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Doctor Strange Lore

Astral Prisoner

Very little of consequence happened in the realms of the arcane without Stephen Strange taking note. He sensed unusual emanations from Latveria over a period of weeks, and eventually Strange decided that if Victor von Doom was creating such an obvious series of disturbances, a little astral surveillance was in order.

"Wong," he said. "I'll be on the astral plane for a few hours. I hope no disaster befalls the Sanctum while I'm indisposed."

"I'll handle whatever comes up," Wong answered.

Strange retreated to the innermost chamber of the Sanctum, near the collections of artifacts and relics from the Vishanti and other eminent magical beings. Here he felt most at home, most centered...most powerful. Here it was safest to perform an astral projection.

He closed his eyes, mouthed the spell without speaking aloud, and felt his spirit lift out of his body and drift across the invisible barrier separating the material dimensions—ordinary space-time—from the endless realm of the astral plane.

Strange oriented himself in this arcane dimension, where things like direction and location operated on principles unknown to ordinary material existence, before beginning his astral journey toward Latveria, intending to observe Doomstadt from a prudent distance.

He could see Doomstadt's astral presence ahead, its occult energies spreading in waves from an intense locus of magical power. Victor was up to something, that much was certain...

The locus flared into a blinding sphere, casting off tendrils of astral energy as it spun.

It flattened into a torus, spinning ever faster—and then it tore itself apart in an explosion that hit Strange's astral self with a force that nearly shredded him into tiny particles of paralyzed awareness.

A wrenching distortion blasted through the entirety of the astral space around Strange, nearly severing his link to his mortal body back in the Sanctum Sanctorum. He locked in on that distant tug, using the anchor of his physical self to keep his projected astral form coherent as the energy tsunami scattered the other projections.

For a moment, he felt the astral link stretched to its ultimate thinness.

He sensed the void that consumed all other projections as they were severed from their physical bodies. It spread around him, infinite and hungry, waiting for his astral soul to dissolve into its emptiness—

No! Strange fought back. He closed his eyes and let the Eye of Agamotto see for him. It showed him the shining thread of his connection to the physical world, and Strange devoted all his power to keeping that link intact.

He felt countless other Stephen Stranges, overlaid on him, radiating the same emotions he felt—confusion, resolve, anger at the thought that some malevolent force had unleashed this disaster.

The wave of distortion reached across timelines, across dimensions, tangling them and dissolving them into one another.

Strange felt the boundaries of his mind grow porous, his soul beginning to leak away. Only the most desperate measures—only dark magic—would save him.

He reached out into the void itself, tapping its negative energy and working an enchantment forbidden to any student of the Ancient One. He would pay a price for it, but Strange knew no other way to survive.

From the very material of the void, Strange called into being a tiny sphere of pure psychic energy, poured himself into it, let it expand to contain him and form an invulnerable barrier.

Against the emptiness of the void, it held firm, and Strange felt the edges of his mind knit themselves back together again. His sensation of the other Stephen Stranges dimmed and faded away.

How many of them had managed to do what he had done, and how many had been erased from existence?

He would never know. All that mattered was that when the wave of distortion had passed, Strange could still feel the link to his body. His astral self was intact, and so was the physical Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme.

But something was different. He was—could it be? Was it possible?

His astral self was still linked to his physical body, but his physical body was no longer within the Sanctum Sanctorum...and around the Sanctum Sanctorum, New York had changed. All this he could feel even across the vast interplanar distance.

Forbidden magic always exacted its price.

The shock of this brought Strange to the edge of the void again, and again he drew himself back. He was Sorcerer Supreme. Earth—all Earths—depended on him, and he would meet his obligations. He would return to Earth, whichever Earth this was, and begin to restore the order that had been so cataclysmically destroyed.

That would mean a confrontation with Doom. Possibly more than one Doom? Strange's arcane senses, attuned to the presence of other powerful magicians, picked out...two Dooms? More?

He would not be certain until he returned to the material plane. Then he would begin the work of sorting out what Doom had done, and undoing it.

It would be a grim task. Doom was a formidable enemy.

But so was Doctor Strange.

He began the enchantment to return himself to his physical body — but before he could complete it, the vision of Agamotto's Eye failed him.

The link to his body dimmed and was lost. New York was lost, the Sanctum Sanctorum was lost. The astral plane was just as chaotic and entangled as the material worlds it linked. All were devastated and transformed by Doom's cataclysm.

How much time passed in the aftermath of this shock, Strange did not know. Measuring time in the astral plane was no simple task under ordinary circumstances, and these were anything but. He held himself together, remained coherent, seized his fear and used his will to shape it into resolve.

Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme of Earth, was no raw initiate.

He would not panic, even though centuries might have passed in the physical world and the very fabric of reality frayed to nothingness around him—although currently the problem was not nothingness, but rather too many realities, overlaid and entangled like wreckage when a great wave recedes.

Each bit of that wreckage belonged somewhere. It was part of a pattern. If he could but discern that pattern...

Strange reached out with the senses only a magical adept possessed. Again he began to perceive other Stephen Stranges...and other Sorcerer Supremes.

Some seemed familiar to him, universes where Jericho Drumm or Daimon Hellstrom or his own daughter Sofia had become Sorcerer Supreme. Others were too outlandish to contemplate, cosmic jokes he passed over as if he had received a direct insult from the universe itself. All the while, he tried to reestablish a connection to himself, to the New York he could sense all around him, but from which he was barred.

All the while, worlds spun around their suns.

And then, a different sensation—A world unraveling under the stress of Doom's dimensional rupture, held together by a power that was not the same arcane might one received from the Vishanti, or training under the Ancient One at Kamar-Taj.

In this world, the chaos of dissolution itself was transformed into an intricate and incredible structure, holding the world's boundaries fast against the void beyond. It was an undertaking that must drain immense power from the adept who tried to maintain it, he thought. Few could hope to begin it, and even fewer to keep it going.

He touched the chaos structure, and it rang in his mind with a familiar identity behind it. Here was his chance.

Strange poured all of himself into one coherent plea, not knowing how much longer he would be able to maintain his own boundaries in the vast formlessness of this entangled astral plane. She was not of his world, perhaps, but at least she was of a world. He needed to find a way back to his body.

He pushed against the structure where it penetrated into the astral plane, following its contours until he had located her.

Would she know him? Had too much time passed? Was the name Strange utterly forgotten, or...

Wanda, he cried out telepathically. Wanda, it's Stephen Strange. I need your help.