What Lies Beneath The Clock Tower: Being An Adventure Of Your Own Choosing

by Margaret Killjoy

  Sixty

  You reach out and grab the gnomish child by the back of his jumper.

  “That’s the spirit!” A’gog cheers.

  You march the kid down the hall in front of you, holding him by his hair. He looks for all the world like a half-sized five-year-old. A’gog trails behind you, shouting directions at each intersection, and soon you find your way to a set of doors larger than any you’ve ever seen, flanked on either side by what you presume to be two five-year-old deep sea divers armed with crazy looking guns.

  One of the guards aims a rifle at you, and you hold tighter onto your hostage, certain they will make an effective shield.

  Unfortunately, your hostage is only as tall as your knee, and the guard aims for your face. A blinding beam of purple erupts against your skin, and you fall down. Your hostage turns on you, kicks you in the face, and soon you die under a flurry of blows.

  The End

  Sixty-One

  “Oh, Gregory,” Gu’dal says, beginning to cry. She takes the proffered ring and places it on her thumb, then crushes it with her fist so that it is small enough to stay on. “Thank you,” she says. She leans over and licks your mouth with her raspy tongue, then looks you in the eye.

  Tears well up in your eyes, and you return to your cot to sleep, happy, excited, and fearful. For the first time in your life, you’ve so much to lose. But also, so much to gain.

  Go to Sixty-Eight.

  Sixty-Two

  “If we start killing people, all we’re going to do is scare the kabouters more, and drive them to look to Hak’kal for support,” you say, and Sergei nods. A’gog doesn’t look convinced, but concedes regardless.

  You spend hours in that cramped ventilation tunnel, crafting phrases to emboss onto the walls of Underburg. It’s frustrating work, because almost every idea you have, poetic and beautiful in English, sounds clichéd or dull in Kabouter. But eventually, you have your message.

  That night—or the kabouters approximation of the same—, you emerge from hiding and set about your work. Actually, by and large, you and A’gog stand around and try to be silent while Sergei does all of the work.

  You then make your way through the city—bumping into walls and occasionally people—and find your way to Sergei’s apartment in the great hive.

  “Now that we’re inside, it’s safe to talk,” your host says.

  “Could we possibly have a light?” you ask.

  “Oh no,” Sergei says, and you think it’s possible that you’ve offended him.

  “What do we do now?” A’gog asks.

  “Sleep,” Sergei suggests, “and in the morning I’ll go out and see what there is to see.”

  You take him up on that, curling into a ball on the floor. You pull your jacket off to use as a pillow, and are asleep before you’ve much of a chance to think about how impossibly long your day has been.

  You wake up some unknown number of hours later, still in the disconcerting dark. There is no sun outside this room, you realize, even if it were to have windows. You avoid letting your mind linger on such thoughts, because while trapped legions beneath the earth is a terrible time to invoke a bit of claustrophobia.

  “Drink?” A’gog asks, pressing a glass into your hand.

  You smell it—whisky?—and drink. “How’d you know I was awake?” you ask.

  “You stopped snoring,” A’gog replies.

  “Oh.”

  “Our kabouter friend is off about his day, leaving us here to… to what? What is it we’re hoping to accomplish anyhow? What is it that we, I mean you and I, can hope to do here?”

  “I’m not sure,” you say, “but we need to give the kabouters a chance to organize themselves. If they want to be free, but just need a little push, a little spirit, then it’s worth being patient.”

  The day goes by slowly, and for an hour or so you agonize over trying not to go mad in the lonely dark. Then you realize that you’re speaking with a goblin, and therefore are likely quite mad already, and time passes more smoothly.

  “It will take more than one day to foment a revolution, it seems,” Sergei says upon his return. “But with your help, tonight we’ll plot new things to write upon the walls, new ways to inspire the revolt that lies dormant in the heart of every creature.”

  “You two can have fun with that. I’m not dying of old age while waiting for that spark. Because in my people, it’s not dormant. It’s alive. I’ll wait there, if I’m to be waiting at all. Gregory? What are you going to do?”

  To stay around and see your plot through to its end, go to Seventy.

  To give up on this whole adventure, state that you’ve had your fun but that it’s time for you to return to your home on the surface, go to Seventy-Four.

  Sixty-Three

  A’gog, realizing you’ve made no move to grab the children, spurs his lion into motion, which chases down the slower of the two kids and mauls her.

  “Are you serious?” you ask.

  “I don’t think you have the nerve for this sort of thing, surface-boy. We have lived as slaves our entire lives.”

  “Did that little kid enslave you?”

  “Will killing her punish those who have killed so many of my people?”

  “It isn’t right,” you say.

  “You make a terrible libertine.”

  You turn your back on the lion-riding child-murdering goblin and leave the zoo behind. You half expect A’gog to ride you down, to die, to be devoured by a lion, but you’re not so lucky.

  Instead, you’re captured by gnomes who enslave you and set you to spend the rest of your days breaking rocks and beating goblins. You die a decade later, miserable, broken, and sober.

  The End

  Sixty-Four

  “Thank you,” Trevor says, taking the ring in his small hand. He pulls a length of leather cord from one of the pockets on his vest and turns the ring into a pendant around his neck. He looks at you and smiles. You realize that he is as afraid of losing you as you are of losing him.

  Go to Sixty-Eight.

  Sixty-Five

  You tackle the kid on the right, put her in a headlock, and turn to A’gog. “What now?” you ask.

  “Now we bring our hostage to the very gates of Hak’kal, make an appointment to see their ruling council, then let the lion eat them all.”

  “You’re drunk,” you say.

  “So are you.”

  “Very well.”

  You hold your hostage in front of you and leave the zoo. A’gog, behind you, shouts out directions, and soon you find yourself in front of a menacing set of steel doors. They’re larger than any you’d ever seen or imagined—although to be fair, you don’t spend much of your time fantasizing about doors and the potential upper limits of their size—and are flanked by a pair of five-year-old boys in deep-sea-diver gear. With big crazy guns.

  “Hey there,” you say, as one points a rifle at you, “you boys go and get your parents cause I have a little kid and I’m not afraid to uh…”

  “Kill her?” A’gog suggests.

  “Well, actually I’m a bit afraid to kill her. I don’t like the idea of killing a child, to be honest,” you say back to A’gog.

  “You have a councilgnome’s daughter!” one of the guards says. “Release her at once!”

  “I’d rather not?” you reply.

  “What do you demand?” the guard asks.

  “To uh, to see your leader.” you say.

  “Leaders. All of them,” A’gog corrects.

  “Yes. Yes, with the plurality. We demand the plurality be brought to us with all available haste!”

  One guard keeps the rifle poised on you, while the other pulls a lever which opens the doors.

  You try really hard to make sense of what lays beyond them, once you can see, but the sheer amount of sensory input overwhelms you and you lose what little ability to reason you had remaining. There are lights and crystals and clocks and gnomes and smiling happy children and there’s opera and everything is bl
urry and…

  And the lion is off at a sprint, tearing past the guards and into the city streets. A beam of purple light strikes you in the eyes, stinging and blinding, and you drop your hostage and wander aimlessly, drunkenly, into the city.

  When your vision returns, you find yourself in an alley like any alley in the world above—except for the cavern roof two dozen feet above your head, of course. In front of you is a bank of levers that seem to run into a pipe. One of them is clearly labeled in sixteen different languages, including English: do not pull.

  To pull the lever, go to Sixty-Nine.

  To refrain from pulling the lever, go to Seventy-Three.

  Sixty-Six

  “Just how drunk are you?” Yi’ta asks. “Do you think we haven’t tried asking nicely? Do you think we spent generations enslaved without exploring all the different ways we could free ourselves?”

  “All the same,” you say, “I won’t stand for this violence. Violence won’t solve your problems, I promise you.”

  Yi’ta nods to Gu’dal, who unsheathes her blade and pulls it sharply across your thigh, causing you to collapse. As soon as you hit the ground, she stabs you in the throat.

  As you lay bleeding—and strangely calm—the two goblins say something to one another in their own language and laugh. As you gurgle blood through your throat, they laugh all the harder. You’ll never know what they said that was so funny, you realize. Then you die.

  The End

  Sixty-Seven

  “Look, I won’t sell you out to the council,” you tell the gnome who stands beside you. It’s clear that he doesn’t understand your words. “I won’t study you to them,” you say, using his own phrasing. This he seems to understand. “But I am going to talk to them. The goblins appointed me to speak on their behalf, and I intend to do so.”

  “Bah,” the man says, kicking your bed in anger. “You will talk, and they will talk. And talk talk talk talk talk talk talk…” He keeps saying the word “talk” as he climbs out the window and walks down the street. “Talk, talk, talk…”

  You retire back to your bed and wake some unknown number of hours later. You suddenly understand why there are so many clocks in Hak’kal. They serve as some sort of replacement of the sun, for there is otherwise no easily distinguishable night or day.

  Go to Eighty.

  Sixty-Eight

  Pre-dawn finds you back in the gathering chamber, surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands of goblins. The approximate number of the little people is hard to gauge since they hang from ropes, cling to the ceiling, and generally refuse to stay still except when playing tiles or sleeping.

  Gu’dal perches on the peak of a short stalagmite, clothed as she was the day you met her—a tailcoat and stovepipe hat. She fiddles with her cane, pulling the sword free and replacing it to pass the time.

  Trevor stands beside you, decked in his full plate. He appears to be sleeping, vertical in his armor. He has a particularly frightening double-headed butcher knife held at his side.

  For your own part, you’ve replaced your old cane with an unpretentious steel-headed one, complete with spike on the base. Not the sort of thing you’d have been caught dead carrying a half a year prior. You wear your bowler—because a gentleman must not abandon pride entirely—but you’ve got a breastplate made out of pewter dinner plates strapped to your chest and a pair of dark goggles that the goblins swear will protect your eyes from lightrifle blasts.

  But appearances be damned, you’re ready for war.

  A stirring speech is made and stirs you, then the doors open. The horde takes off in a light jog through a massive tunnel, then pauses several hundred yards later for everyone to catch their breath.

  As one, you run around the corner and into the first line of the gnomish defenses. The gnomes in front of you—for what else could the creatures be?—look like deep-sea divers in their copper helmets, and each bears the weapon you’ve been told is a lightrifle. They are nearly twice the size of a goblin, which is to say half the size of yourself, and they scream with what could be fear—or enthusiasm, as far as you would know—when you descend upon them.

  You fight fiercely, using your height to your advantage and stepping over your foes to strike them from behind. Your cane shatters their faceplates, your spike finds their flesh.

  The first line of defenses crumbles before the goblin horde, and you see the gates of their city lying shattered to your fore. Clearly, Yi’ta’s machine in your clock tower above has served its purpose.

  Suddenly, a lone riflegnome stands in the doorway and takes aim at you, the largest available target.

  To jump, go to Eighty-Three.

  To duck, go to Eighty-Nine.

  To dodge left, go to Ninety-One.

  To dodge right, go to Ninety-Five.

  Sixty-Nine

  You never really liked to be told what to do, least of all by some half-pints with a big fancy city who seem to be enslaving most everyone they see. You reach out, cackle in a way you wouldn’t were you sober, and pull the lever.

  The wrong one, you realize. The “do not pull” lever is still up, but the one next to it, labeled general alarm, has been pulled.

  Suddenly, green and yellow lights flash all about you, and six gnomish guards run towards you.

  “Ah, hello there, fellows! How glad I am to see you!” you say, hoping to stall them long enough to think of something more clever to say.

  They surround you, and you wish you could see their faces through the smoky glass of their helmets.

  “I seem to have invaded your city while drunk,” you say, trying to explain your situation. “You see, I drank some absinthe earlier this evening and swore allegiance of sorts to help your slaves revolt and utterly destroy you. Er… what I’m trying to get across is that I’m sorry?”

  All six guards rush you, and though you try your hardest to swat them away and shush them as though they were rude children, they soon bring you to the ground. The last thing you see is a metal boot aimed towards your face.

  The End

  Seventy

  “You can’t just expect people to throw away everything they’ve ever believed overnight,” Sergei says.

  “Yeah, I’m going to see this through, A’gog. If you want something done, you have to have patience.”

  “Sure, sure. Whatever. Goodbye. Good luck. Have fun.” A’gog walks out the door after running into the wall in the dark—but only once.

  And so begins your life in the dark city of Underburg. Each day, you ask Sergei the news, and each day it’s the same. “Patience,” he advises you.

  You meet some of his friends, and after a few weeks, a gnome and a human from the city of Hak’kal move in to the apartment with you, agents of the gnomish Aboveground who arrive to help plot the grand revolution of the middle class. These two become your close friends as the weeks turn into months.

  At some point, the months turn into a year, and you stop asking how the plot is going. You no longer even miss the light. You strike up an affair with the human, you eat the food that the Aboveground provides, and you write startling, epic poetry once you become fluent in Kabouter. Surely, you decide, if not this generation, than the next generation of kabouters will know your genius and will sing your praises. Or, you correct yourself, overthrow their gnomish masters.

  It’s not a bad life, in the dark city. Not a bad life at all.

  The End

  Seventy-One

  Gu’dal grins at you, quite a disconcerting thing. With her bird-voice she says, “So you’ll watch my back again, will you? I don’t know what kind of good you’ll do in a scrap with those bites on your leg, so what do you say we find you some guns and let you shoot anything that tries to kill us?”

  A gun in your hand! You haven’t held a gun since your brother left to head across the channel, taking both his poetic politics and his Colt revolver with him.

  Outside the tower window, the first hints of twilight turn the skyline into something majestic. Hurried
, Gu’dal leads you down the steps and out into the foggy morning. After several blocks, she turns the corner into a wide boulevard, lined at the side with the knickknack vendors you’d have called rag-and-bone men back home.

  It’s only after Gu’dal runs up and begins speaking to one quite hurriedly that you realize the shapes you’d mistook for ragged children are really a small army of goblins. Teeth and daggers flash in the first hint of sun. One human walks up to you and throws back his cowl, revealing the form of the old engineer you’d met the night before.

  “Mr. Babbage?” you ask, surprised to see him among the combatants.

  Instead of answering you, he hands you a pair of Remington revolvers. “Twelve shots,” he says, then walks back to his stand.

  Gu’dal runs back to stand in front of you, holding up a pocket watch for you to see. “One minute to go,” she says, and you steel yourself.

  Then, from somewhere, a bell tolls and the ground rises up like an ocean wave—sending fierce pain through your wounded legs—before crashing against the butcher shop across the street from you. You manage to keep your footing, but Gu’dal’s top hat falls to the ground and she grimaces as she retrieves it.

  For a long time, nothing out of the ordinary happens. Well, to be clear, nothing new that is out of the ordinary happens. You are still standing on a street, awake far before noon, with some four score goblins standing at arms besides you. What’s more, you’re beginning to sober up.

  Then, after what could have been fifteen minutes or three hours, gnomes come pouring out of the doorways of the buildings across the street from you. Most wear bizarre copper and brass helmets that look adapted from undersea pressure suits and wield small rifles that shoot rays of purple and red and seem to inflict unbearable pain upon their targets. The boulevard becomes a warzone.

  It doesn’t take long for you to realize that you are vastly outmatched and outnumbered. Whatever the goblins expected, this wasn’t it. Instead of rounding up stragglers, they face an organized assault.