Your name is Stephen Strange and you are running for your life.

Sprinting might be the more apt word, if your are being honest, but you are also too busy doing said sprinting to deliberate about what to call it. You snap your hands out, sling ring humming to life, and begin carving a gateway to the real world a few dozen feet in front of you. Your plan is that you will reach it right as the spell completes itself.

Kaecilius' plan, unfortunately, moves faster than your plan, and when the whole city suddenly tips sideways and gravity jerks you in a completely new direction, you could scream with fear and frustration. You remember this from your fight in the hallway, and it was bad enough on that small scale.

You really, really do not want to see what Kaecilius will do with the whole of New York at his command.

But it seems that you do not have a choice in the matter, because (as you run up the side of a skyscraper) the cityscape around you is already contorting to Kaecilius' will. Within seconds you are standing amidst an impossible concrete, glass, and metal jungle that morphs even further as you watch and in the process disregards everything you have ever considered dependable about reality.

It hits you, suddenly (and a bit too late, in your opinion) that this was a horrible mistake. In the periphery of your vision you see Mordo turn towards you with incredulity practically oozing from his body language, but then gravity switches again and you are both sent falling into the twisting city below.

Everything blurs, now. You run and dodge past the changing pieces of the landscape and try as best you can to craft a gateway to escape, but something always happens to cut you off or disrupt your concentration before you can reach it. Every now and then you catch sight of Kaecilius and his followers behind you, and it unnerves you how close they are getting. But since the Mirror Dimension is folding to their will, not yours, you can only suppose that it makes sense. Regardless of how much you wish otherwise.

By this point, New York has become unrecognizable. Cement soars over your head in the same manner that birds do, while metal railing under your feet suddenly becomes convinced it is a trampoline. An entire city block rushes past and makes the sound of a train, while you spot an actual train about a mile away being used as a sidewalk – upside down. Kaecilius is pursuing you on a diagonal tangent that is in front of you but somehow moving in the opposite direction, and the zealot who is actually behind you is running on what you perceive to be the ceiling even though they clearly perceive it to be the floor.

The Mirror Dimension give you a headache.

You run forwards in a line that is also a zigzag because of the way the plating beneath your feet is moving, and you have to concentrate on keeping your balance enough that you do not notice Kaecilius has caught up to you until he tackles you sideways (up?), reclaims his sling ring from you and manifests a shattered spear in his hands in order to stab you. There is a small part of your brain that is complaining, 'Seriously, again!?' but most of you is searching for a way out of the choke-hold he has on your neck and ignores this.

Right before Kaecilius moves for his finishing blow, though, the plating you are lying on jerks and detaches from the rest in a way that feels indefinably different from the way that things have been warping up until this point. Pieces of streets and churches move and shift and suddenly, the Ancient One is standing on a tile mosaic with a spell over her hands and a look of ice on her face. An arena forms from the chaos of the Mirror Dimension and you find yourself panting on one end with Mordo looking equally exhausted beside you, and Kaecilius with his followers on the other. The Ancient One stands adjacent to both of you and pins Kaecilius with a Look, one which radiates disappointment and anger.

There is also, you notice, a mark between her eyes. A mark which you recognize, because it is the same mark between Kaecilius' eyes. The mark of Dormammu.

Even though you knew, logically, what she had done, the sight of it still hits you like a punch in the gut. Mordo is taking it even harder – he stares at the Ancient One with an expression of pure betrayal.

It's true, he whispers, and the Ancient One's eyes shift to him briefly. You catch a fleeting look of regret on her face before she turns back to Kaecilius and the ice hardens again – she is going to face him, you realize.

You prudently move out of the way.

Kaecilius, the Ancient One says, and the ice crumbles to reveal sorrow. She must have taken his changing sides quite badly, you decide. It must be painful, for a teacher to lose a student like this. But Kaecilius either does not see what you do, or he ignores it, because he does not return the Ancient One's feelings. On the contrary, he only seems to grow more confrontational, and he verbally lashes out at the Ancient One. He rants at her, about how she kept the secret of eternal life from him and how she never truly helped him to heal – all things you have heard him say before, back in the Sanctum. The Ancient One, for her part, tries to reason with him, to bring him back, to make him see.

You want to tell her that he is too far gone to be reasoned with, but all you can bring yourself to do is watch. This standoff between them feels dangerous, as though it will break at any moment, at any trigger. You do not want to be that trigger.

But you do not need to worry about that, because Kaecilius becomes the trigger when he creates another shattered-reality spear in his hands and stalks forward, his followers behind him. In response, the Ancient One's face solidifies back into neutral ice and spells flash on her hands.

It is three against one, and somehow you think that the odds are unfairly balanced against the three. The Ancient One moves like a snake, bending as though her spine has no real limit and hijacking Kaecilius' matter folding to use against him. You can see why she holds the title of Sorcerer Supreme. She is incredible.

But she is not immune to cheap tactics, and Kaecilius is anything but a fair fighter. When he creates a gateway out of the Mirror Dimension, you first think he is retreating. When he forms another shattered spear in his hands, you are confused.

When he runs his own follower through in order to stab the Ancient One on the other side, you are horrified. And when his follower slumps dead to the ground and Kaecilius kicks the Ancient One through the active portal, you are running after her before you even pause to consider your actions.

More fear hits as you pass through the gateway, because Kaecilius has linked it to a spot several hundred feet above New York, and the Ancient One is already halfway down and falling ever faster. She hits a glass overhang and crashes straight through, then collides with the concrete sidewalk below and lies there motionless – and all you can do is watch it happen. You are kneeling at her side moments later, desperately feeling for a pulse and frantically cataloguing her injuries – multiple lacerations, heavy impact trauma, irregular heartbeat, loss of consciousness, deep abdominal puncture wound and that's just what you can find without equipment – then two of the symptoms come back and hit you in the face. Irregular heartbeat. Heavy impact trauma. You curse viciously inside your head, because sometimes you really wish you didn't have so much medical knowledge. She has severe brain damage, likely from the impact with the concrete, and it's causing a neurogenic stunned myocardium. This is bad. If her nerve damage isn't treated, her heart is going to continue to malfunction and it will kill her.

You need to get help. You glance up, searching for literally anything, and your eyes find a familiar sign down the street: New York Hospital. You could laugh with relief, if it were not so very out-of-place and inappropriate at the moment.

Your name is Stephen Strange, and it looks like you will be seeing Christine again sooner than you thought.


Good glory this movie got angsty at this part. I didn't even realize until I had to write it out. I mean, look at this mess!

Changeling


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