"Strange, it's really you." As the man in the billowing red cloak turned around, Ethan Hunt finally confirmed his suspicions. It was indeed the newly minted Sorcerer Supreme, Doctor Stephen Strange.
"Ethan. It's great to run into you here," Strange said, his face lighting up with genuine relief. "What are you doing all the way down here?"
"I should be asking you that," Ethan retorted dryly. "The alien armada is practically knocking on our front door. You're the dignified Sorcerer Supreme, so where have you been? The enemy is using a mix of advanced technology and primordial magic. I figured you would have felt that."
"Of course I felt it. In fact, I left the London Sanctum early today to preempt any disasters during the Convergence," Strange explained, his expression souring into deep annoyance. "But the moment I stepped outside, I ran into a transit worker strike. I finally hailed a cab, only to get blocked by an anti-mutant protest occupying the main roads. It took me entirely too much effort just to reach this subway station, and now the police have put the whole district under martial law."
"You didn't have any other options?" Ethan looked at the wizard with mild suspicion. "Like, say, flying to Greenwich at supersonic speeds?"
"Have you ever actually seen a sorcerer fly at supersonic speeds? We prefer to maintain a certain level of elegance, thank you very much," Strange replied, looking utterly exasperated.
While Strange was certainly proficient in basic levitation magic, traveling at high speeds just wasn't their style. It ruined the mystical aesthetic. For long-distance travel, sorcerers exclusively relied on teleportation portals.
Thinking about it only made Strange feel more aggrieved. If it weren't for the catastrophic spatial anomalies caused by the Convergence, he wouldn't be suffering through the indignity of public transit. Normally, if he had to travel more than five hundred meters, he just opened a portal.
"Elegance?" Ethan echoed, his gaze dropping to the heavy, double-edged battleaxe clumsily tucked into Strange's belt beneath the Cloak of Levitation. Right. Very elegant.
"So, you can't use your portals right now, which leaves you a bit stranded, doesn't it?" Ethan asked.
"Technically, I can use them, but the spatial fabric is entirely too chaotic," Strange corrected. "Unless I can calculate the exact parameters of the dimensional fluctuations, precision is impossible."
"You might not believe me, but if I tried to open a portal to Greenwich right now, we might step through and find ourselves having tea with Mephisto."
Hearing this, Ethan couldn't help but recall his own recent dimensional detour to Hell. He nodded solemnly. "Oh, I believe you. But trust me, Mephisto is definitely not in a tea-drinking mood right now."
Strange blinked, utterly confused.
"Never mind, let's just get moving," Ethan sighed.
Manipulating the ambient kinetic energy around them, Ethan enveloped Strange in a localized vector field. With a powerful burst of redirected force, the two of them shot out of the subway station and rocketed into the sky toward Greenwich.
Meanwhile, in the skies over Greenwich, Malekith hovered directly beneath the massive spatial convergence node. Earth was Midgard, the central pillar of the Nine Realms, making it the perfect focal point to connect all eight adjacent dimensions.
The Aether surged madly around the Dark Elf King, its dark red hue shifting into a pitch-black, viscous fluid. As it corrupted the sky above London, the dark energy began violently expanding into the other realms, aggressively rewriting the cosmic laws of the universe.
"Strange, tell me you have a way to stop that," Ethan said, turning to the Sorcerer Supreme as they landed on a nearby rooftop.
While Strange might not possess Luna's raw, demigod-level destructive power, his magical lineage was built on thousands of years of outsmarting cosmic entities like Dormammu and Mephisto. His tactical expertise in this field was unparalleled.
"There is a way," Strange said, his eyes locked on the expanding dark storm. "If I tap into the ambient magic of the London Sanctum, I can project a massive, reinforced Mirror Dimension to completely isolate him from the spatial nodes."
"The only problem is, I don't currently have enough raw power to pull that off," he admitted. Strange's magical talent was immense, but compared to the Ancient One's centuries of accumulated power, he was still lacking in pure mana reserves.
Ethan stared at him blankly. "So, your brilliant plan is entirely useless."
"It's not completely useless," Strange defended, reaching deep into the magical spatial pockets of his cloak. "I don't have the power myself, but I can temporarily borrow it by brokering a deal with a higher-dimensional entity."
"Please tell me you aren't about to call Mephisto or Dormammu," Ethan said, eyeing the wizard warily.
Sorcerers really are absolute maniacs when it comes to gathering power, Ethan thought. Baron Mordo was right about these guys.
"Not this time," Strange replied, pulling a glowing, ornate spear from his cloak. "Mephisto has temporarily suspended all Earth-based contracts, and Dormammu hasn't answered my calls since our last negotiation got a little out of hand."
"Fortunately, I recently found a new, highly potent cosmic entity willing to deal," Strange explained. The spear in his hands radiated a blinding, pure aura of holy light. "Give me a second. This is just a magical replica of the Spear of Longinus, so the connection can be a bit spotty."
Ethan's expression turned incredibly weird as he stared at the holy weapon. "If you're trying to contact who I think you're trying to contact, that replica isn't going to cut it."
Reaching into his own jacket, Ethan pulled out an ancient, original copy of the Bible and tossed it to the wizard. "Use this. It'll give you a much better signal."
Strange caught the heavy tome, startled for a moment before nodding in appreciation. He didn't have time to ask why Ethan was casually carrying a medieval religious relic. Pressing his hands against the leather cover, Strange extended his consciousness into the astral plane, seeking out the divine entity tied to the book.
As his spirit made contact, a booming, majestic voice echoed directly into his mind.
"Ah, my child! Have you finally seen the truth? Have you decided to embrace the Lord of Holy Light and become my divine champion on Earth?" The voice paused, the majestic tone slipping into genuine confusion. "Wait a minute. You aren't that kid with the vector powers."
The Lord of Light quickly realized he was speaking to Stephen Strange, not Ethan. But the cosmic entity was nothing if not a professional. In an instant, the voice snapped back to a booming, sacred cadence, desperately trying to salvage its divine aesthetic.
"Ahem. Humble sorcerer, you are blessed beyond measure to gaze upon the Almighty in your fleeting mortal life," the voice echoed grandly. "Are you prepared to risk your soul and become my chosen herald?"
He's literally reading off a scripted pitch, Strange realized, unimpressed by the overwhelming aura of divinity.
"Tell me, mortal, are you ready to put your absolute faith in the Holy Light?"
"No thank you, I'll pass on the blind faith," Strange replied instantly. While sorcerers constantly sought out new sources of power, they never truly submitted to the entities they borrowed from. "Actually, I'm just here to broker a short-term transaction."
"Oh. Well, that's disappointing. I don't do business transactions," the Lord of Light replied, his grand persona deflating entirely. "If you want a merchant, the demon lords are two dimensions over. Please see yourself out, and don't forget to close the book on your way out."
"Wait, don't hang up!" Strange hurriedly interjected. "Look at it as a freelance opportunity. I'm sure we can come to a mutually beneficial arrangement..."
Drawing on the accumulated scamming experience of countless Sorcerer Supremes before him, Strange slipped into his best negotiator persona. It didn't take long for him to successfully reignite the divine entity's interest.
A few moments later, a brilliant pillar of golden light erupted around Strange. He levitated off the rooftop, radiating the overwhelming aura of a divine champion. A glowing, golden eye manifested on his forehead, thrumming with raw cosmic energy.
"Let's go to work!" Strange declared.
With a sweeping gesture, a massive, translucent projection of the London Sanctum materialized in the sky behind him. The golden eye on his forehead unleashed a blinding torrent of holy light, piercing straight through the corrupted, darkened sky and slamming directly into Malekith.
Holy Light was fundamentally the power of absolute order. Its inherent nature actively resisted and repaired the chaotic reality-warping effects of the Aether.
Capitalizing on the suppression, Strange unleashed his most potent spatial magic. Synergizing with the ancient wards of the London Sanctum, he violently dragged the entire district of Greenwich into a heavily reinforced Mirror Dimension, completely severing Malekith's connection to the Convergence nodes.
"Damnable light! Damnable sorcerers!" Malekith roared, his grand ascension brutally interrupted.
The crushing pressure of the holy magic and the sudden spatial lockdown left the Dark Elf King severely disoriented. Just as he attempted to mobilize the Aether to shatter the mirror realm, Luna seized her opening.
The demigod had been coldly observing the battle from the sidelines, waiting for the perfect tactical window. She pulled out the Heart of Ymir and smoothly inserted the crystalline Ice Key into its core.
"Absolute Zero," Luna commanded.
The primordial, absolute cold of Jotunheim erupted from the relic. A localized blizzard of absolute zero surged forward, freezing the very fabric of space and time around Malekith, instantly crystallizing the Aether into a dormant state.
"Ethan, now!" Thor bellowed.
The God of Thunder had finally managed to recall Mjolnir from its dimensional detour. Without hesitation, he hurled the crackling hammer directly toward Ethan.
As Ethan caught Mjolnir, he effortlessly bypassed every enchantment and restriction Odin had placed upon it using his vector field. In Ethan's hands, the hammer ceased to be a mere magical artifact. It became a compressed neutron star fragment weighing hundreds of millions of tons, violently venting infinite electromagnetic pulses.
"Die," Ethan stated coldly.
With the Aether frozen by Luna's magic, Ethan swung the catastrophically heavy hammer forward, fully intending to obliterate Malekith's body and soul in a single kinetic strike.
Trapped in the ice, Malekith finally felt the genuine, suffocating terror of true death. Driven to absolute desperation, the Dark Elf King abandoned all caution, choosing to violently burn away his own life force to force the Aether back into motion.
"Pathetic! Do you really think the same trick will work twice?!" Malekith screamed.
The frozen Aether suddenly flared with a blinding, aggressive crimson light, shattering the ice. Pouring his remaining vitality into his arm, Malekith threw a desperate, raw punch directly into the path of Mjolnir.
As his fist collided with the hammer, the apocalyptic kinetic and electromagnetic energy Ethan had drawn out of the neutron star fragment was abruptly nullified, forced back into a dormant state by the Aether's reality-warping power.
Ethan's eyes narrowed slightly at the impact.
He looked closely at Malekith. The Dark Elf King had withered dramatically, looking as frail and emaciated as a dying old man. He used the Aether to forcibly rewrite reality and seal the hammer's kinetic output, Ethan realized. The sheer life force that must have cost him is staggering.
"It seems your grand calculations have amounted to nothing, human!" Malekith cackled, panting heavily but victorious.
But Malekith's laughter was cut brutally short.
The sky of the Mirror Dimension was violently torn open from the outside. A streak of dazzling golden light plummeted from the heavens. Unlike the peaceful, restorative energy of Strange's holy magic, this gold was infused with overwhelming, domineering killing intent.
At the center of the light was a legendary spear, etched with countless glowing Norse runes.
It had already locked onto Malekith's body and soul. No barrier of time, space, or reality-warping magic could deter it from its mark, because it was Gungnir, the Spear of Destiny.
"Odin!" Malekith roared in absolute, helpless fury as the golden light consumed him.
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Word count: 2005
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