Death Temple {Doctor Strange x Reader}

Chapter 2 eternal darkness

In the break of the morning, as the sun barley began to peak out from behind the horizon, i awoke.

As i did each morning, in an almost loop of time, my hands traced the handle of a large mallet as I raised it in the air.
With a force, aided by my magic, I slammed the mallet against a large gold gong hanging in the center of a circular tower that peaked out of the temple. A sound much like a roar of thunder echoed threw the air, as I hit it a total of three times, as tradition told me to.

Moments later as I descended down the spiral staircase and sat out in the center of the cobblestone front yard I heard footsteps approaching me.

"A gong? Really?" His voice was dripping in a terribly groggy taste as his words bounced off my ear drums.
I let out a puff of air threw my nose as a gesture of amusement  at his comment.
"Tradition." I said.
"Yeah you really seem to be into that." He spoke.

I stood up effortlessly to face him, his eyes boring into mine like a train.
"With out tradition, the world would parish." I replied clearly, my eyes slightly narrowed in spite.

He shook his head with a ghost of a smile curling on his lips.

"So- I'm sorry what do I call you?"
He shifted his weight from each foot, not out of nervousness but more out of impatience.

"Master" I stated, a hint of amusement played on my face.

"Oh come on, a real name please."
I smirked at him, noting the please on the end of his sentence.

"(y/n)" I said

He signed once and smiled slowly.
"So (y/n) what exactly is this Black Death magic stuff Iv come here to learn?" He asked, and I  couldn't help but laugh at how cocky he was.

"Before you even begin to learn the process of such a powerful source, you must understand death. Make amends with it." My voice acted as a smooth wave in the air, trying to remain calm and wise so he could understand better.

"I have made amends with it" he stated crossing his arms impatiently.
"Really?" I asked, titling my head to show my clear disbelief in his words. He paused for a moment, a mask of a smirk played upon his features as he stepped an inch closer to me.
"Really." He replied.

A smirk now arose on my face as I rose my hand, seeing transparent white and gray hands begin to exceed themselves from the ground below his feet.

He however, noticed nothing, but continued to stare at me until whispers began to flood his line of hearing. Nothing they said seemed to make sense, they voiced themselves like animals spoke in the wild, not saying anything, but there was a ghost of a knowledge that they where.

With his head now turned down in fear at the hands moving to grab him I flicked my palm downwards and watched as his body disappeared into the cobblestone.
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Several hours later I arrived back from my meditation session at the peak of the cliff. My leg lightly tapping my foot down on the stone as I watched my pocket watch slowly tick to the 2:00 mark.

I put my hand above the ground again and and contoured my fingers as I made a jerking motion upwards with my palm.

The doctors body was yanked from the ground and quickly became one with the world again.
His eyes filled in terror as he held his hand to his chest, feeling his heart beat rapidly.

"What. THE HELL. Was that" he asked in choppy, out of breath gasps.

"In order to make amends with death, you must first understand it."
My face remained stoic as I stood in front of him, chest out and arms behind my back as if I had become a dictator.

"That... was death?" His question was expected, as was the fear that carried in self in his eyes as he asked it.
I simply nodded at him.

"Black, it was only black. For miles and miles on end. Just pure nothing. And I know black is something but this was more then black... it was nothing" his reply to my gesture was choppy, slurred and shaken. His finger tips has assumed a light twitch of anxiety as it flowed with in him.

I knew this reaction quite well, it was the same for almost everyone who came here. A true shaken heart at the thought of eternal darkness.
So as tradition told it, I said my lines. 
"Death is the end. Death it was stops a life from being lived, and a soul from being free. Death has always been nothing."

His eyes fluttered shut in a long dragging blink, then cascaded open again to wonder around the outskirts of the background.

"Amends.." he whispered.
"Excepting an afterlife of nothing" he sighed.

"It becomes peaceful when you form a bond with it. You must refuse to see it as an end, except it as a pause." My smile broke the concentration of strange as he locked back To my eyes.

"A pause?" He asked. His body shifting uncomfortably.

"Essentially, nothing will last forever, that nothingness can never stay a nothingness. And darkness can never be present with out light."
I smiled at him, my arms still crossed behind me like that of authority.

"So then, what happens next?"

I knew not of an answer that would truly fit onto the end of his question, not one true enough to take for gospel.
So I replied to the best of my ability.
"No one knows"

"Can't you bring people back to talk to them? Isn't that part of your sorcery?"

I smiled, my eyes shifting to the floor and back up to him.
"A restored soul has no knowledge of the afterlife when it is brought back to reality. It may only stay for a short amount of time, and can only speak of life when in the presence of the living."

He nodded respectively, his face becoming straight and interested.

"So what exactly is Black Death sorcery?"

With this, a smile formed on my lips.

"Sit" Commanded, lowering my self down to the stone, legs crossed beneath me. He did the same, sitting in front of me merely 5 feet away.

"The three elements of Mnyama ukufa sorcery are: release death, relive death, and repent death."
With a wave of my hand three black forms of misty disks appeared in the air, linked together with black misty chain. In the center of each disk lay a symbol of what they represent. Release: a hand, palm facing forward.  Relive: an outstretched hand. Repent; a fist risen up in protest.
Doctor strange was completely mesmerized by the dark black magic in front of him.

"What do they all mean?" He asked.

With the motion of my hand lightly in the air I vanished the disks and made the first one appear again, lone and magnified.

"Release. To bring a soul back to life for a short time." I then swiped and watched as it flicked to the second like a slide show.

"Relive. To touch a corpse and see their death played out in your eyes like a movie screen."
"Repent. A duty to recapture and drag back the souls that left with out the universe commanding it."

I smiled at him as I let the disks drop into dust in front of us both. His eyes where wide in fascination and it seemed he was genuinely interested in learning more, but before a sliver of a question could escape him lips, I stood. 

"Meditate, eat, rest. That is all for the day." I began to walk away as he shuffled to his feet in a scurry.

"That's it?" He uttered behind me.

"Patience mr strange." I yelled from across the courtyard of cobblestone that I had passed over.

Stephen stood in his place as he watched her leave threw the double doors of the temple.

"Doctor" he said quietly.