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New York Sanctum.
Despair hung thick amid the shattered walls and broken rubble.
When Strange, Mordo, and Wong arrived, all they found was an apocalyptic scene.
The sky had been torn open, a colossal black-purple void gaping at the world. On the ground, buildings crumbled into sand, debris spiraling upward, pulled apart and consumed.
"It's over..."
Mordo's face was ashen, his voice trembling.
"Dormammu has descended. It's already too late."
Strange said nothing. His eyes burned with something that wasn't quite acceptance, he had only just resolved to carry the burden of protecting Earth.
Was this really how it ended?
"Looks like you need help."
A cool, clear voice cut through the chaos.
Hermione materialized out of thin air in front of all three of them.
She swept her gaze across the wreckage, took in the apocalyptic scene, and frowned.
"I'm gone a few hours and the Sanctum turns into this?"
She looked up at the vast black-purple void yawning in the sky and feigned shock.
"Holy crap — which absolute disaster summoned Dormammu?! What, they just decided life wasn't worth living anymore?!"
Mordo stared at her, eyes hollow with despair.
"Too late," he muttered, more to himself than anyone. "Too late..."
His faith had collapsed, not only because Earth stood on the edge of destruction, but because of what he'd learned about the Ancient One drawing power from the Dark Dimension.
"Hey, hey, hey." Hermione shot him a sharp look. "Drop the death wish talk."
"If you want to die that badly, feel free to handle it yourself right now. Some of us still plan on living."
As she spoke, her clothes shifted in an instant. The casual athletic wear was gone, replaced by a pitch-black wizard's robe.
"You..."
Strange stared at her. The image aligned slowly, overlapping with a figure buried somewhere in his memory, and his eyes went wide.
He finally placed her.
The Battle of New York. The mysterious witch who had single-handedly annihilated an entire alien army.
Strange felt something flicker to life in his chest, the faint, desperate warmth of a lifeline. He grabbed for it.
"You have a way to deal with Dormammu. Don't you?"
Hermione glanced at the Eye of Agamotto resting at his chest.
"A way? There might be one."
She paused, then shifted her tone entirely.
"That said — finishing off that old bastard for good isn't something I can manage alone. I'll need you to cooperate."
Strange didn't fully grasp the weight of those words, but Wong and Mordo had already cried out beside him:
"Impossible!"
"Dormammu is the Lord of the Dark Dimension. He is the Dark Dimension. Every Sorcerer Supreme in history could only drive him away, he cannot be killed."
"Even if you're the witch from New York, this cannot be done!"
Their voices were sharp with disbelief.
In their eyes, Hermione might be powerful. But she was still a mortal body. Dormammu was a dimensional god standing entirely outside the mortal realm. Extraterrestrial creatures and a dimensional god simply didn't exist on the same level. This wasn't even a comparable fight.
Hermione shrugged, unbothered.
"Things are already this bad. Trying costs us nothing." She looked between them. "Or would you rather sit here and wait to be devoured?"
Wong and Mordo fell silent.
They had nothing to say. At this point, what option was there besides throwing everything into it? Were they supposed to watch Earth die?
"What do we do?" Strange asked.
The corner of Hermione's mouth lifted. She beckoned him closer.
"You just need to... do this, then this, and then that..."
She leaned in and murmured quietly into his ear.
Strange's expression slowly, progressively twisted.
This...
...
At the boundary where the Dark Dimension pressed against Earth, space buckled and chaos roiled.
Dormammu's colossal face, an abstract expanse of nebular dust and ancient hunger, bore down on the planet, greed flickering in his eyes like dying stars being consumed.
"At last... this day has finally come!"
His voice reverberated across dimensions.
Earth's magical energy density was nearly unparalleled in the universe. Once he devoured it, his power would climb to heights he had not yet reached.
Then a figure came streaking upward from below.
Strange hovered in midair.
"Dormammu! I've come to bargain!"
Dormammu looked down at him. A mocking smile spread across the vast, shifting face.
"Bargain?"
His voice rolled like distant thunder.
"A mortal. What standing do you have to bargain with me?"
"The Ancient One is dead. What power do insects like you have left to stop anything?"
A crisp voice broke in: "There really isn't much to bargain about."
Hermione appeared beside Strange, out of nothing.
She looked up at Dormammu, the corner of her mouth lifting.
"And even if you wanted to talk, I'm not letting you walk away. Dormammu, I've come to kill you."
Dormammu paused.
Then laughter, vast, booming, shaking the Dark Dimension to its edges.
"Ha! Little girl, you are the funniest thing I've heard in centuries!"
His gaze swept over her. "For making me laugh that hard, I've decided to devour you last. Consider it a reward."
Then his eyes sharpened. Something had caught his attention.
"You... are not a mystic arts sorcerer from Kamar-Taj."
Puzzlement threaded through his voice.
"You carry none of the dimensional energies they do. Compared to them, you feel more like... a dimensional god yourself."
His tone shifted to something closer to surprise.
"Though your power is more concentrated. Refined. Contained entirely within that human body without drawing from any external source."
This small creature was nothing like the sorcerers. She resembled something else entirely. Something more like him.
"So." Hermione tilted her head, speaking the most dangerous words in the most pleasant tone. "In appreciation of how hard I've worked to amuse you, how about you just hand over your life? Fair trade."
Dormammu was briefly speechless.
He had crossed countless dimensions. Devoured endless worlds. Not once had anything, mortal or otherwise, looked up at him and said that.
A tiny human, demanding his life.
Dormammu's amusement evaporated.
He opened his massive maw. A violet-black beam of energy erupted toward Strange.
BOOM!
Special Beam Cannon, Hermione noted internally, with a sense of faint appreciation.
Strange didn't manage a single reaction before the beam swallowed him whole, reducing him to ash in an instant. His eyes held one final, deeply aggrieved expression even as they went dark.
She's the one who said it. Why are you blasting me?!
"Now that," Hermione said, nodding with approval, "is how a proper attack should look."
She seemed entirely indifferent to Strange's death.
Dormammu's giant face contorted with savage delight, his laughter crashing through the void.
"Ha ha ha ha — little girl, you have made me angry!"
"Demon god? You're barely even that, trapped in a tiny body, no dimension of your own, nothing!"
"I was going to save you for last. I've changed my mind!"
"I'll devour you first. Your flavor will be far more interesting than that sorcerer's!"
His voice dripped with greed. He spoke as though she was already a meal he'd half-finished.
Hermione said nothing.
She simply watched him.
Dormammu took her silence for fear and grew more gleeful by the second.
"Die!"
He opened his maw again, vast and hungry, and lunged.
Hermione raised her wand.
At its tip, a cold green light bloomed.
"Avada Kedavra."
➤ Next: Transcended Time, But Didn't Quite Transcend It
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