“Not anymore.”

  Strange stared in silence. After a while, the man in the green robe spoke again.

  “You said you were looking for Kamar-Taj.”

  CHAPTER

  13

  Kaecilius was looking right at Stephen Strange when he knocked “Mister Doctor” onto his back. In a flash, he was all over Strange, energy forming around his hands, crackling.

  Strange was dazed. Nowhere near as dazed as he had been the first time he encountered The Ancient One, but still dazed. He saw a nearby vase, then kicked out his leg, sending the vase toward Kaecilius. The vase crashed into the Zealot, knocking him off-balance.

  An opening.

  Strange got up and ran down the hallway, which was once again a regular hallway. Kaecilius had recovered and was right behind him. Strange ran into the room of relics that he had visited just moments ago. (Had it been just moments ago?)

  The Chamber of Relics greeted Strange, and he leveled his gaze at an object he recognized almost immediately.

  “The Brazier of Bom’Galiath!” he said, grabbing it. He recognized the object from his studies at Kamar-Taj. Turning around, he saw Kaecilius smirking.

  “You don’t know how to use that, do you?” said Kaecilius.

  Strange stared at his foe, thinking. No. No, he didn’t.

  Kaecilius advanced.

  Strange threw the Brazier of Bom’Galiath at him as hard as he could.

  Kaecilius ducked.

  It was worth a shot, Strange thought.

  Kaecilius was upon him once more, and the two grappled. Appropriately for a fight in a room of relics, Kaecilius had produced a scythe, although Strange wasn’t exactly sure how, and he now slashed at Strange with the weapon. He knocked the doctor to the floor, then advanced once again. A kick of inhuman strength sent Strange flying through a glass case full of relics, which shattered, scattering its contents across the room.

  Kaecilius then threw Strange against another glass case, containing a cloak of the deepest red, shattering its glass as well. As Kaecilius prepared to strike Strange again with his scythe, a curious thing happened.

  The cloak, finding itself freed from its glass enclosure, came to life.

  It wrapped itself around Stephen Strange.

  It deflected Kaecilius’s blows.

  Strange smiled.

  CHAPTER

  14

  Strange found himself walking down another narrow alley. There was silence. And there was the man in the green robe, who walked beside him. The alley seemed almost impossibly narrow, and yet the two men managed to navigate through it just fine.

  Emerging from the alley, the pair approached what appeared to be an ancient temple. Almost secreted in the stone alcoves that dotted the way were men with long beards and painted faces. Holy men, Strange guessed. He stopped, and was surprised to see the man in the green robe keep walking.

  This isn’t Kamar-Taj? Strange thought.

  The man in the green robe bypassed the ancient temple and came to a plain, simple wooden door that definitely was not part of the temple.

  Strange was confused.

  “You sure you have the right place?” Strange said, pointing back at the temple. “That one looks a little more Kamar-Taj-y.”

  The man in the green robe stared at Strange, their eyes meeting uncomfortably.

  “I once stood in your place,” said the man in the green robe. “And I, too, was disrespectful. So might I offer a piece of advice?”

  Strange gulped, then nodded.

  “Forget everything you think you know.”

  Inside the door, Strange found another world. The building seemed so small on the outside, and yet the courtyard he now saw contained multitudes. There were various ceremonial courtyards, and people everywhere—it was like a city unto itself. Strange saw men and women wearing robes, engaging in all manner of activity. Some were meditating. Some were practicing martial arts. He heard chanting in languages he didn’t recognize.

  And yet, as he looked closer, he saw that some people were wearing sneakers and sunglasses. Someone was listening to music through earbuds. Another person clutched a group of scrolls under one arm and cradled a small tablet computer in the other.

  Forget everything you think you know, indeed, Strange thought.

  Inside the complex, the man in the green robe guided Strange to an ornate structure. He stopped, then gestured.

  “The sanctuary of our teacher,” he said, “The Ancient One.”

  Strange looked at his guide. “Really? ‘The Ancient One’?” Instantly, Strange realized his gaffe, as the man in the green robe regarded him with distaste. “Right, forget everything I think I know. Sorry.”

  The man in the green robe led Strange into the sanctuary. The hall had a high ceiling, supported by stone columns. If ever there was a temple, this was it. As the pair walked into the sanctuary, Strange noted an old man with a long beard with his hands tucked inside his robe. Four women moved into the room. One took Strange’s worn overcoat, and another motioned for him to sit. Still another arrived with a tray of tea, and the last woman poured the tea.

  Silence.

  Uncomfortable and anxious, Strange spoke. “Thank you for seeing me,” he said to the old man.

  “You’re welcome,” came the response. But the old man hadn’t said a word.

  It was the woman pouring the tea who had spoken. Surprised, Strange looked at the woman. She seemed ageless, young and old at the same time. She had no hair on her head, and was scarred, not unlike the man in the green robe.

  The man in the green robe made a gesture. “The Ancient One.”

  “Thank you, Master Mordo,” she said.

  Mordo. So the man in the green robe had a name. Nodding, Mordo stepped back, as The Ancient One took in the man who was Stephen Strange.

  “Mister Strange.”

  “Doctor, actually,” he said.

  The Ancient One smiled. “Not anymore, though, right? That’s why you’re here.” With effort, Strange raised the cup of tea to his lips. As he did so, The Ancient One saw his bandages and the scars beneath. “You’ve undergone many procedures. Seven, from the looks of it.” Strange was taken aback. How did she know?

  “Did you heal a man named Pangborn?” he asked. “A paralyzed man?”

  “In a way,” The Ancient One responded. Strange became more anxious.

  “You helped him to walk again. I was astonished! How could you have corrected a complete spinal-cord injury?” Strange asked.

  The Ancient One smiled thinly at Strange. “I didn’t correct it. He couldn’t walk. I convinced him that he could.”

  “You’re suggesting that his problem was psychosomatic—that it was in his head?” Strange asked in disbelief.

  The Ancient One shook her head. She leaned in. “When you reattach a severed nerve, is it you that heals it back together, or the body?”

  “It’s the cells,” Strange said, starting to get impatient.

  “And the cells are only programmed to put themselves back together in very specific ways.”

  “Right,” Strange said in a clipped tone.

  “What if I told you,” The Ancient One said with a lilt in her voice, “that your body can be convinced to put itself back together in all sorts of ways?”

  Strange closed the gap between him and The Ancient One. “You’re talking about cellular regeneration! Bleeding-edge medical tech. Is that why you’re working here, without a governing medical board? Just how experimental is your treatment?”

  The Ancient One stared at Strange, then gave Mordo a knowing look.

  “Quite,” she replied.

  “So you’ve figured out how to reprogram nerve cells to heal themselves?”

  “No, Mister Strange. I know how to reorient the spirit to better heal the body.”

  “The spirit heals the body,” Strange echoed, unsure. The Ancient One nodded once more, and took a sip of tea. “Okay, how do we do that? Where do we start?”

  Rising from her sitting position, The Ancient One walked across the room to an enormous book atop a table. She flipped through its pages, coming to one that showed a map of the human body, with seven chakras noted, along with a cluster of pressure points.

  Strange had to laugh. “I’ve seen that before.” He sneered. “In gift shops.”

  The Ancient One turned to another page. Strange saw a similar map of the human body, this one detailing the nervous system.

  “Perhaps you prefer this one?” She flipped through the pages again, and Strange saw an MRI image of the human body. “Or this one? Each of these maps was drawn by someone who could see in part, but not the whole,” said The Ancient One.

  Strange’s mind raced; he felt disoriented. “I spent my last dollar getting here. And you talk of healing through belief. Let me tell you what I believe. Pangborn’s injury couldn’t have been complete. He must have had nerve fibers left!”

  The Ancient One remained silent. Strange was now angry.

  “So he had a spontaneous remission here? And you take the credit. Tell people it’s your power. All they have to do is give up their worldly goods and join your little cult. Miracles for everyone!”

  Mordo looked at The Ancient One, uncomfortable.

  “No,” said The Ancient One. “Not for everyone.”

  Strange shook his head in disgust. “Only the believers, right?”

  “You’re a man looking at the world through a keyhole,” The Ancient One explained patiently. “And you’ve spent your whole life trying to widen that keyhole, to see more, to know more. And now, when hearing that it can be widened in ways you can’t imagine, you reject the possibility.”

  That was the truth. But Strange still couldn’t accept it.

  “I reject it because I don’t believe in fairy tales about chakras or energy or the power of belief!” he thundered. “There’s no such thing as spirit! We are made of matter, and nothing more.”

  The Ancient One chuckled. “You think too little of yourself.”

  “No, you think yourself too great,” Strange said, his bandaged, scarred hands throbbing. “You’re no different than I am! Just another tiny, momentary speck within an indifferent universe.”

  “And you judge the universe with paltry perception. And to the Multiverse, you are utterly blind.”

  “The Multiverse?” Strange replied, making no effort to hide his contempt.

  “The reality you know is but one of many,” The Ancient One said in response.

  “Oh, really?” said Strange, sarcasm tingeing every word. “And where are they?”

  “All around you,” came The Ancient One’s answer, matter-of-fact. “Everywhere and elsewhere, and sometimes nowhere at all. Free your mind.…”

  Strange could contain his anger no more. He rose, moving toward The Ancient One, wagging a bandaged finger accusingly.

  “My god, this is all a big joke—a scam! Muggers take my wallet, and you ‘magically’ know my name! You think you see through me? Well, I… see… through… you!”

  With that, Strange jabbed his finger at The Ancient One.

  A mistake.

  Before he could register what had happened, The Ancient One had grabbed Strange’s hand, twisting it and stopping him dead in his tracks. The Ancient One moved aside, then took the palm of her hand and shoved it—not at all gently—into Strange’s body.

  Strange slumped. He dropped his teacup and it shattered on the floor. Mordo rushed to his side, catching Strange with one hand, holding him up.

  Strange saw all of this, observed it like it was happening to someone else.

  How…?

  Strange looked at his hands. Like his body, they appeared translucent, luminous, glowing. He looked at Mordo and saw the man in the green robe holding his body. Wait, his body? Then what was this? What was he? What had he become?

  Gesturing, The Ancient One motioned toward Strange. He felt displaced and disoriented, and found himself being held up by Mordo. He gasped for air and rose to his feet.

  “What,” he said, shaking, “did you just do to me?”

  “I pushed your astral form out of your physical form.”

  Strange couldn’t process this. He looked at the broken teacup on the floor, and the tea that had spilled from it.

  “What’s in the tea? Did you drug me?”

  The Ancient One shook her head. “It’s just tea,” she said. “With a little honey.”

  “What… just… happened?” Strange asked.

  “For a moment, you entered the Astral Dimension. A place where the soul exists apart from the body. For we are more than the measure of our matter.”

  Strange was in a daze. This was all too much. How could he have expected this? He stumbled backward, afraid. He knocked over a table. He had to get out of here, had to leave. The Ancient One watched Strange in his fit of panic, and from somewhere produced what looked like small metal knuckles. She slipped them over two fingers, and then, with a gesture, made reality give way.

  Strange now found himself confronted with a mirror image of the room around them, but it was gray, dull, and lifeless. But when he saw himself and The Ancient One in the reflection, they were in color.

  What on earth was happening?

  “You are now inside the Mirror Dimension,” The Ancient One explained. “Ever-present, but undetected, a reflection of reality as we know it.”

  As The Ancient One spoke, Strange found his already tenuous grip on reality slipping even further. The very walls of the room seemed to melt, to warp. Strange did not want to look, but he couldn’t help himself. He turned to see Mordo and the women in the sanctuary, moving around, taking no heed as reality melted away.

  “In the Mirror Dimension, space and matter can be folded without affecting or changing the real world. Using this dimension, we make gateways to travel great distances in an instant.”

  Strange stared agape as the room continued to melt and re-form itself. Up was down, and down was up; the floor was now the ceiling, and the ceiling became the floor. Strange looked up to see the women cleaning up the tea service. They paid him no heed.

  Strange could not get his bearings, and he stumbled. He was like an infant taking his first steps, unsure and wobbling. He backed into the mirror image and then reality returned; everything was as it had been. Strange was sweating profusely, his heart racing. He couldn’t breathe. He looked at The Ancient One.

  “Why… are you doing this?”

  “To show you just how much you don’t know.”

  With that, The Ancient One placed a thumb upon Strange’s forehead.

  “Open your eye.”

  The floor fell away beneath Stephen Strange’s feet, and he slid down as if it were a sheer wall. He kicked, he grabbed, and he screamed, to no avail. He slid down the floor (wall?) all the way to the far wall (floor?). There was a window.

  He crashed right through it. He thought he was dead and was shocked when he opened his eyes to see stars, blackness, and swirling colors he had never thought possible before.

  Outer space.

  He moved through the void with unimagined speed, his body a projectile careening through the universe. Passing stars, planets, nebulae, Strange’s body was not his own as he hurtled along.

  “This isn’t real! This isn’t real! This isn’t real!” he screamed.

  Below him, he saw Earth.

  CHAPTER

  15

  In front of him, Strange saw Kaecilius. All around, the Chamber of Relics—the Sanctum Sanctorum itself—seemed to react to his presence in some intangible way, almost as if the building itself could sense the evil radiating from Kaecilius.

  Kaecilius looked at Strange, who had the red cloak wrapped around him. If Strange didn’t know any better, he would have sworn that Kaecilius smiled just a bit. Did he know something that Strange didn’t?

  Energy began to coalesce and throb around Kaecilius.

  Strange’s hands throbbed. Not now, he thought, pushing past the pain. He could literally feel the onslaught coming; the hairs on his arms stood straight up.

  “Let’s end this,” Kaecilius said with a snarl.

  CHAPTER

  16

  Kamar-Taj is not an end unto itself,” said Mordo, “but a beginning.” Strange walked beside Mordo through Kamar-Taj, toward a row of simple-looking rooms, listening.

  “I gathered that, after falling through outer space,” Strange replied dryly. He looked at Mordo with a weak smile.

  Mordo glared.

  At last, they came to one particular door, and inside, Strange could see an unadorned room with a cot, a chest for belongings (as if he had any), a desk, and a book. Mordo raised his hand and pointed into the room.

  “Bathe. Rest. Meditate, if you can,” he said. “The Ancient One will send for you.”

  Strange gathered himself and walked into the room as Mordo handed him a small card. Looking down, Strange saw one word scrawled in elaborate handwriting:

  SHAMBALLA

  “What’s this?” Strange asked. “My mantra?”

  “Wi-Fi password,” Mordo responded, deadpan. “We’re not savages.” Mordo turned and left the room, and Strange was at last alone with his thoughts. He walked over to the desk and looked at the book. It was bound in leather, and obviously very old. He flipped open the cover and couldn’t suppress a laugh when he saw a tablet computer inside—the “book” was just a cover.

  They are most definitely not savages, Strange thought.

  There was a small window off to one side, and Strange walked over to it. Taking the watch off his wrist, he looked once more at the inscription on its back.

  “‘Time will tell how much I love you,’” he said softly, reading the inscription. “Time will tell.”

  He thought of Christine and set the watch down on the windowsill.

  The sun shone through the Kamar-Taj central compound, and there was an absolute feeling of spring in the air. With it, Strange was sure he could also feel something he had not felt in a very long time: hope.

  After months spent traveling in the same shabby shirt and pants, Strange at last had a change of clothes. He now wore a gray uniform of tunic and pants. Mordo explained to him that gray was the color of the novice—a person just learning the ways of Kamar-Taj. It had been a long time since Stephen Strange had been a novice at anything.

 

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