C.L. Robison

25. You Are No Noble Scion

EMPRESS

I'll admit to being a bit surprised when my new roommate turned out to be the very same crazy girl who'd challenged me within seconds of entering the outer sect. Not as surprised as she was, though. She yowled like a feral cat and dropped into a fighting stance.

"Whoa! Chill! ...

24. A Multilevel Marketing Scheme

EMPRESS

Tankano Ichika's introduction to the Starry Waters Sect was not an especially auspicious one. First off, the core disciple had marched up the stairs with no regard for poor young Hana, who was scarcely a third of the way through the first realm. While she was certainly more hale tha...

60. On Persistence (I)

Shadows

Success is the intersection of talent and persistence.
-Old Arkavian saying

Success has brothers and cousins aplenty, but failure is an orphan.
-Tactonius, from Pontifications

Nima tossed an armful of reeking 'darks' into the laundry water, her bl...

59. The Society of Night (V)

Shadows

While I teamed up with Mailyn whenever we had pairs contests, that was only about half of them. The other half of the 'gambits' we did with the Society of Night involved outright theft. Our job on these nights was to break into establishments without damaging anything and to steal a...

58. The Society of Night (IV)

Shadows

It was fortunate that our survival class had moved to the forested hills of Alhred Island, because otherwise I'd have been spending far too much time in the dark…

Twice a week, I acted as Philo's assistant in the garden, learning about all of the plants with alchemical and m...

Ongoing Connectivity Issues + Lynn Before & After Pics

Hi, everybody!

I'm sorry if I've been uncommunicative lately - I was staying with my parents for a few weeks, and their place in the middle of nowhere has very spotty internet. Now I've returned home and found that my internet service shut off my old wireless router and sent the new one to ...

Bonus Content: Map of EMPRESS

The following map is a tentative map of the environs of They Shall Call Me EMPRESS that I made using Wonderdraft. The early chapters take place in and around Emerald Vale, Rushing Rivers, and the southern tip of the Heaven's Abyss Mountains. Before too long, the story will be moving to Lake Lhim ...

57. The Society of Night (III)

Shadows

Before I proceed any further, perhaps I should explain a bit about the Perdita Free Collegium's 'Societies'. While our school has an official core curriculum and numerous electives, both of which can be quite 'hands-on', you will never become a Greycloak, let alone a Shadow, by clas...

23. A Student's Duel

EMPRESS

Chu Zileng had been deprived of her twin brother, Zilong, for three long, intolerable months. There were times that she wanted to curse the boy and his damnable talent, but getting promoted to the Starry Waters's inner sect was always a forgone conclusion, and what they'd both striv...

56. The Society of Night (I)

Shadows

I am dark, but darker still
is she whose bed I share;
my lady of the midnight will
gift me her hidden prayer.
-Alscius Calvioli, from Twelve Liaisons

Aldo became a Sneak a week after Mailyn and I did - eight days, to be exact, which meant that it was a Tur...

22. The Wagon Rolled On

Empress

The wagon rolled on and on.

I guess the empire is pretty big, maybe even as big as the United States… maybe even bigger, like Russia or something… because it took forever to get from Emerald Vale to Lake Lhim City. The horses that drew our wagon along weren't very...

21. It's In the Tabloids a Lot

They Shall Call Me EMPRESS

Ken died.

No, Ken was murdered. Cold-blood Ieyasu fucking murdered him, shattered him into a thousand frozen pieces. He'd died, but his battle with the bastard had bought us precious seconds. He'd died and saved the three of us, buying enough time for the im...

2. The Mystery of the Old Barn Mushrooms

Tales From The Guild

"You haven't got your Class yet," Theresa Dyne stated.

"I have," Aly insisted. "I'm a ~Fighter~… you saw me do a Quick-Draw just last week. You yourself said I'm a lot better in practice the past few days, too."

"I don't know what...

55. Sneaks (V)

Believe it or not, I've never been fond of combat. Competition? Definitely. And sparring, even very vigorous sparring? That can be great fun. But combat is, at its essence, the use of force against somebody who will cause you harm, often deadly harm, if you don't succeed. The only time that comba...

20. Tempest of the Cold Heart

"Is this is bad as I think it is?" I whispered.

"Worse," Monkey Yang whispered back.

To date, I'd never come across a cultivator who was much stronger than me, cultivation-wise. When I'd first met Ichika, she was a few steps into the third realm while I was at the peak of body-refinem...

19. Dressed Like a Common Trollop

It was the damnedest thing that Ken had ever seen, and he'd seen quite a bit in his time.

Monkey's plan was simple enough - get the girls to lure the bastard in by dressing like prostitutes, and then give him the chance to surrender (as honor demanded) once he was entrapped. If he offered t...

18. Knock the Rest of the Teeth Right Out of His Face

Big Shilei wrinkled his nose in disgust. "This smells even worse than Lynn's 'truffle earth smoothie'."

"Hey, I put a lot of work into that! And your smoothies!" I huffed. With Granny's help, I'd spent the better part of three hours crouched over a foul-smelling cauldron while Gran...

17. I Think the Medical Term is 'Shart'

Granny P had given us a long list of ingredients…

I should clarify - she gave Ichika a long list of ingredients. My cultivation-enhanced memory was phenomenal and I was making real strides in learning Yu characters, but there were something like 2,000 essential character...

54. Sneaks (IV)

I almost died in the Largotto for the second time, but I did not die. I should hope that much was obvious.

Here's a little-known fact about mantis-sharks: their barbed pedipalps are lined with little stingers capable of injecting an anesthetic and paralytic toxin (apparently also an aphrodi...

53. Sneaks (III)

We met up with Rose and the students in our class at the little Collegium pier just south of the Step Wharf. It was a small pier, well-suited to rowboats and sandolos but barely able to manage the two small sloops that Rose had secured for our class. They were single-masted ships, perhaps seven m...

52. Sneaks (II)

My resistance to being nicknamed 'princess' just about guaranteed that it was my nickname for my first few weeks as a Sneak. Princess Vix, they would call me, and I'd try to ignore it. When our bunk boss, Nafiah, heard folks calling me that, he would frown and tell them that they weren't being ve...

51. Sneaks (I)

Novices of the Mysterium Thaumica spend their days in rigorous recitation and their evenings in devoted study. It is said the average student spends twelve hours a day in courses or study six days a week. Sneaks at the Perdita Free Collegium spend but four hours in class each day, much of whi...