Having had great success with my retelling of Tristan und Isolde, I decided to try once again with the retelling of a not so ancient tale. The story premièred on September 30, 1790 in Vienna, Austria under the title Die Zauberflöte. The story follows two young couples who have to go through several trials before they can reach their goal. Since the original tale involved magic, I didn't have any trouble inserting it into my version of the Spells R Us universe. Those familiar with the story should have no trouble recognizing the characters in their modern garb. Of course I had to modernize the plot, and I took some liberties with my adaption. When trying to come up with the proper trials for my protagonists I immediately thought of the very first interactive computer game I ever played. It was played in several versions. The game was created by Willie Crowther and was titled The Adventure Game or something similar. The version I played, and eventually solved, had been expanded a bit from the original version; however, the original game perfectly fitted, at least I thought so, what I wanted to happen in this story.

I know many of the readers out there are turned off by The Wizard and the Spells R Us universe; however, my wizard is considerably more rational and humane than many portray him. I hope you will give the story a chance. It is not front end loaded like so many TG tales, i.e. quick transformations then a drawn out resolution. In most of my stories the problems are presented long before any transformations occur. The journey is the important thing building to the final resolution(s).

This is a novel (48,000 words) story, so there will be quite a bit of scene setting. Please give the story a chance, I think you will find it very satisfying. If you catch any gross errors, please let me know. I had some problems while writing it in mixing characters up.