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!
