Halfling (editing in process)

Prologue

The forest excreted an air of unease and fear. The tree's limbs seemed to intertwine; their connected branches efficiently blocking the bright illumination from the moon. From within the dark depths echoed the howls and snarls of hidden creatures; the haunting sound produced a frightening song that broke the silence of empty air. To others the overload of sensatory stimulation would be more than enough to frighten away mortal souls.

Funny thing was she wasn't mortal.

To address the technicalities, both sides of the woman's bloodline were immortal. The mixing of elven and demonic blood was previously thought impossible before her conception. Said life was able to thrive after an unwilling mother was prevented from killing the abomination growing inside her. The full details were gruesome; the elven maiden had been taken from her home and forced into acts that had left her pregnant. After trying to kill the baby with the aid of both magic and blade; she had been stripped of her powers using ancient spells and bound for the remainder of her pregnancy. Those months she endured torture and grief at the hand of her demonic captor, and wished death would come to embrace her nearly every day.

The day of the birth she got her wish. The baby, a healthy baby girl born with a soft tuff of copper hair and skin as milky as her mother's, had been born with horns and a tail. The internal injuries caused by the birth had been her death sentence; the woman dying alone while the demon held his prize. The child's first breath lead to her mother's last; the elven woman was abandoned in the woods and later found and burned after long ceremonies by her people.

To the elves, the baby was nothing but an abomination, a thing to be slaughtered and nothing more. Because of the tales of the baby of demonic blood; females were to go through extensive blessings the moment they were born to prevent such a creature from being born again. To the demons, the baby was taken in with mixed feelings. The power that grew within her was strong, a mixing of both the dark and the natural that could lead her to be a powerful adversary. Due to the elven blood tainting her however; she was thought nothing but a lower class demon, perhaps a rank under, and thought of as an experiment to be forgotten.

The only saving grace the child seemed to possess was her appearance. She did not have the features of a demon but the grace and beauty of her mother. Her hair had stayed the soft color of copper, her ears holding a soft point and her skin smooth and pale. As she grew she blossomed into a lovely young woman possessing soft curves and a fiery personality. With her ability to hide the horns she had possessed since birth with magic, there was only one thing to give away the demonic nature hidden inside her; the deep crimson of her eyes.

The forest itself; a terror for any mortal, had been the place she had grown up in. She had not been raised in the Underworld as most demons were forced to live in, but abandoned to dwell in the depths of the forest with a few scamps as her caretakers until she could learn to survive on her own, which didn't take very long at all. By the age of seven she was able to care for herself, her elven abilities allowing her to grow what she needed to eat, the demonic ones keeping her safe from the dangers that had lain within.