The Awakening (Dungeon Guards, Volume 1) by Dusk Peterson

Author:Dusk Peterson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction / Alternative History
Publisher: Love in Dark Settings Press
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

4 | Tempest

The year 364, the eighth month. (The year 1883 Barley by the Old Calendar.)

CHAPTER ONE

“Are you sure we’re headed in the right direction?” asked Clifford.

Barrett looked up from the newspaper. He had been reading accounts of a rumbling volcano on a faraway island, of a tornado that flattened a city in one of the Midwest nations, and of an overseas house that had been jolted by an earthquake, with the result that its gas pipes had broken and the entire family inside had fried in a ball of flame. All of these disasters were described in lurid detail by the reporters. Barrett set the newspaper aside. He had enough lurid activities at work. Instead, he concentrated his attention on the argument between Clifford and D.

“ . . . out in the middle of nowhere,” Clifford was saying.

“Well, where else could we be going?” D. sounded cross, the way he always did when he was worried. “This is the Norfolk and Yclau Beach Railway. The train must go to Yclau Beach.”

“Perhaps it travelled onto the wrong track.” Clifford turned his head to stare out the window at the pine forest they were passing through. “Your father’s railroad has only just opened, hasn’t it?”

“Cliff, he has been a railroadman for thirty years! He’s not going to lose a train.”

“Maybe we should ask the others.” Clifford’s voice was doubtful as he turned his gaze toward their fellow passengers.

Barrett couldn’t blame him for his hesitance. Judging from the clothing and the conversations, the cream of Yclau’s society was packed into this carriage. Barrett would swear that the man across the aisle from him was a duke.

Barrett swung his wicker armchair around to stare again at the scenery outside. The sun had only just risen an hour before; it was difficult to see where they were headed, with the sun directly in their eyes. They had passed nothing since they left Norfolk except farms, though. This hardly lived up to the description that D.’s mother had offered in her invitation, of an “opulent setting.”

Glancing back at his travelling companions, Barrett saw that D. was on the point of blowing up. Barrett decided to intervene; he hated arguments. Squinting against the sun, he made out something at the horizon. “Station?” he suggested.

D. and Clifford turned their chairs to look, with a swiftness which suggested that they too were regretting the argument. Barrett leaned forward in his seat. Certainly something lay ahead, though it was hard to see through the pine forest. The object grew more visible as the train clattered over a short bridge spanning what appeared to be a lake. Then the train was past the trees, and he could see clearly their destination.

The building was too big to be a station; it looked more like one of the sixteenth-century manor-houses that dotted the Yclau countryside, every one of them surrounded by fields with servants hard at work. This building was new, though. As the track turned sharply north to allow the train to draw up in front of the building, Barrett caught sight of something blue, to the east of them.

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