Ch. 9
"No."
"But, Uncle Strange, you said no knowledge in Kamar Taj is forbidden!"
"It's not, but if I can't trust you with a sling ring, I certainly can't trust you with the Tome of Aggaravon. You're not ready for that level of sorcery."
Wong snorted from his side of the book-strewn table between them. Uncle Strange cut him a stern glare. Wong ignored it.
"This from the man that opened portals into the library to steal books I was sworn to protect."
"I didn't steal them. I borrowed them."
"Without permission."
Uncle Strange shrugged, but the scowl line between his brows had eased up.
"You're the one that decided to teach a ten-year-old sorcery. You can't undo what she's learned, Strange. And if you don't let her keep learning, she will only seek the knowledge for herself…the hard way."
Uncle Strange grit his teeth, the muscles in his jaw clenching. He reached up to rub his temple and coughed.
"I thought you were against her learning so young, Wong."
"You already let that cat out of the bag," Wong said. "Now you have to feed it and scoop its shit."
Morgan couldn't stop a snort-giggle from escaping her lips. A smile tugged at Uncle Strange's cheeks and then he coughed again.
"I've got a headache. Wong, you help her get whatever books she wants. I'm going to bed."
The Sorcerer Supreme rose and left the room, still rubbing his temple. Wong watched him go, his smirk fading into a concerned frown.
"I have never seen Stephen sick since he came to Kamar Taj. Injured, yes, but not sick."
"He's still human, right?" Morgan asked and Wong nodded. "Then he can still get sick. His enchants block Covid, but I don't think he blocked anything else. He probably has a cold. Or the flu."
"Perhaps"
"So…the Tome of Aggaravon?"
Morgan lay on the bed in her tiny room, poring over the ancient tome splayed across her pillow. She had a tablet by her side with a document covered in notes she took with a stylus. The Tome of Aggaravon had been a bust and she had moved on to Ineffabilis Nomina. Some of the entities in this book hadn't been called on in centuries, but the rituals to negotiate with them still worked. There had to be something here that would give The Watcher a run for his money.
She had just found something promising when a stuttering series of thuds from the foyer made her stomach jerk. She abandoned the book to race through her door to the stairs.
Uncle Strange leaned against the banister at the bottom of the stairs with Wong's arm draped over his shoulders. They both had ragged rips in their robes and blood coated Wong's neck and splattered over his jaw. His head drooped and his eyes were closed.
"Wong! Uncle Strange!" Morgan clattered down the stairs, her heart in her throat.
"He's been bitten," Uncle Strange said, hoisting his friend up the stairs. "Get the med kit. The big one. And some water and washcloths."
A hundred questions popped into Morgan's head, but there wasn't time. She rushed to fetch what Uncle Strange asked for and brought everything to him. It took two trips.
Strange laid Wong out on a chaise lounge in the library and knelt next to him. He had a few bleeding scratches of his own, but Wong had taken the brunt of the damage.
"What happened?" Morgan asked, dipping a washcloth into the water and wringing the excess out. Uncle Strange rifled through the first aid kit and came up with hemostatic gauze, butterfly closures and wound glue.
"We finally found the power that released Pestilence."
"Really?" Morgan's heart jumped. If they found the culprit finally, maybe this stupid pandemic could come to an end! "Did you kill it?"
Uncle Strange paused to glare at Morgan. "I don't kill unless it's absolutely necessary."
Morgan gave Wong's ravaged neck a pointed look. Uncle Strange ripped open the package of gauze and pressed it to the wound, applying pressure. "No. I didn't kill it. It fled after tearing out Wong's throat."
"Is it that bad?" Morgan frowned, suddenly worried for Wong's life. There was a lot of blood.
"The fangs just nicked the jugular. I don't think it got the artery. If I can get the bleeding to stop, he'll be fine."
"Fangs?"
"Yeah. Apparently, vampires are neither extinct, nor banished to another dimension like I thought."
Morgan frowned. This was no time for Uncle Strange to be cracking jokes. She waited for him to glance up at her with that lopsided smirk that would reveal the punchline of the joke, but his face remained serious as he traded out another pad of gauze.
"Vampires aren't real," she finally said with all the self important confidence of a pre-teen. Uncle Strange glanced at her with an arched eyebrow.
"You've visited other dimensions in your astral form, spun portals into thin air, and personally know more than one person with superhuman abilities, but question the existence of vampires?"
Well, when he put it that way…
"But saying vampires are real is like saying dragons are real!"
"Dragons ARE real. They just aren't native to Earth."
Morgan stared at him as he turned back to Wong's wound. She had so many things she wanted to say but discarded each one as wrong or irrelevant in the face of Uncle Strange's arguments.
"Fine. Vampires are real. Is…is Wong going to become one?" Uncle Strange paused.
"I don't know. The information I read about them was limited and I'm not sure how reliable it was. The author seemed a few cards short of a full deck. I doubt it, though. If simply biting someone turned them, we would be up to our necks in vampires by now. Like the worst multi level marketing scheme in the multiverse."
Uncle Strange pulled the gauze away and grunted at the wound. The blood flow had slowed to a sluggish seeping and he reached for the damp cloth she held out for him.
"So, what does a vampire have to do with a pandemic?"
"He freed pestilence. He is, in his own words, 'culling the weak.' He doesn't seem very impressed with mankind's compassion for the disadvantaged and has decided there are too many humans for the planet to sustain indefinitely, so he released a pandemic to thin the herd, as it were."
"He sounds like Thanos," Morgan grumbled, a mix of fear, anger and hatred knotting up in her chest. Her father had died because of Thanos and anything that reminded her of the mad titan brought up those feelings.
"He does, although considerably more selective as well as more verbose. He wouldn't shut up," Uncle Strange said as he cleaned the blood from Wong's neck. The other sorcerer grunted and hissed with pain. Morgan jerked with surprise. She had thought he was unconscious.
Uncle Strange steadied Wong with one hand while he finished wiping away the blood. "Just stay with me, Wong. I'll get this closed up, unless you want to go to the ER? They have morphine."
"As if. Just keep going." Wong's voice rasped painfully in his throat.
Morgan watched Uncle Strange clean the wound and apply the wound glue. He decided the butterfly closures weren't necessary once the glue set. Of course, he was using medical grade glue normally used by a hospital, not the crap sold at the pharmacy.
"There. That should hold. Take some ibuprofen, drink fluids and rest. I'll order some food to be delivered," Uncle Strange said, sitting back. Wong sat up and groaned.
"Before I go, I got you a present," the sorcerer said and Uncle Strange lifted an eyebrow at him. Wong smiled, baring his teeth in more of a snarl. He lifted a clenched fist and opened it to reveal…nothing.
Uncle Strange reached out and plucked a strand of hair that Morgan hadn't even noticed from Wong's hand. It was long and blond, almost invisible in the low lights of the sanctum. Everyone in the room had dark hair.
"Did you pull this from his head when he attacked you?" Uncle Strange asked. Wong nodded, still smiling with that snarling rictus. A matching smirk curled Uncle Strange's lips. "Excellent."
Morgan sat with her feet tucked up over her thighs in a full lotus pose, watching Uncle Strange work. It wasn't often she got to see him performing serious spell work.
He stood in front of a small jar carved of orange carnelian. It had a small, ornate lid resting beside the jar with a rubber strip glued around the stopper. The jar portrayed a pair of lion dogs cavorting about, chasing the tail of a dragon whose head made up the lid. She couldn't imagine how anyone had carved such fine detail from solid stone. Maybe it was made with magic.
"I call upon the fist of Peth'genthor to imbue this relic with binding and containment. The entity will enter here." Uncle Strange touched the lip of the jar and then proceeded to describe every curve, nook and cranny of its carved surface, explaining how the spell would shore up every chink and restrain the entitiy that would be placed inside.
As he spoke, Morgan's brow furrowed.
"Who is Peth'genthor? I've never seen that name."
"Don't interrupt the spell," Uncle Strange said before moving on to describing how he planned to put the entity into the jar. Morgan turned to Wong who was there as back up, but not actively participating.
"Peth'genthor is a being of extreme power. He is steadfast and strictly literal. His power is most often used in creating relics because, once cast, spells calling on his power cannot be uncast."
"Oh." Morgan turned back to watch Uncle Strange, a flutter of excitement in her belly. This might be the missing piece she needed. "Are there any books about his power?"
Wong cut her a curious look. She carefully kept her eyes on Uncle Strange, not wanting either of them to notice just how interested she was.
"There are a couple," Wong said warily.
"Cool." Morgan left it at that, filing the name away in her memory so she could look at it later.
Uncle Strange completed the spell with a flourish and the jar glowed with a bright, golden light for a moment.
The prison is done. Now, to set the trap." Uncle Strange swept the jar from the table and into the folds of his cloak, where it seemed to disappear into thin air. He turned to Morgan and frowned at her, his eyes searching her face. He seemed uncertain about something, but it didn't take long for him to make up his mind. He reached for his belt and unclipped the second sling ring hanging there.
"I've been thinking about giving this back to you. You've handled yourself well during the pandemic and you've advanced well in your studies. I had a whole speech about responsibility planned out, but you'll do as you will, much like I do. I'm giving this to you, now, because I have to put the entirety of my concentration on dealing with this vampire and his pet plague rat. The safest place for you is in your work room, but I won't leave you stranded there. Spend as much time there as you can, while we are gone. Only leave for food or survival necessities. If you need something Friday can't give you or you can't get yourself, go to Peter. He will help you."
Uncle Strange held out the sling ring and Morgan reached to take it from him, fighting to hold back her excitement. With this, she could escalate her timeline and maybe finish the restraint, if the research she planned to do on Peth'genthor gave her what she needed. He reached up to cough into the crook of his elbow as she accepted the ring. She frowned as the cough went on longer than it should. Was he paler than normal? He doubled over as his face flushed red with the effort. Wong took a step forward, frowning. Uncle Strange took a deep, wheezing breath as he recovered from the cough and his eyes were streaked with red.
"Uncle Strange, are you okay?" Morgan asked, frowning up at him.
"I'm fine. Or will be. I have to be." He looked at Wong, locking eyes with the other sorcerer for a moment. "We are all at risk right now. The sooner I lock away this Pestilence, the sooner we will all be safer."
It wasn't the reassurance she was looking for, but she didn't want to argue. Maybe, if she could finish this restraint system in time, Dark Strange could help.
"Show me you remember how to use the sling ring," he said and it took a moment for his command to register. Morgan was still worried over the coughing and distracted by thoughts of completing her work that would allow her to bring Dark Strange into this battle.
When the words finally sank in, she slipped the sling ring on and concentrated on spinning up a portal. Because her mind was on the books about Peth'genthor Wong had mentioned, the portal opened in the library. Uncle Strange frowned.
"I want you in your work room."
"A few books to keep me busy?" she said with a sheepish smile. He frowned at her and she knew he suspected she was up to something. She only hoped he couldn't guess what.
"Make it quick. I want you in your work room with whatever you might need for the next day or two within the hour."
"Sure. No problem!"
She hurried through the portal, letting it close behind her. She wasn't worried about bedding or clothes. She had those in her work room, already, assuming she got around to sleeping or changing for the next couple of days. Food, she could conjure, if she remembered to. All she needed were the books, but she only had an hour to find them and didn't dare ask for Wong's help.
Glancing around to make sure neither Wong nor Uncle Strange had followed her, she summoned up a spell she had recently mastered. Every book in the room shivered and, although they didn't physically move away from their places, they seemed to shuffle around and were, in fact, organizing themselves by subject. She could sort them alphabetically by name, author, subject, anything really. She could sort them by the third word on the fifth page if she so wished, although that wouldn't do much for her except make her giggle at the chaos.
The only real limitation to the spell was similar to the limitation of a Google search. She had to know what she was looking for and a vague concept wasn't specific enough, but now she had a name. Once the books finished their shuffling, fluttering dance, she found the section that included books with the name she was looking for in them. There were three. Relief flooded through her. If there had been too many, she would have had to narrow it down and might have missed the one she needed in the scant hour she had, but she could justify taking three books with her.
Spinning up a portal, she pulled the books from the shelves. As she released the sorting spell, the rest of the books fluttered back into their original order, only three separate gaps indicating where the books she had taken were previously.
She hefted the books and stepped through to her work room, dropping the portal closed behind her. Somewhere in the space between times and realities, the Watcher smiled.