We've had Stephen's perspective, we've had Wong's, and we have had Christine's for a while now. Eventually we'll have some Cloak to inject a bit of sense, but for now - Elice's pov! :D
No copyright infringement intended. Only fluff is intended.
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It was a quiet day. Elice sat by a desk in the library, her legs pulled up and hugging her knees in the huge armchair she was seated in. She was resting her cheek against her one knee and watching with some amusement as the cloak played with a tablet over in the couch, apparently browsing wikihow for methods about how to embroider oneself.
She wasn't actually surprised that it got hits, crazy as that was. Everyone on the internet seemed to be a bit crazy, in all the best of ways. And sometimes, completely insane, in all the worst of ways, too, but the two were really not to be mistaken for each other. Or, apparently, mutually exclusive, either.
Elice had just started to doze off where she sat when there was a loud, desperat knock on the front door. The kind of sound heralding someone in an absolute crisis, in the very midst of panic. She was wide awake and out of her chair in moments, only to almost fall flat on the floor due to her not having taken into account the fact that her legs had fallen asleep after her long time sitting still in a slightly cramped position.
Luckily, the carpet in the library, wide, soft and fluffy, helped ease the fall when she caught herself on it with her hands, and the cloak caught her before she could really hit the ground. "Thank you, Crimson. You must think we humans are so helpless and clumsy, mustn't you," she spoke to herself rather than the cloak, almost, but she still gave it a playful shove at its clearly smug look. "Oh hush. Now shall we see who is at the door?"
By the time Elice had picked herself up off of the carpet (and helpful, magical, smug flying cloak, for that matter) there was a voice rising in the entrance hall. The unfamiliar voice was getting increasingly loud and upset, but as she moved closer to the sound, there was another, deeper, calm voice revealed underneath the sound - Stephen, already there and trying to calm their guest, whoever he - she was pretty sure the loud, upset voice belonged to a male - might be.
Something about how Stephen's voice rose and fell told her that this was not a stranger, nor was it necessarily a close friend. Of Stephen, anyway, because the cloak perked up at the other voice and flew quicker towards the hall, arriving a full five yards ahead of Elice. Maybe, she considered, it thought Stephen might be in danger.
Once she arrived at the double doors leading from the corridor out into the grand entrance hall, where the cloak had already sneaked out before her, she pushed them open and stopped to survey the scene. Stephen was standing next to a man at the bottom of the hall, beneath the first set of stairs, and why was evident, as the man was apparently in a wheelchair. She didn't recognise him.
"Ah, Elice. Pangborn, this is Elice, the local apprentice. Well, she is supposed to study at Kamar-Taj, but she gets along better with Crimson - the Cloak of Levitation - than all the others combined, and she might as well study here, so... Elice, this is Pangborn, he was a student at Kamar-Taj before our time. He's a local from here in New York, like myself, and was the one who first told me about magical healing..." Stephen paused, looking at the man with concerned eyes. "It helped him out of the wheelchair... at least, it did for a while."
"I heard of you," Elice replied, to Pangborn more than to Stephen, out of courtesy. "The Ancient One spoke of you several times to me."
"Yes, she is... where is she? What happened... how could she have allowed it?" Pangborn's voice was near breaking.
"She died," Elice told him gently. "Kaecilius killed her before the final battle - Masters Wong, Mordo and Stephen finally defeated him after Stephen bartered with Dormammu to make him leave. Kaecilius drew him here." Pangborn looked aghast.
"You've been out of the loop," Stephen's voice was almost dismissive, getting straight to the point instead, "what do you mean 'what happened'? What did this to you?"
"Not what, who. Mordo stole my magic. How could he do that?" Pangborn truly looked like a man who had lost everything. Twice.
While Pangborn's expression was painfilled and Stephen's was puzzled, Elice's eyes suddenly lit up. "He broke your bonds to magic! He cannot steal the force or your expertise, but you can break the link. Well, with a minor sorcerer like you or me, at least, one more experienced can do that!" She smiled at him, looking reassuring, once again reminding Stephen of her excellent bedside manner. "A Master can help you restore it though, so it is completely fixable!" She turned and looked expectantly at Stephen, who blinked and closed his mouth.
"Right," Master Doctor Stephen Strange decided. "We better get Wong. I have not done any recearch into this area. I never thought it possible."
"Well, sometimes, just once in a blue moon or two, idle reading triumphs strategic studies," Elice beamed, just as the cloak swished by and deposited a very heavy book in it's chosen human's arms.
"Scratch that," Stephen amended. "The cloak has clearly seen this before." He opened up, 'The art of magic bonding', and let his cloak guide him as to what section of the book he needed. One to comfort, one to guide and one to do magic. Well, he might have used to be the lone wolf, but that did not mean that he could not learn how to use teamwork.