Edgars Auziņš
Fascinating geography

Prologue

– What did you do, witch? – the man in black stood with his back to her, staring at a large white block of stone.

«Sir, I’m not a witch, I’m a battle mage.» Or have you already forgotten the difference? Eh, why did they give you a diploma?

«A magician wouldn’t do what you did, brat.»

«Ha-ha,» the one whom the man called a witch burst into hysterical laughter, «we sealed the contract with blood, right?» And I did my part! It’s all true! It was you who wanted extra payment.

He turned around and his eyes flashed with two purple lightning bolts. The sorceress recoiled, but the sparks materialized and, reaching her body, paralyzed her arms and legs.

«I won’t forgive you for this, Lina,» the man muttered through his teeth. «I will seal you away where your henchman will never find you.» You will exist in suffering for hundreds, no, thousands, millions of years, until this world orders you to live long. Your soul will not be able to rest on the fields of the third layer…

He uttered one curse after another, but Lina looked at her malicious enemy with a proud look. His face was distorted in rage, but the girl only smiled at his anger. Her long red velvet dress was covered with purple lightning, she could no longer move, she was in so much pain. But the magician did not let the girl go.

And then a tall, thin man entered the hall, also wearing a long black cloak, like the sorceress’s enemy. He walked through a large room with high arches, striking the stones with his staff with such force that this knock struck the emptiness with a terrifying boom. His silvery bangs fell over his eyes, and only his long, pointed nose protruded from under his cascade of hair.

«I knew you would come,» the magician was distracted by the newcomer. «And I knew that I would get into trouble with you.»

«But we will do to you what has long been expected, Mr. Devil,» the alien squeezed out, moving his lips slightly. – Let Lina go.

– I’m daydreaming! – the Devil grinned. -You will never see her.

– Why? – the magician looked up at him with big yellow eyes, and his cheeks became whiter than the sheets.

But the Devil did not answer, he raised his hand and snapped his fingers. The pink and purple lightning that enveloped the girl’s body flashed. She screamed. The light became so bright that the magician who came covered his eyes with his wide sleeve, and only the one who called the spell stood proudly and unshakably and looked at the female figure disappearing in the purple light. As soon as the glow died down, a persistent ozone smell spread through the room, as if after a thunderstorm. The magician attacked the villain from behind and, screaming wildly, began to demand the opposite spell.

The devil snorted, pushed him away, turned away and walked away from the hall. He pretended not to notice how the magician hit the ground with his staff and fell into a glowing green portal.

– Lina, we will return to this world! – were his last words.

«Two less idiots,» the Devil grinned.

Chapter 1. Everyday life of a young resurrector

The caravel of the Spanish discoverer Columbus floated along the river, President Reagan filmed him, John Kennedy walked along the maple alley hugging Marilyn Monroe, and on the threshold of the hut, on the highest hill, Stalin and Ivan the Terrible were sitting on a log, smoking peace pipes. In the lowlands, near the river, Claude Monet painted a picture, and in a miniature pub, soldier Schweik told stories with Baron Munchausen and Vasily Tyorkin.

The young man looked at the resulting composition and smiled contentedly, rubbing his hands. At that moment he looked like Napoleon Bonaparte, who tells his entourage about the success in the Battle of Austerlitz, standing at the map.

The table top was huge, almost the size of a standard tennis table, only without a net. There was no empty space there: a hilly papier-mâché landscape, miniature compared to reality, stretched across the entire surface. The role of grass, no matter how trite, was played by ordinary green velvet, bought at the nearest Fabric store. And on this synthetic simulator of real nature the great people of the past walked, only reduced to five centimeters in height.

Here and there, mostly on the hills, there were small two-story houses. But… a miniature landscape is not at all surprising if no one lives in it. Any even more or less savvy architecture student can create the exact same terrain. But only those who are able to call upon the souls of once dead people are able to bring life into their micro-world.

The guy, the author of the miniature world, was in seventh heaven. And rightly so, he spent a whole six months creating his ingenious project: he skipped lectures at the school of necromancy, owed a lot of coursework and was simply overworked. Well, this man was not interested in summoning the souls of dead partridges: it’s all boring and hackneyed, but having your own little world, your own civilization on a separate table is a completely different matter! Orwell’s pig farm is resting! Why isn’t anyone doing similar experiments?

– Dan, I feel sorry for your parents! – an old master declared from the threshold and entered the guy’s room.

Like all teachers of the school of necromancy, he wore a long crimson robe trimmed with a white border. He looked like a wizard from pictures in children’s books: shoulder-length gray hair, an unkempt beard tucked into the belt of his robe, sad eyes, a wrinkled forehead, a potato nose. If he held a magic wand in his hands, it would be easy to confuse the necromancer with some ordinary sorcerer. But the master put on his head a hat that was completely uncharacteristic of wizards – a rag one, with two white fake horns and a golden school coat of arms on the front side. The exact same symbol with the image of a skull pierced by lightning, cast from pure gold, hung from the master’s neck on a long silver chain, very similar to those worn by new Russian businessmen in the mid-nineties of the last century.

The young necromancer smiled welcomingly and, squinting his left eye, scratched the back of his head, ruffling the silver hair on the crown of his head.

«I feel sorry for them too, Master Julius.» Because…

«They paid one hundred thousand crowns for you,» the master did not listen to Dan, «and you absolutely do not need training at our school!»

– Like this? – the guy was sincerely surprised, straightening his bangs that had fallen over his right eye. – I consider myself the best necromancer in the Czech Republic.

In response to the student’s impudent statement, the teacher only sighed heavily and began to look at everything that was on Dan’s table. It would be clear to any educated person that the young necromancer was wasting time and a lot of energy for the sake of his own entertainment and, quite possibly, to satisfy his curiosity. So many historical figures coexisted in the world he created that it was scary to imagine such an idea put into practice not on a separate tennis table, but in a real state.

But to be honest, the once great and powerful rulers of the past after death, it turns out, had to be content with the happy face of a young necromancer experimenter and trample a clearing of green velvet. It looked too cynical from the outside.

«Dan, for five years, not only have you been constantly skipping classes, disappearing into the library for masters, you have also managed, with all your desire for knowledge, not to master the main principle of necromancy!» «Julius hit the velvety grass with his fist in a rage, and Stalin and Grozny rolled head over heels from the earthquake and plopped into the river.

– Don’t call unnecessarily! – the student jabbered in the tone of a failed student trying to get at least a C on the last possible retake. – It’s written in large scarlet letters on the first page of every textbook!

Proclaiming the basic principle of the science he was studying, the young necromancer put his hand to his heart, where on his blue student robe he had the same skull with a lightning bolt embroidered on his cap as the master’s.

– And where is the need? – Julius snorted, catching Adolf Hitler by the collar. – Children’s pranks!

The miniature dictator, like a hamster sold in a pet store, waved his arms and legs until the master put him on the hill where Stalin and Grozny, who had fallen earlier, had managed to climb.

Dan, looking down, shifted from foot to foot. Yes, there was no apparent need for his mega-project… yet. And the master immediately understood this. Why are teachers so insightful?

«I see,» Julius concluded, leaving the table without attention and going to the window. – And how do you not get a headache from the persistent smell of incense in your own room?

The black dragon, Dan’s pet, was snoring on the green sofa, emitting not the most pleasant odors from his nostrils. The animal had nothing to do with his wonderful owner, much less his teacher.

– By the way, what kind of guy is this? – the master pointed at the window.

There, in the courtyard among the pigeons on the observation deck, from which the whole of Prague was visible at a glance, a short bald man in a cassock sat on his haunches and drew suns on the ground with chalk.

– Akhenaten! – Dan declared proudly.

The master’s face turned purple, and he began to yell, waving his fists, that the young experimenter could only hide from the righteous anger of his mentor or wake up the dragon so that he would breathe on the master. True, the latter is fraught with an order to expel from school.

– Bastard! What are you doing? Were you able to summon a full-fledged person?!

– And more than once. As always, for three days,» the guy waved it off, as if what he had done was quite ordinary, «my next scientific experiment, Master Julius.»

«Do you even know,» the teacher did not stop yelling, «that your, if I may say so, hmm, experiment, killed all the sheep and goats in the corral…

At this news, Dan doubled over with laughter and wiped his face with the sleeves of his robe.

– Should you have heard his sermons in church…

– For… this is why I called the first religious reformer. I filmed his entire performance for the archive. You are… Master Julius… don’t worry so much, otherwise your heart will begin to play pranks, you will die… Am I going to have to call you to lectures later? And this one… he will go back to the dead tomorrow. It’s strange that you didn’t notice Isaac Newton among the gardeners last week.

The magician’s face stretched out in surprise.

«So this is who collected all the unripe apples in the Hradcany gardens…» he whispered, slapping his hand on his forehead.

Dan made a displeased grimace: wow, he is conducting the most ingenious experiments, but they can’t at least praise him, for some reason they are angry. While making justification speeches, the young necromancer backed away from the master advancing on him, and perhaps he would have crushed the composition, carelessly sitting on the table, if the mentor had not stopped the onslaught due to an absurd reason.

The necromancer’s wonderful dragon, an animal no larger than a German shepherd, could not stand the noise and, waking up, clung to the master’s robe just below the waist.

– Well done, dragon! – the guy winked at his pet, which angered the master even more.

«He’s lived in the world for a quarter of a century,» he said offended, «and he’s having fun like a little child.»

With a withering glance, he looked at the presumptuous dragon, who, looking guiltily at the master, crawled to the far corner of the room and began to write something down in a thick notebook with a spring.

«I would have kicked you out a long time ago, Dan,» Julius muttered, adjusting his robe, «but I can’t.» Not a single student of our school has had such strength as you have since the time of the great Wenceslas. If we let you go, then the time is not far off when personalities like the Devil from Old Town Square will become interested in you.

The master sat down on the edge of the sofa, where the dragon was sleeping a minute ago. It was clear that he wanted to make peace with the student, despite the scandal he had just created. The old necromancer patted the sofa next to him with his palm, saying, go, Dan, there’s something to do.

More than anything else, the young magician was afraid of being expelled: graduating from a regular school, college, taking up one of the branches of magic, and then being so absurdly thrown out of a magical institution – a shame for a hereditary necromancer. What does it look like if you are expelled not from some provincial school, but from the world-famous School of Necromancy in Prague Castle?

The last thing Julius said gave Dan hope: if the mentor was able to recognize the remarkable strength in him, then he was unlikely to send him away. And he, picking up the hem of his robe, sat down next to her.

At the same time, the young necromancer’s conscience whispered: «Where is your pride, Dan? This man almost crushed you to dust a few minutes ago!»

«You are very strong, Dan,» Julius sighed, «but, unfortunately, you are too careless and defenseless.» Do you think it was just that the great Wenceslas wrote the main rule back in the twelfth century – do not call unnecessarily? And you use very strong magic to satisfy your curiosity. I repeat, not once in five hundred years has a single necromancer managed to summon a person for more than ten minutes. I’m generally silent about your hotbed of celebrities.

«What is it, a breeding ground,» Dan waved his hand, «childish pranks, reincarnated mice, boring stuff.»

Judging by what he had just said, he was not at all aware of his strength. Julius looked in horror at the young necromancer, who had just turned twenty-five two weeks ago, and who naively considered such powerful magic to be nothing. The mentor himself, for example, would not have been able to hold out such a rat city for more than five minutes, and even after the end of the operation he would have lain around in a sleepy state for half a day and would have eaten for three.

He remembered his first experience very well. Then, three hundred years ago, when Julius was not much younger than his current student, he went to the cemetery at night to call his drowned sister back into the world. Fifteen years have already passed since the dishonored girl threw herself into the waters of the Vltava, but the then young necromancer brother was sure that sister Katinka would want to look at the blue sky again and climb the mountain in Petřín. Exactly at midnight, the young magician began the ceremony: he lit a candle and began to read invoking spells. And the girl returned. In the dim light, the brother saw her pale violet skin, tangled bleached hair, empty eye sockets and… long nails that no one had cut in fifteen years. Before he had time to realize that Katinka did not want to live, these uncircumcised claws, stained with earth and the flesh of the dead, dug into his cheek. The magician screamed, trying to cast a spell and call his sister away, but the revived suicide decided to take revenge on her brother to the last, and grabbed his chest with her other hand. The necromancer screamed in hellish pain. And Julius would not have taught the young boy Dan three hundred years later if that night and at the very moment when the sister wanted to tear his heart out of his brother’s chest, a priest had not appeared at the cemetery. As soon as drops of holy water touched the girl’s body, she released the helpless magician and went back to the grave.

After that day, Julius was treated for two years by the best healer in Prague. But three scars on his cheek and five on his chest, with their pain, for three hundred years, reminded the magician of the most useful lesson in his life, and for a long time they would not let him forget this nightmare.

His student Dan did not care at all about his health or safety. The boy had more than enough strength, despite the fact that two dozen souls of long-dead people were wandering around the tennis table in his room, and another one was waiting for feedback on the observation deck. For some reason, it seemed to Julius that if suddenly they all went to the third layer, as the Kingdom of the Dead was also called, Dan would give up and restore everything back in fifteen minutes.

It was not for nothing that all the necromancers were thin, physically weak and ate a lot. All these are signs of overexpenditure in calling from the third layer. Dan was different from his colleagues: he was tall, strong and did not at all suffer from excessive thinness. But the guy always ate not just for three, but for five! It was clear that he was not like everyone else.

«You don’t understand your strength, my boy,» Julius spoke slowly, trying to calm the restless student, «abilities like yours cannot be obtained anywhere except from birth.» You don’t need our school, even if it’s the best in the world. You, Dan, have the honor of becoming the most powerful necromancer of our time. But you don’t understand! And it’s dangerous! Because sooner or later your ignorance will be used not for the most noble purposes. As long as you are in Prague Castle, you are safe, but if you take a few steps away from the gate…

The master, stroking the scar on his cheek, spoke kindly, but instructively.

«I’m flattered, of course,» Dan spread his hands, blushing from the praise, «but why do I need such power?» I wanted to be an ordinary medical examiner in Prague. Summon murdered victims at trial, which is what all more or less powerful necromancers do. And as a hobby, I always dreamed of running a celebrity museum. Like, outdo Madame Tussauds from the first layer of the world: she has wax dolls, but I would have living ones! People would take pictures with them for money. Do you understand?

The young necromancer knew how to trick his teacher, because for a good hundred years Julius had been crazy about photography.

Dan lounged on the sofa, dreamily looking at the ceiling. There, Renaissance masters painted biblical scenes. The paintings were so beautiful and interesting that the magician who lived here for five whole years was ready to endlessly look at the drawings on the ceiling of his room. Probably at that moment he dreamed of a personal museum and the profits he would receive from ticket sales.

The mentor got up from the sofa and walked around the mouse composition several times. He muttered incomprehensible words under his breath and pulled at his beard.

Arrogant Dan, dizzy with his own power, sat on the sofa and was already drawing up cost estimates for the creation of the museum.

– Do you know how each of your calls ends? – Julius suddenly asked the guy.

«The disincarnation of the body into which I put my soul,» blurted out the young necromancer. «That’s why I call upon the dilapidated skeletons who have applied to move to the dead. As required by the Council.

The mentor just shook his head:

«That’s what it’s written in the textbooks we cram at school.» This is what happens when you call upon the soul of a rabbit, caterpillar or elephant. The same thing happens when a murdered victim is summoned in court. But when it’s far from being for the investigation…

What is the difference, exactly? Dan glanced sideways at his mentor, distracted from his dreams.

– The textbooks do not say what the consequences of calling without the permission of the Council are. Why, you ask? Because not every necromancer is able to pull out a soul for investigation, and experimenting, as you do, can only occur to a normal person after a hangover. In addition, for mass resurrection they can be disincarnated. And imagine that you live for yourself, relax on the third layer, and then they call you and say: «Go on a business trip for three days to the upper layers for a skeleton!» What would you do, Dan.

The guy, realizing how the soul was summoned, smiled impudently. But the warning about disincarnation haunted him. And the teacher continued. Yes, everything is not so simple on this third layer, where they go after death. After all, the souls of the revived exist at the expense of necromancers, which is why all the magicians of this specialization were weak. What price Dan paid for experiments with so many people is not at all clear, because the guy’s health was fine. True, Julius, slyly narrowing his eyes, whispered at the end:

– I have one suspicion about what becomes of the souls you call. And if this is so, everything is simply terrible!

From such words of the master, the young necromancer shuddered.

– Are you afraid? – the teacher grinned. – So that’s great! Because in the near future you will only have to be afraid. A hunt has been announced for you. No, not the police. These goblins and orcs are stupid and so weak that they are not able to fight such a strong magician like you on their own. After all, you know how to call the souls of the departed into any body, the Council allows protective necromancy. Eh, such an enemy’s death is much faster than from a battle mage’s fireball. And the hunters already know that you are here, in Prague Castle. No magical protection of our school will hide you from the omnipresent enemy. He will be waiting for the moment when you leave the gate. You’re not a coward to hide in a tower, are you?

The young necromancer’s eyes widened and he, opening his mouth, silently stared at his mentor.

– Does the name Pink FIFA mean anything to you? – Julius asked slyly, but Dan didn’t answer, he just shook his head.

«It didn’t tell me anything either,» the master said sadly, «but now my entire mailbox on the orconet is filled with messages from this person.» She wants you dead or alive. How did she know about you, but…

– You know, Mr. Julius, I’m not interested in this glamorous Fifa, tell her so!

– Even if she blackmails me and promises to destroy the entire school? – the mentor glanced sideways at the student. – I feel sorry for the tourists from the first layer: there will be no City, where will the poor things go? Where will I scare them by appearing in their world as a ghost? Especially when one gives the other a camera and says: «Could you take a picture of me, please? note 1» They will rush up the high steps of the palace or even this hostel where you and I are sitting now, they will throw the camera, I get the equipment.

– Aren’t you tired of these tourist jokes! – Dan smiled.

It’s clear why it’s not beneficial for Julius to host a battle on school grounds.

– Yes, even if the whole Czech Republic is demolished, I will call everyone back! And I will build the City again! – the guy had no idea of the limits of his power and already imagined that he was capable of much.

– Don’t get carried away! – the master reprimanded him. «The hour is not far off when you realize how weak you are.»

This is a serious matter. Dan didn’t even feel like smiling, and his little dragon, coughing, got out of the corner and, settling down on the sofa next to his owner, read:

We’ll go to FIFA Pink together: Me and my friend Evil Dan, Mighty power of this world!

The owner, having listened to the end of the quatrain, gave the pet such a slap on the head with a request not to write anything else, that the animal slid to the floor and again retreated into the corner. And soon Dan howled, because where the dragon had settled, the creak of a fountain pen was heard again. Despite the owner’s requests, he writes a continuation.

– He’s great, you shouldn’t treat him like that!

«Graphomaniac,» the guy waved his hand. – If I had known about his literary passions, I would never have bought it!

«But he understood that it will take at least another ten years for you to understand,» the master grinned. «You need to go to the lair of this Fifa and… you know… disrupt her plans, because she’s clearly not going to do anything good, especially with the help of a powerful necromancer.» And let this be the best lesson for you, my boy.

How Dan didn’t like the name of this person. Something was wrong in these requests and threats, and the master suspected that he was sending his student to a very dangerous enterprise. But how can he, a necromancer magician, cope with a most likely strong sorceress?

«If you don’t go, I will kick you out of school without a diploma and, believe the old man, I will make sure that you are not given a job anywhere, and your necromantic museum is banned as a business harmful to the safety of the world.»

– Persuaded. Where she lives? – the student asked in a tone full of indifference.

– In Moscow, or something. Or in Paris.

The young magician grimaced with displeasure. Wow spread. And even abroad. He thought that this glamorous individual lived on the other side of Prague, or at least in Karlovy Vary, where he just wanted to go on vacation. But in France. Although, Western Europe is not so bad. In Russia… This is truly dangerous.

From his geography lessons at school, Dan knew very well who populated the second layer of the world in this country. In the cities, no matter what, Europeans have come in large numbers, but in the villages you can’t find a single normal person. The girls are beautiful, but when you get to know them better, they are mermaids or strigas at best. Not like in my native Europe: either a witch or a sorceress. It’s no wonder that the strange Fifa lived in such a country overpopulated with non-humans. But also dangerous. Necromancers, for example, were not born in Russia at all, just like alchemists. No one has yet figured out why. Probably, the nature of his homeland also influences the magician’s gift.

He didn’t want to be distracted by the peculiarities of national magical creatures, and for now he naively assumed: Fifa called him to her place, most likely, to summon some nasty genius from the third layer and subsequently take over the world. But is it really possible that in such a large country as Russia there was not a single Czech, Slovak or Hungarian soul caller? Why wasn’t there such a thing in France, where any European could get there even without a visa? For some reason this escaped Dan’s attention that day.

«Here is the ticket,» the master handed the envelope. – To Moscow. Because, as we found out on the orconet, Fifa writes from Russia. She probably flies to Paris on weekends. You’ll find out, though. Registration in an hour. Hint understood?

«That’s not the right word,» muttered the young necromancer. «But I don’t agree to go to some Fifa who is looking for me without a protector magician.»

The mentor threatened him with his finger:

– If it weren’t for your experiments with all sorts of nurseries, there would be no Fifa, believe me. If you light up, get out on your own. And now… your brilliant dragon will protect you, he is not only capable of iambic and trochee.

– Well, yes, I also know amphibrachs! – the creature blurted out, bouncing on one leg.

Looking guiltily at his feet, Dan took the documents from his mentor.

– If you evade, I’ll report it to the Council myself!

No, he will not hide, cowardice is so vile. The necromancer stared at the mirror and began styling his thin ash-gray hair with gel. Having finished with his hair, he went to the window.

– Free! – he shouted to the poor reformer, snapping his fingers.

A moment later, in the place of the ancient man, only a skeleton dressed in a cassock lay lying, and a couple of seconds later, these remains flashed with a bright purple light and dissolved. After Dan freed the souls of the rulers from the tennis table, and the rats were about to scatter, but the forces of the Kingdom of the Dead overtook them, and the animals dissolved in a purple glow. Now neither the elderly skeleton nor the mice will ever be able to find themselves in this world again.

The young necromancer rolled the landscape from the table into a tube and put it in a corner, from where he kicked out the dragon, who had already written five whole pages of the poem.

The master stood silently at the door and calmly watched his student getting ready.

«I need a battle mage, I need a battle mage, a Russian, a battle mage,» Dan whispered under his breath, as if calling for someone.

«What a stupid necromancer,» the mentor shook his head, «you can call the soul of any battle mage from the Kingdom of the Dead whenever you want.»

«I need a living battle mage with whom I could go through this whole test,» the guy corrected his spell when he blew out the burning candle.

He didn’t notice how the smoke, wriggling like a snake, dissolved in the pink light high above his head. For a long time he thought that what was said was not a spell, but simply an installation before the battle. When he said such words, for some reason he felt better, he felt like someone distant, but at the same time so close, hugged him by the shoulders and whispered in his ear: «I’m with you, I’ve always been there, I loved you.»». Dan had no idea who this voice belonged to. When the noise in his ears subsided, the necromancer forgot to think about the surging vision, and silently left the room.

The master went to the window and sadly watched the student go down to the observation deck. The necromancer stood for a long time against the wall under his window, pressing his forehead against the ivy that entwined the tower in which he had lived for five whole years. It’s hard to say goodbye to something that has become almost dear to you. In the same way, Julius, at fifteen, with tears in his eyes, left home, forever, to Prague Castle, where necromancers are taught and souls are summoned for investigation in the European Court.

Dan still had a lot to learn. He was destined to face more than one danger. A battle mage wouldn’t hurt him. But he didn’t know what happened when he said, before leaving the tower: «I need a living battle mage.» But the power of a brilliant necromancer is often enough not only to summon the dead from their subspace…

Chapter 2. Either a girl, or perhaps a vision

– Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! People, I’m dead! – Alina was lying on the bed, looking at the ceiling. – Such a joke had to happen! I died!

She rolled over onto her stomach and, burying her nose in the pillow, continued to giggle hysterically.

– No, well, you had to be so clever! How I want to tell my friends about this!

Sighing heavily, the girl got out of bed, desperately trying to put on slippers. Oddly enough, two large white plush bunnies completely refused to stay on her feet. They didn’t even budge, contrary to all the wishes of their owner. It’s strange, if they are material, they don’t give in, then on what word of honor does a black leather miniskirt and a green turtleneck stay on her body, why doesn’t the blue denim baseball cap with the Nike emblem fly off her head, why on earth didn’t it remain lying on the bedspread shapeless a bunch of tights?

On the bed. Haha three times! Yes, if everything material had refused to accept her body, then she would not have been lying in bed, but would have found herself under the bed among dust balls and old worn-out shoes, which the girl was always too lazy to throw away.

Alina kicked her slippers, naturally, to no avail, and went to the mirror.

She decided that she had died, her body was probably lying in the refrigerator of the morgue, and this image that she somehow felt… what was it? She died. How did this happen? Why does she believe that what she has experienced is precisely death?

The girl arrived in the morning at the Sibirsky Bereg factory, where she had been working as a technologist for three years. Just think, the whole country ate crackers and beer snacks, the quality of which it controlled. In general, many technologists worked at the factory: two for each workshop. But in the fall, Alina was unlucky: her partner went on maternity leave, and the poor thing had to work for two until a replacement was found.

From birth she had a heart with a defect, that is, with a defect, and the double load did not benefit her health. In winter, the director, however, took pity on the unfortunate Alina who overworked and paid for her to go to a sanatorium for the Christmas holidays. Treatment and rest are wonderful, but when, upon returning, double work fell on her again, all the results of healing baths and procedures went down the drain.

The overworked technologist only dreamed of going on vacation to the Black Sea when she got to leave. It didn’t work out. Alina’s heart couldn’t stand it. It has always malfunctioned until today. There’s nothing you can do if you were born sick.

The last thing the girl remembered when she was conscious was the line for packaging fried kirieski. She stood by the belt and carefully watched as the finished product poured into a large basket, but suddenly her vision grew blurry, she clutched her heart, feeling someone stick a thick stake into her chest and turn it. A gentle male voice muttered in her head; at first she thought it was her brother’s, but he spoke not in Russian, but in some similar language. In Ukrainian, or something. The man repeated the same words. It seemed as if he was calling someone or weaving a spell. And then she saw him, a stranger: a tall, broad-shouldered, blond-haired man in something blue, like a sweatshirt, and tight leather pants, his gaze full of fear: his yellow eyes, distorted with horror, like those of an owl, looking straight at her, the victim. His gaze cannot touch, but at that moment it seemed to the girl that these amber eyes with black pupils see right through her, feel every internal organ, and it is because of this that her arms and legs refuse to move, not the slightest sound comes out of her open mouth, her lungs as if covered in cement, they stop breathing, and only the defective valve in the heart begins to work furiously. The stranger took her hand and whispered: «Calm down’… But the girl was still scared, and… opening her eyes, she found herself at home lying on the bed and for some reason immediately decided that everything that happened to her was death.

Why she thought that is not clear. Death is something that no one can describe. Everyone experiences her, but having met her, no one has ever had the happiness of returning to the living and telling their descendants about everything. Alina didn’t think long. There’s nothing to wiggle around here: a heart rupture, and that’s it, the end of life, and the foreigner in a long blue dress is an ambulance orderly who tried to pump her out. And now her soul, having remembered its last appearance, says goodbye to the house where she lived for almost a quarter of a century. How did the talkers broadcast on the radio? The soul wanders around the home for three days, walks around the world for forty, and then looks for a new body.

Mirror. Once upon a time it reflected her, a tall, thin, not very beautiful girl with an oval face, a narrow nose, and shoulder-length black hair with dyed strands. Now in the mirror one could only see jars of cosmetics, which Alina forgot to close in the morning: she was in a hurry to get to work. It’s strange why the mirror doesn’t reflect the tall, narrow-shouldered Tatar girl? Was she really dead? Is she no longer there? She will never turn on the TV on the opposite wall of the room, and the bed will no longer be useful to her, and in the family photo above her head, her brother will draw with a felt-tip pen exactly the same red cross as above her parents, aunt and grandparents.

Taking a breath, the girl went into her brother’s room. Anyone, he just has to look at her, living, breathing, talking, thinking. Even if she is not able to put on slippers or find her reflection in the mirror.

Afraid of making a lot of noise, Alina crept up to the chair where Kostya was sitting and put her hands on her brother’s shoulders. Wow, mother-of-pearl varnish, on the index finger of the right hand, slightly chipped. This is a small work-related ’injury’ after the girl tested the strength of a closed bag of crackers shortly before her death.

Alina’s twin brother, Kostya, a short, heavy-set brunette, very unlike his sister, by the way, was sitting at the computer, constantly distracted from his work. Typical gamer brother pose, however, this time something was different. In his left hand the guy was holding not a cup of coffee, but a half-drunk bottle of cheap vodka, and next to the keyboard lay three black crackers from the kind his sister had roasted in the oven a couple of days ago. It’s clear and without words – he tried to drown his grief in vodka.

The girl read the text of the message that was written by her own, yes, her brother.

You, friends, are probably waiting for a letter from Alina. Alas, there is no point in doing this. Because she is no longer there. She died. At work. She was very sick, and did not tell anyone about it, did not show her weakness.

Then she was unable to read and grabbed Kostya by the shoulders with both hands and tried to shake and scream: «What are you doing? Here I am! Next to you!» But… he didn’t even feel the touch of her hands?!

– Kostya, what are you writing? – the girl whispered, hopelessly dropping her hands, – I’m alive, Kostya.

But the answer to her was only the lines in the letter.

Now I have no last close person.

– Kostya, how can you?

Why doesn’t he hear? Why is he writing this! And he will also send it over the Internet to all of Alina’s best friends. And none of them will write a single line anymore, they will all suffer and cry for their untimely departed friend. But she is alive! Hello! Maybe we’ll even be able to have some fun when we get out of this strange story with invisibility. What if a magic cap or robe just fell on her at the factory. Everyone thinks she is dead, but she continues to live.

Alina sank to the floor right next to the chair where her brother was sitting and began to cry. But even her sobs were inaccessible to Kostya’s hearing.

Pity, bitterness, hopelessness… all this overwhelmed the girl. Why did fate treat him this way? For what? First the parents, and then she… Although, no, she is alive. Mom and dad aren’t around. They died when Alina and Kostya were nineteen. She remembered that terrible day perfectly… as if in reality, as if it was repeating itself in her memory even now, after the so-called death.

It was summer. Heat. Alina came back from her exam. She was then graduating from food college. Kostya is not a coward, he did not run away from the army, in those years he served Russia somewhere in the Ryazan region. So the girl lived alone with her parents. Having returned from the exam, she lay down on the sofa and fell asleep. A phone call woke her up. She immediately felt that he was not kind. That’s what it turned out to be: they called from the hospital – my father and mother crashed near Berdsk. Since then, she has already lived for four years with her only relative, her brother, earning a living, being in fact the head of the family. True, Kostya himself was also not known as a slob and got a job at the same factory as Alina, as a truck driver, delivering «Kirieshki» throughout Western Siberia.

After the death of her parents, the girl increasingly began to show strange abilities: as if she could see someone else’s future using cards, all the food she prepared had the desired effect, and, oh, horror, she learned to make fire by snapping her fingers. This is how Alina began to do without matches, the quality of which was simply skimped on by manufacturers. True, the girl began to use magic sparks only after the flashing fragment of one such match hit her in her left eye with all the ensuing consequences. And it’s not worth talking about cutlets with love spells and hangover cabbage rolls. And all these miracles are at the behest of the pike, Alinochka’s desire.

Remembering her extraordinary gift, the girl decided to try to set fire to her brother. If she succeeds, she will quickly heal him with the help of her own homemade jelly. But her magic turned out to be invisible, like herself. A fireball the size of a tennis ball flew through Kostya’s chest, and then through the monitor, and then went out completely, hitting the wall.

– Cool! – Alina smiled to herself. – Invisible fire is an original thing, isn’t it?

Two days ago she would not have started making such jokes, but now she had no time for that. Well, at least someone would have noticed and understood that she was alive, but no: her brother is killed and thinks that she is no longer in the world.

The girl was offended and went into her room through the wall. What’s wrong with that? If slippers do not fit on your feet, then why not overcome fifteen centimeters of concrete rock? She imagined that the wall was parting in front of her, and… she succeeded!

When Alina was five years old, she kept asking her mother: what was there in the thick walls. Mom answered that the brownies lived there, and there was no point in disturbing them. Now, when she grew up, she saw with her own eyes – nothing special: grayness, dust and not a single poltergeist.

It’s good to be dead. From time to time. You go wherever you want. But how terrible it is when no one sees you, and you cannot turn on the light in the room, put on your shoes and simply pick up a telephone receiver or an automatic pencil.

The girl, looking doomedly at the writing utensils, sank into her favorite chair, covered with terracotta leatherette, and lay her head on the glass of the desk. Solid, which means that if she wants objects to be impassable for her incorporeal form, they will become so. It turns out that slippers can be made to fit on your feet.

And then the girl’s gaze stopped on an object that she did not leave on the table when she left for work on the day of her death. No, it wasn’t a deck of cards, or a half-written gel pen, or even a notebook with notes in the «family accounting» style, which she hid in a drawer under lock and key. Alina could not afford this item because of its high cost.

In front of her lay a bright green plane ticket. She looked at him questioningly for a long time, until finally she dared to extend her hand to him and… take it! Strange but true! She managed to hold the ticket in her hands, which, by the way, is heavier than a pen! She forced him to submit to her will! Progress in disembodied life!

Having overcome her shock, the girl finally turned away the cover and looked at her own name printed as a red carbon copy. Airplane ticket from Novosibirsk to Moscow, business class. Someone wealthy was waiting for Alina in the capital. In Sheremetyevo. If this unknown person paid that kind of money and slipped a ticket, then it was necessary. One logical question arose – how to get on the plane if no one sees you with a ticket at check-in.

It’s good that the girl noticed this sign of attention to her person in time. Departure is in three hours. We urgently need to go to the airport. She folded the ticket in half and put it in the back pocket of her skirt, because there was nowhere else to go, because a jacket or jacket would hardly have given in to the girl’s will, which had not yet strengthened after the shock.

There’s nothing you can do – Kostya will have to suffer. He had already realized the fact that his beloved sister was no more. Of course, my brother will be incredibly happy if Alina returns. But how can she establish this? Perhaps the mysterious stranger who placed the ticket on the girl’s table will be able to take her back to the world of the living. Therefore, you need to go towards your destiny and what cannot be avoided.

The girl tried to take something writing to scribble a short note on paper for her twin brother. The pen even obeyed her will, but as soon as she tried to write the first letter, it became clear that she would not succeed. No matter how much she tried to concentrate, the text she had written immediately disappeared from the page. And after the third attempt, instead of her scribbles, a strange note in broken Russian appeared on the paper:

Alina, don’t try to write your brother. Alina reject the first layer. Alina should be on the second layer. Alina should try. I’m waiting for Alina in Moscow. Sheremetyevo. Terminal number two.

What would that mean? The girl stared attentively at the scribbles. Nothing other than fate. You need to go to understand all these first and second layers. Something told her that no one took her life, and what happened to her was not death at all, but, most likely, a banal departure to another world in the best traditions of fantastic fairy tales.

Although she lived in the center of Novosibirsk, it was still far from the airport. The girl, of course, did not want to walk down the street barefoot, so she began to hypnotize the shoes so that they would fit on her feet.

Oddly enough, Alina’s witchcraft abilities, which Alina spent only on everyday fireballs, did not fail, and within ten minutes a satisfied girl, wearing two different shoes, was leaving the entrance of her house. Yes, yes, the shoes that nevertheless obeyed the will of the deceased turned out to be from completely different pairs: the left red sandal with a low heel was put on the right foot, and the right black autumn boot with a five-centimeter stiletto heel was put on the left.

Walking like this turned out to be not very comfortable, but the shoes did not want to come off in order to change places. After the unsuccessful trick, the girl completely refused to wear the jacket, afraid that she would have to walk around the city in fifteen degrees of heat in a sheepskin coat or a down jacket with a rabbit collar.

How unusual it turns out to be, to be out of this world and walk through the city. The sensations are completely indescribable – the wind passes through you, and you absorb its chill with every internal organ: your heart, liver, lungs… You can never feel this in the normal state of a living person. The rustling of leaves now caresses not only the ear, but the whole body, but this makes it restless and uncomfortable. Probably, in winter the organs also freeze, Alina thought.

The girl easily jumped into the minibus moving at full speed. It must be so interesting to live among those who don’t notice you. People are sitting in armchairs, looking out the windows, admiring the same cityscapes for the hundredth time, and she stands right in front of them, straightening her skirt, as if someone would examine the color of an invisible woman’s underwear. She was about to put her hand in her pocket to get the money for the fare, but then she realized: after all, now she is a hare in law! An idiot’s dream come true!

But invisible ones can also cause her legs to become numb, especially when she is wearing shoes with different heels. All she could think about was how to conjure the same shoes that were put on correctly. The girl could barely wait until she was able to get out of the minibus. The legs, although deprived of the opportunity to be visible to everyone, refused to obey and constantly ached. Pain is good, they hurt, that means they exist.

Alina stood in front of the entrance to the airport and wondered how she would be allowed on the plane with an invisible ticket. And anyway, where is the logic of the inviter? If she can walk through a wall, then she can find herself on a plane without an expensive ticket. Why spend so much money? Or did the caller buy it while she was alive, that is, visible?

She took the ticket out of her pocket and walked up to the metal detector at the entrance and began to carefully examine what was printed on the document for a living person named Alinka.

– Why do I need him? – the girl muttered under her breath. – For what?

And she suddenly realized that she wanted to become visible again. Something seemed to click at the girl’s temples; the surroundings lost their color for a moment, but soon the whole range of bright colors returned to their proper places.

– The hares are on their way to the zoo! – the old man laughed, coming up to her from behind. – And you can’t go anywhere without a ticket!

His appearance seemed unusual and somehow familiar to the girl, as if the intellectual, dressed in a strange fashion: in a long red coat and a wide-brimmed hat, was a character in a popular film. It looks strange for modern life, and does not fit into the monotonous crowd at all. But the suit is not everything. The old man smiled and bared his long fangs, which is why the girl just squeezed out:

– A vampire?

«Yes,» he smiled.

Alina shook her head and stared at the old man again. He saw her! Those red eyes, from under those yellow round glasses. He stood two meters from her and could easily touch her by taking two or three steps towards her. Realizing this turned out to be more difficult than believing in grandfather’s vampirism. It seems like nothing happened. Just now no living creature could see Alina, and suddenly a suspicious person appeared. Grandfather’s glasses aren’t magic! People walked around the vampire and the young lady standing opposite each other. But at the airport, nothing seemed to have changed, but the girl felt that something was wrong in Tolmachevo.

Alina did not know the Novosibirsk airport at all. She and her relatives couldn’t afford plane tickets. But that’s not even the point: for example, the policeman at the metal detector, after she wanted to become visible and her grandfather noticed her, for some reason he turned green and stopped looking like a person. «Goblin,» she thought for some reason.

«You pass, madam,» the vampire nodded towards the metal detector.

– Can you see me? – Alina finally asked the question that most worried her.

The girl examined the elderly man even more carefully: he was at least five hundred years old. Although, no, this is too harshly said, they don’t live that long, but one hundred and fifty is quite possible!

– Come on, come in, battle magician, don’t torment the old vampire!

After this phrase, she stepped back and almost tripped out of the blue, but grabbed the metal detector stand in time. Not only did this, so to speak, honest vampire somehow know her status (although she never considered herself a battle mage), but he was not going to bite and drink liters of blood from her young body. Alina took a deep breath and walked under the arch.

Marriage…

«Welcome, combatant,» the goblin policeman suddenly said to her, saluting.

If only all law enforcement officers were so polite, it doesn’t matter that they are green and pimply, and, in addition, they are non-humans.

And then it dawned on the girl that the gates at the airport were not intended to look for bombs and other terrorist problems, but to scan the passenger’s status. On the goblin’s monitor Alin’s name was shining, and next to it was a «battle magician».

Surprised, as it turned out, the sorceress moved out of the way and looked at how the status of the old man following her was determined. After him, two alchemist girls, three demons, a chimera man and several sorcerers passed under the scanner. They look like ordinary people, but in reality they all have paranormal abilities.

Alina did not observe further. And so it is clear – she is in Novosibirsk, which was suddenly inhabited by magical creatures, the city was transformed, and again took her into his life, made her visible, began to reckon with the presence of her body. But life turned out to be completely different, fabulous, the kind she dreamed of while reading science fiction novels.

Interesting, but true – the same airport, the same flights, but completely different creatures around. And there was no trace of the life that the girl left: full of banality, dust and soot.

After walking a few meters to the reception desk, she found that she was no longer limping and walking was much more comfortable. Imagine Alina’s surprise when, looking at her feet, she noticed that she was wearing two identical brown boots with thick soles. When did she manage to conjure them? Or did someone else decide to help her and change her shoes?

«Boarding begins for the Samoletina flight to Moscow,» a melodious female voice announced through the speaker.

Hearing the name of the carrier, the girl involuntarily burst into her fist.

If all the creatures here are magical, then this pleasant-to-hear voice belongs to some disgusting lady of inhuman appearance, she thought for some reason. Alina had never thought about the voice of the announcers even once in her twenty-three years of life. But after meeting the goblin guard and the vampire passenger, the mysterious announcer became an object of curiosity.

Check-in and waiting for boarding went too quickly for the newly minted sorceress. A charming skeleton woman, covering her empty eye sockets with black glasses and her bald skull with a wig, gave the young magician a boarding pass: an ordinary one, no different from its counterpart in the non-magical world.

The girl looked at the servants for a long time, but didn’t get the chance to speak to the living skeleton. Therefore, all that she had time to think about Olga the skeleton from the reception desk was regret that her friends, who wanted to lose weight in every possible way, had not seen the skinniest woman in the world. After this you will want to be chubby and forget about all diets.

The entire time Alina was waiting to board, she wandered between the aisles and carefully studied the fantastic society into which, by someone’s grace, she had found herself. Among the short, bearded gnomes and long-eared elves, there were many ordinary people, magicians of various specializations. One stocky man explained to his neighbor that he had checked his son in as an animal because he didn’t have enough money for a ticket. A werewolf, no less. A normal person would not allow himself to do this.

As the newly minted sorceress managed to understand, those who were more like people belonged to the highest caste and were very wealthy, but the more a creature resembled a monster, the less it was valued. For example, there were no skeletons or goblins among the passengers.

What amused the girl most was the scene when three giant trolls were dragging a box of food onto the plane. She was standing at the window next to the gate door, and monsters vaguely reminiscent of Shrek, dressed in colorful red-and-black skins, were operating on the take-off platform. Well, the real «Swan, Crayfish and Pike’.

– Was it really impossible to take the car on the first layer? – the young man who was watching the same trolls was indignant.

Alina’s memory flipped through the pages of the books she had read at great speed and she recalled frames from the films she had watched: judging by the bluish tint of her skin, this man was a total freak. The girl looked back at him, and then continued observing the careless trolls. The monsters, deciding that the food box was too heavy for their pumped up muscles, tore off the nailed lid and began to eat the contents of their burden along with the wrappers. Seeing this, Alina grinned. Pitchman muttered something to her about «This is not fun» and walked away to another window.

Meanwhile, two tall skeletons in orange vests with the words «Tolmachevo’ on their backs ran up to the trolls and began beating the monsters with glowing batons. Funny. From the outside. This is absolutely boring, he’s been seeing things like this for decades. And to her, Alina, this kind of production sabotage in magical Novosibirsk is a novelty.

When the ashamed trolls put the lid back in place and ran away from harm into their kennel, an elderly woman in the same orange vest as the skeletons approached the box. With one wave of her hand, she made him fly to the required compartment of the plane.

It’s strange why airport workers didn’t immediately use the services of a teleportation specialist. Really, like Russians from the non-magical world, Russian sorcerers hoped to get by with cheap labor? Or did you want to feed the trolls so that they wouldn’t die of hunger?

Alina didn’t even have time to think about this topic when she began boarding the plane. And half an hour later, the battle magician and two hundred more magical creatures were flying high in the sky towards the capital of the Russian state.

When Alina was little, she flew on a plane with her mother and brother to the south, but this was not yet in Novosibirsk, where the family moved twelve years ago. Now her childhood memories were returning, but she did not feel the difference between flying in her homeland and in the magical world.

If you sit comfortably in your seat and immerse yourself in reading a magazine published by Samoletina Airlines, occasionally being distracted by the flight attendants offering food and juices, then you will not be able to distinguish the flight from a non-magical one. But the magicians had skeleton girls working on the plane, on whose bony bodies the uniforms sagged like low-quality mannequins. Alina was afraid to even imagine who the pilot was: a troll or a goblin! What if a fearless zombie? But the non-human was not inferior to the human in his skill: the plane did not sway in turbulent flows. What if this Boeing, filled with magicians, flies at the behest of a spell without fuel or engines. What then will happen if the magical powers of the wizards controlling the ship are not enough to pull the colossus to the capital? The latter scared the girl a little, so she decided to take a break from her dark thoughts and stared at the glossy magazine «Let’s fly!» in a pocket on the chair in front of her.

They didn’t write anything interesting there: the airline advertised its newfangled planes with reliable magical protection, which were actually purchased in Europe and written off there from the balance sheet. What kind of magic armor this was, Alina had no idea yet, and therefore she delved into reading – a magic plane cannot be rammed with a rocket, a dragon cannot shoot it down with one blow, and birds and small magical creatures could not fly closer than a hundred meters to the liner. This would be true in a non-magical world, otherwise there would be plane crashes, so many people would die. I was daydreaming.

Such a truth of life would not have been written in a philistine aircraft publication. The magical layer of the world is too sensitive to lies, which is why the magazine was full of interesting and sometimes cheesy jokes like: «Fun, quickly and without worries, our airline will bury you!» Anti-advertising, fear-mongering, was it really impossible to simply not display such pessimistic magazines? The reader’s nerves may fail. Consider the article about a crow that made a nest in the turbine of an old TU-134, which sat in Irkutsk for a whole year and did not fly anywhere; or a double-page advertisement – «Kukuruznik – the airliner of the future, a full-page advertisement – "…in the turbine of an old technical specification, which stood on the airfield in Irkutsk for a whole year and never flew anywhere. mi type.»

But the food, which the voracious trolls from Novosibirsk did not have time to gobble up, turned out to be very tasty – not semi-finished shortbreads of the non-magical world, but almost restaurant-quality food. After this, the spoiled mood from reading the article «Necromancers will bring back to life everyone who died in a plane crash if they pay the magicians ten million dollars» is forgotten. And after a delicious lunch, Alina decided to tune in to thoughts about the capital.

She has never been to Moscow. This city had always remained somewhat unattainable for her… but now what awaited her was not just an ordinary dream, but a capital full of magic and other paranormal phenomena. This fact did not frighten the girl at all, and during the four-hour flight, without closing her eyes, she waited until she finally encountered the capital’s witchcraft and remembered all the possible combat spells that she had read about in science fiction novels. As always, you know a lot, but only a few are extracted from memory, and not the most original ones.

And now my ears are getting unpleasantly stuffy again. Like taking off. The plane decreases altitude.

Of course, as a child, the girl imagined Moscow simply and clearly: the plane lands on Red Square, and happy October students Alinochka and Kostenka run to the mausoleum to admire grandfather Lenin, and then put a bold dot in the center of the square with a bright felt-tip pen. In fact, everything turned out to be much more prosaic – a typical airport, a banal stop, ordinary white and green Lipetsk buses and orc taxi drivers, impostors. It’s still a long way to get to the city center.

However, the newly minted sorceress remembered the text of the note; she did not need to go to the square at all, that she was not brought here from Siberia in order to look at the eternally sleeping Leader of the World Proletariat. They were waiting for her at the second, international terminal. She imagined a tall blond foreigner like «Ordinary Brad Pitt» smiling at her with sparkling snow-white teeth, walking with her arm and treating her to hamburgers at McDonald’s. Alina was never lucky in love. Either she lost her head over a man who had a girlfriend, or her lover turned out to be a female, or, oh, horror, perverts who wanted nothing more than erotic pleasures were interested in her. But why is life so unfair to her? She is an ordinary girl, no worse or better than her friends, half of whom lived with the most wonderful husbands. Fate didn’t like her. And so she dreamed: about Superman, a prince on a white horse, or just a strong defender. And when the girl fell into the magical layer of this world, her matrimonial dreams filled her head in double volume.

At the wheel of the bus sat a strange creature that could easily be dubbed an alien – red, with a large egg-shaped head and one single eye. The creature had no nose or mouth at all. The driver’s torso was much smaller than his head, and his three-fingered hands, like suction cups replacing nails, dug into the steering wheel.

«The fare is 15 rubles, buy a ticket from the bus driver,» Alina read and handed the money to the mysterious creature. The silent alien took the coins with the help of a thin string-tail and in the same way returned the change and ticket to the girl, and she, having punched her travel document, went into the cabin and sat down in an empty seat.

She leaned her forehead against the glass and sadly looked at the landscapes – ordinary Russia: both in the provinces and in the capital. Clouds no different from Siberian ones floated across the same blue sky. Nothing special, as if the non-magical world had returned to her life again. Alina was sad. It was like she was replaying in her memory the circumstances of leaving for another, as they called here, the second layer, and still could not understand: whether she had died or been reborn in a new capacity.

The girl was torn from such thoughts by noise… A fight? She shuddered and looked out the window – she had already arrived. She jumped out of her chair and ran out of the bus.

At the exit from the arrivals hall at Sheremetyevo-2 stood a tall young man with blond hair, who looked like a foreigner, wearing a blue robe up to his hips, tight leather trousers and platform boots. The same one that the girl saw at the moment of departure, rebirth, death, or whatever you call what happened to her. Alina wanted to jump back on the bus and go away from this terminal and the person she saw. She moved back, but when she wanted to put her hand on the railing of the bus, she found that she was grabbing an empty space. Too late.

The face of the man from the dying vision was more likely to be unhappy than angry, and did not at all resemble a collector of the souls of innocent girls, an evil demon of hell, and others like them. In his hand the guy held a leash with a black dragon. The animal grabbed the notebook on a beautiful plastic spring with its front paws and looked at the attackers with a pleading look. It was obvious that this pet furry did not intend to attack.

The asphalt between the guy and the attackers was torn up. In all likelihood, the stranger defended himself with earthen magic. Is it really a shaman? The magician’s first attack against the three hooligans ended in his favor, but what will happen next?

The guy was attacked by three orcs wearing taxi driver jackets. The dispute, most likely, was over which of them would take the foreign guest to the city center. Although an inner voice whispered to Alina: «This is not so!» Intervene! He’s the reason you’re here!»

Chapter 3. Battle with taxi drivers

The guy in the blue robe raised his right hand up, as if wanting to create a large combat fireball and rain down fire on the unfortunate taxi drivers and their personal vehicles.

A colleague, a battle mage, for some reason Alina decided for herself. She was both afraid and embarrassed to intervene. And rightly so, who needs an incompetent sorceress? Her fireballs, which she used to light the burners on the stove, could not compare in any way with real battle spells. Perhaps the girl would have succeeded, but, alas, she had no practice in this matter, and she was afraid to get into a fight, hoping for the Russian «Maybe» that the spells from the books of Olga Gromyko or Sergei Lukyanenko would work as described. What if the guy gets out on his own? He has a dragon. Fire-breathing, judging by the smoke from its nostrils.

The orcs, sensing their imminent death, retreated back to the cars, and the guy, taking advantage of the enemy’s momentary confusion, rushed away from the parking lot.

The unfortunate dragon, who did not expect this from his owner, almost let go of the notebook from his front paws and, stumbling, trotted after him.

– Prey! – the monsters roared and rushed together after the fleeing magician.

He turned around sharply and, noticing the chase, jumped. He summoned a levitation spell and jumped over the almost ten meter high fence that separated the parking lot from the airfield. The black dragon, whose owner had thrown away its leash, looked with a sad gaze either at the magician standing under the wing of the plane, or at the orcs approaching him in the clothes of taxi drivers.

– Dan, who did you leave me with? – he howled, clutching the notebook to his chest.

In the animal’s gaze one could read only one thing: «For what, Judas?» He tensed his small wings, twenty centimeters in span, and tried to take off, but, alas, the carcass turned out to be too heavy to lift. No matter how hard the pet was scolded, it could only jump a meter and, comically flapping its wings, fall and crush its tail.

But the orcs turned out to be much more perceptive. After another attempt by the dragon to imitate a black Boeing, one of the monsters jumped onto its back and, springing, grabbed onto the fence mesh at a height of almost five meters. Then it was a matter of technique, and the orc climbed to the other side of the airfield. The remaining two did the same, despite the fact that the dragon was indignant and promised them something unflattering. True, he babbled all his threats not in Russian, and no one had a chance to find out what fate he had in store for the nasty taxi drivers.

The owner, realizing that there was no way to escape the chase, ran under the stationary plane.

«He’s not a battle mage,» Alina said quietly under her breath, watching the guy hide from the taxi drivers behind the landing gear of the plane. – And not a shaman. The asphalt is probably the work of these orcs.

The dragon, who sat down under a pillar and began to write notes, glared at the strange girl with a yellow eye with an elongated black pupil, but, realizing that danger could hardly be expected from an unarmed girl, he continued to do his job.

– Levitation! – Alina commanded herself, repeating all Dan’s intonations and spreading her arms wide.

From the films, the girl remembered that the magician did exactly this when taking off. It didn’t work, so she jumped and repeated the spell before her feet could touch the ground. Managed!!! She felt that she had suddenly become weightless and could fly anywhere.

The dragon followed her beyond the fence with a look full of envy and, stopping writing, also began jumping up and down, repeating the word ’levitation’. Alas, what is given to people is not given to magical mammals, so he had no choice but to cling to the chain-link mesh with his claws and climb over the fence, as the orcs did.

While the clumsy, fat-assed dragon, holding a notebook in his teeth, climbed onto the field, a real battle unfolded there.

As soon as Alina reached the Hungarian Airlines airbus, around which Dan and a trio of orcs were almost playing tag, she quite accidentally released a real combat fireball towards the pursuers of the stranger magician.

The spell happened by itself: the girl just imagined how a small light flies out of her hand and grows to the size of ball lightning. And as soon as she uttered the word «fireball,» something lit up in her heart, hot lava flowed through the arteries to the palm of her right hand and, flying out into the air, turned into a half-meter ball.

Why did she decide to help this strange boy in a blue robe? Why is he good, but the orcs must run away with their backs scorched? If it weren’t for the memories of the moment of her departure from the banal world, the girl would not have paid any attention to this tall, strong guy in a blue robe and his problems. And since this was the only witness of her transition to the world of magicians, then he must be saved from the orcs, even if these monsters are «good» gentlemen. But what about who to interrogate if they kill the magician?

Three non-humans, seeing a strong combat spell, collapsed to the ground, pressing the backs of their heads with their paws. It’s not without reason that they say that the orc offspring are not distinguished by intelligence and intelligence: the monsters bowed their heads, but they placed their butts just right so that the fireball thrown by Alina would set their pants on fire in the most indecent place.

The magician, who was escaping from the nonhumans, stopped and stared in amazement at the savior who had appeared out of nowhere, muttering a single word under his breath: «Lina.» There was no end to his surprise, but it was too early to relax and celebrate the victory. And Alina herself wondered why he was so scared that he knew her name and called her in the European manner.

– Letistenote 2! Let’s go! – the black dragon sitting on the fence screamed as if he had been cut, which brought the guy out of his stupor about the girl who saved him, and the sorceress – well… also out of her stupor.

The sorceress, who did not know the language in which the animal screamed, only looked where the dragon was pointing with its paw. The magician also stared there.

The fireball that set the orcs on fire did not melt in the air, but continued on its way… towards the small Boeing at the next exit. And the plane had already turned on its engines. You don’t need to be an aviator to understand what happens when a fireball touches fuel. So it’s not difficult to demolish the airport. Bin Laden will be jealous.

Why do fireballs go out on their own only in cartoons and science fiction novels? However, Alina did not waste time thinking about it.

– Water cannon! – the girl blurted out the first spell that came to her mind and extended both hands forward, palms out.

It didn’t take long for the force to appear again. Now it seemed to the sorceress that her heart had drowned in the depths of the ocean, and a stream of water gushed from her palms under great pressure, so that she could hardly stand on her feet.

I must say, Alina made it just in time, and the hissing firebrand fell to the ground literally five meters from the plane’s wing.

– Phew!

Dan, smiling contentedly, looked at the heavily breathing magician.

But, alas, it was too early to relax again. She was guaranteed a meeting with the asphalt that the sorceress would remember for a long time. Two orcs took a tactically correct action and, knocking her down, sat on her like on a log: one on her shoulder blades, the other on her knees.

The cheek with which Alina hit the ground ached with pain, but she could not even raise her head.

– Why did you interfere, bitch? – barked the orc, who settled on his shoulder blades. – Pink FIFA doesn’t like amateur performances!

No matter how much she wanted, the girl could not say a word. And while two disgusting taxi drivers were holding her back, the remaining one attacked Dan with a knife. And he would not have lived if not for an accident.

– Hey, orc, wait! – the black dragon shouted in Czech, having already climbed over the fence and settled down not far from the battlefield with his notes.

The taxi driver, who obviously did not know any language other than Russian, stared questioningly at the animal, which spoke a language very similar to this Russian, but in a slightly different language. Ukrainian? Moldavian? Bulgarian?

– What are you staring at? You must attack Dan with a brutal expression on your face, and my master must skillfully dodge you. Otherwise there is not enough pathos in the poem.

The orc, blinking his eyes, looked questioningly at the foreign dragon, who, after his fiery speech, again began to diligently scribble in his notebook.

Dan, who really disliked his pet’s penchant for poetry, winked at him. It turns out that sometimes the stupid speech of a graphomaniac has a stronger effect on the enemy than a spell. All the orcs abandoned their prey and went to the writer. Have you really decided to read his heroic poem?

Alina, of course, got up, without ceasing to rub her cheek, which was torn and bleeding.

– Jak se jmenujete, Linanote 3? – Dan looked sideways at the girl.

Alina stared questioningly at the magician with a stunned look. His phrase was similar to a stupid student stem: «Who wrote Turgenev’s Mu-mu?»

«I don’t name anyone,» she snorted. – And I’m not Lina. You’ve made a mistake.

– You don’t understand me, Russian woman. I’ll ask you what your name is. And Lina… You look a lot like her.

The girl introduced herself and smiled back, as much as her broken cheek would allow her. But the magician opened his mouth in surprise. Even if it’s not Lina, Alina, what’s the difference.

– Are you a foreigner? – she asked in response. – But you know Russian quite well.

– I’m coming to Moscow from Prague. My name is Dan. I study Russian at school. I am a necromancer. I will get…

But he didn’t have time to finish. The orcs, who suspiciously quickly ceased to be interested in the dragon’s poetry, looked at the victim with a grin. But Alina understood perfectly well that the magician she met at the airport did not know combat spells. It’s a shame not to be able to use levitation, but other bells and whistles require strength. If Dan is a necromancer, then all his abilities are in resurrecting the dead, and not in throwing fireballs. That’s why the guy chased the orcs around the plane, because the only thing he could do to them was to exhaust their physical strength.

The sorceress stretched her hands forward and whispered:

– Fuck-tibi-doh-tibi-doh! Kirieshkus-dimedrolus!

She closed her eyes and imagined small crackers, filled with sleeping pills, flying out of the palm of her right hand. For some reason, out of fear, she decided that the stupid orcs would certainly rush to the crackers scattered on the ground and begin to devour them. As if the movie Shurik’s unsuccessful experience with the professor’s sausage didn’t mean anything.

But, alas, even the first point of Alina’s plan failed. She has not yet reached that absolute level when any imagined spells would be translated into reality. I rolled my lip, as they say: it was one to noon in the magical world, and I already wanted to throw homemade spells.

So it turned out that instead of a hail of crackers, a pack of «Kirieshki’ suddenly fell out of the sorceress’s hand. This would have been the end of the stupid idiot if one of the orcs had not picked up the crackers and swallowed them along with the packaging. Alina grimaced, how unsympathetic she was to such a habit of monsters.

Suddenly the non-human grabbed his stomach and spat out a pile of white rounds onto the ground… sucked diphenhydramine tablets. In the best traditions of «Operation Y», as you would expect!

However, the effect of the spell immediately manifested itself, and the orc, unable to overcome gluttony, fell to the ground, snoring loudly.

«You are a very powerful magician, Alina,» Dan patted her on the shoulder. «You are no worse than Lina, with whom I confused you.»

The two remaining monsters, having recovered from putting their comrade to sleep, grabbed him by the arms and ran towards the airport service premises, loudly shouting to the skeletons in the trucks that hooligan magicians were operating at the fence.

«I would probably die if Alina didn’t save me,» said the necromancer, taking the girl’s hand and touching the back of her hand with his lips.

Oddly enough, in her twenty-three years of life the girl had never met such a gallant gentleman as the young necromancer turned out to be. And even if he doesn’t look like Sylvester Stallone or Leonardo DiCaprio, it doesn’t matter that his long-nosed face is not at all photogenic, and his amber eyes combined with thick silver hair made him look like a Japanese cartoon character. But despite all this, there was something attractive about him. She lowered her gaze and covered her bruised cheek with her hand.

– Is a Russian girl embarrassed? – the magician pouted, – Dan doesn’t understand.

– Hey, what are you doing there? – a skeleton on a cart, driving towards the place where the sorceress and the necromancer stood, shouted into a megaphone. – Who allowed you to walk along the runway as if it were Arbat?

The skeletons in Novosibirsk and Moscow were in exactly the same uniforms, only on the back of their orange vests were different airport names.

From her past life, Alina knew very well what the risks of walking along the tarmac were: if you weren’t arrested and called a terrorist, you’d be run over by an airplane or blasted with such hot air that you’d turn into a chop. Airports in the world of magicians were no different, with the exception of the skeletal-goblin staff, of course.

– Levitation! – Alina and Dan said, each in their own language, and jumped over the fence.

– And what about me? – the dragon howled, starting to climb the net in the opposite direction.

«You’ll catch up, poet,» the necromancer waved his hand and walked towards the transport stop.

The sorceress, limping on her leg that was broken on the asphalt (and she only now felt pain in her knee), trudged behind. She still had nowhere to go, and this young man, whom she saw at the most terrible moment in her life (or death), could explain something. What if the ticket was his doing?

«Excuse me, Dan,» she interrupted the short pause, «what did these airport orcs want from you?» Who is Pink Fifa?

– Dan doesn’t know. «Dan is coming to catch Pink Fifa,» he answered dryly and looked back towards the fence.

The persistent dragon had already climbed back, unfortunately for the skeletons, and was rushing after the owner and his random sorceress acquaintance. The necromancer slowly walked to the stop, crossing his arms over his chest and looking at the sky. Alina kept trying to look into his face, but the sharp-nosed magician kept turning away from her.

«Dan, Dan,» she became too intrusively attached to him.

– Tell me, beautiful girl, where in this city should the polyglot magician live?

She stared questioningly at the foreign tourist.

– Dan wants to know Russian without an accent. Then Dan tells the beautiful girl Alina why being with him is dangerous.

«But,» the sorceress became embarrassed, «I have never been beautiful.» I’m ugly.

He stopped abruptly and turned around, grabbing her hands.

– There is no such thing as an ugly girl, every girl is beautiful!

If he had paid attention not only to the self-critical Alina, he would have noticed how his dragon suddenly stopped and began to finish writing the poem.

– And also, Dan, it doesn’t matter to me that it’s dangerous with you, since only you can explain to me what happened to me. You saw it all. You were in non-magical Novosibirsk. And maybe you know who sent me the plane ticket. I don’t know where to go, who to look for, what is expected of me, why did I leave that life? Let me be by your side until I find the answers to my questions. My intuition tells me to do just that.

«No,» the necromancer snapped, quickening his pace.

– Yes! – the sorceress answered persistently, catching up with him. «I saw how helpless you were.» You don’t know how to cast combat spells, and your poet can’t even breathe fire on the enemy to protect you!

– I will show someday that Dan is not helpless and knows how to fight. But Dan does it at too high a price. He doesn’t do this over trifles like orcs.

The dragon jumped forward and, looking displeasedly at Alina, read in broken Russian, as he said, the quatrain he had just written from his brilliant poem.

The Black Dragon and the Russian know, And the ungrateful girl understands, She will be asking for forgiveness, When the Dragon publishes his book, And becomes a great author.

– Which of my ill-wishers taught you Russian? – the magician cursed in his native language.

«Idiot, do you still doubt that I am the most talented dragon in the whole world?» – the pet was offended and, sitting down by the side of the road, wrote down a couple more lines in a notebook.

While he was distracted by the manuscript, the sorceress returned to the question that there was no one to protect Dan. She, of course, admitted that she was not much of a magician, because she had never even studied at the appropriate school.

«You are a strong battle mage, Alina,» the necromancer praised the modest girl, «you use the author’s spell, you are a good warrior, you come with the first layer.»

The terminology is unclear, but certainly familiar. The girl began to remember the novels of Sergei Lukyanenko, where six layers of Twilight were noted. She even tried to tell Dan something about the books she had read, but the necromancer just shook his head and began to desperately convince her new acquaintance that all the stories from writers from the first layer never reflect the actual state of things, and promised to tell about the structure of the world as soon as he will be able to speak Russian without an accent.

The companion who had imposed herself on his head was frightened, but Dan only reassured her and added again that he wanted to speak with the beautiful girl only in her native language. From another compliment, Alina blushed again and walked, looking at the toes of her shoes.

All her classmates at school laughed at her at one time. Because of this, after finishing ninth grade, she went to college, but even there the ridicule of the tall, thin girl did not stop. If there are beautiful princesses in the world, then for balance there should also be stuffed animals with long ugly noses, thin lips, small, poorly developed breasts, chubby knees and narrow hips. You don’t choose your appearance, and neither do congenital diseases. Alina suffered from a weak heart all the time, but for some reason here, in the magical analogue of her own world, she stopped feeling pain in her chest. But all this is not so important… the foreigner called her beautiful. What bad taste this necromancer has.

The girl was distracted from these thoughts by Dan’s shout. He stood on the steps of a stopped minibus and waved his hand to her. The dragon writer had already settled into the front seat next to the driver, a thick-headed golem.

– Alina, do you want to go to the city? – asked the necromancer.

– Yes, sure.

He gallantly let her go ahead of him into the salon and slammed the door.

– Why is the driver a golem? – the sorceress asked him in a whisper.

In fact, minibuses are a purely Russian phenomenon, and the foreigner did not have the slightest idea about the national characteristics of local roads and drivers.

«So that if she crashes into a pole, she won’t die,» the pitch black man sitting opposite her whispered.

«Schumacher’s children are the same as in that life,» she thought. It’s a pity that there was no one to tell these thoughts to. The minibus rushed at full speed towards Moscow, and Alina and Dan played a staring contest and occasionally complained to each other that they were both seeing the capital of Russia for the first time, and where to find a polyglot magician capable of putting fluency in Russian into the mind of a necromancer, they had no representation.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), they were unable to reach the city safely. As soon as the minibus passed the ring road, a police car jumped out across it, and the golem driver had to stop the Gazelle, although slightly denting the side of the patrol Zhiguli car.

A goblin in a gray uniform got out of the car and, looking displeasedly at the damage and presenting his ID, asked the golem:

– Police Sheremetyevo-2. Where is the citizen of the Czech Republic, Daniel Spatnynote 4, necromancer, twenty-five years old, and his black dragon?

The creature sitting next to the driver closed the notebook and chattered when the goblin stared at him:

– I am a white dragon, and you are colorblind, and Dan is not in this machine.

«Alina,» the necromancer whispered to his companion, «you make me become invisible, prosimnote 5. The battle mage must be able to walk to the first layer.»

Should, but not obliged. The sorceress could not do this. And if such an ability came with a full set of magic spells in one package with fireballs, water cannons and diphenhydramine, then she had not yet learned how to use it.

True, there was a clue: all the spells that she cast during the battle with the orcs came from her heart, whatever she wished came true. Yes, with diphenhydramine there was a slight overlay, but still, some semblance of what was desired was achieved. And since Dan claimed that any battle mage could hide in the non-magical analogue of this world, then the spell should work properly. In addition, Alina couldn’t get the names of two parallel worlds out of her head: the first and second layers. Almost according to Lukyanenko. How did Gorodetsky go into the Twilight? Maybe the same principles work on this second layer?

The sorceress found her shadow and imagined that she was falling into it. No, it didn’t work! What was written by science fiction writers in that world did not work here. Or was she just not trying hard enough? The girl once again presented Twilight as it was shown in films, and as the author described matter in novels. But, alas, the substance invented or spotted in the magical worlds by Sergei Lukyanenko refused to obey her. If, in general, there was Twilight around the sorceress.

Dan looked at her pleadingly. No, she couldn’t let her new acquaintance down. Alina closed her eyes and imagined that she was becoming transparent, disappearing, the same thing happening with the necromancer and his dragon.

While the sorceress was weaving a spell to move to another world, the black dragon convinced the police goblin that he still does not distinguish colors, and that there are color blind people who confuse white and black, and he, the dragon, has an accent that is not Czech at all, but Moldavian, and his owner works at one of the construction sites in the center of Moscow. How the animal managed to find out about the Moldovan workers being brought to the capital is unknown, but from the outside his speech looked convincing.

Meanwhile, Alina slowly erased the images of her companions from the second layer. And suddenly… the same feeling: the colors around lost their saturation, and then, as if someone had turned on a switch, and the colors returned to their places. «So this is what happened to me in Tolmachevo,» the thought flashed through her head like a spark.

And now it’s no longer a golem sitting in the minibus, but a bald bully driver, and he communicates with an ordinary Russian cop. He, judging by the conversations, issues a fine for driving on the wrong side of the road. And in the GAZelle’s interior, instead of pitch-black creatures, vampires and other magical creatures, there are ordinary people.

«Here it is, the first layer,» Dan said, taking the sorceress by the hand, «you won’t see us magicians here.» We need to hide quickly. As long as Alina has strength. If she uses up all her magical power, she will die.

But why then, there, in Novosibirsk, did she not lose her abilities and die? One more question for the collection.

Dan walked through the closed door of the minibus and offered his hand to the sorceress. The dragon followed and all three decided to get away as quickly as possible from the GAZelle, on which someone had set a goblin policeman.

It couldn’t have come at a better time when a long red truck passed by, carrying a shipment of Coca-Cola. It was simply impossible not to jump into such a car. So all three fled from the scene along the first layer. Luckily for them, the car in the non-magical world was driving just in time to a store near one of the metro stations. And as soon as the trio finished their journey among the soda cans, Alina returned herself and her comrades back to the second layer.

«It worked,» Dan took a breath, looking around. «You are a strong magician, you need to be on the first layer for twenty-four minutes,» he deliberately looked at his watch, «and not lose your power.» An ordinary magician can be there for ten minutes, or fifteen. Rare mage lasts longer. You are stronger than Lin.

The tired girl sat down on a bench at the entrance to the subway and greedily inhaled the air of the magical world. Although she is a powerful magician according to Dan, this time being invisible took a lot of her strength. Maybe it’s because she didn’t just rub herself over the first layer. It’s okay, she’ll figure this out later. And how did her new acquaintance know what the first layer looked like? Has he been there before with another magician? Or he can do it himself, he’s just saving his strength, you poor bourgeois!

– So, they dragged me to the townsfolk, sat me on a box of brown soda, and I still didn’t have time to tell this goblin policeman that I was a brilliant poet…

«You’ll make yourself known again,» Dan waved his hand in the direction of the advertisement taped to the post.

«A polyglot magician. 456-78-90».

The dragon shuddered from his unkind gaze.

Chapter 4. About Russian slang and Japanese poets

Old man Methodius was sitting in the kitchen drinking tea with raspberries when the doorbell rang.

«How fast they are,» he shook his head and went to open it.

Mother Nature did not endow the old man with a height of a meter with a cap, if not lower.

Jumping, he hung on the handle, and the door opened. On the threshold stood a tall, broad-shouldered man, a thin girl slightly shorter than her companion, and a pet dragon clutching a colorful notebook to its chest.

– Did you call me, gentlemen? – the grandfather lisped into his beard.

And the old man’s hair was thick, long, and curly. Even his light brown hair had not turned grey, despite the fact that this man could have been at least a hundred years old. And if you take into account the specifics of life on the second layer, then all three hundred. But judging by his behavior and the energy that was overflowing, it was as if my grandfather had turned twenty a week ago.

«Yes, dear Methodius,» the necromancer said, putting his hand on his heart. – My name is Daniel, this is my friend Alina, and this is my black dragon.

«Come in, come in,» muttered the magician, opening the door to the library for the guests.

And all three entered the only room, which the owner rightly called a book depository.

The abode of the polyglot magician was no different from the traditional housing of Russians of the twentieth century: a single room, a workplace and a bedroom at the same time, a narrow corridor, a kitchen three by three meters. And, being lined from floor to ceiling with dictionaries of all kinds, such an apartment looked even smaller than what was noted in the warrant.

Methodius covered the windows in the only room with black curtains that did not let in a single ray of light. It was possible to see at least something only thanks to a small lamp standing on a small round table in the middle of the room. All the furniture was made exclusively of wood, and instead of carpets, the old man laid out bear skins on the floor.

«Here,» the grandfather complained, taking a stepladder from around the corner, «he lived in the village, he had a good house, a pine frame, so they demolished it, the damned trolls, they, you see, expanded the city, and so as not to get angry and send letters to the Council, they gave me an apartment.

Grumbling, he placed the ladder at one of the shelves and walked to a round table, on which, in addition to the lamp, lay a large notebook covered in small handwriting. This is how only students write cheat sheets and experienced magicians encode their wisdom.

– Yes, dear guests, what languages would you like to learn? Modern ones – one hundred dollars, ancient ones – one thousand, encryption – five.

«I want to know modern Russian,» Dan said, picking in his pocket for money.

When he found a hundred dollar bill, he placed it on the table in front of his grandfather.

The satisfied old man smiled and, lifting up the hem of his long linen shirt, groaning, climbed onto the stepladder and took out a small soft-bound book from the top shelf.

– Does the Great and Mighty take up so little space? – Alina was surprised.

Then she began to read the inscriptions on the remaining dictionaries: English, Spanish, Italian. It was as if she had ended up in the foreign literature department. But all the other books were much thicker than the dictionary that her grandfather got, and this alarmed her. But, alas, it’s too late. Before she had time to share her suspicions with Dan, the old man began to perform witchcraft.

Methodius seated the necromancer at the round table opposite him. The magician, who turned out to be almost twice as tall as the old polyglot, felt very uncomfortable on the small, low three-legged stool. But he endured, because investing knowledge in five minutes is much faster than learning the language on your own.

In general, the magic of polyglots has always been considered very dangerous. Any magical effect on the brain is like this. One wrong word in a spell, and a person may forever lose his memory or knowledge of his native language. Therefore, as Dan managed to tell Alina on the way to Methodius, in childhood all wizards and sorcerers studied one or two foreign languages, and then, at the age of twenty, they were allowed to visit a polyglot magician so that they could correct their grammar and remove their accent. Such actions are not too dangerous; it is difficult to make mistakes in spells to improve knowledge. Why is that? The whole point is not the science of magic, but the fact that nothing can be given for nothing. And even if a licensed polyglot magician teaches someone to speak gibberish in five minutes, on the other side of the world a connoisseur of this language may completely lose his memory. Wizards called this effect the law of equal exchange in nature.

Methodius wrapped the dictionary in skin and placed it in front of the client. After that, he quickly ran to the kitchen and brought a kettle. Judging by the way the grandfather carried it, it was heavy, filled to the brim. From there he poured a viscous black liquid (was it tar?) into a bowl that stood on the window, and then splashed the substance onto the skin in which the book was wrapped. As soon as the first drop touched the fur, the fur began to glow bright blue. Having finished with the impregnation, the old man removed the skin from the book and wrapped it around the head of Dan, who was sitting at the table.

The black dragon sat comfortably in a corner and immersed himself in his favorite pastime. Alina looked at everything that was happening with her mouth open. She had seen similar actions more than once in television programs on the first layer, where various psychics and other suspicious individuals who considered themselves magicians performed.

When the skin stopped glowing, the old man removed the bandage from Dan’s head. The necromancer sat on a chair, closed his eyes, and was afraid to move.

«Well,» the grandfather lisped, «say something in the new Russian.»

– Cool, bro! – the magician slapped the old man on the shoulder, so that he could not stand on his feet and sat down in surprise.

– Whaaaat?!?!?! – Alina was indignant.

– Oh, great, chick! – Dan smiled, hugging the girl’s hips.

Five minutes ago, this intelligent Czech guy addressed her so respectfully: «beautiful girl,» but what if… something is wrong… Is it possible that along with knowledge of the language, a person acquires disgusting character traits?

«Dan,» she said offended, pulling his hand away. – What do you say?

She grabbed the guy by the shoulders and started shaking him in the hope of knocking out this gross nonsense.

– What a cool bazaar, absolutely nothing! Are you, like, not getting it?

«I get it, I get it,» the sorceress mimicked him, «but why, having learned a foreign language, start being rude in it?»

– I’m freaking out! – the necromancer rolled his eyes, picking up a thin dictionary.

«Modern Russian slang and obscene expressions,» Alina read what was written on the cover.

«Dear Methodius,» she shouted at her grandfather, «do you even pay attention to what you teach a respectable foreigner?»

– Why the hell stare?

The old man chuckled, took the book from the girl and put it in its place, and then began to look for something.

– Isn’t this necessary? – she asked, taking out from under the leg of the stepladder Ozhegov’s thick black Explanatory Dictionary.

Almost every Russian schoolchild knew this book very well. But… the ladder, from under which the thick book was taken out, naturally fell to one side along with the old man.

It turned out that the grandfather carelessly touched his lamp and it, coming into contact with the bear’s skin, started a serious fire. With the number of books in the room, everyone present could have burned alive in a matter of minutes.

The dragon jumped up on its hind legs, clutching the precious manuscript to its chest. Dan, deprived of any vocabulary except Russian Newspeak, stomped on the tabletop and shouted heart-rendingly:

– The author is burning! Ftopku sovar of the Russian language!

Methodius, numb with horror, watched as the fire approached both him and his precious collection.

And only Alina, who by some miracle did not lose her composure, stretched out her hand, free from the dictionary, and shouted:

– Sandstorm!

The spell again spontaneously surfaced in her memory, from which book or film – she did not remember. The girl imagined how the earth began to move under her feet, how dust rose in a column and circulated around her feet, and then dispersed and was covered by fire, which had almost reached the dictionaries of the polyglot magician. The grandfather sat on his knees, looking with fear at the burnt wool on one of the skin-carpets, and tears welled up in his clear blue eyes. His collection was saved!!!

When Alina lowered her hand, the tornado stopped circulating, and the sand fell to the ground in an even circle around the girl. Definitely, after this spell, the magician’s apartment required cleaning.

The sorceress put Ozhegov’s dictionary on the table at Dan’s feet and stared at the old man with an imperious gaze:

– Teach him Russian back! Correct your mistakes.

Grateful for saving the collection, Methodius agreed, despite the fact that the fire happened due to Alina’s carelessness. Somehow the old man quickly forgot the bad things, but he seemed to remember the good things well for a long time. He did not demand a hundred dollars from the brave sorceress in exchange for the necromancer’s half-burnt bill sticking out of the sandy hill.

Grandfather shook the sand out of his sandals and asked Dan to get off the table and sit on a chair.

– Shave yourself! – the client stuck his tongue out at the grandfather.

– I’ll shave you! – the magician groaned, kicking one of the table legs.

Dan expected anything from the old man, but not that his leg would be kept on his word of honor. As a result, he fell painfully on his back, hitting his head on a stack of dictionaries.

– You’re a fool, rotten old man, ax-head! – he hissed through his teeth, picking up the extinguished lamp from the floor.

Alina took it from the magician’s hands and, snapping her fingers, lit the wick, wanting to give the lamp to her grandfather, but that was not the case. The necromancer held it by the base with a strong grip and was not going to give it up. He jerked the lamp towards himself so that the sorceress almost fell nose-first into the dusty, scattered books of the old man Methodius. Dan squeezed the lamp in his left hand, and with his right began to move over the flame, as if he was writing fancy runes in the air. So this is how necromancers cast their spells!

The magician with the lamp walked straight towards the old polyglot, who at that time was reciting a spell over Ozhegov’s dictionary.

The dragon diligently scribbled quatrains without raising his head. At such moments, the muse came to him without asking and did not leave until the poet’s owner accomplished a feat.

Alina was unable to do anything. All that remained was to rely on fate. The fox’s skin sparkled blue, and the old man turned to the necromancer. And he had already raised a lamp high above him with a ready-made spell and a soul summoned from the Kingdom of the Dead. It’s just like an illustration for «Crime and Punishment» in the magical world, only Raskolnikov’s motives are completely stupid.

The grandfather, as the sorceress often recalled later, turned out to be dexterous and prepared for any actions on the part of his clients, so he accurately threw the skin at the necromancer’s head, and he rolled head over heels at his feet.

Blinded Dan, who did not expect such a turn of events, dropped the lamp into a pot of ficus standing on the window.

At the same moment, the room was filled with the smell of incense, and everyone present closed their eyes, because the acrid fog painfully stung the iris. Only a minute later the desperate dragon-writer decided to see with his own eyes the heroic feat of his grandfather.

– What was it? – the necromancer removed the faded fox skin from his forehead.

Alina and Methodius sat in different corners, closing their eyes and bowing their heads. The satisfied dragon, biting his tongue, wrote the next chapter of the poem, and instead of a ficus, a motionless long-haired tortoiseshell cat sat on the window.

– Yana?! – Dan rolled his eyes. – I didn’t call you!

The animal meowed in response, but did not move. The frightened sorceress first opened one eye, and, realizing that the danger had passed, opened the second one. The polyglot grandfather did the same.

«Forgive me, dear Methodius, for the mess and the attack on your person,» Dan bowed and continued to apologize, «when you gave me a dictionary of modern Russian slang, I could barely restrain myself from saying something obscene, and for some other reason the vocabulary began to control my character.

«Believe me, dear Daniel,» the old man said, putting his hand on his heart; the necromancer understood from his eyes that he was sincere. – I didn’t want to teach you this. When you said that you wanted to know modern Russian, I seemed to be bewitched, and I went for a slang dictionary.

Dan and Alina looked at each other. And the dragon settled down on an overturned table, as if on a barricade, and began to read a poem in Czech:

Fifa Pink is a bastard, And she secretly ordered the polyglot Dan to teach him swear words.

«Dear Daniel,» Methodius interrupted the dragon’s recitation, «to atone for my guilt, I am ready to do anything for you.»

The necromancer scratched the back of his head, and at this time the dragon continued:

Skins are burning, books are burning, and Alina slowly, a tornado suddenly catches up with everything, and that fire goes out!

– Hurray, it’s catching up and fading! I finally got a rhyme! – the poet squealed, jumping up and down on the table lying on its side.

– ABOUT! – Dan raised his index finger up, – teach our dragon Japanese. Let him write haiku! And so that he could not express himself in other languages!

And, after thinking a little, he added:

– That is, he can understand, but he doesn’t speak.

– You’re welcome.

– Dan, what are you doing? – the pet was indignant and was about to rush at the owner, but Alina held the animal by the paws, and Methodius successfully carried out the retraining operation.

The tortoiseshell cat watched everything that was happening in surprise, but could not move.

«Arigato, Mefodiusu-san! note 6,» the dragon bowed to the magician when the polyglot removed the skin from his forehead.

«Now say it in Russian,» Dan grinned.

«Denieru-sama no baka desunote 7,» the animal snorted, clutching the precious notebook to its chest.

The old man laughed hysterically, his mustache comically moving up and down, and the wizards, who did not understand anything in Japanese, could only guess what was funny about the black dragon.

«It’s okay, you’ll have a fight and then you’ll stop,» the grandfather grinned, stroking him on the withers.

He only looked at everyone present with a pitiful glance.

«Allow me, Mr. Methodius,» the necromancer began, not paying attention to the pet, «to borrow a dictionary of curse words from you in exchange for… the cat that is on your window.»

The old man ruffled his beard, looking first at the furry creature, then at the book in Dan’s hands, but still agreed to the exchange, complaining about his guilt. This was all the magician needed. He put the bad dictionary in his bosom and, taking Alina by the arm, gallantly said goodbye to the polyglot.

«Jaa ne, Mefodiusu-san! note 8,» the dragon shouted, leaving the linguist’s apartment.

As soon as the grandfather closed the door behind the guests, Dan pressed Alina to his chest, so that the girl did not even have time to be embarrassed from surprise, and the animal, with its mouth open, watched what the owner would do next. And this event will become the theme of his first tercet in his life.

«I don’t like this grandfather,» the necromancer whispered in her ear.

The girl sighed sadly. She expected at least a kiss on the cheek, and again there were things to do, surveillance, FIFA and other nasty things of this world.

«Don’t be upset,» he took her hand, «do you think I didn’t leave him a cat on the window on purpose?» I am, of course, not a spy, but I have some experience in this matter.

– Is the dictionary enchanted?

«I don’t think so, I’ll have to buy a magic meter and check.» Most likely, this is due to the old man, who was treated before our arrival.

All three went downstairs. As soon as the sorceress Alina, Dan and the dragon came out from under the entrance canopy, a large red brick fell right in front of them and broke into small pieces.

«Those times are like in a joke,» the sorceress said under her breath, remembering her previous life.

– KSO! note 9 – the dragon swore, but no one understood him, they only appreciated negative emotions.

The wizards looked up and noticed that a small imp was sitting on the fifth floor balcony, and next to him were three more bricks.

– Here are those two! – the devil chuckled, throwing off the second brick.

If the «Shield’ spell had been cast a millisecond longer, then none of the victims would have been alive. And so, hitting the transparent shield, like a drop on an umbrella, it shattered into small pieces. The disgruntled little devil wanted to throw down two more bricks, but, realizing that the idea would not succeed anyway, he disappeared into the apartment, finally waving his tail with a donut on the tip.

«Eh, a good witness ran away,» Dan was upset, «otherwise we are all hiding, hiding and doing nothing.»

«Yeah,» Alina agreed, «we’ll find it again.» These evil spirits are following in droves.

«So desu ko! note 10,» the dragon confirmed.

If he often speaks Japanese, then the sorceress and the necromancer will soon learn this language even without any polyglot magicians.

«Okay, let’s go to the metro,» Dan took the sorceress by the hand, «we’ll go to the hotel, but for now I’ll tell you how the world works.» Otherwise, on your first layer they don’t know anything except all sorts of Darwinian theories.

They walked slowly along the wide avenue, and the magician began to give a tedious lecture, which even the black dragon refused to write down. Or maybe his muse just got bored, and they didn’t want to put together hockey.

Alina made a discovery for herself: on planet Earth, it turns out, there are two layers of reality and they develop in parallel, in the same way, because energy constantly flows from one to another and back. There is a third layer, but everything that goes there can never return, which is why that world is called the Kingdom of the Dead. No one knows what is going on there, because not a single living creature has been able to return from there. Yes, there are magicians on the second layer who call themselves necromancers, who can temporarily summon someone from the Kingdom of the Dead, but, alas, for a finite period. A blocker is placed on the soul so that it does not tell anyone about living there. There are rumors that there is an eternal carefree life there, but no one has yet confirmed or denied this speculation.

Many necromancers are struggling to remove the blocker, and they even offered a bonus for this. However, as soon as the magician manages to destroy the protection, he immediately finds himself in the Kingdom of the Dead following the soul of the summoned one. Did you want to? Look!

Dan also studied blockers in secret from the masters of the school; he studied all the theory, but was afraid of experiments. After all, if he does it himself and doesn’t succeed, then there will be no one to continue, and if you attract volunteer magicians, then you can end up on a tribunal and be disembodied for experiments on human life. This is how the Kingdom of the Dead remains a mystery to the living for many years.

The second layer or ’true earth’ is the very wealth of the planet. This is where the best people in the world are born, who call themselves magicians. Everyone has their own specialization and has no right to meddle in other people’s areas of knowledge. Even if someone very much wants to become, for example, a polyglot or a cook instead of their destiny as a doctor, this will not be possible due to natural characteristics. Only a few everyday spells such as levitation and fire spark, which many magicians replace with mini-fireballs, or ordinary healing spells to treat minor injuries and colds could be used by almost everyone without exception. But necromancers, for example, were forbidden to take their own fire for the ritual of summoning the soul.

A magical gift cannot be chosen; it is inherited down to the third generation: that is, from fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers. It turns out that your distant relative was a shapeshifter magician, and you can become one, and then your son will be born an alchemist, like your father’s uncle. The gift is determined immediately after birth. It happens simply: Alina had the honor of seeing a similar detector at the Novosibirsk airport. Then it’s a matter of technique: school, college, specialization, and the magician is ready for life. Fighters, however, are taught spells earlier, but this is an exception, because aggressive magic is much simpler than necromancy, alchemy, teleportation, polyglotism or healing.

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