- Chapter 1 -

Life for Strides-Tall was surprisingly good in the city of Golden-Gates. The city, the world's uncrowned gambling capital, demanded much from one's purse, even more so with the recent upsurge in carefree "swinging" youth culture, but the woman managed to keep up, money apparently springing into existence in her bank account from nowhere.

Strides-Tall was no wild millionaire's daughter, nor did she sell narcotics or sexual favours. Some would have called her a thief, but she thought of it more as "property reallocation", returning stolen items to their rightful owners - for a handsome fee, of course.

Even in her free time - and there was lots of it - she pursued her craft, locating and recovering the lost artifacts of her people. Her people were not the people she mingled with, for although she appeared to most to be a particularly vivacious human woman, under her flesh-shaped exterior she was all elf.

On this particular night, Strides-Tall was curled up in the quietest corner of one of her favourite haunts, the night-club known as Groovy Apples, studying a crude sketch-map she had tricked out of an old prospector, up in the hills. For a bottle of the cheapest gut-rotting alcohol, he had told her everything; he had found an old troll mine, and the trolls, the elves' fellow exiles on the world called Abode, were notorious for "finding" and "storing" elven property.

Thousands of years ago, the space-wandering High Ones had found what was to become known as Abode, shaping themselves into the forms of mythical beings, but the trolls, tired of travelling the stars, rebelled, causing the wanderers' vessel to crash in the distant past, when men were little more than apes. Despite the magic-sapping nature of that two-mooned world, the elves managed to survive, sometimes even taking the most drastic measures.

Most of the elves were gone now, having reclaimed the High Ones' vessel and returned to the stars, but some had stayed behind, for many and varied reasons. Only a child at the time, Strides-Tall had only known the human world, and had found that she liked it. Crude though they were, and still not far descended from apes, the humans could still amuse her.

One managed to do just that, strolling over to chat to her. He was a young fellow, barely recognisable as such with hair hanging down past the high collar of his floral-patterned shirt, which he wore under a shaggy jacket that looked like a freshly-shorn sheep's fleece. "Hey, baby", he murmured, his words slurred. "How's it hangin'...?"

He was either drunk, or high on drugs. By the look of him, Strides-Tall assumed the latter. She had had centuries to learn the ways of men, and she had learned them well. "I'm cool", she replied, noncommittantly. She did not want company, but neither did she want to harm this young fool. She had to get rid of him.

The man sat beside her. "Watcha doin'?", he asked.

"Oh, I'm planning a little trip into the hills", she answered. "I'm going to go to an old mine, strip down to my boots, and go treasure-hunting..."

"Far out...", purred the youth, fascinated. Strides-Tall did not think he had actually registered what she had said. She had, in fact, told him the absolute truth...

The man's hand ventured onto her thigh, and onto the very boots she had spoken of. One of many pairs she owned, they were made from glistening black plastic, and stopped at mid-thigh, just short of the hem of the tiny rust-coloured suede skirt she wore. Around the tops were ornamental straps, decorated with square chromed buckles, and his fingers ventured a little too close to those straps for Strides-Tall's liking.

Time to say goodbye to Mister Adventurous-Hands, she thought, and placed her hand on his.

The young man looked down as he felt her touch him, and at once he recoiled. Her hand had only four fingers, and looked as though that was a natural arrangement, rather than the result of some accident.

He looked up, and found himself gazing into large, slanted eyes, the irises an eerie violet colour. To either side of those eyes were large, pointed ears, the tips of them rising through her long, straight pale yellow hair...

"Whoa", he mumbled, levering himself out of his seat and peeling a warm, sweaty hand from the plastic surface of the girl's boot. "Heavy... I gotta go lie down someplace..."

Returning to human form, Strides-Tall watched, with a smirk on her face, as the drug-entranced human staggered away, shaking his head and most likely wonder just what he had been taking.

He looked back just once, and when he did, he found that the strange girl had quite simply disappeared. Certain now that he was going insane, the young reveller hurried out into the street.

Oh yes. You're good. I'm going to enjoy you...

The following morning, Strides-Tall borrowed an off-road pick-up truck from an acquaintance, and set off for the hills. Arriving there just after the sun had passed its zenith, she had lunch and took a while to go over her plans one more time before preparing for the adventure.

Treasure-hunting was a risky business at the best of times, but Strides-Tall insisted on adding something special of her own. Her most consuming passion was boots, the higher the better, and she did most of her "property reallocation" work whilst wearing nothing but boots. Exposing herself to the world like this brought her an intense thrill, even though no-one was watching, and nothing she had faced to date had gone any way to convincing her that such practices were potentially dangerous folly.

Lunch over and done with, Strides-Tall began to get ready, slipping off her cropped suede waistcoat and rose-coloured satin blouse as she sat in the shade of the truck's passenger compartment. Stepping out into the open air, she unfastened her little skirt, and let it drop into the dust at her feet.

The elven woman basked in the hot sun for a few moments, feeling it warm her tanned skin and the glossy fabric of her thigh-length boots. She nearly lost herself in the sensation, forgetting what she had come to do, but she soon stumbled over a psychic trip-wire she had put in place for just such an occasion, and her focus returned to the real world, and the treasures awaiting her.

Strides-Tall stowed a variety of small items in the tops of her boots - lock-picks bundled in velvet, a coil or two of wire, a tiny steel, glass-lined vial of acid, and a length of thin, but extremely strong silken climbing cord. The elf had the power of levitation and flight - "Gliding", as her people called it - but that power was only developed far enough to carry her short distances, and she preferred to save her mental energy for emergencies. Twenty feet of silk rope was usually enough, and she could always come back for more.

Confident, aren't we - and so brazenly bold...

The mine had been deserted for many years, the rock stripped bare of valuable ores and metals. That was partly down to the trolls, masters of mining and metal-working, who could almost charm the metal out of the rocks. They had probably been working the rock in these hills for centuries before the humans came, continuing in absolute secrecy alongside them, then moving on when there was nothing left to take.

Her footsteps light as a whisper, Strides-Tall had little to fear as she entered the mine, and began following the shafts downwards. A spider dropped onto her arm on one occasion, and she fearlessly brushed the little beast off without even slowing. The passages quickly grew dark as twists and turns took them out of the light, and the adventuress brought out a glowing jewel on a chain which she fastened around her neck.

Again, I find myself wishing I was a Wolf-Rider, she thought, feeling the pendant warming her throat as it glowed. The Wolf-Riders were a tribe with wolf-blood running through their veins along with the elven, and they possessed heightened senses like the wolves they rode - including excellent night-vision.

The sketch-map committed to memory, Strides-Tall quickly found the way down into the old troll tunnels. A pit had formed where part of a troll passage's roof had collapsed, and a rope was already there, left in place by the old prospector when he fled in fear of the "ancient spirits of the earth". Human mythology surrounding elves and trolls comes to my aid again, Strides-Tall thought thankfully, and started to climb down.

The tunnels, Strides-Tall soon realised, were the work of a small band of trolls, nomads who mined what they could, then moved on. Most of the passages were purely functional, crafted with little artistry, and once they had served their purpose, they were left to become derelict, and maybe even dangerous. "I hope your fore-fathers never see this shameful mess, ground-grubbers", the elf whispered to herself. "To think that a troll would be so careless, and so impatient..."

Strides-Tall was hardly a troll when it came to knowing the underground world, but she had learned enough to stay safe. If a passage seemed unsafe, she avoided it, and water seeping through the ceiling was always a bad sign, but nothing stood in the way of her getting to the central chambers, where the trolls had lived, eaten, and played six-sided stones. If there's anything here, this is where I'll find it, she told herself.

Trolls were pitifully predictable. In a side-chamber, the elf found what appeared to be a refuse pit, long ago eaten clean by cave-vermin. Bones could still be seen, nearly twenty feet below - the bones of some rather large animals, still arranged approximately in the positions of creatures that had died down there...

Wolves, most likely, thought Strides-Tall. The trolls left them behind, and they starved to death. But why would they have wolves down there anyway...?

The girl fastened her rope to an old iron ring, bolted to the wall. The trolls made such things to last, but she still made sure it would hold before even trying to test it with her body-weight. Taking risks was one thing - being outright careless was another entirely. Satisfied, Strides-Tall let the rope down into the pit, and started to climb down.

Closer...closer now, my pretty...

Casting her light all around the old refuse cave, Strides-Tall discovered exactly what she had come for - a statue of polished silvery metal, about two feet tall and depicting a slender male elf in robes, standing on a rough stone pedestal, towards one end of the chamber. Delving into distant memory, she recalled just such an item, a relic from the ancient elfin settlement known as Blue Mountain, created to remind one close descendent of the High Ones of what he had been before submitting himself to radical flesh-shaping. "The Statue of Tyldak...", gasped the elf, awestruck.

That explains the wolves, she thought. The trolls knew the statue was valuable, and protected it. They must have had to leave in a hurry, if they left that behind.

Quickly, Strides-Tall fashioned a loop at the end of her rope, then tucked her hair into the backs of her boots before slipping her legs into the loop. If she judged it just right, she could hang from the loop, her head just inches from the floor, and swing across to grab the statue...

Yes...yes...

Strides-Tall let herself drop down, starting the swinging motion she would need. The cord dug into the backs of her knees, only slightly cushioned by the sleek vinyl of her boots, but the loop, and the iron ring high above, held firm as she began to swing further and further across the chamber. She came closer and closer to the pedestal, the precious statue coming ever nearer to her expectant hands. More than once, she had to wipe her hands on her hips and buttocks to remove the beads of sweat that formed there as her excitement grew...

I have you.

The elf made a grab for the statue. Her hands touched the shining metal, then gripped it hard. The statue came away from the pedestal without resistance, telling her there was no additional danger to face in the form of an intricate troll trap. Or so she hoped...

The rope suddenly went slack, no longer digging into the elf's legs. She started to fall, but the floor did not rush up to meet her almost immediately as she had expected. On and on she fell, as though plummeting from the peak of a mountain. How can that be?, she wondered. Just what is going on...?

The statue turned to dust in her hands, and blew past her in a shimmering cloud. Strides-Tall called upon her Gliding powers, hoping she had the strength to reach safety, but the power simply was not there. Something was preventing her from flying.

If I hit anything solid at the end of this, she realised, I'll redefine the term "dead"...

The elf was so certain of her own demise, and had so long to contemplate it, that when her fall abruptly ceased the strain on her psyche was so great that she fainted. She was in no position to see that she had survived, against all the odds, and that her fall had ended on a pile of luxurious satin cushions...

 

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