Bella laid out the situation on this side twice over, but Dormammu simply wouldn't believe her—or rather, he believed her and just didn't care. Pig-headed to the last, he was coming through no matter what.
"There's no reasoning with you. Looks like we do this the hard way." His voice went on ringing in her ears; Dormammu was trying to bewitch her into opening the passage from her end, and every push of it broke against her Psychic Shield.
"Even if there's no magic on that side, it's no matter—I can restore the very wellspring of magic to your entire world. That is the true wish of the little mage who summoned me. Think what it means! You are a mage yourself; surely you know the ecstasy of magic coursing through the blood! I can re-weave the Web of Magic. The dead end you imagine means nothing to me—and once I have conquered that world, I will crown you its queen!"
Dormammu kept up the coaxing, all of it circling one demand: open the passage, let me through.
"Can we let him through?" Bella asked the Cloak of Levitation at her side.
The cloak shook itself again and again—no—and wound tighter around the Cauldron of the Cosmos, hefting the dead weight of it in a couple of swings before 'turning' to Bella, as if to say, See? Even this thing says no!
Bella let out a soft sigh. Things having come this far, bolting now would be poor form.
Against a being that stood outside of time, that could stride freely between countless dimensions and realms, distance was no obstacle to conversation. This creature would hound her up and down the timeline for as long as he pleased. She had to throw him out.
Let Dormammu halfway through, then leave him wedged there for good? Bella turned it over and shook her head—the plan was unreliable, because she had no way to gauge how strong Dormammu was, no way to measure him at all. The better move was still to stop him, to hold him off beyond this Earth, beyond this point in time.
After the Creed Brotherhood's rounds of praise, the psionic energy in her body was nearly full. She'd meant to spend it getting back to 2005; now it would go to stopping Dormammu instead.
"…Right. So you won't listen to reason, huh? You've left me no choice! Worst case, I'll just go back to churning out pages next month! I'm giving up this much—so today, I am going to stop you!" With Dormammu clamped down on the magic node, Bella couldn't draw a thread of power from her surroundings. She'd have to cast using her own psionic energy.
Seeing her mind made up, the Cloak of Levitation flew around behind her, knotting its collar-ties beneath her throat and standing the collar high, the crimson fabric shielding her back—and lending part of its own magic to her casting besides.
Bella refused at once. "No need. Your magic is what keeps you running. I can manage this spell by myself."
The cloak's high collar bobbed in a nod, then its hem shot out, dragging the Cauldron of the Cosmos around in front of her and pointing at it—this one's plump, you can siphon its magic instead.
Bella glanced at the Cauldron and had the faint sense that the round-bellied pot was 'looking' back at her.
"Never mind, never mind. Both of you keep your magic. Just guard me once I've loosed the spell."
The cloak's collar dipped in a nod again. The round Cauldron obviously couldn't move, but from the mental plane Bella dimly read an answer in the affirmative all the same.
"The Eye of Agamotto? You're this era's Sorcerer Supreme? No—you don't belong to this era!" As Bella swiftly marshaled her psionics, her move to pry at the local timeline was caught almost at once by Dormammu on the other side.
Time magic isn't something just anyone can develop. Only Kamar-Taj held the Time Stone, and it was on that singular advantage, and on the research of those who came before, that the Ancient One had built this identically named spell.
Take Loki: Bella had flung him out a good while ago, and the fact that he still hadn't made it back said it all. He could return, certainly—it would just take a great deal of effort. For every ounce of effort it took Bella, Loki would need ten, even fifteen, to claw his way home. Two things accounted for that. One was that the gods of Asgard, with their I'm a brute and proud of it traditions, had never been much good at magic. The other was simply that time magic is exceedingly rare.
Having risen to the sixth level, Bella's command of the craft had deepened by a wide margin—this time, in under ten seconds, the spell was cast.
Temporal turbulence roared toward the far side, seizing Dormammu, straining to drag the formidable being clear of the present moment.
Dormammu was far and away stronger than Loki had been that day; the two weren't remotely on the same footing. Rather than being driven back, his consciousness rode the pull of the entanglement and pressed forward, toward her side.
The entire seabed churned under the surging temporal energy. Untold volumes of seawater seemed to find a floodgate flung open, and the river of time swept them off toward the other end.
Bella slapped her palm down hard on the Cauldron of the Cosmos—this relic held the wondrous power to observe dimensional space and countless realms. She fixed her eyes on the haze rising from the cauldron's mouth, and there, between the real and the illusory, the Cauldron showed her the scene inside the Dark Dimension.
It was a world wrapped in the fire of dark magic. Dormammu sat high on his throne while a legion of servant-mages labored at breaking through the barrier. The sudden surge of towering waves caught the whole crowd of dark mages flat-footed; they scrambled to seal the breach, and a few among them set to calculating the direction the seawater was pouring in from.
Not enough water yet. The waves aren't big enough!
Bella drew a trident out of dimensional space—the Trident of Eden, forged from the Faith Prong, the Fear Prong, and the Devotion Prong.
The Brotherhood had found the Faith Prong in the hometown of Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th President of the United States; they'd found the Fear Prong in the tomb of Möngke Khan—the Great Khan slain by the wuxia hero Yang Guo—and at last, adding the Devotion Prong already in Bella's hands, they'd reassembled the Trident of Eden.
The weapon's chief power, like the other Pieces of Eden, was over the human mind—but it could command seawater too.
With the Eye of Agamotto spell all but draining her psionics dry, Bella brought this piece of ancient tech out on the spot.
"I am the daughter of the sea! Ocean—heed my command!"
As she raised the Trident of Eden, an inexhaustible flood of seawater slammed toward the far side. The force of it was so immense it tore away half of Dormammu's palace outright.
The king of the Dark Dimension still pushed his consciousness toward Earth, sparing not a glance for the waves breaking at his very feet.
The water split apart of its own accord before him—but his dark mages had no such trick. A whole mass of them were sent tumbling every which way, the boundary-breaking work stalled cold, and the dark magical fires of the Dark Dimension guttered out one after another.
"Farewell, old-timer!" Seawater poured at Dormammu without end, and the king of the Dark Dimension was forced to pull part of his consciousness back. He touched a finger lightly to the air, and the unstoppable flood evaporated to nothing—but in that moment of divided attention, he was driven clean out of the year 2185.
"I will find you, little mage," he snarled.
Down but never cowed, Bella kept her tone breezy. "Find me first—then we'll talk."