GUTGAA Pitch Contest #16 - City of Magi

TITLE: City of Magi

Genre: Industrial-Era Fantasy (Adult)

Word Count: 272,888

QUERY:

When Astosen’s greatest military hero is found dead of an apparent heart attack, only Grayson Kearney, intelligence peddler, magus, and smuggler extraordinaire, suspects there is more than meets the eye. He enlists the help of Zia Locke, the hero’s daughter and a Magi Knight in the Astosenian military, and together they connect her father’s murder to a monarchist plot to overthrow Astosen’s fledgling democracy.

The enemies from within engage the help of continental superpower Valania, who is eager to weaken its former colony. Astosen’s independence was won with the discovery and production of the magi stones, a portable form of magic that even non-magi can use. Valania dreams of restoring its empire’s reach by seizing control of Astosen and its monopoly on magi stone production.

Grayson guides Zia through the depths of the capital city Dein Astos’s underworld to discover the truth, bring her father’s killers to justice, and fight to save the country. Dein Astos may not be perfect, but it’s the capital of the free world and the city that allowed Grayson to grow from an abandoned orphan into the architect of an underground empire. It’s a city unaware of his influence and guardianship, and one that only he has the power to defend.

CITY OF MAGI is a work of fantasy set in a magically-powered industrial society. It is the beginning of a saga spanning the length of the world war for control of the magi stones.

First 150 Words:

The funeral march of Alexander Locke began at dusk. Grayson Kearney watched the crowd of politicians, family friends, comrades-in-arms, and reporters walk slowly through the spidery shadows of the weeping willows lining their path. For them, it was a tragic loss: Alexander Locke, great Magi Knight, hero of the republic, leader of men, felled by a heart attack at only fifty-five years of age. Grayson shook his head at their simple, ignorant grief. They should have been outraged. Locke had been murdered.

Hundreds long, the procession wound its way up the cliffs overlooking the Western Sound, through the gates of the National Cemetery, and came to a close at the end of the Trail of Remembrance. Grayson stood solemnly across the cemetery at the grave of a woman he never knew, watching the mostly black-clad crowd with occasional flashes of purple cloaks as they fanned out around the fresh grave.