"Ancient One, you can hold this place, but you can't defend them all. Dormammu's followers are everywhere. London, New York, Hong Kong—every Sanctum is under attack. How many can you protect on your own?"
He leaned back and vanished into the edge of the spatial rift. Dark purple light flashed, and he was gone from the Sanctum.
The Ancient One did not pursue him.
She stood where she was, watching the temporarily suppressed rift. Then she glanced at the wound still bleeding on her shoulder, and a deeply complicated smile touched her lips.
"Soon."
She murmured the word so softly that only she could hear it.
The fighting inside the London Sanctum had briefly subsided, but the city beyond it was descending into even greater chaos.
More than a dozen rifts had torn open above London. Dark purple energy poured from them like rain falling upward, staining the surrounding streets and buildings a color that did not belong to Earth.
Kaecilius's followers swarmed out of the rifts like bloodthirsty bats freed from their cage, spreading to every corner of the city.
Three blocks east of the London Sanctum, on a street half torn apart by a spatial rift.
Stephen Strange was cornered by seven or eight of Dormammu's followers inside the ruined front of a shop. His back pressed against a cracked wall, he formed Hand Seals with both hands while the magical bracers on his wrists glowed with an unsteady orange-red pattern.
He had only just completed his initial training at Kamar-Taj. Before he had even grown used to his Sling Ring, he had been swept into this sudden dimensional invasion.
Three minutes earlier, he had been reading ancient books in the London Sanctum's library. The next moment, Kaecilius's followers had driven him out through a side door.
Their