I opened up the doorway, yawning.

The woman, and I used the term loosely, out in the middle of the street in the middle of the night glared at me. She had blue skin, leathery bat wings, streaked black and white hair, was wearing clothing sewn from human skin, and scrimshaw carved from human bones.

“Who are you and why are you messing with the Wards on the Sanctum?” I yawned at her, rubbing my eyes.

She’d hit them with enough power to flatten a city, trying to wrench them open and get inside. A lot of control on the first one, expecting to succeed and getting no-sold. The second one had been raw power, unconcerned about damaging the contents of the Sanctum, and still hadn’t gotten anywhere.

“Who are you?” she demanded, irate at my casual attitude.

I waited patiently on the steps for her to respond, stifling another yawn.

“I am Salomé, the first Sorceress Supreme of the Earth!” she finally proclaimed loudly, greenish-black power swirling about her as I looked at her in boredom.

“Oh. And, uh, no, you were like the ninth. Agamotto was the first,” I replied casually, waving at her as she blinked at me in disbelief.

“That is...” she was going to say ‘not true’, and held herself back. Getting on Agamotto’s bad side might not be wise. “Who are you, and where is Stephen Strange? Why do you wear his Cloak?! Bring him out, as I will challenge him for his Title!” she demanded of me.

“The Title is mine for now. Strange is in the War for the Seven Spheres at the present time, busting the chops of sorcerers from other times and planes Foh Great Powah.” I looked up towards the great Rune Window that marked the Sanctum, and tossed a thumb at it. “You can’t get through my Wards, and you’re thinking you can take me on?” I asked lazily.

Power hummed and thrummed all around her, coming to her command in a wave of influence that extended over much of the States of New York and New Jersey. “I am tied to the power of the whole planet itself!” she mocked me, her demon wings spreading wide with her arms in a suitably dramatic gesture. “You cannot hope to equal me!” she began to laugh.

“Underweb Caster,” I replied calmly, the picture of unconcern.

“Ahahahahaha, haha...? Hah?” she trailed off, processing what I’d just said, her expression faltering rather suddenly.

“Underweb Caster. I can see you finagled a link to Gaia using some sort of demonic energy. Looks like there’s a connection to Zarathos there? What’d you do, hijack it?” I squinted at the display of energies around her. “Wow, wasn’t that ballsy of you. I imagine you just moved right to the top of His vengeance list.” Despite herself, her eyes narrowed at that truth. “And you just had to interrupt my first nap in three days to do it.”

“Without your Wards, there is no way you can stand before my power!” she hissed, but her voice faltered as I stepped off the porch, walked down the steps and short walk, down to the sidewalk, clearly totally unperturbed by her or her words.

“Your power is fifteen thousand years behind the times,” I waved, pursing my lips to Whistle once.

Reality wavered as I Trilled. It SHOULD have blown apart everything for a dozen city blocks around me. Instead, a zillion lances of silver blew through her from Under it all, and she screamed in horror at the glory and power impaling her mind and soul.

The Fallen Sorceress fell to the ground, all the stolen magic and her forced bond to Gaia taken away. The Cloak swirled and lofted itself around me in a properly dramatic manner as I strolled forwards. It really did know how to help make an entrance!

“You...” she gasped in horror, trying to get to her feet. Oh, yeah, burned off all the human remains on her, too, so she was nude. “Who, who are you?!” she demanded weakly.

“I’m the current Sorceress Supreme, drafted to fill this position until Stephen Strange comes back. Now, I’d like your old-timer, behind-the-times arse to be introduced to someone.” I directed my attention slightly down the block after I stopped in front of her, and she turned her head to follow my gaze. “Hey, Boss, what brings you by?”

Sama Rantha was leaning against a car there, watching all of this, unperturbed. She got up and strolled over.

Kinda hard not to see her skin was very pale white instead of coppery, she had two horns burning with unwhite fire on her head, and green fur was growing along her now-pointed ears.

Salomé gasped at her. “Lilith?!” she exclaimed in shock.

“Lilith was dinner,” Sama replied levelly, standing over the sorceress when she stopped. “You’re old associates, I see.” Sama reached up to tap the horns burning vivus coming out of her head. “When it goes out, she’s gone,” Sama smiled dangerously down at the Fallen, whose blue skin advanced a few shades towards cerulean.

“Got a new addition up front?” I asked archly, and Sama glanced down at the extremely prominent bulges filling up her tunic proudly, indeed.

“Ah, it’ll leave with the horns and ears, Dyna,” she shrugged it off. “Not that I’m not going to see how much fun it is with Mah Fuzzy,” she added without missing a beat. “Almost rivals that Asgardian goddess-buff you have there,” she noted professionally.

“Well, of course.” She was still a couple inches shorter and not so muscular, but she did get the horns. I, happily, got to wear some looser garb than curve-clinging Nova-Armor while playing Sorc Supreme.

I reached down and grabbed the overly long hair of the Fallen Sorceress. “Want a chaser?”

Salomé tried to struggle, her eyes like saucers, like that was going to do anything. Sama bent down to almost touch noses, her too-blue eyes locking the half-demon paralyzed in place. “Tempting...” Sama purred, showing all eight canines, and a wild, hungry light was visible on her face, while the Curse that extended up her neck and side of her face was literally seething eagerly at the idea, “but I’m good at avoiding temptation. Bind her, Seal her, skim her, Burn her.” She straightened back up, waving the meal off. “She’s a necromancer and a cannibal. Her victims are in the five figures that Lilith knows personally of, so easily low-to-mid six figures. There’s no reason to keep her around.”

“Fine, then.” I put my hand on Salomé’s head, whistled another short Note that drove the Binding Seal six inches into the pavement, filled it with light, and the Fallen ex-Sorceress Supreme wailed as she dissolved into blue smoke and swirled up under the Cloak into the Binding Pattern on my back. “Blagh!” was my instant reaction to her presence. “Thanks for stopping by, I suppose. Nice to know Lilith won’t be working with anyone anymore.”

“She has a LOT of children. Whole worlds of them, as a matter of fact.” Sama smiled wickedly.

“Oh, light exercise for you to stave off ennui, right. Wish I could go with you to help, but I don’t think you want me stealing Karma from you.”

“I was NOT expecting you to take up the Cloak. Heya, Levy.” She held out her hand, the Cloak slapped it, and she slapped it back. Tremble tinged behind Sama, poking out her pommel, and the Cloak waved at her.

Well, of course they knew the Cloak!

“Meh. Got drafted. Dealer’s throwing a party for Satanna and a bunch of the female Lords who aren’t caught up in the Seven Spheres stuff, Munnopor’s all moody She can’t attend. I think some of the Angled Shadows showed up, and became spell practice for the lot of them...”

Sama squinted at the Cloak. “Did you do some work on Levy here?” she asked, curious.

“Well, yeah. Least I could do is some work on the Sorc Supreme’s best duds, right?” I held up my thumbs and forefingers, and the Cloak swished up to be flicked grandly, raising the frill behind me improbably high and proud. “I’m adding Indestructible to him first, so he can be more protective than he was. Vier is showing him how to move his threads around, so he can shift form and color and be more discreet, and I even added some alchemical dyes to him so he can change color on his own.”

Showing off, the Cloak swirled up into a tighter hooded version with a running of fibers, which seemed to turn inside out and turn from crimson and gold trim to a shadowy grey dark, draping over me in concealing fashion. Then it drew back to a bright blue-patterned fashionable cloak, before layering itself into an artful white and gold noble half-cape off my shoulder.

“Shoulder mantle and chasuble, maybe an over-robe, Levy,” Sama suggested. “Modern society doesn’t use Cloaks so much, fashion rotters that they are, so something where Strange doesn’t even have to think about taking you off in polite company.”

“That’s a good idea,” I patted the Cloak on my shoulder. “We’ll get some designs from the Vaccine later.” A corner fluttered up in the approximation of a raised thumbs-up. “Huh, a basic rain poncho would probably not attract any attention in public on rainy days, maybe a tartan... whatever, we’ll find some discreet things for you.”

“It’s a Legendary-Class Cloak. It really needs some good stuff,” Sama agreed.

“Strange is not an Artificer. He’s good at spell pre-Casting, and that’s about it. Care for some tea?”

“Sure. Heady duties of the Sorcerer Supreme leaves no time for puttering about with easily-destroyed minor Artifice!” she wagged her dangerously-nailed finger at me.

“If it’s not alive, he gets bored with it. Hence, must already be magical. The closest he gets to making magical things is if he dares to pen a scroll or two. Vishanti forfend he actually write a book for his successors, or something.” I glanced at the street, and the sigil drilled into it by my Voice smoothly filled itself in and vanished.

“You know him well. Well, do the whole biography thing, just get him talking. He can listen to himself pontificate and be smarter than anyone else for hours,” she advised me.

“How long have you known him?” I asked curiously, ushering her inside. She moved through the place familiarly, and the Wards were pushed away effortlessly by her Null.

“Met him at the Ancient One’s when I stopped by for a visit, back when he was an apprentice. Inspired him to take his martial arts training more seriously when I kept rapping on his head through his best Seraphimic Shields.” I snickered at the image. “Who’d you send him out under?”

“Oh, I Unimerged him into Clea and sent him off to practice his Elemental magic with her on behalf of the Faltine for a thousand years.”

Sama burst out with a full belly laugh at that one...

-------

There were still Ghost Riders all over the place, but they were mainly messing with Dragon Mages stirring up problems now, which actually alleviated a lot of the need for me to do anything about said Mages. I did get in contact with a bunch of the Riders and point them in certain directions, which at least let them get familiar with me and the Sorcerer Supreme mantle.

They DID wonder why a High Guard was doing this down-to-mystic-Terra shit, but, hey, I was drafted, just like them. They could understand that, if nothing else.

Oh, but wasn’t I wasting time and everything, helping out the Sanctum and the traditional gear, instead of working on Legendary Rings and stuff?

Well, um, there were these Dupes and Clones of mine in Timeless Places who were going to have centuries worth of downtime and had collected a lot of our Rings and Implements and things to work on, and had tons and tons of gold along to do that sort of work.

TECHNICALLY... they could be coming back to Terra with all sorts of Artifact-level stuff with them, those of them who were Legendary. Derp de derp...

Heh heh heh... Feats and stuff became increasingly precious at the Legendary Level. Personal power tended to be paramount, given how easily a lot of stuff could be destroyed. A lot of the Principals out there simply weren’t good at Artifice, but they were good at DESTROYING Artifice, so naturally they didn’t spend a lot of time making the stuff.

Wasted opportunity in my view, as you could simply make the Artifice easily fixed, but what did I know? I was just an optimizer and Power Gamer forced into a Warlock Pact I still couldn’t get rid of...