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Dreams are not unusual — for Duke, it is sometimes hard to tell them from waking, though. It's usually a dream if the dog isn't there. Whatever Coz is doesn't travel well into the Dream Dimension.
The first thing he does on waking is write the dream out — twice. A copy for him and a copy for Liv. Her copy, he folds up and places under a piece of iron in the center of Tex's circle. On the outside, it reads: I went to Doctor Strange. She's smart. She'll find him if he gets lost.
And then it's him, the car, the trunk full of his gear, a travelling apothecary and weapons store in one. Coz in the front seat. There's no leaving him behind. Tin of LSD in one pocket, tin of 'cigarettes' in another. Who knows where they'll need to go? Best to be packed.
And then there they are. At Strange's door. Duke has the copy of his dream in hand. The moment Strange appears, he hands it over.
"This is for you," he says.
*
The silvery wards interrupt with news of a visitor, a familiar one who is appreciated immensely and probably needs to be told so directly, so the good Doctor is quick to make his way down from Loft to foyer and then to the front doors proper. Opening them, he looks out at the gentleman he knows as Duke and smiles.
His mouth opens to greet, but then the piece of paper is offered — nay, politely shoved — into his outstretched hand intended first to shake. Strange takes the paper and gives the herbalist a curious look before scanning over the handwriting.
"Huh. You'd best come in," he murmurs, walking away from the open front door and expecting Duke to follow in. That the front door will shut remains either up to his guest or the Sanctum proper.
*
Billy has dreams, but he doesn't so often have Dreams, and he doesn't ever have dreams about freaking Nazis, and he especially doesn't ever have dreams where he's the freaking nazi. And he has never woke up shouting for a Doctor. Panting, Billy is leaping out of bed and scrambling into his latest work outfit: a dark red cape, this black hood, black clothes, stuff like that.
A moment later, Billy vanishes and appears before the Sanctum, looking a little bit freaked out and wild eyed. "Doctor, man, like, there was this nazi dagger and I was doing something with it, and it was a dream unlike anything I've ever had and why in the name of all that is Holy would I be dreaming about having a magic nazi dagger?"
*
Duke follows Strange inside, his demeanor calm even when Billy appears like that behind him. He turns slowly to regard the newcomer, Coz stops at his side and huffs curiously.
"Yes, a little like Tex," Duke says to the dog. As though that's a thing one does, converse with the enormous yellow dog. Then Duke frowns as he searches his memories for Nazis and finds them fairly promptly. He's done a lot of research in the last month.
"It's going around," Duke says to Billy, gesturing him on in toward Strange.
*
The good Doctor is not so involved in re-reading the letter detailing the terribly-foreboding dream that he doesn't recognize that particular voice. Pausing and glancing over his shoulder, Billy is granted a lingering look of concern.
"I suppose it is," he replies, partially to Duke and partially in exasperation. Oh gods below, Billy too. Where is Wanda when he needs her?!
"Come in, Billy, you're not the only one to dream of Nazi daggers." Strange rattles the piece of paper lightly in his hand to detail the other source of said dream. "Close the door behind you and we'll discuss this over tea."
Because what else do you discuss portentous dreams over other than tea?
Okay, maybe whiskey, but he's not bringing out that decanter. Not just yet.
*
"Does anyone else hear that?" Duke stands in the middle of the living room with his head canted to one side, just as the second hand on the nearest clock sweeps past the twelve. "It's loudest at the start of the minute, then three more times, softer. Voices on carried on a bell. A slow heartbeat full of broken words. It's somewhere very deep." He doesn't speak loudly but his words have a strange weight to them, as they do when he talks a piece of truth into the world.
*
Billy blinks at the stranger, and then blinks at the dog: and he promptly grins. Hey, big yellow dogs are good for Billy moods. "Hi, boy. You are *adorable*." After a beat, he glances up at Duke a moment, "Oh. Hi. I'm Billy." And then he's following them in, closing the door behind him. He tenses up, waiting for the overly friendly wards to see if they want to come sniff him over again, but if he has to put up with it, he has to put up with it.
"Everyone died… and mayday? Isn't that what you say when a plane needs help? It's like…" Billy shakes his head slowly, frowning, running a hand through his dark hair and pushing his black hood down past his head. The young man seems twitchy: in fact, he's not quite paying attention, so ends up sort of floating an inch off the ground as he walks.
After a moment, he shivers, "Someone just walked on my grave."
*
The living room. Safe place for imbibing herbal brews and discussing the weirdness of the world as a whole. He's almost done pouring the last of three cups and then Strange pauses. Literally freezes up. Tea spills over the edge of his personal cup and he realizes it too late to do much else than put aside the kettle with a heavy sigh.
Billy speaks of gravewalkers, Duke talks about something the Sorcerer is most definitely familiar with, whether he likes it or not.
"Duke, the sound." Steel-blue eyes land on the herbalist, for once able to ignore the utterly-adorable presence of Coz. "Hand-bells, right? Crystalline? A heart rate right around 50 beats per minute, like a resting body?"
*
"No. Deep and slow. Like a voice speaking out of the depths. Think of bubbles rising from somewhere in the abyss, each like the note of a bell on the air of a hot night. Round and sonorous." Duke knows what that feels like, sounds like, though he doesn't remember how. He's impossibly still, barely breathing save for when he speaks, all his focus on what he senses. "Each bubble holds words, not air. They rise and burst. Something is calling out."
*
Great. Billy is surrounded by crazy people. The emphatic rolling of his eyes and the purely teenaged huff shows just what the young man thinks of all this talk of noise and bells and all of that stuff. So, he crosses his arms, and shows a perfect display of: old people are dumb.
Billy can wait, though. He's a picture of patience and decorum. He's only tapping his foot a little bit: taptap, taptap. Eventually, he shivers again, and frowns. "Are your wards on the fritz? Something's making my spine vibrate."
*
"Interesting…" Strange murmurs of Duke's description, folding his arms and frowning. Billy's question pulls him too from the sensing of the chiming emitting from upstairs and the lean Sorcerer sighs. "No, Billy, not that I'm aware of. See?"
And the silvery wards emerge from the walls of the Sanctum to ruffle about the teenager's dark hair in a friendly manner. Even if they're just chilly enough to leave goosebumps in their wake. They swirl away and around their master before disappearing. "The spells are perfectly fine. Do you know what's making your spine…vibrate then? Are you hearing something like we are?"
*
"Do you hear anything?" Duke crouches down to talk to Coz, who tips his head obligingly and whines. "If the wards are in place and we are all experiencing some sort of disturbance, maybe it is the remains of the dream. Sometimes they follow people into waking — you had a dream also, Strange?" Duke hums softly, thoughtfully, taking a moment to try to recreate the words as they ring in his mind yet again.
"Do you know what the dream meant when it said: Give the dancer back her heart? If we do that, perhaps the rest becomes clear."
*
Squinting, Billy bites his lip and cocks his head to the side, "It’s more like a feeling then a sound, though I suppose you could call it a sound if it was like… super quiet and deep. Like, some seriously deep base. It’s like… a vibration. Like, the world trembles ever so slightly and since I don't fit quite right I vibrate out of sync a little. It’s like every minute. Heck I think I could keep time by it." He tenses as the friendly wards come ruffle him, and manages to adopt a look of pure dignity. Then he shivers again.
Billy squints at Duke a moment, "I didn't dream about a dancer at all. I was in a car, somewhere really high, and then… falling. Then it was me with the freaking nazi dagger doing something that was important that I knew would work: but I don't know what or if it is GOOD. I mean anytime a nazi freaking dagger is in play the motives of the guy wielding it are suspect. Then these black lines coming together, and wehn they meet, this giant explosion, all kinds of screams,… and some plane crashing. Someone calling mayday, mayday."
Billy runs his hands through his hair, "Someone named Geoffrey is wanting to jump, which'll kill ten, but if they don't, it'll kill ten thousand. Then I woke up yelling 'Doctor' for no reason I can understand."
*
"Mmmmmmmmmmmfff." It's the sound of resigned acceptance from the Sorcerer, who goes from brooding nearest to the fireplace to collapsing into a disgruntled sit in his high-backed chair. Scrubbing at his face for a moment, he then emerges and sighs. Sharply.
"I had no dream. However, I know precisely what's making the sound. Your 'dancer' is a statuette. I have it upstairs. Wanda brought it in. She's my consort," he adds offhandedly with a glance towards Duke; Billy knows full-well who this Wanda is. "It has a peculiar trick to it. Uncover it, it chimes, every minute loudest and every other 15 seconds, just like you — and you — described." He points to Duke and then Billy. "Cover it and it becomes a heartbeat. Impossible to ignore."
Strange looks rather weary as he says it; perhaps the inanimate object with its life-like rhythms has been interrupting proper sleep for a while now. "I would love to find its heart, Duke, honestly."
Those sharp eyes now narrow at the teenager in red and black. "Your dream disturbs me a bit more. That sounds an awful lot like the Black Sun. Ahnenerbe. Absolutely connected with the Nazis." He can't sit anymore, not with the level of agitation rising in his blood, so the good Doctor gets to doing so in front of the fireplace, arms tightly folded once more. "I recently looked into the disappearance of a local witch, Leandra. Her House was ransacked, her apprentices are still missing. How she survived…" He shakes his head before continuing to speak. "This group dabbled — dabbles still, in the Dark Arts, in occult rituals. They're attempting to gain access to something hidden away very deliberately." Silhouetted by the light of the fire, he pauses with grim expression. "You called my name because there are others missing or who will be missing shortly, all with connections to the Mystic Arts. I need to locate that plane."
*
*Chime*.
*
*Chime*.
*
*Chime*.
*
"The garden." Duke exhales sharply. "Perhaps not the first Garden, but the Garden nonetheless. She said they were at the gates of the Garden. Is that what they're after? Can you take the dancer with you? Perhaps it will point you in the correct direction, to find its heart." He seems slightly irritated, though not necessarily with anyone here. "To find a plane, you should use mundane means if you have no other way to scry for it. I wish I could be of more use. My memory dissolves even as it forms. We can take Tex, but he may struggle to find his way — and I have no idea how much sacrifice he would require." Standing around, talking, is not Duke's strong suit.
*
Billy's expression darkens as Doctor Strange confirms the nazi connection, frowning, "I could try meditating, I can find stuff when I meditate sometimes. Only, that hasn't been working very well lately." He hesitates, then adds, "Leandra? I dreamed that name. 'Tell Leandra. Tell Leandra I couldn't do it' — though don't ask me what it was. Things were a bit weird and jumbled there at the end. But."
Billy makes a sharp, cutting gesture in the air, "If it comes to foiling a bunch of nazi occultists then you can count me in on whatever needs doing. Never again, you know. But I don't get what the connection is between our dreams and your uh, statue. And this plane going down."
*
*Chime*.
*
*Chime*.
*
*Chime*.
*
Strange sighs again and closes his eyes in order to rub at them with thumb and index fingertips. "I don't know how it's all connected precisely, Billy, but I have suspicions that may play out shortly. I hesitate to share them simply because they are unconfirmed."
He flinches at the distant sound and gives the ceiling directly above him a gimlet glare. "Duke, this is the statue." With a curt gesture of hand wreathed in faint orange light and muttered three words, the air directly around the center of the small side table beside his high-backed chair begins to waver. Out of reality, like the waver of a desert mirage made real, appears the piece of art in question, empty-handed and uncovered as to allow his guests the full impression of the thing. "And if you're talking about the same Garden that I think you're talking about, then we need to figure this out immediately."
Stepping over to the statuette, he gives it a pensive squint. To the others, the Sorcerer is the picture of silent contemplation. In his mind, he's desperately turning over memories and digging through information. Anything at this point will help.
Something about where she stands, on the sidetable, triggers an odd freeze-frame before his mental eye. The decorative statues on the wall in the Wychwood House, the ones that offered up illumination via electrical bulbs, they shared the same…pose…
"Wait a second…" he mutters with a grimace. "Olira."
The spell cast is quiet said and quietly comes to fruition in the space above the statuette's outstretched hands. A small glow, no brighter than a candle, orbed and hued in sky-blue, flits to rest there.
*
The statuette in question is not terribly large, at most two feet, polished to a bronzed sheen. Supple lines and curves leave no doubt she is feminine, and created to a standard common to Art Nouveau. Her garment has the feel of ancient Greek or Roman art, a thin draped robe. Blind eyes turn up towards them, incapable of imparting their seduction or knowledge. Graceful arms are outstretched, palms up in supplication, and her body curves as though caught in the process of a dance. Whatever she was intended to hold is absent.
Her presence is like an electric spark to Duke, at least, the plaintive sound turned up several magnitudes from its hushed sound. For Billy and Strange, the anticipation is a crystalline note struck against their arcane Sight. The chime is insistent, but quieter than the last time the Sorcerer Supreme encountered the bronze.
*
The moment the glowing orb fills the statue's hands, the divination spell spooled inside her breast coming to life.
A woman speaks, her English accent strong. The statue takes on a more vibrant amber glow, filling the chamber with warm sunshine.
"….hear this, I am still alive. Give this keystone to Doctor Strange. He must know: Sol sealed the Gardens of Oshtur away from this dimension.
We are being attacked by German sorcerers. More than seven. They came at dawn, and it's 10 November. Bloody hell, they've got funny black swastikas, machine pistols and guns.
The house is being ransacked by those jackbooted thugs. Our wards are being torn apart."
Muted pops rattle over her voice, a heavy thud a moment later. Her voice sounds tight, fear louder than the crack echoing behind her.
"There isn't time, there just isn't time. Mistress Leandra is besieged, and Elroy retreated. Fled. He ran, I don't know!
She wavers, anger and despair on a rising note. Her speech hurries, distracted.
"Doctor, I'm so sorry, but I can't let it fall into the Germans' hands and I don't know what else to do —
Oh goddess, they're trying to break through the Astral. I'll protect it as long as I can.
Doctor, help me! Havayah, pitkhi et sha'arei orah!"
It stops as the light implodes on itself, like watching a supernova going backwards.
*
"There is only one Garden that knows me." That much, Duke knows, in the same way that he knows his name is Raphael and he was once something he can't remember being. Not simply that he's forgotten it, he's incapable of knowing. People try to explain it to no avail. It doesn't matter, it never does. He is what he is regardless.
When the statue is lit, Duke comes over to regard it much as he would a person. He crouches down by it, observing and listening. Coz looks over his shoulder, whining curiously. Then, they both startle with the collapsing of the light.
"She asks the Most High to open the gates of light. She makes a doorway here, the statue — to move through dimensions," Duke says, rubbing a hand over his eyes. Coz shakes his head and sneezes in dismay.
"The Tree of Life is…" The meaning slide away from Duke even as he tries to speak. "It is too close to me for me to speak of it. But I think this statue is the key to traveling where she has gone. That is all I have to offer." Even that feels as though it frays the fabric of who he is.
*
For his part, Billy regards the statue, and the message, with a blink. He frowns. Then he eyes Duke, and nods firmly, "Okay, if the statue-thingy is a Key of Stepping Sideways, let's all grab hold and clench our asses and step sideways and go take the asskicking to the Nazis."
Billy is really into that last part. "I really would like to introduce some Nazis to a really pissed off Jewish kid who happens to also be on the side of righteousness." Pause, "Not that anyone who is against the Nazis isn't by definition basically on the side of the white, you know." So he steps forward, gestures at statue, and looks at Strange questioningly.
*
The Sorcerer listens with half-shuttered eyes that eventually close tightly against the anguish he can hear in the young woman's voice. The sound of gunfire is distressing; he knows that a shield spell can hold only so long against the physical contact of bullets, especially in those who command lesser power than him. The last line, incantation, and he opens his eyes in time to see the spell-light dwindle into nothingness.
Duke's interpretation of things confirms a few of his suspicions. Billy's comment earns him a flat side-glance and thinned lips. Thingies.
"Yes, by all means, let's go take some ass-kicking to some Nazis." A dark sense of humor shades his words. With a nonchalant gesture, his semi-formal daywear melts into storm-blue battle-leathers. The Eye of Agamotto appears about his neck with a subtle flash of citrine light and from outside, whisking in through doorway to the foyer, comes the crimson Cloak. It alights upon his shoulders and now — the Sorcerer Supreme is ready to hand out said ass-kicking.
"Hold on then. Things really may go sideways," he murmurs. With a hand wreathed in opalescent incandescence, he reaches out…and places fingertips into the statuette's upturned palms.
*
Light wraps around them in a gilded bubble and pops again, collapsing inward, pulling them with it. In that moment, three men cease to stand within the friendly sanctum, full of creature comforts.
In that moment, they fall through the space between spaces, a violet-black bruise in existence lit by thousands of stars and psychedelic neon swirls. They fall slow as feathers, at three quarters the speed of sound. Moving shapes pass them, an uncomfortable experience to say the least, and pray they don't take notice, don't see me-don'tseeme-don'tseeme…
In the same moment, they are buffeted by a freezing wind that sears them behind.
They stand within an open-air courtyard, a wide space fallen into disrepair. Directly ahead of them rises a perfectly symmetrical complex enclosed by a high wall breached by a graceful, arching gate into a central plaza. Twin turrets standing in the foreground shine under the stormy sky, and further back, the high round tower vanishes under dark clouds. Sinuous figures frozen in coppery stone frolic among the carved flowers and vines upon the wall's outer friezes, creating a dissonance with the frigid climate swallowing up the gardens in walls of glacial ice. Whatever actual plants should be thriving here probably aren't doing so well given the abundance of ice and the freezing conditions, fed by the shrieking wind.
All that remains of their courtyard is a narrow strip of polished cobblestones strewn by withered flowers and desiccated leaves and spent casings. Beyond the ground falls away in a sizeable gouge easily twenty feet across, filled by black ice burning with entrapped stars and specks of light. A crude walkway stretches cross the fathomless moat to the front gates. Fallen over that route is a rather large banyan tree, chopped off at the roots, and there's no way past it.
*
Coz sneezes again, disapprovingly. Duke chuckles, then ruffles his ears.
"Tex will be fine," he says quietly. The wind rips at his long hair, steals his voice. "That tree is familiar. The one I saw was larger."
Tex may be fine but everything was in the car save for Duke's usual bag with a few weapons and holy water grenades and other bits and pieces. Lately, he's kitted out to fight poltergeists and demons.
"I suppose this is the first trial," he muses, heading for the tree. Yes, this is all perfectly normal.
*
Billy reaches out, ready, and holds on, clenching his teeth. He's been a teleporter ever since that time bullies chased him and he really wanted to go home: now he's a whiz at it. He's been a flier ever since that time he fell off the roof and missed the ground. He's a whiz at this travel power business. But still, he's never travelled via portal key before.
And the moment they arrive, Billy is ready. You can tell because his cape billows in defiance of wind as he floats a couple feet in the air— for Billy, 'flying' is easier than 'not flying'. Bands of telekinetic force stand at the ready, and electricity surges from around his chest to dance along his arm and collect in a claw-like grasp at his hand, there glowing with an intense light. This is Aether in his battle-stance: it doesn't mean he's going to immediately act, it means he's ready to.
"I can manage to lift you both over the tree if you need." he offers, and the touch of pure force can be felt sorta poking each figure in the shoulder. Poke. Poke poke. POKE. Come on, ride the Billymobile.
*
Well — that was a trippy feat. Blinking at his surroundings, Strange doesn't feel any less agitation within him. The adrenaline instead tics up a titch more.
And that is one hell of a banyan tree.
Clearly, it blocks the pathway and he glares at it. The sensation of a sudden prodding against the blade of his right shoulder makes him roll the joint and shift the glare to the now-hovering Kaplan kid.
"I don't need a lift, thank you," and the crimson Cloak grants him a rise to equal footing — or rather, equal hovering with Billy. The Sorcerer snorts (though do note the small smirk of a smile) before flitting over to join Duke in approaching the fallen tree. "Billy, come along," he calls over his shoulder in an entirely father-like fashion. Ugh. "Now what to do about this…?" His murmur is loud enough for the healer to hear and lilted in a sense of openness to suggestion. After all, the man professed knowledge of the Garden. The Garden. Even with a wonky memory, a little gem of information could shake loose.
*
What goes up must get an absolutely horrific feel of space warping and twisting in ways space should never do, for anyone who tries to go airborne. The teetering grows worse as one gets closer to the moat, and the sensation of falling downwards into the endless starry void becomes a horrifying compulsion. Do not want. Every iota of being does not relish falling into externity — an eternity of being outside a pocket dimension. Is that the way into the void?
As Duke approaches the fallen banyan, he does not experience this disorienting effect. The branches show considerable damage, some withered and others blackened by fire. Hacks and cuts weep great stains of a coppery sap that smells exactly like blood. The only difference from his dream, aside from the absence of a woman hanging upside down from the trunk, is the notable absence of glowing lights in those boughs.
Either they're gone or were never there in the first place.
*
Duke is, if nothing else, inured to strange dimensions. The first thing he does, which is absolutely typical of him, is he runs his fingers through the sap and tastes it. He hums thoughtfully, then the tree lashes out to entwine him, drawing him close.
He can feel the life in the thing. The soul. There's no panic in him, only thought. Coz, on the other hand, is barking furiously.
"I need to help her," he says patiently. Equally patiently, he works out a pocket knife, which he uses, awkwardly, to open a wound in his side. His blood wells up and runs down into the wounded tree.
*
The tree helpfully entangles the man with nearly every ounce of whippy flexibility afforded to its boughs. Even the withered ones snap and coil around him in less of an embrace so much as spectacle of pinning him as an intruder. There will be no immediate escape for Duke, given he sticks to the woody bonds. The sticky sap he's so happy to drink slowly, slowly seeps.
*
For a moment, Billy resists: there's this twisting, warping wrongness? But Billy can fly. This is writ into the universe, blazed across the cosmos as a fact as true and immutable as the burning of the stars. Around him, reality *ripples* as his subconscious rebels against this rejection of this local reality as he knows it should be— and knowing, demands it to be true. What is this place, this reality, this pocket, that defies him? Billy is, perhaps, a creature of singular arrogance, but that arroance is not willful: he can fly. It simply IS. He knows it is true to such a deep level that he does not even need to invoke the words: around his body, the ripples of 'I can fly, I can fly, I CAN FLY' spread as he clenches his teeth, not really understanding what is *wrong*.
It might possibly mean Billy 'fixes' this world so he can fly. Or. It might be he tears a whole in it trying to bend it to his will. Or perhaps the local reality will snap back and write his flying out of him entirely. But, Billy is only doing what Billy knows to do: he flies. He is Aether, son of the sky.
*
ROLL: Duke +rolls 1d100 for a result of: 67
*
ROLL: Strange +rolls 1d100 for a result of: 18
*
ROLL: Billy +rolls 1d100 for a result of: 32