PENUMBRA - Introduction and Prologue. A STEEM-PUNK novel and a Kraken good read

Hi everyone.
I'm an author and have written books, but never published through a 'house'. I think my latest story is worthy of being read by the public but I'm not a professional, and I'm not rich. Editing actually costs quite a lot so please bear with any grammar mistakes, extra capital letters or bloopers.

My book is of the fantasy variety set in a Victorian type world, very similar to our own, but with magic, strange beasts, different technologies, air ships and a Kraken.
I'm going to post the Prologue and then follow it up in the next few days with Chapter 1. This book is copyrighted by me, and it does have an ISBN. Please don't copy my work, I'm letting you read this here for free, so please don't abuse that.

Here is a synopsis;

" Life just got a hell of a lot less boring for acting Inspector Lee, aka 'The tea and ticket girl of King Giffy's station'. In fact, it has become extra-absu-blinking ordinary. Thrust petticoats first into a life or death struggle that means stepping up to save her world, Ivy must make a choice between a cosy life of silk dresses and flower arranging or entering a perilous fight to stop the obliteration of Terra.

The people have been cunningly manipulated. The streets are full of rioting mobs. Strange creatures lurk, rip, and murder in the flicker of gas-light. Different kinds of monsters occupy positions of power to carry out their vile machinations. And above all of this something terrifying and ancient is stirring from soporose slumber in the marshes skirting Londonia.

Time is running out. It may already be too late. The gears of chaos are already turning. Plots within plots are in motion. It has begun here as it has already ended on countless other worlds. The monsters with many names have drunk deeply of those worlds, and now they hunger for this one. Ivy Lee must fight and become a power in her own right, or Terra will perish. The pendulum hangs suspended; what will she choose?"

Read on if this tickles your fancy..............................................................

PENUMBRA

Prologue

In the velvet darkness, the banshee shriek of a steam whistle signaled the moment that a great brass clapper pounded a scalloped bell ensconced in a tower. Needle shaped. Spiking high above the moss and pigeon-shit slick rooftops to stab at the sky, Marduk’s campanile bell struck half-night. It sent out a resonating shock-wave through the gas-lit streets and dank, rubbish strewn alleyways of Greater Londonia. The city’s name was, more often than not, shortened simply to London, or nicknamed laughingly among friends as Brit’s Titty.

The twelfth toll shivered to a deathly, fog smothered stillness after which the real silence of such a large city returned like the methane pumped breath of a cadaver on a mortuary slab. It was unexpected and hair-raising, leaving one wondering ‘what next?’ while eyeing the corpse suspiciously for muscle twitches or tremors. A capital city never really sleeps and silence is only complete in mausoleums; between breaths and heart beats, or in that briefest of moments before the maelstrom of all hell breaking loose. They didn’t call this ‘The witching hour’ for nothing.

Tendrils of pea souper smog curled moistly down from roof level, billowing serpentine, twining lower to caress the frames of smeared windows and then door lintels down to cobbles. It left a slimy black, beaded industry residue. Its presence lurked near on every night, a stark reminder of the factories and furnaces clustered on the South Bank of London’s not so charming River Thammuz. Workhorses, they never ceased their tireless churning of bilious coal smoke from chimney stacks high enough to scrape the lowest clouds and besmirch those pale cotton wool shapes with black residue.

Take a snifter of London air and try not to choke. Open your mouth (foolishly) to sample her airy delights and be defied not to hawk and spit the tarry filth that coats the back of your tongue and teeth. Irritated, red eyes constantly streamed, and exposed skin gained a fine film of the black dust. Nothing stayed clean for long, not even when the rains came. Mouth cloths had to be worn, unless you had a wish to die coughing one, or both of your lungs up. Hats, worn with scarves underneath, were pulled low, and when combined with the face cloth, only the white flash of darting eyes were visible. In turn, this led to easy predation on the unwary by thugs, since everyone looked like everyone else, and only the thieves and street pirates seemed to be able to tell who was a tender morsel, and who was one of them. The South Bank began to be feared, shunned, and grew notorious for its vicious temperament. The place was rabid, but people had to brave it, to work and live, or starve and die.

And worse! (How worse? you might ask, how can it be more so?) Not all to be feared came in the shape of man. At this hour, not even a feral cat dared yowl its disharmonious tune to disturb the city’s slumber, not even for a heated Queen, for monstrous rats were known to haunt the streets; rising silent as ghosts from the sewers to scratchy-tippy-clicky-clack-scratch along trash stuffed alleys, their luminous eyes conveying a ravenous appetite for meat. And in the way of the cycle of life, these plump, overstuffed vermin became meat for the bigger lurkers, those who lived for the night’s embrace and hid once more at the mere glimmer of day’s break. These hunched shadow creepers had many names, but most fitting was Morghoul; chyldren of the many faced Moon. One might dig such a name up only from old, elusive texts such as Bishop Dean’s Cryptozoobible;
‘On Phantasms, the Fantastical, and the Fanatical’.
Snippets circulated in obscure and laughed at conspiracy theorist targeted rags, but only one edition of the book was said to be in existence, the other burned with the King’s Fool, 32 of 48.

It was said that these brothers and sisters to the shadows, this race of humanoids, could disappear at whim, wrapping the night around them like a cloak, using it to transport them to an alternate location or plane leaving no trace of them- or their victims (usually a particularly irksome neighbour, an incessantly noisy dog, or a wart nosed wife swiftly replaced by a younger, and fairer model). Not one Morghoul, of course, had actually ever been seen or captured, but the 1000 gold Nimrod reward was still there for the taking, just in case that silly conspiracy theory actually turned out to be fact, this time. Well look what had happened the last time such theories had turned out to be fact. Who would have actually thought the Flat Earth would turn out to be real? Baron Cumberbatch had lost that bet, and his house, his best horse, and his wife too.

Of late, though, public confidences had been restored with the release of new tekno-ologies that made the streets safer. Glassy, monocular eyes resembling stubby telescopes watched from every cornice of buildings, lamp posts, and store fronts, attached by crabby jointed legs ending in magnetized barbs that could bury into or stick onto nearly any surface. Pistons wheezed with ear straining pitch when they did move, which wasn’t often, but the clacking noise of the six legs as they scuttled about whatever business they were on, had people hightailing it out of their way soon enough. Softly crackling with static electricity, the breath-gentle whirring noises of dilating or constricting irises drew many a nervous eye as these odd machines tirelessly scoped the streets left to right, hawkish in their tracking gaze.

Miasma-cording was their new ability, and now they not only watched, but they also memorized and sent their findings to the Thaumaturges that worked in the M-eye-5 department of Parley-ment. It used to be M-eye-6 up until very recently but Mr. Stalwart Brown had met with a very unfortunate end trying to communicate with a Cthulhu spawn under the Thammarsh estuary. The large squid podling had been scaring off the Perch which Brown loved to fish for, and unfortunately could not be bargained with for love nor gold (contrary to the anonymous tip-off he’d received). It seemed instead that the monster had taken affront at the large golden plate he’d been offering it, and the research team concluded that the plate was mistaken for the eye of a rival, and that Stalwart Brown had, in effect, been staring the beast down as he held the plate aloft, refusing to back down even when it released a powerful gush of methane in warning. It was said that sadly, Stalwart Brown had never had a good sense of smell, and had been too cocksure of himself to take the standard canary in a cage with him. They never did recover all of his body, such was the way of these things, and probably the reason for the scarcity of Thaumaturges, who for all their intelligence, had no sense when it came to their own safety. John Dee’s own scripture wrote:

“Thaumaturgy,…which giveth certain order to make strange works, of the sense to be perceived and of men greatly to be wondered at.”

He never once stated that these brilliant men ever had ample sums of common sense when it came to stepping out of their offices, away from their equations and ‘wonder working’, and into the real world. This lack of common sense was why the Thaumaturges were watched over, and worked for, the Justice department. It kept them out of trouble, mostly.

The camera obscuras, corded to their Masters via neurolingual processor chips, never slept. That is, apart from the now defunct ones in Temple Bar that had been the district of Mr. Brown. Those were currently being collected by the urchins and sold for scrap or traded for sundries, scooped up as they lay discarded in the street with legs curled inwards like dead spiders.
The functioning machines saw everything through faceted lenses and there was no escape from their dispassionate glare, and nobody could reach their masters, because they were safe as houses within the most heavily warded area of the city in Temple Bar. Any suspicious activity would result in spiked brainwave activity from the Thaumaturge, which signified communication between the two and a passing of information, and from thence, a detailed Lithograph was produced as evidence - should it be required by the authorities.

One street in particular verily bristled with TLMOs (Thaumaturge linked mobile obscuras). It was a seemingly high-profile place protected by watchmen in suits of heavy corroded iron, giving them the look of cumbersome robotics, but synthetic whale grease infused with high velocity friction particles ensured that the piston powered steam-cranked joints moved smooth as silk. A most definite reality defying speed could be achieved at the press of a certain red button from within, releasing pressurized steam from numerous valves and vents in a blast of carefully calculated cogmatized super motion. Even the steam was intended for battle use, effective as a scalding smoke screen.

A metallic flagella whip coiled at one hip, a pale pulse of static blue light strobing down its fibrous length promising any interlopers a Man-o-War sting to leave them jittering on the floor. Upon the right shoulder, lurking like some squat cyclopic spider, sat an Obscura, and welded upon the left, a small multi-chambered gun with the appearance of a Gatling connected to a pressurized water boiler. A system of wound levers and mercurial gauges indicated full barometric pressures which would power the pistons into action at the flick of a switch or turn of a dial. Right now though, these machine wrapped men remained stationary in the dark, blending seamlessly with the night.

One gas lamp sputtered near a wrought iron arched gateway, hemmed in by black iron bars tipped in razor ice-wire. It was mocking in the jolly warmth of its welcome. Nobody entered this street with a handshake and a how do you do. The only way in was by appointment, followed by a rather personal strip search through a rust hinged side door from which those that emerged left with a shocked expression upon their faces, or did not emerge at all.

The house that was the purpose of all of this security was marked by a black door depicting in glass panels a Sun dipping to the horizon; not rising from it as many mistakenly thought. The embellished Number 10 and the corroded brass lion’s head knocker were also symbols for the Sun, the creative force that brought life, light and warmth. A facade. An act. All theatrics to numb the minds of the citizens of the city and to keep the voting slips flowing in.

This house in Whitehall Place, in fact symbolized a resident of a bloodline so ancient and pure that it could be traced back to the mythical disgraced angels who bred with the daughters of the God’s first creation, Lilith, the rebellious one. These forbidden offspring called themselves the Grigori, also earning over time the title of ‘Watcher’. Not super human in any way, nor even human apart from in appearance, these Watchers believed themselves to be of a bloodline far older than human kind, and the rightful owners of , well, everything. Being of lesser numbers than humans due to being found out to be the cancer they were, and exterminated periodically, and having learnt tough lessons throughout history, they have become cunning and buried themselves in deep, the Cuckoo egg within the Robin’s nest. Only humanity has been their strength, paradoxically, for this generous spirited race always had pity in their hearts, and never quite carried out their threats of complete annihilation, instead relegating the Grigori to roam and wander the realm, homeless, paupers. That was long, long ago in times now forgotten. The books that describe these events now reside in the Grigori’s vaults, or have been burnt. Long have the Watchers waited, biding their time, rooting themselves in deep.

These villains have grown vastly knowledgeable in the ways of manipulation, and covetous of positions of power from which to guide ‘the flock’, rigging elections and buying favors to place themselves at the top of the leader board. They would do anything, sell their own Grandmother’s soul (if she had one), for personal gain, for power, for vengeance. Only those that were strongest of the ‘bloodline’ got to the top, and nothing was ever left to chance. Pedigree held power, and Whitehall Place was the nest of the Prime Minister, current poster boy of the Grigori.

However, even the fallen have found themselves out maneuvered. The parasites of the nest are themselves preyed upon! And the Prime Minister is now the current toy and plaything of creatures so vile, they have formed a cankerous disease that rots away in the very bowels of London. The manipulators have been out manipulated and the Plague sweeps unchecked.
A beeswax candle guttered in a ground floor window of the prestigious building, then burst to life; a sickly yellow glow in the night’s hush that seemed to be absorbed in the dull metallic armor of a figure concealed in a niche opposite. There was a soft whir, a near imperceptible clank, and the machine man melted backwards into shadow as if fearing the silvery radiance of the briefly revealed moon.

Soft, like the sweep of a bird’s wing, a noise from within the manse indicated the closure of deep crimson velvet curtains, shuttering the bay window from outside view. All was again darkness and hush, so different from the hubbub of the daytime flow of tourists and traffic, open-topped Omnibuses, the chug and clank of Vapo cabs, Hackney carriages, Penny Farthing riders and the confusion of accents and couture.

The click-click Boom and smoky puff of Daguerre camera Obscuras, Lithograph hawkers, tour guides flourishing plaques or twirling embellished attention catching parasols was dizzying. Flower sellers peddled sprigs of rosemary and lavender to perfume the stench of Auld Mother London’s foul pits, and swarthy trinket chiming gypsies declared all manner of clairvoyant skills forming a circus like atmosphere.

‘Read yer fortune for a ‘Rod, Guv’nor?’
‘Ahhh, Sirah, now ye gots yeself a curse ‘pon yer head. Let Rosie unlock it for ya, only a silver an a prick a blood, an fer a silver more I’ll tell ya who put it ‘pon ya.’

All manners of ticking, whirring, hooting and wailing gadgets were flaunted by well-heeled ladies and gentlemen, who then became victims of street urchins and Hooders. Outraged voices mingling with screaming toddlers and the cries of newspaper vendors.

‘London Standard reports first, Phantom City seen amongst the clouds yet untouchable even by the highest Dirigible! Read all a’bout it!’ stated one, and, ‘Extra! Extra! Chancellor of the Exchequer blames Pixies for Ceremony of the Pix mix up!’ bragged another. ‘Trouble brewing in London’s melting plot as underclasses cry foul on latest referendum! Curfew expected to be announced by City’s Watch. Be ware the South Bank!’ warned the London Journal.

Blend this with verminous stub footed pigeons, a clashing riot of scents of sewage, urine, rotten foods, Sulfur and, ‘cockles and mussels alive alive Oh’; fast food in paper packets and fumes pouring from chimneys, vents and drain pipes, and there you have it. Welcome to London. Fascination in abundance, weighed down by revulsions too many to count. Gods and all of the prophets save our gracious Queen. Who could blame her for never caring (or daring) to venture into the public streets, and for sequestering herself behind spike-tipped gates, Tesla fences, and an army of Dragoons and Hussars.

All chaos would resume again in a few marks, such was the daily life of this ‘great’ City of London. She had been rebuilt after a most convenient fire wreaked destruction upon her, and was then split into territories belonging not totally to the Royals, due to lack of funding, but also to its benefactors of rebirth, the ones with the deep pockets and outrageous terms of interest.
Mysterious catacombs and tunnels were incorporated into this new London. Locked and barred rooms labeled only with clandestine sigils had been wandered upon by the odd vagrant, then forgotten about mere seconds later, likely due to the rather abrupt demise of said vagrant. There were whispers in East End pubs of these tunnels, but who would wish to venture below, with the rats and the detritus, where human shit-grease layered the walls inches thick, melting into weird blobby sculptures? The gases down there would combust if a mere spark were to touch it. What, go there just to see if such a rumor was true? Madness.

These new overseers who were blood kin to the Grigori, but changed somehow, were safe in their mystery, laughing secretively to themselves of their plans, of their hidey-holes, while poring over their undecipherable maps. Dark and hideously evil were these creatures, twisted into insanity by a self-inflicted curse, remaining hidden, burrowing themselves in as deep as a tick head. Waiting. Plotting. All unbeknownst to Joe public.

Mother London was now a land secretly and most cunningly infiltrated over time with nobody to take witness or heed what was happening. Nobody cared. Who would believe it anyhow? This was a carefully managed apathy which stole across the city where a million citizens were captured almost as if within a web of mesmerism. Trapped in a consumer cycle, ensnared by poverty, the need to earn money; work or die, no time for radical thought, that was the job of the upper echelons who were paid from public taxes to think for the masses. It was a perfect take over, much like the legendary tale told to children fresh tucked into bed, of the Cadaver Snatcher of Londonium who stole the bodies of loved ones from the mortuary slab, then reanimated them with a lusty need for murder and meat, human meat. But in this case, it was London that was snatched, right under its resident’s noses, and filled with that murderous intent.

Chapter One to follow.....