Sub-Zero: Origins

Tundra

Brother.

A faint whisper, but clearly Bi-han.

I'm sorry, Brother.

Louder now, and afraid.

Get over here! a deep, inhuman voice roared.

In the spartan quarters he shared with Tomas and Bi-han, sitting upon his thin mat with legs crossed and eyes closed, Kuai Liang felt a sharp pain in his chest that jarred him from his deep meditation. His older brother had been gone for several weeks now, off on some mission whose details had remained a mystery to the younger Cryomancer. That was the way the Clan worked – on a need to know basis – and evidently, Kuai Liang didn't need to know. Something was wrong though, he sensed it, though he couldn't put his finger on it. He rubbed his now tender pectoral muscles until the pain subsided.

Rising to his feet, he convinced himself he was imagining things. He had been training with his fellow Lin Kuei warriors earlier that day, and Tomas had struck him in the chest during their sparring match. At the time, the blow had not hurt him much, but perhaps the adrenaline surging through his blood had masked a deeper injury.

Kuai Liang looked somewhat Caucasian - his father originally hailed from China but his mother, according to his brother, hailed from America - making him of mixed descent. He was twenty-five years old, six-foot-two and a healthy two hundred pounds, hair the color of dark chocolate, sapphire blue eyes, even white teeth, and lightly tanned and flawless skin save for a thin, purplish-blue scar stretched over his right eye. It was a badge of honor earned in a fight against a Shaolin monk years ago when he was eighteen, in the Lin Kuei Rite of Ascension, the rite of passage that marked his ascension to manhood. Apart from that scar, which ripped through half his forehead and cut through the majority of his cheek, he was the mirror image of his older brother, Bi-han.

He had wanted to go on the mission with him, and he had even asked for permission to accompany Sub-Zero, but Grandmaster Oniro had refused. Tundra was too young and too emotional to be trusted with such a delicate operation. Kuai Liang resented the old man's doubt in him, but even though he dreamed of seeing the world beyond the Lin Kuei Temple and the surrounding Chinese province of Xizang, Tibet to westerners, he did not argue further. Oniro had executed their father for arguing with him. Oniro executed anyone who argued with him.

As Kuai Liang finished rolling up his meditation mat, Tomas, his lifelong best friend, his pr̆ítel, casually sauntered into the room in his gray and black uniform, having just finished serving guard-duty on the Temple parapet. Tomas, code-name Smoke, was like a second brother, and just like a brother, he promptly flicked him on the ear to annoy him.

Kuai Liang glared at him. "Why must you do that?" he demanded to know as he stacked his mat neatly against the wall.

"Because your angry face is so adorable," he answered in his moderate Czech accent.

It was a daily ritual. Tomas would juvenilely pester him, Kuai Liang would ask why, Tomas would give him a brazen answer, nothing would be resolved, and they would repeat the process all over again the next day. Though humor was highly frowned upon by the Lin Kuei, Tomas snuck it in when he thought no one but Kuai Liang was looking. It had been the only thing that made Temple life bearable throughout the years.

"I think you bruised one of my ribs today," Kuai Liang stated as he rubbed his sore chest again, ignoring Tomas' joke.

"Old men bruise easily," his friend chided.

"What are you talking about? You're older than me!" It was true. Tomas was two years his senior.

"Better looking, too." The Czech man grinned as he grabbed his own mat from the corner where they routinely stacked them, unrolled it, and flopped down. "Oniro has called an assembly tonight."