completely and would never even entertain the faintest glimmer of

suspicion concerning his pupil’s duplicity. Kanno had waited until

he was absolutely certain of the spells the master used to unlock

the invisible, thaumaturgic seals on his ancient scrolls and

leather-bound tomes. And even after he had learned all those spells

by heart, backward and forward, he still resisted the temptation

until he was sure, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that there were

no other warding spells that might entrap him or alert Yohaku to

what he had done. For years, Kanno bided his time patiently. And

then, when he felt totally secure in his duplicity, he broke the

sacred bond between master and apprentice, a bond that he truly

felt did not apply to him, for after all, had he not proved himself to

be the master?

Twenty years to the day after he first approached Yohaku, the

master agreed that he was ready to advance to the rank of wizard.

And once again, Kanno achieved the highest scores in the exams. It

was at that point that, with a great display of false regret, he

parted from the master, expressing his desire to dedicate himself to

the lifelong mastery of the art of thaumagenetic engineering. And

once again, Yohaku had been pleased, for while there were a great

many other branches of the path that Kanno could have chosen,

paths that led to a potential for far greater profit than what Kanno

had selected, none were regarded as being more spiritual, more

demanding, more harmonious and aesthetic as the art of bringing

into being new forms of life imbued with magic. Yohaku was proud

that his pupil had not chosen the path to wealth and power, but the

spiritual way of the true artist. And yet again, he was deceived.

Power was the be-all and end-all of Kanno’s whole existence. And

once again, displaying the ruthlessly methodical patience he had

schooled himself in over the years, Kanno waited, biding his time,

opening a small “magenics” shop in the Shinjuku district, with two

young apprentices of his own. He started unpretentiously, by

producing fairly common magenes such as snats, a magical hybrid

of a snail and a house cat, which resulted in a purring, affectionate

little life form with no legs that was capable of clinging to walls and

ceilings much like a snail in an aquarium, and paragriffins, a

hybrid of a parakeet and the mythical griffin, a sort of enchanted