Stephen Strange battles demonic monsters in the midst of a destroyed store. He reflects that he always use to take a hot bath before surgery; while showers helped him think, baths helped him forget, and he felt it was helpful to dismiss all distractions and other non-essential thoughts from his mind before performing operations. He hasn't, however, been able to bathe in weeks, and notes that his nerves are getting frayed.
He kills one monster from a spell and decapitates another with a magic ax. This enables him to leave the store, which turns out to have been swallowed by an even bigger monster. He makes his way up to the monster's mouth and notes that most of his usual tools, such as the Eye of Agimotto and the Cloak of Levitation, don't work in the Darkforce Dimension. Strange still has a few trinkets, though, and he breaks some blue baubles which irritate the creature and forces it to spit Strange and the bauble shards out. He lands and gives most of the scavenged supplies to people on the street before walking off.
Across town, Matt Murdock, Jessica Drew, and Ben Urich are scaling the outside of the Empire State Building. Strange's house has appeared in a bubble halfway up the building, and Murdock and Drew think that's worth investigating. Urich has been brought along because Strange has a big library and Urich has a degree in literature which might prove useful in analyzing the books. Murdock reaches the bubble and is able to push his way in. He then uses his radar-sense and notices a flaw in the magic wards surrounding Strange's house. This enables him to breach the wards and break into the house itself, where he sees a glowing sphere. When he stabs the sphere with his sword, though, he's suddenly sucked into it and Baron Mordo appears. Mordo says that Rogers has left him in charge of Manhattan and that Murdock has fallen into his trap. He then summons a monster to eat Drew and Urich.
Down below, Strange begins preparing a spell using ingredients he's scavenged from all over Manhattan. The spell will, if it works, breach the Darkforce surrounding Manhattan. He begins to cast as Drew, with Urich on her back, glides away from the monster. Unfortunately, she and the monster crash into Strange, disrupting his spell and resulting in them all being seized by the monster. As Strange and Drew bicker over whose fault this is, the monster prepares to eat Urich, but then a car drives into its head and kills it. The driver of the car turns out to be Wilson Fisk, who says that Strange now owes him a favor and he always collects on his debts.
Tropes:
- Enemy Mine: Fisk appears willing to work with Strange and the other heroes against Mordo and the Darkforce more generally.
