Chapter 1
Raz
Raz rolled to his feet in the soft grass outside the window. Moonlight filtered through dark clouds, providing dim illumination for the decorative hedges along the exterior of the building. Cool night air wafted down from above the open window and whispered through his hair, bringing with it the uneasy murmur of distressed partygoers—guests still inside, lost in the dark.
The power had cut out before he reached the base of the stairs inside the mansion. Women in flowing gowns and men in sharp jackets had danced across polished marble floors, laughing and drinking right up until they heard the rumbling outside and learned the ground-level doors were locked. He’d taken the stairs two at a time in the dark and run smack into Daniela at the top. She’d jumped sky-high at his sudden appearance and latched herself onto his arm like a parasite.
“Raz, it’s you! Damian was here, and now he’s not, and the lights, and the—did you hear that? Please don’t leave me.”
A flicker of movement had caught his eye as she spoke, and they turned just in time to see the Raven Legion woman jump out the second-story window at the end of the hall.
Sure, he could have said something to Daniela. Some bland lie, like “it’ll be okay,” or some obvious drivel like, “I’m going after the Raven. I’ll be back.”
Instead, he abandoned Daniela with her clutching hands and gaping codfish mouth and hurtled through the open window to land where he stood now. Whatever this Raven was up to, she wasn’t going to get away with it.
Raz drew his sword from its sheath and hugged the wall, inching toward the generator cage standing three meters tall along the exterior of the house. It was protected by metal bars with enough of a jolt to maim or kill anybody stupid enough to get close. Except now, the power was off—and so was the defense mechanism on the bars.
Clickkkk click.
He peered around the pure silver generator cage, only to come face-to-face with two massive beasts with at least a hundred and fifty legs too many between them. The creatures were three times as thick as a man’s torso and between three and four meters long.
The Raven hung from the generator cage a meter to his left, the edge of a dagger aimed at the nearest of the creatures, feet scrabbling for footing on the smooth cage bars.
Raz jumped back and mentally reached into the system for information on the beasts.
Level 10 Gigantic Miriapod: Scavenger Insect
Travels and migrates in groups
Armored plate exoskeleton
Feeds on dead wood and plant matter, excrement, moss, and algae
The first of the miriapods rose up off the ground, balancing on its ridiculous number of excess limbs and rearing its creepy little armored head back like a cobra. The thing shot its head forward at Raz, a battering ram of bone-crushing power. He rolled to one side and smashed his sword down.
The strength of the blow reverberated up his arm, and he staggered back. Okay, so the exoskeleton armor was actual armor. He should have added some gear out of his inventory before jumping out the window. But he hated wearing heavy stuff, and how was he supposed to know the Raven girl would wind up clutching the generator cage instead of running like any sane thief?
Raz bounced on the balls of his feet and adjusted his grip on his sword. “Is this how you usually spend your weekends? Breaking into mansions and playing bait for giant invertebrates?”
The Raven wrenched her body sideways as the second miriapod plunged itself toward her head, leaving her unarmed arm and hand exposed. The armor-plated insect crashed into the generator cage just above her extended limb. The creature’s mouth bent toward the girl’s arm, and she crouched beneath it, dagger poised, half-hidden behind the insect’s slew of legs.
Raz tapped his miriapod on the top of the head. That would wake it up. They were kind of stupid, really. If he could get it to rear up again, maybe he could stab its softer underbelly. The miriapod curled its body into a coil with a clack-lack-ack and rolled straight for him.
Dust and death. No underbelly for him.
He dove sideways, slamming his shoulder into the generator bars.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the girl swing her dagger up into the tender flesh of the beast. “Usually, I play bait for something a bit more challenging.”
Raz planted a foot on the back of his miriapod and launched himself onto the skeleton of the one attacking the girl before stabbing in between the armored plates. The beast jerked backward, and the Raven slashed her dagger at a sticky substance latching her arm to the bars. He laughed.
“Is that why you stuck your arm to the bars? To make it more of a challenge?”
The creature writhed backward in a sweeping arc, the segments of its armor closing in on Raz’s blade.
“Obviously.”
The miriapod swung back and forth, shaking Raz like a rag doll. His feet slipped, and his body swung out into the air, hands still gripping the hilt of his sword buried between the armored plates.
The Raven’s snarky voice bit into his aching limbs. “Is that why you got your sword stuck? For the challenge of it?”
The miriapod curled itself in the other direction, and the plates loosened, releasing Raz’s sword. He dropped like a gavel and stifled a groan.
“Naturally. If I didn’t handicap myself, you’d never get the chance to kill your miriapod before I did.”
When he turned to face his latest enemy, the girl had freed her arm and held a dagger out toward the beast with one hand, tampering with the generator panel with the other. Raz smacked the second miriapod on its head, angling his sword to slip between the armored plates the moment the opportunity arose.
She hadn’t acknowledged his witty comeback, but he definitely wanted to keep her talking. He cleared his throat. “So, what kind of thief are you? Sensitive documents for the highest bidder or shiny baubles for the common criminal?”
The next second, the miriapod swirled its long body around Raz, surrounding him. Pincers clacked together a handbreadth from the toes of his boots before the monster surged up his body. An army of legs scuttled the length of him from ankle to shoulder.
The girl’s taunting voice floated to him like the sing-song of a sunshine yellow lemon dumping its acidic juice into a fresh open wound. “Oh, just household decoration. I figured my house could use a little sparkle.”
Involuntary disgusted shivers racked Raz’s body as he dropped low under the weight of the creature. The beast’s head and mouth lolled over itself, leaving Raz facing its thick midsection underbelly rather than a pair of mandibles.
“What’s the matter? Handicap yourself a little too much?”
Ignoring the fifty or so prickly feet clawing up his torso, Raz seized his sword with both hands and thrust it into the core of the creature. The underbelly wasn’t armored, but it was tougher than he’d hoped. The blade sank a third of the way through but halted before reaching the other side.
Beasty flailed and shot its head toward Raz. Raz dodged and rolled from beneath the canopy of decay-scented coils, popping up a meter to the side.
He shot the Raven a sideways glance. “You light your house with energy from the most powerful man in Phaedrin, instead of buying it from any idiot salesman in town?”
No need to mention the handicap thing again.
The generator panel snapped shut, and the Raven dropped the remaining meter to the ground.
“Saves me a conversation with an idiot. At least, it used to.” The girl looked him up and down. “Guess my luck ran out.”
The first miriapod lunged at the Raven again. She dove beneath the mass of legs just as the second miriapod slung the length of its body around Raz once more. Did the thing only have one strategy? He leaped into the air just in time to avoid it smashing his knees out from under him and glanced back up at the girl. She had one fist white-knuckled tight around a small object and plunged the other into the creature’s throat.
Her blade was shorter than his, a mere dagger rather than a sword, but the effects were instantaneous. The miriapod snatched its body to and fro with an otherworldly shriek that sent ice rocketing down Raz’s spine. The beast’s long, scuttle-slither motions shifted to short jerky motions in an awkward, drunken writhe until all at once its gigantic body collapsed.
The Raven whirled and ran.
“Hey! You cheated!”
Raz lurched after her, but the surviving miriapod wrenched its body from beneath its dead friend and slammed its head into Raz. He fell back. What had she had in her hand that killed the thing so quickly?
A pool of sticky purple liquid spilled out onto the ground from the Raven’s final blow. Raz rolled to his feet, wiped his sword in the blood-like substance, and drove the blade with both hands, hacking off the nearest leg at the joint.
But the girl was gone.
Behind him, the generator hummed to life. Power to the Stoica mansion snapped on again, flooding the gardens with light from the windows and terrace. Raz recoiled, his eyes balking at the brightness after adjusting to the dark of night. The miriapod saw its chance and took it, rearing up for a final death ram to the skull.
But he wasn’t about to be bested both by the Raven girl and by a monster with goo for brains. Sword dipped in purple blood laced with whatever toxin the Raven had used, Raz ran forward with a guttural cry and sank his blade into the creature’s dark underside. The miriapod wavered, and slammed its head toward him—but its aim was off, and the head crashed into the metal bars of the generator instead.
Raz sliced into the underbelly. The beast half-curled in on itself, writhing in stuttering jerks. The innards of the creature oozed from the gash in a deep violet mixed with a brown Raz didn’t want to think about. It took two yanks to free his sword, and he could hardly clamber over the armored back of the beast fast enough as it made a final wretched shriek and fell dead.
You have defeated Level 10 Gigantic Miriapod!
You have reached Warrior Level 10!
Reward:
Endurance increase
Speed increase
A rush of adrenaline ran through him as his cut of the experience points he’d earned from the kill washed over him and was absorbed.
Raz blinked at the system message.
He’d leveled up? No, it couldn’t be. No one in the Phaedrin agency had leveled up in over a year. Raz was due to level up, of course, but that had been the case for months. And he wasn’t the only one.
He shook his head, trying to stave off the thrill of a new level. Maybe it was a glitch and wouldn’t last. But if he really was faster, maybe he could catch the Raven before she made it off the grounds. Raz hardly made it two meters when screams rocked the air from the mansion behind him.
Raz swore under his breath and skidded to a halt. She was probably long gone, but what if he could still catch her?
Fresh screams overtook the first, coming from the second floor. Raz groaned and altered course, sprinting for the terrace entrance. Two figures stood in the shadows of the terrace thirty paces off, staring open-mouthed as he neared the doors.
Irina Imbasa and Cristian Popescu. How long had they been watching? Had they seen the level? What if—
Focus, Raz.
He brushed by them and strode into the house. Some sort of broken crustiness ran the length of the door seam. This must have been how the Raven had sealed the doors shut when the power went out. Inside, one of the elegant flower vases and several trays of food had been knocked to the floor, scattering soil and sweets across the polished marble floor. A group of people gathered just beyond the railing on the second story, halfway from the staircase landing on the right and the window at the end of the hallway on the left.
Hadn’t Raz been out of breath a moment ago? Maybe he did have more endurance. Or maybe he was full of it, and it was just the excitement of the evening still rolling around in his veins. Wait, shouldn’t he be worried about the kerfuffle upstairs? What had she stolen?
Straggling partygoers ran up the steps to the second floor. Raz ran after them, Irina and Cristian close on his heels. Andrei Stoica, the leader of the Phaedrin agency and owner of the mansion, came running from somewhere farther into the house on the first floor, two other men on his heels.
One of the two, a short Level 11 bald man, cradled a forearm decorated with a gash of his own red blood and sported a shirt stained with purple monster blood. Andrei Stoica and the other council member had a few flecks of red and purple blood, but at levels 25 and 21, respectively, it was no surprise that the Level 11 had caught the brunt of the injuries.
Andrei looked Raz over. “Miriapods?”
Raz nodded. “Two of them. You?”
“Four.”
Raz took the stairs two at a time and spun left at the top. A railing on his left looked out over the ballroom floor, with doors to a row of rooms on his right. And, at the end of the hall, the open window that he’d jumped out of earlier.
Experience-fueled chandeliers hung over the mansion’s main hall, illuminating the space from the vaulted ceiling to the sweeping staircase to the marble below. Party attendees formed a bottleneck outside the last of the rooms, where
Andrei’s daughter Elena stood blocking the half-open door, keeping people at bay.
“Has anyone seen my father?”
Raz nodded. “He’s right behind me. He—”
“I’m right here.” Andrei pushed through the crowd to Raz’s side.
Elena let out a breath, her careful, practiced veneer cracking a little in the safety of her father’s presence. With a trembling hand, she pressed the door open further.
A collective gasp swept through the crowd. Scattered documents shattered the curated perfection of the study. Neglected cherry pastries glistened in the light from a full silver platter on a stand by the door.
And a dead body lay on the floor.