worked diligently on his task while Kanno suffered patiently, the

design had slowly taken form in brightly colored ink, agony, and

drops of blood. Week by week, the dragon slowly took shape. Kanno

could almost feel its power coiling across his back.

He had worked the spell with great care, spending hours at home

in the elaborate thaumaturgic ritual after each visit to the master.

Soon he would know whether or not his efforts had all been in vain.

He dreaded the possibility of failure. It was unthinkable that he

should not succeed. In a sense, he had been preparing for this day

ever since his early childhood, when he had first embarked upon the

thaumaturgic path. The effort and expense his parents had gone to

in order to secure a place for him in the proper preschool, followed

by the stringent and unceasing competition of Japan’s rigorous

school system, had only been the first steps taken on that path.

In order to gain admittance to Tokyo University’s School of

Thaumaturgy, it had been necessary to prepare almost from birth.

Admission to the university depended upon first being admitted to

the right high school and passing all the exams with only the

highest marks. And admission to the high school had been

dependent on securing a place in the right preparatory school and

so on, all the way back to childhood. And only those university

graduates who had achieved the highest honors could seek

admission to the postgraduate School of Thaumaturgy, which

required surviving Shiken-jigoku, the period known as “Exam Hell.

” Students often quite literally did not survive Shiken-jigoku, as the

intense pressure and the opprobrium of failure drove many of them

to suicide. Those who passed experienced a joy that was

transcendent, but short-lived. Life as a warlock demanded a total

immersion of the student in the thaumaturgic arts, a complete

self-sacrifice that left no time for any sort of social life. Nor was

graduation a release from the rigorous obligations of the Way. Even

then, successful completion of the courses in the School of

Thaumaturgy did not guarantee that one would ever pass beyond

the rank of warlock.

Following graduation, those students who had passed the

rigorous battery of tests had to embark upon a minimum of three

years as a warlock apprentice. Three years was the minimum, but