Demon of Dawn and Dusk

“I hate you,” I panted while I looked at Astra with my hands on my knees.

The two of us stood atop the peak of the mountain where Astra had set up her first immortal cave. While it looked sharp from a distance, the peak actually had a flat and even surface. I didn’t know if that was natural, or if Astra made it that way. In terms of area, the peak was about the same size as the stone platform down below.

“Oh, don’t be such a big baby, Darian,” Astra said. “It wasn’t that bad.”

I looked up and glared at her. What happened to the apologetic Astra from last night? At the moment, I would have preferred her over the Astra who had no problem dragging me to the peak of a tall mountain without warning.

That said, the flight up here wasn’t that bad. It only lasted a few seconds, and Astra had kept a firm hold of me the entire time. Still, the sudden ascent had caught me off guard and filled me with terror. The sight of the stone platform growing smaller with each passing second was not one I would forget any time soon.

Astra grinned at me.

“Glare at me all you want, Darian,” she said. “But you have to admit that the view is worth it.”

I stood up straight and looked around. She was right. Our perch atop the mountain gave us an unobstructed view of the surrounding landscape. As ominous and frightening as the Black Mist Mountains looked, they had a certain majesty and grandeur to them. They were great and terrible to behold in equal measure. It was as if they were ferocious demonic beasts themselves, deserving of both fear and respect.

I took a deep breath. Unlike at the stone platform down below, the air up here smelled clean and clear. I felt reinvigorated just breathing it in. It was colder up here than at the stone platform below, but not by much. I found it brisk and refreshing.

The sky above us started to change color as dawn approached and the sun peeked over the horizon. It went from dark indigo to a light blue mixed with various shades of pink and yellow. It was as if a god had swept a paintbrush across the sky, using it as a canvas. The view was clearer than usual. Back on Mt. Wind Dance, I always greeted the dawn from my house at the base of the mountain. Seeing it from this height was a new experience for me, one that I enjoyed.

My anger and annoyance towards Astra dissipated as I took in the sights and sensations of witnessing the dawn from atop a mountain. Peace filled me.

Without a word, I sat down in the lotus position facing east and began to meditate using the mnemonics of the Song of Dawn and Dusk technique. This technique consisted of two different chants, one for dawn and one for dusk. According to the manual Astra gave me, repeating each chant during their respective times strengthened the mind and gave one insights into the mysteries of dawn and dusk.

As I repeated the chant inside my head over and over again, I started to fall into a meditative trance. Sunlight pierced through my eyelids as the sun rose, yet instead of breaking my focus, the sunlight strengthened it instead. My body relaxed and everything else fell away. Soon, my entire world had narrowed down to the chant and the rays of sunlight that bathed me. No extraneous thoughts intruded upon my mind as I contemplated the mysteries of dawn.

At first, nothing out of the ordinary happened. I maintained my trance, focusing all of my attention on the chant. However, after an indeterminable amount of time, I felt a change come over me. With each repetition, my mind grew clearer and my senses grew sharper. It was as if there had been fog inside my head that was slowly dissipating. These changes were small, but noticeable, at first. As time went on, they grew more and more pronounced.

What was dawn? What did it mean? What did it represent?

Dawn represented hope and renewal. It was a time of transition; the end of night and the beginning of day. However, for a brief moment it was both. For a brief moment, darkness and light reigned in equal measure. In that moment, the two existed in perfect balance and harmony. When that moment ended, darkness receded and light became ascendant. The sun continued on its journey and greeted the world, bathing the land with its life giving warmth.

As I repeated the chant in my mind, it almost felt like I was taking in the sunlight and making it a part of me. It became the catalyst for the changes occurring within me, burning away the fog. My mind continued to grow clearer. Stronger. I became more aware of the world around me; not only through the usual five senses but also through another sense, one less tangible than the others. It had always been there, faint and ephemeral. Trying to grasp it was like trying to grasp the air. However, the sunlight strengthened that sense, invigorating it and giving it more definition.

When I ended my meditative trance, the sun had just finished rising above the horizon. The world seemed sharper somehow. Everything seemed more…Well, more. The sky looked more colorful, the air smelled crisper, the cold felt more refreshing, and the roars of the demonic beasts sounded deeper. There was a depth and a richness to everything that wasn’t there before. Or rather, that I hadn’t noticed. The world hadn’t changed. I had. It was as if I journeyed through life with my eyes closed, and I was just now beginning to open them.

I had been blind, but now I was starting to see.

“Well then,” Astra said, sounding both surprised and pleased. “It usually takes novices several tries before they get results with the Song of Dawn and Dusk, even those who have already formed their dantians. You’re one of the rare few who managed to do it on their first try. Congratulations, Darian.”

I looked over at her. To my surprise, a black outline surrounded her body. It looked vague and indistinct, like a mirage, but when I squinted my eyes and focused the outline didn’t disappear.

“What is that?” I asked. “You’re surrounded by something, though I can’t quite make out what it is.”

“That would be my aura, the visible manifestation of my qi,” Astra explained. “One of the benefits to mental refinement is that it strengthens your spirit sense. Think of it as the sense that allows you to view the vital energies of the world around you and the vital energy of others, though this is a rather simple explanation. Spirit sense is much more than that.” She gestured to me. “At the moment, you’re like an infant that just opened its eyes. As you continue to refine and strengthen your mind, you’ll be able to use your spirit sense with more effectiveness.”

I tried to use this spirit sense to view my own aura. To my disappointment, I saw nothing. Unlike with Astra, no outline surrounded me.

“Why can’t I see my aura?” I asked.

Astra chuckled.

“That’s because the auras of mortals are weak, even for a demonkin like you,” she explained. “Your spirit sense isn’t strong enough to see them, for lack of a better word. The only reason why you can see mine is because of my high cultivation base. I’m in the Golden Core realm.”

Oh, so that’s how it was. Still, I felt a little disappointed. My expression must have revealed my feelings, because Astra let out another chuckle.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “As you continue to meditate using the Song of Dawn and Dusk, your spirit sense will grow stronger.” She paused, looking thoughtful. “Given your aptitude, I don’t think it will be long before you can sense the ambient qi within the environment. That should make it easier for you to cultivate with the divine Fire qi and form your dantian.”

As Astra reminded me of why I started with the Song of Dawn and Dusk in the first place, I found that I no longer dreaded the idea of cultivating with the divine Fire qi. Before, I viewed it as an ordeal I needed to endure in order to achieve my goals. Now I viewed it as a challenge to overcome. One way or another, I would become a divine demon. I refused to accept anything less at this point.

My stomach rumbled, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet. Astra let out a laugh.

“Let’s head down and get some food in you, Little Demon,” she said, her eyes filled with mirth. “While you eat, I’ll tell you about our family and why we couldn’t visit you.”

I shook my head.

“Not yet,” I said, gesturing towards the east. “I want to enjoy the sunrise just a bit longer.”

Astra followed my gesture and nodded.

“It is beautiful, yes,” she said. “As old as I am, I still haven’t gotten tired of watching the sun rise.”

The two of us lapsed into silence as we enjoyed the sunrise together.

Later on, as I ate breakfast, Astra explained to me how my parents met, and the circumstances behind my birth. I tried to keep the moans of pleasure to a minimum as I ate, so they wouldn’t be as distracting, but that turned out to be a futile effort. Once again, the food Astra provided was just too delicious. I couldn’t help myself. Astra found my embarrassment amusing, but didn’t let it distract her from explaining things to me.

“Mother is…” she started, before pausing. “There’s no polite way to say this. Mother is a loose woman.”

I swallowed wrong when I heard that and the fried dumpling I had been eating got stuck in my throat. After thumping my chest a few times, and drinking an entire glass of water, I managed to clear the blockage.

“Excuse me?” I asked in a rough voice.

“Mother is a loose woman,” Astra repeated, before tilting her head from side to side. “I suppose you could call her a free spirit, if you’re feeling charitable, but there’s no denying that she’s had countless lovers over the course of her long life.”

I stared at Astra in stunned silence. It was beginning to seem more and more likely that my mother had seduced my father through trickery.

“Two of her favorite pastimes are drinking and fucking, to put it crudely,” Astra continued. “Now, make no mistake. Mother might sleep around, but she has high standards. She doesn’t just sleep with any man. They either have to be handsome enough or powerful enough to catch her interest. She does have standards.”

“That’s…better, I suppose,” I said with a frown. “Is she some kind of demon of hedonism?”

While I didn’t know that much about demons, I knew there were demons out there that embodied sin and vice. While they were more subtle than the demons who wrecked havoc like ferocious beasts, they were no less destructive. These kinds of demons tempted people and led them astray, causing them to fall into wickedness.

“No, actually,” Astra said, shaking her head. “Those are just two of her favorite pastimes. Her favorite pastime is fighting. Mother, at her heart, is a warrior. She loves the thrill of combat and pitting herself against powerful opponents. Winning and losing matters less to her than the fight itself. ” She gave me a wry smile. “In the world of cultivation, we call those kinds of people ‘martial idiots’. This is because they concern themselves with fighting almost to the exclusion of everything else. While Mother isn’t as bad as some, it’s clear that she lives for battle. You’ll understand what I mean when you meet her yourself.”

At the thought of meeting my mother, a pit of dread opened up in my stomach and I lost my appetite. While my view of demons had changed somewhat thanks to Astra, my feelings regarding our mother remained mixed and complicated. I still hated her for leaving me alone to suffer at the hands of Clan Wind Dance, yet I also wanted to meet her and see what she was really like. After all, if Astra was any indication, perhaps our mother wasn’t as bad as I always assumed.

Astra must have noticed something, because she reached over and held my hand for a brief moment before letting go.

“From what Mother told me, she met Cultivator Connor while adventuring in the Western Region,” Astra continued. “She was looking for a specific kind of spirit herb to advance her cultivation, one that grows on an obscure island over there. At first she didn’t think much of him, since he was an entire realm below her and his features were too pretty for her tastes. However, after she witnessed him defeat a flood dragon, he caught her interest.” She grinned. “To provide some context, it’s difficult for a group of Nascent Soul cultivators to defeat a flood dragon. Yet somehow, your father managed to do it by himself.”

I hung onto Astra’s every word. Regardless of my feelings towards my parents, I had always been curious about how they met and how they ended up together. However, I hadn’t expected anything like this. Flood dragons were powerful creatures with power over storms and floods, far above the likes of mortals such as myself. Finding out that my father defeated one on his own increased my reverence and respect towards him.

A part of me also noted that my mother was in the realm above Nascent Soul. Unfortunately, I didn’t know what that was, since my knowledge of cultivation was lacking. However, she must be quite powerful if that was the case. Nascent Soul cultivators were powerful enough to topple mountains, overturn seas, and devastate entire provinces. Did that mean my mother was powerful enough to devastate the entire Northern Region? The thought sent shivers down my spine.

The Azure Dragon Empire encompassed most of the world. It was divided into five administrative regions. There were the four outer regions, which were named after the cardinal directions, with the Central Region serving as the heart of the empire. The Northern Region consisted of three continents that formed a rough triangle. The Southern Region consisted of two continents divided by a narrow sea. The Eastern Region was one giant landmass that seemed to stretch on forever. The Western Region, the other hand, was mostly an ocean dotted with tens of thousands of large islands and countless smaller ones. The Central Region, the smallest of the five, consisted of only a single island floating in the air.

“As was her way, Mother propositioned him right then and there,” Astra continued. “Cultivator Connor hadn’t even had the chance to wipe the blood from his blade yet.” She gave me another wry smile. “Mother is direct like that. When she wants something or someone, she doesn’t hesitate to go after them. Shameless, I know. However, she always said that it was better to act shameless than to miss out on an opportunity due to hesitation or fear.”

I was starting to get a better picture of what our mother was like, and I didn’t know if I liked what I saw. While I could respect her strength and her outlook towards life, I didn’t know if I could condone her shameless hedonism. From the expression on her face, Astra felt the same way.

“What happened next?” I asked.

According to my uncle, my father concerned himself more with training and cultivation rather than romance. Some even thought he would remain celibate his entire life. That was one of the reasons why people continued to doubt that I was his son. Showing up with a child born out of wedlock was completely out of character for my father.

“Cultivator Connor turned her down,” Astra said with a chuckle. “Which just inflamed Mother’s interest in him. No man had ever rejected her before. It was a novel experience. However, no matter how hard she tried to persuade him, Cultivator Connor remained unmoved.”

A disturbing thought floated to the surface of my mind.

“She didn’t…force him, did she?” I asked after some hesitation.

Astra’s expression hardened.

“No,” she said in a heated voice. “Mother, despite how she might act, has a set of principles that she lives by. There are lines that she will never cross, no matter what. Rape is one of those lines. To her, only cowards and weaklings force themselves on others like that. You should be ashamed of yourself for even suggesting it.”

I flushed with shame and lowered my eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to…”

I trailed off, because that would be a lie.

“I accept your apology, Darian,” Astra said, her voice softening a touch. “Just don’t say anything like that again. I understand that you still have misgivings regarding demons, but I will not tolerate any slights or insults against our mother. Whatever your feelings towards her, she is still the woman who gave birth to you. She deserves that much respect from you, if nothing else. Understood?”

I nodded.

“Understood, Big Sis Astra.”

“Good.”

I lifted my eyes and faced her again.

“In that case, how did they end up together?” I asked. “From what I know, my father was something of an ascetic. He sounds like the complete opposite of…Mother in that regard.”

“Mother saved his life,” Astra said. “Cultivator Connor got caught up in a feud after he killed the young master of a powerful clan. The young master deserved it, but that didn’t stop his clan from trying to avenge his death. Mother helped Cultivator Connor escape their wrath.” She frowned. “I don’t know all of the details about that particular incident, however. You’ll need to ask one of them if you want the full story. Regardless, afterwards, Mother demanded one night with Cultivator Connor as a reward for saving him.” She shrugged. “Afterwards, they went their separate ways and assumed they would never see each other again. It should have ended there. Fate, however, had other ideas.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about the fact that I was conceived after a single night of passion between my parents. At least it was better than the worst case scenario, where my mother either seduced my father through trickery or forced herself on him. Still, a part of me couldn’t help but feel disappointed.

When I was a child, before my uncle started forcing me to “prove” myself worthy of learning Clan Wind Dance’s cultivation techniques, I always imagined that my father and my mother shared a forbidden romance; star-crossed lovers forced apart due to their circumstances. It seemed that a part of me had still held onto that childish fantasy.

“Mother sent word to Cultivator Connor informing him that she was pregnant, but didn’t expect much from him,” Astra continued. “Experience had taught her not to put too much trust in her lovers. She planned on raising you on her own, as she had done so with me and the others. Imagine her surprise when Cultivator Connor showed and demanded to raise you instead. The two ended up arguing about it for months. I found it quite entertaining at the time.”

She looked lost in thought for a moment, as if reliving the past, before she came back to the present.

“Your father was one of the few people who had the courage to stand up to Mother. Not only that, but he won. In the end, Mother relented and agreed to let Cultivator Connor raise you among his kin. Me and our older sisters were quite shocked when we heard that. We thought that Mother would never agree to let you go.”

It warmed my heart to hear that my father stood up to someone much more powerful than him for my sake. Perhaps he had loved me, and hadn’t brought me back to Mt. Wind Dance out of responsibility and obligation. Of course, the person he stood up to was my mother, which complicated the situation a little. A part of me wondered what my life would have been like if I had been raised by my mother and my sisters instead of my kin on Mt. Wind Dance. Would I have been happier?

“Do you know why my father was so insistent on raising me at Mt. Wind Dance?” I asked.

Astra frowned before answering.

“I think he wanted you to experience a normal human life, at least for a bit,” she said. “Something you would never have experienced had Mother raised you. I love her, but sometimes she’s akin to a natural disaster; wild and destructive.”

I could understand where my father came from, but I couldn’t help but feel a little angry at him. If he hadn’t taken me away from my mother, I wouldn’t have suffered at the hands of Clan Wind Dance. Of course, I don’t think he expected to get attacked on the way home. If he hadn’t been poisoned, things would have turned out differently. My anger dissipated when I remembered that.

Besides, from what Astra just said, there was no guarantee that I would have been happier being raised by my mother.

“Mother did have a few conditions of her own, of course,” Astra said, continuing with the story. “The first was that Cultivator Connor would only get you to himself for twenty years. After that, Mother and the rest of us would be free to see you. The second was that he would teach you our family’s cultivation techniques. We knew from the beginning that you had poor aptitude for Clan Wind Dance’s cultivation techniques, and it would have been a waste of your potential to force the issue. Cultivator Connor accepted those conditions, stayed long enough for the naming ceremony, and then headed back to Mt. Wind Dance with you in tow.” Astra shrugged. “After you two left, Mother forbade us from even thinking about sneaking over to Mt. Wind Dance, before going into seclusion. Giving birth to you took a lot out of her and she needed time to recover.”

Huh. I found it ironic, in a sad sort of way, that both of my parents went into seclusion so soon after I was born.

“You know the rest of the story after that,” she said. “We kept our end of the bargain for sixteen years, before I sneaked over to Mt. Wind Dance to see how you were doing. When I found out what happened to Cultivator Connor and realized how you were being treated, I took you away from that place and here we are.”