“I have an Intelligence of 40!” I complained nastily. “I should be able to comprehend XV’s!”

“Fifteen Ranks in Spellcraft,” Dealer corrected me. “It was confirmed you need at least 21 Ranks to comprehend X’s.” She stuck her tongue out at me. “You need to get on that. I want to be Casting true IX’s, not Boosted VIII’s!”

“Duping is a Boosted VIII+1,” I pointed out to her, half-triumphantly.

She rolled her eyes. “Clone, duh, can’t make Clone. All I’d do is magically replace myself. You want to make a True Clone who can, you go break out the vats and wait six months to spring a murderous duplicate of yourself.”

“Ways around that!” I shook my finger at her.

“Sure, sure.” She rolled her eyes again. “Face it, you need to spend the month to get two more Ranks in Spellcraft.”

“I just got back from time traveling, going to another world, and meeting cosmic-class entities!”

“FIVE headaches,” she noted acerbically.

“Gah!” I jumped up, barely adjusting my clothes. “You are so lucky the Sorcerer Supreme lives across the road!”

“Luck?” she scoffed, gliding down the stairs as I hopped down them ahead of her.

It was early morning here, but Mr. Hill didn’t sleep, and had wandered up when he heard us talking in twelve languages up there. “Have a nice trip?” he asked me, waving at Dealer. “She said you were in England, of all places?”

“Hi, Mr. Hill. Bye, Mr. Hill!” I announced loudly, sliding past him, clutching at my head as I opened the door and slammed it behind me.

He blinked at the door, looked back at Dealer.

“She got a good hard look at the underpinnings of the universe and realized she doesn’t know enough to make sense of it. She has five separate headaches right now,” Dealer reported cheerfully, the rotter.

He winced despite himself. “Oh, that sounds painful. Where’s she goin’?”

“To spend way too much time in the Sanctum’s library.” A bottle of Dealer’s Best Morning Brew floated in from the other room, popped its lid, and steam gushed out of it.

Mr. Hill shook his head as he put forth his mug and my Clone filled it up, then corked it and let him take the rest of the bottle. “You Schmot Gurls,” he murmured, taking a sip in appreciation with a sigh.

Dealer looked him up and down. “Chem Michal got away, I trust?” she asked archly, gesturing and sending a wave of Fix-It-That-Stinks to clean up the smells, stains, tears, and burns on his coat and clothes.

“Of course. A contract is a contract. Getting a ransom for plunging a resort town inta hallucinations, not s’much,” Mr. Hill shrugged. It wasn’t his problem, he’d just done his job. “I think he was a bit surprised at how fast the local luchadors responded. I couldn’t Weight without trashing his precious contraptions straight off, and I couldn’t protect them and prevent the luchs from grabbing him, either, so he had ta abandon it all, and the luchs trashed everything in grand style.

“I got away in the explosion. They paid me fifty grand a bit later to use my name and image on the public vids, and I gave ‘em some nice hearty curses that’ll play well.”

Dealer gave him two thumbs up. “PAID TWICE!” they said together, and laughed in unison.

=============

She stopped in front of the Portal with a sour expression, staring at the bloody thing that was linking together uncounted numbers of alternate realities in a basically wide-open dimension-crossing circuit, practically ensuring that troubles in one dimension were going to cross to another, and that the dimension at the middle of it all would profit off the knowledge and resources of all of them, and so control and repress them from its superior position.

The champion of Britannia and her man were off enjoying a walk on the beach.

The Sword in her hand chimed twice, and with each note the opening to Otherworld rippled, and threads seemed to spill out of in infinite numbers, shuddering under the notes.

Her Sword swept down.

Ding-ting!

The Portal was split in twain, and the countless threads connected to it were severed instantly. With one cut, the artificial dimensional ties erected by the Convergence of all Realities were sliced through, and their Earth was cleanly removed from the circuit and influence of Otherworld.

If Otherworld wanted to come here, they’d have to do it personally, not using a potentially realities-destroying creation devised by an insane twat messing with the Phoenix Force for personal power. Seriously, who thought these things up?

The lighthouse began to tremble around her, the energies that fueled its magic interior rapidly starting to evaporate with their power source cut. She looked around once, and Tremble chimed once, whisking her away before the extra rooms collapsed and evaporated.

The Cumberland lighthouse now had no use, except as a tourist attraction, Here Be The Former Base of Captain Britain. The Captain could find some place more useful for him and Meggan to live at...

==========

“You’re looking a little stressed,” he pointed out from behind me.

I was reading three books at the same time, one with each eye, and one with the medallion on my forehead. There were Holos all around me, spinning and sorting themselves out, segueing into one another, withdrawing and rearranging themselves anew. New data turned from words into Runes and lines in four dimensions, maaaaybe five, and radiated away as pages turned constantly.

“Hey, Doc. I made the mistake of taking some good long looks at multiversal dimensional conjunction points, one in the Underweb and one smashed into existence by the Phoenix Force and magic. If I don’t figure out how it goes all together, I’m going to have to dump all memory of it.”

“Is that why it’s so cold in here?” Stephen Strange asked, puffing out a clear breath of mist, and flicking a spell up to protect himself from the cold.

“I think best in subzero temperatures,” I confirmed to him, my breath noticeably not misting in the slightest. The Occludium of Ostrus Omini finished, flipped shut, and zipped back to its place on the shelves as In Search of Weirder Dimensions replaced it. “Doc, you know you got some utterly fantastic drivel in this place, right?”

“What clued you in, the bizarre naming conventions, or the rambling discourse of oracles high on mushrooms?” he replied dryly, stepping in to get a better look at what I was reading. “Ah, the seventh stack...” he mused. “For a moment I thought I was back in college, reading some of those.”

“Experimenting with higher states of consciousness?” Talking with the Sorcerer Supreme was a job for my dumb thoughtstream.

“Yes, that is definitely what I was doing and why,” he answered with a straight face. “You have an incredible gift for magic, you know.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “Perhaps you’d like to negotiate with the Widow of the Web about dropping my link to the Underweb so I can actually use it properly...”

He was silent a moment. “So, you ARE a Spider Totem.” He inhaled softly. “I thought I might have been mistaken. You conceal it well.”

I shot a blob of webbing over my shoulder to coat his chest. He eyed it for a moment, then gestured, and it bubbled away into ectoplasm. “Misdirection is a great way to hide things in plain sight. I’ve been doing that for good reason,” I informed him.

“How did you find out Her name? I believe your fellow Totems still have no idea of their Patrons...” he asked me, taking a seat in midair, courtesy of his fantastically useful and fancy Cloak. Vier sent off a wave of greeting, and his Cloak rippled a corner at my Ring in reply.

“I went to the Temple of the Spider in Africa. The Weaver is connected through there. Had a good chat with Grandfather Anasazi.” I cleared my throat. “He’s not particularly happy with the Widow.”

“Yes, well...” He was silent a moment. “Stack Twelve, The Warp and Weft of the Woven Worlds, has some stories on their relationship.”

Despite myself, I tilted my head back. “I swear, Doc...”

“You might be broken by Mushroom Magic Merges the Manifold of Minds, then. It’s actually quite good.”

My hands twitched. “Dammit, Doc!” I swore. “Is the author alive? I think I’ll find and shoot him!”

“I believe he experimented on some extradimensional fungi and ended up hosting some demons of rot. Higher states of matter, indeed.” He did a dry voice so well.

I slapped Krentellian’s Discovery of States of Ascension and Parallelism closed and sent it back to Stack Seven, then held out my hand to Stack Twelve. “Anything you don’t want me to read, just Ward it and I’ll avoid it. I do NOT want to read the Darkhold.”

“Mmm, yes.” His eyes roved over what I was assembling in Holo. “This is... quite extraordinary,” he observed, furrowing his brow as he looked at it all. “Rather more complex than anything I’ve devised myself...”

“You’re probably using a shortcut you learned or read somewhere to bypass the foundational structure.” Mushrooms..., I sighed, and opened it after it arrived. “What’re the most complex six books you’ve read on the arts of transversing worlds?”

“Below the Darkhold and the Book of the Vishanti?” He stroked his closely trimmed beard. “Fractured Reality, Stack Nine. Grisbolr’s Proofs of Alternity, in Thirteen. Infiltrations of Infinity, Sixteen. The Roving Roads of Raggador’s Reign, Ten...” I made another groan, and he just smirked. “Canzersithquimer’s Contemplations on Higher Dimensional Thought, Volumes I through IV. In V and VI, he’s either raving mad or beyond what I could possibly understand.

“The Prismatic Planes of Plenipoloor,” he drew the words out pedantically, and I bent forward to thump my head on the floor, “has an extraordinary rendition of planar mechanics in it, which utterly contrast those in the Myriad Mystic Moons of Munnopor.”

Thunk, thunk! Loudly, this time.

“Stacks Eight, Eleven, and Eleven,” he went on in a friendly manner.

I didn’t raise my head again until the diversely-sized tomes thumped to the ground in front of me, getting back to my reading.

“I’ll shoot them all, Doc!” I threatened.

“Open your mind, young Alchemist, from the limited view of your potions and philtres, to the glory of the multiverse and the unlimited secrets of magic beyond!” he promptly returned to me.

I drew another rattling breath. “I read Dannigrio’s Denials and Digressions on Diablo’s Dissertations and Discoveries too, you know.” It kind of strangled itself coming off my tongue.

“Oh, really? What did you think of him?” he just asked lightly.

“For an alchemist, he made a good sorcerer. He should have stuck with what he knew.”

“To be fair, Diablo has been trying to destroy all copies for centuries. Calls them outright slander and defamation of his sterling character and contributions to the art and wonders of alchemy.” Dr. Strange didn’t seem perturbed with my assessment.

“Judging an alchemist’s stuff harshly because it’s not as effective as sorcery in the same area is like judging a masterwork sword or bow as crap because it’s not a Winchester Rifle. Diablo is a total arse, but he’s good in his field, and he knows some sorcery, too, so he’s not a complete nitwit.”