“Um, I really would like my body back?” Dr. Strange urged Dealer cautiously. “If he lasts until morning, I might not be able to return to it...”

“Yes, yes, that will not be an issue.” Her hand flicked out, and a Card was in her fingers, glowing black and somber. “Milady Death is well familiar with this fellow. I think She will enjoy making his personal acquaintance after some of the things he has pulled in the past, yes?”

The Reaper on the Tarot Card seemed to seethe with the attention of something great and vast, and both Stephen and Dormammu quivered at the touch of Her Presence.

“In the meantime, there is no reason not to take full advantage of this fool, right?” Dealer asked him. “You seem uncomfortable floating around out there, Doctor. Why don’t you come inside and I’ll share this with you until the dawn, since you made it happen?”

“I’m not sure that whhhhhhhhaaaa...” he murmured, and then his astral form was sucked down between her lips, silver streaks promptly manifesting at her dark temples.

Mystic flames ignited in her eyes as Strange turned to look at Dormammu. “Strange! Free me this instant! I will return your body to you! You know my power, and what I can grant you! I, I...”

“This is quite the extraordinary sensation, Dealer.” Strange tilted her head back to enjoy it. “I believe I might have been speaking a little hastily. Until dawn, you say?”

Cards flashed out and wove an illusion around them that would keep them totally unseen by any passers-by. “And then we’ll feed the tiny little spark that is left of this Faltinian Elemental to the Land, and Death will take the whiny rest of it.”

“Ahhhhhhhh ahhh!” Dr. Strange tried not to murmur, and could not. “Yes, that sounds like an appropriate fate for this fellow...”

Dealer, hovering only a foot in front of the Sealed Faltinian god, extended her Card-bearing hand out so the seething blackness of the Death Card was right in front of Dormammu’s eyes. His whole stolen body quivered, and his guttering flames sank even lower.

“Dawn, little Elemental. You will not see the fires of our native sun. When dawn comes, Death whisks you off to Her Realm for a nice discussion about your fate. Mmmm-mm! In the meantime, please, entertain us with your sniveling and your promises.

“Or not.” A Jack of Hearts flashed in, pasted itself across the burning mouth, and the words of Dormammu were no more. “There we go, a proper ending to a braggart and loudmouth. I’m sure Death will love to hear more from you.”

Dormammu, conqueror of entire dimensions and worlds uncounted, uncontested ruler of the Dark Dimension, the Fallen Faltinian, quivered and trembled and could not move as all his power was drained from him constantly and smoothly into the mortal woman before him. His protests and promises were silenced, and he could only see the edges of the sky around and past the Card hovering in front of His eyes, and the almighty Presence waiting patiently on the other side of that Card for him.

He screamed, but the laughing Jack across his burning mouth just mocked him more...

------

Five minutes later...

There was a beeping. Dealer reached down, plucked up Strange’s Crystal Vaccine from the grasp of his Cloak after it was offered to her politely, and answered, “Hello?”

There was the slightest of pauses. “Is there a problem there?” Sama’s dry voice came through.

“Oh, no, no problems. One moment.” She held up the Vaccine, hit the camera, and fed the view to Sama as Dormammu, his flames looking much cooler than before and even hints of Strange’s real face now visible, twitched and quivered uncontrollably. “There, you see? No problems.”

“THAT FUCKTARD AGAIN?!?!” her snarl came right through, and Dormammu’s flames actually went gray for a second in horror. “Exactly what the fuck are you planning to do to this burning shithead, and it better be good.”

Dormammu’s burning eyes were tiny little slits, and he wanted to be spouting something, but the Jack of Hearts on the Card Sealing his mouth was laughing and slapping its knee in amusement.

“I’m sucking away all his magical energy as his Eternal Faltinian arse automatically pulls it in, and using it to power up my Arcane Core. He’s being quite generous. I’ll do it until right before the dawn when he can perma-bind to the Doctor’s body. I’ll power-drain him down to a spark, and then I shall administer Death’s Own Kiss to him, and send him off to enjoy Her company until The End,” Dealer reported smoothly.

Sama hissed out a long breath. “He is SUCH an annoying bastard.”

“Ah, I muted him so I wouldn’t have to experience his whining. I shall leave a more nuanced opinion to the professionals.”

“You do that. How is Strange?”

“I have an effectively zero-row seat to this show, Lady Sama. Don’t worry about me,” he said with only a little difficulty through her lips.

“You make sure this dumb shit doesn’t come back, I don’t care what it does to the balance of power in Limbo.”

Strange would have winced, but he was much too relaxed at the moment. “I’ll do my best, ma’am.”

“Have fun.” There was a click as she hung up.

Dealer deftly handed the Vaccine back to Strange’s Cloak, who took it and slid it into a dimensional Pocket for safekeeping. She then smiled at Dormammu.

It was not a nice smile. “Yes, she was aware you popped up. I bet you thought you’d have time to grow in power and claim his body and do all sorts of stuff once you got rid of Strange.

“Five minutes. That’s all you had, and it was that long because she wondered what was going on when your power stopped growing, but you didn’t go away. Then she was going to come here, carve you up, and feed you to the Land.

“Dumbass.”

His flames fluttered in despair, but she wasn’t going to hear a reply as she closed her eyes and enjoyed the flow of power... and not incidentally was monitoring everything around her with all her mystical senses, just to be sure there was nothing coming to mess with this process...

------

There was a hiss. Something dark and ominous reached out of the Card that had been held out before her all night, unmoving as a steel rod. The flames about Strange’s head had dimmed to literally candle flickers, and now writhed in protest as they were drawn towards that Card, dimming as they went. By the time they hit the Card, the burning spirit was already without fire or light.

With a woosh, a surge of magic reversed, and Strange’s astral form was drawn out of the floating Dealer and deposited back into his body through the auspices of the Amulet of Agamotto. He shook and trembled, his eyes snapping open just in time for the first rays of the morning to hit them.

Looking utterly composed, and not as if she had spent the whole night sucking mystic power out of a Faltinian very pleasantly, Dealer’s dancing eyes met his as the Seal underneath him faded away and his Cloak smoothly took over his levitation. “Test your talent. I imagine having pure Faltinian power flowing through you all night should have had some, ah, positive benefits,” she encouraged him, while she gathered up her floating Cards with a riffling gesture and deposited them into her finely embroidered vest.

He found it difficult to meet her eyes as he made some gestures and ran an internal circulation of his own magical powers. That had indeed been a very pleasant shared experience...

It was as she had said. It wasn’t Faltinian power left behind, which could be both a boon and a curse, but more like the magical pathways inside himself had grown larger and sturdier under the tempering and flow of Dormammu’s power, the power of the former ruler of the Dark Dimension instinctively forging his body to a higher degree.

“I... do seem to be in better shape than before,” he admitted slowly, meeting her eyes carefully, and pointedly flexing his hands, which seemed to have lost some of their vestigial trembling. “Yourself? That Arcane Core of yours seems incredibly powerful...”

“It is an alternate Ultra Core, except I’ve been filling it with arcane energies, instead of stellar or cosmic or other types.”

“You have... not spoken of this before,” he said carefully, still probing his own abilities and making sure no tricks or traps by Dormammu had been left behind. He doubted it, as he had been perfectly able to tell that Dealer had been draining the poor conquering demon-god dry.

“I have the first and only one in existence, so I’m not sure of all the variables involved with it. However, a great deal of power that is not reliant on actual Casting is a side benefit.” She closed her immaculately-manicured fingers elegantly into a fist, and the popping of her knuckles was like firecrackers, a sure sign of superhuman strength. “It has basically integrated as the heart of my entire Casting Matrix at this point. The primary benefit seems to be able to power any spell of Valence V or less without any magical expenditure on my own part, just Casting it out of the magical draw of my Arcane Core.

“In other terms, I can use the energy blast output of the Core to instead power up to mid-tier spells as if they were Cantrips.” Her smile was quite satisfied. “If I build up the energy over time, I can do the same for higher Valence effects.”

Dr. Strange was not an idiot. “That... sounds very much like an unlimited supply of magical energy...”

“Over time,” she appended for him smoothly. “It won’t do anything for momentous surges.”

“Still...” Her ability to gather massive amounts of magical power would be unrivaled. “Are you... planning to challenge for the position of Sorcerer Supreme?” he asked her hesitantly.

An elegant dark eyebrow climbed above her simple Mask. “Is the mighty Doctor getting tired of his lofty position already?” she inquired shrewdly, and he winced despite himself as he looked at her.

“No, but the position is based on proficiency. The one most suitable for it should be the one holding it...”

“And you are thinking you are less suitable than I because a hopped-up fire Elemental with delusions of grandeur fell so easily to me?” she asked archly, rolling her blue eyes. He was going to say something about the unstoppable Dormammu, and exactly how powerful he could be, when she reached out and her cool hands gently clasped the sides of his face.

There was a very serious look in her eyes. “I have made some inquiries of Sama Rantha and her people, for they do a great deal of monitoring of other alternities. I specifically asked them about you and your counterparts.

“Dr. Stephen Strange, allow me to say this. You have a very exciting, very important, and very grand life in many, many realms, and if those duties give all of you some intellectual satisfaction, you are yet not truly happy in any of them.

“You do your duty, and do it magnificently well, as is only appropriate for the mantle you wear.

“But if you should choose to give up your cloak, and go out to the Dark Dimension where the love of your life now rules and make her a happy woman, while she makes you a very happy man, I will make sure that the position you leave behind is filled.

“Other than your death, that is the only way you ever need wonder about my ambitions for your position.”

She released the shocked Sorcerer Supreme’s face, and giving him an incredible view from behind, she drifted back across the street, waving her hand over her head as lightly as if nothing had happened the night before, and re-entered the expanded Hill brownstone.

Stephen Strange was lost in thought for a good five minutes, her words ringing in his head, before he turned, brought down the Wards, and entered his Sanctum Sanctorum.

There would be reverberations from the death of Dormammu, and... he should let Clea know.

Yes...