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.
