~~~

“Booooring!”

Elio sighed while leafing through a new volume of Wizard World Weekly with Sakura S on the cover image. Beside him, his sister was looking around the street without much enthusiasm.

“Where does your constant whining come from?” she said.

“You can call me whining as well, but don’t you have a feeling that we’re just wasting the time here?” Hitomi supported the boy.

“I sense a great magical disturbance,” Shadow was extremely focused. “Sensei, does the scanner show anything?”

“Bizzare,” Izumi replied, scrutinizing the projection from his smart. “Each two or three minutes it registers some flashes of violet color, and it is intensifying. The shade is so dark and deep... it doesn’t look real.”

“But the street is completely empty!” Elio spreaded his hands.

“Not anymore...” Hitomi said, and everybody peered at what she was observing. Three enforcers were approaching them: Viktor’s heavy gait of a military man, Niji’s reluctant drag and Mirabel’s galloping at the head of this strange procession.

“Bright day to you, my fellow mages!” Shadow’s courtesy was so sweet it could make one sick.

“Aloha, sugar,” the Amber pealed in reply.

“Are you just passing by or interested in a local anomaly, perhaps?”

“No idea what you’re talking about, but Mira won’t stop chirping about something crazy. What’d you say, Mira? Hey, Mira?”

Still half asleep, Mirabelle approached the spot where the scanner showed suspicious flashes.

“It hurts…” she whispered. “She’s in so much pain…”

“Who’s ‘she’?” Elia frowned.

“Oh, Heavens!” Mira pressed her hands to her mouth. “We must help her! Now!”

“What’s--”

Hitomi stopped speaking as a huge portal of black and purple popped before the mages, with small elements of sinister matter circulating both inside and outside it. Everyone except Mirabel backed away, but the girl leaped right into the mystical substance and disappeared within it.

“Mira!” Viktor bawled and jumped after her. The portal engulfed him too with a soft booming noise. It was far beyond what mages could encounter in their daily routine, so even Hitomi, a competent specialist in the Unknown, started to panic:

“Takeshi-kun, what is it?!”

“A product of some cursed magic, apparently, and I find it difficult to identify the exact source. However, I am positive that this portal is bound to a specified destination.”

Shadow went a bit closer to the particles which were dancing all around the hole.

“I… I can hear a female voice.”

“Goddess?”

“I… I don’t know. It’s too subtle. But… I’m sure she is crying.”

“Hm, that’s what Mira has said before,” Niji remembered. “That’s what has driven us here.”

“We should follow them,” the Viridian concluded.

“Are you sure it’s the best option?” Hitomi asked.

“I am. Whatever there might be, we must find the origin of this violet magic and exterminate it. I am afraid we have no choice but to enter this portal. I believe we--”

He wasn’t able to finish. Shadow gasped in pain and covered his ears, as if something had deafened him. The dark matter began to spin many times faster and in seconds it swallowed the mages, sucking them right into its center.

~~~

They were thrown somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Only soft lilac clouds were around them, but the sorcerers stood firmly, as if on a solid ground.

“Oh, wonderful,” Niji breathed out. “Could I be the very person who’s always asking ‘Where the hell are we?’”.

Izumi glanced at the screen of his smart: the device seemed dead, signifying that the satellite communications were not designed for such remote places. Hitomi tried to summon a spirit, but failed.

“Dammit, I can’t do that!”

“Never use the name in vain… unless you want him to appear—and I’m sure he travel this far for you,” Shadow mocked her teammate.

“If the summoning doesn’t work, it means we are somewhere between the worlds,” the Viridian concluded. “I have only read about this in studies on the existence of the Hall of Goddess. And—to be completely honest—I still consider all these hypotheses lacking enough of scientific basis.”

“Mirabel! Viktor! Hello?” Niji looked around but saw nothing apart from clouds drifting languidly in the space. “Wait. We are five. Where’s another one?”

Everyone turned to the twins—or rather, there was only Elia, shaking in a terror, clasping her head with her hands.

“Elio...” she whispered. “Where’s… Elio?”

“Elia!” Izumi rushed to the girl and squeezed her shoulders. “It’s okay, don’t worry.”

Tears were running down her cheeks, and the Amber gave in to the sobs that were strangling her throat with each word she tried to pronounce.

“Elia, do you hear me? Hold together!”

She began falling on her knees, and Izumi sat down next to her.

“Where’s Elio? Where’s my brother?!”

“Elia, are you here? Listen to me! Do you remember who you are? Elia? Elia! Eleonor!”