"Once, in this room, you begged me to let you learn. Now I'm told you question every lesson, preferring to teach yourself or with (y/n)." The Ancient One said as she leads Strange into her sanctuary.
"Once, in this room, you told me to open my eyes. Now I'm told to blindly accept rules that make no sense." Strange retorted back at her.
"Like the rule against conjuring a gateway in the library?" She asked.
"Wong told on me?" Strange asked with a smirk.
"You're advancing quickly with your sorcery skills. You need a safe space to practice your spells." said The Ancient One as she waves her hands down the hall.
Strange heard what sounded like a mirror cracking and the Ancient One disappearing into a gateway. He follows after her and see that the Sanctuary is mirrored. "You are now inside the Mirror Dimension. Ever present but undetected 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." She said as Strange looks around.
He sees a woman walking up to a table setting up a tray of tea. He walks over to her but she doesn't respond to him. He waves his hand in front of her face and again she doesn't respond to it.
"Hold on. Sorry, what do you mean, threats?" Strange asked The Ancient One.
"Learning of an infinite multiverse included learning of infinite dangers. And if I told you everything else that you don't already know, you'd run from here in terror." She replied as she waves her hand and the gateway appears. "Also, I know it wasn't just you that conjured the gateway in the library." She said as she looks at Strange over her shoulder, giving a knowing look.
Fall was approaching as Strange stands on the training ground with Mordo. On the other side of the grounds, was you and the Ancient One, who was watching you train a student on hand to hand combat.
"So, just how ancient is she?" Strange asked Mordo, nodding his head towards the Ancient One.
Mordo, who was on his knees lacing up his boots, looks up at him and said. "No one knows the age of the Sorcerer Supreme. Only that she is Celtic and never talks about her past."
"You follow her even though you don't know?" Strange asked in disbelief.
"I know that she's steadfast, but unpredictable. Merciless, yet kind. She made me what I am. Trust your teacher. And don't lose your way." said Mordo.
"Like Kaecilius?" Strange asked him.
"That's right." Mordo replied.
"You knew him." Strange said.
Mordo nods and said. "When he first came to us, he'd lost everyone he ever loved. 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. He left Karmar-Taj. His disciples followed him like sheep seduced by false doctrine. He wanted (y/n) to join him but she rejected."
Strange looks at Mordo for a monent then looks over at you. "Really?" He asked.
"Yes, he wouldn't admit it out loud but Kaecilius had a soft spot for (y/n) and she is very powerful and he thought, since they were close friends, that she would follow him as well. But once he told her what he was doing she said no." Mordo said.
"He stole the forbidden ritual, right?" Strange asked.
"Yeah." Mordo said as he stands up.
"What did it do?" Strange asked him.
"No more questions." Mordo said as he walks over to a stand and grabs a quarterstaff.
"What's that?" Strange asked, pointing at the staff.
Mordo points the staff at him and said. "That's a question." Strange laughs as Mordo continues. "This is a relic. Some magic is too powerful to sustain, so we imbue objects with it. Allowing them to take the strain we can not. This is the Staff of the Living Tribunal." And he takes the staff and and twists the staff and it makes a crackling sound.
Strange watches the staff in awe as Mordo said. "There are many relics. The Wand of Watoomb. The Bolting Boots of Voltor." And he kicks the heels of the boots on his feet as he said the last relic.
"They just roll off the tongue, don't they?" Strange asked as the two men circle around each other.
"When do I get my relic?" He asked Mordo.
"When you're ready." Mordo replied.
"I think I'm ready." Strange said.
Mordo chuckles and said. "You're ready when the relic decides you're ready. For now, conjure a weapon."
"Yeah." Strange mutters as he conjures up a luminous whip and the two begin to spar.
"Fight! Fight like your life depended on it!" Mordo shouted as, on the other side, you, the student and the Ancient One stop and watch the two men spar. Mordo then vaulted to the side and he starts to fly off to the side and get behind Strange.
Before Strange could react, Mordo comes up behind him and slammed the end of the staff into Strange's body. Strange falls and lands on his back. "Because one day, it may." Mordo said as he looms over Strange, who move to his side panting. Mordo walks away as you look over at the Ancient One, who nods, and you walk over to Strange.
"Are you okay?" You asked him as you hold out your hand to him. He smiles up at you and takes your hand and said. "Better now that you're here." You blush as you pull him up to his feet.
Weeks later, Strange, now in a blue tunic, sits by his desk with the tablet in front of him. He brought up the email app and was trying to figure out on how to apologize to Christene. Many times, throughout his stay at Karmar-Taj, he's been trying to figure out how to apologize to her, he did leave on bad terms with her, but with everything that's been going on; how do you explain all of this to a person over email and not sound crazy? He lets out deep sigh as he looks over at his bed and watches your sleeping form.
Earlier the two of trained some more on combat and you told him you were exhausted. Once your head hit his pillow, you were out like a light. Strange smiles as he thinks about these last few weeks with you.
Ever since that first kiss you shared, the two of you grew even closer, if that was even possible. You and him trained some more and when you two had free time, you and him would sit in his room or your room and talk about random stuff and learn more about each other. Also every now and then, the two of you would kiss and make out.
Normally, Strange would have slept with you by now already but something about you was different than the other women he has been with. You were special and he didn't want to ruin this connection you and him have and, also, he is the first guy you have ever been with, romantically.
So, he decided he wanted to take it slow with you and wanted to wait until the both of you were ready.
He looks out the window and sees the rain pouring down outside as he sighs once again. Making up his mind, he gets up, walks over to you, kissed your forehead and quietly walks out of his room and head toward the library.
When he enters the library, he walks over to the Ancient One's private collection of books and grabs The Book of Cagliostro and sits on a table and flips through the pages as he takes a bite of an apple. He stops on a page that showed an amulet that was in the shape of an eye. Beneath it, he read the descriptor: The Eye of Agamotto. He remembers seeing this before, he looks up and across the hallway was a room with a stone pedestal in the middle of it.
Displayed on the top was the Eye of Agamotto. Strange looks at it for a moment, swallows the piece of apple, and looks around the library. "Wong?" He shouts. No response, so Strange takes that as his cue as he rushes over to the amulet, removes it off its pedestal and places it around his neck.
He walks back over to the table and looks through the book. "Okay. First, open the Eye of Agamotto." He reads, aloud. He makes the gestures the book said to do to open the eye and the eye opens and begins to glow green. "Alright." He mutters as he looks through the pages and reads the next instructions.
He waves his left hand over his right arm and green lighted lines form around his arm as a green circular rune appears at the end of his right hand. He raises his right hand and aims it towards the apple, that had the one bite he took out of, and reads through the book. He moves his right hand over to the right and, as he does this, the apple starts to disappear as if someone was eating it.
Shocked by this, Strange moves his hand to the left and the apple starts to become whole again. "Oh my." He said, in shock and excitement. He starts doing this a few more times, turning the apple to an eaten apple back to a whole apple, until he grabs the whole apple, moved it off to the side and moves his hand over the book.
He waves his hand over the book and the two pages that were missing begin to appear. Once the two pages reattach to the book, Strange begins to read them. "Dormammu. The Dark Dimension. Eternal life?" He said aloud to himself.
Then suddenly a large crystal appear in front of him and in different angles of the crystal was his face look straight at him then off to the side. "What the...?" He asked when suddenly he heard a voice shout. "STOP!!!!"
Strange turns around, sharply. The Eye turns off and the crystal disappears as he looks and sees you, Mordo and Wong walking towards him. "Tampering with the continuum of probability is forbidden!" Mordo shouted, angrily, as the three of you walk up to Strange, you on his left and Mordo and Wong on his right.
"I....I wa....I was just doing exactly what it said in the book!" Strange said, defensively.
"And what did the book say about the dangers of performing that ritual?" Wong asked him, angrily.
"Yeah, I don't know, I hadn't gotten to that part yet." Strange said.
"Stephen, temporal manipulations can create branches in time." You said to him, calmly.
"Unstable dimensional openings. Spacious paradoxes! Time loops!!!! You want to get stuck reliving the same moment over, and over, forever, or never having existed at all?" Mordo asked Strange, angrily again.
Strange bites his lips then mutters. "They really should put the warnings before that stuff." You bite your lips to hold back a laugh as Wong says. "You're curiosity could have gotten you killed. You weren't manipulating the space-time continuum, you were wrecking it. We do not tamper with natural law. We defend it."
You point at the amulet and asked. "How did you learn to do that?" Strange looks over at you with raises eyebrows.
"Where did you learn the litany of spells required to even understand it?" You asked.
"I've got a photographic memory. It's how I got my M.D and Ph.D. at the same time." He replied.
You smile and said. "Impressive."
"Okay enough with the flirting! What you just did, Strange, takes more than a good memory. You were born for the mystic arts." Mordo said.
"And yet, my hands still shake." Strange said, annoyed.
"For now, yes." Wong said.
"Not forever?" Strange asked.
"We're not prophets." Mordo said.
"When do you start telling me what we are?" Strange asked, looking between you and the other two men. You look up at Mordo and Wong and the three of you nod at each other and the three of you lead Strange to the room at the end of the library.
Wong clicked the pedestal and above the four was a luminous map of the Earth. Strange looks at it in wonder as Wong said. "While heroes like the Avengers protect the world from physical dangers, we sorcerers safeguard it against more mystical threats."
"The Ancient One is the latest in a long line of Sorcerers Supreme going back thousands of years to the father of the mystic arts, the mighty Agamotto. The same sorcerer who created the eye you so recklessly borrowed." Mordo said.
"Agamotto built three Sanctums in places of power, where great cities now stand. That door leads to the Hong Kong Sanctum." You said as you point at the door behind Strange, then you point at the door on your left.
"That door to the New York Sanctum." Then you point to the door on your right. "And that one, to the London Sanctum. Together, the Sanctums generate a protective shield around our world."
"The Sanctums protect the world, and we sorcerers protect the Sanctums." Wong finished.
"From what?" Strange asked.
"Other-deminsional beings that threaten our universe." Mordo replied.
"Like Dormammu?" Strange asked.
You gasp then looked over at him and asked. "Where did you learn that name?"
He looks over at you and said. "I just read it in The Book of Cagliostro. Why?" You bite your lips as you blink back tears. "(Y/N)?" Strange asked, softly, as he approaches you and placed his hand on your cheek.
"Dormammu dwells in the Dark Dimension. Beyond time. He is the cosmic conquerer, the destroyer of worlds. A being of infinite power and endless hunger, on a quest to invade every universe and bring all worlds into his Dark Dimension. And he hungers for Earth most of all." Wong said as Strange looks at you with concern.
You look up at him and said, quietly. "He's the one who killed my parents." Strange's eyes widen as Mordo continues.
"The pages that Kaecilius stole. A ritual to contact Dormammu and draw power from the Dark Dimension." Strange removes his hand from your cheek and looks down for a moment before turning to the two men.
"Okay. Okay. I....time out. I....I came here to heal my hands, not fight in some mystical war." He said.
At that moment, a bell rings out and you and the men look up. "London." Wong replied then the door leading to the London Sanctum opens and a man, Sal Rama, runs out until a shard of energy flew through the door, spearing Rama in the chest. He drops face-first onto the floor and you let out a yelp as the four of you look through the door and see Kaecilius forming a giant yellow ball of energy.
"KAECILIUS!" Mordo shouted but Kaecilius paid no attention to Mordo and throws the energy down to the ground, causing an explosion. Strange went and grabbed you as you and him were blown backwards through one of the doors to one of the Sanctum.