avian cyborg with metallic-scaled wings that was capable of speech.

Only as common as those popular and well-established magenes

were, Kanno’s creations were truly works of art that stood head

and shoulders above all the others. His snats were derived not from

ordinary house cats, but from miniature ocelot, panther, and

Siberian tiger hybrids that he himself perfected. And his

paragriflfins were likewise based not on ordinary parakeets, but on

bonsai raptors and frigate birds, with variegated, iridescent scales

of titanium, silver, and gold, with jeweled eyes and immaculately

cut talons of emerald and amethyst. And every one of them was

engineered as painstakingly as a haiku was composed. Kanno’s

reputation as a thaumagenetic artist grew by leaps and bounds.

Yohaku positively beamed with pride in his former pupil.

After he was elevated to the rank of sorcerer, Kanno respectfully

declined numerous and highly lucrative offers of employment from

several large conglomerates, humbly- and politely stating his

opinion that true art could not be corporatized and produced on an

assembly line. After he took such a stance, the offers soon stopped

coming, at least from Japanese concerns, because no one wanted to

offend a master, but very soon thereafter, possession of a Kanno

magene became the ultimate of status symbols. Kanno pretended

discomfort at having to continually raise his prices, but he

apologetically gave the reason that only by doing so could he limit

the demand and continue to insure the highest standards of

thaumagenetic craftsmanship.

And, not long after that, the backlog of orders was so great,

despite the lofty prices, that Kanno closed his shop to orders from

the public—-though he left it open as a gallery where those who

could not afford his magenes could at least come in to view

them—and started working only on select commissions.

In the meantime, after his shop closed for the day and his

apprentices had left, Kanno worked diligently, late into the night,

pursuing his true calling—the art of necromancy.

Beneath his shop, in a long abandoned and forgotten excavation,

was a small underground mall that dated back to the days just

prior to the Collapse. The site on which his shop now stood had once

been an entrance to an underground arcade of exclusive boutiques,