- Chapter 1 -

Previously...

Strides-Tall, dancer and adventuress, felt utterly invigorated as she threw off her loose satin shirt and felt the hot stage lights blazing down on her bare skin. She was still relatively new to undressing for an audience, and it unsettled her a little, but if she told herself that the heat was that of the sun, and her surroundings were the open desert, with no-one around for miles, the unease simply drifted away.

Loosening the laces at the side, the tall golden-haired elf slid her short leather skirt off her hips and let it fall to the stage. A roar of approval greeted the act, and followed in the girl's wake as she strutted almost the whole width of the stage, to one of the shiny metal poles that extended from floor to ceiling. Her hair streamed out behind her as she walked, then wrapped herself around the pole, her knee-length tresses catching on a wind created by a large rotating fan hidden from view.

Strides-Tall's strut was not quite as confident as usual. She was wearing new boots - thigh-length scarlet vinyl boots, with silver heels and large polished eyelets running around the edge of the flared cuffs - and those heels were higher and slimmer than she was accustomed to. The other dancers at The Phantasia, the most famous club on Freeport Rock, wore the same kind of heels, and danced in them without difficulty, so Strides-Tall had decided to give them a try.

The "wind" did not help, but the elf only had herself to blame for that. It had been her idea, something she had suggested to Drasheel, the manager of The Phantasia, and Skylla, the club's "First Dancer", and to Strides-Tall's surprise, Drasheel had given her permission to try out the concept in a solo performance, or "feature dance".

Skylla was far from pleased. She wanted the honour of being first to perform "in the wind", and objected to anyone but herself doing feature dances, even though she now had to share that honour with the exotic and enigmatic Raven.

"Next you'll be giving everyone feature dances", the First Dancer had snorted in disgust. "Why, this girl and Raven are our newest acquisitions - and this one doesn't even dance full-time!"

Drasheel had already decided, however, and no-one, not even the illustrious Skylla, was going to change his mind.

Strides-Tall had seized this opportunity to earn herself greater favour with the management, and put everything she had into her show. Her wind-tossed hair did most of the work, swirling and whipping around her as she swung around the pole. Leaning outwards, into the wind, the elf shuddered as the swiftly-moving air sent her hair rippling in silken waves against her body, and drove tiny streams of sweat across her body, down her neck, along the valley of her cleavage, across her stomach and along her thighs, down into the tops of her near-skin-tight boots...

Strides-Tall loved boots. They were her one greatest passion, and a moment like this, when something came along to heighten the thrill of wearing thigh-high boots, would bring her to the very brink of absolute ecstasy. She nearly lost herself in the experience, and nearly forgot she had an audience...

The dancer's heart was still racing somewhat as she sat in the carriage that took her home, a couple of hours before the first of Freeport Rock's artificial suns rose. She was eager to tell her friends Raven and Ashyra about her performance, and the excitement she had felt - and almost as eager to climb into bed, still in her dancing boots, and let the world of sleeping fantasy have its way with her subconscious imagination.

The carriage rattled to a halt just short of the two-storey town-house co-owned by the elf's friends. "Serpentine watch over me", murmured the driver, and Strides-Tall leaned out of the window to catch sight of something incredible - a winged shape, partly deepest black, partly brilliant white, descending towards one of the second-floor balconies.

The elf knew exactly what this was. This was Raven, a girl possessing incredible powers - one of which was the ability to sprout great, bat-like wings - but Strides-Tall had never actually seen her fly. I still don't know how she can manage it, thought the adventuress as the wings, extending from the back of Raven's head, folded, then shrank out of sight behind the night-black silk curtain of the tall, lightly-tanned dancer's ankle length hair.

Raven seemed to sense she was being watched. She glanced over her shoulder, down into the street, and she smiled briefly before disappearing through the balcony doors. Was that for my benefit, wondered the elf, or did she sense the driver's fear...?

"Is...is it true?", asked the driver as Strides-Tall climbed down onto the street. "Is she a demon...?"

The elf tried to be truthful, whilst respecting Raven's privacy. "I don't know", she said, shrugging. She and Raven were both keen on honing their paranormal abilities, and frequently "shared thoughts", all but merging their minds in long periods of meditation to achieve that goal. Raven also hoped those sessions would unlock memories of her past, absent since her arrival in Freeport's strange universe, but nothing had so far come to light.

Strides-Tall couldn't say just yet whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

Her ride paid for by The Phantasia, Strides-Tall headed inside straight away, letting herself in without making a sound. The elf was a fine dancer, as the almost deafening applause from her audience had proved, but she was also highly skilled in the arts of stealth - she could get into a tower, a castle, a hidden vault without being detected, and leave with whatever treasure she had come for - and those talents were available to anyone who could meet her price. All that she asked was the assurance that what she took was being returned to its rightful owner, or that the owner had been dead so long that the transfer of ownership no longer had any legal complications.

The town-house was dark and quiet inside. Both houseowners were plainly making the most of one of their nights off, either sleeping, in the case of slender, elfin Ashyra, or making the most of the night, as Raven had clearly been doing. Raven, still awake, appeared shortly after Strides-Tall closed the door again, strolling down the stairs to greet her companion.

"A good night?", enquired the black-tressed dancer, leaning on the end of the stair-rail. She had not even bothered to put something on - she was still as the elf and her driver had seen her minutes before; naked but for the gleaming white thigh-high boots she customarily wore for dancing.

"Great, thanks - the wind thing went down a storm", Strides-Tall replied. "And how about you...?"

Raven snapped herself up straight, and stretched. "I don't need to sleep as much as I used to", she said with a satisfied sigh as she relaxed again. "I woke up, but I wasn't tired any more. I just got the urge to do something...different, so I did."

Raven talked like any young woman, but she didn't need to grow wings for people to know she was out of the ordinary. The dancer's voice was strangely eerie, possessing a peculiar hollow echoing quality that made people hearing her for the first time shudder...yet more evidence to suggest that maybe the carriage driver might be right about the girl.

"Someone left you a message, while you were at work", Raven continued. "A Mister...Bresquet. He said you've done some work for his employers in the past, and he had a proposition for you."

"Not that kind of proposition, I hope", giggled the elf.

Strides-Tall was well aware of the sort of proposition Nadel Bresquet of the Reclamationists had in mind. His organisation was dedicated to recovering lost technology and reviving it, and she had been on a number of missions for them, retrieving ancient devices and documents from the ruins of what had existed in Freeport's universe before the disastrous cosmic event known only as "The Ancient Rage".

The Rage had shattered planets, turned space inside out so that only ships equipped with sails attuned to the cosmic currents could traverse the stars...and laid waste to the technological civilisations of "The Realm". Those who had survived had struggled to rebuild even a small part of what had existed before, and it was the Reclamationists' intention to accelerate the rebuilding.

"I'll go and see him tomorrow", said Strides-Tall. "Did he say where he'd be?"

Raven smiled, and it was a rather sly and wicked gesture. "The Phantasia. Tomorrow night."

Strides-Tall frowned when she heard this. She always tried to keep dancing and adventuring separate, but Bresquet was in the mood to see his occasional employee in her other working environment. I'm already in Skylla's bad-books for missing rehearsals a few times, she thought. The last thing I need is for Drasheel to find out what I've been doing when I'm not dancing - keeping secrets from him is bad enough.

"We're both dancing tomorrow", Raven told her. "If you need us to cover for you..."

Whatever Raven turned out to be, she was, for the present, a friend, and such things were hard to come by, especially when, like Raven and Strides-Tall, one had been plucked from their home reality and deposited in The Realm. Strides-Tall was glad for the support, now and in the past, when Raven and Ashyra had so generously offered the recently-arrived elf the sanctuary of their home.

"I should be okay, but it's nice to know that someone'll watch my back", she answered. "Just don't get yourselves into trouble on my account."

"I, for one, should enjoy some leeway in that respect", Raven said with a smile. "Every club and tavern on the Rock, and some from beyond, have been asking if I'm available. I don't think Drasheel would like it if I 'suddenly' decided to take a job elsewhere - just when I'm becoming popular..."

"Popular enough to take the post of First Dancer from Skylla?"

Raven sauntered down the last few steps, and lowered herself onto the huge leather couch that was a major feature of the town-house's open-plan ground floor. "Popularity has nothing to do with becoming First Dancer", she said with a barely audible chuckle that became a soft purr of pleasure as she savoured the feel of the leather against her bare body. "You of all people should know that."

Strides-Tall nodded, and Raven continued. "I'm not ready for the responsibility, but Drasheel benefits from the competition between me and Skylla. She tries harder, just to keep him impressed, and the takings go up. In the end, that's all that matters - if he makes the club a big success, he's almost certain to inherit it when his father - the real money behind it - dies."

"If you'd asked me earlier, I'd have said that money was the key factor for everyone in this business", admitted Strides-Tall, "but after tonight, I'm not so sure. Tonight, I really enjoyed myself up there..."

Raven swept aside some of her cloak of jet-black hair, clearing a space on the couch for the elven adventuress. "Please, tell me more...", she purred, expectantly.

Strides-Tall sighed, and sat. Her bed would clearly have to wait a little while longer for her.

 

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