"You need my help?" asked Stephen skeptically.
"I came here because I felt that," I tried to explain, pointing at the necklace he wore. "I'm connected to that. I don't know how, or why, so don't ask any further questions. I think I'm somehow aligned to Agamotto. Maybe the stone itself. Perhaps both. I have no idea. I just know I'm supposed to be around that necklace if I want to survive."
Stephen's face hardened. "You're dying?"
"Not yet. I will be. Every day I've spent since I connected to that stone has felt like Hell. I haven't been me in months. I've wandered the world, a vessel for that stone. I was supposed to wait when I felt it activate."
"I did that when I touched it," guessed Stephen.
I nodded. "And doing so brought me back into my body, with a warning. I need to touch the necklace, connect it to my soul, maybe. The message was rather confusing and I did just get my brain back, so I'm a little slow right now, forgive me."
"You need it to save yourself."
"That's what it's sounding like."
"Why me?" asked Stephen rudely. "I have my own issues, my hands, my--"
"Because you're the one who woke me up," I snapped. "I have spent months being wedged away from the love of my life, my friends, because of this goddamn stone. I have traveled across the globe, through time, just waiting for the day that stone was located on this Earth. You're the one that happened to do it. So, Stephen, you're going to help me, or you're going to feel the wrath of that stone and myself.. And I can do a hell of a lot worse than you think I can."
Without my consent, blue and green wisps started to surrounded my hands. I didn't try to retract them; it would be no use. My anger had awakened whatever hold the stone had over my abilities. I felt different in the use of my powers. I could do worse than ever before, I knew it. It terrified me.
It scared Stephen, too. He didn't show it through his face, but I had shaken him up enough to demolish the mindset he previously shared about the situation. He stood straighter, clasping his hands together.
"How can I help?"
I approached the desk he stood behind. I flipped around the book he had open, scanning over the page. Each page brought more confusion to my mind.
Distraught, I said, "I can't read anymore."
"It's in a language commoners don't know. I've learned it since I arrived here. It's spells, mystic arts type of spells. I was in the middle of translating it," he said, slapping my hands away from the book. He flipped it back to him.
"'Mystic arts'?" I repeated, raising my brow. "Like, magic? That exists now, too?"
"In some shape," agreed Stephen.
"I--"
Stephen then hushed me. Sending me a look that clearly told me to silence myself, he took a deep breath, ridding his conscience, presumably. He spread his feet apart.
"'First, open the Eye of Agamotto,'" he translated.
Raising three fingers on each finger, he connected the bottom two, then crossed his wrists. The parallel set of lines over the necklace opened. It's emerald beam of light shined on my chest, generating a burning warmth within my soul. It struggled against Stephen's neck to reach me.
My knees weak, I reached for the desk. I clutched at my chest, slammed my fist against it, scratched-- anything to try to rid the burning inside of me. I coughed endlessly. It was as if no amount of coughing was going to end my struggle to breathe.
He mumbled Doctor phrases and possible treatments I didn't understand, not because of my lack of a Doctorate, but simply because I couldn't focus on his voice. I was hearing whispering voices coming from the necklace on his chest. Overlaps of my name and a single phrase: "Come to me, my love," spoke to me.
I managed to tear my hands from my ears long enough to point at the Eye of Agamotto. Stephen, understanding the message, dropped his hands. He closed the Eye.
"Sorry," he said quickly. "Hide behind the shelf. If we want it to focus, I can't control it when you're in it's sight."
Hands rubbing my temples, I shuffled behind a nearby shelf. I tilted my head, allowing a single eye to continue to watch Stephen as he tried to work with the Eye of Agamotto.
He connected his wrists and spun them, generating three rotating circles around his right arm. He stuck it straight, allowing the other hand to work the magic from the Eye. He waved his hand. The apple on the desk, his focus, degraded. He waved his hand the opposite way. The apple was untouched again.
Stephen looked to me after he lowered his hands, closing the Eye. "You said you had traveled through time, didn't you? That's likely the cause. Your connection to the stone allowed you to do. Does it continue to let you?"
"Don't know. Not eager to try. Last time I time traveled, I almost broke up my relationship with future me with past me," I said.
Stephen opened his mouth, then closed it again. "Right. So, this thing can control time. It's a... It's like a..."
"A time stone," I finished, sighing. I patted my hand over my rapidly beating heart. "And, somehow, it's tied to me."
Stephen returned his focus to the book in front of him. He flipped a few pages forward, then opened the Eye once more. He wiggled his hand over the ripped paper, replacing the previously torn page.
"Can you translate it?" I wondered.
"'Dormammu,'" he read to me. "'The dark dimension. Eternal life.'"
The words brought on sheets of what appeared to be emerald-tinted mirrors. Echoing booms hit the room as more layered on. Shadows danced through each one, the voices coming from it got louder with every second, until Stephen's curiosity about the odd occurrence was broken by a startled, "No!" from two incoming men.
Stephen whipped around to face them, but not before widening his eyes at me.
I hurried to hide further in the library. I ducked behind a cart of books.
"Tempering with the continuum probabilities is forbidden!" shouted the Asian man.
"I was just doing exactly what it said in the book," defended Stephen.
The African man shut the book quickly. He asked, "And what did the book say abut the dangers of performing that ritual?"
"I don't know. I haven't gotten to that part yet."
"Temporal manipulations can create branches in time, unstable dimensions, spacial paradoxes. Time loops! You wanna get stuck living the same moment over and over forever? Or never having existed at all?!" shouted the African man unbelievably.
Stephen cleared his throat awkwardly. "They really should put the warnings before the spells, I mean--"
"Your curiosity could have gotten you killed," interrupted the Asian man, so calm it was terrifying to even me. "You weren't manipulating the Space-Time Continuum. You were breaking it. We do not temper with natural law. We defend it."
"How did you even do that?" asked the African man hopelessly. "Where did you require the litany of spells to even understand it?"
"I have a very big memory; it's how I got my MD and PhD at the same time," said Stephen proudly.
The African man raised his chin at Stephen, skeptical by his quick and mildly witty answer. "What you just did takes more than a good memory."
"You were born for the mystic arts," diagnosed the Asian man.
Stephen's voice lowered. "Yet my hands still shake."
"For now, yes."
"Not forever?"
"We're not prophets."
"When are you going to start telling me what we are?" he asked angrily.
Both men began walking. Stephen glanced at me, then followed to the depths of the library, a dome was built. Three doors were spaced evenly around the outskirts of the room. In the center, a podium with the Seal of Ashanti sat proudly on top of it.
A wave of the Asian's man hand brought forth a golden, rotating projection of the Earth above the podium.
"While heroes, like the Avengers, protect the world from physical dangers, we Sorcerers guard it against more mystical threats. The Ancient One is the latest in a long line of Sorcerers Supreme. It goes back thousands of years to the Father of the Mystic Arts: The Mighty Agamotto."
The man broke his gaze from the projection to look at the necklace hanging on Stephen's neck, pointing out it was the same Sorcerer who created the Eye of Agamotto in a passive-aggressive tone.
Stephen shrugged his shoulders minutely.
"Agamotto built three Sanctums in places of power, where great cities now stand," continued the Asian man. He pointed to each door. "That door leads to the Hong Kong Sanctum. That door to the New York Sanctum. That one to the London Sanctum. Together, the Sanctum's generate a protective shield over our world."
"The Sanctum's protect the world, and we Sorcerers protect the Sanctum's," said the African man, in conclusion.
"From what?" asked Stephen.
"Other dimensional beings that threaten our universe."
"Like Dormammu?"
The two men exchanged an anxious look.
"Where did you learn that name?" seethed the African man.
"I just read it in the Book of Cagliostro. Why?" wondered Stephen.
"Dormammu dwells in the Dark Dimension, beyond time. He is the Cosmic Conqueror, the Destroyer of Worlds, a being of infinite power, capable of endless hunger... He's on a quest to devour the whole universe and bring all worlds into his Dark Dimension," explained the Asian man. He softly sighed, seemingly tired. "He hungers for Earth most of all."
Stephen paused. "The pages that Kaecillius stole..."
"The ritual to contact Dormammu to contract power from the Dark Dimension," agreed the Asian man.
"Ah, okay. Okay," said Stephen. Continuing, he said flatly, "I'm out. I came here to heal my hands, not to fight in some mystical war."
A response from either man was not granted, or allowed time to process his words. Directly after his words, a set of bells above one of the doors began to chime obnoxiously.
Stephen whipped around to find me, since both men were occupied trying to discover the source of the ringing. He, again, widened his eyes, repealing my cautionary footstep towards them.
"London," gasped the Asian man.
The London Sanctum door flew open.
"Kaecilluius, no!" shouted both men.
Stephen's eyes were filled with panic when he saw the inside of the London Sanctum explode. He had turned to me, disregarding the secrecy. He wanted to shout a warning, I suppose, but it didn't make it. By the time he turned to where I had been standing, I was no longer there. I was in front of him protectively.
I tried to open protective portals in front of the two other men. I created small ones, enough to cover their heads from debris. I had no time to stretch each portal for better protection before the golden blast shot through the London doors and blew apart the dome we stood within, sending all four of its occupants like rag dolls through the air.
Together, Stephen and I crashed through the set of doors behind us. Stephen was the first on his feet, dashing through the debris-filled air to find the door. His trembling hands had touched it, barely, before an emerald green shimmer appeared over where the door used to stand.
"Wong! Mordo!" shouted Stephen, banging his fists hopelessly on the door.
"You can't get through," I said, coughing out the dust in my lungs.
"You don't know that," snapped Stephen.
"I do," I said calmly, temping him to look at me. I nodded at the necklace he wore. "That Eye is going to protect us from returning there."
"Portal us back, then," he huffed.
"I only saw the library, which is the last place we want to be. I'm sorry. Your friends are going to have to wait until we figure something else out," I said.
Stephen, unhappy about my rebuttal, stalked away from me instantly, muttering, "I need to figure out where we ended up, first."