Chronicle of a Rising Demon Chapter 1 (Patreon)

Update on the next chapter of ISWG. It's about halfway done now and will be coming out soon. In the meantime, however, have this draft of a different project to tide you over. Inspired by various depictions of the Demonic factions across Xianxia and Wuxia fiction.

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The day started entertaining enough. A few thugs were beating up a beggar boy.

The Old Man, for he was old and ostensibly a man as the situation required, took his breakfast tea in the outdoor seating area of a rather severe tea shop. The kind frequented by merchants and travelers who stopped by briefly to have a cuppa, rest their feet, and grab some news before returning to the road and on to their business. The only thing separating the tables of the tea shop from the traffic of the road was a wall of planters blooming with flowers that did their part to fight the usual smells of urban drudgery. Fortunately, they were just short enough that the Old Man had a prime spot to watch the thugs kicking around a boy who had more in common with the trash on the streets than he did with the civilized gentlemen cleaning him up.

The boy was too old to be called a child but too young to truly be called a man. He cowered on the cobbles, his arms cradling his head for protection. Not that it stopped the thugs from stomping on it when they got tired of kicking his ribs and stomach. The boy howled in pain like an animal would, and when he dared to reveal his eyes, there was no higher reasoning or brightness behind them. Just wild fear, hurt, and ignorance. A dullard’s gaze.

The Old Man was quite pleased with this and watched with relish as he drank his tea. Occasionally, he licked his thumb and ran it across the surface of the silver hand mirror in his lap. Nodding to the reflection before turning back to his observation.

The patrons of the tea shop were curious for only a moment after the first painful shout before quickly losing interest. Given the itinerancy of their occupations, they were undoubtedly well experienced with the fact that kicking the poor was only as exciting as the first time you’d seen it happen and that everywhere under Heaven had its own version of the pastime. Ignoring the background of human suffering, they instead turned to the more pressing matters of money and gossip.

“The Silver Sword School cleared another mine,” spoke a fat merchant liberally robed in brocade. He sat at the head of a table of strangers, the Old Man included. His evident wealth buying him more respect than a sword would. “Perhaps we might see the price of Argentum finally drop.”

“I’m sure they’ll raise tariffs in the City of Five Silvers to compensate,” grumbled a stocky fellow who looked more like he guarded caravans than commanded them. “It makes you wonder if they even want business anymore. I’ll have to go to the next county to supply the forges in my contract soon enough.”

“We might yet see prices go higher,” spoke a whipcord-thin man. Though he was younger and dressed more poorly than everyone at the table, he was more dangerous than the rest of them combined by half. “My last trip to the Marquisate, I sold all my stock of weapons and pills and left with the next shipment pre-paid.”

The stocky caravaneer leaned forward. “You think there might be a war?” A question ordinarily spoken with worry turned into ugly eagerness.

“It’s the border. They’re always buying weapons and pills,” said the fat merchant, rolling his eyes. “If the Demonic Sects want to start a war they’d have to stop imploding first. I hear they still haven’t had a new leader since Marquis Lightsword decapitated the old one.”

“Your news is old,” said the thin man. “Rumors spread to the border that a new Primus Inter Pares has risen. Raids have picked up as well, though no one knows if its spillover from the civil war or a political statement.”

Another young merchant perked up, perhaps sensing his chance to feel included in the conversation of his betters. “Speaking of demons, another Demonic Cultivator popped up in Spring Grass City. Slaughtered the entire Chen Family before he was put down.”

“At least they caught that one. How many more managed to get away?” said the caravaneeer.

The young merchant preened upon getting a response and continued. “I know a man who used to work for them. The demon was an old servant of theirs that they always treated poorly. In a way it’s rather karmic—”

“Bah,” scoffed the fat merchant, interrupting. “A demon is a demon. Only fools make up excuses for monsters.”

The young merchant flushed as his future ideal took offense to him, and he flicked his eyes wildly across the table in search of a way out.

Finally, he settled on the Old Man.

“Elder, what do you think?”

The Old Man finished his tea as the table’s attention turned to him and smiled. “Demons aren’t anything special. You can throw a rock and hit one. They’re always closer than you think.”

“They’re cropping up like weeds,” nodded the fat merchant. “The Sects need to step up and properly deal with them.”

The Old Man smiled and said nothing.

The thin man sighed. “If the Silver Sword Saint was—”

A particularly loud screech cut across the road and interrupted the thin man’s sentence. He scowled and stood from his seat, looking angrily at the thugs. “Enough already!” His voice carried an unearthly pitch to it that made his words fall like weights upon their shoulders. The din of the patio faded, and the merchants at the table froze up as they realized the thin man seated with them was no mere human.

He was a cultivator. A being refined through the energy of the world.

Of course, he was just a trifling Qi Gathering cultivator of the First Layer, trash even by trash’s standard. To the unrefined, however, he was still a force to be treated warily.

The thugs certainly thought so. The three of them immediately ceased their beating and faced the cultivator as a united thought. The most cunning-looking one clasped his hands and bowed.

“My apologies, sir cultivator, but must do the bidding of our lord. The Young Master of the Rose Family.”

The thin man pursed his lips. Perhaps he knew who the Rose Family were, or perhaps he didn’t. Any fool, however, could see that if the Rose Family’s thugs were willing to talk back to a cultivator, then their own means were not lacking. If the thin man were obstinate, then perhaps this would become a bigger issue. Maybe even escalating into a duel.

Thankfully for the thin man, however, he never actually cared about helping the boy.

“Take that thing elsewhere, then,” the thin man said, sitting back down. “You’re disturbing the customers.”

The thug smiled and relaxed. “Of course, sir.”

He whispered to his fellow thugs, and they left. One peeled away down the road while the leader and the other dragged the beggar boy away into the alley. Their backing may have allowed them to ignore a cultivator, but they were wise enough not to antagonize one when their superiors weren’t present.

The Old Man palmed his mirror and stood, dropping a few coins on the table. “Gentlemen, I will be off.”

The thin man, nursing his hurt pride, sized him up. “Going after them?”

The Old Man smiled. “I just feel like I’ll be hit by a horse carriage and die if I stay here any longer.”

The Old Man left, whistling a tune he’d long forgotten the lyrics to. Behind him, the table immediately shifted to flattering the thin man and more joined from other tables. It was perhaps another reason the thin man decided to reveal his standing. He’d never get any respect from his fellow cultivators, so he indulged in worship from his lessers instead. As the Old man turned into the alley, there was a sound of rapidly clopping hooves and the loud neighs of horses. He timed the rise of the tune to the crashing of wood and shattering of ceramic, bringing it down to a low when the screaming and cries of pain began.

The thugs hadn’t dragged the beggar boy too far, and when they heard the crash and turned around, they spotted the Old Man. The boy laid at their feet, motionless.

“Hey, you, what’s happening over there?” Demanded a thug.

“If you don’t kill him, I’ll kill you,” the Old Man said.

“Hah?” The thug sneered and sauntered up to him. “Oi, old man, we work for the Young Master of the Rose Family.” He jerked his head at the beggar boy. “If you don’t want to end up like him, I’d advise you not to cross our lord.”

The Old Man slowly raised his hand faster than the thug could react and palmed his face. With unnatural ease, he pushed the thug’s head into the stones of the alley wall.

Then he kept pushing.

The other thug watched in horror as the Old Man pushed his hand straight through his screaming partner’s head and squashed it like a fruit. He pulled his hand away, completely clean of any blood, and the headless body slumped to the ground.

“I will not repeat myself,” the Old Man said.

“Y-yes, my lord,” the thug sputtered. “I’ll kill him right now.”

The Old Man looked at him with pity. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

“What?”

The confusion in the thug’s eyes cleared when the beggar boy suddenly leaped up from the ground and slammed a rock into his temple. The thug collapsed like a stringless puppet, and the boy set upon him with wild abandon, repeatedly smashing the rock onto the thug’s head till it became a bloody mess. The boy placed a finger to the thug’s nose and, after confirming he wasn’t breathing, dropped the rock and leaned back.

His chest heaved as he painfully gasped for air, still feeling the effects of his earlier beating. The Old Man patiently waited for the boy to collect himself. When he finally regained control of his breathing, he rose, and what greeted the Old Man was a calm face and cool, indifferent eyes. A far cry from the fool’s act he’d been playing earlier.

The Old Man took a moment to observe the boy now that his mask had been pried off. He was gaunt from years of hard living, his face sunken, his short black hair dirty and matted. Still, his eyes were a nice color. A royal purple. They spoke of his breeding, that he had cultivators in his ancestry whose cultivation was strong enough that a mark was left on their descendants, though not enough to become a real power for their offspring. The Old Man could picture what he must have looked like before, some pampered son of a wealthy family.

It was a tale as old as time.

“Tell me, boy,” the Old Man said. “Would you like power?”

“Okay.”

The Old Man chuckled. “That was quite fast.”

“You made it clear from the beginning that there is no choice,” the boy said. “It’s either your way or death.”

“That’s still technically a choice,” the Old Man pointed out.

“Please refrain from saying that, as the person who’d kill me.”

“Fair enough,” the Old Man said, smiling.

They waited. Staring at each other in silence. Old Man and boy. Boy and Old Man. He found himself growing more and more amused.

“Go on,” he gently prodded. “Ask your question.”

The boy’s eyes fell to his hands. “What is that mirror?”

The Old Man burst into laughter. He doubled over, hands on his knees, laughing the world away. He’d met plenty of interesting seedlings thus far, but this one—oh, this one was amusing.

Eventually, the Old Man regained himself and straightened up, wiping away a tear from his eye. “You are the first person to make that their first question. I will answer, but before I do, will you tell me why you chose that? The normal thing would be to ask who I am. Or what I want with you.”

The boy’s composure did not slip during the Old Man’s hysterics, but he had a long, long time to go before he could fool the Old Man’s eyes. The wariness was clear as day. As was his resolve.

“You’re the one behind the rise of the new Demonic Cultivators,” the boy said.

“That’s a bold accusation,” the Old Man joyfully replied. “Any other cultivator would kill you for that.”

The boy was unmoved. “All the stories of demons recently, the famous ones at least, have all had one thing in common. A noble girl sold to a brothel, a crippled warrior, an abused servant, all of them were people who were poor, struggling, desperate.” The boy said each of the last three words with emphasis. “Now you appear before me, casually dealing death and offering power.”

So he was being beaten near the tea house for a reason. The Old Man thought.

“You could be wrong,” the Old Man said.

“I’m not,” said the boy.

The Old Man nodded. “You’re not. That only explains who I am, however.”

The boy bit his lip, finally slipping. Long repressed emotions surged now that golden opportunity finally revealed its door. “It doesn’t matter. What you are doing making demons. Why you're making them. Why you're picking people like me. None of it matters. What I’d learn would be meaningless.”

The Old Man raised an eyebrow. “And you think you’d learn something meaningful by asking about my mirror?” He lifted the mirror. “If I told you this was just an ordinary mirror, then what you’d learn would be even less than meaningless, wouldn’t it?”

The boy was firm. “Then I would have gambled and lost.”

The Old Man snorted. “Bold. Foolishly so. But I suppose it is the duty of the old to reward the boldness of youth.”

He turned the mirror around and showed the boy his reflection. “In the Netherworld, there is an Immortal Artifact called the Mirror of Past Existences. The souls of the dead who march into the First Court of Hell are made to stand before it and are forced to watch the entire accounting of their life and their deeds, good and evil, so that they may be judged.”

The Old Man watched with relish as the boy paled in realization of what he was implying.

“This is not that mirror,” he cheerfully continued. Enjoying even more the whiplash he left the boy with. “It’s merely a copy of a copy. Even so, it is still fairly useful in helping me find misbegotten souls like you, Cathal Zayd.”

The boy froze.

“Orphaned at eleven after your family lost its struggle for power, you destroyed your cultivation and pretended to be a fool for six years to survive as the living example of defying the Rose Family. You fooled mortals and cultivators alike, biding your time until you could exact your revenge.” The Old Man nodded in satisfaction. “It’s quite dramatic.”

The Old Man reached into the folds of his robes and pulled out a wrinkled, leather-bound book. “It’s nice to meet you, Cathal. I have come to make your dreams come true, and in time, you will do the same for mine.”

Cathal Zayd trembled, but it was not with fear or hesitation. He slowly reached out and placed his hand on the book. He looked at the Old Man.

“It took you long enough.”

The Old Man smiled.

Yes. Very amusing indeed.