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Stephen’s heart pounded in his chest. One moment he’d been in the New York Sanctum, taking some time to familiarize himself with it now that he was its ‘Master’, the next moment he found himself in a completely unfamiliar environment.
It looked like some sort of jungle or rainforest. The moss reminded him of images he’d seen of temperate rainforests, but the massive leaves on the plants around him looked like something from a jungle. Stephen closed his eyes, and took a deep steadying breath. He knew, without having to check, that he didn’t have his sling ring on him. Foolishly, he’d set it down on a table in the library before wandering through the shelves. He slipped his hand into his pocket and checked anyway.
Nothing. Just as he’d expected, but it still made him grimace. Stephen turned his head and looked at the Cloak of Levitation’s lapel.
“Do you have any idea what just happened?” he asked it. He was still getting the hang of communicating with it. When it came to movement, their connection worked seamlessly. The Cloak simply understood Stephen’s intentions when it came to moving in three dimensional space. And Stephen… it was as though a whole new area of his brain had been activated. He had always been good at mental visualization, but now he related to the space around him in an entirely different way. He imagined it was a bit like how a bird might process their spatial awareness, and it came from his connection to the Cloak.
As marvelous as that was, it didn’t help them communicate about anything other than coordinating their movements.
The Cloak tilted its lapel as though in thought, and then made a wobbly sort of ‘so-so’ motion.
“You have some idea, but it’s vague?” Stephen guessed.
The Cloak bobbed its lapel up and down in a makeshift nod.
Stephen sighed. He wasn’t exactly interested in playing twenty questions with the Cloak when it didn’t even have much information to impart. He wasn’t entirely clueless himself; he had felt the strange surge in mystical energy just before they’d suddenly been here. That almost certainly had something to do with them being translocated.
The problem was that he had no idea where they’d ended up, or how to get back. He could just be in some obscure rainforest somewhere on Earth, but… Stephen closed his eyes and concentrated on the dimensional energy around him. He had yet to visit any of the other dimensions that Kamar-Taj was aware of, but in the last week and a half he’d learned about many of them as Wong had explained Kamar-Taj’s extra-dimensional trading partners to him.
His heart felt like it dropped into his stomach at what he sensed. The energy around him wasn’t the familiar eldritch energy of Earth’s dimension. He could still access energy from Earth’s dimension to do magic if he needed to, but accessing the energy of a dimension other than the one he was currently in was a more difficult technique – one he had barely any familiarity with.
If he was more experienced he would almost certainly be able to tell what dimension he was in from its energy, but that was currently beyond his abilities due to sheer lack of exposure.
A thud from behind him had Stephen whirling around. It was a man dressed in an expensive suit – at least as nice as the ones Stephen used to wear to speaking engagements. He had apparently stumbled on arrival, and jerked upright at Stephen’s movement.
It was Tony Stark. Iron Man. Stephen stood frozen, stunned for a moment.
Stark touched one wrist with his other hand, and suddenly he was pointing what looked like a gauntlet from his Iron Man suit at Stephen.
“What the hell did you do?” Stark demanded. “Who are you?”
Stephen took an instinctive step back and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.
“I didn’t do anything, as far as I’m aware. I suddenly ended up here, just like you.” Stephen considered. “Though I have been here for a couple minutes already. Not long enough to figure out how this happened,” he added.
Stark eyed him skeptically.
“As for who I am, my name is Doctor Stephen Strange.”
“Doctor?” Stark scoffed. “That getup of yours doesn’t exactly scream ‘doctor’ to me.” The hand aiming at Stephen hadn’t lowered at all.
“I no longer practice,” Stephen defended stiffly. “I was a neurosurgeon.”
Stark’s eyes widened with something that looked like recognition, and his gaze shifted to Stephen’s hands. After a moment, he slowly lowered his gauntlet.
“The neurosurgeon that drove his car off a cliff.” Stark stated bluntly.
Stephen nodded stiffly. Not exactly what he wanted to be known for, but if it meant that Stark stopped holding him at… what, repulsor-point? He’d take it.
After a moment, Stark touched his wrist again, and the gauntlet somehow folded away back into something that looked a lot like a watch. Stephen was momentarily transfixed; he would have thought it was magic if he hadn’t learned so much about the real thing.
“So how does-” Stark cut off with a yell as he was jerked backwards off his feet. Stephen couldn’t see what had caused it.
“Stark!” he yelled, and just as he stepped forward to try to see what had happened, his own feet were pulled out from under him.
“What the ACTUAL fuck?” Stark yelled, and… Oh.
Stephen didn’t recognize the specific type of creature that had hold of him, but it didn’t look like anything that existed on earth. It had a blotchy green body that superficially resembled a tiger’s in shape, but no apparent head or mouth. Instead it had several long appendages that resembled eyeless snakes, if snakes were poisonous frogs.
It was near instant to connect with the Cloak to get himself into the air, and though it took him an extra few seconds, Stephen was still able to quickly conjure an eldritch whip and lash out with it at the tentacle like appendages holding on to his ankles.
He got one of them to release almost immediately. The Cloak enabled him to fly higher and higher, and the creature’s remaining grip on him quickly weakened enough that he was able to pull away.
Stephen changed course, heading straight for Stark, who had his gauntlet back out, and had injured the creature that still had a hold of him. It had two appendages around his legs, and had dragged him closer to itself and was grabbing hold of his arms with two more appendages.
Stephen swooped in, remaining in the air, and caught the two new appendages with his eldritch whips, and hauled back, pulling them away from Stark. Despite Stark’s obvious shock at Stephen suddenly flying and wielding glowing energy whips, he wasted no time at all in turning his gauntlet on the tentacles currently pinning his legs together.
The noise of the creature that had initially attacked Stephen crashing through the under-layer of the rain-forest caught his attention – it was headed straight for Stark. “Dammit,” he muttered, sinking down to the ground and gathering both whips in one hand. “Go!” He flung the Cloak off his shoulders, and it intercepted the beast just before it got to Stark.
Now on the ground, Stephen moved back away from Stark as he yanked on his eldritch whips, pulling the creature further off of him, and Stark took careful aim at the base of the cluster of tentacles where they had been yanked away from each other by Stephen’s efforts, exposing what Stark probably hoped was a vulnerable spot.
Stark fired his repulsor, and the creature slumped to the ground, seemingly stunned. For a moment, Stephen breathed a sigh of relief, before realizing that it was too quiet. The Cloak suddenly appeared, darting back towards them, swiveling around as though looking for something. Oh no. The creature must have slipped away from it somehow.
Stark’s eye twitched as he regarded the Cloak. “So, just a former neurosurgeon, huh, Gandalf?”
Stephen stiffened, even as he tried to keep an eye out for the missing beast. “I don’t believe I said anything about only being a former Neurosurgeon. You questioned my calling myself a doctor. I also happen to be a sorcerer, these days.”
Stark squinted at him like he was trying to figure out if he should take that seriously or not.
Suddenly, Stephen was being jerked backwards, and this time not by his feet. The thing had one tentacle around his chest, and another around his neck, he thrashed instinctively.
“Shit!” Stark exclaimed, eyes wide as he leapt after him. The Cloak shot after him even more quickly.
Stephen’s thrashing was accomplishing nothing, and he stopped so he could concentrate better, trying to get his eldritch whips re-summoned. The combined challenge of trying to summon eldritch magic outside of Earth’s dimension while being dragged backwards by the neck was making it take even more time, and he couldn’t afford that right now.
Changing tactics, Stephen hooked an arm around the tentacle grabbing his neck, and twisted. The creature flailed, jerking him closer, and extended two more tentacles towards him and grabbed him around the head, covering his face. Everything jerked again, and Stephen realized that it was a result of Stark hitting the creature with a blast from his repulsor. It had at least freed his head again.
The appendages around his head had left behind some sort of slime, and Stephen spat, trying to get rid of some that had managed to get in his mouth while also trying to pull away from the tentacles that still had hold of him. Suddenly they loosened and he was finally able to yank himself away.
The Cloak was once again wrapped around the creature, restraining it’s many snake like… whatever they were. Stephen took a moment to concentrate, conjuring the eldritch whips once more, and used them to restrain the creature’s tentacles, while Stark, seeming to understand immediately, repeated the shot he’d made on the first creature.
They both slumped in relief when it had the same effect.
“We-” Stephen started to say, and stopped short. They did need to get out of there, but more pressingly, his mouth was going numb and tingly. Oh no. His passing thought to compare them to poisonous frogs had been more apt than he had realized.
“Poison!” He looked at Stark. “We’ve got to find away to wash this slime off of us!” It might be absorbed much faster through the tissues of his mouth and lips, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be absorbed at all by the rest of their skin.
Stephen realized a second later that he was wavering where he stood. Stark was right next to him suddenly, steadying him, when just a second before he’d been more than a dozen feet away. That didn’t make any sense. How had he moved so fast?
Stephen felt himself jerk to a stop, he’d almost fallen over. Stark had caught him. He blinked blearily up at him, as Stark lowered him to the ground.
Stephen shifted, trying to sit up, but his balance seemed to be shot. He jerked awake, the sensation of falling momentarily penetrating his haze. This was bad. This was very bad. Stephen jerked half-awake, only realizing he’d lost consciousness when he regained it somewhat. He blearily tried to focus, but his awareness already seemed to be fading again.