Chapter 637

A great dam doesn’t have to be smashed apart to collapse. Sometimes all it takes is one tiny crack in the foundation.

Stephen Strange would eventually spend his fortune and exhaust every avenue of conventional medicine trying to restore his hands. When none of it worked, he’d naturally assume the injuries had simply been too severe, or that he’d missed the optimal window for treatment.

Even the highly acclaimed new medication would fail him.

He would never know that the nurse administering it had diluted every dose with cold water beforehand.

The potion would look exactly the same.

Its effectiveness would be another matter entirely.

Finding a nurse willing to do that wasn’t difficult.

Wilson Fisk was exceptionally good at this sort of thing. Persuading a junior nurse to perform a favor that didn’t directly involve killing anyone was hardly beyond his capabilities.

And Stephen Strange wasn’t exactly beloved by everyone around him.

Put kindly, he was aloof and difficult to approach.

Put less kindly, he was arrogant, socially inept, and perfectly capable of offending someone with a single sentence without even realizing he’d done it. Even people who genuinely liked him sometimes struggled to put up with him.

When Strange had been at the top of his field, people had tolerated it. They smiled, flattered him, and swallowed their irritation because there was something to gain from staying on his good side.

Now that he’d fallen from grace?

There were probably plenty of people waiting for the opportunity to look him in the eye and say, So, Doctor Strange. How’s that pedestal treating you now?

"Still..." Evenson smacked his lips. "Isn’t this a little cruel?"

He wasn’t suffering from any moral crisis. He was mostly talking for the sake of talking.

"How is it cruel?" Cleya shook her head, clearly dissatisfied with the suggestion. "Did we cause his accident? No. He destroyed his own hands because he couldn’t drive safely. And we’re not refusing to treat him. We’re only delaying the treatment."

She narrowed her eyes.

"Once he eventually comes to Kamar-Taj and completes his training, the Ancient One will naturally have a way to restore his hands."

Cleya paused.

"And he’ll have us to thank for giving him the opportunity to choose."

Her eyes grew distant.

"Most people in this world never get that choice. Some don’t even realize there’s another reality beyond the one they’re trapped in. They spend their entire lives struggling through an ordinary, manufactured existence without ever seeing what the world really is."

Her voice softened.

"Will they remain ordinary people, crawling through a false reality until they die? Or will they wake up and open their eyes to the harsh truth?"

Evenson sighed.

"Let’s hope he’s the kind of man who can face it."

"Who knows?"

Cleya wasn’t nearly as confident.

"Even the Ancient One isn’t certain. Her judgment when it comes to apprentices..."

She trailed off.

For some reason, she abruptly decided not to finish the sentence.

Evenson noticed.

"What?"

"Nothing."

She shook her head.

He let it go.

Whatever Cleya was hiding wasn’t his business, and he wasn’t interested in prying.

Instead, another thought occurred to him.

"I just realized I haven’t asked you in a while. How’s the training going? The spells I taught you?"

"I finished all the assignments."

Cleya nodded confidently.

"I’ve mastered the spells as well."

"Good."

Evenson gave her an approving nod.

Kamar-Taj valued individual comprehension above almost everything else, and Cleya had been considered a prodigy there. Even so, she’d progressed faster than he’d expected.

"Then we’re probably ready for the next stage."

"No."

Cleya rejected the idea immediately.

She smiled and shook her head.

"If I keep going down this road, I’ll end up just like you. Didn’t you say having too many warlocks in one world was a bad thing?"

"I wasn’t talking about you."

Evenson immediately tried to explain himself.

"I know."

Cleya’s expression became serious.

"I just want to follow my own path."

Evenson barely hesitated.

"All right."

He’d actually been struggling with how much warlock magic he should teach her.

So far, he’d limited himself to the edges of the discipline: the fundamentals of magical arrays, along with various sealing and binding techniques. Those were relatively safe.

The moment fel energy entered the equation, however, things became much more dangerous.

Learning how to manipulate fel energy was one thing.

Learning how to acquire it was another.

One mistake could hurt the caster.

Two mistakes could put the entire world at risk.

Evenson had intended to finish teaching her everything that didn’t involve fel energy, then find a reason to end the lessons.

Cleya choosing to stop on her own was a relief.

"By the way."

Cleya suddenly added, "I won’t be staying at home for the next few nights. I’ll be sleeping at Kamar-Taj."

Evenson’s heart gave an unpleasant little jolt.

She wasn’t going to continue studying his magic, and now she was suddenly staying away overnight?

What exactly was going on?

"Don’t start imagining things."

Cleya looked at his open-mouthed expression and immediately knew where his thoughts had gone.

She was secretly rather pleased by how concerned he looked.

She just didn’t let it show.

"I finally managed to get permission to borrow a book from the Kamar-Taj library. I want to finish reading it while I have the chance. The library has strict rules, and this particular book can’t be taken off the premises."

"Oh."

The tension drained from Evenson’s shoulders.

"Can I at least ask what kind of book it is? If it’s about magic, I might be able to help with the reading comprehension."

"I’m sorry."

Cleya hesitated.

"I’d rather not tell you."

"Understood."

Evenson nodded.

No matter how close two people were, there were still boundaries.

And this particular matter clearly wasn’t only about Cleya. The book belonged to Kamar-Taj, which meant its contents could involve secrets of the order.

Pressing her for details would only put her in an awkward position.

The conversation ended there.

For a while, they sat in silence, drinking their coffee.

Then Evenson noticed someone approaching from across the street.

A short, thin Black man was walking toward the coffee stand.

He looked young, but an enormous beard covered most of his face. It wasn’t the carefully maintained kind, either. The man’s general appearance suggested he’d gone a long time without caring about things like grooming.

He wore a black sweatshirt and jeans, both of which looked like they hadn’t seen a washing machine in quite some time.

His steps were unsteady.

His eyes kept shifting.

His lips were pale.

Evenson recognized the signs immediately.

The man walked straight toward the coffee stand.

Evenson’s mood soured.

He had little patience for people like this.

Yes, there were certain beings in his life who indulged in similar substances, but they weren’t exactly human.

That was an important distinction.

As far as Evenson was concerned, recreational drugs were something humanity could live without.

Is he coming over here?

The man drew closer.

Evenson watched him carefully.

Fortunately, just before entering Evenson’s personal danger zone, the man abruptly changed direction and walked diagonally behind him.

Evenson turned his head.

The man sat down at another table.

Someone was already waiting there.

The contrast was almost comical.

His companion was a white man with neatly groomed black hair and a well-maintained beard. He wore an immaculate purple suit, complete with a red pocket square carefully tucked into his breast pocket.

The man looked like a gentleman who belonged in an expensive restaurant rather than beside a street coffee stand.

Yet the disheveled Black man had clearly come to meet him.

Evenson watched curiously.

The Black man reached beneath his sweatshirt and produced a document bag.

It was stuffed with something.

He handed it to the man in purple.

The suited man opened the bag, glanced inside, then closed it and tucked it away.

Evenson looked away.

He sighed.

In broad daylight, too.

New York.

What a city.

As far as he was concerned, he’d just witnessed a drug deal.

Then things got stranger.

A large white man wearing a knitted cap and sunglasses walked past the coffee stand. He carried an ordinary brown paper envelope in his right hand and kept his head lowered, looking for all the world like someone out for a casual stroll.

When he reached the man in the purple suit, he stopped.

Only for an instant.

He raised the envelope with both hands.

There was a faint sound.

Then he continued walking.

The entire thing happened so quickly that most people probably wouldn’t even have noticed.

The man in the purple suit suddenly clutched his throat.

His body jerked.

His face went slack.

He looked as though he was about to collapse.

Then, seemingly from nowhere, two women rushed over.

They caught him before he hit the ground and hurried him away.

Evenson sighed again.

So not only was someone conducting business in broad daylight, someone else had just pulled a hit on him in the middle of the street.

And judging from how quickly the women had appeared, there was probably some kind of kidnapping involved too.

Yep.

New York.

"We should probably go," Evenson said.

There was no reason to sit around after that.

He also lifted the coffee pot.

It was empty.

Cleya had already lost interest in the place.

"All right."

She stood and straightened her clothes.

"Next time, I’ll pay."

"We’re not keeping score."

Evenson quickly dug a handful of coins from his pocket and dropped them on the table.

As they walked home, Cleya eventually looked over at him.

"You’re seriously not going to do anything about what just happened?"

"Hm?"

"You’re an Avenger, aren’t you?"

Evenson shrugged.

"I’m not an Avenger because I’m some champion of justice."

He glanced back toward the street.

"I’m here for the paycheck and the retirement benefits."

He spread his hands.

"Why would I interfere? How much does the NYPD pay?"

Cleya had no answer to that.

The rest of the day was surprisingly quiet.

Once they got home, Evenson suggested that Cleya create a new character in their game.

"The new expansion is coming soon," he said. "Some quests might become unavailable afterward. You don’t want to miss them."

Cleya considered this.

"That makes sense."

And that was that.

They spent the afternoon playing games together.

By evening, they shut down their computers and went through another workout, because apparently one workout a day wasn’t enough for either of them.

Afterward, Cleya opened a portal and returned to Kamar-Taj.

She didn’t stop to speak with anyone.

She went directly to the library.

From one of the shelves deep inside the room, she carefully removed a particular book and sat down to read.

The librarian approached with his arms folded.

"Master Cleya. The Ancient One has given you permission to read this book, but I must remind you to exercise extreme caution."

Cleya looked up and smiled.

"Don’t worry. I’ll be careful."

The librarian nodded and left her alone.

Cleya turned her attention back to the book.

Its material was strange.

So were the words written across its pages.

The script itself was an ancient form of Chinese, but the text had been arranged in the obscure, archaic style of Chu Ci, making it exceptionally difficult to interpret.

Fortunately, Cleya was a mage.

Rather than painstakingly deciphering every phrase, she could communicate directly with the will embedded within the writing.

Even so, she proceeded with extreme caution.

She didn’t allow herself to become too deeply immersed in the text.

Several magical arrays had been drawn around her seat, many of them techniques she’d learned from Evenson.

After a while, she carefully lifted the book.

Its cover became visible.

A distorted, uneven pattern had been carved across it.

The longer someone stared at the pattern, the more it seemed to move.

Twisting.

Turning.

Almost alive.

On the shelf where Cleya had taken the book, there was only one empty space.

A small label marked it.

The title written there was:

The Book of the Worm.