The Magic Surrendered

By Dax Murray

"I haven't been trying to build a weapon! I have been trying to prevent a war. Ellie, please don't make me do this."

A short story about a brilliant mage and an insecure empress; of love and ethics, partnership and conflict. After generations of relentless expansion, Empress Eleanor is ready to put her family's habit of conquest behind her, content to cease her army's forward march and solidify her position as the ruler of the territories already in her possession. But these countries her fathers' conquered are eager to leave the Empire and willing to resort to revolution. Amalthea grew up poor, her homeland destitute after being invaded and occupied. But her new status as a citizen of the sparkling empire gives her access to the Academy of Mages and all of their teachings. However, once there, she defies their rules and pursues her own experiments with dangerous and forbidden magics. Despite this, she catches the Empress's eye and is soon the first official Imperial Scientist and the unofficial consort. Together, the two have the power to sow cohesion, spur innovation, and improve the lives of everyone in the Empire; or they could obliterate any resistance at a perilous cost.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Kraken Collective
• Release date: Sep 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215565162

Dax Murray

After realizing their dream of being a curmudgeonly hedgewitch in the woods of Western Pennsylvania was not possible due to the construction of a Dave & Busters, Dax took up a new form of sorcery, where they whispered to rocks in arcane languages and taught them how to spy on you, colloquially known as software engineering. After an epic battle between the forces of Ethics and Student Loan Payments, Dax left that behind to join the magical order of word-placing. Today, they can be found waiting on the two gods (ie: cats) who have allowed them to live in their abode and use their word-magic to make others cry. Dax studied political science and creative writing at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania and is a member of the Editorial Freelancers Association. When not writing, they can be found at the Crystarium in Norvrandt.

Book preview

The Magic Surrendered

Dax Murray

The Kraken Collective

For all the people who I have loved,

who never wholly loved me back.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Acknowledgments

About the Author

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Spring awakened slowly in this part of the world, bearing flooding rains and a mist that hung over the thaw from winter. When the gray lifted, the sun again cast warmth upon the land, and the flowers began to unfold themselves, the Empress would invite her closest friends to a picnic.  

The miasma of pollen left a certain glow on the entire event, and Amalthea wasn’t sure entirely to what she should attribute the daze in which she found herself. She was, as she called herself, a scientist. The mages mocked her, yet a roll of scented parchment had found itself into her small dark hands. Did the Empress wish to get to know the most scandalous woman at court? The woman who took the vows of a mage just to break them? Who invented titles for herself, who cloaked herself in an air of scientific supremacy over the superstitions of sorcery? The woman from that far-off conquered land who never should have been allowed in the Academy of Mages to begin with, and yet, despite her braided hair, was here?

The picnic was not the last time Amalthea found herself with a scented scroll. Spring became summer, and still the Empress sought out her company. At first it was a procession of small gatherings, where the intimacy was subtle, and sometimes Amalthea swore she imagined it. But steadily the Empress sought her out more. Earls and duchexxes gave her confused looks, seeking to know why the places of honor they once occupied were now given to a wayward and obstinate mage. A mage who wasn’t a citizen by birth but by conquest. But, all else aside, she was a mage: mages were tools,