The war of the avatars
an excerpt

She hung upside down, thighs burning and long, braided black hair dangling dangerously just around her hands. There was a thin string of wire that reached from one end of the tiny room to the other. This seemingly innocent stretch of wire was all that held her taunt body from what most thieves would describe as both a messy and painful death.
Her slim legs were hooked between the wire and the ceiling, all that kept the girl aloft was the tensity in her knees. If she relaxed, she would fall headfirst toward the stone floor. And while the girl was an adept acrobat, it would not be the landing that would kill her.
Sweat had beaded over her body and ran up toward her hairline in tiny droplets. Her hands had a light film of dust covering her palms, and while sweaty, the dust helped to maintain her grip.
With a small release of oxygen from between her strained lips she inched just a fraction, releasing just the tiniest bit of tension from her legs. The wire that held her aloft made a small sound of protest but held under the shift in weight.
Slowly and surely Lyra’s hands extended. She paused as her palms began to hover around the tip of the object that she hung above.
The small room had walls of thick stone, covered in designs and tiles from the long forgotten past, it boasted opulence and danger. One in two tiles would depress if touched and fill the room with magical acid that devoured flesh, leaving only metals and belt buckles if you were lucky. The first metre from the doorway in was a sixty foot drop onto a bed of spikes and spears that triggered after exactly four average human footsteps. Each of the tiles on the ground was differently coloured. The red ones released a volley of arrows from slits in various places around the room. The blue ones released poison arrows from the floor that would shoot up into the ceiling and then back down again. The green tiles filled the room with magical acid again. And Lyra didn’t want to take the chance that the white tiles, while probably safe, might also be trapped. In the centre of the room, surrounded by dusty belt buckles and thieves picks from centuries ago, was a thin pillar that finished at about hand height for most humanoids. On this ornate and gently carved pillar sat a crown made of pure platinum gold. The ‘white gold king-maker’ was adorned with sapphires and blue topaz that ringed each other in priceless circles. Runes and ancient embroidery was carved into the crown, and each of the seven spiked points was adorned with a droplet of dragon’s tears. The crown could not be bought by any one man it was worth so much.
Lyra’s face was flushed a deep red from blood rushing to her temples, her eyes opened and closed in deep thought as she hung in that tiny room for the longest time.
Don’t confuse this thinking with something that is complex and tricksy. That is not in Lyra’s nature, and besides, one cannot think of the words ‘double-crossing’ after seven arduous hours of hanging by your knees in an ancient tomb. The thief extraordinaire, Lyra Fow, was thinking about her weight.
After another long pause she reached up her body with one hand and took a small, black bag from her belt. She pulled a second, empty bag from another loop of her belt and opened the first. She took another look at the crown and bit her lip.
Barely a pinch of sand came from the first bag before she closed the second and reattached it to her belt.
Another tense moment passed as Lyra moved her hands back into preposition.
Many thieves often brag about how they easily and quickly replaced the false weight with the object that they stole. About how simple and quick the process had to be in order to fool the spells that the mage’s had cast upon this weight-sensitive area.
Lyra Fow did not boast any such thing now. She moved the crown with her left hand little more than a millimetre and then gradually began to ease the bag into its place.
The process was long, and many a man would have given up in the time that Lyra took. Seeing little more than small dazzling spots of red as she turned her head occasionally, she moved the bag inch by inch until the crown was fully replaced.
The room remained silent as Lyra slowly clutched the crown to her chest.
A bag emerged from her waist and she slid the priceless artefact inside its confines.
Lyra sat up in one smooth, powerful movement, using her stomach muscles to pull the rest of her body up. She hung a moment as she slipped a pair of black gloves black over her fingers and then grabbed the wire that she hung on.
Again, she neither rushed nor panicked. Her pace was slow and steady as she moved to the door, sliding cautiously along the wire.
The only warning was a small scream of metal before Lyra felt her body suddenly freefalling.
She twisted free of the taunt wire and flipped in the air, curling her body into a tight ball as she fell toward the ground.
The world spun in a dizzying haze before Lyra slammed her feet out and spread her arms.
She landed.
Red, green and white.
She didn’t even hesitate. One second she was standing, the next she was running and jumping.
Her reaction speed was instantaneous. The traps were not.
Lyra landed against the thick stone of the closing door and rolled shoulder over shoulder out.
She stepped into the small hallway and took three steps left, avoiding the trap doors that would open and send her failing to a messy and painful death in a pit of demon-snakes below.
“Sorry. I just wanted to see what your reaction would be if I cut the wire.”
Lyra’s brilliant blue eyes shot a very unfriendly look at the man who stood a good few hundred metres away, holding a small dagger in one hand and looking down at the felled wire with a degree of interest on his face. He was an older man, perhaps thirty, perhaps older, but obviously well past his prime. His purple, half elven eyes held a similar spark of animosity in them as Lyra’s. While he was of an age most men retired back to their home villages and rested, he wore the garb of traveller, dusty, well-worn boots and a long, old looking sword sheathed on his side.
Lyra’s lips curled in a snarl and she reached for something just behind her back.
“Don’t move! I know exactly which stone to step on to trigger the poison darts at your back.” The man threatened, features contorting into a similar snarl.
Lyra stopped moving and stood, motionless. Behind her she could hear the clink of belt buckles as the room filled with acid and something exploded. Now, she thought, I know what the pressure sensitive spell did.
“Hm. Well this is a rare situation. The great family-less Lyra, at a loss for words. Now while I appreciate the moment for all its beauty, I think you know what I want. Hand it over and we might both yet live to be rivals another day.”
Lyra cocked her head to one side, a small smile slowly spreading over her features. “Dari’ed, I am not stealing this object for you to sell across the oceans in Porvi. There are things more noble than wealth.” She paused, although wealth was generally what determined nobility these days, that argument would be a little contrary to what she wanted to remind the half-elf of.
Dari’ed smiled, stroking his greying beard with his dagger as he watched Lyra. “Now, now, Lyra. You should know better than to preach to me. I don’t take lessons from children like you.” His face grew serious. “Drop the crown and take two steps to your left.”
Lyra raised her eyebrows. “Two steps?”
“Yes. Two steps to your left, are you deaf, girl? Drop the crown, now. I don’t have all day.”
Slowly and deliberately Lyra set the crown down. “You should not do this, Dari’ed. Your greed will mean that the kingdom of Jaiol will be without a king. The cities will descend into chaos and civil war.”
Dari’ed sighed. “Always such the helper; with the words of helping the weak, protecting the peasants. When are you going to realize how foolish your high ideals are?”
Lyra’s jaw set and she took two steps to her left.
Dari’ed didn’t have time to scream as the first volley of arrows that shot down the corridor ripped through his body at throat height. The next set took his stomach and the third missed his head by the time they launched as he had fallen to the ground.
Blue eyes dark the thief picked up the crown and tied it securely to her waist.
She lightly and carefully picked her way down the corridor, not even sparing a glance for the would-be thief’s body as she passed it on her way out.
The maze consisted of vastly mundane and easily avoidable traps. Most thieves of Lyra’s calibre could have navigated the dark passageways with relative ease. But getting the crown out had taken a level of creative thought that Lyra was often labelled as incapable.
The black haired girl made her way through the winding corridors, stepping daintily over trap doors, rolling under trip-wires and generally avoiding what few traps still worked in the upper levels. The good thing about priceless artefacts was that someone was always trying to steal them. Most of the inexperienced thieves had long ago taken care of a multitude and labyrinth of painful deaths.
Lyra emerged in one of the thickest jungles on the Likakis continent. She stretched her arms over her head and cracked her neck in several places before wandering down the side of the small, dusty trial.
The day was heavy with a full sun, and the heat hit her like a physical blow. Inside the tomb, it had been cold and the air stale. Outside it was a sauna and the world smelt like thick, too-sweet tree sap. Birds and bugs flew in swarms overhead. Small demons darted between shadows, taking notice of the mortal who had emerged from the tomb.
The nearest town was well over a week’s ride away and few even remembered where this place was. A lucky tip and some well placed threats had gotten Lyra to a shady man with a wooden arm who was the last person to ever hear about a pirate who had once gone missing in this area.
She moved down the little used track to her draco, where it waited obediently, snuffing at jungle-grass in what was clearly distaste.
Lyra mounted the beast silently and nudged it with her foot in the direction of home.
“High ideals, indeed. You know, horse, I’ve been thinking about my career a little. I guess I have sort of lost my way from what mother originally intended. Perhaps I should go and visit her after we get this crown to Prince An’one.”
The draco snorted, although it could have been more interested in a bothersome blowfly than Lyra’s words.