Dreaming of tattered Robes and levitating Cloaks

I can't remember the last time I actually slept without bracing for cosmic static. That's just how life is when you've got an impossible brand carved into your skin—what my mother always called "the swirl," though we both knew it was more than that. She made me wear a glove to hide it, as if a scrap of fabric could shield the world from me—or me from the world. Part of me still wishes she was right.

I laid down in my attic's squeaky bed, letting the final traces of daylight fade. A tinge of gold clung to the edges of my battered jacket, draped over a chair. I tried to ignore it, pressing my palm to my chest in a ritual of calm. Everything's fine, Sasha. Just rest. But the swirl under my glove buzzed like an anxious heartbeat. I exhaled, closed my eyes, and forced myself to drift off.

And for a while, I managed. Dreams brushed past me—images of half-finished paintings, blank canvases waiting for fractal patterns. I sensed a warmth that was more than physical, a cosmic presence stirring like it sometimes does. Then a jolt cracked through my body, like lightning in my veins. My eyes snapped open—except my attic was gone.

I lurched forward in a realm of shifting blues and purples, each breath tasting like static. My battered yellow jacket manifested around my shoulders, the glove on my left hand burning. Panic flared. Astral plane, I realized. I'd never visited, certainly not by choice. Who dragged me here?

A tall man stood on a gently rippling platform a few yards off, arms folded, a crimson cloak draping behind him. He held himself with an aristocratic calm, but his eyes were all business. Doctor Strange. I'd heard rumors—Sorcerer Supreme, big cosmic credentials. Great. My Yellow Sign, as i came to know the swirl was called, thumped under my glove, outraged at this intrusion.

"Sasha Martin," he said, voice measured but urgent, "forgive this abrupt summons, but I had no alternative."

My real name, spoken so casually. Mom used it in her best "Miss Martin" tone, like it could keep me normal. Hearing it from a stranger's mouth rattled me. "Did you seriously just astral-kidnap me?!" I snapped, heart hammering. "I was asleep in my bed, minding my own business."

His cloak stirred, mirroring some tension in him. "My wards have tracked an unknown outer-dimensional energy, akin to Dormammu's scale but… distinct. Tonight, that signature spiked, indicating meltdown potential. I had to intervene before it could devastate your city."

Meltdown potential. The Sign must've reacted in my sleep. My head spun, fury sparking in my chest. So he decides to yank me here like some cosmic toy? "Well, meltdown's not on my agenda," I muttered, glare slicing through the haze. "I don't appreciate you deciding otherwise."

He shifted his posture, arms lowering slightly. "My wards rarely err. If your rewriting soared to critical levels, ignoring it might doom half the city by morning. I apologize for the lack of courtesy, but necessity forced my hand."

"Necessity," I echoed sourly. "And I'm supposed to cooperate because your fancy wards beeped at you?"

He exhaled. "Miss Martin, your illusions warp reality. If you lost control, the consequences would be catastrophic. I must confirm you can restrain yourself."

The swirl in my chest snarled at his tone. My jacket's edges flickered, a sure sign I was seconds from letting it show him how "controlled" I could be. "So you forced me here to test me," I said, voice tight with anger. "Any chance you'll just send me back if I say no?"

Without answering, he shaped golden runes in the astral air, drifting them toward my ankles. "This is a binding. If you're stable, these won't harm you."

I reeled away, swirl heating under the glove, spitting a wave of rancid-sweet adrenaline through my veins. "You're binding me?" I spat. "Bad idea."

He lifted his chin. "I can't risk your meltdown fully manifesting. If you truly have it under control, prove it."

"Let me go," I warned, pulse racing. "Or I'll show you how stable I am."

He pressed more energy into the runes, ignoring the golden fog swirling around my feet. "So be it."

Something in me snapped. My jacket rippled, shedding its mundane shape for tattered folds of burnished gold. At once, the swirl roared to the surface. Power poured from my chest and rolled across the astral plane, thick and sweet as rotting honey. The swirl expanded, unstoppable.

Everything blurred in heated gold and black… and that's when I saw his eyes go wide. He started to see.

---------------DR STRANGE--------------------

I had prepared for many threats in the astral plane—Dormammu's fire-laced presence, the parasitic madness of the Mindless Ones, even the shifting kaleidoscope of the Dream Dimension. But tonight, i saw something different. I saw no magic, no illusions—this felt real, physically real, which was impossible in the astral plane.

A flicker of rancid sweetness permeated the air—like rotting honey. It tasted sweet on my tongue, yet nausea started to build in me. She hissed, the battered jacket rippling. In that instant, I sensed something older and vaster than any dimension I'd encountered. 

Her jacket tore into a golden mantle. In one fluid moment, she shifted from a disgruntled teen to a majestic horror draped in tattered folds spun from corroded sunlight. I heard the astral plane groan beneath me, as though the entire dimension felt her presence. My wards sparked in frantic alarm. Ribbons of radiant corruption spiraled around her, each thread seemingly plucked from some lost epoch of unimaginable grandeur.

The air grew dense with a delirious perfume, half honey, half decay. My cloak fluttered anxiously, as if it, too, sensed we were out of our depth. Sasha made no illusions—she forced her cosmic domain onto this plane. A single wave of that swirling robe shattered my runic binding, leaving me exposed to her reality. It wasn't some phantasm—her realm was insisting on existing here, rewriting the astral environment.

I tried to reinforce my shield, but my wards only sputtered in the face of her power. All at once, my mind was deluged by visions so impossibly vast I nearly forgot to breathe. It began with a single corridor stretching on forever, its walls dripping gold like molten wax. Canvas after canvas hung there, radiant with grotesque and exquisite hues—fleshy pink skies, kaleidoscope spires, contorted figures entwined in patterns of ecstasy and grief. The very paint on those images seemed alive, writhing in decadent creativity that reeked of sweet rot.

A heartbeat later, I was swept into entire courtyards hewn from carved bone, half-rotted yet adorned with lace and glittering filigree. Twisted cathedrals loomed, their reflections swallowed by swirling golden fog. Everywhere, the air grew thick and cloying, stinking of honey left to decay. And above—gilded skulls the size of galaxies floated like deranged celestial bodies, each grin wrought in shimmering metal. Their hollow eyes flickered with cosmic currents, and from their open jaws seeped a choral dirge, half lullaby, half war chant, tugging at the edges of my mind with relentless insistence.

Soon, the music rose into a single, thrumming tapestry of every masterpiece I'd ever heard, braided with countless unknown symphonies. A cosmic hymn that stoked rapture and terror in equal measure, making my ears ring and my heart hammer. The astral plane itself felt as though it might fuse with that chaotic rhythm—my wards glowed in alarm, unable to steady me against the rising storm.

Then came the whispers. A thousand voices, hushed yet fervent, reciting lines of a text older than humanity. Their words manifested as half-solid illusions merging and dissolving in the swirling gold. Fragments brushed my ears: In the palaces of silent starlight... Where crowns and masks lie entwined... Hallowed be the hush before the final chord... Each syllable threatened to fray my reason, as though the language itself was a gateway to a realm of regal nightmares.

Reality in this astral space cracked beneath the pressure of her domain. Through the golden haze, I saw her battered jacket had become a tattered mantle, shimmering with corroded splendor. She was the beating heart of this waking dream, the swirl beneath her glove blazing like a cosmic brand. If she unleashed it fully, I had no doubt everything might drown in that rotted majesty.

But then I heard her breath out, so simple and yet so loud—she was pulling it back, fists clenched, eyes blazing yet resolute. The swirling gold convulsed, then began to recede. Those gilded skulls flickered out, the surreal corridors and bone-hewn courtyards folding into themselves, the monstrous hymn fading into trembling echoes. My wards clanged wildly, stabilizing the plane only because she allowed it.

I sagged in relief, the final spark of gold vanishing. All that remained was her black jacket, frayed but mundane. A faint whiff of honeyed decay lingered, a ghost of the realm she'd nearly unleashed.

She stood there panting, brand still aglow beneath worn fabric. I realized in that moment that she had decided meltdown wasn't happening tonight—that she had the power, not me. Trying to act otherwise would be suicidal.

I steadied myself, forcing my hands not to shake. "You… can control it," I whispered, voice raw. My wards had never felt so useless. "No chain of mine could bind you. You're not possessed. You're the source."

Her eyes glinted with a ragged sort of triumph. "Took you long enough to figure that out," she said, each syllable tight with lingering fury. The jacket's tattered edges drifted into normal folds. I sensed a darkness still thrumming behind them. "Next time, Strange, ask before you yank me out of bed."

"I—I won't force you again," I promised, swallowing my lingering terror. No incantation in my arsenal would have held her if she'd let that cosmic city fully bloom.

She pinned me with a final glare. "I'm not rewriting Earth tonight, but I could if you push me. That meltdown scenario you're so worried about? It's in my hands, not yours. Remember that."

I swallowed hard, cloak fluttering as though it feared her. She turned, the astral plane bending like a pliant stage curtain in her wake, and then she was gone. The air felt cold where she'd stood, that rancid-sweet scent lingering like a warning. Only a hush remained, along with the memory of gilded horrors pressing in on every corner of my mind. 

My wards fizzled, adapting to the plane's return to normal. But inside me, tension coiled. We had survived… barely. I let out a slow, shaking breath, heart pounding as though it might still match that swirling cosmic hymn. If this was just the shadow of what she contained, I dreaded the day her tattered mantle might bloom unrestrained—should she ever decide meltdown was worth it.

I pressed my lips tight, gingerly testing a spell to guide me back to the Sanctum. I couldn't deny the truth: she'd shown me enough to prove that no chain I forged could hold her, and if I'd triggered a meltdown, we would have all drowned in that decadent, rotted empire.

"Never again," I whispered, cloak trembling in agreement. "We're at her mercy."

Then I vanished from the astral plane, half-praying she'd choose restraint in the mortal world. If not, the nightmares I'd glimpsed—corridors of dripping gold, swirling cathedrals of bone, gilded skull-planets—wouldn't remain visions for long.

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I stumbled back through the portal, half-collapsing into the Sanctum's dim corridor. My wards still swirled with frantic glyphs along the walls, each one marking that catastrophic energy spike from just minutes ago. My chest felt tight, my cloak trembling like an anxious pet at my heels.

Wong hurried over, concern etched on his face. "Master Strange," he said, voice taut, "I felt the meltdown alarm. Did you locate the source?"

I pressed a hand against a carved column, trying to keep my breathing under control. "Yes," I managed, my tone raw. "A young woman—Sasha. She wields an outer-dimensional force well beyond illusions. My wards pegged her at meltdown-level, and it wasn't exaggerating. She nearly tore the astral plane apart, just to prove a point."

Wong's brows rose in alarm. "And you confronted her alone?"

A dry, humorless laugh escaped me before I could stop it. "I had no choice. She's more potent than anything I've faced since Dormammu. I forced her into the astral plane, hoping I could contain any damage there if she truly lost it. She... controlled it, but only barely."

He exhaled, shoulders dropping. "So she's a genuine threat."

"Cataclysmic, if it comes to that," I admitted. My cloak still shook with leftover tension, recalling those tattered folds spinning in rancid-sweet gold, flickering spires half-formed in the astral. "She's not malicious so far as I can tell, only furious I tried to bind her. She mentioned that if she 'dons her crown,' we wouldn't be ready. I believe her."

Wong's eyes flickered with new worry. "Another cosmic tyrant, then?"

I shook my head, swallowing the lingering taste of honeyed decay. "No, not a tyrant—more like an artist of decadent horror. If she truly lost her grip, 'meltdown' would be an understatement."

My meltdown alerts dimmed to a low glow, and Wong took a moment to study them. I could still feel stray arcs of arcane tension snapping through the air. "We watch from a distance, I assume," he said quietly. "No cornering her. Might provoke exactly what you fear."

I nodded, stepping further down the corridor. "Indeed. She's resentful enough after tonight. We can't chance antagonizing someone who can spawn entire micro-realities at will." My eyes flicked to the wards, still sparking faintly. "I only hope she meant it when she said she'd hold back."

Wong's footsteps echoed in the hush. "Then a watchful vigilance," he murmured.

"Exactly," I said, dragging a slow, weary breath. "She rattled me like few foes ever have. For now, though, it's over. She returned to her attic, meltdown averted." I paused, remembering the battered jacket unraveling into a half-robe, that rotted sweetness in the astral air. I felt a chill all over again.

"One day at a time," I whispered, letting my gaze wander over the runes that had flared so violently tonight. A small part of me couldn't stop picturing the crown she threatened to wear, a final unleashing that would dwarf all my defenses.

Wong nodded, voice hushed. "One day at a time, Master Strange."

In the silence that followed, my cloak brushed softly against the stone floors, and the ward-lamps guttered. She'd chosen to back down, but if ever she decided otherwise... well, not even the Sanctum's wards would contain that cosmic artistry. I prayed her next dream wouldn't bring all those gilded horrors spilling back into reality.