Angharad was first into the burrow.
Boar moles were almost as broad as they were tall, so while the ceiling on the tunnel was so low she had to bend her elbows Angharad did not feel too cramped at the shoulders. It had been a concern, given that she had a broader back than most. Mother’s inheritance: she’d liked to say that Tredegars were built to shoulder their way through life. Stil...
2025-08-15 16:04:15 +0000 UTC View PostAngharad sat on her folding chair, sipped at her cup and let the sounds of the bustle inside the cottage wash over her.
It was a quiet evening, after a quiet day – Theology had been straightforward, Professor Artigas more interested in revision and laying out a plan for the year than new material, while her ban from the Acallar had left her with a largely free afternoon she spent ...
2025-08-08 16:00:20 +0000 UTC View PostHello!
For those of you unaware, tomorrow is the release day for the first book of the final version of "A Practical Guide to Evil", my first series.
Specifically it will be the release of the ebook and audiobook. They can be found here. Paper release was slightly delayed, but s...
2025-08-04 19:50:58 +0000 UTC View PostIt was nearly eleven when they let him out, not that Tristan knew until he got the watch back.
There had been no window in the room where he was held, and the door was thick enough he could only hear the muted drone of people speaking when he put his ear against the wood. The soldiers had not mistreated him, but their manner had been brisk and unfriendly. Twice a day he’d been handed a ...
2025-08-01 16:00:23 +0000 UTC View PostThe chapterhouse’s shadow ran too long.
Not by much, Izel thought, and with the way the Grand Orrery worked it was hard to tell. No shadow ever lay still in Port Allazei: they ducked and danced, driven by stars and moons of burning aether. But the longer the tinker looked, the more he grew convinced the Akelarre Guild’s walls cast too long a shadow for its height and the angle of the ...
2025-07-25 16:00:18 +0000 UTC View PostThe Colored Arches was the most expensive tavern in Port Allazei, but it didn’t look like much from the outside.
It was just a long, sloping building with a dark green façade and a sign displaying a rainbow. The inside, though, Maryam found to be fittingly luxurious. The antechamber was all smooth, polished wooden panels and elegant pillars of cloth in a shade of green that matched the...
2025-07-18 16:00:20 +0000 UTC View PostMaryam tended to like Mandate class best when it was stepping on Saga’s toes, redrawing the history they had been taught by Professor Sasan with the Watch’s own brush, and today’s class was no exception.
“- by the end of the Century of Accord, Hell’s positioned had weakened,” Professor Iyengar lectured. “While no serious attempt to breach the wall of Pandemonium had taken pl...
2025-07-11 16:00:20 +0000 UTC View PostThe bulk of the students would have set out for the Old Playhouse, by now.
The thought itched away at Tristan, like coarse cloth against the skin – the more he rubbed it, the worst it got it. But Izel had needed to stop by the workshop, and though the tinker had offered to head out alone and catch up to them later Tristan had no intention of letting him wander around Allazei alone. He...
2025-07-04 16:00:19 +0000 UTC View PostThe second year at Scholomance brought it with a change to the schedule: firstday mornings were no longer Mandate class but Teratology.
In a way Song was glad. Not that the first lesson of the year would be two hours of Professor Yun Kang, but that the entire matter of Teratology would not be left to hang above her head like a sword. Near a year had passed since the man tried to get her k...
2025-06-27 16:00:15 +0000 UTC View PostYao looked well. Furious, of course. The black stripes of the House of Acatl’s war-paint were twisted into a second scowl by the pull of her glare, but that was nothing new with Yaotl. Back aching from hitting the stone, Izel pushed himself up so he might sit with his back to the wall even as she drew on him. His palms stung, scraped raw, but he was no stranger to small pains. It was a rare w...
2025-06-20 16:00:11 +0000 UTC View PostIzel Coyac had known it would be a bad day from the moment he woke up with a corpse in his bed.
A leering, rotten cadaver with a burst belly leaning over the foot of the bed, intestines spilled all over the sheets. There had been another by the door, choked on its own vomit, and three more waiting in the hall. Five corpses, all dead from excess; the Five-Headed Hand was sending a stark om...
2025-06-13 16:00:17 +0000 UTC View PostThe taste against the roof of his mouth was foul, like rotten flowers.
What had it been – mafeisan, juniper, letheon? Not letheon, it would have knocked him out faster. It must have been mafeisan, the Tianxi tincture supposedly had over ten different herbs in it. Tristan slipped out of the sheets, bare feet against the wooden floor, and crouched to put on his boots. Move, don’t th...
2025-06-06 16:00:15 +0000 UTC View PostThere were places across Vesper where dawn was a soft thing, gentle and graceful. The inching return of light as brought back by the wonders of the First Empire or the painstaking work of lamplighters. A tide of warmth lapping at your feet.
Tolomontera was not one of those places.
Time had whisked away the second the Orrery’s great moons, gold bleeding out of the pale-and-gold lig...
2025-05-30 16:00:16 +0000 UTC View PostAngharad got her arms up in time to cover her eyes, but the scorching wind still sent her sprawling.
Her back hit the cobblestone, smacking a breath out of her, but she swallowed the wheeze and rolled to the side. She had dropped her saber, so she scrabbled for it before rising to her feet. Her hands throbbed and the skin had darkened as if touched by soot. Angharad rolled her shoulder ...
2025-05-23 16:00:15 +0000 UTC View Post“That is untrue,” Angharad sighed.
“Which part?” Shalini Goel asked with a grin. “The one where the Unluckies robbed a slaving ship, the one where Maryam uses the souls of the damned to soak up bullets or the one where you lot killed an entire cabal and got away with it because they hadn’t picked up their plaques yet?”
Shalini had shown up half an hour early at the Cro...
2025-05-16 16:00:16 +0000 UTC View Post“Lay them out, you fiend,” Tristan challenged. “You can’t possibly have picked up that many knaves twice in a r-”
Yayauhqui of the Twenty-Ninth Brigade, also known as Yaq, laid down his cards. First a knave of Clubs, then one of Cups and finally a third of Coins. The scarred Izcalli stretched out the reveal, obviously enjoying himself, and the moment the last knave hit the table...
2025-05-09 16:00:13 +0000 UTC View PostSong had asked well in advance to borrow the room, which was the only reason the quartermaster did not manage to deny her the use of it. Between the garrison men being rotated in and the fresh batch of students, the Timely Dispatch was packed to the brim and its crew had grown increasingly irritable as the journey from Concordia ran long from the lacking winds.
Still, there reall...
2025-05-02 16:00:14 +0000 UTC View PostShe could barely make out her father’s corpse through the curtain. Only the outline of his silhouette, laid on the bed as if to let him rest. His arms crossed over his belly, still in a way they had never been in life. Father had moved them ceaselessly, talked with his hands as much as his voice. The priests had placed the bier flowers around him already, Maryam could smell the heavy scen...
2025-04-25 16:00:20 +0000 UTC View PostIt was rare for the Port Allazei docks to be so crowded: between the students, soldiers and sailors there must have been over a hundred souls milling about the stone piers. The pair of them, leaning against the old fortifications, watched the mass milling this way and that.
It was easy to see why there were so many. While six was not the most ships Angharad had ever seen docked in Allazei...
2025-04-18 16:00:26 +0000 UTC View PostIt was a fool’s notion, so of course Fortuna heartily endorsed it.
A grim portent if Tristan had ever seen one, but he was running thin on options. There was no telling how long Lord Asher would remain on Tolomontera, which meant that if he wanted to cut through the bureaucracy tonight might just be his only chance. So he set out early, taking to the streets, and swallowed his doubts. H...
2025-04-11 16:00:21 +0000 UTC View PostScholomance spat them all out, as if they had turned into the most distasteful of morsels: there was not a single attempt to slay or deceive the students as they slunk out of the grounds.
That eldritch and eerie ceremony had unsettled them all enough that the Orrery lights above felt like a hollow reassurance, and the Thirteenth were far from the only brigade to retreat to their lodgings....
2025-03-14 04:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostSong understood better than most what Scholomance was: the shell-labyrinth of a god, a maze that was a maw. But such understanding was nothing to boast of, when one had eyes like hers.
How could she ignore the malevolence lurking in the walls when it was visible to her gaze, ghostly vines creeping along walls, floor and ceiling whenever the beast paid the Thirteenth attention? Yet usually...
2025-03-07 05:00:12 +0000 UTC View PostHello again!
First off, as per the poll the AMA on the 21st of March will be taking face at 5 PM, Eastern Time. Looking forward to seeing you on the Discord! (Link here).
Second, thanks a lot for the support. It's been pretty good for morale seeing comments come out pretty overwhelmingly in favor of the break. I'll ...
2025-03-03 18:24:41 +0000 UTC View PostMaryam woke up the sound of Song Ren shouting at a bird, which was not an infrequent occurrence.
She cast off the covers and went to wash her face, rubbing her eyes blearily before glancing at her reflection in the bronze looking glass. The war against those black rings around her eyes had hit a stalemate, but at least they were no longer getting larger. There had been victory on other fr...
2025-02-28 05:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostHey there!
First off, of it's my pleasure to introduce the title and backcover to the third book of Pale Lights, "Borrowed Trouble". We can talk about the rest after you've had a peek.
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Borrowed Trouble
The Thirteenth Brigade returned from Asphodel famous and triumphant, but as their second year at Scholomance dawns they learn they cannot afford to res...
2025-02-21 05:01:03 +0000 UTC View PostCaptain Wen Duan had once spent a well-liquored evening with Sasan and Chanda figuring out the broad strokes of how much money went into the yearly upkeep of the Rookery, and it was a ridiculous sum. Standing armies went for less, and not bad ones either.
Knowing this made it all the more bewildering how the hallway he currently sat in could be so cold and damp. This was the Old Chantry, ...
2025-02-21 05:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostWell, Tristan mused as he stood by the balcony’s edge and watched the colossal corpse-god climb up the side of the Collegium, his day had already been shot anyway.
At some point ‘worse’ became a relative term. Mind you, that monstrosity down there wasn’t the only god he’d have to look out for. Oduromai King had come back after the Hated One made his entrance, inevitable as flies...
2025-02-07 05:00:13 +0000 UTC View PostFirst, Song saw to it that they could hold.
Tactically speaking, this was not overly difficult. Though the Odyssean threw host-corpses down the lift shaft regularly, most of them broke their limbs in the fall and thus she only need leave Tupoc and Expendable to put them down. Spears made easy work of the dead things, enough damage severing the threads of blood-red divinity moving the corp...
2025-01-31 05:00:08 +0000 UTC View PostHey there!
We're close enough to the end that I can now officially tell you Good Treasons will be ending with the February 21 update (meaning that, including this week, we are four chapters away from the end).
As discussed earlier this year we'll be launching straight into Book III without a break. I'll be putting up the backcover in the coming weeks, so even before the end of this ...
2025-01-28 17:09:37 +0000 UTC View Post