Agatha H. and the Clockwork Princess

Maxim looked surprised. “Really?”

“Oh, yes. It’s much more satisfying to kill without a fight.”

Maxim stared at him. “Oh.” Was all he said.

“Quiet!” This was delivered in a strained whisper from Kalikoff, who held up a hand to stop the group.

“What is it?” whispered Krosp.

“Listen,” Sturvin muttered, “There’re voices coming from the tunnel up ahead. Weird voices.”

This was not the first time this had happened. Zeetha frowned. “But I thought you said these were the secret tunnels.”

Sturvin shrugged. “Guess the Prince decided to share after all.”

Kalikoff crossed a passage off on a map. There were a number of other passages marked in red. “This was the last of the routes that the princess suggested.”

Veilchen leaned in. “But you know of others, don’t you? Tunnels that can get us directly into the castle.”

The plumbers looked at each other. “Well, yeah,” Kalikoff replied, “But you don’t want those.”

“Why not?”

“Those are in the Deep-down. That’s where the worst monsters are.”

Veilchen looked interested. “Really.”

“Yes.”

“Monsters.”

“Yes.”

“Scary monsters.”

“Yes!”

The assassin leaned in close. “Worse than me?”

Kalikoff stared at him for a second, swallowed and began releasing a set of bolts off of a nearby hatch. “Okay, down we go,” he muttered.

Maxim looked at Veilchen with admiration. “It iz a pleasure to vatch hyu vurk!” he said sincerely.

Veilchen looked perturbed. “I can honestly say I’ve never heard that before.”

With a sense of extreme caution, the party slowly clambered down a slime-encrusted ladder. The sewermen found a shelf full of lanterns and expressed a glum satisfaction when they were discovered to be still functional. The map was again consulted, a direction was picked, and off they went.

Zeetha found herself next to the taller of the plumbers. “So—if this place is so full of monsters, how is it you still know your way around?”

Sturvin sighed. “Well, we ain’t been in the Deep-down for years, but it weren’t always like this. We just started getting more and more of the big monsters, and there were a sight few too many deaths down here. Finally Prince Aaronev had us close it all off.”

He paused. “But ten, fifteen, years ago, before it got bad...” he smiled at the memory. “Well, it was an event if we had one of the Prince’s experiments escape down here.”

Kalikoff chimed in. “Heck, yeah! All the young bucks swarming around down here with torches, trying to impress the girls. And afterwards, when it had been caught and hauled up, why there’d be a celebration! A big bonfire, and lots of drinking in the streets! The Prince would make a speech, and hand out a reward to the feller who actually killed the thing.”

Sturvin nodded. “Used to be kind of fun.”

Kalikoff grinned. “And the girls would run around kissin’ everyone in sight! Didn’t even seem to mind the smell.”

Sturvin dropped his voice conspiratorially, “Our old Guild-master used to say that the Prince cooked one up and let it go intentionally every couple of years just to liven things up some.” He sighed for days gone by. “But these days—”

From a pool before them, a monstrosity that seemed to consist of nothing but eyes, tentacles and teeth erupted upwards in a geyser of filthy water. It screamed in triumph, whipped out a set of bright green limbs, grabbed a startled Kalikoff, and vanished, pulling the screaming plumber down into the murky depths.

Sturvin looked at the rest of the party, which was frozen in shock. “—These days, it ain’t no fun at all!”

There followed a timeless period of running, screaming, crashing into various things and finally, with a grand sense of inevitability, tumbling over a precipice, and falling into an even deeper, darker pit.

Some time later, various groans filled the darkness. Eventually these groans turned into complaints. This was encouraging.

“Ug. What did we land on?”

“Hy lended on rocks. Hyu lended on me.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“Who’s got a lantern?”

“Er... dropped it.”

“Terrific.”

“Hey—Herr Sturvin, aren’t there supposed to be phosphorescent crystals or fungi or something down here?”

“Oh, those. Yeah, we sold ’em.”

“Figures.”

“I have a firestarter.”

“Great! Who’s got the lantern?”

“...Look, I’m really sorry about that.”

“Hey—wait... There’s some kind of moss on these rocks.”

“Moss? Naw, it’s too dry.”

“So what do you call this?”

“Huh. Okay, light it up.”

There was the scrit-scrit-scratch of the firestarter, a gentle “fwomph” and Lars found himself holding a genially grinning skull with a head of burning hair. Reflexively, he shrieked and dropped it. It fell and went out, but before it did, everyone could see that they were in a cell, carpeted with mummified bodies.

In the privacy of the darkness, everyone gave vent to some screaming. Once equilibrium had been somewhat restored—

“Hokay! Der goot newz is dot der bodies vas not scattered.”

“How is that good news?”

“Obivoulously dere ain’t monsters attackink pipple from der dark and eatink dem.”

“...That is good news!”

“Hey! I found the lantern!”

“Yay! Bring it over here.”

“But der bad news iz dot anyvun who vind op here—dey schtay here.”

The lantern’s wick flared up, illuminating Dimo’s grim face. “Befaw ve rezcue Meez Agatha, ve gots to rezcue uz.”

Agatha dropped the wrench onto the floor and fell back into a nearby chair. “There,” she sighed. “It’s done.”

Tarvek eyed the device before them. It was a slender column that stood over three meters tall. It was encrusted with various tubes and what looked like the bells of musical instruments. These increased in number and complexity towards the top, culminating in a great flowering of pipes, horns, and lenses.

Around the base, a swarm of Agatha’s little clanks continued to tighten screws and industriously polish the brass casing.

“Good. Now will you tell me what you’re going to do with it?”

Agatha wearily waved a hand. “I’m going to expose her, of course. If no one knows that The Other is back, if she manages to hide what your father was doing here, she could enslave most of Europa before anyone’s the wiser.