Chapter Text
The shaky video started out with the sound of a crash of a body slamming through wood and the crack of too close lightning followed on its heels by the flash of the electricity off to one side. Tony Stark was seen scrambling through a wooden doorway missing the door out into the courtyard only to be forced to dodge a flying brick of a stone.
"Dormammu! What the Hell?!" Tony bellowed in anger as he dodged the tentacle-tongue of a pale thing with too long limbs, skinny to the skeletal bones, and a distorted head that made Quasimodo look cute while moving like a distorted panther in a humanoid body.
"Not mine!" Dormammu snarled as he sent a blast of magical lightning after one of the thing's friends. The purple rip in the air over the courtyard gave Tony a clue as to where everything was coming from.
"Well these things sure as hell aren't mine!" Tony snapped before throwing his own blast of power while his iconic repulsors formed in wire frame around his hands in the glowing iconic blue-white.
"Dark Lord, not stupid, these things aren't controllable," Dormammu countered, sending a blast of his own down range and nailing three of the creepy things climbing along the sides and roof of the nearby building.
"Chew out the apprentice later! Hit the demons, now!" Doctor Stephen Strange snapped at both of them.
"The apprentice is dead," Master Wong called out. "Master Fu is trying to figure out the botched summoning variant so that she can craft a counter. Keep fighting!"
"Oh great!" Tony said sarcastically. "I bet they transferred the TH sound with WV sound or started but turned to talk to someone normally halfway through."
"Unless you have any idea how to temporarily seal the rift that's not helping!" Stephen snapped at his husband.
"Oh, sure, like using my repulsor spell as a welding laser might even work..." Tony started out sarcastic and then turned thoughtful before using the same spell on hands and feet to fly as if in his armor.
"Tony!" Stephen called after him.
"Keep 'em off me. I'm going to try to weld the stupid rift shut," Tony retorted before casting the spell a fifth time on his chest. He braced in mid-air as if in his armor and then gave the top of the rift a full on chest blast before starting to weld it shut as if it were metal.
The creatures freaked out and every last one of them immediately went after Tony. The sorcerers formed up in a lose circle under him and started blasting everything that went after him or them out of the air, off of the buildings, and killed them as they bolted across the ground. What was an invasion of the weird pale death like distorted creatures became a slaughter of pale pink and white blood as Tony sealed the rift by brute force with his magic variant of his armor flight stabilizers.
The video shakily extended out of the hiding spot in between two buildings only for one of the remaining abominations to hit the holder and the viewers only heard screaming as the camera went dark, the live stream ending.
~~~
Fury grunted as he landed hard against the wall, his head slamming into the stone behind him. Vaguely he noticed his shiny new concussion as he watched Coulson, Barton, Romanoff, and Pierce get tossed around. The Ancient One wasn't even bothering to use magic as she thrashed them as a group, never mind individually. Dormammu was off to the side obviously taking mental notes on the fight. From the way that he was frowning he didn't like their skill levels compared to the Ancient One. If that woman's name was in any way literal there was no way they were going to match up to her skill for skill. That didn't mean they weren't going to try to at least fulfill the set task. Unfortunately the concussion had basically taken him out of this fight and he had to watch the others get creamed. This was the third time in however long they had been held captive by the pair with interrogation sessions in between long days of being left alone together untouched in their cells.
"Disappointing," the Ancient One sighed. "Even as infiltration specialists they aren't as competent as they could be. The Shiniobi I encountered in the past had a much better grasp on how to manage their energies and supplement their skills for a proper fight."
"You stayed at the level you expect apprentices to reach for a minimum," Dormammu observed. "Proper chi and magic use is largely unknown outside of specific temples such as ours. I investigated if only to see who else I could safely prank or pretend to threaten to relieve the boredom. Stories are told but very few are actually taught. They need to be evaluated as initiates, not apprentices."
"Then they all fail even that," the Ancient One said in disgust. "I wouldn't risk teaching any of them. Combat skill isn't everything."
Fury felt the magic take hold as Dormammu used it to drag him across the floor so that he lay at their feet.
"This one has potential. Even in his dreams Tony somewhat respects him. The others he has tried to accept out of respect for this one, giving them a chance to prove the promises of this one and of the Captain America to be solid," Dormammu mused, looking down at Fury's battered body. "As one commander to another of sorts. Tony even made a game out of matching wits with him and Shield before he knew of Hydra sleeping within and risked everything to save those of Shield when Captain America and the Black Widow burned all of both groups by dumping everything to the internet. Still, he blames the Widow for stabbing him with an experimental chemical rather than Fury, here. This despite him giving the order. Apparently, he reasoned that as a Black Widow she should be fully aware that other medications and treatments could cause a very bad reaction to any unknown chemical introduced especially since he was dying of heavy metal poisoning that he was somewhat successfully treating. Fury is excused as not a doctor nor necessarily trained extensively in poisons. The Red Room training prevents Tony from accepting the same of the Black Widow."
Fury felt his insides freeze at this declaration. Even if Romanoff was accepted to be bound to Stark after this the others would try to kill her. Hell, he would try to kill her! Unfortunately, it also confirmed to him at least one of the breaking points. He now knew that if they decided to keep him and gift him to Stark or Strange he would need to be utterly loyal for the rest of his life. Magic or no magic Nicholas J. Fury now had to choose between kneeling to a man he saw as a loose cannon or dying for an organization that was clearly going to be ripped apart or subsumed and gifted to the same loose cannon he was worried about.
"A spymaster?" the Ancient One asked thoughtfully. "They might do well with one. I don't know if Tony has one already or if he serves as his own after a fashion. I know that Stephen doesn't have one. He's too straight forwards in everyday things. It would be years before he realized that he needed access to contacts among the less reputable side of things."
"I plan to inform them that they are expected to conquer the planet. I want to see what they do with that ultimatum," Dormammu smirked. "I won't actually expect them to do it if only because of how young they are, not for at least the next two hundred years or so."
"Humans don't currently live that long," the Ancient One sighed. "I get away with living longer by drawing on power from your dimension. If I hadn't started drawing from here on accident and struck that deal with you so that you wouldn't kill me I would be long since dead."
"I will have to fix that with our boys," Dormammu scowled over the news of the shorter life span. "However that does explain why Stephen is so insistent on being especially careful with removing the shrapnel from Tony. Boosting the regeneration rate to something decent isn't exactly hard even if it puts him in pain for a time."
"Have you checked the standard human healing rate compared to what you are considering?" the Ancient One asked archly. "Or are you basing your calculations off of the time loop with Stephen? Because I can assure you that the time loop would have altered the appearance of standard human healing rates."
"Ah... I do believe that I need to discuss that with Stephen. He is trained as a healer is he not?" Dormammu pondered that.
"A mundane one, yes," the Ancient One agreed. "I don't believe he ever cross trained to use magic for healing. I think we should perhaps encourage him to do so if only to help his peace of mind and remind him that he is a healer instead of only bringing destruction. It would be very easy with his power levels to be caught up into thinking that he is a monster simply based on what he can destroy without ever remembering that he can heal and create with it as well. We don't want him or his husband broken after all."
"No, no we don't," Dormammu grumbled in agreement. "That might be a way to get them to keep whoever we gift to them. We hand the prospective slave or servant over while injured and tell them to heal whoever it is or kill them. We can tell them after the gift is healed that they have accepted them as such or even before they heal the gift. If the boys won't heal them then we take them back and either kill them or use them for something else. The first several we will have to kill in front of the boys so that they understand we are serious about this but I don't see anything wrong with that. It will give them closure that the threat is dead if nothing else."
"They won't accept that from me and let me stay close, or rather Stephen will be upset unless I make it clear we are dealing with it as the Sorcerer Supreme. I don't think Stephen realizes how old I really am or what I have had to do and order as a leader over the centuries. This would have been considered perfectly acceptable in the past," the Ancient One said ruefully.
"That's fine. They both know I am a Dark Lord and plan on seeing them trained," Dormammu waved the concern off. "We can look into longevity spells later. For now let's ensure they survive and get strong enough to actually face off against this Mad Titan. Empire building beyond the basics to get things into place can come later if necessary. I'll give them a two hundred year time limit on actually claiming the planet as their territory or else it becomes my snack. If by the deadline they can force me to back off or agree to my claiming them as servants or my heirs or something then Earth will survive unmolested from my appetite."
"Then let us start with Mr. Fury," the Ancient One said with a smirk of her own.
Fury didn't argue. He just sighed and allowed the concussion to drag him under into the dark.