The Demon Awakens

The Demon Awakens is a fantasy novel by the American writer R. A. Salvatore, published in 1996. It is the first book of his DemonWars Saga and the opening of the sequence that followed it.

The setting is a frontier region of the land of Corona, where isolated villages live without much protection from the wild country around them. A demon has come awake and has been drawing followers to it, and the merciless attack on the village of Dundalis leaves two children who have grown up together, Elbryan Wyndon and Jilseponie Ault, known as Pony, without families or homes.

Elbryan is taken in by the Touel'alfar, an elven people, and trained in the forest that is their home, not only in arms but in the philosophy that goes with them, until he becomes a ranger. Pony, who cannot remember her own past, has to make her way separately. The novel also follows a monk named Avelyn Desbris, who joins a monastery in order to serve his faith and finds that the men running it are using their position for their own ends.