– 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.

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.