Prologue
Since every damn book has one.
It was a cloudless summer night in the Soskeialsidoaak Woods. The moon shone brilliantly like an Elfin-made silver plate in the middle of the velvety black sky, surrounded by its usual consort of scintillating constellations. Two tall, dark figures rode in a swift pace among ghostly trees, their profiles concealed by thick branches.
Their horses made no sound at all, and no creature stirred in the deathly silence. After a considerable amount of going around in circles, passing the same ugly knotted oak tree over and over again like some sickly deja vu, one of them finally stilled his horse.
"Sister," he said, in a tinkling voice reminiscent of bells and other musical instruments, "we're lost."
"Shut thy mouth and keep going," replied his sister. Her voice, too, sounded beautiful.
"But…we're lost! Really, surely, hopelessly, absolutely, definitely, undeniably, unquestionably…lost!"
"Shut thy mouth and do as I say. Keep going! Or thou shall never taste chocolate again," replied his sister.
The thought of chocolate made the brother's mouth water. In fact, if not for the darkness, he would have been seen drooling. He wiped his mouth with an intricately embroidered sleeve and shook his head.
"But please, Sis! We can't go on anymore. Tabby is tired too."
"Since when did thou name thy horse Tabby?" said the sister, suddenly stopping. "That is not an Elvish name! What is more, that sounds like the name of a cat!"
"Well…you named him Josoallosciarrinus when you gave him to me, and I can't really pronounce that all the time. Plus, Tabby sounds…cute."
"Thou art such a shame on the House of Hisaphoddamiarino."
"Can't you stop saying 'thou' and 'thy'? You're driving me crazy, Sis! Just because we're Elves in some epic medieval fantasy doesn't mean we have to talk like…like…some stupid old poetry! The readers won't understand you!"
The sister shook her head and sighed. Sometimes she wondered if she was really related to this pointy-eared idiot. Well, she was pointy-eared too, but she was not an idiot.
"So…where are we?" the brother asked hopefully, after a while of trotting. Tabby walked on, oblivious of his surroundings, but Kiallanolisoratis, the sister's horse, suddenly raised her ears in alert.
"Hush," snapped the sister. Something, or someone, stirred in the nearby bushes, disrupting the thick, oppressing silence.
"You're mean, Sis," replied the brother, pouting, completely unaware of the poison dart behind his neck…well, it was in his neck now. He fell off his horse with a thump. Tabby whinnied in surprise, resulting in a poison dart in his neck, too. Tabby fell with another thump.
"Who the hell art thou?" shouted the sister, raising her right hand in preparation for a spell. "Show thyself, coward!"
"Put your hand down, and no one will get hurt," replied a rough, grating man's voice from somewhere above the nearby tree. Dammit, that was the stupid knotted oak.
"My brother is already hurt," replied the sister furiously in her ringing voice.
'Nah, that's just tranquilizer. He'll wake up tomorrow morning with a pretty bad headache and no memory of tonight's venture, but he'll be safe. Don't worry about him. Worry about yourself—hand me that…thing in your bag. Or I really will kill you."
The sister flung her hand towards the voice's origin, shooting a green bolt of energy. There was a dull smack where the bolt hit its target, a string of curses and ruffle of leaves as the target fell, and a loud, disturbing crack when the target hit the ground and broke several bones, followed by another string of curses.
"Gotcha! Go baby, go baby, yeah, yeah, go baby! Who's awesome? I'm awesome! I am! Go baby!" exclaimed the sister in delight, completely forgetting her medieval style of speech. As she was happily singing to herself, her voice like melting honey, warm and sweet and—okay we get it!—something hit her in the back of the head, knocking her out alongside her unconscious brother.
"What a pair of morons," muttered the man who just fell out of the tree. His clothes were bloodied, but his body was without a scratch, completely healed from the bone-breaking fall in just a few seconds. He grinned maliciously, showing sharp, gleaming white fangs where normal canine teeth should be. His eyes were a bloody crimson, and his long hair a deep, raven black as impenetrably dark as the night sky…no, darker than the sky, since there's a moon in the sky and he didn't have a moon in his hair. That would be gay. Anyway, what was most unsettling about this man was his skin—deathly, paper white, without a tinge of redness and…did I see sparkles? His skin was sparkling like white marble? Holy holmium, he's a vampire!
Waving his hands in the air, the vampire summoned his minions, a group of extremely ugly, stinky, slimy, disgusting, unpleasant, repulsive, horrible Orcs and Ogres. They chortled nastily at the sight of the two elves slumped on the forest floor, their beautiful, elegant bodies splayed in strange angles—wait, that sounded kind of inappropriate. Anyway, the vampire called to several of the strongest Ogres to carry the brother away, which in reality was quite unnecessary as even a fully grown Elf male weighed less than the average anorexic schoolgirl. The brother shifted his head a little as the vomit-inducing reek of the Ogres penetrated his nasal cavity, but did not wake up.
The vampire walked to the sister and fumbled in her bag of belongings. He knew it was tremendously impolite and disrespectful to look into a lady's bag like this, but he was a vampire, which meant he was dead and sterile and unable to comprehend gender relationships and differences. So he picked up the bag and looked inside. Lipstick, eye shadow, a mirror, a couple of brushes, mascara, eyeliner, a leather pouch filled with gold coins—mm, delicious money!—and an Elvish copy of some feminist magazine, with her name, Arnaimisarirmethusa, written on the first page. The vampire wondered why in the world a feminist would carry such a large amount of make-up. A parchment pack of tissue paper, a miniature painting of a handsome Elfin man, contact lens fluid—so her eyes were not really that green!—a notebook scribbled in Elvish with what looked like calculations, a quill, a bottle of ink, a magical calculator, and a diamond necklace.
Where was the Plot Device? The golden egg he came to look for? He shrieked a blood curdling shriek that would send shivers down the spine of a lion, and emitted yet another string of curses so offensive that even several Orcs blushed. He threw the bag to the ground and trampled it, kicking the make-up and the ink into a disgusting brown sludge in the mud. He pocketed the money and the diamond necklace, and signaled for several other Ogres to pick the Elfin lady up. He would question her quite intensively, using torture if necessary, to find out where she had sent the Plot Device, that one very last Dragon's egg.