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When a champion dies, there are rules on how to handle their body.
Lord Raiden steps out into the Koliseum, hands held steady behind his back as he crosses the sand under a wave of wild cheers. His head remains held high despite the weight of his heart, his steps never wavering until he reaches the arena’s blood soaked center.
“Prince Goro,” he greets as he comes to a stop, voice formal and calm. He keeps his gaze locked up as the prince turns back with a grunt to look at him. There is red spattered up to the shoulders of his higher arms. Raiden swallows.
“Hah!” Goro laughs. “This was the best you could bring, Thunder God?” He steps back, flicking viscera from his fingers. “How weak. Earthrealm’s showing this year was pitiful.”
“I… congratulate you on your victory,” Raiden grits out, and Goro sneers down at him.
He turns with a roar to raise his arms in victory, and the crowd cheers even louder, Shao Kahn’s voice echoing out over the arena in mocking joy. Raiden feels the telltale shift in the air as yet another year of Mortal Kombat falls to the enemy.
“Once more the tournament goes to Outworld!” Shao Kahn bellows.
Raiden tunes out the rest of his victory speech, moving instead to kneel by the mangled body half crushed into the sand. It is an awful thing, to be relieved when he finds she is not still breathing.
“I am sorry,” he murmurs, hands touching the edge of her arm briefly before they begin to move over the body, cauterizing the still leaking wounds. Bones stick up through the split skin and shining muscle, her uniform caved into the planes of her ribs and the soft flesh of her stomach. She hardly looks like herself now, after Goro’s work. Her eyes do not see how deeply Raiden frowns, wet and red where they’re sunken into her skull.
Raiden sighs slightly when he is done, taking a moment to recenter his energy before he lifts what is left of her body.
It is a shame to have ended this way. It always is, but Kung Yī nuò was one of Raiden’s most promising fighters. Her parents believed so deeply in her when she took up training, and she had just inspired her brothers to follow in her footsteps. An amazing woman, really. Raiden frowns again, worn and weary as he carries her remains away from the jeering crowd.
That was their seventh consecutive loss to Outworld. There are not many chances left now, not if their realm is to be saved.
But…
There are things to be tended to in the present first. Their future can wait its turn.
Lord Raiden walks briskly through the halls of the Koliseum, ignoring the Outworld champions that heckle him as he passes and making his way straight to where the other Earthrealm bodies are held. Much death befalls these tournaments on both sides, whether in victory or loss, and though Shao Kahn has pushed for the fallen to be used as animal feed in the past, Raiden believes they have a right to their flesh. As do their families.
The Shokan guards let him into the mortuary wing when he arrives, showing a marked level of diplomacy compared to the gladiators themselves, and Raiden weaves across the stones to their allotted room. Members of the Shaolin and Sky Temple meet him there, calm but equally somber when they see what rests in his arms.
They open the doors for him, welcoming him into a room lined with clean burial beds, each sculpted from marble and lined with dark cloth. The symbol of the Elder Gods, the great dragon, is emblazoned on each, watching over what remains of Earthrealm’s fallen champions. Raiden walks to one of the still empty tombs, laying Kung Yī nuò down beside the others, and then finally, takes a moment to breathe.
So many this year… Such formidable warriors, and yet…
Torn. Broken. Burned. Spared only from decaying in Outworld’s heat by Raiden’s personal spells and the grace of the heavens themselves.
His eyes drift over their many weapons, laid against the foot of each bed with care, cleaned deftly by the temple members attending at Raiden’s side.
What lovely humans, he thinks. What awful deaths. But it is… routine by now, isn’t it?
Raiden sighs.
He does not wait this time to break bread with Shao Kahn. He can already hear the hoards celebrating from outside, rowdy and sickening as Raiden stands in a room full of loss. No… He will not sit at his table and play formal this year, the Elder Gods have already seen the results. That is all that matters.
Raiden raises his arms and pulls a portal through the room in a flash of light, transporting his entourage—dead and alive—back home, and finally gives them all a long welcomed reprieve from the stench of Outworld’s hatred.
***
The next steps come as painfully as they always do.
First, of course, comes the news. The news that they have had another failure, that there will be another generation to come of death, fear, and paranoia. Raiden never wishes to give it, but reality is not built on wishes.
The whispers rise through his followers as always. Wails spill from those aggrieved.
Raiden walks through it all with the same practiced weight he always does. It is a balance now, honed well after millennia.
Friends are held close, (closer, perhaps, than he has any right to hold them) and apologies are given to those that can accept them. Memorials are planned. Corpses are returned to those who wish to bury their dead elsewhere. The rest, later, are entombed where all other champions lie: in the great halls of the White Lotus Society, where their memories may uphold the strength of the tournament for future participants, and where the Elder Gods may bless their souls.
That is the final task. When it is done—every blessing, every offering, every posthumous medal and speech of love—it is done. Until the next time. And the time after that. And—if they are unlucky—for one final time after the merger of realms. But… Raiden has faith enough to believe it will not come to that.
He steps out to the edge of the Sky Temple, pausing with his heels braced on wet stone and his toes balancing over open air.
The final service was today. It was a lovely one, full of much laughter and drink. Raiden is sure Bo Rai Cho will be polishing off the guests’ glasses by the end of the night. As he always does.
He smiles briefly to himself, savoring the quiet of the moment.
The wind is absent today, he notices. The rain is only a dull patter upon the endless rooftops. Fujin must have taken this year badly, though… Raiden can’t blame him. It is only the routine steps of grief that have saved him from his own wallowing.
He swallows thickly.
Speaking of…
Taking a deep breath, Raiden turns his face up to the sky.
“Great Elder Gods,” he murmurs, “vanquishers of darkness, ancient bringers of light.” The recitation is slow on his tongue this year, but he continues. “May you bless this world with luck and fortune. May its warriors make you proud as they fight for the freedom of life you have given us. And may Earthrealm find victory under your careful watch.”
He seals the prayer with a roll of thunder, sending it off into the heavens in a great call of hope. Hope that they will hear. Hope that they will listen.
They have not thus far. Not in so many centuries, not in so many repetitions of the same loving prayer. But… what is faith if not enduring?
Raiden hangs his head, rain sliding down his shoulders and the sallow lines of his cheeks.
What is faith if not a comfort when the world has grown so bleak?
Again. Each time he will do it again. Until it works. Until his men come home alive.
“I am sorry,” he whispers again, this time to the earth below, and to every ear the air will carry it to.
It has become a prayer of its own to him by now. A prayer of forgiveness. A prayer of deep regret.
Lord Raiden swallows again, straightening his hat as he steps away from the temple’s edge and makes his way back towards the lights and laughter emanating from inside.
Perhaps, one day, he will learn to say Congratulations instead. He hopes so.
He would like that very much.