Mordo and Amber stood side by side, watching as Stephen inspect the room, seeming stupefied at everything. Two students quickly approached him, stripping him from his coat and luggage.

"Thank you" He stuttered, peering over to a man in a chair before staring at a woman handing him a cup and filling it with tea. "Oh, thank you. Uh, thank you, Ancient One, for seeing—"

The man reading at the table stood up, tucked his book beneath his arm and walked away. Stephen's words trailed off as he became confused.

"You're very welcome." The woman in front of him answered with a smile, surprising him.

Stephen looked over his shoulder towards Mordo and Amber, who bowed their heads in response. "The Ancient One," Mordo confirmed, holding out a hand.

"Thank you, Master Mordo and Amber, thank you Master Hamir." She called as Hamir left while Mordo and Amber stood at the edge of the room.

"Mister Strange," the Ancient One introduced, letting out a breath.

Stephen blinked in slight annoyance, correcting her. "Doctor, actually." He brought the cup to his chapped lips, appreciating the moister it brought to his once dry throat and mouth.

"Well, no, not anymore, surely. Isn't that why you're here? You've undergone many procedures. Seven, right?" She airily asked, walking away to prepare three more cups of tea.

"Yeah. It's...good tea." He replied woodenly, looking down at it before studying her actions. Looking over to the two behind him once more, they stared back at him in silence, quite amused with his awkwardness so far. "Did you heal a man named Pangborn? Paralyzed man?"

"In a way." The Ancient One replied, not looking up.

"You helped him to walk again."

"Yes." She answered quickly with a curt nod, briefly glancing up at him.

"How did you correct a complete C7-C8 spinal cord injury?" Stephen demanded, approaching her in long strides. He longed to get back to the hospital, saving lives by the tips of his fingers.

"Well, I didn't correct it," She rebutted, stirring the tea with gentle movements. "He couldn't walk. I convinced him that he could."

"You're not suggesting it was psychosomatic?" He asked, disconcerted even from the mention of it.

"When you reattach the severed nerve, is it you who heals it back together, or the body?" She questioned back, continually stirring.

"It's the cells." He responded, knowing this like the back of his hand.

"And the cells are only programmed to put themselves back together in very specific ways." The Ancient One tapped the spoon on the rim of the cup.

"Right."

"What if I told you that your own body could be convinced to put itself back together in all sorts of ways?" The Ancient One gave him the idea, waving the spoon around in small loops.

Stephen took a step closer to the table, setting down his cup. "You're talking about cellular regeneration. That's bleeding edge medical teach." 

He followed her as the Ancient One walked up to Mordo and Amber, handing them their cups of tea with her warm smile.

"Is that why you're working here? Without any governing medical board? I mean, just how experimental is your treatment?"

She turned to him, tipping her head almost coyly "Quite."

Behind her, Mordo and Amber sipped their beverage simultaneously. Amber fought to smirk cockily, knowing Stephen's arrogance like her own.

"So you've figured out a way to reprogram nerve cells to self-heal?" His voice was filled with unhesitating ambition.

"No, Mister Strange." She approached the man, standing in front of him. "I know how to reorient the spirit to better heal the body."

He was silent. Stephen didn't believe it...couldn't believe it. "The spirit...to heal the body?"

The Ancient One gave a curt nod, taking a sip of her tea and stepping away from him. "That's right."

Stephen closed his eyes momentarily, fighting the urge to say how fictional and absurd she sounded.

"Al-Alright, how do we do that? Where do we start?" He stuttered, struggling to nod. He was incredulous to her claim, only knowing how life worked in a specific way.

Turning around, the Ancient One held up a book towards him, already at a specific page. Stephen looked down at it, then at her, expecting more.

She smiled at him. "Don't like that map?"

"It's-it's really good. I've seen it before...in gift shops." Stephen's face dropped, almost rolling his eyes at her.

Her smile grew bigger as she moved to his side, flipping to another page. "What about this one?"

"Acupuncture, great."

Amber tilted her head with raised eyebrows, her eyes shining with curiosity. She noticed the little things in his face. Like, how his nostrils flared in irritation or how his eyes flickered around the page in curt but deft movements.

"What about that one?" the Ancient One turned the page again and jabbed her finger at a picture.

"Showing me an MRI scan. I do not believe this." Strange scorned, walking away. Slapping his hands over his eyes, he angrily rubbed them.

"Each of those maps was drawn up by someone who could see in part, but not the whole." She set the book down, folding her fingers together behind her back.

"I spent my last dollar getting here on a one-way ticket, and you're talking to me about healing through belief?" He spat, turning from the window with an ire glare.

"You're a man, looking at the world through a keyhole. You've spent your whole life trying to widen that keyhole. To see more, to know more. And now, on hearing that it can be widened, in ways you can't imagine, you reject the possibility." The Ancient One questioned, tilting her head.

"No, I reject it because I do not believe in fairy tales about chakras or energy or the power of belief. There is no such thing as spirit!" He hissed, bits of saliva drivelling from his mouth.

Amber glanced at Mordo, seeing the slight regret on his face. 

"We are made of matter and nothing more. You're just another tiny, momentary speck within an indifferent universe."

"You think too little of yourself."

"Oh, you think you see through me? Well, you don't." Stephen seethed, taking wide strides towards her, anger now present in his tone. "I see through you!"

He jabbed her in the shoulder with his finger, only for her to grab his hand and strike him in the chest with her palm. Stephen's physical body fell backwards. His astral body floated upwards, Stephen now staring at his real body slowly fall.

Gazing down at his hands, Stephen let out a soft gasp. Mordo approached him with slowed strides, placing a hand on his back, and shoulder. The Ancient One raised her hand and closed it, bringing his astral form back to his physical.

He gasped loudly as Mordo pushed him upright onto his feet. "What did you just do to me?!"

"I pushed your astral form out of your physical form." The Ancient One replied simply.

"What's in that tea? Psilocybe? LSD?" Stephen interrogated, glancing over to the teapot.

"It's just tea. With a little honey." The Ancient One shrugged.

"What just happened?" Stephen blinked rapidly, looking around.

"For a moment, you entered the astral dimension. A place where the soul exists apart from the body."

"Why are you doing this to me?"

"To show you just how much you don't know. Open your eye." She placed a hand on his temple with her thumb in the middle of his forehead.

Stephen's eyes widened before he launched back. He flew upwards and into the clouds. Further and further he went the edge of the world now in full sight. "AH! This isn't real! This isn't re–"

His words cut off as a monarch butterfly fluttering by...in space. He reached out for it, gasping softly.

Stephen suddenly flew backwards again, more screams ripping from his throat. Everything twisted into a rainbow of flashing colours curling around him in odd shapes and designs.

All things seemed forgotten by him as the colours blurred past him wildly.

"His heart rate is getting dangerously high." A male voice said in the distance.

Landing in a chair abruptly, Stephen looked up to the girl with the heterochromatic eyes. Her plump lips stretched into a friendly smile. "He looks all right to me."

The wall behind her stretched out and he flung backwards.

"You think you know how the world works?" the Ancient One's voice asked around him. "You think that this material world is all there is?"

Entering a black hole, he soared across lands before entered a room of hands.

"What is real? What mysteries lie beyond the reach of your senses? At the root of existence, mind and matter meet."

They reached out, enclosing his legs and arms. Looking at his own hand, his fingertips sprouted smaller and smaller hands.

"Thoughts shape reality."

The hands continued to surround him before they covered his face. Stephen suddenly looked up at himself, flying through his eye into a room of pure diamonds. He neared a diamond shape, seeming to break through it to another world with even wilder shapes.

"This universe is only one of an infinite number. Worlds without end. Some benevolent and life-giving. Others filled with malice and hunger."

Stephen's body moved on its own, soaring across the area until an alien figure appeared with vivid glowing eyes. "Dark places...where power older than time lie ravenous and waiting."

His yells filled his ears until he was suddenly still, his body floating calmly.

"Who are you in this vast Multiverse, Mister Strange?"

Stephen got sucked into another tunnel of rainbows and flashing lights before landing in the chair, back in Kamar-Taj.

With the force of the fall, Stephen fell over with a pained grunt.

He slowly got up, startled by the Ancient One speaking again, "Have you seen that before in a gift shop?"

Sitting on his knees, Stephen gazed up at the Ancient One with wide and venerable eyes, his hands shaking. "Teach me."

"No."