by Alex Irvine
Mordo stopped next to him. Strange concentrated harder. “All you need to do is focus,” Mordo said. “Visualize. See the destination in your mind. Look beyond the world in front of you. Imagine every detail. The clearer the picture, the quicker and easier the gateway will come.” All around him, apprentices were forming their gateways, sharp and clear. Strange could barely make a spark appear. He wasn’t going to quit, but he was getting too frustrated to focus.
“And stop,” Mordo said as The Ancient One stepped out of the temple to the edge of the training ground. Another Master walked with her, hands folded into the loose sleeves of his robe. Strange recognized him, but they hadn’t spoken yet.
“I’d like a moment alone with Mister Strange,” she said.
“Of course.” Mordo beckoned the other students to follow him inside the temple, leaving Strange alone with The Ancient One and her companion.
“My hands,” Strange said, guessing she was going to criticize his lack of progress.
“It’s not about your hands.”
“How is this not about my hands?” he asked. They were all using their hands to make the symbols, weren’t they? He had done all the reading his peers had, and more—it had to be his hands holding him back.
“Master Hamir,” The Ancient One said. Her companion spread his hands… no, hand. His left arm ended in a scarred stump above the wrist. Without a word, Master Hamir used what remained of his left arm to draw a symbol of power in the air. He held it for a moment, then let it flicker away.
“Thank you, Master Hamir.” He bowed and walked silently back into the temple. The Ancient One turned to Strange to drive home the lesson. “You cannot beat a river into submission. You have to surrender to its current, and use its power as your own.”
“I… I control it by surrendering control? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Not everything does,” she said. “Not everything has to. Your intellect has taken you far in life. But it will take you no further. Surrender, Stephen.” She raised her hands and he saw a sling ring on the left. With a quick circular gesture, she drew a portal in the air. “Silence your ego and your power will rise. Come with me.” Stunned, Strange followed The Ancient One through the portal.
They emerged onto a mountainside. Wind howled and snow swept over them. It was freezing, colder than anything Strange had ever felt. The air was thin in his lungs. He couldn’t draw a whole breath, and what air he managed to get stung his nose and throat. “Wait,” he said. “Is this…”
“Everest. It’s beautiful.” She was looking out over the Himalayas, “the Roof of the World,” seemingly unaffected by the wind or the cold.
“Yeah, you’re right. Beautiful,” he said. “It’s freezing, but… beautiful.”
“At this temperature, a person can last for thirteen minutes before suffering permanent loss of function,” The Ancient One said like she was reading from a guidebook.
“Great.” Strange wondered what the point of this lesson was. He looked where she was looking. It was an amazing view, yes. But again, what was the point? Surely she didn’t bring him all the way here just to play tour guide.
“But you will likely go into shock within the first two minutes,” she added.
“What?” He started to turn back to her.
“Surrender, Stephen,” she said in a singsong tone as she passed through the portal back to Kamar-Taj and closed it behind her.
“No, no! Don’t!” He tried to dive through it but only crashed down onto the snow-covered ground. Now also covered in snow, Strange felt more than cold—he felt angry and desperate.
Back in the training courtyard, The Ancient One waited. Mordo saw her and approached. “How is our new recruit?”
“We shall see,” she said. “Any second now.”
“No, not again.” Mordo had seen her do this before. It was a difficult test, and those who did not pass… he took a step forward. “Maybe I should…” he suggested helpfully.
She stopped him. He saw she held one hand behind her back, flicking a fan open and closed. It was her one nervous habit, or at least the only one Mordo had ever observed, and even then, he would hesitate to call her nervous the same way other people got nervous. They waited… and waited…
A portal sparked to life in the courtyard and Strange fell through it, gasping. Ice crusted his beard. He weakly got to his hands and knees and looked up at The Ancient One. His face was a whirlwind of emotion—slowly receding fear, and anger again. But eventually, in his face she saw that he was beginning to understand.
Alone in his room, Strange relived the experience. The panic, the desperation… and then the incredible moment when he had felt it happen. He had made the portal.
He had made magic! Up until recently he hadn’t even believed in magic, but he had created a portal for himself just the same.
Behind him hung a new robe. He would wear the gray of the apprentice no longer. Now that he had shown the first glimmerings of power, he had a new, deep-red robe. And he decided he needed a new appearance to go with it.
He hadn’t shaved or had a haircut since leaving New York, weeks before. Now, by the light of a single bulb, he cut his own hair, taking his time. He had nowhere to be. His hands hurt but for some reason, now that he knew he could do something wonderful again, they didn’t seem to hurt as much. With a borrowed electric razor, he clipped his beard and then shaved it to a shape that suited him. He liked the sharpness it gave his face. He combed his hair straight back, then considered himself in the mirror. Yes. He was a new man. He had come seeking wisdom, and he’d begun to find it.
Now it was time to see what else he could learn.
CHAPTER 6
Stephen,” Wong said when he saw Strange come into the library.
Strange nodded. “Wong.”
Wong saw something new in Strange, and looked at him with some suspicion. “What do you want?”
“Books on astral projection.”
“You’re not ready for that,” Wong said.
“Try me,” Strange taunted. Wong said nothing. “Come on. Do you ever laugh?” Still nothing. “Oh… come on, just give me the book, huh?”
Wong didn’t even bother to shake his head. “No.”
So Strange took matters into his own hands.
If Wong wasn’t going to give him the books, he would just have to take them. If he could get good enough at creating portals, then he could pop one open and slip a book out while Wong was looking the other way.
Strange practiced obsessively. Because of his dedication—and soaring confidence—he got good at this, fast. He absorbed everything he could from the books Wong had tried to stop him from reading. He was so devoted that he started astrally projecting himself to read while his body slept. There was so much to learn; he couldn’t spare the time to just lie in his bed uselessly.
After a few days of this blistering pace, The Ancient One called him into her study. “Once, in this room, you begged me to let you learn. Now I’m told you question every lesson, preferring to teach yourself.”
“Once, in this room, you told me to open my eyes,” Strange shot back. “Now I’m being told to blindly accept rules that make no sense.”
“Like the rule against conjuring a gateway in the library?”
Uh-oh, Strange thought. He’d thought Wong hadn’t noticed. “Wong told on me?”
“You’re advancing quickly with your sorcery skills,” The Ancient One said. “You need a safe space to practice your spells.”
She reached out a hand, and when she made a small gesture, the air in the middle of the study seemed to fracture into a thousand shards that hung tinkling in space. Each of them reflected part of reality at a different angle. She walked toward this wall and through it. Strange followed.
“You are now inside the Mirror Dimension,” she said. “Ever-present, but undetected.” Outside, the other apprentices and sorcerers in the study went about their business. Strange and The Ancient One were completely invisible to them. “The real world
isn’t affected by what happens here. We use the Mirror Dimension to train, surveil, and sometimes to contain threats. You don’t want to be stuck in here without your sling ring.”
“Hold on. Sorry, what do you mean, threats?”
With a thrusting motion The Ancient One folded the matter of the ceiling, creating a concentric pattern of timbers with a black opening in the middle. Strange sensed spaces beyond, as if she had folded reality out of the way to make room for… something else. “Learning of an infinite Multiverse included learning of infinite dangers,” she said. “And if I told you everything else that you don’t already know, you’d run from here in terror.”
And she would say no more. She had made her point, though. Seeing the way she could so easily manipulate reality told Strange there was still much he didn’t know. He would have to train even harder.
Later, outside, Strange and Mordo prepared for physical training. Learning martial arts was part of body discipline, just as learning sorcery was discipline for the mind. “So, just how ancient is she?” Strange asked. The Ancient One, flicking her fan, was watching two other students as they sparred.
“No one knows the age of the Sorcerer Supreme,” Mordo said. “Only that she is Celtic and never talks about her past.”
“You follow her even though you don’t know?” Strange found this hard to believe. How could anyone trust a leader who kept those kinds of secrets?
“I know that she’s steadfast, but unpredictable. Merciless, yet kind. She made me what I am.” Mordo dropped into a fighting stance. Strange did, too. “Trust your teacher,” Mordo said as they began to circle each other. “And don’t lose your way.”
“Like Kaecilius?” Strange asked.
Mordo lunged at Strange. They exchanged punches at practice speed, testing each other’s defenses. “That’s right,” Mordo said.
Strange grappled with him, locking his arms and buying himself a second of time to reassess the fight. “You knew him.”
Twisting out of Strange’s hold, Mordo spun him around and got Stephen in a firm choke hold. Strange gripped Mordo’s arm and struggled to free himself, wiggling his body to gain leverage where he could, but he couldn’t break Mordo’s hold. “When he first came to us, he’d lost everyone he ever loved,” Mordo growled in Strange’s ear. He was suddenly intense and angry. “He was a grieving and broken man, searching for answers in the mystic arts. A brilliant student, but he was proud, headstrong. Questioned The Ancient One, rejected our teaching.”
Ah, Strange thought. Mordo was warning him because he thought Strange was following the same path. Well, he had some surprises in store for those who thought they could possibly predict Stephen Strange.
He let go of Mordo’s arm and pounded an elbow back into Mordo’s gut. Taking his opportunity to wrest free, Stephen spun away, feeling his throat. Mordo didn’t come after him. “He left Kamar-Taj.” Mordo panted. “His disciples followed him like sheep seduced by false doctrine.”
“He stole the forbidden ritual, right?”
“Yes.”
“What did it do?” Strange had gotten the sense that the ritual was important, but nobody in Kamar-Taj seemed to be doing anything about it. He saw The Ancient One watching him from near the temple door, and wondered what she thought she saw in him.
“No more questions.” Mordo went to a rack at the edge of the training ground and selected a short carved wooden staff.
“What’s that?” Strange asked.
“That’s a question,” Mordo said with the smallest of smiles. A joke, Strange thought. He was starting to like Mordo. “This is a relic,” Mordo went on. He pointed the staff at Strange, then turned his wrist to hold it parallel to the ground. “Some magic is too powerful to sustain, so we imbue objects with it. Allowing them to take the strain we cannot. This is the Staff of the Living Tribunal.” He gripped it with both hands and it flared with magical energy as he struck the ground, making Strange flinch. “There are many relics. The Wand of Watoomb. The Vaulting Boots of Valtorr.” As he said the last, he kicked his feet together. A tiny magical sigil came to life in the air near his feet, then faded away.
“They just roll off the tongue, don’t they?” Strange commented. Mordo grinned. “When do I get my relic?”
“When you’re ready.”
“I think I’m ready.” Strange was getting tired of people telling him he wasn’t ready for things. Wong had said the same thing about books, but he’d been wrong, hadn’t he? Strange had mastered astral projection with basically no problems—a few setbacks didn’t warrant Wong’s refusal to help. He could handle a relic, too.
“You’re ready when the relic decides you’re ready,” Mordo said, still smiling. “For now, conjure a weapon.”
Strange held both hands in front of him and, with some effort, brought forth a bar of energy between them. Without warning, Mordo struck it with the staff. Strange absorbed the shock and barely got braced to deflect Mordo’s next strike. “Fight!” Mordo shouted as they sparred. “Fight like your life depended on it!”
He launched himself into the air, taking three long strides past Strange on the Vaulting Boots of Valtorr—and then swinging himself around to drop Strange with a kick to the chest. Looming over Strange, Mordo was suddenly all business. “Because one day it may.”
In the evenings, Strange had some time to reflect on what he had learned during the day, or to study, depending on how the mood struck him. Or to think of all he had left behind. Tonight he was thinking about Christine. He opened his laptop and started to type her a message.
Christine
I’m e-mailing you one more time to
Then he stopped. To what? He had already e-mailed her twice, and she hadn’t answered. What else could he say? Someday, he vowed, he would apologize to her face-to-face. She deserved it… and the longer Strange was apart from her, the more he realized how much he missed her.
Someday, he thought again, looking at the watch on the table next to the laptop. He would make it right. They would have a future together.
Future.
CHAPTER 7
Future… That got him thinking—about all the mistakes he had made along the way to Kamar-Taj. Wong had said The Book of Cagliostro was devoted to the study of time. Strange had been too proud back in New York to admit any of his mistakes, but now in Kamar-Taj his head was clearer. He was learning a little bit about being humble. What if he could undo his mistakes? What if…?
He went to the library late that night and took down The Book of Cagliostro from its place on the high shelf. Strange realized that his study had paid off. He could understand the script in The Book of Cagliostro now, when it had just seemed like random marks the first time he opened it. Sitting at a table, he began to read, taking bites from an apple as he turned the pages—he always found new research to be hungry work. He saw symbols and sigils on the pages that he recognized from artifacts in the library—specifically the artifact sitting on a pedestal not ten feet from where he sat.
The Eye of Agamotto.
“Wong?” he called out.
No answer. He was alone in the library. No knowledge in Kamar-Taj is forbidden, Wong had said. Only certain practices.
He was about to test the truth of that statement.
Strange went to the pedestal and detached the Eye of Agamotto from its fixture. He hung it around his neck and returned to the book. “Okay,” he muttered to himself. “First, open the Eye of Agamotto.”
He touched the middle and ring fingers of both hands together, then moved them in a circle. The Eye of Agamotto opened, radiating green light.
“All right,” Strange said. So far, so good.
He spread the fingers of both hands and rotated them, creating a circle of green light with runic symbols in its center. The shape was just as big as his spread hand, and when he turned his hand, it turned as well. Bands of green energy circled his right forearm, rotating around his wrist of their own accord.
He held the circle out toward the h
alf-eaten apple. When he turned it clockwise, some more of the apple disappeared. Future bites that he had not yet taken. The relic’s power was carrying the apple forward into the future while Strange stayed in the present. He turned the circle counterclockwise, and the bites disappeared, restoring the apple chunk by chunk. The apple was whole again, even though he could still taste the bites he had taken from it.
“Oh my,” he breathed. It was real.
He could manipulate time.
He turned the circle clockwise again, further this time. The apple turned into a core and then began to decay, right there on the table. Strange restored it and looked back to the book. He turned to the place where pages had been ripped out of the book. Slowly, he turned the green circle of power counterclockwise, this time directing it at the book… and the missing pages reappeared. Now—finally—he would be able to discover what the missing ritual did, since no one in Kamar-Taj would tell him.
A large red symbol occupied much of the right-hand page, and the facing page showed a set of circular symbols. Around them was the text of a new ritual. Strange studied it, trying to understand.
“Dormammu,” Strange read. “The Dark Dimension. Eternal life?”
Now he understood how The Ancient One had lived so long. She must be tapping into this Dark Dimension… but beyond his questions of how, the revelation shocked him. Could it be true? Was there another explanation that he was missing? He had gotten the sense that The Ancient One was a force for good in the world, and her associating with something as dangerous as this… Strange had a hard time focusing on that question with the new sensations blazing through his mind. Swept away by the power he felt, and the idea of even vaster power contained in the ritual, he began to turn the ring.…
With a soft chiming sound, crystal structures appeared in the air over the table. They were like the Mirror Dimension portal, only larger, stronger—as if the dimension they marked had to be held back by greater power. Strange concentrated, and began to feel the portal open.