Doctor Strange: Dimension War (eBook)

James Lovegrove (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
320 Seiten
TITAN BOOKS (Verlag)
978-1-80336-259-5 (ISBN)

Infos

Based on the iconic comics by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko: The mind-bending original adventures of Doctor Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme, are brought to life for a new era. A self-centred healer, Stephen Strange is arrogant, but it's almost justified. After all, he is one of the best surgeons in the country. However, that all takes a dark turn following a horrific car crash. The doctor survives but at a great cost: his hands are irreparably damaged, and he can no longer perform surgery. No doctor can help him. Nor can faith healers or gurus. Nearing the end of his rope, he seeks out mystic help from the Ancient One, a man rumoured to possess unearthly talents. The Ancient One isn't able to heal his hands, but he teaches Stephen the mystic arts as well as discipline, self-restraint, and, eventually, selflessness. These qualities soon lead him to clash with his fellow student, Baron Mordo. After completing his training, Doctor Strange leaves the temple and uses his magical powers to defend the Earth from arcane threats that few humans can conceive of- battling rival sorcerers, thwarting Nightmare, the malevolent ruler of dreams, and daring to defy the terrifying despot of the Dark Dimension, Dormammu. This creative novelization of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's original Doctor Strange stories sees Doctor Strange magically transform from a vain egoist to one of Earth's greatest defenders.

James Lovegrove is the New York Times bestselling author of The Age of Odin. He has been short-listed for many awards including the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and the Scribe Award. He won the Seiun Award for Best Foreign Language Short Story in 2011, and the Dragon Award in 2020 for Firefly: The Ghost Machine. He has written many acclaimed Sherlock Holmes novels, including Sherlock Holmes and the Christmas Demon. As well as writing books, he reviews fiction for the Financial Times. He lives in Eastbourne in the UK.

Textauszug

PROLOGUE

A LONE figure staggered through the mazy streets of Greenwich Village. It was late at night, and a pounding downpour had driven most Manhattanites indoors. But not this man, who moved along the slick, rain-spattered sidewalks hunched over, trembling, seemingly in the grip of profound torment.

He was searching for a particular townhouse, and at last he found it, on the corner of Bleecker Street and Fenno Place. The residence was made distinct from its neighbors by the large, circular skylight set into its angled roof. With nine panes arranged like an asymmetrical tic-tac-toe board, the skylight resembled some arcane ideogram.

The man climbed the steps and hammered on the front door, which swung inward immediately, as though a visitor had been expected. He stumbled across the threshold, and the door closed behind him. He looked round to see that no person had opened or shut the door. It had operated apparently of its own volition. Some automated mechanism, he assumed.

The hallway was spacious and filled with exotic furnishings: ornate mirrors, cavorting statues, intricately fashioned urns. A broad staircase curved upward. Dozens of candles flickered in tall candelabras, and the heady smell of incense wafted through the air.

The man thought he was alone, but then, as if from nowhere, another man appeared in front of him.

This other was tall and dignified-looking, clad in a loose, bell-sleeved dark blue shirt and skintight leggings, with a sash cinched about his waist and a high-collared cape hanging from his shoulders. Suspended around his neck was a golden amulet, square in shape and featuring a closed eye at its center. The ensemble was completed by a peculiar pair of gloves which reached to his elbows and had a spotted pattern somewhat like leopard-print. His raven-black hair was white at the temples and a neat little mustache adorned his upper lip.

He looked, in short, like exactly what he was rumored to be. A student of the occult. An expert in sorcery. A magician.

“Mr. Trent,” he said. His voice exuded calm, quiet competence.

“You—you know me?” said his guest.

“The face of New York real estate mogul Ronald Trent is not unfamiliar to those who read the newspapers and watch the news.”

“Yes. Yes, of course.” Trent was, in his way, famous. Some might call him notorious.

“And you are in trouble,” said the magician.

“I am,” Trent said. For someone like him, the hardest of hard-nosed businessmen, this was a difficult thing to admit. “How can you tell?”

“All who come to me as importunates are.”

“Importun—?”

Before Trent could finish echoing the word, the magician made a beckoning gesture. “This way. Follow me.”

*   *   *

“IT’S THE dreams,” said Ronald Trent, sitting in the magician’s book-crammed study. “The dream, strictly speaking. Same one, night after night.”

“And what happens in this dream?” the magician asked.

With some effort, Trent collected himself. Being out in the rainstorm had left him bedraggled, his hair awry, his clothing sodden, but this only added to a pre-existing haggardness. There were dark rings around his eyes, and his complexion was tinged with gray, suggesting he had not slept well lately, or indeed at all.

“Every night,” he said, stumbling slightly over the words, “I dream of a man in a hooded robe, bound in chains.”

“And what does he do, the hooded man?”

“Nothing. Just stares. Stares and stares at me. I can’t even see his face—it’s hidden in the shadows of the hood—but I know he’s staring. It’s like… like he’s judging me.”

“What might he be judging you for?” the magician said.

Trent hesitated briefly. “Nothing. Nothing comes to mind.”

“I presume you’ve sought conventional treatment for your… problem.”

“I’ve been to doctors. To psychiatrists. The best money can buy. Even to a priest. Pills, therapy, praying, none of it helps. This has been going on for weeks. Weeks!” Trent clutched his gaunt cheeks with both hands, shaking his head from side to side. “I’m going crazy! I can’t focus at work. I’m barely eating. I dread going to bed. Every time I close my eyes and doze off, I’m there in that place. That same blackened, empty landscape, where everything’s all bent and sharp like thorns, and in the middle of it, staring at me, the hooded man.”

The magician nodded pensively. “I believe I know what is plaguing you, Mr. Trent, and I believe I can resolve the matter.”

Trent looked at him with almost pathetic hopefulness. “You can? Really? I was told I should try you. Rumor has it that you specialize in this sort of stuff. If it’s true, if you can make the dream stop, you won’t regret it. I’ll pay you handsomely. I’ll tell all my pals about you. I’ll make you a celebrity.”

“I seek neither wealth nor fame,” said the magician. “My only goal is to help my fellow human beings. Go home now, Mr. Trent. I’ll call on you tomorrow night.”

Ronald Trent left the house on Bleecker Street feeling something he hadn’t felt for a long while. The magician’s confidence had kindled a flame of optimism in him. His nightmare might finally be over.

*   *   *

TRUE TO his word, the magician arrived at Trent’s the next evening. The real estate mogul lived in the penthouse of a tower he himself had constructed, a couple of blocks away from the city landmark that was the Baxter Building, home of the Fantastic Four. His apartment was an opulent palace with sweeping views of the Manhattan skyline.

Seemingly not surprised nor particularly impressed by the extravagance of the place, the magician encouraged Trent to go to sleep as normal, while he would wait in an adjoining room.

“But how?” said Trent. “How’s that going to work? What are you going to do?”

“It’s very simple,” the magician said. “I shall enter your dream, Mr. Trent.”

“You’ll what?”

“You disbelieve me?”

“No. I mean, yes. I mean, I don’t know what I believe.”

“You came to a practitioner of the mystic arts for aid, Mr. Trent. Have faith that I know what I’m doing.”

Trent could have protested further but chose not to. The man had a point. Trent was desperate. The magician was his last resort. Enter his dream? Sure. If he said so. Why not?

Trent took himself to bed, popping a couple of sleeping pills which he washed down with a slug of bourbon for good measure.

Soon enough, sleep drew its curtain over him.

Then he was there again: back in that dark, twisted place of winding pathways and leafless trees and broken ground, like a world that had been devastated by some apocalypse, where whatever lived and grew, lived and grew stuntedly and soullessly.

And there, too, as expected, was the robed, hooded man, with his burden of heavy iron chains. He stood observing Trent fixedly, and Trent, as he always did, turned aside to avoid that mute, accusing stare, only to find that the hooded man still stood before him. This was the true hell of the dream. Wherever Trent looked, the hooded man was invariably in front of him. If he ran away in any direction, the hooded man loomed ahead. Trent couldn’t even close his eyes. The dream prevented that.

Something was different this time, however. Trent was no longer alone with the hooded man.

The magician was beside him.

With calm resolve, the magician approached the hooded man. Trent had never had the nerve do this. He had only ever yelled at the phantasmic figure to leave him alone or pleaded with him for mercy, in either instance receiving nothing but stony silence in return. It certainly had not occurred to him to speak with the hooded man conversationally, as the magician was doing now.

“You,” he said. “Whoever you are—whatever you are—why do you torture Ronald Trent in this manner? What has he done to deserve it?”

“He knows,” the hooded man replied in slow, sepulchral tones, like a monk intoning a liturgy. “He knows exactly why I visit him in his dreams night after night. He knows his shame. He knows the crimes he has committed. If you do not believe me, ask Chester Crang.”

Chester Crang.

The name fell on Trent’s ears like a hammer blow.

Of course. That was it. Crang. Crang and all the rest.

The hooded man might have said more, but then came a sound of hooves. They thundered from a distance, growing ever louder as a terrible apparition loomed over the horizon. It sped closer, revealing itself to be a coal-black horse with a horn sprouting from its forehead, like some demonic unicorn. Astride this creature sat a slender wisp of a man. The latter was clad in a forest-green fishnet bodystocking, with an up-pointing collar around his neck and a tattered cape trailing behind. Red eyes leered dementedly from a face as white as chalk, below a shock of jet-black hair.

The magician turned to confront the new arrival. His jaw set into an expression of steely resolve.

“Nightmare!” he growled. “I had a feeling you might show yourself.”

“With you intruding into my realm, mage,” replied the rider, reining in his mount, “how could I not? Have you come to spoil my fun?”

“I should hope so.”

“Pity. I think, however, that you have overestimated your worth, and you will now pay the penalty.”

Trent’s dream had taken a truly unexpected turn. The magician’s presence had upset the status...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 26.3.2024
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Schlagworte: Agamotto • Ancient One • Baron • Baron Mordo • Cast • clea • daemon • daemons • Dark Dimension • dark magic • Demon • Demonology • Demons • Dimension • Ditko • Doctor Strange • Dormammu • Dormmamu • Dream • dream lands • Dreamlands • Eye • Eye of Agamotto • Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth • Hoggoth • Hosts of Hoggoth • Incantation • Lee • Mage • Magic • magical • Mystic • Mysticism • Nightmare • Nightmares • Ritual • Rituals • Sorcerer • Sorcerer Supreme • Sorcery • Spell • Spells • Stan Lee • Stephen Strange • Steve Ditko • Strange • wizard • wizardry
• ISBN-10: 1-80336-259-6 / 1803362596
• ISBN-13: 978-1-80336-259-5 / 9781803362595