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There really should have been something in the guidebooks about what Not to do with portals.
Or perhaps some advice on what you had to do if your portal went fucking haywire, and then proceeded to dump you in a dreary landscape that ressembled the accidental lovechild of a bog and a volcanic field; In front of a towering creature that looked like a child’s nightmare of a spider, and smelt like death warmed over.
Steven blinked, lifting a slender hand to brush at the black ichor splattering his face. Words seemed to have deserted him, his gag reflex still doing it’s level best to choke him.
The monstrous beast slid back beneath the water, fouling the pool with clouds of black blood- leaving Steven to watch as the man responsible for saving his life went to sawing the thing’s head clean off.
The man was clad in black leather armour with his white hair plastered flat to his skull. His eyes were dark as the night, surrounded by ink black veins that ran like spiderwebs under the skin of his face. A rather garish look, if Steven was being honest.
And then there were the swords...
“Exactly what century have I come to?” asked Steven weakly.
The white-haired man halted in his gruesome endeavour, fixing his black stare on the sorcerer.
Well, perhaps Steven did look slightly out of place... what, with his blue tunic and the eye of Agamotto hanging about his pale throat. The Cloak of Levitation rustled, lifting its hem above the brackish muck of the swamp- it didn’t seem pleased at the prospect of a mud bath.
Oh god, could this man even understand english?
Steven was now seriously debating whether there was any chance of this all being an extremely vivid hallucination brought on by spell exhaustion. It had happened to him before... though perhaps not in this large of a capacity...
“I try not to keep track...” rasped the man, his voice a deep rumble of a bass tenor that Steven swore he could feel in his very bones. “Though I think you might have the wrong Sphere, mage.”
“Wrong Sphere...?” Steven rocked on his heels, contemplating the meaning of that cryptic sentence. “What... who... where the fuck am I?”
“Just outside Blaviken,” said the man, grunting as the monster’s head came loose with a wet pop.
“I’ve never heard of Blaviken,” said Steven, feeling like this was all uncomfortably out of his control.
The man shrugged with a rumbling, “Hm.”
“Um.” Okay, he could figure this out... probably. “I need to get back to MY... sphere...”
The man straightened, those black eyes fixed on him. It made the sorcerer shiver. The strange man cocked his head. “So portal yourself back.”
Of course this was the perfect time for Steven to make a terrible discovery: he seemed to have lost his sling-ring.
“Oh for the love of god...” It came out in a hopeless groan. Bending double, he trawled his keen gaze over the dark mud and slime at his feet- searching for a shine of gold. This couldn’t be happening. It had to all be a bad dream. That must be it. He would wake presently in the Sanctum Sanctorum to the cacophony of New York City outside his window.
The man bared his teeth in what might have been a smile. It was far from a pretty sight, what with the monster blood and slime smeared over his face. “Which one?”
“Uh,” tried the young sorcerer supreme, “the big one? The main event?”
The man barked a laugh that rasped like snakeskins. He drew an oil cloth from a pouch at his belt and began to slowly tease the black blood off his sword, the horse that been hovering by the edge of the trees finally plodding over. She dropped her head and nudged the man gently. His hand came up to rub her forelock, a faint smile on his lips.
“Hey, Roach.”
Steven refrained from asking the man why his horse was named after an insect. Or a fish, for that matter. At least, he was half-certain that somewhere in the voluminous depths of the oceans back home, there WAS a fucking breed of fish with the same name.
Focus, Steven... the fish can wait.
“Have you seen a ring about yea big?” Steven spread his fingers to indicate the length of the two-fingered ring. “Gold, flat on the top, possibly magical? Looks a little like a knuckle duster?”
“What, in this muck?” The man snorted. “Good luck.”
Steven hid his face in his hands. Groaning, he contemplated how long the Cloak would put up with him scrabbling around on his hands and knees in the slime before it throttled him while trying to flee. The answer was not heartening.
The man sighed, black eyes gleaming like obsidian. “Can’t you just summon it to you?”
“Do you think if I could, then I might have done so already?” Steven didn’t know why his sling-ring always refused summons. Maybe it was BECAUSE the damn object was enchanted. He really needed to ask Wong when he got home.
IF he ever got home.
He tried to kneel, but the Cloak gave a vicious tug and Steven coughed, stumbling back. “Fucking piece of clothing...” he grumbled. “Fine, you just go hover there and I’LL get dirty.”
The Cloak lifted free from his shoulders and drifted away to float innocently under a tree. It lifted its corners in what could pass for something resembling a shrug when Steven shot it a filthy glare.
The strange man made no comment over how odd Steven’s garments had turned out to be and mearly watched as the sorcerer dropped to his knees and began to inspect the mud closely.
It smelt like a bog left to dry in a sock drawer.
Slowly.
“Mages here don’t need rings,” commented the strange man. “Only lessons to learn how to tap their Chaos.”
Steven inspected a possible object and then threw it away when it turned out to be a pebble. “Chaos?”
“Magic,” clarified the stranger.
“So everyone here can tap... chaos... then?” Steven sat back on his heels, ignoring the discomfort of the brackish mud seeping into his pants. He was intrigued despite himself.
The man let out a deep sigh which sounded more like a growl, dropped the bleeding monster head onto the bank and sat down on the fallen tree near the muddy sorcerer. “No.”
“Can you?”
The man raised a pale eyebrow, his black eyes sending a shiver through Steven. The veins around them had begun to recede somewhat, at least and his complexion was darkening to a more human shade of pale under the streaks of monster blood, and grime. “A little, yes.”
Steven extended a muddied hand, managing a smile, even though he was still inwardly bemoaning his situation. “Steven Strange, Sorcerer Supreme of the New York Sanctum Sanctorum.”
A small quirk graced the strange man’s face as he took the proffered hand. “Not a Noble are you? With a title like that?” His handshake was firm, black leather glove smooth on Steven’s skin. “Geralt of Rivia, Witcher.”
Steven could hear Geralt’s slow, steady heartbeat. Four times slower than his own. “You’re not completely human, are you?”
Geralt, for his part, didn’t seem annoyed by the question. He merely grunted in agreement and then went back to silence. Watching Steven rummaging about for his ring.
“Urghhhhh,” groaned the young Sorcerer. “I’m going to be stuck here forever... aren’t I?”
“With that attitude, probably.” Geralt started to smile, then winced and dropped his head, palm flat to his forehead, as though he had a severe migraine. “Ah, fuck,” he hissed, voice a low, coarse rasp. He rocked forward, leaning on his knees, breathing hard like he was forcing back nausea. Steven scrambled to his feet and approached the log the witcher sat on, unsure what was bothering the man.
“Can I... can I help at all, or...?”
“Just coming down... from the potions...” grated Geralt, voice a ragged snarl. The ire didn’t seem to be aimed at Steven, however, so he cleaned his hands as best he could on his poor tunic and then kneaded them into the tense line of Geralt’s trembling shoulders.
The witcher stiffened, a low growl rumbling deep-throated from his chest, but it faded as he relaxed back against Steven, a weary sigh escaping his gritted teeth.
Steven pulled away once the witcher was breathing with a slightly more normal cadence. And got a shock when Geralt raised eyes the color of golden sunlight to meet his.
“Thank you,” he said, gruff, voice slightly smoother than before. “Not many people can stand to be near me... let alone touch me like that.”
Steven decided not to pry into what that meant, and dropped his gaze to the lake, the island of slain monster toward the shore a garish addition to the gloomy scene. “Glad I could help.”
“Hm,” said the witcher in what sounded like slight amusement, before he bent over and plucked something free from the black ooze at their feet.
The moon shone off the curves and carvings of one very muddy sling-ring, and Steven leapt to his feet with a shout.
“Fuck, yes! Thank you!”
Geralt laughed a low, rasping laugh and placed the piece of enchanted jewellery into the young Sorcerer’s hand. “Consider bonding it to your hand... might save you the trouble.”
That wasn’t a half bad idea...
When Steven stepped through the belated portal, the Cloak one again hanging from his shoulders- albeit rustling as it tried to use it’s one corner to scrub at a mud splot on its hem- he glanced back.
The witcher was long gone. Along with his horse. And maybe Steven would never see him again, but God... who knew, what with the fact that all the books in the Sanctum’s whole Fucking library possibly needed updating.
Ugh.
He had a long night ahead of him.
“Wong! I need the library keys! And quite possibly a shit-ton of paper and ink! AND the next ten tears of my fucking life, preferably wrapped into a loop so I don’t end up old and grey by the time I’ve finished up in here!”
Wong’s distant voice informed Steven that, while the former two requests were easy enough to attain, the third was not.
Typical