Magic Mania: Book One

5

For most of that day, Stephen read, re-read and re-re-read every book he could find on the subject, until he felt 98.5% certain he could perform the two spells: one for checking the danger in other dimensions, the other for actually travelling to one. He memorised the rules so well he could recite them better than the Avengers' names (which wasn't hard because there were so many Avengers) but there was still one huge problem, or maybe two.

The first complication: Strange didn't know what was happening in the other dimensions. Or if the spell would show him what was happening in the other dimensions (though that wasn't a separate problem). How can you prepare to fight something if you didn't know what the thing you were fighting was?

Unfortunately, A guide to the Multiverse didn't provide the knowledge to answer that question, so he concluded that, in the likely event there was indeed something amiss (though he still couldn't quite understand how he knew that something was wrong yet) he would find out once the spell had been cast. That was the easier of the two problems he could resolve.

The second complication was a lot more complex. Over the past month he'd been forming a simple, yet failsafe plan, one of which included, to put it bluntly: getting a bunch of wizards, getting to the other dimension, kicking ass, being back in time for lunch. I did say bluntly.

But obviously, Stephen had thought, that strategy had been completely scrapped when he'd found out it would include tipping the multiverse into chaos. Only one wizard could travel through dimensions at a time, and only when they had returned to their own could another perform the same spell without overturning the hundreds, maybe thousands of universes. Strange did not want to be that guy.

So instead, the words Wong had said floated through his brain and got the cogs turning. Three others who aren't wizards like us. The "like us" had got him thinking... what if there were some magic beings out there who didn't count as wizards like them, but still might have phenomenal magic similar to him? That was worth a look, right?

But who did he know who had magic as strong (OK, maybe stronger) than his? That was the complication.

He had someone in mind. Someone who had mastered almost all forms of magic, except mind control, which he also couldn't do. Someone who was used to battle, and barely ever failed at said battle. Someone with a ton of experience fighting off-world, seeing as they weren't actually from this world. Someone who had also tried to brutally murder him within 20 seconds of them meeting.

To further increase the complication, this someone had been in hiding for over 5 years, since the last time he had faked his death. No-one, not even his own brother, knew he was still alive, except Strange, and he'd only found out by accident on a walk one day. Everyone thought he had been strangled at the hands of Thanos himself.

Namely, Loki, the God of Mischief and Magic himself.