Stephen woke up over and over and over again that night, suffering from an unceasing stream of tiny nightmares that disappeared the second he jolted awake. He couldn't remember a single thing about any of them, but they felt like little scavenging animals nipping at him, testing him to see if he was good to eat.
A very vocal rooster woke him up for good as soon as the sun rose, and wouldn't shut up, continuing to announce the sunrise every ten seconds.
"We get it," mumbled Stephen. "The sun's not going anywhere, you stupid bird." The rooster crowed indignantly in reply.
The Tvanians had graciously donated Stephen's cot, dragging it to the den of the 'royal palace', along with a spare, clean mattress for Christine. She looked much better after finally getting a full night's sleep, a lot better than he did, probably.
After a small breakfast of berries and corn mush, they made their way to Mobius's room. It had been cleaned of most of the trappings of a child's bedroom, but elephant themed wallpaper still lined the walls and his sagging bed looked utterly pathetic and too small for Mobius as he sat on the edge. Something struck Stephen as odd about the bed, though, the same thing he'd noticed about the mismatched siding on the front of the house. He'd chalked that up to ridiculous style in this universe, but Mobius's bed seemed to be made of two totally different materials. The foot of the bed was brass and the head seemed to be made of wood. Stephen had no clue why anyone would want a piece of furniture like that. It was a Frankenstein's monster of a decorative choice.
They moved all of Stephen's books into Mobius's room. Whatever kid that had lived there before owned an impressive little library with lots of bookshelf space. Sadly, most of the children's books left were starting to rot. They weren't good for anything but kindling, so Mobius tossed those to make room for Stephen's books. Stephen's long legs stuck out comically from underneath the bedroom's pint-sized desk, but it was the quietest, coolest place to study, on the forested side of the house away from the bustling village.
He gave Mobius and Christine a book each. "Look for anything related to astral projection or the Astral Plane," he said. "But if you find something, don't dog ear the book or make any markings. These things are hundreds of years old. I'm certain Loki's soul is stuck in his body with no way out, but I've never heard of such a thing happening."
They all quietly flipped through their books without speaking, when suddenly Mobius piped up.
"Oh!" he said, pointing to his book. "Here it says if you lose access to your body, you can go to something called the Mirror Dimension-"
"That's old news. Don't think that will help. Find anything, Christine?"
"Hmm, not really," she said. "Are the Ancestral Plane and the Astral Plane the same thing?"
"Yes," he said. He was starting to think trying to get them to help might be as useful as asking someone to look up a word in a dictionary written in another language. Still, any little bits of information could help.
Sylvie's boots clomped slowly down the stairs from the master bedroom, then down the hall towards them. She wasn't stomping around, at least. She slowly appeared in the doorway, almost uncharacteristically sheepish with her arms crossed at her chest.
"How's he doing?" asked Christine with a smile.
She shrugged. "He seems less awful, I guess. Still shaking."
"Well, the goal right now is to make him as comfortable as possible."
That sounded like palliative, end-of-life care kind of talk to Stephen, but neither Sylvie or Mobius seemed to catch it. He knew there was a mystic cure out there, though. Every magical problem had a magical solution.
"Sylvie," he said, though he feared she might snap at him for even speaking to her, "We were all just leafing through these books, trying to look up information about astral projection that might start us in the right direction." He picked up a book and offered it to her. "Would you like to help?"
She sucked in a breath for a second, like she was about to be offended and give him an earful, but then paused, not finding any reason to chew him out.
"Um, sure," she said, taking the book from Stephen. She sat on the floor and opened the book. Such a mild response surprised him. Progress, he hoped.
They spent a while longer together, looking through the ancient tomes, occasionally finding scraps of information, when Sylvie closed her book and stared out the window.
"What if his soul's just … gone?" she said quietly. She looked as if she might cry at any moment.
"It has to be in there," Stephen said gently, "Every living being has a soul, that's basically what an astral projection is. When they die, the soul lives permanently on the Astral Plane. At least that's the theory, though no one has actually, truly died for long enough and then come back to describe it for themselves."
"He's barely living, though, isn't he?" her voice sounded strained, and for the first time she looked at him as if she was asking for answers instead of demanding them.
He shook his head. "He's very much alive, Sylvie. As long as he's alive, there's a solution waiting out there. All we have to do is find it."
She gave a little pout, then went back to her book, resting her head in one hand. He tried to put her suggestion out of his mind-he knew it wasn't possible-but she'd planted a seed of doubt in him that he feared might grow. If his soul simply wasn't there, then finding it would be like locating a single dandelion seed that had blown away in a hurricane.
The day wore on, growing hotter and so humid it felt like trying to breathe swamp water. They all had to strip down to the bare amount of clothing they could wear and still keep their modesty. Sylvie went back upstairs and changed into a green, airy, floor length cotton skirt and a matching crop top. He assumed she'd found it in a closet in the village. It certainly didn't look like traditional Asgardian garb. She'd taken off her heavy boots and gone barefoot, as well. The outfit looked very flattering on her thin frame, softening her edgier features and turning her green eyes a bright emerald, but he figured if he said something like that she'd punch him straight in the face.
Another Tvanian came by later with lunch for all of them: roasted carrots and mashed potatoes and beans for Stephen, and large chunks of chili-spiced goat meat for the other three of them. The stout, pale, jolly faced Tvanian introduced himself as John as he gave them all their food.
"For future reference, Dr. Strange," said John, "Hasan wants to know: do you do eggs and cheese?"
"Well, it is ethically sourced, so sure," said Stephen with a smile.
"I haven't had goat in forever," said Christine, licking the spice off of her fingers as she devoured her meat with bare hands. "I can't believe you found goats here."
"Oh, yes!" John piped up with a chuckle. "We found a herd of the poor things wandering around in the forest. They came right up to us, they were very tame."
"Oh," said Christine guiltily as she looked at the remainder of her meal. Stephen couldn't help but smirk. He was aching to make a sarcastic comment about avoiding eating things that could love you back, but he kept it in. He couldn't blame the Tvanians for using whatever resources they could get.
"I hear that you're a surgeon and a sorcerer, Dr. Strange," said John.
Stephen gave a surprised look. "How? I don't think I told anyone."
"I think there was a Dr. Strange in someone else's timeline. They recognized the name, and that one was a surgeon-wizard."
"Used to be a surgeon," he said, scooping up some beans. He had to remember not to talk too loud in this place if he wanted to keep anything confidential.
"I only mention it because I was a surgeon, too," said John excitedly.
"Oh, really? Where did you practice?"
He furrowed his thick brow into a confused expression. "Why, I had my own practice, of course. Does it work differently where you're from?"
"Yes. Yes it does. So you didn't do surgeries in a hospital?"
"No. Patients would come to me in my shop-"
The beans dropped off of Stephen's spoon.
"Shop?"
"Right, they would come to my barber shop and I'd just give them some opium and saw off the offending appendage.* Pulled a few teeth in my time, too."
Stephen stared at him, utterly dumbfounded for a moment, then threw his head back and burst into laughter.
"Oh, you're that kind of surgeon!"
"Exactly," said John. "The TVA took me in … I believe it was 1865. I was very proud to serve the Union army during the Civil War." He frowned and shook his head. "Ugly, ugly times those were. The smell in those medical tents … " he shuddered.
"Maybe not while we're eating, John," said Sylvie flatly. She didn't seem disturbed much, though, as she ripped a tendon off the bone with her teeth.
John shrugged. "Well, I'll leave you to your meal. I have to go check on the rest of the goats, make sure none of the little scoundrels escaped again."
John left and the four of them enjoyed their meal in silence. As they ate, John's voice popped into Stephen's head with a single word: escaped. Escaped. Stephen put down his fork, ignoring the last few bites of his mashed potatoes. But his soul couldn't simply escape, could it? Sylvie's seed was growing quickly, but all of Stephen's knowledge pointed to the opposite: that his astral form was stuck inside, not outside.
"Unless … "
Unless it was attached by some kind of thread. A tether, of sorts.
"Unless what?" said Mobius. Stephen looked up in surprise. He hadn't even realized he'd spoken.
"I think I have an idea of what I need to do. I'll need a little help."
The four of them gathered in the master bedroom upstairs, Dr. Strange taking a kneeling position on the floor next to Loki's bed with Mobius sitting behind him. Christine sat cross legged in front of them, phone in hand, her thumb hovering over the start button of the stopwatch app. Sylvie sat at the edge of Loki's bed, looking nervously between Dr. Strange and her husband.
"This isn't going to go like last time, is it?" asked Sylvie.
"No," said Stephen. "I promise. This is just to explore what's happening in the Astral Plane. Now, Christine, as soon as I leave my body-"
"Start the timer," she finished, holding up her phone.
"Right. I want to see exactly how many seconds are going by in our dimension when I'm there."
"And I catch you when you fall?" asked Mobius from behind him.
"Just make sure my head doesn't hit the floor, that's all," said Stephen. "Everyone ready?"
Christine nodded and he felt Mobius shift forward, prepared to break his fall. Sylvie patted Loki's leg in a comforting gesture.
Stephen took a deep breath in, gathered the energy for the spell inside of himself, focusing it on the very core of his being, then with a sharp jerk, pulled his soul out of his own body.
The real world, his dimension, burst into pieces around him. A shock of terror tore through him like electricity, then nothing. Only consciousness remained. Softness grew around his soul, his astral form taking shape as he lifted himself gently out of his physical body, nearly frozen in time, just starting to fall backwards into Mobius's arms. Sylvie was mid pat, her hand ever so slowly creeping towards Loki's leg. The Astral Plane glittered in perfect silence, reflecting the physical world around it yet completely unattached to it, like the reflection of a forest on the surface of a lake.
His ghostly form floated over to Christine, whose thumb had just pressed the start button. It counted up from 00:00:01, and so did he.
"One Mississippi, two Mississippi … " he said out loud to himself, his voice echoing in the stillness of the Astral Plane. His count obviously wouldn't be exact, but it's not like he could take the ghost of a stopwatch with him.
Stephen floated over to Loki, who looked more dead than ever while frozen in living person had the slightest glow to them. It was the light of their soul shining through their physical form. If all the other living bodies in the room had glowsticks for souls, then Loki's would have been a dying firefly. It shone so weakly that Strange feared the worst: that Loki truly wasn't going to last much longer.
He reminded himself to keep counting as he examined Loki closer. He floated through the bed to the other side, trying to feel for any bad energies trying to harm him. Obviously, something had sucked his energy dry, like a vampire, but without any clues left behind he didn't know where to start. When Stephen floated above him, he caught a glimpse of something from the corner of his eye, just the faintest shimmer, like a mirage in the desert. Focusing on it closely, it appeared to be forming a thread coming directly from Loki's chest and going upwards in a jagged line, like a nearly invisible tree branch.
"A tether!" he said excitedly, then hurriedly counted a few more seconds to make up for the ones he'd just lost. There was no use counting at all if he kept getting distracted.
Stephen reached out to touch it with his astral hand, to see if he could break it, somehow. When he came close to it, to his surprise, the tether glowed an angry, hellish red, growing hotter to the touch until it was too fiery and painful to handle. The entire tether, from Loki's heart to where it was broken by the ceiling, glowed like a red hot streak of lightning.
Stephen drew away and instinctively shook his hand and put a finger in his mouth to dull the pain, though it obviously did nothing in a realm with no physical form. He'd been under the impression there was no such thing as pain in the Astral Realm. This was worrisome, to say the least, but he knew that his soul must be wherever the end of the tether led.
He followed it upward, past the ceiling, through the attic and the roof and into the sky, floating higher and higher.
"Seventy-three Mississippi, seventy-four Mississippi-" he continued as he flew straight up like a loose balloon. His astral form floated through thick, fluffy clouds, through the higher clouds that looked like smudges of white on blue, then past even those until the atmosphere started to give way to space. The tether just kept going and going. He wondered if he was going to have to fly all the way to the sun, and how far he could possibly travel and not break the connection with his own body.
Finally, the tether stopped somewhere in the stratosphere, at the edge of the stars and the sky. Stephen floated closer to it to find a small crack in the Astral Plane, glowing redlike an open, oozing sore. It reminded him of the crack that had appeared in the multiverse when he'd made that spell for Peter Parker, but much smaller, only about as long as he was tall.
"One hundred fifteen Mississippi, one hundred sixteen Mississippi-" he whispered his count, afraid that something on the other side of that crack might hear him. Still, he had to see if there was a way in, as much as every instinct was telling him to run.
He reached out his hand closer to the angry red crack, preparing himself for the pain it would bring.
What he couldn't have prepared for, though, was a bolt of red lightning that burst out of it, pounding him like the full force of Thor's hammer.
He screamed as he whizzed back down into the atmosphere like a comet crashing to Earth. There was no way for that form to die as long as his physical body was safe, but the terror was as real as the horrible falling dreams he had all the time.
He closed his eyes as the Earth came at him faster and faster, as his imminent demise felt closer and closer. Suddenly, he crashed back into his physical consciousness like belly flopping painfully from the high dive of a pool. He took one gasping breath, and before he forgot, yelled, "Time!"
"Uh-ten point two four seconds," stuttered Christine. "God, are you all right? It almost looked like a seizure."
Stephen moaned, finally becoming aware of Mobius behind him, holding him upright. He shakily lifted himself back into a kneeling position, feeling like he'd just been run over by a truck. His hands and face were freezing cold, almost numb, as if he'd gone into shock.
"I think I made it to one hundred twenty Mississippis," he slurred, slumping forward, holding himself up like he was about to vomit. "So … ugh … can someone else do the math for me?"
"Two minutes for every ten seconds, so five seconds here per minute in the Astral Plane," Christine chimed in.
"Approximately," he mumbled.
"Did you find anything?" asked Sylvie.
"Oh yeah," he said. "I found something. I just have to … " He trailed off as he lifted himself up from the floor, preparing to stand. Without warning, his head felt giddy and light and he fell back to his hands and knees.
"Stephen!" yelled Christine.
"Water," he whispered, feeling his consciousness slowly creeping away, his mouth turning into cotton. "I need water."
Sylvie jumped from the bed and rushed downstairs.
"Here, Stephen," said Mobius, gently putting his arms around him and maneuvering him like a very heavy ragdoll. "Lay on the floor. That's it."
Sylvie returned a few seconds later with an old, clear plastic bottle full of questionably yellow-tinged water. It could have been pure brown, Stephen didn't care. He grabbed it greedily with a shaking hand and gulped it down like it was the last bit of liquid on Earth.
After a minute or two, he finally felt well enough to sit up and try standing again, much more slowly this time. With Mobius and Christine on either side of him, he sat down on the edge of Loki's bed.
"That's not normal, is it?" Christine asked worriedly. "I've seen you come out of the Astral Plane before, it didn't seem as traumatizing as this."
"It was different this time," he said. "Something is definitely attached to him, that's why I can't get him out. It's not good. The problem now is who-or what-is draining him."
"But you know where his soul is?" asked Sylvie earnestly.
Stephen paused, then lied. "Yes," he said. "We're finally getting somewhere, Sylvie, don't worry."
He felt a pang of guilt as she breathed a sigh of relief. In reality, he had absolutely no idea what was going on, but he was still Dr. Strange. If he could bring back half the population of the universe, he could save a single soul.
*Barber surgeons were people who cut everything from hair to bones. They were around from the middle ages to the dawn of modern medicine in the early 20th century. Doctors and barber surgeons were considered totally different practices until surgeons became a respected part of the medical community.