Ch. 8
Dark Strange stood and glared up at the domed ceiling of his prison.
"I know you're watching. It's what you do. Show yourself."
Morgan frowned, looking around for whoever he might be talking to. Was he slipping into another bout of madness?
"Come on, watcher! You owe me!"
A moment passed, then two. Behind Dark Strange, the fabric of his reality cracked and shattered, creating a portal with a blue glow that reflected off the facets of the sphere around them. A creature floated through with smooth, dark skin. There wasn't a hair anywhere on his body that Morgan could see. He wore a midnight blue, asymmetrical robe and towered over Dark Strange, even though his body shape made him seem short. His eyes glowed with a blinding, bluish white light, no trace of pupil or iris visible.
"Strange. You called. I've come." His deep voice reverberated around the small pocket dimension.
"I want you to let her test her device on you," Dark Strange said, gesturing at Morgan. "If it can hold you, it will hold me."
"And what about your duty?" The creature narrowed his eyes at Dark Strange.
"The girl is right. The isolation of this prison is starting to eat away at my sanity. If I lose my sanity, I won't care if the things I guard escape."
The watcher turned his head as though to glance at Morgan, although she couldn't actually tell where any pupils were pointed.
"Would you trust her to control you that thoroughly?"
"Would you?"
The watcher looked at the ground, his lash-free eyelids hooded. Dark Strange crossed his arms and glared at him.
"You foresaw this."
"I never meant for you to remain alone here indefinitely. Even your mind would crack, eventually."
"But you can't intervene."
The watcher met his eyes, or seemed to. "I can't intervene."
"You broke your oath, once."
"That was to save the entire multiverse."
Dark Strange let his arms drop with a sigh. "And I'm not as important as the multiverse." There was no resentment in his tone, or even anger. He was just stating a fact. The watcher didn't answer. He just stared Dark Strange in the eyes.
"After what we've been through together, will you do this one thing for me? Please?"
"I will, Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme, because you are right. I owe you an unpaid debt. But you must keep your oath to guard your prisoners. You cannot allow them to escape."
Dark Strange reached up to pat a barely discernible lump under his robes, just over his sternum. "I won't. I have them with me, always."
The watcher turned the full weight of his regard onto Morgan and she felt like a butterfly pinned to a board. She could feel the power rolling off of him. A more primitive people would happily worship him as a god. He could probably bring a more sophisticated people to worship him if he so wished. Dark Strange was right. If she had summoned a being this powerful, it would have destroyed her and maybe everything within several miles of her location.
"Do you truly believe you have created something that can restrain or control me?" he asked with his chin held high. He adopted the countenance of an humble monk, but there was a streak of the same arrogance in him that Uncle Strange sported. The arrogance, more than anything, put Morgan on familiar footing.
"There's only one way to find out," she said with a flippant shrug. The watcher's mouth twitched with a suppressed smile at her hubris.
"Indeed. I know where your device is. I've been watching you make it. I will meet you there."
With that, he floated back through his portal and the rip in the dimension folded closed behind him.
"That watching thing is really creepy, by the way," Morgan shouted. "In my world, we call that stalking!"
Dark Strange burst out laughing. Morgan turned surprised eyes on him as he wrapped an arm around his chest and reached up to swipe away tears of mirth. The hand that touched his face had tentacles for fingers. He laughed harder and collapsed to the ground. His cloak detached from his shoulders and drifted toward the domed ceiling. It pulled something from around his neck as it went, folding the small sphere on a cord into its fabric. She had seen it do something like this before, getting out of the way as Dark Strange succumbed to his madness.
Her face dropped. She thought she might have gotten to see him actually amused, but something about the interaction had stripped his sanity away. His laughter grew deeper and less controlled as his humanity slipped away. Morgan reached out to touch the scintillating sphere and the surface repelled her astral form, as it always did. The human body of Dark Strange melted away into tentacles, horns, eyes and wings. It was strangely beautiful in a macabre way. The parts all fit together naturally but made a grotesque whole.
"I'm going to help you," Morgan whispered. "I swear it." The thing writhing on the ground with unholy laughter did not respond. She turned away and sped back to her home, more eager than ever to complete her project and get him out.
When she returned to her body, the Watcher was waiting for her. He had shrunk down to closer to her size, although taller. Always taller. She opened her physical eyes and stretched.
"So, you've been watching me?"
"I watch everything. And it's not stalking. Stalking insinuates an intent to harm. I just watch."
"It's still creepy," Morgan muttered. The Watcher's power marched down her spine, raising goose bumps on her skin.
"Everyone says that," he muttered, but didn't elaborate. He glanced once to the side and then looked back at her with those glowing eyes and serene, waiting features.
"Okay, so, guess we move on to the testing phase."
Morgan went to her cabinet and cast her spells to retrieve the device. It briefly crossed her mind to wonder if the Watcher could get past her spells. Not that it mattered. He just watched, right?
"Okay, I'm going to warn you, there are needles. It does hurt some." She carried the bracelets and collar back to him and he just gave her a small, knowing smile. "Oh, yeah. Guess you'd know that. And you didn't stop me when I was summoning stuff to test on?"
"I don't intervene."
"Unless you owe someone a favor."
The Watcher just gave her a shrug that could mean anything or nothing. Morgan scowled and any guilt she had about the device hurting him fizzled away. Something about him rubbed her the wrong way, but she couldn't put her finger on it. Maybe it was his utterly passive stance on, well, everything. No one in her family sat around and just watched when there were injustices happening.
Reaching out, she took his wrist in her hand and clasped a bracelet over it. She put the other one on and reached for his throat. He stepped back and took the collar from her hand.
"I will apply it," he said and she filed away the information that he had a sensitivity about his throat. Not that it mattered.
The Watcher placed the collar about his throat, the metal automatically shifting and expanding to accommodate the larger diameter of the creature's neck. He pressed the buttons on the devices, himself, as Morgan wrapped the control wire around her ear. The metal whirred to life, climbing his arms and cinching down his back. He grimaced as the needles pierced his skin, but didn't make a sound.
"Okay. Ready?"
The Watcher nodded and Morgan gave her first command. "Sit."
The vambraces lit up with gold power. The Watcher staggered, but didn't sit. He did clench his jaw and a low growl trickled from between his teeth. The glow of sorcery on the vambraces stuttered and died. The Watcher recovered from his stagger and eyed the vambraces closely. Morgan drooped.
"They didn't work."
"They did work. They just aren't powerful enough, yet. I think with any lesser being, they would work perfectly. You've accomplished a great deal." He brushed his fingers over the release sensors, and nothing happened. The Watcher frowned, twisting his arm. The vambraces moved with him, the tiny servos, powered by sorcery, allowing the metal to bend and twist with his movements. The vambraces were still active. The spell work just wasn't strong enough to compel a being of his strength. He looked at her and narrowed his eyes.
"Remove them."
"Sure." With a small smile, she approached him and brushed her fingers over the sensors. The vambraces retracted and fell from his wrists. She reached up to remove the collar and watched him hold himself very still as she came close to his throat. The collar retracted, falling to the ground. The Watcher shivered, a bit like a horse dislodging a fly. At least she knew the DNA coding in the sensors worked. Only she would be able to remove them once they were in place. Now, she just had to make the important part work.
"I need to go over the spell work," she said, picking up the bracelets and collar. "There must be a way to enhance the power. Maybe if I tweaked the mandala and added another channel…" She took the items to her work bench, the Watcher very much forgotten behind her. Once her brain latched onto a challenge, nothing else tended to matter.
The Watcher's glowing eyes tracked her path back to her work bench and a small, derisive smile curled his lips.
"When you are ready to test your restraints again, I will come. I'm always watching."
Morgan nodded, but didn't look back at him. She drew a glowing, mystic symbol over one of the bracelets and studied it intently. Behind her, the Watcher cracked open her reality and disappeared through the rip.