Peter laid everything out on the study floor.
It took less time than he expected. That was the worst part. He'd been mentally building this inventory for days, running lists in his head during the long hours in the chamber, adding items, removing items, adjusting quantities. In his imagination, the pile had been substantial. Meaningful. The kind of supply cache that said this person is prepared.
On the floor of Strange's study, spread across six feet of old hardwood in the grey light of a November afternoon, it looked like the contents of a college student's backpack after a particularly disorganized weekend.
He knelt beside it. Catalogued it. Tried not to think about the gap between what he had and what he needed.
Web fluid. Fourteen canisters, each containing approximately thirty shots at standard dispersal. That was four hundred and twenty total deployments. It sounded like a lot until you remembered that a single patrol night in New York could burn through three canisters, and he was going to a world with no resupply.
Four hundred and twenty shots. That was it. The entirety of Spider-Man's signature capability, measured in a number that suddenly felt very, very small.
He picked up one of the canisters. Turned it in his fingers. The housing was brushed aluminum, custom machined on a lathe he'd borrowed from the engineering lab at Empire State before dropping out. The fluid inside was his own formula. Synthetic polymer base, bioadhesive compound, tensile strength rated at approximately 120 pounds per square millimeter. Dissolves after two hours of atmospheric exposure.
Two hours. In New York, that was a feature. Webbing that cleaned itself up. No lawsuits from angry building owners, no environmental complaints, no permanent evidence of Spider-Man's nightly commute.
In Westeros, two hours was a problem. If he used webbing for construction, for binding, for anything that needed to last, it would dissolve before it served its purpose.
He set the canister down. Made a note in his notebook. Reformulate for persistence? Need to extend dissolution window. Possible with available materials? Tree resins? Animal proteins?
Maybe. Maybe not. He wouldn't know until he got there and started experimenting. Add it to the list of things that depended on variables he couldn't predict from a chamber in Manhattan.
Next item. The sensor.
His rebuilt electromagnetic detector, now on its third iteration. Small screen, crude waveform display, battery pack soldered together from salvaged cells. He'd added a kinetic charging mechanism using a spring-loaded weight that generated current from movement. Walking, running, any sustained physical activity would trickle-charge the battery. Not fast. Not efficient. But sustainable.
The sensor would let him detect Atlas network signals. Ley line concentrations. Node proximity. The electromagnetic component of the infrastructure that his scientific instruments could read even when mystical diagnostics couldn't. In a world without Strange's magical displays, this ugly little device was his only window into the network's physical layer.
If it broke, he couldn't rebuild it. Not without electronic components that wouldn't exist on Planetos for another several centuries.
He wrapped it in a spare shirt and set it aside. Handle with care. Understatement of the millennium.
Next. First aid.
A basic kit, assembled from the Sanctum's surprisingly well-stocked medical supplies. Strange had been a surgeon. Old habits. The kit contained bandages, antiseptic, suture thread with a curved needle, a bottle of broad-spectrum antibiotics that Strange had procured from somewhere Peter chose not to ask about, anti-inflammatory tablets, and a small vial of morphine.
"The morphine is for emergencies only," Strange had said when he'd handed it over. "Extreme pain management. Field surgery. If you use it recreationally, I will find a way to reach across dimensions and confiscate it."
"I'm not going to use morphine recreationally."
"I'm being thorough."
Peter set the kit aside. It was comprehensive for a hiking trip. For a months-long deployment in a medieval war zone, it was a band-aid on a bullet wound. Literally.
His notebook. Two hundred and forty-seven pages of Atlas translations, signal analysis data, map coordinates, repair procedures, and letters he would never send. The most valuable item in the pile, measured by information density. Also the most fragile. Paper and ink. In a world of rain and mud and no plastic bags.
He'd need to waterproof it. Wax, maybe. Or whatever passed for waterproofing in a pre-industrial economy.
The multi-tool. Titanium. Non-corrosive. Eighteen functions including pliers, wire cutters, three blade types, a saw, and a small file. The single most versatile physical object he owned. He'd had it since he was sixteen. Ben had given it to him for Christmas.
Peter held the multi-tool for a moment. Ran his thumb across the housing. Ben's handwriting was still faintly visible on the gift tag he'd taped to the handle: For the kid who fixes everything. Love, Uncle Ben.
He set it down carefully.
Protein bars. Twelve. Various flavors, mostly peanut butter because the bodega on West 4th had been running a sale and Peter had bought their entire stock at 2 AM three days ago. The cashier had given him a look. Peter had said "camping trip" and the cashier had said "in November?" and Peter had said "it's complicated" and the cashier had shrugged because this was New York and weirder things happened before breakfast.
Twelve protein bars. Each one roughly 300 calories. 3,600 calories total. Peter's enhanced metabolism burned approximately 4,000 calories per day.
Less than one day of food.
He stared at the protein bars arranged in their neat row on the hardwood floor. Thought about the math. Thought about arriving in a world with no grocery stores, no bodegas, no 24-hour delis on Broadway. A world where food came from the ground or from animals you killed yourself, and winter could last a decade.
He was going to be hungry. A lot.
Moving on.
His suit. The Spider-Man suit, folded into a tight square beside the protein bars. Basic version. Not the Iron Spider. Not any of Stark's high-tech iterations. Just the suit he'd built himself, the one he patrolled in, the one with the waterproofing sealant that never fully cured and the web-shooter mounts on the wrists and the mask that fogged up in cold weather.
It was thin. Flexible. Excellent for urban acrobatics. Absolutely useless for keeping warm in a subarctic climate.
He'd need other clothes. Local clothes. Something that didn't scream "I am from another dimension and please execute me for witchcraft."
The suit would go underneath. A base layer. Hidden. His identity as Spider-Man preserved beneath whatever medieval costume he ended up wearing.
If he could find medieval clothes. If someone gave them to him. If he wasn't killed on sight before the clothing question became relevant.
The right web-shooter. Functional. Loaded. His left one was still broken, the tension spring misaligned, the compression valve slightly off-center. He hadn't been able to fix it.
He'd been hoping Elara could fix it.
The thought arrived uninvited. A name from a map projection. A dot of gold light labeled WHITE-HARBOR that had stuck in his mind for reasons he couldn't name.
Elara. He didn't know why the device had fed him that name during the map projection. He didn't know why the word kept surfacing in his thoughts, attached to nothing, connected to no face or voice or context. Just a name. Like a bookmark in a book he hadn't read yet.
He shook it off. Focused.
Last item.
A photograph.
Not the Coney Island photo. That was upstairs with Strange, anchoring the tether. This was a different one. Smaller. Wallet-sized. Creased from being carried in Peter's back pocket for three years.
May. Just May. Standing in her kitchen, laughing at something off-camera, caught mid-motion with her hair swinging and her eyes crinkled and one hand raised in a gesture that was either waving hello or throwing a dish towel. Peter had taken it on his phone and printed it at a CVS because he was sentimental and because phones died but photos endured.
He held it.
His throat tightened.
He set it on top of the notebook. The last thing he'd pack. The first thing he'd reach for.
---
Peter stood up. Stepped back. Looked at the inventory from a distance, the way you'd look at a painting to see if the composition worked.
It didn't work.
Fourteen canisters of web fluid. One sensor. One first aid kit. One notebook. One multi-tool. Twelve protein bars. One suit. One web-shooter. One photograph.
That was everything. The complete list of resources that Peter Benjamin Parker, age twenty, was bringing to save a dying world.
A world with armies and castles and a seven-hundred-foot wall of ice and a darkness that had been eating the foundations of reality for longer than his species had existed.
This was what he had to work with.
"It's not enough," he said to the empty room.
The room didn't argue.
He sat on the floor beside his inventory. Pulled his knees up. Rested his forearms on them. The study windows showed a grey sky over Greenwich Village, the bare branches of a tree moving in wind he couldn't hear through the glass. The old radiators clanked their rhythm. The Sanctum creaked and settled, wood and stone doing what old buildings did.
Four days.
In four days, this pile of stuff on the floor would be everything standing between him and a world that didn't know it needed saving. Fourteen canisters and a prayer. A multi-tool and a photograph.
He thought about the heroes in the stories he'd grown up with. The ones who prepared for their quests with magical swords and enchanted armor and loyal companions and vast armies at their backs. Frodo had the Fellowship. Luke had the Rebellion. Even Tony Stark had gone into his final fight with the most advanced technology on the planet.
Peter had protein bars.
The absurdity of it hit him in a wave, and he laughed. A real laugh, sudden and uncontrolled, the kind that came from the place where terror and comedy shared a border.
He was still laughing when Strange walked in.
---
Strange stopped in the doorway. Looked at Peter sitting on the floor surrounded by his meager supplies, laughing. Looked at the inventory. Looked back at Peter.
"Should I be concerned?"
"I'm bringing twelve protein bars to save the multiverse."
"I see."
"Twelve. That's less than a day of calories for me. I'm going to arrive in a medieval world and be hungry within twenty-four hours."
"The destination reality has food, Peter."
"The destination reality has medieval food. Which means bread, if I'm lucky. Meat, if I'm luckier. Mystery stew, if I'm at a castle. And nothing, if I'm in the woods, which is where I'll probably land because the device doesn't seem to care about convenient arrival points."
Strange walked into the room. Stepped carefully over the line of protein bars. Sat in the chair behind his desk, which was the only surface in the study not covered in books, star charts, or Peter's discarded coffee cups.
"You'll hunt," Strange said.
"I don't know how to hunt."
"You have enhanced reflexes, superhuman speed, the ability to sense danger before it arrives, and you can stick to any surface. I suspect you'll figure it out."
"I've never killed an animal in my life."
"Then you'll learn."
Peter stopped laughing. The humor drained out of the moment like water through a crack, leaving behind the dry, cold bedrock of what was actually happening.
"Yeah," he said. "I'll learn."
Strange studied the inventory. His eyes moved over each item with the systematic evaluation of a man who had spent his career assessing whether a patient had what they needed to survive.
"You need warmer clothes," Strange said.
"I know."
"A fire-starting kit. Flint and steel, or something equivalent."
"I know."
"A container for water. Something durable."
"I know, Stephen."
"A weapon."
Peter looked at him.
"I don't use weapons."
"You don't use weapons in New York. In a world where everyone carries a sword and the primary method of conflict resolution is stabbing, you need something that doesn't require web fluid."
"I have super strength."
"Super strength is excellent at close range. It does nothing against an arrow from a hundred yards. Or a mounted charge. Or an ambush by twenty men with spears." Strange leaned forward. "You are extraordinarily capable, Peter. You are not invincible. And in a world without hospitals, without antibiotics beyond what's in that kit, and without anyone who understands your physiology well enough to treat you if something goes wrong, a single serious injury could kill you."
The words sat in the room like stones.
Peter looked at his inventory. Fourteen canisters. One sensor. One first aid kit.
"What do you suggest?"
"A staff. Something you can use for defense without killing. It suits your fighting style, extends your reach, and doesn't require training you don't have. I have one in the armory downstairs that's reinforced with minor enchantments. Impact resistance. Weight reduction. Nothing flashy. Nothing that would register as magical to anyone without sophisticated detection capabilities."
"You're giving me a magic stick."
"I'm giving you a practical defensive tool with minor mystical enhancements."
"A magic stick."
Strange's mouth did the thing. The almost-smile. The ghost of humor in a face that had forgotten how to wear it comfortably.
"If it makes you feel better, it looks completely mundane. Dark wood, six feet long, iron caps on the ends. It could pass as a walking staff anywhere in the destination reality without attracting attention."
"Do you just have weapons lying around the Sanctum?"
"I have artifacts lying around the Sanctum. Some of them happen to be weapons. This one was used by a Kamar-Taj practitioner in the seventeenth century who specialized in close-quarters defensive combat. It has survived three hundred years of occasional use without damage."
"Three hundred years."
"The enchantments are very good."
Peter thought about it. A staff wasn't a sword. It wasn't lethal by design. He could use it to block, to deflect, to knock someone down without killing them. It suited his philosophy. It suited his fighting style, which was built around agility and redirection rather than brute force.
"Okay," Peter said. "Add it to the pile."
Strange nodded. Made a note. Then he looked at the inventory again, and his expression shifted. Something softer crept in around the edges. Not pity. Not sympathy. Something closer to the look a parent gives a child on the first day of school, knowing that the lunchbox they packed isn't big enough for the day ahead but understanding that the child has to go anyway.
"I want to add something else," Strange said.
"What?"
Strange reached into his robes and produced a small object. Dark metal, roughly the size of a coin. Flat. Circular. Engraved on one side with a pattern Peter recognized: the Sanctum's seal, the geometric design that appeared on the building's doors and windows and presumably on Stephen Strange's stationery, if Stephen Strange were the kind of person who had stationery.
"What is it?"
"A signal coin. Enchanted. It's connected to the tether. If you hold it and focus, I'll feel it on my end. Not communication, nothing that complex. Just a pulse. A signal that says 'I'm alive.'"
Peter took the coin. It was warm. Heavier than it looked. The metal had a faint vibration, barely perceptible, like a tuning fork that had been struck days ago and was still humming.
"One pulse means alive," Strange said. "Two rapid pulses means in danger. Three means..." He paused. "Three means you've found the node and you're attempting repair."
"What about four?"
"Four means come get me."
"Can you come get me?"
Strange held his gaze. "If you send four pulses, I will find a way. I don't care what it costs. I will find a way."
Peter closed his hand around the coin. The warmth seeped into his palm, steady, persistent. A tiny piece of home, small enough to carry in a pocket, powerful enough to cross the gap between worlds.
"Thank you," Peter said.
"Stop thanking me."
"No."
Strange blinked.
"No," Peter repeated. "You've been telling me to stop thanking you since this started. And I'm not going to. Because in four days I'm going to step into a machine that will send me to a world I've never seen, and the only reason I have any chance of coming back is because you are going to sit in this building and hold a spell and feel everything I feel and sacrifice your own power for however long it takes. Nobody asked you to do that. You chose it. And I am going to thank you for it every single time I feel like it, and you are going to deal with that."
The study was very quiet.
Strange looked at Peter. At the twenty-year-old sitting on his floor, surrounded by protein bars and web fluid and a photograph of his aunt. At the kid who had arrived at his door dripping wet with a broken web-shooter and a bad attitude and had somehow, in the space of ten days, become the most important person in the multiverse.
"You're welcome," Strange said.
He said it like he meant it this time. Not reflexively. Not reluctantly. Like the words had found their way past whatever wall he kept between himself and genuine human connection, and had settled into a place they could stay.
Peter put the coin in his pocket. Felt it hum against his thigh.
"Now," he said. "Where's this magic stick?"
---
The staff was beautiful.
Peter hadn't expected that. He'd expected functional. Practical. The kind of weapon that prioritized durability over aesthetics, like a fire extinguisher or a tire iron.
Instead, Strange handed him six feet of dark wood so perfectly balanced that it felt like an extension of his arm the moment he touched it. The grain was tight, nearly invisible, polished to a sheen that caught the light without reflecting it. The iron caps on the ends were forged with a precision that Peter's engineer brain appreciated immediately: flush with the wood, no seams, no visible attachment points. As though the metal had grown out of the wood rather than being added to it.
He spun it. Once. Twice. The weight distribution was extraordinary. Center-heavy by exactly the right amount, which meant it could be wielded from the middle for defensive work or from one end for extended reach without feeling unbalanced.
"This is not a three-hundred-year-old walking stick," Peter said.
"I may have understated its provenance."
"What is it actually?"
"It was crafted by a Kamar-Taj weaponsmith named Dorje who spent forty years perfecting a single weapon. The wood is from a tree that grew on a dimensional boundary, which gives it unusual density and resilience. The iron caps are forged from ore collected in three different realities. The enchantments are layered: impact absorption, structural reinforcement, and a minor gravitational field that makes it return to the wielder's hand if thrown."
Peter stared at him. "It comes back when you throw it?"
"Within a range of approximately thirty feet, yes."
"You gave me a boomerang staff."
"I gave you a precision defensive instrument with recall functionality."
Peter spun it again. The weight sang through his wrists and forearms, the rotation smooth, the momentum perfectly controlled. His spider-sense hummed in harmony with it, not warning, not alarm, just... resonance. As though the staff and his enhanced reflexes were speaking the same language.
"Dorje," Peter said. "Forty years on one weapon."
"He was very dedicated."
"You're not going to tell me what happened to him, are you."
"He retired. Grew orchids. Died peacefully at ninety-seven." Strange paused. "Not everything ends in tragedy, Peter."
Peter held the staff across his palms. Dark wood. Iron caps. Three hundred years of service, and it looked like it had been made yesterday.
He set it beside the inventory on the floor. It looked right there. The one item in the pile that belonged in a medieval world instead of a CVS in Queens.
"Okay," Peter said. He stood back. Looked at the updated inventory. Web fluid, sensor, first aid kit, notebook, multi-tool, protein bars, suit, web-shooter, photograph, signal coin, staff.
Still not enough.
But closer.
"I need a bag," Peter said. "Something I can carry it all in."
Strange was already walking toward the hallway. "I have something. Give me five minutes."
He returned with a leather satchel. Not modern leather, the cheap, processed kind that cracked after six months. Old leather. Dark brown. Soft from years of use, but strong. The stitching was hand-done, tight, with waxed thread that would resist water. A wide strap for cross-body carry. Two internal compartments, one main and one smaller, secured with brass clasps that had developed a green patina from age.
"Kamar-Taj?" Peter asked.
"REI, actually. 2014. I bought it for a hiking trip I never took."
Peter laughed. Took the bag. Started packing.
The web fluid canisters went in first, nested together at the bottom, cushioned by the folded suit. The sensor, wrapped in its protective shirt, went into the smaller compartment. The first aid kit, the protein bars, the multi-tool. The notebook, pressed flat against the back panel. The photograph of May, tucked into the inner pocket where it would stay dry and close and reachable.
The signal coin stayed in his pants pocket. Close to skin. Close to pulse.
The staff wouldn't fit in the bag. He'd carry it separately. A walking stick. A traveler's companion. Nothing unusual about a young man walking through a medieval countryside with a staff.
Peter slung the satchel across his body. Adjusted the strap. Felt the weight settle against his hip.
Twelve pounds. Maybe thirteen.
The sum total of his preparation for saving a world.
He caught his reflection in the study window. A young man in jeans and a flannel shirt, carrying a leather bag and a dark wooden staff, standing in a sorcerer's study with the grey light of November behind him.
He looked like someone leaving.
---
That night, Peter made a list.
Not an inventory. Not a survival protocol. A different kind of list, written in the notebook by candlelight because he'd gone back down to the chamber and the chamber didn't have electrical outlets.
He wrote at the top:
Things I need to do before I go
Below it:
1. Dinner with May (Thursday, done)
2. Call MJ
He stared at number two for a long time. The pen hovered over the paper. The candlelight made the ink look darker than it was.
He hadn't called her. He'd told May he would. He'd told himself he would. But every time he picked up the phone, his fingers stalled on her contact and the weight of everything he couldn't explain pressed down on his chest until breathing took priority over dialing.
What would he say?
Hey, MJ. I know we're on a break, but I'm being sent to a medieval world by an ancient machine in four days and I might not come back. Anyway, how's your week going?
He wrote beneath number two: I don't know what to say to her. I don't know what to say that isn't a lie or a goodbye. And I don't want our last conversation to be either one.
He looked at what he'd written. Then he crossed out the entire entry and wrote instead:
2. Write MJ a letter. Leave it with Strange.
A letter she might never read. A letter that only mattered if he didn't come back. A letter that was simultaneously the most cowardly and most honest option available to him.
3. Leave instructions for Strange (tether maintenance, emergency protocols, what to tell May if)
He didn't finish the sentence. Didn't need to.
4. One more session with the device. Final briefing. Everything it can tell me about arrival conditions, immediate threats, survival priorities.
5. Sleep.
He underlined number five. Then added a question mark. Sleep had become theoretical. A concept he remembered fondly but couldn't reliably execute.
The chamber hummed around him. The device pulsed amber. The walls cycled their diagnostic, the Atlas symbols scrolling past his eyes in a language he could now read without effort, the health report of a dying multiverse written in light on ancient stone.
Node 1,247. Status: degraded. Output: 28%. Connection: intermittent.
Node 892. Status: failed. Duration: approximately 6,000 years.
Node 2,441, the one in Planetos. Status: critical. Output: 11.4%.
11.4. Down from 11.7 two days ago.
Falling.
Peter closed the notebook. Lay on his back on the warm stone. Looked up at the ceiling that went up forever.
Four days.
The device pulsed in time with his heart. The coin in his pocket hummed against his thigh. The satchel sat beside him, packed, ready, absurdly insufficient.
He closed his eyes.
In the darkness behind his eyelids, the faces from his dreams waited. The girl with the sword. The boy with the wolf. The man at the tree. The climbing boy.
People he was going to meet. People he was going to care about. People who would become the mechanism through which he saved their world.
If he was good enough. If he was brave enough. If he was Peter Parker enough.
Four days.
He slept.
He dreamed of snow.
[END OF CHAPTER THIRTEEN]
---
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