Wow, I did not realize it had been so long since I updated this. Let's call it a (one day early) birthday present. (Gifting chapters on my birthday always seemed a bit hobbit-ish to me, actually 😊)

"Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something."
-William Goldman, William Goldman: Four Screenplays with Essays

Stephen shivered, eyes heavy-lidded and unseeing as he panted from…from desperation. From fear. From memory rather than exertion.

His heart pounded in his ears, too loud for him to hear the sparks of his closing portal. He barely felt his Cloak squeezing his wrist rhythmically, a grounding presence and a reminder of his breathing exercises.

He came back to himself one sense at a time, sagging back into the Cloak's hold until he felt less shaky. Stephen's feet, at least, were on solid ground. Last time he'd portalled – and he only ever seemed to do it blindly these days; the other masters would be apoplectic if they knew – he'd appeared right off a cliff. If Stephen hadn't had the Cloak, he would be dead.

Well. If the Cloak of Levitation hadn't chosen him, he would have died long before portalling off a cliff.

When his eyes finally took in the view, every other thought was driven out of his head.

It was beautiful. Stephen might have been a little closer to the edge than he generally preferred, but he hardly cared.

He was quite a ways up a mountain somewhere, and if he looked closely enough, no doubt he could pick out faint paths and wooden walkways. But he was far too taken by the stretches of peaks and rock formations fanned out before him, shaded in the greens of twisted, crooked pine trees growing in near-inaccessible places. If he looked far enough, they were almost like stepping stones, or a sharp-tipped, meandering path for giants, rising up out of the sea.

Because below him was an ethereal blanket of clouds, so thick he might have been fooled into thinking it solid, completely concealing canyons and valleys, and giving no hint to the true elevation. The sky was a barely darker shade of gray, and Stephen thought he ought to feel claustrophobic.

But the air was damp with the promise of rain, the cold breeze bringing with it the scent of wet moss and soil, and he felt reassuringly small standing on the edge of such vastness.

Stephen breathed slowly, slipping into something like a standing meditation, content to simply stare at the view as he let his desperation and despair drain away. It was hard to tell what, exactly, triggered him into these flights from Kamar-Taj. Something like routine, perhaps. Or too many reminders for a mind that remembered everything, crowding too close and building until it reached a threshold.

Trauma wasn't exactly logical. No matter how much he might wish it.

He did wonder where he was, exactly. But when one had the ability to return to sanctuary in a step, with a thought and a sling ring, getting lost was never really a worry. A phone with a GPS could be useful, but he'd never bothered to get a new one after his had been stolen.

(The joke was on the pickpocket; he had broken it and only carried it around out of habit.)

He had no money, and hardly needed a new phone anyway. Christine was the only person who might call him, but they had email to keep in touch. And sorcerers had other options if it became necessary.

Instead, Stephen had begun deconstructing every compass and directional spell he could find, with the goal of understanding the structures well enough to alter one to act as a sort of map or GPS. Or possibly even create a new spell altogether. He just wanted something that could give him coordinates, and image results he could manipulate like Google Maps. None of those star maps, sun dials, or other esoteric spell outcomes that required interpretation.

That was all well and good in a dimension the sorcerer was unfamiliar with. But here on Earth, Stephen wanted something better.

The light thud of something hard hitting packed dirt, and the scuff of foot against stone startled Stephen from his contemplation. He turned sharply as the Cloak went completely limp on his back, without even the usual subtle twitching or shifting.

The person who rounded the corner was old, back bent as they shuffled slowly up the path, leaning heavily on a walking stick made from a stout tree branch. Their round face was weathered by the sun, lines carved deep by time. Their pants and thick coat were simple, warm, and in good condition, while a woven, conical hat sat upon a head of white hair as protection against sun and coming rain.

Stephen's sharp gaze studied the old stranger closely, but their gender and purpose remained ambiguous.

Dark eyes observed him in return, and they greeted him in Mandarin. Distracted by identifying which country he was probably in, Stephen hesitated. He was much better at understanding the language than he was at speaking it.

Nepali, Mandarin, and English were the three most common languages at Kamar-Taj. There was always someone around to help mediate conversations if the people speaking couldn't find a common language, and Stephen hadn't been at the temple to make friends. Communication satisfactory enough for his purposes, he'd focused more attention on learning the ancient and dead languages of the spellbooks.

He'd spoken even less since Dormammu, though he listened more. While his reading and listening comprehension improved, in both Nepali and Mandarin, his verbal practice suffered.

Stephen must have taken too long fumbling for an answer. The elder switched to accented English.

"Come." They motioned for him, indicating a shadow in the rock wall a little bit ahead. "It will rain any minute, and you should not stand around getting wet."

The sorcerer hesitated, conflicted. The Cloak of Levitation gave no opinion one way or another, so Stephen belatedly dipped into a bow before matching his pace with his companion.

"I'm Stephen," he introduced himself awkwardly.

"I am called Houtu," the other said with a stately sort of nod.

As they approached, the shadow in the rock gave way to a decent sized cavern, shallow, but with an extended overhang that would keep out the rain that was just rolling in.

Unable to just disappear with a witness, he sank back against the cave wall and let the steady thrum of rain lull him into a trance.

Houtu spoke eventually, voice low and gentle enough to soothe rather than startle.

The elder said, "This makes me think of the story of the flood, in which the sky collapsed, and the earth sank, and all of humanity perished except for a brother and his elder sister.

"These two siblings passed by a temple on their way to and from their school. In front of that temple was a fierce lion shaped from iron, and the children would often play and clamber over the lion.

"One day a monk told them that every day, the siblings should feed the iron lion steamed bread. He also stressed that they should pay particular attention to its eyes. When the eyes turned red, they should get into the lion's stomach.

"The siblings dutifully obeyed, feeding the iron lion daily and checking the color of its eyes. Sure enough, one day as the girl fed the lion, she saw that the eyes had turned red. She and her brother immediately climbed into its stomach.

"Day grew dark as night, the wind howled, and it seemed the very sky crashed down. But they were protected by the iron lion, and subsisted on the steamed buns they had fed it daily. When at last it was safe to emerge, they found all other people dead."

That was the last and only thing he remembered clearly of his conversation with Houtu. Though it hadn't alarmed him at the time, the rest of the conversation flowed out of his mind, eluding the grasp of his photographic memory and leaving only impressions. Stephen had been unusually forthcoming – likely under some sort of influence, he deduced later – but nothing damning. Nothing secret, or too identifying. He had enough control to hold back.

But Houtu seemed uninterested in secrets or anything that might be too personal. He seemed more interested in the kind of man Stephen was. His thoughts and opinions.

Of course, these realizations struck him only after he had portalled back to Kamar-Taj without any clear idea of deciding to do so. Nor whether there had been anyone around to catch him doing so.

The Cloak of Levitation perked up immediately, swirling around him frantically and patting at his face and limbs as if checking for injuries.

Stephen sucked in a breath, feeling rather stricken. He'd thought, in the beginning, that the Cloak was unusually still. But this person had…had frozen it? Put it to sleep? Had taken his closest companion out of commission, and could have done anything to him.

What did they want? And why was the story of the flood etched so clearly in his memory?

"I'm fine," Stephen reassured the Cloak a little numbly. It grumpily left off its mother henning when his feet automatically carried him to the library. When in doubt, research.

Or go for Wong.

Maybe he should see a healer as well, just in case.

Wong took one look at his expression, and his own seemed to sour further. It wasn't Stephen's fault that the librarian, and eventually the other masters, seemed equal parts incredulous and resigned to the occurrences that tended to congregate around the tall, troublesome American. It definitely wasn't Stephen's fault that chaos and trouble tended to seek him out.

The excitement from the shell relic had finally died down, too. It wasn't even that bad. The shell summoned whatever the user asked for as they threw the shell down. And since Stephen hadn't asked for anything, it simply brought forth what it had last been commanded to summon. In that case, a palace.

Luckily reversing it was simple. The user just had to focus on wanting it returned to where it had come from while throwing down the shell.

Of course, this was discovered after a few hours of research by a frantic group of sorcerers, goaded by rumors that the Nepalese government was talking of bringing in Iron Man. If those rumors had been true, at least the Order had been fast enough to avoid that potential headache.

Once the panic was over, most of the actual fuss surrounded how Stephen had found the relic in the first place. Been gifted it, rather, which almost never happened.

The fuss might be worse this time, though. Wong's expression even faltered briefly at hearing the stranger's name.

"Houtu is a god, Strange."

Stephen blanched as Wong sent off a spell to gather high-ranking masters, and then grabbed him a book that contained a description of the god. Rarely did the deity appear so old and feeble. It must have been a targeted decision, one that would see Stephen's guard drop at least a little, and possibly a test of respect, or compassion, or whatever the mythological, fairy tale tropes tended towards.

Stephen recounted his encounter several times at the meeting and afterward, with increasing irritation and increasingly less patience. The legend – one that was well-known in China with a number of variations – was obviously important for some reason, but none of them had any idea why.

After countless theories, and days of searching, and reading, and divining, they found it. In rural China, an ancient iron lion had been found, and archaeologists were preparing it to be properly stored and eventually restored.

The statue was a powerful, dangerous relic. The tomes were unclear regarding what exactly would happen to anything that reached its hollow stomach, but it wasn't anything good. What was clear, was that if both eyes were colored red, most of China and some of the surrounding countries would drown beneath the ocean.

The iron lion was quickly procured and safely locked away and hidden with the other extremely dangerous relics that would hopefully never see the light of day.

"But why come in person?" Stephen wondered aloud late at night as he helped Wong with the shelving. "Why not go the typical vision, or dream, or whatever route? And since Houtu was already there, why not just tell me outright? Actually, why warn at all for something that wasn't an apocalyptic, imminent event? According to all that I've read, the gods don't usual forewarn quite so far ahead of the disaster."

"It seemed more like an excuse to gain your measure," was Wong's rather ominous observation.

I found the legend and information on Houtu in the book Handbook of Chinese Mythology. I chose Houtu to interact with Stephen for a few reasons. Sometimes described as male and sometimes female, they are a shadowy figure sometimes described as the ruler of the netherworld. I figured Stephen's many deaths would draw Houtu's attention. They're also an earth deity, and in some local belief systems, "People offer her sacrifices and pray to her for harvest, rain, children, health, wealth, safety when boating in the Yellow River, and the tide when a boat is stranded". So, the association with the mountain, cave, rain, and flood.

The mountain Stephen found himself on is (meant to be) Huangshan Mountain.