"Wong doesn't have any laughing lines because he's a grumpy old man and absolutely zero fun." All false, of course: for all the current Sorcerer Supreme's glowering resting bitch face, Wong is actually also a riot.

Stephen watches the water roil beneath them as it sinks, attentive like an attending physician eyeing a delicate procedure. That tell-tale red glow is so very her: not just the Scarlet Witch's trademark colour, but the fact that it's also Wanda Maximoff's distinctive magical signature. Her fingerprints are all over it, and when he concentrates, he can always recognise the ripples of her presence left behind, like catching a whiff of her perfume after she's left the room.

It's been fascinating, getting to learn alongside a different magic-user with a novel and unfamiliar flair to her spells (less trained, more instinctive, more impulsive). It's not what he's used to. The Masters of the Mystic Arts — whether sorcerers, disciples, apprentices, or novices — all drew their powers from the same source, like tapping the same well, drinking the same water.

Whatever Wanda is, she's something else entirely. She's the ocean.

He shakes off those thoughts. "I think it's working," he says, a little unnecessarily, because they can both see more of the sand-strewn steps reappearing.