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.

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.