"Thanos…" I muttered once we had fallen into an unnerved and thoughtful silence. Dan looked slowly back at the stack of books as I looked back over my shoulder at the dimly lit window behind me.
"Do you think there's anything on him in these texts?" He asked doubtfully. I shrugged deeply, wincing as I caught myself moving my extremely sore arm again.
"I don't know, but I still feel awfully underprepared for when we meet him. If he's any worse than the other guys we've seen, and I'm pretty positive that he is…" I trailed off, leaving the rest of my sentence hanging in the open and Dan nodded in awed understanding.
"Strange said that we were doing okay so far…right? As long as we try to stay on track with our speed training maybe we'll actually be able to pull this whole thing off." Dan said hopefully. His expression betrayed his sunny predictions and I shook my head with a dry smirk.
"Sure."
As if to conclude our downcast hopes, there was a low rumble that shook throughout the calm atmosphere of the library. I looked around hurriedly, the mental exhaustion from my mind trip still fresh in my body. Dan had thankfully instinctively flashed his golden mandalas into position but my head ached so terribly that it took mine a moment to flare to life over my fists. Both of us stared around wildly looking for the source of the quieting rumble and just like that, the commotion was over. Dan and I stood there almost back to back scanning the room around us for several long moments before relenting to stand down.
"What was that?" I asked rhetorically, still glancing around for anything that looked out of place in the warm light of the lamps scattering the library. Dan took a step away from me and the slight movement of his foot on the wood floor beneath us squelched oddly.
"I don't know…but it didn't sound like one of those alien spaceships that time…" He said quietly. I shot a look at the floor as Dan took another step towards his armchair to peer around of the large bookshelves. The wood rippled slightly when his slippered foot left the surface and I squinted down at it critically as his foot made another soft squelching noise when it reached its new standing spot.
"Um…Daniel?" I asked, pointing down at his feet. He hesitated before he took another step and turned around to see what I was referring to. When he followed the direction I was looking, he frowned deeply in confusion and tapped his foot on the polished wooden floor once more. Ripples spread slowly from where his foot lightly hit the surface and my strained mind finally registered what was going on.
"It's wet." I said softly. "The floor is wet."
"…Why?" Dan asked, a confused and slightly disgusted look on his face. I shook my head and then glanced down at my own slippered feet. I lightly traced my right foot in a wide semicircle in front of me and wasn't surprised when an inch or so of liquid rippled and signified the disruption on the floor.
The confused moment was then interrupted by the sound of the library door slamming shut joltingly past the numerous shelves across the room. Dan and I looked in the direction of the noise then immediately rushed around the corner, splashing in the inches of water that covered the wooden floor to see the closed door. Just out of curiosity, I tried the doorknob and was only a fraction of surprised to find that we were locked in the vast library. I turned around to face Dan's worried expression with an amused smirk of my own.
"Yeah…we're locked in here. Guess Wong is telling us that he won't let us leave until we get some actual studying done." I quipped lightly. Dan looked unsure as he glanced down at the bronze doorknob behind me.
"Then why is the room filling up with water?" He asked, placing a hand sarcastically on his hip. I eyeballed the floor and noticed that the water level had risen up nearly to our ankles in the few moments since we'd noticed the phenomenon.
"I'm not sure." I said, feigning nonchalance. Dan moved away from the locked library door and trekked back over toward the small sitting area where we had been reading. I slowly followed him, sloshing through the four or five inches of cool water, frowning in confusion and wonder at the situation. By the time I had reached Dan's side where he was flipping hurriedly through a few of the books in the stack, the water level had risen to above my ankles and my thin slippers were soaked and weighing down my feet.
"There has to be something in here we can find to reverse this..." Dan muttered, slinging through books and scrolls in search of answers. I watched him in stunned silence for a few seconds and then turned around to survey the room. The water was seeping upward, nearly halfway covering the lowest shelves of books on the floor level. The water had crawled up and covered the legs of the armchairs by our side, readying to seep into the soft, comfortable cushions of the furniture.
"Hey…this wasn't here before." I said thoughtfully as I nearly waded over to a nearby bookshelf. Dan looked back in my direction, a disbelieving look on his face.
"Alex, what are you doing? Get back here and help me!"
I reached the shelf by one of the wall lamps where I had noticed a brief shine of light. I reached upward and grasped the small object responsible for catching my eye and I studied it, squinting in confusion at the oddly designed ring in my palm.
"Whatever…you're no help at all!" Dan shouted angrily, turning back to his books. I ignored him as I tried to place where I had seen the two-fingered ring before. I could feel that the water level had started to rise slightly quicker than before, already sloshing around my knees.
"Hey Dan…look for anything about an artifact that looks like this." I said, my voice strangely calm as I turned around and headed back to him. He frantically looked up and tried to take the ring from me but his fumbling hands knocked it out of my palm and into the rising water that pooled near our waists by this point.
"Oh my God…where did it go?!" Dan exclaimed, his voice shaking.
I fixed him with a steely, annoyed look before I leaned over and felt around on the slick wooden floor underwater by my side where the small splash had sounded. My brow suddenly furrowed with worry and I ducked my head underneath the surface and opened my eyes to scan the floor better. It was eerily silent under the water, and I waded around carefully for a moment, dragging my hand along the wooden floor before my fingers finally grasped the small ring. I stood back up and noticed that in just the mere moments I had been looking for the ring, the water level had reached my armpits. Dan was standing in one of the armchairs holding the book on artifacts, flipping hurriedly through the pages.
"Find anything yet?!" I called up to him quickly. In the armchair, the water only came up to his midsection and I offered the ring up for him to examine as he looked for anything about it. He shook his head, muttering to himself incoherently. "Daniel!"
"Shut up for a second, Alexander…" He retorted, mocking my calling him by his full name. "I can't think with this much pressure!"
"Calm down first and then think! We've got all the time in the world, here!" I said bitingly. His jaw clenched angrily and his page turning grew only slightly slower as he stopped to scan the passages in front of him. I kicked off of the floor and floated lazily on my back to show him that we weren't in any immediate danger. "See? We're good."
"We are not good." Dan muttered angrily as he nodded toward the other arm chair bobbing alongside him. Books and scrolls littered the water's surface along with the table with the lamp on it which had come unplugged.
"Worse comes to worse, we can kick a window open or something." I suggested lightly. I floated in the water, scanning the ring and kicking myself for not remembering where I had seen it before.
"It's gotta be a Sling Ring!" Dan blurted out, holding the book up over the water where it had risen up to his shoulders as he still stood in the armchair.
"A Sling Ring?" I repeated softly, the name somehow and unexplainably familiar to me. "That sounds like a really odd name for an 'ancient artifact' but…okay. That has to be it."
Dan looked at me over the book where he held it and waved me over towards him. The frantic motion that he made caused the armchair's wooden legs to slide on the slick, wet wooden floor beneath him and he was tossed into the water with a surprised cry.
"Alex! Alex, we need to hurry!" He shouted once he had broken the surface. He swan over to me, and I scrambled to touch the floor with my slippered feet but the water was too deep.
"Come on! Maybe we can kick the door in…" I called, closing my fist around the Sling Ring and leading the way back towards the library entrance, past floating ruined books and scrolls. The water was almost level with the lamps imbedded in the walls and I knew that the wiring would probably short-circuit at any second, casting us in complete darkness.
We reached the door, where only a foot or two of the door was exposed above the surface of the water and I quickly dove down to try the knob once more. I braced my feet against the heavy wooden door and the sliver of wall beside it and pulled on the small handle with as much strength as I could muster, my injured shoulder screaming with white hot pain. After I knew that wouldn't work, I swam down to the floor and felt around the bottom of the door to see if the flow of water was seeping through there. I slipped the Sling Ring on the first two fingers on my left hand and reached underneath the bottom of the door with my right. My eyes widened in surprise as I oddly felt the water just end and shift to dry air on the opposite side of the door. A sharp pain landed on my outstretched fingers and I let out a shout of protest as I jerked my hand away from the bottom of the door and kicked back up to the water's surface.
"What the hell?!" I shouted once I'd caught my breath. Dan looked at me worriedly from where he had his fists pressed against the door, and I noticed that we only had another three feet or so of space before the room was fully submerged.
"What happened?!" He stammered, spitting water out of his mouth as he was frantically treading water.
"Something on the other side of the door…" I said roughly, aiming a firm kick against the wooden door before swimming across the room back toward where the armchairs and table bobbed on the surface. I swam past the floating furniture and threw the random books out of my path as I went for the window. The heavy drapes floated outwards, exposing the window for me and I oddly thought that the long haunting looking drapes opened out toward me as if to pull me into a crushing hug. I shook my head to clear it, panting with the effort of my speedy swim.
As I reached the window, I prepared to duck under the water but before I could, a rushing wave shot past me and then retreated. The extended drapes fell back to the sides of the large picture window I was floating in front of, and I glanced around to see that Dan floated behind me, his arms glowing with golden energy as he held back the water.
"Go! Do what you're gonna do, Alex…I can't hold it for long!" He shouted.
I dove forward and conjured up one of the glowing shields around my right fist. Wincing as I prepared for the impact, I punched my fist forward and watched as my shield went flying against the window. I expected it to shatter straight through the windowpane and I turned away to brace myself for shards of glass and debris. When it didn't, I conjured up another one and repeated the motion. This time I watched as my golden mandala shattered on impact, a bright glow of orange overtaking my spell.
"No…" I breathed as I floated there in disbelief. I swam forward and felt my feet touch down on the three feet or so of dry ground against the window. I placed my right fist against the windowpane and conjured up another shield. I pulled back and let out a cry of agonizing pain as the golden shield dissolved on impact, leaving my bare fist to slam against the thick glass. I turned around, my hand on fire as Dan finally let the torrent of water go, submerging me back into its depths instantly.
I opened my eyes under the water and kicked up from the floor and reached the ceiling, where there was less than a foot of air left. Dan was there too, his shields conjured up and glowing by his sides.
"We can't break through the walls or the door…we're trapped." I panted, my hand and shoulder burning numbly with pain. Dan nodded wordlessly and then pointed to the double ring on my left hand.
"Try to use it! You knew how to work the Time –" Dan said before the water finished rising, throwing us into overwhelming silence.
The Time Stone.
I glanced down at the pendant around my neck and prepared to position my hands in front of my chest. As I tried to place my fingers the way I had seen both Doctor Strange and Wong do previously, my right hand flashed with agonizing pain. I winced and resisted from physically crying out, not wanting to release the last little bit of air I held in my lungs. So I focused on the ring resting on my left hand. Dan floated by my side, watching me hopefully, occasionally attempting to throw his own glowing shields at the windowpane with the same result that I'd had. I even saw a flash of red and a whip like Wong had used against Proxima Midnight wrapped around the handle of the window. Dan held onto the other end of the whip, tugging at it uselessly to try and pry the window open.
I centered myself carefully, the encounter I'd had with Strange fresh in my mind. He knew everything that was happening to me, and it even amused him how I had been able to do things without being properly taught. I closed my eyes and thought back to when I had first met him on the street during the first alien invasion, recalling how he had given me the Time Stone and then swirled a portal into existence and sent us through it. My eyes shot open.
A portal.
I looked down at the ring once more, feeling my chest burn with the lack of breath that I had. I slowly lifted the left hand with the ring on it, unsure of exactly how I was doing it. I then raised my right arm, feeling the white hot pain coursing through it as it dragged through the still water. I swirled my hand in wide circles in front of me as I faced the window, imagining a portal there. After a few seconds I then thought back to any movie or science fiction novel I had ever read.
Imagine a place…
I continued the slow methodical movement of my injured arm and pictured where I wanted the portal to take us. Remembering the warning Wong had given us earlier about not leaving the house, I pictured the grand staircase that I had repaired just an hour or so before. Seconds later a swirl of golden light materialized over the window, spreading out into a large disc. I strained my mind further, picturing the polished wood of the staircase and the warm lamplight that lit the room downstairs around it. The huge window with the odd symbol above it shone down over the staircase, whole once more because of my repairs with the Time Stone.
I suddenly felt a strong force slam into my back and I mentally woke up, seeing that the portal conjuring had been a success and the grand staircase had materialized in the midst of the swirling portal before me. Dan shoved me forward and I instantly swam to reach the portal and felt the water disappear from around us as we broke through the golden light.
With what little air I had left in my chest, I let out a surprised shout as my left shoulder struck the wooden stairs, and tucked myself into a tight ball as I tumbled down to the ground floor. Dan fell just a moment after me and I lay there for a second in confusion and pain before I looked back up at the portal I had conjured halfway down the stairs. Looking up at the golden portal was like looking at a porthole from a boat, blue with the water we had just escaped from. I leaned forward and reversed the motion I had used to conjure the portal and I wasn't surprised when seconds later, the portal had vanished. Wong was revealed standing at the top of the stairs, a speculative expression on his face as he descended the steps.
"Took you both long enough." He said sarcastically as he stood over our coughing and sputtering.
"Was…was that the pop quiz?" Dan asked between heaving breaths and coughing up water. I looked up to see Wong's confirming smirk.
"Did we pass?" I added with a daring look in my eye. Wong's smirk fell slightly as he regarded me and then he nodded.
"You succeeded in showing me how exactly you're able to do things without learning them." He said cryptically. I watched him, waiting for him to explain further but when he moved to leave us in the foyer without another word, I climbed to my feet with a grunt of pain to follow him.
"And how am I able to do that? Because I genuinely still have no idea." I said, grabbing onto his shoulder with my left hand. He turned around to face me and I slowly removed my hand at his stern glance. "Please."
The sorcerer studied me knowingly before he sighed heavily and crossed his arms in front of himself. He looked me up and down, sopping wet and dripping water all throughout the foyer and hallway. When he finally spoke, it was in barely a whisper.
"You're Strange."