The Sorcerer Supreme wheeled him, along with the hospital bed and a heap of medical equipment, through a portal. When Sherlock Holmes woke again, he would find himself amid snow-covered mountains, thousands of miles away from storm-ravaged Romania—provided he knew he had been near Romania before, though no one expected him to possess such common sense. He would not realize that the place where he had once stayed was steeped in the lingering scent of burned propellant and the stench of organs and bodily fluids mingled after human bodies had been torn apart. He was about to receive knowledge utterly unlike any education he had experienced before, reshaping the way he saw the world.
The Emperor of Latveria did not waste much time on him. Kamar-Taj could make even the most stubborn people understand the cruelty of the world and the threats it faced, educating generation after generation of Arcanists to devote themselves to it like martyrs. Admittedly, history often produced Arcanists unwilling to shoulder responsibility, who wanted only to live the life of an ordinary person, but every one of them had drawn the Sorcerer Supreme's attention.
In the Emperor of Latveria's eyes, middle-class Sherlock Holmes and Stephen Strange were very likely to become the latter due to their ingrained ways of thinking, resisting new knowledge with a refined, self-serving mindset. If possible, he hoped the Sorcerer Supreme would use more traditional methods of education. A cane had far broader applications than most people imagined. If even that could not change their narrow-minded outlook, their final destination would not be a return to human society, but abandonment.
"Look at them. Look at these idiots."
Company Commander Aparajita once again stood before the heaviest building in the world according to ordinary human understanding. His heavy combat boots stepped onto its