Prologue:
Lampshade of Fear

Wind howled through the night, carrying a scent that would change the world.
A tall Lampshade lifted his head and sniffed the air.  Yes, it certainly did smell pretty world-changing, though it didn’t smell as good as him because he was wearing Old Spice.
He looked human except for his crimson eyes and lampshade-like hair. More importantly he smelled like a real man.
He blinked in surprise.  The message had been correct, they were here. Could it be a trap?
He looked around.
Nah. It seemed legit.
“Spread out;” he said icily “hide behind the trees and that. Stop whoever is coming…. Or die.”
Around him shuffled twelve Urgals. They weren’t really too keen on dying, so they hurried into the brush, grunting as they hid. All but one of them, who tripped over his shoelaces and landed heavily on the ground.
The Lampshade hissed in fury and vaporised him with his laser vision.
The now eleven Urgals hushed pretty quick-smart.
The Lampshade peered around a thick tree and looked up the trail. It was too dark for human eyes to be able to see, but for him the faint moonlight streaming between the trees was like the light of a 100W incandescent bulb.
He remained unnaturally quiet, a long pale sword in his long pale hand.
The Urgals however could not see as well as him, they groped around like a particularly creepy old guy in a dark room full of women, and fumbled with their weapons.
The monsters shivered in the cold night; one snapped a twig with his heavy boot .
“Oooop! Sorry, sir…” The Urgal grimaced sheepishly.
The Lampshade rolled his eyes. Why did he put up with these idiots? Their poor hygiene, intellect and fashion sense were frankly painful, especially to his superhuman senses and dapper vampiric style.
Never mind, he’d be rid of them soon, one way or another.
He forced back his impatience, as the minutes became hours.
Another gust of wind rushed through the forest. The smell was stronger this time. Excited, his thin lip lifted in a snarl of delight.
“Get ready,” he whispered, his whole body shaking with excitement. It had taken so much pain, so many plots and auditions to get to this point. He couldn’t screw it up now.
Eyes brightened under the Urgal’s thick monobrows, and the creatures gripped their weapons tighter. Ahead of them, the Lampshade heard a clink as something hard struck loose stone.  Faint smudges emerged from the darkness and advanced down the trail.
Three rainbow-coloured unicorns with riders pranced toward the ambush, their horns held high and proud, their coats shimmering in the moonlight like DVDs.
On the first unicorn was an elvan man with pointed ears and elegantly waxed eyebrows. His build was thin but strong, like skilfully sliced blue vein cheese. A powerful bow was slung on his back, though it was mostly for show seeing as he’d decided to bring his collection of elvan flutes instead of arrows. The elegant musical instruments clattered around in his quiver.
The last rider had the same attractively androgynous features as the other. He carried a long spear in his right hand and had an elvan battle ocarina at his belt.
Between these two rode a raven haired elven lady. She was all pretty and that, in an efly kind of way. She carried in her lap a pouch that she looked at every few seconds, as if to reassure herself it was still there.
They all trotted by the Lampshade’s hiding place without suspicion.
The Lampshade was already savouring his victory when the wind decided to change direction and swept his manly aftershave fragrance right into the hyper-sensitive nostrils of the unicorns. The beast’s nostril’s flared and they tossed their heads. The rider’s stiffened, eyes darting from side to side, then wheeled their mounts around and galloped away.
The lady’s unicorn surged forward, leaving her guards far behind. The two elven men saw that they were going to die anyway, so they decided to hold them off for a bit.
The first rider, with inhuman speed, fletched a flute and fired it at the Lampshade. The flute shot through the air with a sweet D#, before burying itself up to the second finger hole into the tree behind the Lampshade’s head with a loud thock.
The other rider quickly reached for his elegantly carved ocarina, put it to his lips and began playing a rousing elven battle song. He was only into the the eighth bar when his steed was struck by an Urgal arrow and fell to the ground
The first elven man continued desperately firing volleys of flutes but the Urgal’s arrows soon soon finished him. His companion soon met a similar fate.
The elven lady glanced over her shoulder to check on them.
As she did this, the Lampshade jumped out from behind a tree and yelled “LÄZÃVESlON!!”
A red bolt flashed from his eyes toward the elven lady, illuminating the trees with a bloody light. It struck her steed, and the unicorn toppled over with a high-pitched squeal, plunging into the ground chest-first. She lept off the animal with inhuman speed, and glanced back for her guards again, whose corpses currently bore a resemblance to pincushions.
The Urgals were going over to the two elves when the Lampshade screamed “After her! She is the one I want!”
The monsters grunted and galloped down the trail.
A cry tore from the elf’s lips as she saw her inconvenienced companions. She took a step toward them, the cursed her enemies and bounded into the forest.
While the Urgals ploughed through the trees (in some cases literally through the trees) the shade scuttled up a piece of granite that jutted above them. From his perch he could see all of the surrounding forest. He raised his eyelids and shouted his evil laser spell again, and a quarter-mile section of the forest exploded into flames. Glaring in an evil manner he incinerated section after section of the forest until a circle of flames enclosed the ambush site. He watched the local fauna scampering away with second degree burns, and he grinned because he was such a prick.
Suddenly, the Lampshade heard shouts and a high-pitched girly scream. Through the trees he saw that three of his Urgals had blundered into a patch of prickly shrubs.
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? GET HER!”
The monsters sniffled for a moment, before obediently bounding off after the elf.
She fled toward the dramatically craggy chunk of granite faster than you can say Bkqæ?u?ahm. The horned monsters lumbered out of the thicket and closed in, blocking her only escape routes. She whipped her hair back and forth as she tried to look for a way out. Finding none, she drew herself up to her full height (five feet) in a poncy regal fashion.
The shade grinned some more.
“Get her.” He said after a long while, savouring her helplessness and his own incredible evil brilliance because it was practically part of the job description to do things like that.
The Urgals, some of them still crying, as quietly as they could, due to their prickle wounds, stepped forward.
She reached into the pouch she was carrying, and held out a large blue stone which was definitely not egg-like in any way.
“You want this, my friends?” She said quietly.
“Uh.” Said one of the Urgals, glancing up at his master for help. “Uh. Yeah. Dat thing. Yeah we do.”
“Well then, think quick!” She jerked her arm as if to throw it, and the Urgals bounded off in the direction of her feign throw like particularly dim-witted Labradors.
The elf-lady begun chanting as quickly as her tongue would allow.
The Lampshade screamed in fury, before diving off the rock and at the elf.
But he was too late.
A flash of emerald light illuminated the forest, and the stone vanished.
Then the Lampshade landed on top of her and punched her in the face with his laser-enhanced fist. She collapsed.
The Lampshade leapt up, howled in rage and ditched his sword at a particularly unfortunate Urgal who had only just caught on to the elves’ trick. There was a loud shlock.
He killed the other Urgals instantly with his laser vision, before wrenching his sword free from the mangled corpse and strode toward the elf.
Prophecies of revenge, spoken in a wretched language that only he knew, and therefore completely useless, rolled from his tongue. He clenched his thin hands and glared at the moon. The moon stared blankly back.
“RAAHH!” He said, and threw a rock at it. The rock sailed off into the night sky.
He took a deep breath and counted to ten very slowly though his teeth. Then he made his way back to the unconscious elf. Her beauty, which would have enchanted any mortal man, or at least and straight mortal man who didn’t mind elves, held no charm for him. He confirmed that the stone was gone, and then retrieved his horse, with some degree of difficulty, where he had stuffed it into a hollow tree to hide it. After duct-taping the elf onto the saddle, he mounted the horse and made his way out of the woods.
He quenched the fires in his path but left the rest to burn, resulting in several serious charges of arson.