“Yes, yes, very terrifying,” Strange says.

The flippancy isn’t unearned. He has been tortured. He has been impaled, cast into flames, crushed, ripped apart, tied up in Ebony Maw’s grasp, a thousand needles hovering centimeters from his eyes, burrowing into his skin, into his brain. Pain, agony, dying over and over, dying and dying. His organs in jars is practically an everyday threat by now.

He rubs absentmindedly at his throat and what he expects to be faint bruising later — but Tav’s fists are not Thanos’ monstrously oversized hand, so there’s that small favour.

With the equipment packed up, he shifts to redo Tav’s restraints, prepared for when the magic will fade, replacing them with tightly-cinched everyday rope and some shackles they’d both seen fit to pack beforehand (this trip was a gamble, yes, but not a completely unplanned one).

“Well, Bhaalspawn,” he says, “I’m looking forward to getting my friend back, one way or another. We’ll see you back to the Gallows.”

And thus begins the long haul of dragging that howling seething monster back home.