"How?" Strange demanded, his voice a raw mix of disbelief and professional curiosity. "How did you fix a complete C7-C8 spinal transection?"
The Ancient One took a slow, deliberate sip of her tea. "Oh, I didn't fix it. He came to me unable to walk. I simply… convinced him that he could."
Stephen's head tilted, his brow furrowed in skepticism. "Are you telling me it was psychosomatic?"
"When you reconnected a severed nerve," the Ancient One countered smoothly, "did you heal the tissue, Doctor, or did the body heal itself?"
"The cells did," he replied, as if explaining a basic concept to a child.
"And those cells are programmed to regenerate in a very specific way," she continued, her eyes holding his.
"Precisely."
"And what if I were to tell you that the body can be persuaded to reprogram itself, to mend in ways you've never imagined?"
A flicker of hope ignited in Strange's eyes, the desperate, grasping hope of a scientist on the verge of a breakthrough. "You're talking about cellular regeneration," he breathed, the words tumbling out. "That's beyond cutting-edge. Is that what this place is? Some off-the-grid research facility? No regulatory boards to slow you down? How experimental are we talking?"
"Extremely," the Ancient One said, her calm demeanor a stark contrast to his rising excitement.
"So you've done it," he concluded, leaning forward. "You've found a way to reprogram nerve cells to repair themselves."
"No, Mr. Strange," she corrected him gently, and the hope in his eyes died as quickly as it had appeared. "I know how to reorient the spirit to better heal the body."
The silence that followed was heavy with Strange's disappointment. "The spirit," he repeated flatly, the word tasting like ash in his mouth.
"Yes."
He stared at her for a long moment, the last dregs of his optimism draining away. Still, he'd come too far to give up completely. He forced a strained smile. "Okay. Fine," he said, trying to play along. "So… what's the procedure?"
The Ancient One rose and retrieved a heavy, leather-bound book. She opened it on the table before him, revealing a series of anatomical charts. There was a diagram of the chakra system, a map of acupuncture meridians, and then, jarringly, a modern MRI scan of a human brain. Page after page, she revealed ancient mysticism alongside contemporary medicine.
By the final page, Strange couldn't contain his frustration any longer. He let out a short, bitter laugh. "I've seen all of this before. In gift shops."
"You've seen the maps," the Ancient One corrected him, her voice patient but firm. "Each of them drawn by doctors who could see the parts, but never the whole."
That was the last straw. "I spent my last dollar getting here," Strange snarled, his voice cracking with rage. "A one-way ticket, and you're talking to me about healing through faith?"
The Ancient One simply smiled, an enigmatic expression that infuriated him further. "You are a man who has looked at the world through a keyhole," she said softly. "You have spent your entire life trying to widen that keyhole, to see more, to know more. And now, on hearing that it can be widened in ways you can't imagine, you reject the possibility out of hand."
"No, I reject it because I do not believe in fairy tales about chakras, or energy, or the power of belief!" He surged to his feet, stalking toward her until he was looking down at her, his face a mask of contempt. "There is no such thing as spirit! We are matter and nothing more. We are just one tiny, insignificant speck in a cold, uncaring universe!"
"You think so little of yourself," she murmured.
"Oh, you think you've got me all figured out, don't you?" He began poking her in the chest with his finger, his movements sharp and aggressive. "Well, you don't. But I see right through you!"
She looked down at his finger, then back up at his face, her expression unreadable. She had heard enough.
In a motion too fast to follow, she grasped his arm and placed her other hand flat against his chest. "You think you know how the world works," she whispered.
And then she pushed.
The world dissolved. For a split second, Stephen Strange had the most profound out-of-body experience imaginable. He was floating, looking down at his own physical form, his expression of shock frozen on his face. He saw Celeste and Mordo rush forward to catch his now-vacant body before it could slump to the floor.
Then, just as quickly, he slammed back into himself, the impact sending a violent jolt through his entire nervous system. He gasped, stumbling backward, his lungs burning for air.
"What… what did you just do to me?" he choked out.
"I pushed your astral form out of your body," the Ancient One explained calmly.
"What's in that tea?" he demanded, his mind scrambling for a rational explanation. "Psilocybin? LSD?"
"It's just tea," she replied, a hint of amusement in her voice. "With a little honey."
"What was that?"
"For a moment, you entered the Astral Dimension. A place where the spirit exists apart from the body."
"Why are you doing this to me?" he pleaded, his voice trembling.
"To show you just how much you don't know." She stepped forward and placed her thumb on the center of his forehead. "Open your eye."
Reality shattered.
He was no longer in Kamar-Taj. He was hurtling through the stratosphere, his body tumbling uncontrollably as he screamed in pure terror. "This isn't real! This isn't real!"
Suddenly, he stopped, floating in the silent blackness of space, the blue marble of Earth hanging beneath him. A monarch butterfly, impossible and beautiful, fluttered past his face. He reached out a hesitant, trembling hand to touch its wing,
And was launched forward again, thrown into a vortex of impossible, swirling colors. He could hear voices, distant and muffled.
"His heart rate is spiking to dangerous levels," Mordo's voice said, laced with concern.
"Master, is all of this truly necessary?" That was Celeste.
The kaleidoscope of color resolved itself into a familiar room. He was seated in a chair, the Ancient One beside him, a faint, knowing smile on her face. "He looks fine to me," she said playfully.
Celeste's voice again, closer now. "You look like you're having entirely too much fun with this."
"Nonsense."
The room around him began to warp and stretch like taffy, and he was sucked backward into the psychedelic maelstrom.
"You think this material universe is all there is?" the Ancient One's voice echoed in his mind, clear as a bell. His body fractured into a thousand copies, each one a different version of himself, before dissolving into light. He was pulled into a pulsating, living galaxy that throbbed to the beat of a cosmic drum.
"What is real?"
He flew through another dimension, feeling himself torn apart at a subatomic level and then stitched back together.
"What mysteries lie beyond the reach of your senses?"
He found himself in a horrifying reality made of flesh, where hands grew from the tips of his fingers, and smaller hands sprouted from those. They began to claw at him, pulling him down, down, down into the pupil of his own eye.
"This universe is only one of an infinite number," her voice continued, a calm guide through the madness. "Worlds without end. Some benevolent and life-giving. Others, filled with malice and hunger."
He crashed through a crystalline reality into a dimension of pure darkness. It was a place of suffocating dread, and as he drifted through it, a pair of burning, malevolent purple eyes ignited in the void, staring directly at him. He screamed, a raw, primal sound that was swallowed by the infinite dark.
"There are powers in this multiverse that are older than time," she warned. "And they lie in wait."
The darkness gave way to a sudden, blissful peace. He was floating in an endless, empty universe, all fear and ego stripped away.
"Who are you in this vast multiverse, Mr. Strange?"
Then, with a violent lurch, he was pulled back. He shot through a tunnel of light, back toward Earth, back toward Kamar-Taj. He crashed into his seat with a bone-jarring thud, tipping it over and landing in a heap on the floor. He lay there, trembling, every cell in his body screaming from the experience.
He pushed himself shakily to his knees. The Ancient One stood over him, her expression serene.
"Have you ever seen that in a gift shop?"
Stephen looked at his own shaking hands, the source of all his pain, the symbol of his failure. Then he looked up at her, the woman who had shattered his reality and, in doing so, had shown him the only path forward. The arrogance was gone, replaced by a profound and desperate awe.
"Teach me."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Writing takes time, coffee, and a lot of love.If you'd like to support my work, join me at [email protected]/GoldenGaruda
You'll get early access to over 50 chapters, selection on new series, and the satisfaction of knowing your support directly fuels more stories.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~