Like Teacher, Like Student /// A Doctor Strange Fanfiction

Chapter 8

Okay, so, astral projection was pretty awesome. Extremely difficult but awesome. While her body was laying on a comfy pile of pillows downstairs, Casey's astral self was moving around the second floor of the Sanctum, drifting through display cases and walls.

It gave a whole new meaning to wandering soul.

"Don't go far," Stephen said. He was walking beside her, still in his physical body, but he was using a spell so that she was visible to him. "You'll tire yourself out."

It was the fifth day of her astral projection lessons, and this was the first time he had let her move out of the room her body was in. Apparently she needed to stay mentally grounded in the now or something like that so that her astral self didn't become separated from her physical form. The first few days, she hadn't even been able to cast her astral form out of her body. Yesterday, she had gotten the hang of it, but he wouldn't let her move around much.

"I'm not going to do the whole severing thing. I'm definitely coming back to my body since, y'know, I'm partial to it," Casey said, floating on her back. She raised up to the ceiling and stood upside down beside one of the light fixtures. "It's dusty up here, by the way."

"You have to keep thinking about the physical plane of this dimension," he said, ignoring her comment. "As much trouble as it is to leave your body, it's extremely easy to lose touch with it."

"Do you know how New Age that sounds?" she asked, "Next you're going to want me to use a crystal to focus my chi or something."

"You're mixing things up," Stephen said, "And you won't be using crystals yet, you're not ready."

"Oh, you're serious?" Casey did a backflip off the ceiling and landed beside her guardian. She smirked up at him then floated up so that she was eye level to him. He was too tall, anyways, she always had to look up at him. "I was kidding."

"There's a lot you don't know about the world of sorcery yet, and you shouldn't take it so lightly."

"And you were always gung-ho seriously sold out on it and never questioned any of it?" Casey let herself drifted around him in a slow circle. "I reeeeally doubt that."

"There's a whole respect component that comes into play," Stephen said, crossing his arms over his chest, "You're not there yet."

Casey sighed. "I'm trying, okay? It's all just really weird. I mean, look at me." She waved her arms through the air and shot back up toward the ceiling. "I'm a transparent ghost girl." Suddenly an idea popped into her mind about how useful this could be at school. While she wasn't much of a prankster, a few excellent scenarios came to mind. She could totally make the school ghost come alive.

"Hey, I don't like that look," Stephen said, point a finger at her, "The only time you're allowed to go astral is in this building until I say otherwise."

Casey gave him a long look, debating the amount of sway he actually held over her. He was, in fact, her legal guardian according to the papers he had forged via magic. And if she didn't follow his rules, he wouldn't teach her any more magic, which she was actually suspecting she needed. Her grandpa had said he'd buy her a couple years, which meant that Arpath might come back or that she would at least need magic to help her.

While the whole situation was odd as all get out, she did want to learn magic, even if she complained while doing so. Revenge wasn't her style, though if she got the chance, she might take a page out of a certain hero team's book and avenge her grandpa. But first and foremost, she wanted to defend herself as well as others and keep them from becoming orphans like she had due to extradimensional monsters or aliens or whatever they were.