Syrinxian Diamond: Chapter 1
For AroWriMo 2021. A novella with the theme fantasy & ancient world.
I am looking for sensitivity readers to help me with my portrayal of inter-LGBT+ invalidation and conflict in later chapters. Comment or email me at CharCharCharAce@gmail.com if you are interested.
The Syrinxian Diamond
Chapter One: A Heist
"I'm going to poke around a bit once I'm down there."
Sand dances around my shins, oblivious to the team trust I'm currently sabotaging.
Isaac rechecks my harness, latching the strap around my ribs a notch tighter. The brick of anxiety on my chest above my sternum shifts, drawing attention to itself. I shove the emotion back down.
"This whole heist is about your feelings isn't it?”
I want to glare at him, but can't, because he's right. I can imagine what more he’s refraining from saying: You've still got it in your head that you're special in some inexplicable way and you want to use a rare object’s knowledge magic to prove it. Being Redenbav's chosen isn't special enough for you?
"Well, I'm in charge, and I say it'll be fine."
The wind storm is upon us in a blink. The herculean air threatens to unpin my hair. A wall of furied sand and wind absorbs us in it’s chaos of directions. Unpleasantly, one such direction is up my nose. Someone needs to invent nose googles. Well, a mask. I should've worn a mask.
I feel my pockets for the device, but it’s not there.
"I can’t find the device" I shout to Isaac. The storm swallows my words.
Sand drifts upward like upside down rain. Visible again in our pocket of calm, I see Isaac has his finger on the button. He must've lifted it off me so he could be the one to push the button. I put my hands on my hips, ready to scold, but not before he points the device at the bedrock and presses another button.
A controlled explosion smacks into the bedrock between us, about the force of a one horned roovian – but without stampeding of course. The newly loose rock drifts upward, slower than it's micro counterparts (the sand). My and Isaac's relativistic boots keep us where we are.
"Jobs are for finishing, not exploring," Isaac quotes Uncle Requ, who only ever says this in specific regard to me.
"and then exploring" I finish with a misquote from Uncle Requ. I grin at my brother.
I clamber down the hole – or up rather as it feels like to me. Our work light shines into the amphitheater cutting a column of light into the darkness.
I leap downward, breaking past the radius of the anti-grav. True gravity grabs me, stripping away all the slack from the rope.
"Give it!" I say to Isaac.
He chucks the device – which should always have been with me – past the anti-grav radius and into reach of true gravity. I snatch it on it's way true down. We played catch around grav devices enough as children, but it's still dangerous to risk dropping a thing he shouldn't have taken from me on a mission. I may want to poke around AFTER the mission, but I'm not the one risking mucking things up MID mission.
I activate the second setting and aim the device randomly. The column of light (and relative gravity) and my braid point in that direction. I slowly pan the device, searching through the dark across the exhibits.
Like a properly researched thief, I recognize the feathers and aquamarine of the Devirige exhibit and know the Syrinxian exhibit will be at two o'clock. I re-aim the light and gravity and give myself a mental pat on the back for being right.
The column of light bends from the ceiling around me and on to illuminate our prize, but leaves the rest of the amphitheater in stiff darkness. The Syrinxian Crown sits high atop a pedestal, nestled in blue velvet.
My brother Isaac, safely perched on the roof, lowers me another foot. The rope sways, threatening to swing me out of the light. My heart shrinks as my feet dip into the darkness. I breathe deeply until the momentum dies. Then he drops me another foot.
Someday I'd like to switch places with him and see how he likes being dangled, see how he likes the uncertainty and loneliness of not "just knowing" what you are and who you want.
Get it together brain. A heist is not the time for your usual existential crisis.
I spread my arms: our signal to stop lowering me. The Syrinxian Crown, guarded for centuries by Denovian pledges, is as big as my head. As tempting as snatching it up is, now is the time to take advantage of my inheritance. I feel like it's cheating, like it takes the fun of the danger away, like I shouldn't take advantage of the misunderstanding by the ghost of our eleventh great grandfather.
If I were to say as much, Isaac would unclench his jaw just enough to tell me again that it's a privilege. I don't see how that makes it not cheating.
I close my eyes and slow my breath. I can feel my blood streaming through my veins. I can feel which parts are mine and which are the ghost of something greater.
Redenbav's magic blooms in my mind and overflows to fill up my eyes. My head buzzes. I can feel which parts of my brain are me, and which are synced with the ghost of something greater - a something that is typically bestowed upon a boy, not their little sister who liked it when people couldn't figure out her gender as a child.
Tapping into that guilt-soaked greatness, I open my eyes. The amphitheater lights up around me. A spring loaded net at the main entrance glows sunset red. So too do the spiked traps under the windows and the pressurized tiles forming small moats around each exhibit.
To have successfully guarded their treasures for centuries, it is natural that the Denovians have precautions in place for attempts from thieves, magicians, and ghosts. But they aren't ready for me.
A thin mist on the floor hums with the milky blue of alarm magic. The Syrinxian Crown glows silvery blue of ancient magic. And somewhere else in this chamber is a distant delicate ringing like someone crying a secret from far away. The sound of knowledge magic. My heart sings with hope that the rumor is true.
Quietly, underneath the song of the artifacts, is the whisper of a pressure plate.
I carefully untie a one pound weight from my hip and slide it beneath the crown. I loop a double swan’s knot around the crown and send a shake up the rope at Isaac.
I sync my focus to the relativism processor in the soles of my boots. I stand on air and detach from the rope.
"We don't have time for you to take stupid risks," Isaac whisper screams down the column of light.
"I'll be right back! Don't distract me!" Relativism is fickle and demands constant focus on how you believe gravity ought to be behaving. As I move, the bend in light and gravity shifts with me.
My focus holds steady. I reach the Syrinxian corridor, and don't immediately spot my desire my goal. I pace. (It helps with the relativism not to stop moving once you start).
None of these artifacts are diamond. The lore says its a diamond as big as my head. None of these are that. There are gems in the crown and scepter. There are even gems encrusted in the frame of the mirror and the spine of a large tome. Well I'm looking for knowledge, so a book seems a good place to start.
The person in the mirror slips into my peripheral vision. My long light brown hair plastered with sweat to my forehead and neck. The climbing rig, snug around my ribs and shoulder, unfortunately accenting my bust, despite the layers. Deserts at night are cold. The blacks and greys meant to meld me into the shadows also tones down my curves. I unhook the climbing rig. I don't appreciate my boobs being outline.
Do you ever look in the mirror and think. Ah! Who's that? Okay it's not that extreme. Half a second of - is that me? My face is just so - unrecognizable. A collection of distances, of facial features of different lengths. I know it's the face on my body because I've seen me before. But still, it doesn't feel like me-me. Another one of the thoughts Isaac would roll his eyes at.
A book is always a good place to start. Maybe it references the diamond. The pedestal is not meant to support the heavy tomb splayed open. I perch one foot on the non-magicked-alarmed base of the pedestal and raise the other knee to brace the front cover, and release my focus from the relativism. My perception of reality lurches – but I knew it would and will myself not to wobble.
This would be an especially humiliating moment to be caught by the guards. Hunched over a book, standing one legged, pausing in a heist to read.
... and the pages are blank, which fills me with hope. This is clearly some kind of magic book, with the answers hidden. Much more convenient than trying to read it cover to cover (either that or steal it, but I don't want my family knowing I have these questions they don't, they couldn't understand).
"Reveal your answers" I try more phrases. "Reveal you secrets." "Please." "Open". "Please I need to know. I can't be nothing." The words choke scratch up my throat. The spine hums. words of light seep out of the seam spine, spiral outward on the open pages then lift in flight, they lock together is a prism grid, a diamond of me.
I swipe away at the outer words. Daughter sister thief Redenbav's chosen. My favorite foods, my favorite book, my favorite weather clutter up the outside. I pinch and pull at the magic floating words. Desperate to dig deeper, to find my core. I rip away the mid level of words that are honestly quite rude "manipulatable" "invalid" "uncertain" "distractible".
I smush up the too honest words and let the sizzle pop sparking balls of crunched up letters clatter drift to the ground. floor. I swipe away the final letters and suppress the urge to scream mid-heist (which is thief guild 101, no noisy temper tantrums mid-heist). At my core is a hazey word: searching. Disappointment rampages inside me. This isn't an answer. I know that I don't know. I want to know why I don't know. If there's something that I am or am I confused, young, and naive. Just absence. This doesn't give me answers.
"The journey lies within you." says a hollow ethereal voice from the pages.
I slam the ancient tome shut. Such bullshit. The diamond framework only showed me what I know about myself. This was entirely not worth the risk. I storm (relativistically) out of the Syrinxian exhibit and back to the main hall, the rope dangling down the column of light. I march up the ramp of light. I hook back into the climbing belaying gear, relax my focus, and give the rope a jiggle. My brother does not appear.
"Issiah!" I whisper scream upward. "Very funny! Lesson learned. Get me out of here."
I wait a full minute before taking the situation into my own hands. I lift myself a few inches up the rope, detach and reattach the gear the harness. squiggle my feet high up the rope, loop a foot hold. shift myself higher. I accomplish the pattern five times before I fail to reattach the harness before my hand slips my tired arms give out. I tip backwards, down, head first, the foot loop snagging my ankle.
I wait for the lurching to end, then try to reengage the relativism – which will be tricky, I've only mastered walking forward and walking up and down imaginary slopes. Doing a relative spin and then vertical is something i have – well – attempted – and I realize my focus isn't latching on – that the processors burned out already. Which is why we don't trust boots – boots are back up plans.
This isn't the worst possible scenario I tell myself. I wiggle. Testing the rope's hold on my ankle. There are two options. Activate as yet undiscovered epic abdominal strength feat, or squirm my foot out of my boot, grab the pedestal before my head cracks on the thin cushion, then a gymnastic flip and stick the landing on , ideally, a non-rigged tile.
Neither option feels right, so I hang for a few minutes, letting the blood pool in my head. letting my disappointment in myself for chasing stupid non-answers, my frustration with my brother slip away. I will breathe and close my eyes and an opportunity will present itself.
I open my eyes.
Denovian Pledges of four species trample lunge sprint and glide through the door. Their only similarity a faded starburst splitting their brows and the clawing emptiness in their eyes left over from the removal. The degree of vacancies in the eyes from pledge in varied from species to species. The woman with flaming hair looked the most dead eyed, and her hair limp and sizzling down her back, singeing the thick ceremonial robes.
"Surrender to the righteousness of Denovia," they howl in unison, high and breathy like the desert wind.
All I can do is dangle. So much for family.
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