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

by Margaret Killjoy

  “Eh, you know. The same old crap. We goblins are great, the gnomes killed everything good. We have to fight. We won’t win… you know, a battle speech.”

  “We won’t win?” you ask, because you feel quite invested in a victorious outcome for the side that you have chosen nearly at random.

  You are shushed again, and A’gog doesn’t translate anything more.

  The crowd gets driven to a fervor, many of them weeping red tears, many of them screaming, chanting, banging their weapons against their armor. Then…

  Then the chanting stops, and the great doors in front of you stay closed. Someone makes an announcement.

  A’gog then addresses the room. In English, probably for your sake. “I don’t care. So Yi’ta messed up. Yi’ta always messes up. I don’t know about any of you, but I’m going to fight, because I’m an old man and I probably won’t even be around next chance we get. If I’m gonna die, I want to die drunk at the hands of our foes! And I’m going to bring this poor, moronic Englishman with me!”

  You pull a small flask from your hatband and empty it.

  Everyone starts to shuffle out of the room, back towards the goblin town. The battle is over, it seems, before it has begun. Even the woman with her battle-speech departs, leaving you alone in the chamber with A’gog.

  “Well, how about it?” he asks.

  To demur and ask for directions back to your tower, go to Thirty-Seven.

  To pass a flask of brandy and see what you can do about nearly single-handedly laying siege to a city full of strange inventors, go to Thirty-Five.

  Twenty-Two

  “We make it, you know,” Gu’dal says, stopping to run her fingers along a set of small whistles set into one pipe. “The gnomes design it, but it’s not like we couldn’t do that ourselves. This one sounds an alarm if the pressure has built up too high. It has notes for the gnomes, and higher pitched tones that only us goblins can hear.”

  Your guide takes her hands off of the pipes and turns to look at you. “The gnomes will tell you, when you talk to them, that they’ve civilized us. That we do this work and that we are appreciative of it. That they taught us the wonders of technology. It’s not true. One hundred and seventy years ago, when Hak’kal was built, we goblins already knew about light and sound. All they brought was steam. Steam, and, of course, slavery.”

  You walk awhile longer while you consider what she said. It’s a strange, dark place, this underground. You begin to hope, for what will not be the last time, that you’re indeed hallucinating this whole experience.

  “We’re here,” Gu’dal says. “The gates to Hak’kal are just around the corner.”

  Go to Forty.

  Twenty-Three

  “Tell me a bit about yourself,” you say to Gu’dal.

  “What?” She looks genuinely concerned. “Why?”

  “I’m curious, you know. I’ve never met a goblin before.”

  “Well I’ve never met a human either, but I’m not going to go sticking my ears into your business.”

  “You’ve never met a human? Really?” You walk down the deserted cobblestone street, a bit of fog rising from sewer grates.

  “No, of course not. In the resistance, it’s just diplomats who work aboveground. This is the first time any of those engineers or us warriors have ever seen the sky, tell you the truth.”

  You look up into the dark heavens above you, catching what stars you can past the streetlamp’s glow. You think about what it would be like to have never had an expanse above you, and you shudder. “You’re a warrior, then?” you ask, looking up at Orion.

  “Been studying since my head reached only to your shins. In between work shifts, we drill. It’s the best thing in life, training. We don’t make it look like training, of course. The gnomes think we’re just dancing.”

  “How could someone mistake militia training for dancing?”

  “Never underestimate the civilized’s contempt for the tribal. We sing, do things in rhythm, and they think it’s art. In fact, I’ll tell you a story. My uncle, see, he was a bomb maker. He did demolitions for mining, mostly, of course, but he studied how to take down the doors to Hak’kal. He even built a machine for it, the craziest contraption you’ll ever see, with pneumatics and a drilling arm and optical systems to correctly orient itself. Thing was, three days before he was going to put into place, only hours before he was going to fill it up with gunpowder, the gnomes did a sweep through our camp. They saw his machine and they asked him what it was. ‘Art’, he said, and the damn thing is in a museum in Hak’kal. I saw once when I was–

  “Watch out!” Gu’dal yells, dragging you into a nearby alley.

  “What?” you whisper. But Gu’dal puts her hand over her mouth. Three police officers walk past, swinging truncheons, one whistling a lively folk tune. You press your back further to the wall, not wanting to be seen skulking about in alleys, and you see what looks like a child hurrying along behind them.

  “That’s a gnome,” Gu’dal whispers from her newfound perch atop a trash can.

  “How do you know?” you whisper back.

  Just then the child-or-gnome barks an order at the gendarmes, one that you don’t understand, and the police obey, turning into the alley across the street from you. No child would be ordering the police about, of course. And with a friendly green monster standing beside you in the shadows, you’re willing to believe a lot more than usual.

  Gu’dal grabs your hand and you find your way through the alley as quickly and silently as you can. You make it to the next street and reach the first tower on your rounds.

  Go to Thirty-Three.

  Twenty-Four

  A’gog passes you his lighter and you strike it, witnessing a bizarre scene. A hatch in the floor opens onto a rope ladder and darkness. A green little man—A’gog—stands poised to descend, and right behind him stands perhaps the strangest looking creature you’ve ever seen. He’s taller than the goblin and shorter than you, but it’s hard to discern his height in the dim light and the strange cramped corridor. His skin is paler than that of a sickly white fellow; his eyes are enormous unseeing orbs. His ears are deranged, maybe like an elephant’s. And he’s hyperventilating, you think. Only, you know, silently.

  “Hello?” you ask.

  “Good morrow. Are you here with the Aboveground?” The stranger speaks with excellent English, although you detect a hint of a Russian accent.

  “Yes,” you say, thinking that he means the surface of the earth.

  “Hell no,” A’gog corrects.

  “What?” the kabouter—what else could he be?—asks.

  “We’re not with those wimpy city gnomes.”

  “Oh,” you say. “Is that like, how, up above, we have, you know, the Underground?”

  “Is that the resistance movement that is largely incompetent and people mostly just join so that they can be impressed with themselves and have sex?”

  “Well,” you think. “I’ve never heard it put that way before, but… yes.”

  “Then yes. The Aboveground is like your Underground. Only the Underground is aboveground, and the Aboveground is underground, of course.”

  “Of course,” you say. This calls for a drink, and the flask in your boot happily obliges. You pass it to your two companions, who both drink deeply.

  “So you’re not with the Aboveground. Are you working with the gnomes?”

  “I’ll have your ears, you snotty bastard!” A’gog reaches to grab the stranger.

  You try to hold him back, but no sooner is your hand on his shoulder than you get kicked something vicious in the chest.

  “Sorry, sorry,” the kabouter says. “I offer you a sincere apology, my good goblin. Believe me, I would not have thought you to be a–”

  “You’d better not have,” A’gog grumps.

  “Look, I’m quite confused,” you say, “so I’ll just lay it all out. My handsome, forgiving, and very-much-not-a-traitor friend A’gog and I were on our way to Underburg to see what
kind of trouble we could stir up, see if we couldn’t recruit some of you capable folks for a full-scale revolution.”

  “And how did you think to do that?”

  To suggest minor shenanigans that are likely to draw the ire of the gnomish guards, and therefore spark anti-colonial sentiment within the kabouters, go to Thirty-Eight.

  To propose that you gather up all who will listen and persuade them with your charisma and oratory prowess, go to Thirty-Six.

  Twenty-Five

  The brandy is incredibly strong, incredibly tasty. It also appears to be drugged.

  When you wake, you’re in an opium den, surrounded by fellow humans. Between the haze of drugs and the endless decanters of brandy, though, you never do make sense of your situation.

  Perhaps this is the peak of your life: you’ve found the bar that there is no need to stumble home from, the opium den never raided by police. You rouse and slumber at random intervals, and never again learn to distinguish dream-state from reality.

  In a rare moment of lucidity, you decide that you don’t care.

  Eventually, the drugs seep so deeply into your brain that you fail to notice the distinction between living and death. You die, most likely, perhaps years or decades or hours after arriving in Hak’kal, in a city-sponsored prison for those prone to excess. You don’t remember exactly how to distinguish pleasure from sorrow, but you have the distinct impression that you die quite happy.

  The End

  Twenty-Six

  “Oh heavens no,” you say. “I don’t see myself as much of a combatant, not really.”

  “Coward, are you?” asks the one who menaces you currently.

  “Why, no!” you say, then think of a bigger lie to disguise that smaller one. “It’s just that, well, I don’t believe in it. I don’t believe in war.”

  “Well I don’t believe in grash’nar,” the goblin says, the word foreign and guttural and honestly quite frightening, “but that didn’t keep one from eating my older brother!”

  The rest of the goblins laugh at this macabre humor, but it merely emboldens your stance.

  “Now see here, you can’t just go around enacting vengeance all of the time. It’s no way to solve the problem of violence. You can’t solve anger with a sword any more than you can cure sobriety with abstinence!”

  “Your brain is made out of those little flecked mushrooms, the ones that look like the penis of a rat.” With this bizarre insult, the angry goblin walks away. The rest of the crowd soon follows suit, and you’re left standing quite confused in the midst of a great deal of hubbub. Most of the town’s goblins appear to be assembling a good bit distant from you, many of them wearing makeshift armor and wielding nasty looking engineering and mining tools.

  Two goblins approach you, holding hands and dressed quite unlike the rest of their fellows. Where most of the goblins in your sight are wearing rag-tag suits, engineering clothes, or battle raiment, these wear thick woolen tunics embroidered with the symbols of the arcane that you recognize from the alchemist phase that you went through in your youth.

  “We heard your words, friend, and believe you,” the shorter of the two goblins says.

  “You do? Why?” you ask, unable to catch yourself.

  “Because we have uttered them ourselves, though we too were met with scorn. What our brethren fail to understand is that the problems we goblins face are internal. We must defeat the colonization of our brains, the colonization of prejudice and resentment, before we can begin to understand the problem outside of us. Don’t you agree?”

  “Sure,” you say, a bit uncertain as to what you are agreeing with.

  “You must join us!” says the second goblin, the taller one. “We have battles to fight, yes, but they are battles of perception and understanding, not retribution. Our weapons are our vapors, our armor is our mind.”

  “Yeah, join us.” says the first goblin, and flashes you an all-fanged smile.

  To turn down the offer, go to Thirty-Four.

  To join the strange, peaceful goblins, go toForty-One.

  Twenty-Seven

  “Well, you see,” you begin, your mind searching around for a suitable excuse. “I’m quite tall, you understand. An easy target. But also, quite useful tactically. I can survey the situation more effectively if I’m at a more appreciable distance…”

  While you’re talking, Gu’dal looks at you with a face that may or may not be condemnation, then walks to the front of the room, leaving you behind.

  “Yes, well…” you begin, talking to yourself.

  “Makes sense to me,” a young-looking goblin man says, from his position hanging in a net very close to right above your head.

  “It does?” you ask.

  “Certainly. And why, I bet you’d make a first-class goblin-thrower, too, when the front lines thin out and we need reinforcements.”

  “Of course,” you say. “Naturally.”

  You find a spot to lean against the wall near the back of the room, and soon fall asleep.

  Just as you being to have a pleasant dream about a seductive haberdasher, you’re woken by someone giving a speech. High above the crowd, dangling from a rope, a powerful-looking goblin woman armored with cast-iron pots and pans addresses the room in a shrill but charismatic voice.

  Unfortunately, you’ve no clue what she’s saying. The crowd responds a few times, gathering energy, then begins to chant. It sounds like “God earth rain, god earth rush” to you, so that’s what you chant, in between sips of whisky from the flask in your boot.

  “God earth rain, god earth rush! God earth rain, god earth rush!”

  It gets your blood going, even if it’s gibberish. You’re ready to fight.

  Gu’dal emerges from the front of the room and looks at you appraisingly, but you keep chanting. The alcohol and the power of the crowd have gotten to you. Gu’dal smiles her disconcerting smile.

  Go to Thirty-Nine.

  Twenty-Eight

  Your willpower overcomes your oft-drunken mind and you hold the glass in your hands for a half-hour before the captain returns. Upon seeing the brandy remaining in the snifter, a look of alarm crosses his face and he blows a whistle.

  Seven heavily-armed riflegnomes double-step march through the gates and arrest you bodily, bludgeoning you into unconsciousness.

  When you awaken, you find yourself high above the city, perched naked in a human-sized birdcage hanging by a chain from a stalactite. On the floor of the cage is a small bowl filled with something that smells like oatmeal. Next to it is a sign, written in sixteen different languages. In English, it says: “Sing, and you eat. The louder and more beautifully you sing, the better you eat.”

  Across the ceiling of the vast cavern you see other birdcages, filled with naked humans of all ages. The cage closest to you holds a man even younger than yourself, one who seems to be signaling to you by holding his arms out at angles.

  It takes you hours to decipher the semaphore code he’s using, but eventually you learn enough to communicate.

  “Don’t speak aloud, or they’ll hurt us,” he says.

  “Alright,” you respond, laboring over each letter of the code.

  “You refrained from drinking the brandy, didn’t you? Bad idea. Means you’re smart enough that you might have caused trouble.”

  Shortly after this communication, the man in the cage near you is taken roughly away by gnomes on an impossibly tall ladder. He never returns.

  When it comes your turn to sing, you sing. For years and years, you sing. Until the end of your life, you sing in your birdcage above the city.

  The End

  Twenty-Nine

  A’gog opens a hatch in the floor, though you can’t see anything, and passes you his lighter.

  You strike the flint, the wick catches, and you find yourself staring into the huge, unseeing eyes of a bizarre thing—not to be rude, but you certainly have a hard time finding another word to describe the creature. You jump with a start, smacking your head on the cei
ling, and it takes off at a run down the crawlspace.

  “Was that a, uh…”

  “Kabouter? Yes. And he noticed us, as you might have guessed. Whatever it is we’re going to do, we’d better do it quickly.”

  You look through the hatch, and see a metal-runged rope ladder dangling down into the darkness. You put your foot on the first rung, shrug, douse your flame, and descend.

  Three hundred rungs—well, give or take a score, your fear of heights distracting your count for a good moment—later, you put your foot onto solid stone ground and re-strike your flame.

  Hive was indeed an apt word. You’re in the midst of a strange nightmare, shrunk down and thrust into the hive of a bee. Everything glistens and looks oozy. There’s no separation between buildings here; they all melt together. It’s like you’re in the belly of a terrible, terrible monster. And the monster smells bad.

  You rush up to the nearest wall of snot and bring your flame to it. It takes only a moment before it catches, and A’gog screams, right behind you.

  “I could kill you!” he says to you. “But I won’t have to.”

  “What?”

  The flames spread quickly, and you have to step back away from the heat. Soon the entire cavern seems to be burning. Including your rope ladder.

  “Don’t worry,” you say, “the flames are dying as fast as they started.”

  “That’s because they’ve used up all the oxygen,” A’gog tells you.

  “Exactly! See? Since we’re in a cave, the fire can’t last long enough to… oh.”

  And those are your last mortal words, because it turns out that you, like fire, require oxygen to breathe. You fall to the floor and suffocate, your skin scorched. An angry, angry old goblin dies beside you.

  The End

  Thirty

  You walk down the hallway in a silence punctuated only by the echoes of your footsteps and by Gu’dal’s loud breathing. Eventually, Gu’dal stops.