Chapter 172: Strange Meets Mordo for the First Time
"I've been waiting so long the flowers have wilted. Do you have any idea how valuable my time is?"
Ethan had barely reached the bottom of the stairs before Strange's voice hit him.
"Relax." Ethan picked up a piece of bread from the breakfast spread and started eating. "Good things are worth waiting for. Give me five minutes."
Strange stared at him with the expression of a man who had pushed back three surgical consultations, fielded forty-seven missed calls from the hospital, and spent the night in a neighborhood that had, until recently, been on the receiving end of federal military action — all on the strength of a cryptic promise from his college roommate.
He did not leave. He had known Ethan long enough to know that leaving was not how this worked.
If it had been anyone else, he would have walked out before the second minute. But Ethan was different. Ethan was the only person Strange knew who could look at him with complete awareness of exactly how insufferable he was being and continue to find him worth the effort. That was not a common quality. Strange held onto it.
Also, the portal from yesterday was still very much in his head.
Ethan finished eating without apparent urgency, stood, and said, "Let's go."
Strange was already moving toward the door.
"Where are you going?" Ethan asked.
"My car is outside."
"Your car."
"Yes. To drive to—"
"Strange." Ethan's voice had the patient quality of someone explaining something to a person who is almost certainly going to get there on their own if given another two seconds. "Where do you think Kamar-Taj is?"
Strange opened his mouth. Closed it.
He had, in fact, been assuming it was somewhere driveable. Nepal hadn't occurred to him because he hadn't asked, and he hadn't asked because he'd been operating in regular-person logic, which assumed that destinations were accessible by vehicle.
Ethan had already raised his hands. The familiar gesture — circular, practiced — and a golden ring opened in the air in front of them, crackling at the edges, impossibly real.
Strange looked at it.
"That's what you used yesterday," he said. "During the — the warhead thing."
"Same skill."
"And this goes to—"
"Kamar-Taj. Yes." Ethan stepped through. "Coming?"
Strange followed, because Strange had spent his entire adult life being the most capable person in the room and was now confronting the specific disorientation of someone who operated at a level he couldn't fully parse yet, and it was the most interesting thing that had happened to him in years.
Kamar-Taj.
Ethan had seen images of it in his previous life — the films, the establishing shots, the particular atmosphere of ancient stonework and mystical tradition tucked into a mountain landscape that shouldn't have been as beautiful as it was.
The reality was better.
He stood in the courtyard and looked around with the mild awareness that this was genuinely his first time here, and that the Ancient One had been in his phone contacts for months and he'd never actually visited.
Strange was doing a full rotation, taking everything in, his expression cycling through surprise and recognition and the particular recalibration of someone whose model of the world is updating faster than he's ready for.
"This is incredible," he said. "Is that — is this Chinese martial arts?"
A group of student sorcerers in plain robes were running forms in the training yard. Their movements had the precise, grounded quality of something that had been refined over a very long time.
"Close enough," Ethan said. "You'll learn it."
"I thought you said this was about superpowers."
"It's magic. The robes are part of the deal."
"They look like monks."
"They are monks. Sort of." Ethan shrugged. "Did you want a pointy hat and a broomstick?"
A voice came from across the yard before Strange could answer.
"Is that what you imagined?" The speaker walked toward them with a calm, measured step — a Black monk with the bearing of someone who had been in this place for a very long time and had earned his place in it through that duration. "Black robes, an oversized leather hat, flying on a broom through the night sky?"
Strange's mouth closed quickly. "That's not — I wasn't—"
"I'm Mordo." The man stopped in front of them. His expression was composed. His eyes moved between Ethan and Strange with an assessment that was too practiced to be casual. "Why have you come to Kamar-Taj?"
"We're here to see the Ancient One," Ethan said. "I'm Ethan Cross. This is my friend Strange."
At the name Ethan Cross, something shifted in Mordo's face. Not the assessment — the assessment was still running, still precise — but underneath it, something that wasn't quite welcome. The smile that appeared was correct. The eyes weren't entirely behind it.
Interesting.
Ethan had the new ability in his inventory and it took him approximately three seconds to decide to use it.
He reached — carefully, briefly, the way you test a door before opening it — and touched the surface of what Mordo was actually thinking.
So this is Ethan Cross. The Ancient One's outside consultant. The one she chose over anyone from within these walls to handle multiversal incursions.
What I have done for this place — years of training, years of discipline, years of proving myself — and she goes outside for this?
My seniority. My ability. By any reasonable measure, the role should have come to me.
Ethan withdrew cleanly.
He understood immediately. Mordo's grievance wasn't with Ethan specifically — Ethan was the symptom. The actual wound was the Ancient One's choices, and the belief, held for a long time and with some justification, that Mordo had earned a trust that kept being extended to other people instead.
What Mordo didn't know — what Ethan couldn't say — was that the person he was actually going to be competing with was standing right next to Ethan, currently looking at the training yard with the focused hunger of a man who had just discovered something he wants very badly.
Strange is the threat, Mordo, Ethan thought. I'm just the opening act.
He also noted, with mild amusement, that in at least some parallel timelines Mordo had eventually gotten what he wanted — the Sorcerer Supreme title, a seat on the Illuminati — by routes that had been considerably less pleasant than this one.
Strange stepped forward. "Mordo — we'd like to see the Ancient One. We have something important to discuss with her."
The sentence landed on Mordo the way a first impression lands when everything about it registers as a challenge. The confidence, the directness, the implicit assumption that I have important things to say and you will arrange for me to say them — Strange wasn't trying to be aggressive. He was just being Strange. Mordo experienced it as a declaration of war.
This one, Mordo thought, his expression going perfectly still. This one is going to be a problem.
He breathed in. Breathed out. Reminded himself of the discipline that had gotten him this far.
"The Ancient One is expecting you," he said. "Follow me."
He turned and walked. Ethan and Strange fell in behind him.
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