The Eidolon

The Eidolon The Magnus Academy Series: Book 1 K.D. Edwards Copyright © 2023 K.D. Edwards No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles, reviews and social media features.This book is a work of fiction. Names, character, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (or undead), business establishments, events or locals, is entirely coincidental. Unless Brand calls you an asshole. If Brand calls you an asshole, you’re probably an asshole.ISBN-13: 979-8-9874287-1-9Primary Cover art by Dezaray ShulerSecondary Cover art by Bethany Cath (@cheshire.cath94)Dust Jacket design and Magnus Academy seal by Justyna ChlopeckaInternal typesetting and design by M. MoonEndpaper designs by Jake Shandy (www.JakeShandy.com), Caerwyn Roberts, Kelly Rodgers (@orbynit), and MenonoRC For my Beta Readers, who helped get this book to the finish line, and reminded me how lucky I am to have the type of readers and friends I do. Foreword Putting together The Eidolon was the chance of a lifetime. Traditional publishing has its limits—it doesn’t change course easily, and the pandemic created a host of shortages and supply chain issues. This resulted in a strict page limit to the third book in my main series, The Tarot Sequence. I was forced to excise a significant storyline featuring my “book kids” – the younger generation of Sun Estate. The problem was that this excised material was big. Really big. Fundamentally big things happen to Max, Quinn, and Anna that may change readers perspective of everything that’s come before this. So I set about drafting the idea for a stand-alone novelette that told their story – a sort of companion piece of The Hourglass Throne. Things snowballed from there. The novelette became a novella, and the novella became—technically, at least—a short novel. Not only did I get to expand my vision of the mysterious ghost trap called the Eidolon, I was able to include more scenes with the villainous Lady Jade. I was able to include characters tangentially referenced in the main series, but never described on paper before. I also saved one of my biggest “series bombs” for the story—including a scene that I’ve waited years to write, which will give Eidolon readers advance notice on certain revelations bearing down on Rune in his next book. Even better? I opted for a hybrid publishing model for this first series. A limited edition hardcover is being prepared by the queer subscription book service, Rainbow Crate. Audible will create an audio version. And I’ll sell Content Warnings Violence Nudity Drug Use Smoking Unwanted Sexual Advances Meddlesome Kids in Danger For more information, as well as access to free between-the-novels stories, please visit kd-edwards.com/extra-content Prologue Quinn The wheel on the oxygen cart squealed as Quinn dragged it across the small stretch of grass that led to a downtown plaza. There was no oxygen cylinder in it, just an assortment of random objects, including an umbrella, a rake, several plywood boards, and a plastic bag of quarters, dimes, and nickels. He’d found the cart in the basement of Sun Estate and gladly traded his heavy duffle bag for it. The first few stops were easy. He left a dollar and eighty-five cents in one of the city’s rare remaining payphones. The umbrella went behind the bench of an unsheltered bus stop outside a women’s shelter. The boards were carefully laid down on a sewer grate. He would squint in the air and chew his lip every so often. Slowly, the things he Saw stopped spinning in so many chaotic directions. The nice lady almost always never tripped; the young woman usually grabbed the umbrella and sat quietly in the rain until she found the resolve to cross the road; and the penniless man with the tears in his eyes usually called the American embassy before something hunted him down. (It was unclear what something was, but the man wrote a really pretty song in the future, and Quinn wanted a copy for his playlist.) He turned his gnawed lip to the rake, trying to remember where that one went. He suspected