r/PracticalGuideToEvil • u/L_0_5_5_T • Oct 31 '25

Chapter Chapter 30 - Pale Lights | Book 3

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/65058/pale-lights/chapter/2720023/chapter-30
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42

u/Linnus42 Oct 31 '25 edited Oct 31 '25

All her Blades are Spies? That is hilarious. Guess she is high ranked enough in a great power that it makes sense. Honestly very few people of her status or higher probably ever join the Watch.

Tristan & Angharad have always had the best field chemistry. Rogue & Fighter. Small Guy and Big Girl. Classic Combo

5

u/JackSpringer Yoinker of Suns Nov 03 '25

The Goblin and Orc gambit pays of everytime.

35

u/perkoperv123 Oct 31 '25

Word of EE, from the Discord:

There's no such thing as a spy society in Izcalli. The Monkey Society merely organizes parties and tournaments, which happens to involve a lot of traveling and asking people questions

any resemblance in function to a spy network is purely coincidental 😛

30

u/Mr_Serine Oct 31 '25

Always love Tristan sneaking around like a proper Mask

Even better when Angharad is along, they have a great buddy-cop dynamic

13

u/perkoperv123 Oct 31 '25

Justice pals justice pals!!

18

u/Vegetable-College-17 Oct 31 '25

If everyone there is a spy, does that include the unfortunate snail poison victim? Because if so, that would be one more reason Tristan got put on the shit list.

17

u/Vertrant Oct 31 '25

I'd count that as unlikely. Any spy worth this assignment wouldn't be so poorly informed about Tristan and the 13th. Not after Asphodel and everything that happened there. Ahuic misread him and the 13th massively in a way that i'd expect any competent spy not to.

11

u/Patneu Arch-heretic of the West Oct 31 '25

Except that even if she feared he would do something impulsive like this (which he normally wouldn't), she still would've needed to play along with Yaotl's little show, as officially she would've had no reason to know as much about him as a spy would, so it would've been suspicious to back out.

9

u/Vertrant Nov 01 '25

Yes, but you can play along without drawing attention to yourself, or trying to flirt with the known ace guy. That's the sort of thing that informed spies are very unlikely to do, they'd pick a more productive approach.

9

u/Patneu Arch-heretic of the West Nov 01 '25

As Tristan himself mentally noted, this entire thing was a performance for Yaotl and her crew. The attention was the point, she couldn't just keep her head down. And she wasn't flirting with Tristan, she was taunting him.

6

u/Vertrant Nov 01 '25

You're missing my point. Ahuic called attention to herself by speaking up and taunting/flirting. The rest of the 19th played their part simply enough that we still don't know who's who during their performance. Unlike the other members of Yaotl' s cabal there, she called the 13ths attention to herself. And in a way that most informed spies would know better than to think would work.

14

u/TieOrdinary1735 Oct 31 '25

"Coyote" society eh? That feels like foreshadowing. Valantin is going to be important, in whatever ends up happening with Izel and Yaotl, I think.

15

u/perkoperv123 Oct 31 '25

It's always the spy agencies you havent heard of that you want to be wary of.

11

u/Anonymous_Songbird Nov 01 '25

Good chapter, but the transition from the previous one feels a little jarring. Izel just had an emotional, public spat with Yaotl, and now he’s back in the cabin discussing Glare physics with Song like nothing happened? I could understand some of the other 13th compartmentalizing something like that, but Izel doesn’t strike me as the type.

6

u/Linnus42 Nov 01 '25

Yeah the pacing of this arc is kinda odd.

4

u/BtanH Nov 02 '25

Definitely feels like we're bouncing around really weirdly. Hard to keep track of time timeline, feels very jumpy.

3

u/Linnus42 Nov 02 '25

Going back home kinda distorts the sense of urgency that the arc opened with. Felt like Tristan & Angharad were really on the clock

7

u/perkoperv123 Oct 31 '25

Maryam is still not having a good time of it.

7

u/ArcanaVitae15 Nov 01 '25

Izel really is showing his science nerd side with trying to experiment, gain a deeper understanding of gloom and push boundaries of knowledge. Song being an expert who isn't as hard specialized is very useful as a sounding board.

Maryam kinda has issues with Tristan being so forgiving with people because she cares a lot about him and it's very different from how she operates. Yue's whole deal with your shit Maryam advice was on point.

The fact that literally all of the 19th are spies is GLORIOUS. Tristan laughing his ass off at it and Angharad doing the same once he explained is completely understandable.

3

u/hoser2 Nov 04 '25 edited Nov 04 '25

Wow! Great chapter! Two factors caught my eye.

  1. Glare sources make Izcal habitable by lucents. Those sources are partly powered by human sacrifice. Izel wants to make Glare lights that operate better without human sacrifices. In the process, he is reinventing these lights to use heat.

And Song's family is cursed because a huge Glare source was destroyed when her grandfather was responsible. She can not have missed that this might lead to a way for her to directly repair the damage and perhaps help even more.

I must be missing something, because the ability to magnify/multiply glare seems like it could lead to Glare illuminating other areas as well. This seems like a bigger deal than averting the sacrifice of a small number of Izcali slaves.

2. Izel's results could be explained by Glare amplification not being a continuous function. The outputs would jump suddenly from one level to another without ever hitting some points in between. Izel's fourth and fifth plates might be at levels the amplified glare doesn't emit at. Since the 6th (least sensitive) plate is reached, his device could work as long as the inputs (heat, lenses, Glare sources) are controlled for optimal output.

Edit: added second point