Stephen Strange, Doctor of the Occult practised behind the walls of the Sanctum Sanctorum, Bleecker Street, Geenwich Village, New York.
There were many taller buildings on Manhatten Island, but few older than this two story dwelling. Extended and refurbished in the nineteenth century, the interior was Victorian Gothic Revival. A later third story addition nestled within the confines of the hipped roof, dated by the Art-Deco stained glass central circular light. Converted just before the birth of Stephen Strange; child protégée, teenage Medical Doctor, becoming Mister Stephen Strange FRCS, practising as Surgeon specialising in the impossible out of Harley Street London, Tuesday to Thursday, catering to the vanity of the rich and famous in the heyday of the swinging sixties. Before jetting back for a long working weekend, across the Atlantic to New York's Presbyterian Hospital and the Columbia University Medical Centre, pioneering the latest advances in neurosurgery. Stephen Strange became a very wealthy individual, and notorious amongst the powerful and influential.
He was a driven man and he liked to drive. The E-type's tyre blew out as he braked down from its v-max. He was lucky to survive the crash.
His hands were broken, the nerves damaged. The world renowned surgeon was presented with an unpalatable truth by his colleagues whom he regarded as lesser men. Strange would never wield a scalpel again.
"You can still do so much without your hands" they told him, but vanity overcame all wise counsel, and against advice of his colleagues, Stephen travelled the world, and spent most his wealth, seeking a cure. A search that became ever the more desperate; his condition worsened, his dexterity deteriorated. With rational hopes all but gone he turned to irrational faith. Finally in the highlands of Tibet, Stephen found his answer.
Three decades had passed since he had lunched with Andy Warhol. Travelling widely Strange always returned home to New York's colourful Grenwich Village. Stephen had aged gracefully, white temples gave him a certain kind of dignity and magic gave him unnatural vitality. Stephen's face was free of age lines, and he was stronger today than he'd ever been. He hovered, cross legged, inches of air betwixt him and the polished floor. Before him in this Chamber of Shadows atop the old brick built house, he attended the Orb of Agamotto. This Scriers ball of crystal that betrayed its power suspended unsupported above the floor. As the Supreme Sorcerer of the Earthly Realm, Strange, Doctor of the Occult searched for the subtle signs of unforeseen change. In the shadow-lands of Prophecy, in the dark unknowns of the near future where the light of prescience had not shone, where fates were fluid and subject to momentary change. Strange sought agitation in the ether, the invisible veil between disparate realities that separated the mortal waking world from these other realms of dreams.
Geography was of no consequence for the eyes of one so empowered with magical sight, focused through the unearthly sphere. So it was he drifted far from the East Coast of the United States, back towards the cradle of civilisation.
There in the Mediterranean basin frothed a growing disturbance. Unmissable it grew stronger becoming a boiling pot hissing in the hidden dark, emerging into the visible as a steaming mist, smoke on the water. Repulsing all, and in a sea as busy as the Mediterranean this was no mean trick. Such an enchantment screamed of powerful old magic, long lost, returning from the former Golden Age of man. It was a signature Stephen recognised.
What could have awakened this aeon long sleeper?
A cold hand of fate gripped his innards. This could bode nothing good.
Strange saw shapes in the mist, an island chain, with golden beaches, so like any of many; the some six thousand outcrops that stood proud of the Aegean's waters, and yet these isles were so very different. Concealed invisible and separated from the Earthly realm for three millennia. Now the magical enveloping mist rolled from the chief Island's tall peak, across the Agean, as the hidden paradise emerged visible to Stephen's all seeing eye, and into his Earthly realm.
"Themyscira." Stephen gasped. Then his brow furrowed. "Why in the name of all that is holy would this thing happen now?" He gasped, staring deeper into the Crystal Sphere, searching for answers.
Something or someone had stirred the long dormant interest of Olympus.
Time sped past as he searched in ever widening circles away from the mystic islands.
So it was his eyes were drawn to a glimmer, a passing spark of no apparent consequence. Something within him stirred a sense of disquiet tinged by curiosity, one that pulled him south across the African coast, and into the hot desert sands of Libya. Dry dirt gave way to the darkness of the rocky Earth's mantle. Stephen's eyes danced past the cleverly laid obfuscations, simple but well-made enchantments constructed in the web of steel reinforcing concrete of a buried bunker.
The pattern was familiar to him, like a psychic fingerprint, it was also a page from recent history, a page that Strange had not imagined revisiting.
Alarmed he dove deeper. Thrusting into the interior in his Astral form.
The vision now changed. Light exploded within the Crystal spheres confines in a way that threatened to illuminate every corner of this the Chamber of Shadows. Strange's Cloak of Levitation billowed out and around the Sphere protectively, the Amulet around his neck awakened the eye at its centre opening. So the Sorcerer Supreme constrained the maelstrom of magical energies that had become a perfect storm in miniature around the Orb.
Images flashed before the Doctor of the Occult's eyes, an impossible sight; the broken skull of the unbreakable Aegis Goat.
Zeus' prize had been usurped and defaced, his triumph debased. Could this hubris have aroused the olden gods from their slumber?
Then Stephen sensed something else. Like a foul stench, a bitter taste, strong and acrid in his throat, green like an unripe fruit.
Then cutting through the brilliance Strange witnessed the source of this unnatural light. It was crystalline perfection. An armoured suit made from what appeared to be diamond. It was unearthly, that is to say, he knew it was literally alien, not of this world.
Pulling back in surprise, he glimpsed the architect of this place, the long haired countenance of Lionel Luthor.
"Package the artefacts." He snapped. "We're going back States-side."
The old man was unmistakable. His face graced the business sections of leading international newspapers.
Stephen was bowled over by darkness and deceit something profound, ancient and very evil laid at the heart of this matter and the agent of this darkness was the head of Luthor Corp. Now he understood how and why the bunker had been constructed with this familiar magical efficiency. This was the signature of an old organisation whose agents had crossed the world over in the years of his childhood, a force for evil that had risen to power in the economic turmoil of the global depression that had wrecked the thirties giving rise to war.
"Thule-Gesellschaft" Strange whispered.
He stared at the red haired Luthor, his flame hair now silvered by grey. A terrible conclusion crossed the Mages mind. It did not bear thinking about.
Rising from his cross legged position to his full height, Strange raised his hands to his temple; the action was a ritual, his change in stance part of the process.
His thoughts extended beyond his mortal shell, riding on the force of his magical aura, they sailed through the ether in search of a unique intellect, possessing a powerful telepathic signature.
His astral form had not far to travel, crossing the city to Westchester County and out into the rural North East. Seeking out a well-guarded residence.
"Alexander Charles Luthor." He repeated the call.
The response came through strongly as a thought given voice. "Stephen I no longer go by that name. I have not done so since my first day at Oxford." Then the telepath added more softly. "Please call me Charles."
Strange settled his astral self into a chair in the well-appointed study of this Scottish Baroque Westchester Mansion. Stephen knew the powerful Mutant Human, Homo Superior, would be able to perceive his ethereal form with all the clarity of flesh and blood. He noted the details around him, the highland scenes portrayed on canvas and in water colour. Charles had retained a lasting affection for Scotland.
"Forgive me Charles, it has been a long time since we last spoke, and I find my Astral self is all the more literal when it comes to matters of fact" Strange said.
"The fact of the matter is I have elected to choose my own name." Charles countered.
"We all strive to be greater than the sum of our biology and our experiences." Stephen said. "I see you have taken not only your mother's surname; Xavier, but also her family seat."
Charles nodded. "And her genetic legacy" He said, running his hands over his hairless head, seated in a metal wheel chair, the legacy of an old and terrible accident.
"Lionel was left frustrated." The younger man noted "when he was unable to seize all of her fortune after her death, when so much of it came to me."
"Still atoning for the sins of your father?" Strange asked.
"Of all our fathers. Some one must think of the children." Charles said pressing his fingers together. "They are the future."
Strange nodded. "Indeed your work here has much promise."
"So say the runes?" Charles asked.
Strange did not give an answer verbal or otherwise.
The door opened. "Professor?" A gangly youth, long limbed peeked around the door.
"I'll be with you shortly Hank." Charles replied.
Stephen read in the ether, the mystic aura of Hank McCoy. The Sorcerer Supreme saw an exceptional mind and athlete. He saw adolescence had brought on-going and increasingly radical changes to Hank's physiology. Seeking answers McCoy had found the Xavier School for the Gifted.
Hank looked around. The Doctor of the Occult was invisible to him, yet something instinctive caused Hank to stare in the direction of Strange's avatar.
Once the young man had closed the study door, Charles Xavier nee Alexander Luthor, came to the point asking. "Stephen, is this about my brother?"
"No, Marco remains where I sent him." Strange answered leaning forward "Tell me Charles how good is your ancient Greek?"
"It has been a while." The bald man frowned. "Why?"
"I may have need of your skills." Strange admitted "Your natural telepathy can cross, unopposed, boundaries erected against the magics my sorcery employs." Stephen paused. "You seem troubled my friend. Does my appearance here open to many old wounds?"
"Stephen I shan't pretend otherwise, but I am troubled for another reason. Indeed I thought at first, that it was I who had inadvertently called you, bringing you here. For you were present in my thoughts tonight."
"Mystery upon mystery" Strange noted. "What would make you call upon your brother's jailer once more?"
Charles shook his head. "I hold no malice, or resentment toward you. What was done was necessary; Marko was unstoppable in his crazed state." Then he lent forward. "Are you familiar with the mythology of the Star-Child?"
"It seems we have arrived at the same place but from different directions."
"You perhaps speak of Asteria – the starry one?" Charles concluded.
"And you her counterpart from beyond the heavens Aster?"
"It seems so. An infant that presents as human was retrieved from an isolated crash site in the Canadian wilderness."
"A mutant?"
"An alien I had a trusted ally, an investigative Journalist, chasing up a lead in British Columbia."
"Ah yes the columnist, writes the Daily Planet page in the New York Bugle – Perry White, as I recall. I presume this alien's mind is not open to you?"
Charles laughed. "Is everything I am so transparent to the Sorcery Supreme's gaze?"
"Some things are very well hidden, even from me."
"Meaning?"
"The Star-Child's existence." Stephen admitted.
"Lionel is a genius at deceit." Charles confirmed the elder Luthor's part in this. Bitterness crept into his voice.
"More so than either of us realised." Stephen agreed.
"Whatever do you mean?"
"I don't believe your father is who he pretends to be."
"That much is known..."
"No Charles, I don't mean the false sincerity, the charitable works, the front he presents as a businessman, or the work he does for the United States government."
"What then?"
"I don't believe Lionel Luthor's biography. He wasn't trapped holidaying in Europe by the War, and I don't believe he escaped the Nazi's clutches. Rather I think he returned to America as a willing captive."
Charles saw the Sorcerer's meaning. "You imply the stories of fighting with the resistance and aiding the allies are a smoke screen. That he in fact was working for the Axis?" Xavier asked.
"I'm sure of it."
"In what capacity?" Charles demanded. "What did he know that made him so valuable as to get a free pass like Wernher von Braun and the others?" His eyes strayed to a framed photograph of three young people. Strange recognised each of them. A young Charles arm in arm with an old girlfriend, beside his former best friend, an intense young man called Erik Lehnsherr. Behind them the dramatic landscape of the Holy Land.
Strange replied with one heavily loaded word "Hydra."