing through.

When they were halfway through the area, all four of them heard the sound of something dense scraping against wood near the far side of the corridor. The tartaka swept around their master and startled to snarl as their arm blades popped into position. With his poor sight, Shang had difficulty seeing the creature until it was within five yards. From first glance, he could tell that it had once been a human, but at some point, someone had torn off its arms and most of its head. As compensation, what remained of its torso seemed to be wrapped in another layer of flesh that pulsed and stretched, seemingly to be on the verge of tearing apart as the creature writhed and convulsed.

The center tarkata went to take a step forward but was stopped by one of Shang’s now gaunt, skeletal hands. “Let me,” the sorcerer muttered as he gripped the pipe in both hands and stepped out in front of his monstrous slaves. With a grin, the decrepit warrior waited for the twitching subhuman beast to draw within a yard before he swung the heavy metal pipe with every ounce of strength he could muster from his atrophied muscles and weary bones. A gurgling noise resounded from the creature as it fell sideways, leaving itself open for a second thunderous blow that shattered the stump of a neck jutting up from its body. After the second strike, the monster crumpled and stopped moving as blood began to pool out from underneath it.

Dropping the pipe, Shang gently lowered himself next to the dead beast and set his shriveled hands upon what had once been its chest. It wasn’t a person, but from its appearance, it had to have been at some point. If that was true, surely it had to have something close enough to a soul lurking beneath its warped, twisted form.

The process took longer than it should have—or did it just feel that way given his current condition? Either way, a flash of rainbow-colored light danced momentarily along the creature’s chest before fading to reveal the translucent green cloud that Shang so coveted. The corpse shuddered as the prize within vanished into the sorcerer’s chest. For a moment, there was nothing but silence in the hallway.

Then a great agony consumed Shang. A great, blinding agony that made him grind his teeth to swallow a scream and clench his eyes and fists to will his way through the attack. It felt as if he’d just consumed pure fire, and for a brief moment, he feared he would black out and slip into the abyss. As his strength seemed on the verge of failing, the burning suddenly subsided, and after a few moments longer, Shang slowly opened his eyes. A look down revealed that the corpse had become a bubbling heap of flesh, and a glance at his hands showed that he’d recovered a little.

“Damn it,” he groaned as he rose to his feet. He felt much improved compared to how he’d been a few minutes ago, but he’d need to find something more substantial if he wanted to shake off the lethargy of feeling the age that he appeared. “I need something real.” He muttered as the tarkata formed their crescent formation behind him. Although he no longer needed it to maintain his balance and keep himself upright, Shang held onto the metal pipe. At this point, he’d grown somewhat attached to the now dented and bloodstained piece of steel. With both hands griped to the weapon, Shang traversed the remainder of the hallway and exited out through the pair of metal doors at the other end.

On the other side the door, the ‘fresh’ air of Silent Hill wafted over the sorcerer, reminding him that he was still far from safety. Leaving the motel behind him, Shang led his retinue through what remained of the empty parking lot and to the adjacent street, which remained bare. As he turned to head north toward the hospital, he noticed the glint in the corner of his eye right before the gun’s rapport shattered the silence.

Throwing his body forward, Shang clenched his jaw as the pavement erupted upward, ravaged by a high-caliber bullet. Behind him, the tarkatan warriors unsheathed their arm blades and started toward at the building from which the gun had fired. “No!” The sorcerer barked as he regained his balance and gestured up the street. “Let’s move.” Although it was clear they sought blood, the tarkata sheathed their weapons and sprinted to follow their leader, who was jogging up the street as fast as he could in an effort to get out of the gunman’s line-of-sight. As he cleared the next intersection, he heard a second gunshot, but like the first, it missed the quartet by a few feet, and after another block, the sorcerer paused to catch his breath. If the shooter wanted to follow them, he or she would have to move to a fresh vantage point on an adjacent street.

Once he caught his breath, Shang checked the nearby street marker and pulled out his map. If he had any luck, Alchemilla Hospital would be just another two blocks north of their current position. After folding the paper back up, the sorcerer secured it and started up the empty street. He managed to make it a block before he caught movement in a nearby alley. It was flash of unnatural red atop of blurred, vaguely human shape, and once it was out of sight, he heard what he could only describe as a titillating giggle.

Trap. Shang’s legs moved forward, carrying him toward the barely-lit alleyway. You’re aware that this is a trap. He held up a hand to order the tarkata to hold their positions as he neared the cramped passageway. Idiot. Passing between the two cramped apartment buildings, Shang glanced down to see if he couldn’t spot whoever had lured him here. When he saw nothing, he took a few additional steps toward the blackness at the other end of the alley. As he passed under a rusted fire escape, he failed to see the shape slip down over the elevated platform and land gracefully behind him. In fact, for someone trained over the course of a few centuries, he failed to detect anything until the slender hands slipped around his waist and he felt the hot breath on his ear.

“Hello there, stranger.”

With an almost childish yelp, Shang wrenched away from the hands loosely hugging his waist and turned to confront the woman. Even in the obscured light of the alley, he already knew that he’d seen her once before, albeit with less clothes. The red hair and purple eyes were unmistakable, even though the first time he’d laid his own eyes on them, he’d been staring through a keyhole. “You.” He muttered, a mixture of confusion and uneasiness washing over him as he glanced up and around for any indication of her angry, growling companion. Even though he saw nothing, he kept the pipe gripped firmly in his hands.

“We’re alone,” the woman cooed as she stepped forward and placed a soft hand upon the sorcerer’s cheek. “And I know it’s you, even if you turned back your biological clock,” she added with a wink as she continued to edge forward.

“I have no idea who you are or what you are talking about,” Shang retorted, although he made no immediate effort to step away or gently move her back. The longer he stared into those eyes, the more his resolve faded. His interactions with most women had been farce or his attempt to ensure he stuck to social conventions, but the millennium-old sorcerer found himself putty beneath the touch and gaze of this sensual creature that stood before him.

“Don’t try to fool me,” she whispered as she stepped up and placed her lips near his ear. Shang heard the pipe clang loudly on the ground but couldn’t remember letting it go. “No one can fool me.” As if to prove a point, she put a soft kiss against the man’s ear before pulling away to stare him in the eye. “I know you liked what you saw,” she continued as one of her hands snaked lower on the sorcerer’s body. “Don’t deny it. It’s been so long since we’ve had company… I’ve grown so tired of the same old piece of meat.” When her hand closed around something it shouldn’t have, that served as enough of a shock to jolt Shang from his stupor.

With an abrupt grunt, the sorcerer pulled himself away from the woman, his eyes hardening as he tried to shake the haze from his mind. “Who and what are you?” He demanded as he glanced down at his weapon.

“Who I am?” She asked, tilting her head before responding with a shrug of her shoulders. “I was probably someone,” she replied with a wink as she ran her hands down the sides of her skin-hugging bodysuit.

“What does that mean?” The sorcerer asked as he watched her reached up and start to play with the zipper just below her neckline. His mind was a little clearer now than it had been when she had ‘ambushed’ him… he knew what game she was playing as she teased pulling down the zipper.

“I’m just me.” She cooed. “You don’t understand how much I crave an escape from all this… from all them. Even when we’re apart, I still can’t have peace. It’s as if we stop existing when we get too far apart from one another.” For the first time, the woman blinked, and her expression showed a flash of sadness before reverting back. Her polished, painted fingers slipped the zipper down to the middle of her chest, revealing quite clearly that there was nothing beneath the suit. “Now why don’t you help me feel a little more alive,” she whispered as she started toward the sorcerer.

It was then that Shang knew he had to make a decision whether or not to run, hit her, or succumb to some baser instincts.

Fortunately for him, he was saved by the wail of the air raid siren, which created an instant and horrifying change in the woman.

“Fuck you!” She screamed, her words directed up at the air rather than the man in front of her. “You did this on purpose!” The redhead began to glance around like a frantic rabbit, as if she half-expected the gradually decaying walls around them to give way to a horde of monsters. “Fuck you.” She rasped to the sky as she dashed at Shang. He reacted too slowly to prevent her from wrapped her arms around the small of his back and crushing her lips against his. He felt her tongue slipped into his mouth and a soft moan escape her mouth before her nails tightened against him.

She suddenly broke away from him, and for the first time, he saw horror in her violet eyes. Then, without any real indication, she crumbled into pink dust as the siren’s warbling shriek faded away, leaving Shang in an alley transformed from its previous version. The walls and the street around him had aged, revealing cracks, fissures, and the signs of long neglect, while the dumpster next to him had rusted almost to the point of being unrecognizable. Outside of the alley, the streets were now bathed in a pale red light, a rather menacing change from the blend of yellow and white streetlights. Somewhere back behind him, in the darkness of the alley, he heard a low moan.

Unlike the noise that had drawn him here in the first place, there was no humanity in the sounds he now heard.

Damn it.

[Shang Tsung]

With a scowl on his face, Shang retreated from the alley and back to the main street. Much to his frustration, the available light had shrunken when the world slipped back into whatever living Hell the city turned into when the sirens rang. The flickering yellow street lights now gave off only a fleeting amount of red light that only served to highlight how rusted and decayed the surrounding buildings now appeared. A few minutes ago, he could see all the way to the next intersection, but as he stood in the street now, he could barely see more than three yards in any direction.

The only solace that the sorcerer had was that his tarkatan warriors remained in the same position, although it was clear that they had become somewhat unnerved by the town’s transformation. Their blades stood ready to pop forth at the slightest indication that some monster was going to come twitching or shrieking out of the surrounding darkness. With the Spartan gone and Argento more of a liability than an ally, Shang Tsung was pleased to have the half-demon killing machines guarding his flanks.

***

The paladin heard the wail of the air raid siren, but he was further removed from the district than he had been the previous time. As he looked back at what he now knew to be ‘central’ Silent Hill, and if what his map told him was correct, he was passing through the ‘resort’ part of the spread-out town. To someone who had lived much of his life in a rural farming community, Argento knew little of what the terms and figures on the map meant. All he knew was that he needed to continue his search to find Omni, and if Shang intended to search that part of town in more depth, the paladin figured it best he venture to a different locale. He was driven by a need to know that the sacrifices of his friends and associates would wind up meaning something.

For better or for worse, Argento noted that the surroundings remained unchanged. With the map clenched in his gauntleted fist, he continued on his path. The monster had been all but nonexistent since his last conversation with the sorcerer, but the paladin was unable to relax. Up ahead, there was another bridge, and to his left, the river flowed into Toluca Lake. Despite the perpetual fog and dreariness that consumed the region, the lake was quite beautiful—its crystal blue waters were still enough to allow Argento to glimpse a few fish.

The fact that the fish he saw weren’t covered in spikes or glowing with devil fire led the paladin to believe that the stories of this town once being close to utopia probably had some truth to them. What had befallen this place to leave it in such a bizarre state?

With a sigh, Argento placed a hand over the sun emblem on his chest plate and started across the wide bridge.

***

They were close to Alchemilla Hospital. Even with how thick and inhospitable the area had become, Shang and his entourage had remained unmolested as they continued north on Canyon Street. If the map was to be believed, they’d soon approach the entrance to a little courtyard part on the east side of the hospital. At this point, he wasn’t even sure what he’d been looking for in the hospital, since it was pretty clear at the Sanitarium that he was chasing the trail of something that had been quite hastily covered up by people in nice suits.

That said… Shang wanted to get to the bottom of the trail of breadcrumbs he had found amongst the computer terminal in the old medical facility. If the Hospital yielded no results, he’d just turn his attention to something else. In a city of this scale, there had to be more than just one or two secrets waiting for a prying eye to find them. Despite the fact that the city was still seething red around him, Shang was starting to feel a little better about the situation. Even though he still needed a few viable souls to remove some of the ill effects of his curse, he had a little spring in his step as he spotted the gates up ahead.

Unfortunately, the sorcerer should have known that there was always a lull before the fury of the storm fell upon you once more.

“You!”

Shang spun just in time to watch a man drop down to the street near the intersection. The impact with which the lightly armored man hit the ground was enough to cause the pavement to buckle and fissure beneath him.

Just like the Spartan, this new arrival had a translucent white aura that burned fiercely around a body covered in a suit of armor that could best be described as a fusion of samurai and science fiction. Although the warriors gloves and greaves were clearly influenced by Eastern cultures, the breast plate, epaulets, thigh, and crotch guards were too different to have been originally paired with the rest. They were designed from a different material and somewhat molded to the man’s chest and abdomen.

Beneath a head of wildly unkempt black hair that was pulled back in a loose ponytail, but it wasn’t the hair or the armor that drew the sorcerer’s attention. It was the man’s eyes. They were eyes that he’d seen before—the same ones that had glared at him through the keyhole at the Riverside Motel. This was the same man who had been ‘physically engaged’ with the young woman from the alley, and just like earlier, he didn’t sound any happier.

Instead of respond right away, Shang Tsung took a long series of moments to glance back and forth at the clearly abandoned street before turning his focus back to the glaring stranger. “You mean me?” He asked, choking back the usual sneer he’d use to punctuate such a snide retort. “Or do you mean one of these fine gentlemen?” At that, the three tarkata stepped forward, and their arm blades popped out with a succession of snikts.

The display of aggression only served to elicit a tooth sneer from the man. “I know that it’s you from the motel, Old Man. You can change your appearance, but you can’t change your ki.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Shang replied as he let his arms slip down to his sides. As they did, his sleeves fell over them, which would cover up the subtle shift that would occur to let him use his own tarkatan arm blades.

“I know you were watching… And I know that you were talking with the Mistress before the siren.” The man’s eyes narrowed as he eyed up the quartet that stood opposed to him. “I don’t take too kindly to filth trying to make moves on my wife,” he added as Shang noticed that little droplets of what seemed to be gray blood were dripping from the man’s very clearly armored hands.

“Your wife?” Shang inquired; fighting back a laugh that he knew would tip the man over the edge. “She didn’t mention a husband, just that she was sick of the same old piece of meat.”

At that, the sorcerer saw the man tense up—a clear indication that Shang had ruffled his feathers. Why not? Men always fought their worst when anger took over. “I will murder you,” the armored warrior seethed as he took a single step forward and clenched one of his fists. “This is my town!”

Just like that, the flung his squeezed hand forward, and when it reached the extent of his arm, his fingers flung open, releasing what appeared to be a large crossbow bolt. The projectile, still dripping with liquid metal, zipped through the air and hit one of the tarkata hard in the chest, throwing the half-demon monster off his feet. Shang didn’t need to look back to know that his creature had suffered a mortal wound.

Now, at least, he knew what oozed and dripped from his adversary’s hands.

Without hesitation, the two surviving tarkata charged the metal-wielding warrior, who stood his ground despite the pair of snarling monsters. For his part, Shang just watched as his trained dogs rushed his would-be attacker. As the tarkata approached, their foe moved forward to meet them as liquid metal poured down over his hands. By the time his punch would have connected with the side of one of the tarkata’s necks, the man’s gauntleted fist had vanished beneath a three-foot serrated blade.

With relatively ease, the newly formed sword-arm cleaved down through the half-demon from neck to waist, and the two chunks smacked wetly on the pavement around the warrior. The surviving tarkata wasn’t able to finish its attack before the wild-eyed fighter’s second blade punched up through its gut and out of its back. The creature flailed for a few moments before slumping forward. A beat later, it was ceremoniously hurtled back at the sorcerer.

“You should have put a leash on your dogs,” the sneering man responded as Shang lifted his hands up into the air. The three corpses of the tarkatan warriors shuddered on the ground for a few moments before—following a flash of rainbow light—they faded into green clouds.

“They served their purpose,” the sorcerer replied callously as he gestured with his hands, causing the three clouds to return to their owner. As they vanished into Shang’s body, he let out a soft sigh as he felt the dead creature’s strength return to him. He didn’t expand on that thought, but the sorcerer was glad that the tarkata had been so bold, because it had forced the strange, angry warrior to reveal many of his skills.

“How very callous of you,” the other man sneered as the blades around his hands bubbled and hissed as they receded—vanishing into his gauntlets within a matter of moments. “You won’t be that way when I’m peeling the flesh from your bones with my bare hands.”

“Heh,” Shang snickered. “I don’t think we’re acquainted… I’m Shang Tsung.”

The man shook his head. “I’m a killer. That is what I am.”

His response made the sorcerer recall the remark made by his ‘wife’ in the alleyway. ‘I was someone.’ For the first time, Shang found himself interested in learning more about these people he met who had no names. Was this what happened when someone became trapped in this place for a long period of time? Would he himself start to forget who he was and become some sort of walking vessel of overactive emotions?

“Now we have the matter,” the Killer responded as he held out his hands. As Shang watched, the serrated blades reformed over his would-be murderer’s hands. “Of me drinking your blood.” With an animalistic scream, the other man launched himself forward, kicking off the ground with such force that chunks of pavement were ripped up in his wake.

[Shang Tsung]

The sorcerer fell back as the warrior rocketed through the air at him. Before those blade hands could find their mark on Shang’s flesh, his tarkatan blades punched out through his forearm to intercept the oncoming attacks. Flash-formed metal struck organic steel as Shang tried to stand his ground against a foe that was clearly physically dominant. The pavement behind the sorcerer’s boots started to buckle up behind him as he was driven down and back into what should have been an unyielding surface.

Rather than try and win a fight of brute strength, Shang opened his palm and released a blast of fire that caught the Killer across his armored chest. Upon impact, the ball exploded with enough concussive force to kill the other fighter’s momentum, although it didn’t seem to have any other real effect other than singing the both of them.

Even so, Shang managed to pivot and throw his foe away from him. The armored warrior hit the ground with a harsh thud but was quick to roll up to his feet. Before the sorcerer could react, his adversary threw a hand forward and released a shimmering crossbow bolt. A fireball caught the projectile before it could find a mark, but Shang was unable to regain his bearings before the Killer came stampeding across the street. With a thud, the black-haired man tackled the sorcerer to the ground and started to bash him with his armored forearms.

Three blows came and went before Shang was able to properly defend himself, and by then, he could already feel the fresh blood on his skin and taste it throughout his mouth. The delay was enough of a window for the pinned sorcerer to summon a fireball from the wall of a nearby building. His opponent let out a scream as the blast crashed into the side of his head and toppled him over. As the Killer fell away, Shang popped up to his feet and moved to bury his pair of blades into the chest of his angry-eyed adversary.

With a grunt, the sorcerer’s adversary rolled away, avoiding the tarkatan blades as they slammed into the pavement. By the time Shang wrenched them free from the asphalt, he had to twist and throw them up in an ‘X’ to block against the on-coming pair of blades. After the initial block, the Killer grabbed onto his foes weapons and tried to rip them out of Shang’s arms. Feeling stabs of pain as his bones started to splinter under the duress; the sorcerer leaned forward and smashed his boot against his opponent’s shin.

The grip of the Killer relaxed enough for Shang to pull his arms free. As the blades retracted back up into his forearms, he grabbed his longsword and slid it out of its scabbard.

“That won’t save you either,” the other man sneered. He took a step forward and lifted a hand to fire another attack when a gunshot shattered the otherwise still air of the street. With a growl, the Killer hopped backwards as the spot in the street where he’d been standing moments before exploded upward. Ignoring Shang, the black-haired man glared as he looked up at all of the nearby buildings. “What the hell are you doing?” He roared into silence before a second shot clipped the side of his face, causing him to slap a palm against his cheek. His eyes then fell to the bloodied sorcerer, who was just as confused. “I will kill you. She can’t protect you all the time.”

Just like that, the Killer turned around and slipped into an alley, probably intending to avoid being caught in anyone else’s crosshairs.

What the hell is going on?

Before he could respond, a voice issued forth from his walkie-talkie. “You can thank me later.” Shang knew the voice from earlier. It was the same woman who had radioed him at the motel. The sorcerer grabbed the device from his belt and brought it up to his face.

“Want to explain to me what’s going on?”

“Relax. The hospital is up the street.”

The line went dead before Shang had a chance to hurtle more questions at the shooter. With a groan, Shang tucked away the communication device, and although he probably should have taken some time to clean up his face, he set out directly for Alchemilla Hospital.

***

From the other side of the bridge, the paladin had ventured down Sanford Street to what appeared to be a small marina built for both tourists and for the purpose of loading and unloading goods being transferred across the lake or up the river. An assortment of visually pleasing homes lined the north side of the street, and while none of them appeared to be currently inhabited, the paladin did note that most of them didn’t seem to be in a state of advanced neglect.

On the south side of the wide street was a large, two-part building that seemed to be a spot where they would repair equipment or stow any of the goods being taken to and from the lake. As Argento approached the buildings, he spotted the words ‘East and West Garages’ on a metal sign on a pole between the two structures. Prior to the Omniverse, the paladin wouldn’t have had the slightest idea what a ‘garage’ was, but this new world had taught him many strange and fascinating things. As he walked toward the old structure, he knew it was a spot where engineers and laborers fixed ‘machines,’ which mobile pieces of steel and fabric that ran off of sources of fire.

Making his way over to the East Garage, Argento twisted the doorknob and smiled when it opened for him. Once he was over the threshold, he found himself in a large room filled with a bunch of strange equipment he didn’t understand and a vast collection of seemingly dissembled machines. They were the same machines that lined the streets of Silent Hill and came in various shapes and sizes—cars. People in other verses used them for transportation, and while he saw the benefit in the armored boxes, Argento would never want to trade in his horse for one of the strange contraptions. There was no soul in these machines. They didn’t feel… they just existed to do a bunch of mundane purposes. With Maximus at his side in battle or on the field, Argento knew he had a third set of eyes watching out for him (the Sun was an eternal set of second eyes). He’d never feel that way in one of these contraptions of ‘technology’ and ‘science.’

In the back corner of the room, a dying light bulb caught Argento’s attention after a few moments of glancing around the garage floor. The flickering yellow light was behind a stained window labeled ‘Office.’ Striding across the room and maneuvering around all of the abandoned equipment and machine parts, Argento reached the door and slipped inside. The interior of the office was filled with a great deal of clutter, and although the stack of papers on the desk had the appearance of being recently sorted through, the rest of the room was covered in a layer of dust. The shelves were decorated with old books, yellowed magazines, and an assortment of metal statues for something called ‘bowling.’ Whoever the owner was, he was clearly some sort of star athlete in the local leagues.

While the faded, dusted decorates were interesting to look at, Argento couldn’t pry his attention away from the desk for too long. Walking over, the paladin took a seat in the padded chair, which whined as it sank a little to support his armored frame. He wasn’t an academic by any means, but the former farmer could tell that someone had rifled through the contents of this room in the recent past. Many of the papers were newspapers and torn papers from magazines, but what drew Argento’s interest were the half-crumbled documents that detailed what was coming in and out of the docks. Most of it seemed rather pedestrian—food, commercial products, and the occasional piece of machinery.

What eventually drew Argento’s attention was the number of lines that someone had written over with a thick black pen. For some reason, the man in charge of this location didn’t want to leave a legibile record of whatever goods he had received that were destined for a place called ‘Alchemilla Hospital.’

…Wait. The paladin furrowed his brow as he tried to recall his last conversation with the sorcerer. Hadn’t Shang Tsung mentioned something about a hospital before they went their separate ways? With a scowl, Argento reached for the communications device and fumbled with it for a few moments until all the settings were correct. After his finger from the appropriate button, he cleared his throat. “Shang, are you there? This is Argento!” He released the button and listened to the jarring yet somewhat soothing noise that sprayed out of the device. He was about to try once again when the calm, cool voice of his associate sounded through.

“Yes, you are the only one with this frequency… What is it?”

Oblivious to the subtle jabs taken at him, the paladin picked up one of the papers and glanced again for clarity. “Did you say something about traveling to Alchemilla Hospital?”

“Correct, I’m standing outside of it, actually. Where are you?”

“I am outside of town at a spot where that river hits the lake. It’s like a merchant wharf combined with a drydock… I found some papers in the building office, and it appears that whoever ran this place didn’t want anyone to know what was being delivered to your hospital.”

The sorcerer was silent for a few moments. When he finally spoke, there was something almost like joy in his words. “That confirms my suspicions about this place, Argento. There’s definitely something hidden in this place… I know it.”

“Then you should wait for me to return, and we can scour that fel installation side-by-side!”

“I can’t waste any more time… I’ll be fine on my own.” With that, the device went silent—Shang had turned off his walkie-talkie, leaving the paladin with a decision of his own to make.

Fortunately for Argento, he didn’t need longer than three seconds to know that he had to return to help his new associate.

[Shang Tsung]

As he clipped the walkie-talkie to his belt, Shang strode across the front parking lot toward the main doors of the hospital. He made it across the midpoint when a sudden pain shot through his head. With a grunt, he dropped down to a knee and covered his face with his hands. A few streets over, the air raid sirens started to wail. Although he could see the city shifting around him once again, the sorcerer ignored it as he made his way toward the front doors of the hospital. Now that he was here, he didn’t plan to let anything distract him from his objective… whatever that was supposed to be.

Stepping through the revolving door, Shang had an immediate feeling of uneasiness at how perfect everything looked. Cedar Grove Sanitarium had been in a state of decay, and the Riverside Motel had been neglected for some time. For whatever reason, Alchemilla Hospital had the appearance of a place that was still servicing hundreds of people every day, despite the fact that the building was empty and silent. Directly across from the revolving doors, a polished elevator sat with its doors shut and a feel strips of ‘Out of Order’ tape barring access.

Given that the stairwell was likewise ‘sealed’ with a sturdy chain that Shang didn’t feel compelled to break, the sorcerer made his way to the next room down the far wall. Labeled ‘Director’s Office,’ the room behind the nondescript door was plain, but there were a few small clues that made it seem like someone had combed the place over earlier. For a hospital director’s office, the place was devoid of any sort of evidence that a human, rather than a robot, did work in it. All the books were perfectly aligned on the shelf, the trash was empty, and it even smelled as if the paint and wood stain had been freshly applied.

Shang frowned as he walked over to the chair and slid it out from behind the desk. His hands found the drawer and tugged it open to reveal that the desk was empty save a little notepad. Plucking it up, the sorcerer dropped into the old chair and quickly skimmed through the handful of pages that remained on the spiral-bound pad. Most of it was gibberish about office supplies vanishing and poor work being done on the inventory. The only things that caught the sorcerer’s attention were mentions of some supplies being stored ‘Down There.’

From behind the man, he heard the door creak open. Shang spun around and found himself staring at a scraggly little man in a tattered red hoodie. Despite having the appearance of someone who hadn’t showered in a few days or slept more than an hour or two, the sorcerer didn’t feel intimidated or unnerved. “Hey, what’s up?” The man asked as he pushed back his hood and unkempt hair to reveal a face that was probably no more than twenty-some years old. “I think most of the staff has cleared out for the night… can I help you?”

It was rare for Shang to meet someone who didn’t want to jump his bones or trying and tear them out of his body, so the young man casually asking how he could assist him was probably one of the bigger shocks of the evening. “Who are you?”

“Me?” The youth asked as he glanced around to make sure he was being addressed. “I think I work here. At least I hope I work here, since I’ve been cleaning up these messes for far too long without some form of money. Hell, I’d take free coffee drinks… I got a bud who could whip up an excellent mocha y’know.”

Shang furrowed his brow. “You didn’t answer my question.”

The young adult shook his sweatshirt-clad shoulders. “I can’t recall the name, I’m sorry. I think I’ve had a few of them, but none of them have stuck as of late.” Stopping his train of thought, he ran a hand over his chin, which sported the barest traces of facial hair. “Yea… I think the other guys knew it. Anyway, are you looking for anything in particular? I think the guy who used to work here left… a while ago? You can’t imagine how hard it is to keep track of time in this place. Sometimes I feel like I go to sleep and wake up last year.”

He was talking in that rambling and confused way that everyone else did, but since he wasn’t blatantly hostile, Shang didn’t mind. “How long has the hospital been like this?”

The scraggly youth scowled and scratched the side of his head for a few moments. “A week? A year? Three hours? I feel like none of those are right, but at the same time, there’s a chance they’re all right. We haven’t really had much luck with any of this since coming to this place.”

“We?”

“Yea,” the youth replied, his tone confident for the first time. “I got some friends who I ride with, but we all occasionally like to go off on solo tours.”

“Solo tours?”

“Yea,” Shang’s acquaintance replied. “It’s like… when the Beatles split up and they all decided to go take a stab at being famous on their own.” The young man glanced at his surroundings before shaking his head. “Only when John Lennon gets shot in the face, we all get reunited in band mode.”

It made little sense, but Shang found his curiosity drawing him further into the unkempt youth’s rambling remarks. “So does that make you Ringo or George Harrison?”

What followed was one of the more uncomfortable pregnant pauses in Shang Tsung’s many centuries of life, but after that uncomfortable silence, the twenty-something let out a soft laugh and shook a finger at the seated sorcerer. “You’re pretty funny for a guy who throws fireballs and has knives in his arms.” Had this not been the first time they met, the tone in which the other man said the remark would have made it seem like just a casual remark. Instead, it betrayed the fact that the poorly dressed youth knew things he shouldn’t be able to know.

“And you’re pretty knowledgeable for someone I’ve just met.” Shang retorted with a little more menace in his tone.

“Ah, nah… I just have a really good pair of eyes outside,” he replied without skipping a beat. “What brings you to Alchemilla anyway?”

Shang scowled at the deflection before setting the notepad back on the empty desk. “I was following some leads I picked up in Cedar Grove Sanitarium about some patients transferred from here. From what I learned, they had some sort of degenerative and highly contagious condition. Do you know anything about any patient transfers? An… associate of mine also mentioned that there were so shipments made to the hospital that were removed from the import registry.”

The scraggly young man thought about the question for a few moments before almost reluctantly nodding his head. “You’ll probably want to check out some of the rooms in the basement, but to get to that part, you’ll need to go to the third floor.”

“Why the extra trip?” Shang inquired.

“Is anything ever as straightforward as ‘Walk to X and win’?”

A scowl spread across the sorcerer’s visage as he contemplating having to navigate his way through the hospital. The last thing he wanted to do was run into any plague-addled patients or homicidal nurses. “Can you lead me up to the third floor then?”

“Nah,” the youth replied with a faint grin. “You really think I work here, man? I just like to keep the place clean for visitors.”

Before Shang could offer a response, his new acquaintance slipped back into the lobby, letting the door click shut. Unwilling to lose such a vital lead, the sorcerer bolted up from the seat and nearly tore the door from its hinges as he threw it open. Half-stumbling into the lobby, Shang glanced to his left and saw that the room was completely empty, with no indication that any of the doors had been recently disturbed.

A scowl spread across the sorcerer’s visage as he made his way over to the elevator. Although it was clearly out of commission, the wall next to it had a large map of the hospital’s first, second, and third floors. After a few moments of staring at the images, Shang committed them to memory. If the map was accurate, the hospital was essentially a large ‘U’, and he was on the employee side that contained some offices, a kitchen, and a storage room. He would need to head over to the other part to find the stairs that led up to the second and third floors.

“Let’s get this done,” Shang mumbled to himself as he started toward the other end of the room.

[Atelos]

Atelos woke up with a massive headache and he went to rub his head. He felt the dented bronze of his helmet but he couldn’t feel something else. He brought down his hand or well his arm and was alarmed to see nothing. His face was of pure panic as he brought his hand down to see bubbling, black goo seeping out of the wound. Atelos’ eye widened in panic as the fear of what had happened trailed through his mind. He heard a grumble in the back of his mind the memories came flushing in. The artefact, the fight, the deaths...why didn’t they kill him? Why didn’t they just do him a favor and kill him? He told them too...He slammed his fist into the ground and fire stormed his body and slowly dimmed down to a soft ember. How could this happen to him? Why did this happen to him? Why him…?

Pain erupted in Atelos’ hand as he saw black strings began to come out of the skin of his hand, the bleeding wound began to jerk itself around. Atelos fell to the floor as the handless arm began to sputter itself around with black tendrils stringing and forming into something new. Something disgusting. The flurry of black string revealed white bone as it continued its way down. Atelos’ eyes widened and he tried to stop and tear out the string but his arm didn’t move. His body fell to the floor and all he could do was move his head to look at the horrifying sensation of his hand being rebuilt. Muscle began to cover followed by skin and Atelos writhed in pain as it felt as if his hand was being torn apart by wild dogs.

It felt as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulders, he lifted himself off the ground and looked at his hand. It was perfect...It was without blemish... It made Atelos vomit. It was too perfect, and it disturbed Atelos. His nails were filed, no signs of age, no scars, no sign of anything. Atelos used it to get up and the hand failed him and he felt back on the ground rubbing his sensitive wrist. That took up the last of my energy Spartan. Your body continues to fail me. I must rest to regain power. Till next time Spartan. Atelos felt the presence leave him and he left a sigh of relief escape his lips. He pressed on his hands once more, slightly more sturdy this time and used his right hand to push himself up. Blood rushed to his head and the world started to dizzy before he shook his head and was fine.

He took his first steep and he heard metal clatter on the floor. He looked down onto the floor and saw his shield, split into two. “Hades…” Rage filled in his mind as he looked down upon his only sense of pride. Atelos let out a cry of anguish as he fell to his knees over his broken shield and spirit. He kneeled down as he felt a source of power flow through him. Omnilium was in his hand...he was able to tap into Hades’ power and it seemed the god was still sleeping. A smile grew on his face as he brought it to his shield and the rainbow light was amplified and blinded his eyes. Hope grew in his heart as the Rainbow orb began to swirl around the shattered shield. Minutes passed and the orb stopped swirling around the shield and slowly fused back into Atelos. His eyes were closed in anticipation as he started felt around the shield.

The shield was whole again. His most prized possession was whole again. He opened his eyes and was relieved, as if something had let his heart out of it’s grasp. He picked it up and put it on his arm, the familiar brace pressing against his skin. He couldn’t help but chuckle at the gravity of the matter and began walking off. Atelos glanced to the side and noticed a piece of the skull of the monster he killed. He smiled faintly as he went over and grabbed the shattered remains, putting it somewhere safe.

The ground shook beneath Atelos and he looked around for the source but didn’t see anything in the distance. Was it the Tarrasque? Was it back? Atelos felt the cold drawing in towards his legs. His head shot down and he saw the ground beginning to swallow him, almost as if it desired him. Or something, desired him. Atelos panicked and he flailed his arms around, looking for anything to grab onto. The floor was at his chest and he desperately tried to push himself out of the ground but it just absorbed his arms like a pool of water. He tilted his head upwards as the cold began to trickle up his chin and covered his mouth. His eyes widened in fear as the ground began to cover his eyes.

Darkness. The same darkness he felt when his village was destroyed, when he was brought here, and when he is consumed by the power of the God inside him. The darkness is so familiar, so cool, and calming. It felt second nature to him, to be stepped on, to be used. This mysteriousness of the dark, it wasn’t so mysterious once one got used to it. If only life were this simple.

The darkness gave way to light as he opened his eyelids, each one dragging down like it was burdened by a load of weights. He scrambled to his feet as he saw mist wrapping around his body. “It’s not possible. There is no way in Olympus I cannot be back here.” Atelos looked around, no building in sight and the floor beneath him. The same cracked road with the same faded striped line. A crackling noise came alive next to him and Atelos hurriedly picked up the walkie talkie and looked at it curiously.

Now how did one work this thing? Atelos banged on it, screamed at it, and almost chewed on it to get it to work. Static came and went again and he found the button on the side. He pressed it, “By the gods sorcerer, I am back. Where exactly...that I do not know…” Atelos looked around before realizing he was lost in the maze of mist.

[Shang Tsung]

With a grunt, Shang side-stepped the nurse and smashed his elbow into the side of her saran-wrapped skull. A gurgling hiss escaped the woman before she was shoved down the flight of stairs by a scowling sorcerer. The man waited only long enough to her the snap of her neck against the platform below before continuing his ascent up the gray and white stairwell. She had been the third such employee of Alchemilla to try and accost him, with the other two now residing in mangled heaps in the guest lobby. Having gone so long without anyone trying to stab him, the sorcerer looked at it as a nice way to keep his heart rate up as he made his way through the building.

Ignoring the second floor, Shang made his way up to the top of the stairwell and exited out onto the third floor. After passing through a set of double doors, he tried to recall the layout of the floor. If his memory hadn’t failed him, the northern part of the corridor contained a series of treatment rooms, and if he went straight to the east, he’d pass the bathrooms, storage rooms, and a few more patient rooms before reaching the elevator. Opting to check out the store rooms first, Shang jogged down the hallway toward the eastern end of the building. He made it most of the way before a nearby door flung open and a woman came screaming out of the darkness at him.

Not seeing the blade in her hand until it jabbed into his side, the sorcerer bit down on his lower lip and threw an elbow at her skull. The blow snapped her neck back, but it was the stiff left hook that threw her against the door frame. Before the woman could right herself for another attack, Shang grasped her head in his hands, yanked her toward him, and then drove the back of her skull against the frame. When she continued to writhe after the first dull thud of bone on metal, he repeated himself, and this time, the dead nurse slid to the floor, leaving behind a smear of blood and brain matter.

For good measure, Shang kicked the nurse in the face before stepping away from the open door. Before he could continue on his path, the other rooms in the hallway slung open, and a pack of nurses spilled out. As they stumbled and shambled their way into the corridor, the overhead lights started to flicker. Holding his palms up, Shang scowled as two burning spheres slowly formed above his weathered palms. With the fluorescent tubes struggling to illuminate the corridor, the fireballs seemed like bright beacons in the on-and-off darkness.

Without letting the mass of workers collapse onto him from both sides, Shang twisted his torso and threw a fireball down both ends of the hall. The spheres both hit targets and erupted, splashing hungry flames against both approaching mobs. Drawing his sword, the sorcerer rushed at the three burning women to his right. They came at him with agonized shrieks and flailing hands, but with a cold and calculated series of stabs and swipes, Shang laid them low. As the jian’s tip sunk through the bosom of the third woman, the sorcerer was already shifting his focus to the four nurses who had nearly twitched and lurched their way over to him.

Tearing the blade free, he spun around and swung it down through the neck and into the ribcage of the nearest nurse. As the woman shrieked and went limp, her three ‘coworkers’ surged forward. Before Shang could free his weapon, the trio of blondes was upon him—their bare hands clawing and ripping at his clothes and the skin they concealed. A few jagged nails tore deep enough in the time it took for Shang to individually hurtle the three women off his body. In the scuffle, he’d lost his weapon, so rather than waste the time to pick it up; he dove at the nearest nurse. The woman, her face mostly concealed beneath blood and plastic wrap, made it to her feet in enough time for Shang to draw his handgun, press it into her skull, and pull the trigger. Brains, blood, and bone pieces erupted out the back of the nurse’s head as she sagged into a pile against the wall. Without skipping a beat, the man twisted around and fired three more shots that resulted in two fresh corpses on the ground.

Something about the garish display of gore and corpses should have perturbed him. Maybe it would have… back when he was still a man, but even now, the former Grand Master of the Mortal Kombat tournament felt nothing but disgust because he’d have to navigate around the pools of blood and viscera. After slipping the gun back into the makeshift holster, Shang trudged through the thin film of gore that covered the linoleum floor.

The sorcerer found the door marked storage and slipped inside. As the door clicked behind him, he flipped the lights on and started toward the opposite wall.

“You like storage rooms, don’t you?” A voice replied from behind him, causing Shang to pivot to face the figure standing in the corner next to the door. The young man in the hoodie stepped away from the corner and flashed a gentle smile as he scanned the room. “Why are we here again?”

“You sent me up here… said I needed to come up here first before making it to the basement.”

“I did?” The Youth muttered. His features twisted up as he tried to remember where he’d been just a few minutes earlier. “I mean, it’s possible that’s what happened. Afraid I don’t really remember, man.”

“How can you not remember?” Shang demanded as it became harder for him to suppress his frustration with the young man. “How come the only people in this place that can communicate in this place are all insane?”

“Insane?” The youth asked, furrowing his brow. “The nursing staff isn’t insane.”

“You mean the monsters in the hallway that tried to jump me?” Shang scoffed.

“Oh…” the young man muttered as a frown spread across his pallid face. “So they look like monsters to you?”

That remark caused the rest of the sorcerer’s thoughts to grind to a halt. “They are monsters. They’re all bloody and look like someone went a little homicidal with the shrink wrap!”

“You sure about that?” Shang’s acquaintance asked as he opened the door and peeked out. Almost immediately, his face twisted in disgust, prompting the sorcerer to shove passed him and back out into the now wholly illuminated hall. Instead of the twisted, bruised, and partially disfigured corpses of the wheezing nurses who had tried to kill him, Shang found himself staring at seven completely normal-looking corpses. They were all dressed in thoroughly bloodstained nurse’s scrubs, but now they had faces and features. “Is this supposed to shake my resolve?” Shang asked as he glanced over his shoulder, but when he looked back into the store room, it was empty once more. As quickly as he had popped up, the unkempt young adult in the dirt- and sweat-stained hoodie was gone.

Shang scowled as his eyes fell to something glittering on the floor where the Youth had once stood. Stooping down, the sorcerer picked the object up off the ground, and despite what he should have felt, he had only gradually mounting frustration. The discarded item that had reflected non-existent light on the very spot where someone had just been standing was a fireman’s key for the building’s elevator.

***

The streets were deserted.

Where had the strange, hellish creatures gone?

With his hammer still at the ready, the paladin jogged down the middle of the street. From what he could tell, he had returned to the district that housed the motel and the hospitals, but he hadn’t bothered to memorize the names of the crisscrossing streets. Someone probably thought it would be a smart idea to use some sort of grid for streets, but Argento’s brain was already well-adapted to the winding, intermittent paths and half-streets that made up both Darkshire and his native community. The nature of the streets and the dull, repetitive style of the buildings made it increasingly hard for the man to know whether or not he was heading in the right direction.

As the paladin came to an abrupt stop, he glanced to his right and wondered if he was staring at the same ‘Post Office’ he had passed ten minutes ago. Before he could solve that quandary himself, a female voice asked the very question hanging over his mind. “Are you lost?”

Turning around, Argento found himself staring at a red-haired woman in the sort of camouflage worn by ‘modern’ soldiers. Since the fatigues weren’t evidence enough, the woman also had a sniper rifle slung over her shoulder and a belt adorned with a handful of munitions and portable equipment pieces.

“Hello, Milady, I am Sir Argento Camarinos,” the paladin took a step forward and offered a gauntleted hand to the woman, who had the appearance of someone in her early thirties. Despite his friendly smile and tone, the Soldier held up her own gloved hand and shook her head.

“I don’t do physical contact,” she replied, her voice made it seem as if she hadn’t slept very much over the last few days, but she lacked the bags under her eyes that normally went along with sleepless nights. “…It’s a long story.”

“That is strange yet ultimately understandable,” Argento responded as he tried to soften his normally boisterous voice. “Are you likewise trapped in this hellish hamlet?” He inquired as he gestured with his hammer to the dismal, dirty street around them.

“Yea… something like that,” the redheaded soldier answered halfheartedly. “You off to the hospital as well?”

A wide grin spread its way across Argento’s rugged features as he nodded his head. “You are correct! I was heading to Alchemilla Hospital, but I am unfit to navigate this maze you call a street system.”

“Maze is a fitting word,” the Soldier replied as she pointed to a nearby lamppost. “When you’ve been here long enough, you’ll notice how things like that will shift around if you don’t keep an eye on them.”

“This truly is a place scorned by the light of the Sun,” Argento muttered as he glared angrily at the suspect lamppost. What other evil magic corrupted this place of monsters, mist, and mazes? Did the sorcerer still survive? “Can you help me to the hospital, Camouflaged Maiden? I need to rendezvous with my friend, for I fear that he cannot fend for himself.”

“Of course, you just need to head due north,” she remarked before pointing in the direction the paladin would need to travel. “Once you reach the house with the yellow trim, you need to go left, and the hospital will be right there. You can’t miss it… it’s the tallest building on its block.”

“Excellent!” Argento declared as he reached out and clapped her outstretched hand between both of his, already forgetting her earlier remark.

There was one brief moment where everything seemed normal, and then the woman yelped and started to shudder. It wasn’t until she wrenched her hand away that she was able to start breathing normally. When she looked back at him, there were tears in the corners of her eyes. “Damn it all, why the hell did you have to go and do that?” She screamed, although her tone held more grief than anger or frustration. She even went so far as to shove him. “I don’t want to know that kind of shit about strangers! I don’t!”

“I apologize,” the paladin muttered. “Can I go find some water for you, you seem a bit faint.”

“Just go!” The Soldier screamed as she clutched a hand to her head, turned around, and made for the nearby side-street.

With a frown, Argento turned and headed toward the hospital, unsure of what the woman’s strange behavior meant.

[Atelos]

Static appeared on the radio, Atelos was alone...or he broke the machine. One thing or another, he was alone, cold, and out in the open. The mist that enveloped him opened up to him, almost as if it was welcoming him back home. The black concrete on the ground strangely made the Spartan feel safe. He shuddered, that was a disgusting thought. He walked towards the path with a determined glare that this place would crumble beneath his feat. He felt the shield on his arm and his helmet firmly in place and he knew he would show this place what for.

Screaming came from behind him and he turned slowly. The fleshy dinosaurs, how he missed them. Thier claws stretched for his throat and their piercing screams were directed at them. The distance closed and Atelos held his shield up, bracing for impact. He grit his teeth as he felt one of their claws rake against his shield before taking off. It seemed to pass and he breathed a sigh of relief as he saw some pass by overhead.

*SLAM*

Atelos was thrown off of his feet and flew towards the wall. His head solidly cracked against the brick wall. The Dinosaur seemed to smile cruelly as it began to fly towards him at an alarming speed. He felt blood trickle down his forehead and the high pitches of the Dragons warmly embrace him as he fell asleep. His mind fully embracing the idea of death and hoping for a moment of serenity.

Darkness was second nature to Atelos. He could feel the black tendrils upon his mind and their pulsating. It drove him mad! He couldn’t sleep anymore or else he would see Hades. The cruel god that had once given him a source of power now held complete control when he was unconscious. However, Atelos didn’t see him nor the throne this time. He was in the recess of his mind but it was too filled with mist. He walked around in the mist, contrasting the darkness that lie everywhere. He continued to walk down the darkness and he felt something at his feet.

“You filthy Spartan! Get your feet off of me!” Atelos looked down and saw the god bound by the mist. It wrapped around his wrists and his neck completely isolating him. He struggled pointlessly, the mist giving no way to his struggles. The two made eye contact and something gripped his heart. Fear was in the god’s eyes. What could bind him like this? What could make this being of insane power on it’s knees before it? Atelos cowered away as the god continued to scream at him.

“Help me you damned idiot!” Atelos ran far away and into the light. He startled into the light.

His head jolted up and he was in a bed, not comfortable but not...the brick wall. He rubbed his head, bandaged together. He got up and saw someone there and he was reminded of his time in the Frozen Fields. It was a brunette and she had green eyes that one could get lost in. Her hair,
perfect and it stopped right before her shoulders. Her cheeks blushed as Atelos rose out of the bed. Atelos could feel his heart beat out of his chest as he looked at her. She was the epitome of all he had wanted.

“I appreciate the help miss, may I ask for your name?” She giggled a little bit before speaking. She outstretched her hand for a handshake.

“The name’s Eileen.”

[Shang Tsung]

The sorcerer smashed the call button with his thumb. It gave off a weak light that showed a few surface cracks in the plastic, which seemed to indicate a lot of use in the hospital’s history. Shang tapped his foot as he waited for the elevator to approach. When it arrived and the doors swung open, the sorcerer took a tentative step back and waited for something to come screaming out at him. After a few seconds of silence, he entered the elevator and glanced at the panel. It took him a moment to find the button labeled ‘B.’

Shang gave the button a soft smack with his thumb and stepped back as the doors slid shut in front of him. As he stood in the center of the cramped lift, the sorcerer glanced up at the speaker in the corner. It was trying to spit out some noise or music, but something was broken and the whole thing just spewed static the entire way down. When the elevator touched down on the basement, the doors slid open one at a time, revealing a dimly light corridor that didn’t please the man in any way, shape, or form.

Stepping out from the elevator, Shang reached for the gun and tried to recall the details of the map. He recall a morgue, a generator room, and yet another store room. While the notion of rummaging through another room full of junk intrigued him, he set his sights on the morgue and made his way to the metal door. A giggle of the lock revealed that it wouldn’t open of its own accord, so the sorcerer smashed the latch with his gun until it broke off. With the barrel of the weapon, he pushed the broken door open and reached inside for the lightswitch when nothing snapped at him with teeth or nails or scalpels.

He crossed into the room and noticed immediately that a few of the doors to the freezers were open. Making his way to the nearest open one, Shang nudged it open a few more inches and peered inside. As he had expected, it was empty, although it wasn’t clean. He noticed what seemed to be traces of skin and hair on the inside of the box, which meant the crew probably hadn’t cleaned it out to prepare for the next carcass.

Turning away from the open container, Shang walked over to a small desk in the corner. A look inside the keyboard drawer revealed a collection of crumpled sheets of paper from a legal pad. While the first two had only half-finished words and scribbles on them, the third contained something that bordered on a coherent thought.

“Get them OUT. BURN FREEEZE KIIL.”

A scowl spread across the sorcerer’s face as he dropped the scraps of paper back into the drawer and closed it. Was there a single human being in all of Silent Hill or was this place solely populated by unstable people and the equally incoherent memories of others? Turning around, Shang made his way out of the morgue and back into the hallway. As he exited the room, the lights above flickered and flashed a little brighter, revealing something he hadn’t noticed on his first walk through the corridor.

The wall in front of him had a message written on it using bloody palms. “All Hope is Lost.” It was a bit of a cliché, but that still didn’t make him feel happy as he read the erratic words smeared across the gray concrete.

Glancing down the hall, Shang started toward the storage room.

[Atelos]

Atelos’ heart beated louder and louder as he outstretched his hand to meet hers. Electricity shot through his veins and raced around his body as their fingertips touched. Her warm smile invited him and made him feel at ease, even in this horrid place. Her eyes disarmed him and he couldn’t help but smile back at her. She made him feel like everything was alright and he breathed a sigh of relief. He was lost in her eyes and he stared into them before her hand so rudely interrupted his eternal glaze with a quick motion. She was waving her hand in front of her face almost as if she had realized he was staring at her. Oh shit. She did realize he was staring at her. The spartan wiped the drool coming from his mouth and his cheeks flushed a bright pink, causing Eileen to giggle and return the blush.

“I’m glad to see your active but that head wound seems very painful. You should rest some more.” The Spartan nodded as she came by and rubbed his matted down hair. He let out a barbaric giggle before she winked and walked out of the door. He smiled as she closed the door slowly. Man was she a looker. Silence. Atelos broke from his dreamy state and raised an eyebrow. Where was Hades? Asleep? He shook his head and smiled, it didn’t matter. The Spartan was glad that he wasn’t there with him. He felt as if for once he had bliss. He sat up on the bed, cracking his neck as he surveyed the area around him.

The room was very plain: cream colored walls, small windows, and a stiff bed. It reminded him a bit of the home he was so used to. He turned his head to see his helmet and shield sitting by the bedside. He grabbed his helmet and inspected it as his feet dangled off the bed. The metal was shiny as if it were brand new and there was no dents or looks of battle scars on it. Peculiar...He put on the helmet and felt it’s cold embrace touch his scalp. He got up off the bed and bent over to pick his shield with the same peculiarities. Brand new...Atelos ignited the shield and watched as the flames spurted out with excitement as if it was coming alive for the first time all over again. He slung it around his back and walked over to the oak door. As he opened the door, a slight creak came out and warned the girl in the living room that she had a guest. She smiled at him and he felt his heart tingle a little inside. He smiled and sat in a chair in front of her and she couldn’t help but giggle underneath his glazed stare.

He blushed and quickly spoke to cover his bumbling mistake. “Thanks again for helping me on the outside of the road again. When do you think my cracked head will be fixed?” He laughed nervously as she gave him a confused look.

“Cracked head? Your head is fine.” His eyes shot open with curiosity and he took off his helmet to feel his hair. His head was fine...Was that all a dream? Where was he...What was real and what wasn’t. She took up his hands and his heart started to pound in his chest and he looked into her eyes. “You’re really worrying me...are you ok?” He smiled and nodded but something was tugging at his mind while she was tugging at his heart.

Outside the window there was screaming and his head turned while her hand stayed put with his. A creepy white smile had taken over her face and she pleaded. “Please stay here with me.” Atelos’ eyes were wide in shock and he shook his head.

“I am bound to protect people. That is my duty.” His voice sounded conflicted but he tore his hand away and rushed to the front door and tore it open. A woman and her two children were running away. Oh there was a nice little bakery in this town and it was so godforsaken by the mist. The ran past Atelos and he shook his head. Right. I need to save the town and then admire the architecture. His head turned to the left and his eyes widened as he saw a hole at the edge of the street. Pure blackness was what was inside and he almost felt curious to what was inside.

A giant black claw reached out of the portal and crushed the ground beneath it. Another claw broke the lightpost. It’s head reared out of the black abyss...it’s black skull popped out and let out a massive roar that made the earth tremble.

“A dragon…it had to be a dragon."

[Shang Tsung]

My name is Argento Camarinos. Like many of my peers, I also carry the ghost of a life now long lost to me. A dead life filled with sorrow and the graves of loved ones ripped from my hands before their time.

Many people look at the Omniverse as if it is some sort of prison or hell, but for me, this place is the closest that I will ever come to a second chance at redemption. The Pale Moors are a desolate place, where dreams go to perish and the living wait for the embrace of death. I can think of no other collection of people who more desperately need to feel the light of the Sun wash over them.

I couldn’t imagine doing anything else with my time in the Omniverse. In just a few short years, I believe I’ve done more good here than I did during my time serving with the church back home in Terra Prime. The foul creatures that I have dispatched here were far worse than anything I encountered during my service with the clerics… I don’t think Father Paul’s resolve would have held up against a Behemoth or a Barghast.

I regret only that I was not around to defend Darkshire during the war against Diablo. Every time I stay in town, the ‘old timers,’ who are themselves not much older than I, regal me with tales of how everything used to be beautiful and glittering. I hope I live long enough to see the light of the Sun shine down upon a sparkling, renewed Darkshire. In the meantime, I can only continue to play my part in the town’s survival.

That is not the best of burdens.

There is something in Silent Hill that is designed to break the spirits of man. Those monsters that slew my group were not random… I fear they were probably willed to us by the shards of darkness we all harbor in our hearts—those tiny, hateful feelings we work to keep bottled away. I am a man of the Sun, but I know that even I sometimes find it hard not to lash out at a criminal or to chastise someone for not carrying their weight. This is what makes us human.

The town, however, seeks to give a face and flesh to that darkness. As I walk its streets, I can spy people staring at me from nearby windows. At first, I used to turn and look, because I recognized them almost immediately… the faces of my slain comrades. Some of them have been dead for years, and many of them are still rotting near the bridge that led us to this foggy place of nightmares and darkness. I understand that they exist to make me doubt myself and to make me second-guess my actions.

Despite the expressions of grief and rage that decorate their pallid visages, I know they are simply manifestations of this town. My friends are one with the Sun, much like I will be when this suit of armor and body of flesh and bone at last fails me. In the meantime, I know I must press on toward the brighter future that the Moors deserve. Somewhere, beyond the fog and the haze of half-realities, I know that there is a secret buried beneath this town. Even with the Sun at my side, I am but a man, but Omni… he can bring about real change.

Silent Hill represents the ultimate fate of the Pale Moors. The town is stuck in a permanent limbo betwixt Heaven and Hell. Rather than be loved or hated, it exists as little more than a numb dream, rife with the deformed nightmares of yesteryear.

From what the signs tell me, the hospital should be up this ‘block.’ With any luck, I can reunite with Shang, and the two of us can uncover the mystery of this place. I am never one to lean on the shoulders of others, but I fear that I cannot make it through this town by myself. Perhaps with the sorcerer, we can march onward to victory…

I see the hospital gate just ahead, and within moments, I find myself standing before it, grasping the metal handles. Even though my fingers are sheltered within gauntlets, the steel grip of the gate is cold to the touch. With a long sigh, one of the barred gates swings open, and I see my path laid out before my eyes.

Despite the wraiths that haunt my peripherals, I have never felt stronger about my faith.

With the Sun shining behind me, I will reach the Truth.

Silent Hill and the Pale Moors shall be redeemed—I believe it with every fiber of my being.

Alchemilla looms high in the sky before me...

Here comes the Sun.