Disclaimer: I do not own Strike Witches. Strike Witches is owned by Shimada Fumikane and most certainly not me.

Author's Notes: To everyone waiting for the next chapter of Halo: Contact Neuroi, I deeply apologize. However, I just had to get this plot bunny out from my mind before it chews its way out like the Rabbit of Caerbannog (for those of you who don't know what that is, look up Monty Python and the Holy Grail).

That being said, I would like to say that I didn't give birth to this little bunny. The credit for that goes to DeltaWitch, who I adopted the story from. Additional credit should also go to fuji92 and kamikazadude1 for their participation in a forum expressly for the purpose of figuring out what should happen next in the story.

Rest assured, I will continue this story until the end. It might take a while since I have no idea when I'll get back to this, but I refuse to just leave a story to die.

And yes, I fully intend to continue HalCoN. I'm just taking a short break to write something different.

And as always, please leave a review. At least a sentence long so I know what you think of it.

Now that that's over with, you may now relax and enjoy the story. Thank you, and have a nice time.


Chapter 1- A Most Unexpected Journey

It was a quiet night at St. Edwards Institute of Higher Education. Located in the city of Seattle in the northwest corner of Washington, USA; the school was quite large and was usually a hive of bustling activity as students, teachers, and staff alike came and went in their daily routine. Right now though, it was a Saturday night and even the Saturday school attendees had all gone to either their actual homes or their dormitories. All was peaceful in a rare moment for the high school.

Little did they know that the peace was not going to last.

In an ordinary suburban home near the school, lived three equally as ordinary students whose lives were about to become quite extraordinary by the actions of one of their own. This was their story.


The Morrison's Home

In front of a softly glowing computer screen, amidst the manic typing of keys and rapid-fire clicking of an abused mouse, 17-year old Robert Fuller sat on a rather comfortable office chair; blue eyes darting back and forth across the screen as he battled for his life.

Or rather, the life of his onscreen avatars.

On the computer screen, Robert had been playing a round of Starcraft II with a friend against two other players in a 2 vs. 2 match. Unfortunately, just minutes into the match, Robert's "friend" had messaged them to say he had something important to do and called it quits.

Not wishing to submit to defeat so easily, Robert had decided to see if a battle-hardened Protoss player was good enough to take on two measly Zerg players by himself. So far…

"Yes!" The chestnut-haired teenager shouted triumphantly as he watched Zerglings burn like marshmallows over an open fire under the thunderous impact of photon cannons and the deadly beams of his Colossi. Standing in front of the cannons, Zealots stood ready to chop apart any Zergling that survived with their psionic blades. "In your face, you Zerg bastards!"

Robert cheered and whooped as the Zergling horde continued to die on the screen. He wondered why his opponents were going with the classic Zerg Rush when his defenses were so solidly built.

Then his jaw dropped as the ground near his base exploded and massive Nydus Worms popped out like demented Whack-A-Moles, and hordes of Roaches, Banelings, Ultralisks, and the like burst forth out of their gaping maws and rushed towards the defenses holding back the Zergling horde.

"All your base are belong to us, man," one of the Zerg players messaged.

"Da Warboss iz in da howz!" the other Zerg player messaged right after.

Robert was in the middle of ordering his units to respond to this latest threat when the doorbell rang.

"Argus!" Robert shouted for his best friend/roommate. "Go and get the door! I'm a little busy here!"

The best friend/roommate in question, Argus McAllistair, was sitting comfortably on a wide sofa facing the TV in the living room, watching an episode of one of his favorite anime, Strike Witches. The ginger-haired 16-year old was in the middle of watching Erica Hartmann spearhead her way through another monstrous Neuroi when he heard the doorbell as well, followed quickly by his best friend/roommate calling out for him.

"Can't you get it?" Argus shouted back with a note of annoyance at being interrupted from his favorite pastime.

"I told you, I'm busy!"

Argus sighed as he heard the desperation in Robert's voice and he pressed the "pause" button on the remote. The screen froze on an image of Gertrude firing her signature dual-wielded MG42s on full auto. "Yeah, yeah! I'll get it!"

As he stretched after having been sitting on the sofa for the past hour or so, the doorbell continued to ring. Constantly. And loudly.

"Alright already! I'm coming, I'm coming!" Argus then stalked over to the door. With an exasperated sigh, he pulled the door open to reveal a black-haired teen, his normally calm caramel eyes wild and bright with energy.

"Argus is Robbie here?! There's something incredible I have to show you two!" the 16-year old said breathlessly.

This prompted Argus to clamp his hands on the slightly taller teen's shoulders. "Calm down, Alan. I can't understand a bloody thing you're saying. Just take a deep breath and start over at the beginning, but go slower this time."

Alan Morrison, best friends with Argus and Robert and the one whose family was sponsoring the two British nationals here, took that deep breath and held it for several seconds before releasing it. "Argus, is Robbie in right now?"

Argus shrugged. "Well, yeah. I mean, he's always on his computer around this time."

"Great." Alan stepped inside, shut the door, and made sure it was locked before turning back to Argus. "I've discovered something incredible and, hold on. I need to get Robbie in on this. Robbie!" he shouted as he headed towards Robert and Argus's room, leaving a bewildered Argus to just tag along.

Alan popped into the room to see Robert at the computer, still clicking madly away. "Robbie, there's something incredible I have to sho-"

"In trouble now. Later."

"But-"

"Later!"

Alan became more and more restless as time passed by. Finally, after waiting over a minute for Robert to finish his match, Alan had had enough. He went over to the electric socket, found the wire that led to Robert's PC, and pulled the plug.

Robert blinked in confusion as one moment he'd been fighting for his life against a horde of Zerg, and the next he was staring at a blank screen. Spinning himself around in his office chair, Robert got up and fixed the boy who'd ended his gaming session so abruptly with a fiery glare that promised a painful and prolonged death. "What the bloody fuck was that about?" he asked.

"Robbie," Alan responded. "What I've found is bigger than your game of Starcraft. It's bigger than me, and it's bigger than you. Hell, it's bigger than all of us! Just give me a few minutes of your attention. Please!"

Robert was about to tell him to bug off when he noticed the near-mad look in Alan's eyes and the conviction that laid within them.

My God, he's serious, Robert realized.

"Alright, fine," he conceded. "What's this 'bigger than everyone' thing you're going on about?"


A few minutes later…

Alan carefully placed a small, leather-bound book on the coffee table in front of the sofa as Robert and Argus watched. It was about the size of a pocket dictionary and the edges of the pages were yellowed with time.

"You two remember this, right?" Alan asked.

Argus leaned forward to look more closely at it. "Isn't this the book you got from that bookstore down the street? The one you said was written in Latin or something like that?"

"Yes, it was!"

Robert just gave the book a glance before looking back at Alan. "So what's this about the book, then?"

Alan stood up straight and cleared his throat before speaking. "Well, as I said before, the whole thing was in Latin, so I didn't know what it said at first. It took several online Latin courses and 6 months of translating before I could finally read the thing, and even then about two-thirds of the pages were too rotted to make anything out. But! The parts that I could read told me everything I needed to know about it." He stabbed a finger at the book in question. "Gentlemen, this little, inconspicuous book is, in fact, a spellbook!" he declares.

Several moments passed in silence as Alan awaited the applause.

Robert stood up. "That's it, I'm out of here."

Alan rushed over and pushed him back down. "Whoa, whoa! I'm serious here! This is a real, live, magical spellbook!"

Robert scoffed at the idea. "Oh, come off of it! There's no such thing as magic. All that time you spend with the occult club has rotted your brain."

"Hey, just because there are some things in this world you can't explain doesn't make it any less real!" Alan countered.

"Just because there are unexplainable things in the world doesn't make it magic."

"Oh, yeah? How do you know those unexplainable things aren't magic?"

"Simple. The correct answer is usually the simplest one: Occam's razor. Why come up with a complicated answer when a simple one is usually right?"

"Oh, yeah? We-"

"Guys, guys!" Argus stood up, interrupting the two before it came to blows. "Let's worry about whether it's possible later, alright? First off, Alan. What kind of spells did you find in there?"

"Oh, come on!" Robert shouted. "You're not buying into this too?"

"Hey, I'm just curious! There's no harm in a little curiosity, is there? And if it is bogus, what's the point in arguing about it, anyway?"

Robert sat back down with a huff. "Fine, fine. What kind of hocus-pocus did you find in there, Alan?"

Alan beamed at them and sat back down on a nearby couch. "Lots. For example, one of the spells in there tells you how to turn any liquid into, get this, mead!"

Argus stroked his chin as he thought about the potential uses.

Robert just gave him a flat stare. "What."

"There's more! There's a spell that makes anything smell like feet, a spell that makes your voice squeaky, a spell that makes your hand glow with the light of the sun-"

"Oh, oh!" Argus interrupted. "I know what we can use that for." He stood up and adopted a pose. "This hand of mine glows with an awesome POWER!"

Alan's eyes widened as he recognized the line and he too adopted a similar pose. "Its burning grip tells me to defeat you!"

"Take this!" they shouted in unison. "My love! My anger! And all my sorrow! SHINING FINGER!"

This was followed immediately by explosions, or at least their best attempts at mimicking the sounds.

Robert, meanwhile, just continued staring at the spellbook in disbelief. "What is this: the Book of Magic Frat Party Tricks? Did you find anything in there that wasn't completely ridiculous?"

His words quickly knocked Alan out of the fantasy he'd found himself in. "Oh, yeah, I haven't gotten to the best part yet! You see, one of the spells that I was able to read was something called the "World Gate". It says that the spell can pull whatever we want out of any world we can imagine. Anything."

Robert nodded. "Yes, yes. I see it now. You've convinced me."

"Really?" Alan asked.

"Yes. You've convinced me you're completely bonkers if you actually think something like that is going to work." He stood up once more. "I'm going to go back and try to resume my match. Don't try to interrupt me with more of this-"

"Wait, wait, wait!" Alan grabbed onto Robert's arm. "I still need you! The book said the spell needs at least 3 people to work! Just help me out this once, and I won't bother you about this ever again!"

"Fine! Fine! Just this once!" Robert shook off the arm. "But that's it. If this cockamamie spell of yours doesn't work, which it won't, do not even mention this to me again."

Alan nodded…rapidly. "Yes, yes! I promise."

Robert sighed. "So what do I have to do for this…spell?"


A couple of minutes later…

Robert, Argus, and Alan stood equidistantly just outside a large circle drawn with chalk on the living room floor. The rest of the furniture had cleared away to make room for the 5 feet wide circle. They stood on 3 smaller circles for the sorcerers to stand in sat just outside the rim and connected to it by lines.

The circle consisted of 2 rims surrounding a larger circle that separated into an inner rim and an outer rim. The inner rim had 39 strange symbols inscribed into it, while the outer rim consisted of 9 chevrons that overlapped the symbols on the inner rim. At the center of the circle, sat a strange symbol that resembled a vortex or a whirlpool.

Robert thought that it looked a bit like the Starportal from "Wormhole X-Treme!", but he refrained from mentioning it. There was more than enough nerdiness going around here, and he didn't want to add to it.

The three friends were dressed in appropriate attire for the occasion: accurately reproduced Hogwarts robes that Alan had collected somewhere. Argus was dressed in the red and gold highlights of Gryffindor, Alan had chosen the yellow and black of Hufflepuff, and Robert had given up and grudgingly accepted the blue and silver of Ravenclaw. None of them had wanted to wear the green and white of Slytherin robes for this.

It was Robert who spoke first. "Alright, now that we've gotten all dressed up for this, what else do we need?"

Alan pulled out the spellbook and flipped to the page he'd marked. "Let's see: we've got the circle, we've got the clothes, now we need a medium."

"A medium what?" Argus asked.

Alan gave the Scottish teen a flat look, who looked back with an unconvincingly innocent expression.

"Not that kind of a medium, you dummy. I meant a spiritual medium; something we can all focus on so the energies are concentrated on what we want to summon."

Argus thought for a moment before snapping his fingers. "I know just what we can use," he said before dashing up the stairs.

A few minutes, and quite a bit of noise later, Argus came rushing back down and he showed them what he found. It was a piece of laminated paper–promotional artwork from the looks of it–depicting 3 girls dressed in what looked like WWII-era German winter military uniforms standing amidst a snowstorm.

The one on the right had crimson hair and eyes and looked slightly older than the others. She wore a grey coat and had a slight, but kind smile on her face.

The one on the left had dark brown eyes and chestnut hair tied into a pair of pigtails. She wore a serious expression on her face and she carried a MG42 rested on her shoulder.

Sandwiched between the two was a girl with short blonde hair dressed in a black uniform. She had an openly cheerful expression on her face that didn't quite match the scene or the expression of her companions, and she had her arms linked with the other two in a gesture of close friendship.

Alan raised an eyebrow at the picture. "You want to try summoning those three?"

Argus shrugged. "Why not? It's a good place to start as any."

Robert peered closely at the picture, "I'm sorry, who are these girls?"

Both Alan and Argus gave him a flat stare.

"Hello? The Karlsland Trio? The aces of aces?" Alan asked.

At the sight of Robert's blank look, Argus chipped in. "Strike Witches? Only one of the greatest animes of all time?"

At this, Robert scoffed. "Well, unlike you two, I don't waste all my time watching those ridiculous widget animes of yours."

"It's not a widget series!" Argus protested. "It's a perfectly well-known story of friendship and courage against a terrible foe!"

"Guys, guys!" Alan interrupted. "Let's argue about it later. I really want to see if this works."

Robert rolled his eyes. "For God's sakes, I can't believe you seriously believe that this could–in any possible way–work."

Alan shrugged in response. "It couldn't hurt to try."

Argus nodded. "Right, let's get on with it then. So what do I do with this?"

"Place it in the center of the circle, then step back into your original position," Alan instructed.

Argus proceeded to do so. "Now what?"

Alan proceeded to pull a wooden wand out of his robe's pocket. "Now I'll speak the words of the spell."

He thrust the wand forward while reading from the spellbook. "Hecate, custodia foribus, ministra quadrivium, domina noctis, et dea magicae! Custodite mandata mea! (Hecate, guardian of gateways, minister of the crossroads, lady of the night, and goddess of magic! Heed my command!)

For a few moments, nothing happened. Then the central spiral opened up, revealing a black light that seemed to suck the warmth from the room. Only a square-shaped shadow was present on the ceiling from the picture still sitting at the center; its presence only noticeable because it was lighter than the blackness emanating from the circle.

The jaws of all three friends dropped wide open.

"What. The. Hell?" Argus said slowly, shocked that the spell was apparently working.

"Okay, did one of you slip in some lights in there while I wasn't looking?" Robert asked, though even he didn't believe that excuse considering there was simply no room for something remotely like lighting in either the chalk or the floor, nor was it even possible for any manmade lighting source to ever emit that terrifying blackness. It wasn't just darkness. Darkness implied a mere absence of light. This was a black that was the opposite of light; a sort of anti-light that filled the air with a cloying blackness that swallowed the light around it and made Robert want to curl up under a blanket and never leave.

Alan, on the other hand, felt himself fill with excitement at the sight of the soft glow and he spoke the next words of the spell. "Inter tres facies, vultus super hac imagine signum meum! (With thy three faces, look hence upon this icon of my target!)"

This time it was the picture that started to glow, but with a golden light instead. It then rose up into the air and condensed into a ball of light.

It was at this point that Robert and Argus started to feel a strange pressure build up in their heads. They both tried to step out, but found that they were unable to move their feet, or even break their focus from the glowing picture.

"Alaaan," Argus said with a slightly quavering tone.

"Scrutamini infinitos mundos desideriorum scopum! (Search the infinite worlds for the target of my desires!)"

The inner rim of the chalk circle suddenly began spinning. A symbol rotated itself into a chevron, then both chevron and symbol glowed with a golden light.

The inner rim then spun again until another symbol rotated into the next chevron and both glowed like the first. Then the process continued.

At the same time, the building began to shake, as if a small earthquake was beginning. The shaking grew in intensity as more and more symbols were highlighted, becoming a true earthquake. Robert and Argus heard things crash onto the floor from where they'd been resting on shelves and the like.

It was at that point that Robert was beginning to get scared, for he was feeling drained, as if whatever this spell of Alan's was sucking the very life from him. "Alan, stop," he said weakly.

Either Alan couldn't hear him or he was too drunk on power to care, for as the ninth and final chevron lit up, he waved his wand once more and uttered the last part of the spell, "Hecate Arcanorum, recta ad pontem currere de mundis et aperiant viam! Portus Mundi, apertum! (Arcane Hecate, erect the bridge that spans the worlds and open the way! Gate of Worlds, open!)"

The glowing ball that had been theStrike Witches artwork shot into the glowing circle beneath it. The circle rippled and depressed with the impact, as though the wooden floor was made of water instead, as both Robert and Argus collapsed to the floor like puppets with their strings cut.

Alan heard the thuds and finally looked around at his friends lying on the floor. "Guys?" he asked with a note of fear in his voice before his eyes rolled back and he too collapsed on the ground, unmoving and unstirring as a light shot out of the circle and completely enveloped the room with its intensity.


Meanwhile, in another time and place…

May 3, 1944

501st Joint Fighter Wing Headquarters

Pescara, Romagna

In a long, rectangular bath built in the ancient Romagnan-style, a young woman with auburn hair sat with her eyes closed and peacefully humming a soft tune to herself. After a long day of fighting Neuroi, shewas content to just sit there and soak in the hot steaming water.

Then the entrance to the bath flapped open and all peace ended.

"Kanonenkugel!" shouted a woman with short blonde hair as she jumped in, sending up a mighty splash as if an actual cannonball had been dropped in.

"Frau! Don't just jump into a public bath! Have some dignity!" a woman with chestnut brown hair that came down to just below her shoulder scolded. Her entrance was far more dignified, if a little stiff as though she was marching on a parade ground. No matter when and where, Flight LieutenantGertrud Barkhorn always strove towards martial perfection.

The blond woman, Flying OfficerErica Hartmann, couldn't have cared less. "Don't worry about it, Trude. It's just us in here, so what the harm?" she shouted back as she floated lazily on her back.

Gertrud, or Trude as she was called by her friends, let out an exasperated sigh as she took a seat besides the crimson-haired woman. "I swear, she's such a child! Why can't she conduct herself like a proper Karlslandan soldier for once?"

The auburn woman, Wing Commander Minna Dietlinde-Wilcke, laughed softly in a musical chime at her subordinates' antics. "Now, now, Trude. A bath is a place to relax, and different people have different ways of relaxing. Frau has her own, and we have ours."

Gertrud sighed again. "Honor, courage, discipline; those are the qualities of a true Karlsland soldier. You and I both know Frau has the first two in spades. Now I just have to get her to improve the last and she'll be the perfect soldier." There was a determined look in her eyes at the last sentence.

Minna merely smiled at that. "Good luck with that, Trude." Personally, she'd rather Erica stay Erica, or else it just wouldn't be the same anymore.

Almost as if she read her mind, Erica chose that moment to swim up and splash water into Trude's face. "Oh, come one, Trude! Don't be so uptight all the time. Relax and enjoy the water, will you?"

One of Gertrude's eyebrows twitched in irritation. "You want me to relax, huh?" Before Erica could react, Gertrud had grabbed hold of both of her cheeks and pulled. Hard. "How's this for some stress relief, then?"

"Bah u oh uu e'ey ee'axed! (But you don't look very relaxed!)" Erica protested.

Minna just closed her eyes once more as she soaked in the bath, listening to the subordinates who'd become like younger sisters to her going about as usual. All was right with the world.

Then suddenly, the ears and tail of a grey wolf shot out from her body of their own accord and she instantly went to full alert. "What's wrong, Krawatte?"

Gertrude and Erica had stopped playing around and had gone to full alert as well as their own familiar ears and tail shot out. The older girl had the ears and tail of Karlsland Pointer, while the younger had a dachshund's.

"What's happening? Is it an attack?" Gertrud asked.

Minna tried to calm her familiar down so she could listen clearly. "I'm not sure. Something about the world being…invaded? Breached? Wha-"

Then it happened.

The whole room began shaking violently. Minna might've thought it to be a regular earthquake had it not been for what happened right afterwards.

A white circle with a series of strange symbols and chevrons engraved in the rim began drawing itself into the bottom of the bath around the three girls. The center of the circle where they were sitting in started to glow with an eerie black light that made them all shiver despite the warmth of the bath.

All three girls started to get up. "Get ou-" Minna began to shout, but it was far too late.

The unnatural light grew and swallowed the three witches. It lit up the bath before suddenly vanishing like a snuffed candle. For a moment, there was a perfectly circular, 5 feet gap in the bathwater where the floor could be seen. Then gravity took hold and the rest of the water flooded in to cover up the gap. Waves washed about the bath until the disturbance finally ended and all was still once more.

Several minutes later, a young woman with long black hair and an eye patch over her right eye walked in with a teenaged girl with short, chestnut brown hair.

"Waa, that was some earthquake, wasn't it, Sakamoto-san?" the girl asked.

The woman, Sakamoto Mio, laughed heartily. "You thought that was bad, Miyafuji? You haven't seen anything yet. Why, I remember back when I was a child, when…"

Her voice trailed off as she looked around at the empty bath in confusion.

"What's wrong?" the younger girl, Miyafuji Yoshika, asked.

"That's strange. I saw Minna's clothes in the dressing room before coming here. So where is she? For that matter, I saw Barkhorn's and Hartmann's clothes in there too, so where are they?"

Yoshika looked around the bath more closely. "Maybe they left without their clothes?" she asked hopefully.

Mio had a momentary image of Minna naked in the hallway, and a flash of heat shot through her body as her heart beat faster. She had no idea what could possibly be the reason for that though, and resolved to ask the base's doctor or Miyafuji what kind of sickness could produce such symptoms.

"No, I can't see them doing that. Hartmann maybe, but not Minna or Barkhorn." Mio turned away from the bath. "You go ahead, Miyafuji. I just need to check something out."

"Ah, but-"

But Mio had already left.

Yoshika shrugged and proceeded to sit down in the hot water. She tried to relax, but felt very uneasy for some reason. She hoped that Wilcke-chūsa, Barkhorn-san, and Hartmann-san were alright.

It took a few minutes for Mio to change back into her Imperial Fusoan Navy uniform and another few minutes for her to ask the base personnel if they'd seen the Karlsland Trio about. It took several more minutes until they realized that no one had seen them around the base for some time and that they had apparently gone missing without a trace.

It took just a moment for Sakamoto Mio to raise the alarm.


?

Somewhere on a darkened ocean stood an island alone, with no other land in sight. The island was a conical shape with the tip broken: the remnant of an extinct volcano that once spewed fire and ash like an angry god but now lay sleeping like a corpse buried in a coffin. Trees lined the slopes thickly like moss growing from a rotting log.

A lone covered pier stretched out from a section of beach on the island's south, yet no boats lay moored next to it for no one dared moor that close to the island. A pathway paved with stones stretched from the end of the pier into the dark forest, winding through it like a serpent crawling along the leaf litter. The only source of illumination came from a row of lights lining both sides of the path. The lights were not lanterns as one would expect, but rather they were floating orbs emitting a white glow.

Walking along the path though would show that the diffuse light provided by the orbs proved to be of little comfort. The light extended to the path and only a meter or so beyond it on either side. The forest remained pitch-black and inscrutable. Should one walk along the path, one would catch movement in the trees beyond the light's reach and the occasional snap of a broken twig, reminding one that they were not alone here. And should one be brave enough to peer into the trees, hoping to catch sight of their stalker, one would see glowing eyes peering back from the darkness.

It is in one's best interest then, that they move as quickly as possible and make no threatening gestures, so as to not attract the attention of the owners of those glowing eyes.

Upon reaching the top of the broken cone, one would be able to see that it was in fact the lip of a bowl-shaped caldera that was formerly the top of the volcano before it had violently blown its top. The caldera was mostly lined with vegetation, but these looked as if someone bothered to prune and tame them. The only oddity was a Greek temple sitting at the bottom, sticking out like a marble statue in a meadow.

Walking down the path winding down the walls of the caldera, one could get a closer look at the building. The temple was shaped like a giant plus sign, or a crossroad depending on one's view. The temple also appeared to be made out of black, volcanic basalt instead of the usual marble. The floor appeared to be made from volcanic glass. The square lines of tiles one would normally see were missing; the floor appeared to be one massive pane of obsidian, as though a volcanic flow had somehow produced a perfectly smooth floor against all logic and reason.

Yet upon reached the front door, one's eyes would be drawn to a wooden sign sitting beside the gateway. Carved in flowing Greek script were the words:

All entering shall be the guests of the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone

Pray comport yourselves in an honorable manner and we shall do the same

However, there were additional words below it. In stark contrast to the elegant beauty of the previous words, these ones looked as though they had been scratched into the sign with a crude knife. Or claws. Or something even more ancient:

or We will eat you

Within this temple, three pairs of violet eyes snapped open in surprise.

"What was that?"

"A portion of our power has been taken."

"Not much, but not an insignificant amount either."

One pair of violet eyes narrowed in anger. "How dare they take our power without our consent?!"

"The least they could have done was ask for it."

"Bah! One of our younger acolytes was likely responsible. The young have no respect for their elders."

"…But you're the same age as both of us."

"It's the thought that counts!"

"Sisters, calm down and think. Even the least of our worshippers know to beseech us for our power before borrowing it. Another party was responsible."

"I have the trail left by the passage of our power," said one of the voices as she held up a black, glowing thread for the others to see. "Shall we go see who was responsible?"

"Probably an outsider. Some novice mage who knew not who to pay their dues to when calling upon the arcane arts."

"Actually sister, the trail leads much farther than that. Outside the boundaries of our world."

"Oh? Another traveler like us? Truly, this will be an interesting journey."

"Farewell, everyone! Keep watch over our home in our absence, and we will meet again soon!" the three voices said in unison.

"And don't eat anyone we know, okay?"

One of the brings that was being addressed waved goodbye to them before the three pairs of violet eyes disappeared into dark portals and vanished from this world. The being then returned to playing with the remains of the last intruder that dared invade the island.

Though he had long since stopped screaming, his thigh bone made for a good game of tug-of-war.

I do not speak Latin. Not a word of it. I had to use Google Translate for the Latin Alan was speaking. If anyone who speaks Latin reads this, please tell me what the correct phrasing for Alan's spell is.