"You should keep an eye on that Maximoff girl,'' Wong told him the moment they passed through the portal into the New York sanctum.
"She will handle it," Strange adjusted his black tie, he had become unaccustomed to wearing suits. And to think back in the days he took great pleasure in pampering himself for all sorts of grand events. Now, the only reason he had to put on a suit was to attend a funeral.
"Still, things can get out of hand in Westview,'' Wong side eyed him.
Strange hummed, disregarding Wong's caution. He knew Wanda Maximoff was capable enough to fix it herself, it was a lesson she had to learn in order to grow stronger and for the timeline to continue on its rightful path.
Suddenly, the air shifted.
"Shit," Wong sweared and stopped dead on his tracks, body fidgeting.
The Doctor raised his eyebrow in question. He had never seen such a raw panicked expression on the shorter man's face.
"I do not have the time to play hide and seek, Master Wong,'' a stern female voice boomed through the walls, catching Strange's attention.
It came from the main hall.
"I am not here, you haven't seen me," Wong whispered to the dark-haired man, as he started to walk backwards, ready to run.
"Don't be ridiculous, Wong,'' Strange mused, his interest piqued.
"My patience is not infinite," the female voice was now closer, the sound of heels against the main staircase gave indication she will be soon on the second floor and in vicinity to see them in the corridor on the right.
Wong raised his arms and quickly started to form a portal.
"The Master of the London Sanctum," dark eyes shifted to a point behind the Doctor's shoulder. The taller man quickly turned around to follow the direction of Wong's gaze, but was met with nothing out of the ordinary. He tuned back just in time to catch Wang peeking from the other side of the portal. "Good luck, Strange.''
Before he could even open his mouth, the portal closed.
Wong was not the type of person to run away from responsibility. Lost in thoughts, the Doctor started walking towards the entrance hall to inspect the intruder.
A tall woman met him at the top of the staircase. Dressed all in black, a broad-brimmed sun hat hid her face from view, she raised a gloved hand for a handshake.
Strange extended his own and practically enveloped her thin one.
Time suddenly froze, cold darkness enveloped his senses as all the oxygen left his body.
And like that, it was over. Her cold gloved hand had escaped his hold, leaving his own hanging awkwardly in the air. He could feel the scarred skin of his hand prickling, as if thousand of needles had broken through the damaged tissue. A strange sensation of being violated erupted through his body and mind.
"Dr. Stephen Strange, your reputation precedes you,'' the grave tone the woman used reminded him of the stillness in the air around dead bodies.
"Can't say the same,'' his own voice rasped through the quietness. He started to understand now why Wang had ran away in such a hurry. It was as if the death herself was standing in front of him.
"Pardon my lack of courtesy,'' she slightly bowed her head, the edge of the hat's brim lightly touching his chest. "Rosamund Astor, Master of the London Sanctum."
The woman raised her head, but Strange still couldn't see past her chin.
Before he could say anything, she walked past him towards the hallway he had just came through, long black coat brushing against his calves. Her heels left burned trails over the wooden floor.
"May I acquire the reason of your visit here?'' They both knew she was aware of the fact that he perfectly well realised whom she was after. If that made sense.
"Playing daft do not befit you, Doctor,'' her British accent cut like a sharpened knife.
"Impolite uptightness is also not a noble quality to posses,'' he bit back, voice calm but full of pomposity.
"Temperamental, I see,'' Master Astor mused more to herself.
She stopped where Wang had created the portal and raised her left arm, a small golden ball formed atop her palm, lighting the dark corridor.
"It seems he had finally learned to cover his tracks,'' she closed her palm, the sphere disappearing.
"A quite handy spell, indeed,'' the Doctor smirked, knowing fully well he was the one responsible for concealing the portal's direction.
The woman turned towards him. They stood in silence for a few seconds, maybe a minute or more, until she broke it.
"You know,'' Master Astor took a step, then a second one, until she violated his personal space.
"I do,'' he drawled, the corner of his mouth lifting in arrogant grin. She could not see it, but could clearly hear it through his deep timber.
Darkness started crawling around them, his periphery vision detecting the shadowy tendrils blocking any light capable of reaching them.
Too bad he had a few tricks up his sleeve as well.
Her shadows may whisper all secrets and untold truths, but he has been studying Telepathy long enough to grasps a few simple techniques.
With a flick of two fingers, a strong wind swept the black hat away, revealing unhealthy pale skin and blank eyes. The blackness around them erupted, going straight after him for attack, but he was faster.
Blue eyes turned liquid gold as they hypnotised the graphite ones, which became bleary with golden hue covering them like a mist.
He may not be the Sorcerer Supreme anymore, but that did not mean he had lost his abilities.
"Arrogance is Failure's long lost friend." A smirk ghosted over her discoloured lips as her eyes lost the golden hue, turning it into shadows, while his own became completely black, the veins around his temples turning dark grey. His mind hit an onyx wall, unable to pass through it and possess her thoughts.
He pressed further into her mind, a pulsating pain erupted behind his eyes.
The resilient woman hissed, pain enveloping her sensors as well. A few of her memories and thoughts leaked through the assault of her mental shields. But so did some of his.
The energy field around them started cracking, uncontrollable powers clashing against one another. Strange furrowed his eyebrows in bewilderment, unable to grasp the notion of his inability to make her mind submit to his. He had tried it a few times with fellow sorcerers and with great success at that. Even Wong was not immune to it, not that he would admit to it.
He took a deep breath, holding it in for a few seconds then released it and finally accepted her shadows.
"No, don't!" She raised her arm to create a shield and ward them both of what his prodigious skills were about to manifest as they were used in such a raw and untrained manner.
A golden circle with fiery geometrical patterns formed horizontally around his head, like an halo but on eye level.
The sorceress raised her other arm as well to cast a more powerful protective spell, but it was already too late. Everything around them erupted into golden light, the explosive energy being so strong it threw both of them backwards.
The dark haired man fell onto the floor, the impact so severe, the wooden boards dented beneath his weight.
Master Astor groaned a few meters away from him down the hall, her body had collided with one of the decorative vintage tables.
He quickly opened a portal between them to shorten the distance.
She pressed her arms to create the Eldritch whip, but to no avail. She tried again and again and again until he caught her gloved hands in his own.
"What did you do?" She hissed, the short platinum locks, which had escaped her French twist, fell into her dark eyes.
"I am not sure," he sincerely told her. A feeling of shame creeping in him. He rarely lost control like that.
Master Astor sighed, she should not have tested his abilities like that. She should not have provoked him. Her bloody curiosity, she had come here with much different reasoning.
Lost in thoughts, she let him pull her onto her feet. His large hands burning her ones even through the leather gloves, so much raw power contained in them. So much prodigious potential and magnetic vigour, the Ancient One had been in her right to be cautious of him and refuse to take him under her tutelage. That man was a walking calamity, capable of shattering the boundaries of reality and the potential futures of this timeline.
"Dr. Strange, you should learn to control yourself better," the stern note in her voice made him raise his eyebrow in obvious objection.
Oh, how he hated to be lectured.
"Notary Astor, you should learn not to provoke what is beyond your capabilities," he chided, gaze sharp and demanding. She narrowed her gaze in his recognition of her previous vocation. He had already browsed through the memories he had collected from her mind.
"Allow me to propose you an entente," the woman made a circular motion with her arm and the black hat sat upon her head, hiding her face once again from the weight of his assessing eyes. "You bestow to me Wong's location and I will make certain we will not meet again unless on work-related grounds."
"Can't do," he rasped, his magic scanning hers, seeking something. "Now I kindly ask you to leave as I have other matters to attend to."
For a few second she stood there still as a statue - unmoving, non-breathing, frozen in time. The tall man felt as if he was being evaluated, but they both knew who would emerge as a victor if they decided to test each others capabilities in more serious manner.
A light breeze passed by them, the brim of her hat twitched, followed by stillness of the air which turned into a deafening silence.
The sorceress slightly inclined her head to the left as if listening to something.
"I bid you a pleasant evening," a portal opened behind her, she took a step backwards to enter it.
Master Astor turned her back to him and continued to walk away to what he assumed was the London Sanctum. It looked slightly more different from what he remembered from the photos in some of the books he had studied.
Wong so owed him.
"Master Astor, did you meet him?" A young man joined her as the sorceress walked through the Sanctum's library.
"Trainee Badawi, what have I said about nosy inquires?" She calmly asked him, the shadows around them cracking with restrained power.
The dark skinned man raised his hands in surrender.
"My apologies, Master,'' he smiled at her, flashing his pearly white teeth. "We are just really interested about Master Strange."
For the last five years he had become somewhat of a legend amongst their circles. Some of the sorcerers believed he was destined to posses greater power even than the Ancient One. The platinum haired sorceress did not wish to be the one to confirm such statements, even tough she quite literally tasted the destructive capabilities of said man's powers.
"You shall all judge for yourselves when you meet him."
An unrestrained laughter escaped through Aalim Badawi's lips.
"He bested you, didn't he?"
The woman stopped dead in her tracks, her long coat froze around her as the temperature in the library shifting with a few degrees, un intolerable coldness swept through their bodies.
"I advise you to mind your words, child." Her sharp tone cut through his cheerful mood in a second.
The young sorcerer could only imagine the terrifying scold hidden beneath that black hat.
He pointedly cleared his throat, changing the subject sounded like a sufficient idea for the moment.
"We detected another crack through one of the dimensional portals." He debriefed her as they entered one of the hidden chambers. The Council of the London Sanctum had already gathered there. It consisted of five sorcerers including herself, it was one of the few changes she bestowed upon this Sanctum after she had became its Master.
She needed people with established abilities in various field, who could help her be of absolute control of everything under her jurisdiction. A single person was incapable of having eyes everywhere needed, so they served her as observational towers.
What escaped her own senses, at least one of them would be able to detect it.
She nodded to the young man, the brim of her hat swiftly following her the movement. Having felt it herself, Master Astor had already contacted the members of the Council through her shadows to wait her at the Crystal Chamber, which they used for emergency summits. It was warded with numerous protective spells and defensive conjurations. Even she as a Master was not able to penetrate them without seriously risking her own well-being, as they were directly sourced to her vitality. The stronger the protection the more of her energy it consumed, but that was the only way to protect all the forbidden magical artefacts the London Sanctum was entrusted with.
After Kaecilius' attack it was the only logical solution for her to do following Sol Rama's death. They could not risk such excessive breach happening again.
She was not fond of cleaning after other people's messes. Unfortunately, with the death of their previous Master those responsibilities fell upon her shoulders and she would be damned if she did not catch the culprit who has been giving her headaches for the past few years.
"Somebody is masking these cracks with well-crafted illusions," an elderly woman, leaning on an ivory cane, was the first to express her displeasure with the current events.
"We uncovered another two in Rosario and Mendoza," added the broad dark skinned man, standing close to her. His oriental aubergine robes catching the lights in their liquid-like movements. Idris Willmont was notorious sorcerer, truly proficient in tracking everything animate or inanimate in this universe. Trace origins, tail presences, shadow and protect what is required of him. He was truly well-practised in his field of work and was often sought after.
"We are in great need to find an illusionist, Wang is currently training one of his apprentices in the art after Komar was murdered by Kaecilius, but for now we are a lost cause without an expert in the field." The forth member of the Council grumbled, his notorious ill-tempered character already manifesting itself. Harold Edmund, the grumpy Englishman was the spirit animal of the London Sanctum as Balowi loved to call him.
"Master Astor, did you finally manage to talk with him?" Sorcerer Willmont asked the black cladded woman.
"No, but she met Master Strange," Balowi chimed in, his brown eyes expanding expressively.
The black hat turned slowly towards him as if asking why was he still in the room. The young man quickly excused himself and left the Council to their own demise, which would be soon delivered by their Master.
"So how was he?" Madame du Bellay asked in her stern French accent, her luscious grey locks were pulled in a tight bun atop her head. She hated being called Master du Bellay, said it made her feel as an enslaver. As if the elderly woman did not look like one already, but nobody dared tell her that. If they valued their lives that was.
"I do not think it is appropriate to discuss such matters now," Master Astor objected.
"So we should discuss your failure to contact Master Wong then?" The French sorceress bit back, glowing blue eyes narrowing in scepticism.
"Please, Madame du Bellay, now is not the time," Sorcerer Willmont intervened, but he was rudely interrupted.
"Then when, huh?" She hissed, her magic cracking obscenely around her. "As a Master of this Sanctum per protocol it is her responsibility to lead formal communication with the Sorcerer Supreme."
Blackness seeped underneath Master Astor's black coat until it enveloped the whole room.
"We are currently facing a critical situation, which imperils our whole universe," her cold tone left no room for objection.
"You are a Herald of Death, Master Astor," Harold Edmund spat. "Everything you encounter is either pernicious or beyond saving. So, please, enlighten us, how did you decide this in particular is of critical importance?"
"The Blip has generated enough energy for our dimension to shine bright enough to entice numerous multiverse beings here," the tall sorceress clipped her gloved hands behind her back."Whoever creates these cracks in our reality is becoming wilier in their craft.''
"Furthermore, we still have no additional news from Master Luncasu," Idris Willmont added in regard to their missing fifth member of the Council. Constantin Luncasu was their newest addition amongst the Master Sorcerers of the London Sanctum, he had previously served as a senior scholar of magical artefacts to the Ancient One in Kamar-Taj, but due to the deficiency in sorcerers they faced after Kaecilius' attack, he relocated to be of help until his services would no longer be needed.
As the London Sanctum specialised in storing and securing mystical items, Master Luncasu soon had turned into one of the Prime Sorcerers in the Sanctum. The majority of sorcerers still couldn't muster why Sol Rama had appointed Rosamund Astor as his successor.
"I told him it was a lost cause going after the Ring of the Ancient One, who knows where the old hag had hidden it," Madame du Bellay bristled, her thin lips pursed in distaste.
"We should not let that man - Strange, have it," Sorcerer Edmund joined, supporting his own theory that the Ring can grant the ability to do anything one is capable of in physical form while astrally projecting, as well as to take on the form of the Ancient One herself. Although, it could only be used by her own pupils.
"Our current aim is to find the Wand of Watoomb," Master Astor ignored her fellow sorcerers, they had no time to waste in meaningless quarrels.
"Do not be foolish, the Ancient One spent centuries unsuccessfully hunting it," the elderly woman mocked her.
"The Wand will help us reopen old dimensional cracks and track who had created them in the first place as no illusions had been casted upon them," Idris Willmont interjected.
The Wand of Watoomb was an omnipotent relic, which could amplify one's power and absorb mystical energy, it was fully capable of reopening inter-dimensional apertures and unleashing damaging blasts. Combined with other mystical objects, it has the potential to even restructure or alternate the reality. It can also be divided into two separate powerless parts, which they believed happened in the past, as no sorcerer has been able to even slightly detect it throughout the centuries.
"How can you be sure of that?" Harold Edmund raised his eyebrow in mistrust.
"We cannot, but as we all know desperate times call for desperate measures," the dark skinned man offered. They did not have any other sufficient option for the moment.
"Even if we entertain the idea of actually finding it - none of us is strong enough to contain its energy," no matter how hard it was for the grey-haired woman to admit to such notion, it was simply the truth.
Quietness overtook the Chamber, all of its occupants busy going through thousand of possibilities and feasible outcomes.
"Strange."
Three pairs of eyes turned towards the Englishman, his suggestion was quite the unexpected contradiction to his previous words.
"Master Strange has still not reached his true potential," Sorcerer Willmont stated, the possibility of freely giving this man such power as he has still not fully learned their ways of wielding the Mystical Arts, seemed atrocious.
"He fought Thanos, he guarded the New York Sanctum, the Cloak even chose him, he was also able to use the Eye of Agamotto, he was on of the brightest pupils the Ancient One has ever taken under her wing," the older man insisted, knowing fully well none of them could object his points.
"He also restored our Sanctum after Kaecilius destroyed it," Madame du Bellay narrowed her eyes at the black cladded woman. Her unspoken accusation floating in the air - where had Master Astor been when they needed her.
"I will not take such risk, his vigour is raw, unmastered, turbulent - Master Strange is an amoral force not to be reckon with." Master Astor said calmly, although the blackness in the Chamber pulsated in silent demur.
"As Master Willmont said - now is not the time to be selective about such predicaments," Harold Edmund crossed his arms over his dark grey tunic, knowing fully well that Idris will not be able to object it.
The dark skinned man took a deep breath, his head was starting to throb with tension and stress. This was going to be a long meeting.
"Why are you smiling like this, Master Wong?" A fellow sorcerer asked him while passing by one of the smaller temples at Kamar-Taj.
"I think he met his match," Wong mused his thoughts aloud, feeling a deep satisfaction in picturing how the London Master would put that arrogant bastard in his place for once.
"Who?" Another sorcerer asked, his interest also piqued.
"Strange." The Sorcerer Supreme couldn't stop entertaining the idea of both of them going at each others' throats. He hoped Master Astor would leave him alone for a while. It felt as if he was dodging the Death on every step these past few months.