Down by the dumpster of darkest fate
The third one left, to be precise,
Where tragic secrets cannot wait-
A staircase drops like thrown jade dice.
The Chamber weeps its midnight tears,
While Ha Li's ornaments shine bright.
His perfect posture masks his fears
Of darkness rising in the night.
"BEGONE!" they cry, so boringly neat,
Their orthodox formation glows.
The Sect Master, from his judgment seat,
Bans her from wearing pristine clothes.
Her raven dies the fifteenth time,
Returns with signs of protest dark,
While she soars out, her fall sublime-
Through bamboo groves that bear her mark.
"YOU'RE COURTING DEATH!" she cries with pride,
Though immortality's their aim.
Her destiny now cast aside,
Their boring sect to bear the blame.
...
The third dumpster behind the dining hall looked exactly like an ordinary dumpster, which Ai Baoni found HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS. Her raven, now sporting seven detective hats AND tiny magnifying glasses, investigated the bin with all fourteen of its eyes.
"This is so beneath my tragic aesthetic," Ai Baoni muttered, poking the bin with Tears-of-Infinite-Sorrow. "But the ghostly voices were very specific about-"
Suddenly, the ground began to shake. The dumpster slid aside, revealing a staircase that descended into darkness. Ancient runes flickered along the walls, spelling out "Chamber of Midnight Tears" in a writing style that was trying very very hard to look spooky.
"Finally!" Ai Baoni declared. "Something appropriately ge-de!" She'd prepared for this moment by adding extra chains to her robes and applying a fresh coat of her special darkness-enhanced lipstick.
But just as she was about to descend the dramatically convenient stairs, she heard voices approaching. Quickly, she dove behind a conveniently placed spirit bush.
"The purification ceremony must be completed tonight," came Ha Li's voice, his jade ornaments tinkling with urgent preppiness. "Once Ma Fen's bloodline is cleansed, the prophecy will be broken!"
"Indeed," replied another voice that Ai Baoni didn't recognize. "The Orthodox Cultivation Alliance cannot risk the return of the Dark Phoenix's power. Imagine if all cultivators started wearing black and channeling their emotional trauma into spiritual energy!"
"THE HORROR!" Ha Li gasped.
After they passed, Ai Baoni emerged from hiding, her black robes somehow even darker with righteous anger. "They're going to purify Ma Fen's bloodline? But that could destroy his connection to the Dark Phoenix's legacy! And, his perfect crimson aesthetic!"
Her raven cawed in agreement before dying from the mere thought of such orthodox cultivation techniques. This was death number pi + i times sqrt(tragic_coeff), but like pi itself, the tragedy was infinite and non-repeating. It resurrected wearing tiny protest signs that read "SAVE THE CRIMSON CULTIVATOR" in perfectly ge-de calligraphy.
Without further hesitation, Ai Baoni descended the stairs. The Chamber of Midnight Tears lived up to its name - the walls wept actual tears that glowed with ethereal light, and the air was thick with tragic spiritual energy.
At the center of the chamber stood an altar, and upon it... a single crystallized tear that seemed to contain an entire universe of darkness.
"The last tear of the Dark Phoenix," Ai Baoni whispered in awe. Her ever-changing birthmark began to pulse with unprecedented power. The tear responded, its dark energy reaching out to her like a long-lost tragic friend.
But before she could reach it, the chamber filled with light.
"STOP RIGHT THERE! CRIMINAL SCUM!"
Ha Li stood in the doorway, flanked by sect elders and members of the Orthodox Cultivation Alliance. Their combined righteous aura was almost blinding.
Their formation was an ancient pattern, six connected lines forming angular curves that looped back on themselves. Some said it came from the First Realm of cultivation, others claimed it was an emblem of power that appeared in every major sect across history, yet mysteriously, no one could explain its origin.
"The Ancient Formation of Infinite Wisdom," Ha Li declared reverently. "Passed down through generations."
"Whatever," Ai Baoni muttered.
"Step away from the tear," Ha Li commanded. "That artifact was sealed away for a reason! Its power could corrupt the very foundations of proper cultivation!"
"You don't understand!" Ai Baoni protested. "The Dark Phoenix wasn't evil - it was just misunderstood! Like me! Like Ma Fen! Like anyone who thinks black is a valid color for cultivation robes!"
"Speaking of Ma Fen," Ha Li's perfect features arranged themselves into a smirk, "the purification ceremony has already begun. Soon, all traces of the Dark Phoenix's blood will be cleansed from his veins!"
"NOOOOOOOO!" Ai Baoni's scream of anguish shattered several nearby spirit stones and caused her raven to die from pure secondhand emotional devastation.
In her distress, her spiritual energy exploded outward, connecting with the Dark Phoenix's tear. The crystal began to resonate, filling the chamber with shadows that took the shape of dark phoenixes, each one wearing appropriately ge-de accessories.
"What have you done?" gasped one of the elders.
"The power... it's awakening!" cried another.
"By the sacred texts, look at her EYELINER!" Ha Li clutched his jade pendants in horror.
Ai Baoni felt power surge through her meridians. Her hair floated dramatically in a wind of pure darkness, and her robes billowed with enough tragic energy to supply a thousand ge-de cultivators.
"YOU'RE ALL COURTING DEATH!" she declared, and this time, the very foundations of the sect trembled at her words.
But then... a new voice cut through the chaos.
"YOU! SHALL! NOT! PASS!" Each word was punctuated by the Sect Master slamming his Staff of Orthodox Administration into the ground. The White Administrator himself appeared, his seventeen-foot beard radiating pure bureaucratic fury as it arranged itself into the complete text of the Employee Conduct Manual.
"Do not take me for some conjurer of cheap dress code violations, Ai Baoni!" he thundered, his pristine white robes making Ha Li's look practically rebellious. "I am the White Administrator! Wielder of the sacred Standard Operating Procedures! Keeper of the Ancient Regulatory Compliance Scrolls!"
His beard suddenly twisted into perfect administrative calligraphy: "FOOL OF A CULTIVATOR!"
"But-"
"SILENCE!" The Sect Master's voice carried the weight of ten thousand years of properly filed paperwork. "A darkness lurks in the deep places of this sect... in the ancient archives... the forgotten filing cabinets... And YOU have awakened it!"
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
He dramatically withdrew an official expulsion notice - Form EXP-666: "Notice of Cultivation Termination (Extreme Dress Code Violations)." The document was printed on regulation white paper with orthodox watermarks and at least seventeen different places for spiritual signature validation.
"By the power vested in me by the Inter-timeline Council of Orthodox Cultivation Standards," he intoned, his beard now forming a perfect organizational flowchart, "and in accordance with Subsection 7.3.2 of the Administrative Guidelines for Proper Protocol Enforcement (revision 10.9.8.7.6.5.4.3.2.1), you are hereby charged with:
- 47 counts of Unauthorized Aesthetic Modification of Sacred Objects (Form VIO-47: 'Intent to Modify Sacred Objects with Non-Regulation Colors')
- 23 violations of the Proper Brooding Height Ordinance (Did you even READ the Acceptable Brooding Elevations Manual?)
- 156 instances of Excessive Emotional Display Without a Permit (Form EMO-156: 'Application for Dramatic Emotional Expression')
- 1 count of Converting a Spirit Beast to the ge-de Path (Your raven must attend mandatory rehabilitation classes AND complete Form SPR-777: 'Spirit Beast Aesthetic Realignment Documentation')
And..." here his beard twisted into an expression of maximum administrative disapproval, "IMPROPER FENG SHUI ALIGNMENT OF ACCESSORIES!"
"This foe is beyond any of you," he muttered to the other elders. "A Ba-luo-gu of Administrative Violations!"
Ai Baoni's gasp of shock caused her newly-resurrected raven to die again, this time from pure bureaucratic horror. The death was so tragic it could only be expressed in terms of a triple integral that made three Orthodox Logicians file for immediate spiritual retirement.
This was the ∫∫∫(sin(x^2+y^2+z^2)/(x^2+y^2+z^2))dxdydz-th death, the triple integral of pure despair over all of R^3 from negative infinity to positive infinity, the oscillating nature of the integral perfectly representing its eternal cycle of tragic demise and resurrection.
"WHATEVER!" Ai Baoni declared, but then paused as she noticed her raven's latest resurrection had produced a scroll clutched in its seventh beak. The scroll, written in tears of pure mathematics, contained what appeared to be an ancient proof from the Sect of Discreet Logic:
Theorem 1.3.7: On the Supreme Tragic Nature of Multi-Headed Spirit Beasts
Proof (by contradiction, the most tragic form of proof):
Let us suppose, for the sake of achieving maximum dramatic irony, that Shadows-Upon-Shadows-Darknight-Void is not the most tragic being in existence. Then there must exist some cultivator c with tragedy value T(c) > T(SUSDV). However! As any properly ge-de logician knows, the raven's seven heads form a complete set of tragic basis vectors in ge-de space, and by the Fundamental Theorem of Angst (first proven by the Dark Phoenix Demon Emperor himself), any tragedy can be expressed as a linear combination of these basis deaths. Thus T(c) must be expressible in terms of SUSDV's deaths, implying T(c) <= T(SUSDV).
"But that's like, totally absurd!" Ai Baoni gasped, her black-painted nails tracing the ancient symbols. At the bottom of the scroll was a small box (∎) that appeared to be crying and wearing a tiny black veil.
The proof was so tragically perfect that three passing Orthodox Logicians fainted from its dark rigor, their jade calculation beads shattering into precisely calculated fragments of despair. Their spiritual essences briefly manifested as a non-degenerate closed 2-form, their cultivation paths preserving the symplectic structure while violating all known laws of orthodox Liu-wei-er volume.
The sect elders would later whisper that their meridians had formed a completely integrable Ha-mi-er-dun system of pure shock, each fainting body adding another degree of tragic freedom until they achieved perfect ge-de canonical coordinates in their unconsciousness.
The spirit birds overhead mocked her with their song - B-C#-D-E-C#-A-B - the ancient melody, now transposed into seven simultaneous tragic keys by the raven's heads.
"Furthermore," the Sect Master raised his staff, which was actually a ceremonial Letter Opener of Orthodox Destiny, "by the authority of all three ages of the cultivation world, and in accordance with form BAN-101 'Notice of Prolonged Exclusion from Orthodox Activities,' you are hereby banned from:
- Wearing white robes
- Using orthodox cultivation techniques
- Attending any Official Cultivation Standards Committee meetings..."
He paused for dramatic effect, consulting the Manual of Proper Dramatic Pauses (16th Edition).
"For the next TEN THOUSAND YEARS!"
"Hey," Ai Baoni blinked, "that last part actually sounds pretty goo-"
"YOU SHALL NOT PARSE!" The Sect Master's beard literally glowed with righteous bureaucratic energy. "BEGONE! And remember to file your Exit Interview documentation within three business days!"
The combined power of the sect elders - now arranged in a perfect administrative hierarchy formation - created a blast of pure orthodox energy that sent Ai Baoni flying out of the chamber, up the stairs, and out of the sect grounds, her trajectory describing a perfect parabola at exactly 29/25 radians (as specified in the Manual of Proper Cultivator Ejection Trajectories).
"Look to my coming at first light on the fifth business day," the Sect Master declared to Ha Li. "At dawn... look to the east... for the mandatory post-expulsion compliance review meeting."
As she sailed through the air, she caught three critical last glimpse of the sect. In a window of the purification chamber, she thought she saw a figure in crimson robes reaching out to her, a familiar mark glowing on their arm...
In the purification chamber's window, Ma Fen struggled against his bonds, his crimson robes somehow still billowing dramatically despite being indoors. Their matching marks pulsed in sync one final time - F ascending to B natural, the forbidden tritone of dark destinies.
In the courtyard, Ha Li was already ordering servants to repaint all the spirit stones back to their original boring white. "Finally! No more unauthorized cultivation accessories!" His jade ornaments tinkled with premature triumph.
Actually, there is a fourth scene.
And in his chambers, Elder Deng's beard shimmered with that mysterious red light again as he clutched an ancient scroll titled "The REAL Truth About The Dark Phoenix (Very Tragic, Much Forbidden, Wow.)"
Then she crashed into a conveniently placed grove of black bamboo, which seemed to bow tragically around her like the world's most aesthetic landing pad. Even her raven had to admit the cinematography of her exile was on point.
Her raven, having executed one final death and resurrection, exploding into exactly twenty-two primary flight feathers and six hundred and sixty-six down feathers, now landed beside her, resurrecting with ALL SEVEN HEADS now sporting:
- Tiny exile-appropriate black veils
- Ge-de tear tattoos
- Matching crimson streaks in memory of Ma Fen
- Microscopic protest signs reading "ORTHODOX CULTIVATION IS FOR LOSERS"
- And somehow, impossibly, even more heads starting to bud
Her forbidden scrolls, darkness-enhanced cultivation supplies, and diary written in what she CALLED blood but was actually red ink with just a HINT of crushed spirit herb for extra darkness had been thoughtfully packed by the raven between its death and resurrection.
Ai Baoni stood, her black robes artfully tattered in the most aesthetic way possible. She gazed back at the sect one last time as her ever-changing birthmark shifted into its most tragic form yet - somehow simultaneously depicting a broken heart, a dark phoenix, and what looked suspiciously like Ma Fen's profile in silhouette.
"YOU'RE ALL COURTING DEATH!" she declared to the sect that had cast her out. The irony of this statement - given that they were all literally cultivating to become immortal - was not lost on her raven, which promptly died from the philosophical implications before resurrecting wearing tiny Nietzsche-style mustaches on all seven and one thirteenth heads.
Somewhere in the distance, a spirit beast howled - first in C, then in G flat, the tritone echoing ominously through the night.
To be continued... in the key of DARKNESS ASCENDING, which is just Db Hypodorian with extra angst, so all the notes are kind of off by a little bit.
NOT! This is the end. Like Shadows-Upon-Shadows-Darknight-Void's many deaths, this story stops here with absolutely no warning. The most tragic and unexpected ending possible - the story itself has successfully courted death, which is SO ge-de. Ha Li would be so annoyed at this lack of proper narrative closure. WHATEVER.
Goffik man, take me by the hand,
Lead me to the land where the shadows reign
Goffik man, the voyage to the corner of a tomb
Is a real trip
Goffik man, the crust of a vampire, imbibed by the night
Sucking up the blood of a knight
Goffik man, can you see through the wonder of disillusion
At the tragic man?
Goffik man, the path is elusive when it casts forth
To the wight-like man
Goffik man, the sequence of a life form bathed in the night
Soaking up the tears of a fright
Goffik man
Goffik man
Goffik man
Look, if you had one shot, one solemn evening,
To seize everything black and gloomy in one moment
Would you grasp at the shadows, or just let it fade?
Lo
His palms are deathly, bones weak, flesh is heavy
There's blood on his velvet already, a brew so deadly
He's haunted, but on the surface, looks dark and ready
To cast spells, but his mind keeps on forgetting
What he carved down, the ghost crowd moans so loud
He parts his lips, but the curse won't come out
He's dying, how? All the wraiths are laughing now
The bells gone out, doom's near, raven, CAW!
Drift back to insanity, woe, there goes vanity
Woe, there goes raven, he's cursed, he's so damned
But he won't surrender his soul, he's got magic
He knows his fate's bound to these halls, it don't matter
He's hope-less he knows, but he's lost, so phantasmic
He knows when he creeps back to his hallowing hall, that's when it's
Back to the rites again, lo, this dark prophecy
Better go harvest this darkness and pray it don't pass him
You better lose your soul in the darkness
The moonlight, you own it, you better never let it glow (No)
You only get one spell, do not miss your chance to show
This demonic pact comes once in a fright time, woe
You better lose your soul in the darkness
The moonlight, you own it, you better never let it glow (No)
You only get one spell, do not miss your chance to show
This demonic pact comes once in a fright time, woe
You better