Mitigating Risk Read online

  Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Also by Blaise Corvin

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Book End

  Author's Note

  Proofing Thanks

  Nora Hazard: Mitigating Risk

  Nora Hazard, Book One

  Part of the Delvers LLC storyline

  By Blaise Corvin

  Mitigating Risk

  Copyright ©2018 by Blaise Corvin

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Also by Blaise Corvin

  *Note: Some titles are scheduled for launch in 2018 or early 2019

  Artifice Universe

  Delvers LLC

  1. Welcome to Ludus

  2. Obligations Incurred

  3. Adventure Capital

  Nora Hazard

  1. Mitigating Risk

  2. Competitive Advantage

  3. Accounts Payable

  Delvers LLC (Cont.)

  4. Golden Handcuffs

  5. Hostile Takeover

  Yggdrasil Universe

  Secret of the Old Ones

  1. Luck Stat Strategy

  2. Airship Privateers

  I dedicate this book to Bonnie Price, Dawn Chapman, my mom, and all the other ladies I’ve talked to (at length) about Nora. In my opinion, writing a character with an unfamiliar viewpoint requires a bit of humility, a dash of skill, a lot of life experience, and a willingness to ask for feedback.

  -BC

  Foreword

  Hello readers! This book is classified as GameLit or RPG GameLit.

  You might be curious what RPG GameLit actually is. GameLit, the larger genre umbrella, is any fiction with game mechanics or that takes place in a game. RPG GameLit also includes some sort of linear progression for characters that is significant to the plot of the story. These types of stories have been extremely popular in Russia and other countries where they are called LitRPG. They’re just now making an impact in the West!

  RPG GameLit is usually a funky mix of Fantasy and Sci Fi. The types of stories can vary, but what most GameLit novels have in common is a setting that most gamers can immediately relate to.

  ***

  Writing the Nora series has been a risky move for me. I don’t know how it will be received, and the storytelling style is vastly different than what I’ve more or less grown my career on. However, I really felt like Nora’s story was demanding to be told. Nora’s journey is part of my vision for the greater Delvers LLC, and eventually the Artifice Universe, so I needed to rise to the challenge.

  As for writing Nora herself, I was highly influenced by Honor Harrington, Xena, and Yu Shu Lien from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I’d grown up consuming media with a series of strong, awesome female characters in fiction, and I really wanted to bring that energy, and those types of characters into my stories. To some extent, the High Priestesses on Ludus so far have all been powerful beings, but they’re so old, so alien, I doubt readers will ever connect with them the way people can connect with Nora.

  In fact, I’d originally been concerned that Nora herself might be too alien. Nora is a tough-as-nails, casual criminal from a matriarchal world. I’d been a little worried whether readers would…/get/ her viewpoint. As it turned out, as always, readers are amazing. Writers can really miss the mark, weakening their storytelling by not giving readers enough credit. Luckily, I’m willing to eat crow and admit my mistakes. I decided a long time ago what type of author I wanted to be—the type that listens.

  This foreword is being penned before launching the first book of the Nora Hazard series. I still have nerves upon nerves as I wonder what my core readers will think of the new series, whether I might be discovered by new readers. But ultimately, I have made my peace. I’ve decided to tell Nora’s story. Even if nobody buys these books, Nora’s journey will be complete before I pen Delvers LLC 4.

  Hopefully, if you are reading this, you will approve of this sentiment rather than cursing me for it. If it’s the latter, all I can do is assure you that I’m writing faster now that I’m full time, and you shouldn’t have too long to wait. :)

  ***

  I really had a lot of fun writing this book. If you’d like to visit my website, the URL is http://blaise-corvin.com/

  I also have a writer’s note in the back of the book with a whole mess of links as well as a few reading suggestions.

  If you’d like to connect with me on Patreon, the link is http://www.patreon.com/BlaiseCorvin.

  My reader group on FB is at http://www.facebook.com/groups/BlaiseCorvinBooks/.

  I hope you enjoy your time on Ludus with Nora!

  Bittertown

  I stared into the beautiful, dimming eyes of an unfamiliar girl, and my world wavered. I’d seen death before, but this violence had been so sudden, so senseless, my mind struggled to keep up with the events that had led me here.

  This day had seemed like it would be normal, maybe even lazy and stress-free. Where had everything gone wrong? I wanted to blame it on the strange girl—I already knew my pack would—but it seemed to me she’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Come to think of it that could describe most of my life as well. In the space between moments, as the world around me grew darker with each breath, I reflected on my own existence.

  Would I die like this shiner, this beautiful stranger one day?

  Would that even be such a terrible thing? My life hadn’t exactly been wonderful up to this point, after all. Memories I had not examined in ages were dusted off and reexamined all within the space of two heartbeats.

  As usual, my memories began with my father. I’d loved my birth mother dearly, and respected my first mother, but I’d always been a bit of a tomboy. My father worked a lot, but he had always made time for me.

  My father had been Terran—had even come from Earth—so he’d put value on Earth languages. I’d been taught English, Russian, and Hindi from a young age, as well as Terran units of measurement. I’d used them since I was a little girl—I had just thought they were cooler than standard Luda. I guess it was part of why I didn’t have many friends growing up.

  Their loss.

  I’d always liked languages. My family had had some money, so it was kind of embarrassing now, but I’d had a tutor as a little girl. Some people told me I was something of a prodigy back then, able to pick up languages really fast. Well, fat lot of good that did me. I wish I’d learned more useful skills than math and Russian when I’d had the chance to study.

  The day had started fairly normally for me. The streets of Bittertown were kind of slimy and smelled like garbage, as usual, but a breeze f
rom the Berber Sea almost made everything salty and fresh. Almost. The weather was kind of warm but bearable.

  I had been bleeding time with my Jackal packmates, including my best friend, Arren. Arren was a tough bitch, but unlike me, she was sort of pretty, too. Nobody would ever mistake me for a lord’s first wife or anything crazy like that. I was built more like a man, which was great for busting heads, but not so great at actually attracting men.

  Arren was almost everything I wanted to be, except she liked female bodies. I didn’t understand that, and even thinking about it brought back some bad memories that I really didn’t want to deal with. Maybe that’s a story for later. Probably not. Anyway, Arren was my best friend, and she’d even saved my life before.

  I’d known Arren since we were little girls. My family and I used to live in a big, fancy house. We’d been happy. I didn’t exactly grow up with an aluminum spoon in my mouth, but I had a future ahead of me. A real future. I’d never been very pretty, or super smart, so I probably wasn’t destined to be a first wife, but I usually wasn’t dumb either. And Creator knows I can get stuff done if I put my mind to it!

  All of that came crashing down when my father got arrested. The family business had involved refining parts of small mollusks that my father’s employees fished out of the Berber Sea. The parts had been used in a lot of machinery in Berber, and it’d always created a steady income for the family business. But after the parts had started to be used in military vehicles, demand had increased, and new people had opened businesses.

  Bad people.

  Eventually, since my father had held a lot of old contracts with the city, some shady deals had been made by some bad people, all of which wound up with Papa getting thrown in prison. I still don’t have proof of it to this day, but I have a good idea of who was involved. Then my father had mysteriously wound up murdered in prison.

  My birth mother hadn’t lasted much longer after that. I still believe she died of a broken heart. Regina, my second mother, had vanished, taking my two little sisters with her. I never heard from them again. I still don’t know why she didn’t take me, too.

  I’d been left alone. I came home one day, and my house was locked up. I had nothing. I had been ten years old at the time.

  Luckily, I’d known Arren. To this day, I prefer not to think about where my life might have gone if I’d been truly alone.

  Arren had been a street kid I used to play with. Her mother had been a nice lady who’d lived in an alley and tried to make the place feel like a home. I think that Arren’s first mother had been a soldier, as well as her father, and they’d both died at the same time. Her birth mother hadn’t had much, but she’d made due.

  When I’d been homeless, I’d come to Arren, crying, and somehow began making a new life for myself. The streets of Bittertown could be brutal for orphaned kids, but I’d survived. Thirteen years later, I was a Claw in the Jackals gang, in charge of my own pack, and Arren was part of my pack. She could have had her own pack years ago, but she’d wanted to stay in mine.

  Our friend Gaanal was currently in my pack, too. I knew the impulsive woman could be bad news, but Arren had had a thing for her for a while. She’d always had terrible taste in women.

  This day had been like most others. We’d been loitering on Tanner street, one of our favorite places to just bleed time. Yvadne had been talking about some man she’d fucked. I hadn’t been paying attention. Yvadne always had some story of a new conquest, and we generally believed her. The bitch was a shiner. She was like a venom demon on two legs, but was also still the best looking of us all.

  She knew it, too.

  And yeah, she looked sweet, but her big eyes, high cheekbones, and curly auburn hair all belonged to a killer. Yvadne had zero relax switch. I knew of at least a few rival gang girls she’d probably killed, but I never said a thing. My loyalty was to the Jackals, not laws. I’d start giving a rot about laws if the Guard gave a rot about me. Eating was more important than fancy rules.

  Gaanal had been listening to all of Yvadne’s yuckashit like she always did, club propped up on her shoulder, chewing gum. She was attractive enough, I guess. I personally thought she had kind of a pinched face, but I’m not attracted to women, so what do I know? She definitely had Arren’s attention. Gaanal had dark hair, full lips, and bright eyes. She could be charming too, but also as crazy as a five-clawed, long-fanged, feline rage demon trapped in a sack with a whole hive of Ludus hornets.

  The girl was a firm ally, but she saw everybody and everything that was not a Jackal gang member as an enemy. Since I was the Claw of this pack, she was both my greatest tool and my greatest liability. I had to be careful. Controlling Gaanal was like playing with a snake by the tail. Plus, Arren was in love with her. I wish my friend would just admit it. Sometimes I felt more like a nurse than a gang leader.

  Arren herself was more of a sister than my sisters had ever been. I loved my friend. Arren definitely wasn’t homely like me. She wasn’t a shiner like Yvadne, but still had her own sort of beauty. Tall with no curves, Arren’s feet were as big as a man’s, and her shoulders were so square you could cut bronze with them, but she definitely still turned heads. Her presence could brighten up a room, and her smile was quick, clever. Arren could give almost anyone a better day just by existing. She could be anyone’s friend.

  She was a better person than I could ever hope to be.

  Arren wasn’t one of the better fighters in the Jackals, but she always used the power she had to protect the other girls. She was loyal, honest, and smart. When I had lost my family and didn’t have anything to give in return, Arren had still asked her mother to take me in. Her little family had accepted me and suffered no small amount of hardship from that. The memory still shamed me. My family had tried to discourage me from playing with Arren when I had been young. Then her family had saved my life.

  Arren was incredible. She always had my back and had introduced me to the Jackals as soon as she’d joined. It hadn’t been her fault that I’d been taken in by Lisa, and it wasn’t either of our faults that the vile woman was the Jackals second leader now. I think Arren still blamed herself, though.

  I knew what I looked like— all broad shoulders, no curves, no waist...I was not beautiful. The only concession I made to vanity was dying my hair blonde—I liked how it looked. Slightly taller than average—the one thing Lisa had been right about when she’d tried to hurt me was that no man would ever want me.

  That’s fine. They still wanted my coin. At least the working boys did.

  All of us—me, Arren, Gaanal, and Yvadne - always wore our Jackals vests and carried the official weapons of the gang; clubs and shivs. Our Jackals clubs were basically a carved oval on a stick. The weapon was handy because as long as we didn’t use enough force to break the club itself, we wouldn’t kill any rival gang members in a scuffle, which prevented bringing the Guard down on us. Well, usually.

  The moment leading up to my spiral of memories had begun when we had seen the strange girl coming down the street towards us. She’d been wearing an odd, flowing outfit of dark material with a light colored belt. In one hand, she held an unfamiliar type of club, made of bunches of sticks bundled together. In the other hand, she held a box.

  “Who’s this bitch?” muttered Gaanal. “Looks like a normie.” I had felt the tension, too. Bittertown wasn’t the largest city in Berber but was still a port city with some strong fighters. Even rare orb-Bonded warriors passed through. The girl approaching us had walked far more confidently than she should have been doing. Heading directly towards a group of Jackals on Tanner Street was not something most normies did. This was my pack’s turf, and everyone knew it.

  The approaching girl hadn’t seemed to care. Her head had been on a swivel, examining the buildings around her in the fading light as dusk began to fall. This one sure is confident...and pretty, I’d thought. Some people have all the luck.

  The strange girl’s eyes had had epicanthic folds, her skin pale and smooth, her li
ps shapely. I don’t think I’d ever seen a girl with such long eyelashes before. Her features had been refined, and except for the confident way she held her sword-like club, it had looked like she’d never done a day’s work in her life.

  As she’d gotten closer, I’d realized that the newcomer was actually closer to my own age, about twenty-three or so. Unlike me though, she had had perfect skin and clear eyes.

  The beautiful girl had asked, “Excuse me, where am I? Did you see anyone leave me in that alley? Is this a prank? I remember falling asleep in my dorm room, but I just woke up in an alley with nothing but my shinai and this weird box with a note…” A bit of worry seemed to have been creeping into her voice.

  Nobody had said anything, and the stranger had drawn nearer, her body language obviously distressed. With a start, I had realized, She’s speaking English. I hadn’t spoken English in a long time, so my mind felt rusty as it had turned the words over, double checking the meaning.

  The strange girl had come even closer. She had asked, “Are you girls part of a team? Can you help me? The note is signed by someone named Dolos, and I really don’t understand what is going on. This doesn’t look like Ottawa. Am I still even in Ottawa?”

  Now the words had started coming together in my mind, and I had begun to understand the situation. My father had never talked much about his first couple years on Ludus, but I’d gathered they hadn’t been pleasant. Maybe this new girl had just been transported here...to Bittertown.

  Wow. Now that would have been some terrible luck. I had started thinking about what to say to her, to this new, but somehow interesting person. I had wanted to make sure I was hearing her right first, so I wouldn’t sound stupid.