Harry had a bad track record with forms of magical travel. Abduction via tentacle proved to be the latest installment on that already long list.
When Harry felt his body reach its destination, he collapsed straight onto his face.
It was ridiculous, honestly, that a wizard who had seen and done it all when it came to magic… STILL struggled with any form of teleportation. At least he'd learned to ignore the nausea of apparating so that he could use it in fights. He just wished he could land stylishly from more long distance forms of travel. It would help him maintain an image.
Harry had appeared in a cage… or a cell. Since it was small and he was the only one inside of it, he decided to use the latter word. His cell was one of a multitude that were floating like there was no gravity through an ethereal landscape. Harry saw disoriented, scared, and crying New Yorkers in the other cells. He'd located the civilians that were kidnapped. Fortunately, everyone seemed to have been sent to the same place.
Where that place was… That's a question Harry was still struggling with. Clouds lit with red and purple light made up the background of this place. There were hunks of rubble floating the same way as the cells. It was made primarily of colorful mosaics that would've been quite beautiful, if the temple they were once a part of hadn't been ripped apart with the pieces left to drift aimlessly. There was only one hunk of rubble that was bigger than the rest. This one was roughly fifty meters in diameter and circular in its shape. There was a dais in the middle with a book on it. The book was glowing bright blue, as shiny as if it was pumped full of electricity. Something about it called out to Harry's magic, telling him that it was powerful.
"Seems important…" he said.
He heard someone growl. Looking to the side, Harry saw that his cell had drifted close to another one. This one held the archer he'd fought alongside.
The spandex she was wearing was still ripped up in unfortunate places. Harry could see most of her bra despite the arm that she was holding across her bust. Most of her midriff was visible too; as much as if she was wearing a bikini. She had dark hair and a pretty face on top of her fit, stocky build.
While Harry watched, she picked up her bow and notched an arrow. She shot it between the bars of her cell. It flew toward the largest rubble piece that Harry noted earlier. Specifically, it flew at a familiar face.
Steven Strange—with his hair in a ponytail, of all styles—was standing over what looked like an operating table. Harry had heard something about the wizard being a former surgeon. This wasn't something you'd see in a hospital, though. It was made of stone and strapped down, as if she was about to be tortured, was the latina that Harry watched the tentacle monster capture.
The archer's arrow was a perfect shot at Strange's head. Right before it could hit him, his cape shot up and slapped the arrow away. The archer screamed with rage and punched one of the bars of her cell, a move she immediately regretted when her knuckle throbbed and she hopped up and down in pain.
"Good aim," Harry said commiseratingly.
She looked over at him. "It's you!"
"My name's Harry," Harry said. "It's nice to meet you."
"Is it?" the girl asked. "Because I'm a little too concerned about being abducted into an evil wizard's lair to say that ANYTHING is nice right now."
She took a deep breath. Strange hadn't reacted to her arrow; Harry wasn't sure he even knew he'd been shot at.
"Just… Call me Hawkeye," the girl said. "Sorry. I'm in a bad mood. I was touched in places by a tentacle monster, so now I want to kill something."
"Fair enough," Harry said. "Any idea where we are, Hawkeye?"
She shrugged. Harry did his best to ignore how her suit tore a little bit more, showing him more of her bra and cleavage.
"I shoot arrows," she said. "I just saw a monster chasing a girl on the street and tried to help. You're the one with a magic wand. I think you have the better chance of answering that."
"I am magical…" Harry agreed, rubbing his chin. "This isn't something I've run into before, though."
"Great. So we're lost," Hawkeye said.
"I've got an idea of how we can figure this out, though," Harry said. "HEY, STRANGE!"
He used a charm to increase the volume of his voice. It made Hawkeye cover her ears. The girl strapped to the table gritted her teeth while the man in question looked up, spotting Harry's cage.
"Fascinating. A wand wizard," Strange said. "Who would have known that Gargantos would have caught one of you on his mission. I suppose that's why he hasn't returned promptly."
"Gargantos? Is that your pet monster?" Harry asked.
"One of them…" Strange said.
His face was identical to the man that visited Harry's home, his voice was also the same, but Harry had the strange suspicion that this was a completely different man from the one he'd dealt with. It was an uncanny feeling. Harry's mind went to Voldemort's diary horcrux, except there was no way Dr. Strange would've used something of that kind. The man was an ass, not evil.
This Strange held his hand over the girl he'd strapped down, content to ignore Harry as just a passing oddity. Harry spotted something that made his eyes widen. In Strange's free hand, a shape appeared, flicking and covered in shadows. It was a book: the Darkhold, identical to the one that Harry watched Wanda destroy. There were multiple?
The latina started to scream. Strange was pulling something out of her, sucking it into his own body. Hawkeye cursed and shot another arrow, only to have it blocked the same way her first one had been. Harry's neighbor fell to her knees in her cell, suddenly crying out. Harry's eyes widened with alarm.
A force was trying to absorb something out of him. His magic was keeping it at bay… But those in the other cells didn't have that advantage. Muggles collapsed and started to moan with intense discomfort.
"Huh, it seems I'm fine," Harry said; intentionally, he didn't reduce the volume of his voice, leaving the enhancement spell on. "I guess your kind of wizard has their limits, compared to mine."
The absorption process halted.
Strange slowly turned his head toward Harry. With the Darkhold in his hand, he flew rapidly toward Harry, his cape fluttering behind him. He stopped in front of the bars of Harry's cell.
"Do you fathom the difference between us?" Strange asked. "You need a stick of wood in order to work your magic. My magic is a part of me. I have mastered it. I've mastered powers you could scarcely comprehend." He glanced at the Darkhold. "And, soon, I will have mastered the multiverse. I am inches away from ascending to a level of being you can't begin to imagine."
"By… What? Torturing young women?" Harry asked.
"Torturing? Torturing! You… You don't even know what I'm doing." Strange laughed. Harry was certain now that this wasn't the man he'd met, and not just because of the hair. "That girl is special." He pointed at the latina, strapped to his table. "She was born with the power to traverse the multiverse. The Darkhold showed me her powers. If they belonged to someone more competent, someone like me, the good they could do is inconceivable!"
Harry looked around. "Yeah, I can see how much good you do."
"These are small sacrifices!" Strange was getting worked up quickly. He was basically spitting on Harry. "Her life will grant me the power to fix entire universes! Your lives will be absorbed to strengthen my spells, so that they can save millions more!"
Harry squeezed his wand. He looked around one more time at the people Strange was talking about absorbing, about a hundred ordinary muggles from New York and one young hero who stepped in to try and save them. Strange's words made him angry. Harry took his temper and transmuted it into icy focus.
"You don't get to decide what sacrifices others make," Harry said. "That's not a sacrifice anymore."
Strange frowned and raised his hand. "I'll take your magic first, so that I don't have to listen to any more of your preaching."
"Go on. TRY," Harry said.
The bars of Harry's cell turned into huge, venomous snakes. They reached their jaws toward Strange, but his hand glowed with an orange circle and the snakes were all beheaded. Strange shot fire at Harry. Harry enchanted his clothes and skin to be temporarily resistant to heat, ran straight forward, and jumped into Strange. Harry punched the man in the jaw as hard as he could, sending both of them falling toward the stone circle beneath them.
It wasn't that Harry's fist was more effective than his magic. Simply put, after listening to Strange talk, Harry REALLY wanted to do that. No matter how effective a bludgeoning charm could be, it would never be as satisfying as driving your knuckle into a prick's jaw.
Strange's cape wrapped around Harry's neck and throttled him. Harry closed his eyes to focus, then apparated. He landed next to the latina on the table. Four quick spells cut her restraints. She sat up quickly, even though she looked exhausted.
"Thank you," she said.
"You're welcome," Harry said. "He's coming for us. Don't get caught again."
Strange had stopped his fall. He didn't just look angry, his eyes looked maddened, touched by insanity. Dark energy started to crackle in his vicinity.
"Do not block my righteous way!" he said.
He made a gesture with his hands. Things screeched inside the clouds around them. Tentacles creatures and other borderline eldritch monstrosities slithered or flew into sight. There were lots of monsters, each of them uglier than the last. This was the power of a Darkhold when it abandoned mind tricks and chose to exert its pure power.
"Can you handle yourself?" Harry asked.
The latina nodded.
"Good. What should I call you?" Harry said. "Before we save… What did he say, the multiverse? Well, before we do that, I'd like to know who I'm working with."
"America," the girl said. "That's my name."
"America, I like that." Harry grinned. "Let's kick some ass."
The monsters came at them. Harry turned one into a pile of grinded meat by blowing a hole through it. Something that looked like a slug with thousands of muscular human arms coming out of its body spit acid at him. Harry apparated away from that attack and fired a conjured metal spike through its head. America charged into a group of monsters. She was definitely endowed with superhuman strength, like Harry suspected when he saw her fight in New York. Although he wouldn't say she looked comfortable, she held her own.
He even saw a few of the smaller monsters go down seemingly for no reason. One that had a body made of glass was shattered by a high pitched noise. Another had its head blown off in a small explosion that hadn't come from Harry's wand. Hawkeye was using her cell like it was a sniper tower, her special arrows thinning the crowd. Harry got her attention and pointed at Strange. He didn't have time to explain anything else, hoping that she understood his plan, or that she would figure it out by watching him.
Harry apparated across the unearthly battlefield, using various summoned monsters as platforms to approach Strange. The sorcerer saw him coming. He smiled in Harry's direction while his eyes stayed full of rage.
"Yes… Come to your death," he said.
"You know, I thought the Strange that I knew was the biggest prick I'd ever meet," Harry said. "Sanctimounious, arrogant, closed minded… But you actually manage to be worse by a few magnitudes. I think what bothers me most is, you still see yourself as a hero."
"I'm more of a hero than you'll ever be," Strange said.
"And yet, I'm the one saving people, while you're trying to use them for your own ends," Harry said. "Come on. Let's see if your skills are at least the real deal."
Strange growled and a dozen copies of him appeared. They all conjured burning ropes of fire, shooting them at Harry like lassos. Before the fire reached him, Harry shot a beam from his wand that split into twelve paths, one for each of the copies of Strange. Eleven of the copies were hit and disappeared, while one dodged. Strange made a hand gesture. Reality became glassy in front of him, broke, and the shards fired at Harry. It was nothing that a good protego charm couldn't stop.
Strange abandoned technique in favor of raw power, screaming with rage as he did so. His magic possessed a putrid purple color that was clearly a result of the Darkhold's corruption. He fired beam after beam toward Harry, who changed his protego out in favor of a protego maxima. Harry pulled a sudden trick by propelling his shield forward just as Strange sent another blast at him. The blast hit the shield and caused an explosion.
Strange might have been destroyed by his proximity to it, but his cape wrapped around him and absorbed the dangerous fire. After defending its master, the cape rushed at Harry. It choked him the way it'd choked him earlier. Grinning, Harry did what he did the last time this happened, apparating away… but he changed one detail. This time, he sidelong apparated the cape, too.
He reappeared next to the body of the first monster he killed. He was still being asphyxiated, so he had to grab the cape and pull on it with all his might in order to shout. "NOW!"
America looked over at him in confusion as she desperately grappled with a gang of monsters. Strange seemed confused. He didn't see the arrow that hit him in the forehead.
His sentient cape recognized what was happening a few seconds before Strange did. It left Harry and flew back to its master but was too far away to get there in time. Harry took aim and cut the cape into ribbons with the strongest cutting charm he knew. The Sun's Bite, the Egyptian curse he used to pick apart Gargantos, split the cape apart and burned its remaining pieces. Harry felt nothing but satisfaction when he looked at Strange to see the man clawing at his eyes.
The most suitable arrow Hawkeye had left was one that'd emitted a bright flash. Not only did she manage to hit Strange directly on the forehead, marking it with a bruise and possibly concussing him, the ensuing flash robbed him of his vision, making him growl with rage while running his fingers over his face.
Harry apparated directly in front of Strange. Someone else got there first. Before Harry started moving, America had fought free of the monsters she was battling and hurled herself at Strange.
"You fake friend traitor!" she roared, punching him in the cheek. The blow knocked out half of Strange's teeth, empowered by her strength and a history that the two of them clearly shared.
The Darkhold started to shine with ominous dark light. Harry wrenched it out of Strange's hand before anything could happen. He leveled his wand at the book, rather than Strange, before he spoke.
"Checkmate," Harry said.
The Darkhold's pages pulsed with anger.
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