xXx

Valeria crushed the demon with a slap to its chest, but others came, ranks and ranks of them. She took to the skies, but demons with wings lifted from the mass that clamored below her. She was weakening. She threw a flurry of punches and kicks around her, but the demons piled on oblivious to death and dismemberment. They packed on her, clawing and gouging. Her superhuman toughness resisted the damage, but she felt her strength draining. She looked up at the sky and gasped.

The sky was a slowly roiling sheet of dark flame. No night on Earth had ever looked like this. There were no demons like this on Earth.

Even at night, the planet Earth soaked up the outpoured generosity of the Sun somewhere, and Valeria could feel the Sun's energies carried through the atmosphere, protecting and nurturing the life of the world, protecting and nurturing her power.

The sky here was empty. Empty and dark, an eternal twilight.

Her strength faded.

"Strange!" she shouted as she began to sink through the unnatural air under the weight of the demons.

The sky was silent. The carpet of demons below gibbered and shrieked as she drifted closer to their reach.

She scowled, and lashed out in all directions. Demons and bits of demon sprayed through the air before her wrath, but this did not feel like killing. This was different, and life was not sacred here. She was not even certain that the demons were possessed of life. She killed and killed, her martial arts training kicking into high gear. Slashing, parrying, hurling demons from her, she fought desperately.

Her strength was going fast. She punched holes in the demons, pulling out all the stops. They no longer flew apart at her touch.

"STRANGE!" she shouted. "Can you hear me?"

The hissing and squealing of demons was her answer, and she had no breath left for talk.

xXx

"I may be ignorant," the interloper snarled, "but I am not powerless. Nor am I a fool."

"Then surrender the woman to me," Strange said, his voice hard, "and I will be lenient. I would prefer to discuss this. We can find another solution. You still have a chance to accomplish through negotiation what will get you killed if you continue with coercion."

"Killed?" she said, her lips curling back in a derisive smile, revealing sharp little teeth. "How final."

"There are," Strange said, his face taking a peculiar and disturbing cast, "worse fates at my disposal."

"It's been a joy," the interloper snapped, jerking in the binding, "but I must go." Suddenly a sheath of silver armor slid up her forearm and flowed over her body. For a moment she was mystically frictionless, and she squirmed free of the binding, into a flaring disc ringed in unhallowed flame. Strange lashed after her, but she was beyond his reach a fraction of an instant before he reached her.

"I think not," he said, his face dead white. "I think not." His lips compressed to a thin determined line of fury, and he lay into his bookshelf and whipped out several tomes. "Not in my house."

He began to hunt.

xXx

The demons suddenly withdrew. Valeria stood drenched in their gore, her chest heaving, her clothes in ribbons. She wasn't sure, but she suspected her blood was intermingled with the demon ichor. She turned to face the direction the demons were facing.

A woman stood regarding her from a rise in the tortured rock. Valeria took a good long look at the cloven hooves, goat legs, and shapely torso, her gaze traveling up to the cruel eyes in the pretty face. The woman held a long, glittering sword sheathed in sparkling runes, a weapon of deep magic.

"Hello," the woman smirked. "I am the Swordbearer. Who are you?"

"I am Valeria von Doom," Valeria replied.

"Impressive," the Swordbearer said, nodding at the piles of demons. Already, small imps swarmed on the carrion, wolfing it down.

"Release me at once," Valeria demanded.

"Do I bind you?" asked the Swordbearer, amused. "I see no shackles."

"Return me to Earth," Valeria said, struggling to keep her temper.

"Hm," The Swordbearer said, tapping her lips with one finger. She shrugged. "No." She smiled.

"Then face me in single combat. If I win, you send me home. If you win, I'll stop crushing these demons. They are yours, aren't they."
"Yes, they are," the Swordbearer said. She beckoned a hulking mass of bone and meat, and she petted its head between its horns. Its eyes rolled back and it gurgled something like a purr, its tongue lolling out. "Each time you slay one, it is reformed in the heart of my realm. You simply cannot win," she said with a smile. "But your offer intrigues me. Very well. Let us fight."

She settled into a ready stance, her sword poised.

"Hardly fair," Valeria said, eyeing the sword.

The Swordbearer shrugged. "I don't intend to lose," she grinned.

"Alright," Valeria said, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. It came away sticky. "Let's do this." She trudged up the broken cliff until she was level with the Swordbearer, who shifted and lashed her tail in anticipation.

Valeria sprang, calculated to come up short of her target. The Swordbearer extended the blade to impale her on her own momentum, and Valeria spun, knocking the blade to the side with the flat of one hand and gripping its crosspiece with the other. A simple jerk and the weapon was hers as her foot lashed out and caught the Swordbearer on the hip, knocking her away. Valeria rammed the sword into the stone; it sank in with a ringing clang and slowly swayed.

The Swordbearer faced her, jaw slack with amazement. "That was cool," she said. She smiled and gestured. The sword sank into the rock and sprang free in a jet of gravel at her side. She scooped it up. "Do that again!"

Valeria got a sinking feeling, but she squared off. Those countless hours of training under red sunlight were paying off. Sore muscles, patterns of tiny fang and claw marks, and pulled muscles went away as her disciplined mind locked into combat readiness. "This time," Valeria murmured, "you come to me."

A single wicked grin was all she got by way of answer, then the Swordbearer sprang, uncomfortably quick on her cloven hooves. Valeria smiled; the Swordbearer charged her directly. So many ways to end the rush.

And no reason to be gentle.

A quick sidestep carried her just past the blade's path, and her hand snagged the Swordbearer's wrist. Startled, the Swordbearer had no time to react as Valeria swung her around with her own momentum; the Swordbearer was airborne, then she smashed down flat on her back on the rock. Valeria had not surrendered her wrist; she slammed the Swordbearer's elbow down on the rock next to her knee and she twisted the wrist at an angle it was not meant to twist. With a tearing sound, the tendons in her arm gave and her forearm cracked as her elbow just shattered. The Swordbearer screamed, her sword clattering to the stone. Her eyes flared with rage and agony. Valeria sprang up and back as the Swordbearer kicked at her with her sharp cloven hooves.

Valeria stood breathing hard as the Swordbearer rolled over and slowly rose, cradling her shattered arm. "That," the Swordbearer said, "was wicked cool." She shook her arm out, and it reformed itself. The very air and stone around her dimmed, then she was whole again. She grinned. "Bet you can't do that again."

"If you want to learn how to do that throw, there are simpler ways than unpleasant experience," Valeria said, her voice level. "I could show you how to do that particular trick. It isn't hard, once you know the secret."

"Really?" the Swordbearer said, trying to sound superior instead of curious.

"Really," Valeria smiled, blood trickling down her face.

xXx

Doctor Strange could have been a statue. He sat focused, his face a study in determination. After what seemed an eternity, he relaxed.

"So," he murmured to himself. "Wherever you took her, neither of you are still on Prime." He stood, his legs trembling slightly with his weight. Even in Astral form, asking every spirit on the way, covering the Earth in a search for a familiar face was deeply draining.

He wiped his face on a towel and took a deep drink of water. Waited for his mind to clear.

"At least it happened here," he murmured to himself. He touched the wall in the corner, and his consciousness scattered through the many layers of protection in the walls and air. Runes and protections that could track a careless teleporter who escaped the space. None could enter, but leaving… that was permitted unless he forbade it, and the direction and distance were remembered by the walls and air.

Strange bent his will to the cipher, burying his intellect in the puzzle, reading the riddle. He got a sense of a distant layer of reality. His brow furrowed.

The trail got close but escaped the range of his senses. He would have to search more… personally. But the planes, that far out… to even scan them sometimes fractured and split them, they could be so unstable. He had taken so long already.

No surrender. He thought of Valeria.

Then he began to split hairs.

xXx

Valeria rose out of the pool, feeling oily and slick. At least she was no longer slathered with gore. A fresh change of clothes lay on the rock, and she quickly put on the jeans and the sweater. She was still barefoot.

"Good," the Swordbearer said from her throne. "You're almost the same size as me." The sweater bulged uncomfortably; they were not exactly the same shape. The jeans were quite tight. But the fit was better than the gluey ribbons Valeria had stripped off, thinking incongruously of papier mâché…

"My legs are a bit different." Valeria strolled into the throne room, noting the massive throne and the scrying pool before it. Demons hovered in the shadows, paying court to their young queen.

"Your legs are different at the moment, I'll grant," the Swordbearer said. "But not always." Her legs shifted; she developed human knees before her calves swept down into dainty fetlocks over her cloven hooves. "This is my land, Valeria, and I appear as I choose to appear."

Valeria let that go. "We had best work out what we're going to do when Strange arrives," she said.

"When?" the Swordbearer scoffed. "I think you mean if."

"No," Valeria shook her head. "Doctor Strange may be peculiar, but he will not forgive a slight to his privacy, not with a kidnapping on top. He will find you, and when he does, he will kill you."

"Really?" the Swordbearer said smugly. Valeria heard the doubt in her voice.

"What do you think?" Valeria asked. "What would you do?"

"I escaped him once," the Swordbearer said airily, waving her hand. "This is my realm, and I am invulnerable here."

Valeria shrugged. "That is your chance to take. Strange is a man whose power I have not tested to its limits. I would not dare."

"Hamming it up a bit, aren't you," the Swordbearer said, her anger sparked by fear.

For a long moment, Valeria gazed into her eyes. "Maybe it's better this way," she said finally.

"What do you mean?" the Swordbearer asked suspiciously.

Valeria gestured around. "This place is very dangerous for you, Swordbearer," she said quietly.

The Swordbearer blinked once, gripping the arms on her throne. "Have you not been paying attention?" she said rapidly. "I am the absolute ruler of this place!"

"I did not mean you are vulnerable to attack," Valeria clarified, looking around in the shadows, feeling the unpleasant grip of gravity. "I meant you are vulnerable to… weakness."
"Weakness?"

"Yes," Valeria said, nodding. "How do you know?"
"How do I know what?" the Swordbearer asked, exasperated.

"How do you know what to do with your power?" Valeria asked simply, shrugging. "If you simply sit here and rule the demons, over time you will grow to be more and more like them. Doesn't some part of you long for the open sky? For sunshine, and grass, and beauty?"

"I can make all that and more here."

"Can you?" Valeria asked simply. "Would you force that upon your demons? Or transform them too?"

"What's your point?" the Swordbearer hissed, eyes narrowed.

"Part of you is of this world," Valeria continued. "But part of you… part of you is connected to the Earth. You are able to move back and forth between them, and I think they both have claim to you."

The Swordbearer waited, glaring at Valeria.

"When I came to the Earth, to Prime, I was alone and wounded and afraid," Valeria said quietly. "He gave me a place and the information I needed to get started here. He gave me a gentler way in to the world than raw experience, which is always a harsh teacher."
"Strange?" the Swordbearer spat. "I would not kneel before him!"

"Nor would I," Valeria said. "But neither would I steal from him. He can be savage when roused."

"You must be his press agent," the Swordbearer sneered.

"As you wish," Valeria shrugged. "Believe what you want to believe. There is a way you can see for yourself." She gestured at the scrying pool.

"Wouldn't that be neat," the Swordbearer said contemptuously. "You think he wouldn't notice?"

"What does it matter?" Valeria shrugged. "You're unbeatable here, right?"

The Swordbearer looked sideways at the pool.

"Think of it," Valeria said. "If you returned to Earth, then for a time you could surrender the heavy burden of rulership of this land." She looked intently at the Swordbearer. "Haven't you missed conversation? Laughter of friends? Is that not why you stopped your fight with me? Because you have heard the voices of demons day in and day out, except for the pale and distant reflections in your pool?"

"Enough!" the Swordbearer shouted, springing lightly up to stand in the seat of her throne. "Enough, already! There is no place for me on Earth! Earth has only betrayal and pain! Here there is no one to betray me but my demons, and no pain that is not more power."

"What if you're wrong?" Valeria whispered. "What if Earth has more to offer? What if you don't discover that until it's too late and you can no longer bring yourself to leave this place? What if I have found something on Earth that you have not?"

"Shut up!" screamed the Swordbearer. "Shut your damnéd mouth! Not another word! Not another Word!" and the Binding swirled up in a creaking rush of stone.

Valeria was silent, barely able to breathe.

The Swordbearer slumped in her throne, gnawing at her knuckle, staring at the scrying pool.

"Not another word," she murmured.

xXx

Strange sat motionless, blood slowly trickling out of his nose and losing itself in his mustache. So much to cover. Regions of the dimensional reality that no sane wizard dared to tread, and he was skimming too fast, looking for something he wasn't sure he'd recognize.

The lightest touch ghosted through his Sanctum's defenses, and he instantly dropped his search and flashed his consciousness back up the path of the scrying. Slinging through the emptiness of Astral space he followed the desperately retreating touch; it was faster than thought, but his skills and the power of his will shot him through insane thickets of Astral protections between himself and the region he sought.

There. The flat black barrier between the Astral Space and this paltry little dimension. Close to the underspace, a shade of limbo. Fine. She wished to hide here.

Strange could not permit it.

His thought drifted back to the red coat wrapped around his body.

"Come to me," he soothed in a language long forgotten by intelligent races. "Bring my body to me."

An unimaginable distance away, his body folded into itself and left reality for the far reaches of madness, where the body's master awaited.