Elder Demon Shinnok

My name is Shinnok. I was once a God, no, an ELDER God of great power and strength, until I was banished to the Netherealm... But that was millennia ago! Everything was going so well... I had finally escaped the Netherealm thanks to a traitor from Edenia; my Brothers of the Shadow had successfully killed off enough of the Earthrealm and Outworld gods for them to not pose a threat; Shao Kahn was finally dead; and I would finally achieve my dream of ruling Earthrealm, and even Outworld and Edenia as bonuses! Three realms of actual life to manipulate and control as I saw fit!

Of course, despite my great wisdom and knowledge, even I could not detect the knives that were already driven into my backside. When I had to battle against Raiden and Fujin's Earthrealm forces of pathetic mortals, my generals in the Brothers of the Shadow had deserted me. While the Humans and gods fought against my other lackeys, Liu Kang confronted me personally. He fought very well, but I had just toyed with him the whole time, like a cat playing with an insect before eating it; my power surpassed that of Shao Kahn, and I was going to show him once he got too cocky and made a mistake. When that mistake came in the form of trying to deliver a blow to my chest, I summoned a skeleton hand to knock him into the air, at which point I struck him with a bolt of my nether-energy. That attack, which I learned while I was ruler of the Netherealm, allowed me to absorb some of his strength and power, and made me a much stronger combatant.

Although I threatened Liu Kang with my new abilities, he chose to continue fighting me, and with my taste for battle growing, I happily obliged. He knew it was over, and I knew so as well, but I respected him wanting to proceed and die as a true warrior. Using every ounce of energy I could muster, I gave him a devastating blow to the head, and knocked him out cold; however, luck was against me this time, as when my fist neared his head, his foot neared my own. I had but a moment to notice before everything went black. The next thing I knew, I had awoken... On the ninth plane of the Netherealm.

It seemed as though in my absence, the Netherealm gained a new ruler, an Elder Demon named Baphomet, and he was overjoyed to have me as a ``subject''. As per the orders of the remaining Elder Gods, including the newest one, Raiden, I was to be tortured throughout eternity by the largest and most powerful Oni demons. My powers were drained from me, and my torment began almost instantly.

I was forced naked and beaten by these creatures. They had this special routine for me... They used rusted chains to rip my flesh from my bones, and then stitch it back onto my body; then they gouged out my eyes and re-inserted them; then chopped my body to hundreds of pieces, and put me back together with magic; then they forced me to drink magical potions that burned my insides and made me vomit with pain for hours, and caused my bowels to melt; they bled me from all of my orifices for days on end and fed on my fluids... Occasionally, especially during Oni holidays, they would get creative and smash my bones with gigantic, spiked clubs, sodomise me, feed me to various monsters that would digest or regurgitate me onto the floor, or impale my body upon a spiked ball and roll me throughout the Netherealm to be mocked by those that once worshiped and feared me.

Perhaps the only good thing that came with that particular torture was that I was able to view the entire realm and obtain useful information from those still loyal to me. I learned how to draw power from the Netherealm itself and the pain that I received, like most of the inhabitants who were once persecuted, but escaped from their confines by force and became the tormentors of other occupants. I also learned that Quan Chi had survived the war, and was trapped here as well, although suffering by Scorpion's hand. I noticed that I was able to do something that I never could before... I could detect my amulet... It was in the possession of Quan Chi... I could not believe that he had it for all of these years! I longed for its power once more... I bided my time and allowed my abilities to grow stronger, under the guise of a continually battered prisoner. I repressed my rage, and took in every ounce of pain I could, knowing that it would serve me well when my time came once again...

As the years went by, I learned what had happened to those who had sided with me initially: Noob Saibot and Reiko had their own agenda concerning their elevation to power; Mileena had allowed herself to be captured by Kitana; Reptile was just useless and a waste of a position; Quan Chi wound up being stranded in the Netherealm thanks to a careless spell he cast on Scorpion; Tanya left the Brothers of the Shadow as soon as she had been discovered as the traitor; Meat... That treacherous pile of rotting flesh and bone! How dare he use me?! After everything I did to allow him a position in my Brothers of the Shadow! I blame him for all of this! He forced the hand of fate against me and he was going to pay for it!

I remember, one day, a spike in power came from a higher plane of the Netherealm, and the familiar screams of Quan Chi, Scorpion, and my former servant Sareena were heard as their presence from the realm faded away... They had all escaped... Quan Chi figured out my amulet's ability as a key...I could not stand it anymore, but I had to wait just a little longer... With Quan Chi's escape, a gear was set into motion, and with it now turning, all I had to do was sit back, and take my punishment for a few more weeks... The Oni never wondered why I kept a smile on my face as they disembowelled me and tore off my flesh for all that time...

When the same energy surge happened again, I felt that Quan Chi had returned... Well, not him specifically, but his presence was somewhere... He was not whole, but he was there, and he called out to the Oni and told them that their time had come to crawl out of the trenches of the Netherealm and taste the flesh of mortals. The Oni cheered and pronounced Quan Chi their saviour, and they all went towards the portal that led into Outworld... The gear had been turning for sometime, and at last, my waiting had paid off, and I could finally escape.

My tormentors could not kill me, as I was already dead, so they were going to make sure that I would not be able to regenerate for a very long time, and were going to pulverise me until they could put me in something called a ``match-box''. The cockiest one, Belokk, attempted to strike me down, but for the first time since my punishment began, I blocked his arm with my own; the aftershock that came from my counter knocked all the present Oni off of their feet, and gave me the opportunity to change into my demon form. I was not as large as my tormentors, but that was going to change. Belokk came at me again, but I jumped onto his torso and jabbed my thumbs into his eye sockets. He howled in pain as I began to absorb his essence... A creature's essence is what makes it what it is, whether it be their size, their abilities, or their appearance; it is their defining characteristics that make it whatever it was, and everything has it, including realms and souls.

When I was finished absorbing his essence, Belokk was nothing more then a grey slab of shivering matter, whimpering as he slowly lost himself in what remained of his conscience. My stitches and flesh ripped and tore as my body changed to suit the characteristics of Belokk, and with these changes, I grew stronger, smarter, and more aggressive. The other Oni fought me as well, and one-by-one, they fed me and gave me their own essences. When I was through with all of my Oni tormentors, my body size had quadrupled, and my physical strength had quintupled, and my physique was a mixture of various Oni breeds, including a flying breed...

I flew into the refuge of the Elder Demon Council, and surprised the first two I encountered. They screamed for help, but by the time their comrades came, their essences, which included their magic spells and powerful resistances, were mine, and the grey blobs that were once their bodies were left babbling on the ground. The remaining Elder Demons could not withstand my brute force, and thanks to my newly acquired immunity to their spells, they fell to their knees as I absorbed them as well. With the essences of the five strongest Oni and the seven most powerful Elder Demons, I chose this time to find the most powerful being in the Netherealm - Baphomet.

Baphomet sensed that his council had been put out of commission thanks to my abilities, and he chose to avenge them and to assert his title as the most powerful creature in the realm; this was a terrible mistake on his part. His magical light show was a mere spectacle compared to what I was capable of doing thanks to my newly acquired magic. I used the darkness of the realm itself to bind and silence him, and when he had just the right look of fear in his eyes, I stared into them, laughed, and grabbed his face and pressed it against my own and absorbed his essence nice and slowly, watching the hope and fear fade out of him and be replaced by a dull, neutral emotion, suitable for the colourless, jiggling-mass that was once his body.

The powers I received from Baphomet were... Astronomical. It had been so long since I had this much power... I only felt so strong when I fought against Raiden all those millennia ago... I was no longer a mere demon... I became an Elder Demon, and with my powers heightened to such a great extreme, they became almost limitless, and there was so much essence in the realm, from the tormented souls, to the minor demons, I felt that I had to have it all.

I flew high into the putrid, black, sulphuric atmosphere, and yelled as loud as my vocal cords could. I made sure that the portal that the Oni had used to leave was still opened, and at that point, I summoned the power from the pits of my soul, and began absorbing everything. The souls of the screaming individuals moaned, the tormentors whined, the monsters roared, and the demons cried in agony as they slowly changed into dull piles of semi-transparent flesh; every being in the realm became gobs of sobbing nothingness, and I was not satisfied with it. I wanted so much more... I channelled my energies further into the core of the world itself, and with a violent shaking and shifting of the realm's land, its essence became mine; the realm changed from a repulsive, fiery planet, into a dull, grey rock.

Before the portal's essence could be taken in by my body, I escaped into Outworld with the essences of billions of generations of souls, demons, and an entire realm. The portal itself turned into a massive globule of grey, and the Netherealm was no-more. I was teleported to a high mountain-peak in Outworld! My body had grown into a considerable size, my power was now unmatched by any and all creatures, and my abilities were beyond those of even the Elder Gods. With my new found power, nothing was going to stop me from getting revenge on my generals, who were allowed to roam freely while I suffered for all these years... I wanted to make them suffer the same fate that I was put through, and then absorb their essences, and once I was done with them, I was going to take Earthrealm for my own... Maybe Outworld as well, and Edenia... No, why should I stop there? Why not take all the realms for myself? This way, nobody would escape the wrath of the last Elder Demon; the realms will be mine, and I will become the most powerful being in the entire universe. And I know just where to start...

Author : Jerrod Therace

Creation date: 2005-12-12-21-36

Modification date: 2005-12-12-21-36