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Kamar-Taj, The Training Courtyard.
The air was thin and crisp, smelling of burning incense and eternal snow. Stephen Strange stood apart from the other novices, his face slick with sweat despite the biting cold. His hands—scarred, trembling, and useless—moved in frantic, jerky circles.
Bzzt. Fzzzt.
A few pathetic orange sparks sputtered into existence and died instantly, like a damp firework. Around him, other sorcerers were opening sparkling, geometric gateways to deserts, forests, and cities.
Hermione stood on the balcony beside the Ancient One, watching the former neurosurgeon flail. She rolled her eyes so hard it physically hurt.
"What kind of taste do you have?" she complained, leaning against the wooden railing. "You picked him? He looks like a windmill fighting a losing battle against the wind."
The Ancient One sipped her tea, her expression serene and unbothered. "He is the most suitable, Hermione. Stubbornness is a virtue in our line of work. But… he needs some guidance."
Hermione pursed her lips. "Guidance. Right."
She walked down the steps, her boots clicking on the stone, and circled Strange like a shark inspecting a drowning sailor. She looked him up and down with critical, unimpressed eyes.
"Hey," she said, breaking his concentration. "Did the Ancient One give you the opportunity to 'open your eyes to see the world' yet? You know, the psychedelic tea trip?"
Strange paused, wiping sweat from his brow with a trembling hand. He nodded instinctively.
Hermione narrowed her eyes, leaning in close. "When you were 'daydreaming' through the multiverse, did you see a… well, a particularly sleazy face? Giant? Purple? Rippling with evil dimensions?"
A blurry, terrifying image flashed through Strange's mind. A face the size of a galaxy, distorted and hungry, staring at him from beyond the veil of reality. Just recalling it sent a chill down his spine that had nothing to do with the mountain air.
He nodded again, slowly.
Hermione smiled with grim satisfaction. "Very good. Remember that face. You'll be seeing each other again soon. It's a date."
She patted Strange on the shoulder, her tone dripping with schadenfreude. "Good luck, newbie mage. Try not to die."
Strange looked completely bewildered. He turned to the Ancient One, who was watching from above.
"Is this child one of yours too?" he asked, exasperated. "I've met Wong, I've met Mordo… but who is this?"
The Ancient One shook her head, her tone flat. "She is not a sorcerer of Kamar-Taj. She is our guest. Though she behaves like she owns the place."
Guest? Strange was even more confused. How could a secret order of sorcerers allow a teenage girl to wander around offering ominous warnings? And she seemed to treat the Sorcerer Supreme like an old drinking buddy.
Who exactly is this little girl?
But he pushed the thought away. His ego was bruising, and his hands were aching. The most important thing was to master the magic and heal his nerves. He turned back to the empty air, raising his trembling hands again.
"With your drawing skills, you'll never be able to open a teleportation portal in your lifetime," Hermione's voice cut through his focus. She crossed her arms, tilting her head. "You look like you're trying to scrub a window, not bend space."
A vein throbbed in Strange's forehead. He was a Doctor of Medicine. A genius. The best in his field. And he was being roasted by a child in a bathrobe.
"This isn't my fault!" Strange argued, his voice rising as he tried to suppress his humiliation. "My hands are injured! The nerves are severed! I can't stabilize the somatic components! If I could just hold them steady, I would—"
He wanted to say, "Otherwise, it would have succeeded long ago," but he stopped. Hermione was looking at him with an ambiguous, pitying smile that made the words stick in his throat.
"You'd better listen to her, Stephen," the Ancient One's voice drifted down, leaving no room for doubt.
Strange was stunned. He looked up, betrayed.
"Hey, you." Hermione walked up to him and poked him hard in the chest. "Could you stop straining like that? You look constipated. Magic is about mental concentration, not muscle tension. The gestures are just an aid, a crutch for the weak. Do you understand?"
She tapped her own temple. "It's in here. You're too obsessed with your broken hands. You think they define you. They don't."
Strange turned pale. Her words struck a nerve deeper than any scalpel. He wanted to argue, to defend his medical knowledge, but he couldn't shake the feeling she was right. Still, his arrogance wouldn't let him fold.
"You make it sound so easy," Strange scoffed, forcing a smile. "Since it has nothing to do with hands, why don't you try it? Without using your hands?"
He refused to believe it. Every sorcerer here used the Sling Ring gestures. It was fundamental physics.
Before he could finish his sentence—
WHOOSH—
Hermione didn't move a muscle. She didn't raise her arms. She didn't chant.
A perfect, golden ring of eldritch sparks ignited in the air in front of her. Through the aperture, the warm, candlelit interior of the Kamar-Taj Library was clearly visible.
Strange's expression froze. His jaw practically unhinged.
He had just issued a challenge, and she had answered it with the casual ease of blinking. It was a humiliation of the highest order.
Strange fell silent. He turned to the Ancient One, pointing a shaking finger at the girl. "Isn't she a guest? How does she know Kamar-Taj magic better than the masters?"
"She is an exception," the Ancient One said simply. "To the laws of physics. And common sense."
Strange looked dejected. He was worse than a little girl. It was the first time since the accident that he felt truly, intellectually small.
"Looks like you need some motivation," Hermione said softly. Her lips curled up into a smile that was not kind. It was the smile of a predator who had just decided to play with its food.
Before he could react, Hermione grabbed his arm.
"Hey! What are you doing—?"
CRACK.
The world twisted. The pressure dropped instantly. The air vanished.
When Strange opened his eyes, the stone courtyard was gone. He was floating in the blue-black gradient of the stratosphere, 10,000 meters above sea level. The wind roared like a jet engine, whipping his clothes and freezing the sweat on his face.
He looked down. The Himalayas were jagged white teeth far below. Kamar-Taj was a microscopic speck.
"Where… where is this?!" Strange screamed, his voice snatched away by the wind.
"This is the cruising altitude of a commercial airliner," Hermione shouted over the gale, smiling brightly. "If you fall from here, terminal velocity means you have about… three minutes before impact?"
She tilted her head, calculating. "Maybe less. You're quite dense."
She leaned in close. "Either you successfully open a portal before you become a red stain on the mountain, or you die. Simple physics!"
Hermione raised her arm in a cheerful 'fighting' gesture. "Come on! You can do it!"
CRACK.
She vanished.
Gravity took over.
"AHHHHHHHHH!"
Stephen Strange plummeted. He flailed in the thin air, tumbling uncontrollably.
"You brat!"
"I'm not done with you yet!"
"YOU JUST WAIT!"
"@#￥%...!"
Back in the safety of the courtyard, the Ancient One looked at Hermione, who had reappeared with a pop.
"Your method is a bit too extreme," the Sorcerer Supreme noted, sipping her tea.
Hermione blinked, looking completely innocent. "I have to speed things up. I want you to die… cough, I mean, ascend to a higher plane of existence sooner. Efficiency is key."
The Ancient One sighed, withdrawing her gaze from the multiverse. She looked at Hermione's hand. "If you want him to succeed, you cannot take his Sling Ring away."
Hermione paused. She looked down.
There, clutched in her hand, shimmering with golden magic, was Stephen Strange's Sling Ring. She had grabbed his arm to teleport him and accidentally ripped the device off his finger in the process.
"Oh dear," Hermione said, sticking out her tongue. "Whoops. My bad. Force of habit."
CRACK.
She disappeared again.
One second later. CRACK.
She reappeared in front of the Ancient One, dusting off her hands. "It's okay. I tossed it to him. He still has a minute of freefall left. That's plenty of time for a genius."
The Ancient One looked at Hermione, utterly speechless. This child was an agent of chaos.
They both looked up at the sky.
A dark shadow was descending rapidly, growing larger by the second. A high-pitched screaming sound became audible.
Stephen Strange was falling like a stone. He was flailing his arms wildly, sparks flying from his fingers as he desperately tried to visualize a destination.
Focus! Focus! Not the hands! The mind!
The ground rushed up to meet him. The snow-capped peaks became jagged rocks. The rocks became distinct boulders.
Fifty meters. Thirty meters. Ten meters.
Just as he was about to become a permanent fixture of the landscape, a spark caught.
FWOOSH!
A ragged, desperate golden halo tore open in the air mere feet above the ground. Strange fell through it, tumbling out onto a pile of hay in the stables on the other side of the world.