Chapter Text
The land was scarred black. So was the sky. Dusty clouds behind a black horizon, grey with stolen light from long dead sources, rolling out across the void. Where there had once been stars, now there were only points of darkness where the light had been erased, holes in the listless maelstrom, final fragments of clarity.
Wrapped in tattered, and stained robes, skeletal hands holding the reigns of a vibrant, gnashing, scarlet spell, a Sorcerer worked in the dark. Robes which might once have been a regal blue or a glorious red, had been reduced now to a moody grey and a pitiful purple. His form was poised in meditation. Behind his eyelids, his eyes furiously darted. Light refracted behind the membrane of his skin, a hungry red.
Beside him, two others. Both were in similar states of abuse. Thin, and ragged, faded around the edges. One wore a suit of black, the holes and gaps patched up in red, and it clung to his body tighter than his skin, his masked head swaddled in a hood. The other was the only light beyond the malicious flashes being summoned from within the casting circle. The palest, most frightened blue shone through the slightest crevasses about his body, glinting off worn, silver armour. Their faces were obscured. Impatience and weariness were outlined in red and black. Silver and blue were framing a profound sadness. The expressions beneath were not betrayed by body language. Silver armour was unmoving, unflinching, watching. The slighter, unarmoured creature beneath the hood was huddling against the cold. The sorcerer’s work continued.
“We’re running out of time…” The black suit muttered. No grey mist was summoned fourth from their mouth. The chill had climbed into his chest. The silver armour raised an arm, and brought it around his shoulder. He held him as close as possible, up to his chest, and his glowing heart.
“… Just stay close to me…” He replied, not in human tones, but approximations of a farmiliar voice, synthesised, digitized.
The Sorcerer stirred. The air tried to fight its way out of his lungs as he pulled it in, wheezing all the way down. His body twitched, suspended feet off the floor, legs coming undone from a serene cross, but finding purchase again swiftly. Still his companions lurched to be closer.
“…. Not… Long now… I promise.” He said. He sounded hopeful, like his voice was meant to be a warm hand under a chin, lifting from despair. It instead was knotted, and dry as a bone. It had been hours. In the dirt beneath him, symbols had been carved, the dust, despite the wind, was forced to keep its shape, circles and runes and foreboding eyes. The horizon seemed to grow closer with every passing hour. It was hard to pinpoint, the shifting of far-off foundations, remnants of mountains drifting away. It had been going for weeks now, but had yet to reach them. It would be upon them before they realised it. Vanishing.
Another silver hand wrapped around the wilting black shoulders, holding him as though he meant to pull him inside his own chest, to use the beating of his heart to instil warmth, or comfort. Muscles harder than stone would not relax beneath his skin.
As if racked by pain, the Sorcerer gasped, his eyes opened, rimmed with red light, and exhaustion. His mouth gaped wide, fingers grasping at nothing, but finding two steady hands to grasp.
“I Found It.” He rattled. The world folded in on itself, collapsing into the wormhole of his eye, pulling free his weight from the fractured gravity and then inverting it, so that he was falling into himself, like a nightmare…
And then he woke up.
The night was still reigning, but it was never truly dark in New York, no matter how many light dampening spells you tried to cast on your windows. The stars were all invisible in the light-gloom, a small pity. Steven Strange, former sorcerer supreme, sat up in bed. His silk sheets struggled to slip free from his sweat drenched body. His chest was strained with heavy breathing. He struggled to shake loose from his heart the feeling of dread, and fear, and deep, ceaseless, unyielding love. He wasn’t sure which worried him most. He rose from the bed, sighing at his lost sleep, and his scarred hands found a towel and wash basin which conveniently filled itself with cold, fresh water. It was an antique feature, expected in so lavish and so historical a bedchamber, with its wooden fixtures and high ceilings, but it was not entirely an unwelcome one. It was only a shame that its uses were limited. No mirror, rather too close to a window, not that people could just go looking through it and see what they were expecting to see.
Washing himself down, he felt a breath down his back. He turned, hands raised. There was nothing there. No presences, no figures. The room was dark. Shadows were deep, and seemed to sink deeper as he interrogated them. A stray breeze caught on the curtains across the room, flicking them daintily. The fear was loosened from his guts. Only the wind. He breathed deep, and laughed at his own paranoia. As if anything could have passed his ward spells without him noticing, not even so much as a pang from their retraction. He turned again, washed his face in cold water, and as the icy droplets stung at his skin on the way down, he realised,
He hadn’t opened the window.
Vacuum-cold pain inverted his spine, turning the vertebrae inside out, robbing the air from his chest, like a hand wrapped around his bones, he could feel each finger, he could see the eyes behind him through his own skull. His limbs disobeyed him, betraying his weight like a young tree under heavy snow, and he bent over backwards, straining for air until he collapsed to the ground, and the consciousness was ripped from him.
His body twitched, and rolled, like a puppet whose master was being stabbed in the heart. Then he wretched like his insides meant to come up through his mouth and his lungs tore at the air like savage beasts and he was on his front pushing away the fine wooden floor. He went to his feet and then further, into the wall, collapsing over the basin, sending spray in all direction. Again, and again, and again, he took staccato breaths, fighting against himself to take them. Feet unwilling to take his weight, he stumbled, and danced to the window, hands gripping the frame, knuckles turning white. His reflection stared back from the glass, scared, pale. He gasped, and caught a wail before it passed his lips. His body shook, like ice had invaded his every cell.
Standing, half naked, in the cool wind of an early Manhattan morning, Stephen Strange wept silently into his palm.