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.
