Seconds passed, and seemed to stretch to minutes. Even the blood seeping from Marie’s arrow wound stopped. All her pain was forgotten, overridden by the overwhelming, paralysing fear of what lurked outside.

  She closed her eyes and waited for the end. Whatever came next, she was powerless to stop it.

  The air was still.

  A creaking sigh, impossibly long, like a hundred stubborn doors being opened back to back.

  A scrape that could have sheared the top off a concrete block.

  And throughout, the only sound that made sense, was the irregular tap-tapping of the undead hound, limping about on the other side of the wall to where she hid.

  Then… as the dog ambled about the street with no apparent concern… the heavy footfalls began once more, and slowly began to move on, receding into the north.

  It had faded completely when Marie suddenly realised her lungs were bursting, and she exhaled a great rush of air and sucked in as deep a lungful as she could, heedless of her protesting wounds.

  She still couldn’t stand, her legs were still shaking, but as her undead companion came back and lay down next to her she began scratching its skull, and didn’t stop until it picked up a rock with its mouth and gave a hopeful tilt of its head.

  They played fetch until Marie felt like she could stumble to her feet, and as she did she looked down at the dog, sight partially fragmented through her broken glasses, and addressed it with as much sincerity as she had ever given anything before, voice cracked and hoarse.

  “Thank you.”

  Perhaps she was reading something into it, but she thought it understood.

  Glancing out to the street and the city beyond, she made up her mind.

  “This changes things. I cannot stay here, dog. I need to get out. Tonight. I do not care if things are more active in the darkness. I hope you can understand that, too.”

  There was no response, but of course there wouldn’t be.

  She’d been putting it off because she’d been afraid of what she might see, but if she was to leave tonight then she owed it to her companion, and when she turned back to the skeletal hound, she whispered one of her Skills again, and looked at it properly.

  “[Glimpse of the Forgotten].”

  It took her a moment to get over the shock, and then she knelt down and petted him through the image she could see.

  “You were thicker than I thought you would have been. Stocky. Or maybe it was just the fur.”

  The skeletal dog shook its head.

  A crack of a smile showed on her face as the glimpse of its original form mirrored its movements.

  “And a mane too. You could almost have been part lion!”

  There was something else odd about the image too. Bits of lines kept on flickering in and out of existence around the image, and the smile faded as she wondered how badly she’d hit her head.

  When the Skill faded, she patted it one more time.

  “I will remember you, if that is worth anything to you.”

  The ruins of the townhouse where her camp lay were not far off to the west, but she left the chest where it was for now, and her backpack with it. The less she had to carry for a while the better.

  Her spade went with her though. It might not help against whatever… thing had passed by, but against the others she needed any advantage she could get right now.

  Staccato clacks told her the dog was following.

  “I cannot just call you dog, you know. Not now.”

  The click of bone on stone was her only response.

  “I could come up with a name for you.”

  Was it her imagination, or was there a sudden hitch in the dog’s stride?

  “Come on. I know bonebow was not my finest moment, but I was under a lot of pressure. Stressed. I can do better than that. Ignore that name. I will find a good one for you. Something from my world.”

  She thought for a few moments, she considered options, as the townhouse drew steadily closer on her mental map.

  A fierce fighter. Brave. Not afraid to take on someone much larger than you are…

  After a minute the path she was tracking in her mind’s eye grew short enough that she could see a recognisable wall rising above the surrounding remnants of its one-time neighbourhood and, as she staggered on shaky legs round the corner and into its meagre shelter, she came to a decision.

  “Napoleon. That is what I will call you…”

  The dog scampered forward in what she took for assent.

  “...which makes you Boney, for short.”

  She could have sworn he looked round at her in reproach.

  —

  It didn't take long for her to pack up her tent, even with a bandaged hand. It helped that the painkillers were beginning to kick in.

  She spent longer standing at the underground cistern, staring at the ewer.

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  It was a beautiful piece. She'd just finished refiling her canteen and bathing her hand again, but it seemed…wrong to take it with her.

  She glanced back down at the cistern.

  If you hadn't been here…

  Surely no one would appear in the middle of this place again.

  And even if they did, finding this exact same place in the whole of the city…

  …If they even survived that long…

  But if they did…

  She returned the ewer to its hook and closed the hatch.

  If it remaining here might bring even one more person hope in the next thousand years, who was she to deny someone what she'd had.

  She stood back up and put a hand out to steady herself against the wall.

  It had been such a long day.

  She was so tired.

  She swayed on her feet.

  [Fighter L-

  Marie caught herself before she fell.

  She'd fallen asleep standing upright.

  If it hadn't been for the Voice…

  With her uninjured hand she gave herself a gentle slap on the cheek.

  Her voice was still hoarse, but the water had helped.

  “Not yet. Not when those…”

  She shuddered at the memory, all too recent.

  Trying to move quickly and failing, she gathered up her tent and refilled canteen and resigned herself to a slow but steady walk out of the city.

  Napoleon looked up at her as she hesitated at the exit to the townhouse’s ruined courtyard.

  She answered the question she read in its undead gaze.

  “It is simple; whatever it was went north, so I will go south. Besides,” she went on as she stepped out of the scant shelter the place had offered, “I am fairly sure that there is a sea to the south, or a very large lake perhaps. People build near the water. Fishers. Traders. And then there is also more of a chance to catch food myself.”

  How she was going to do that with no rod or experience she didn’t know. Maybe she’d get a Skill if she at least tried?

  She left off talking, both to save energy and to avoid drawing attention as they passed closer to areas where she’d mentally marked clusters of the undead gathering before.

  Whether it had been the passage of the unseen terror, or simple dumb luck, Marie didn’t know, but she wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. She had a bigger problem; how to get everything out with one hand out of action.

  The rucksack held almost everything in the main compartments and pockets, or clipped onto straps or held in webbing or wedged under flaps.

  Two things it couldn’t hold were the chest and the spade.

  Well, it could hold the spade, but then she’d be left without a weapon to defend herself, dead on her feet and weighed down by her gear.

  And that seemed unwise, even if she swung wide to the south east and risked skirting the manor to take advantage of the clearer streets. There were still a couple of miles after the manor that she’d not yet explored before the city began to give way to whatever wilderness lay beyond, and even with the painkillers she didn’t want to use her burned hand any more unless absolutely necessary.

  If she’d still had the rope…

  …but all she had from her hoisting of it before was her jacket.

  It took a few minutes to fashion the jacket into a sling. One to tie the ends of the sleeves together one-handed and make sure they wouldn’t come loose if she had to run, and the rest to get the chest into it and get it into a workable position, hanging partially across her chest and under her right arm.

  It was an awkward carry, but it sufficed, and her injured hand could rest on it and help keep it in place at the same time.

  The spade she took in her left hand.

  Her shoulder still throbbed with a dull ache, and her forearm wasn’t fully healed after only a couple of days (and her flight through the manor hadn’t helped) but at least she could grasp it and swing in a pinch.

  She was running on empty as she set off, but her [Silent Steps] let her cut closer to the groups of shambling undead she saw in the distance than she otherwise would have dared.

  Twice she had to stop in the shadows of an alley until a group passed on the other side of the street, and one skeleton stepped out of the wreckage of a building almost on top of her, but [Swift Blow] had ended that threat before it could even react to her.

  It was only the residual adrenaline in her system that kept her awake - the heightened awareness from the fear doing everything it could to counteract the utter exhaustion.

  And then she was passing the ruins of the ancient manor. Keeping to the south side and the shadows of the bluff, out of sight of any windows and as far away from the twisted metal front gate as possible.

  What came next was new territory, though as she trudged through the darkest part of the night she was startled to alertness as a clattering crash sounded just behind her.

  She lurched round to see Napoleon standing over a disanimated body that had been half a step away from her. Its vertebrae were in the dog’s mouth, being crunched to dust.

  Her heart beat faster as she realised she’d zoned out, and that the only reason she was alive was the vigilance of her four-legged companion.

  Was that the first time he’d done that?

  “Good boy.”

  She was slurring, and as she looked back up the street she realised she didn’t recall coming down it, and her [Precise Cartography] had no record of it.

  But she was still heading east. She just needed to keep going…

  She felt her body protesting even before she fully formed the idea, but she forced the words out.

  “[Adrenaline Surge].”

  Her heart began to race, but her arms and legs were shaking as she forced her body into a shambling, if silent run. Her head lolled forwards, nodding from side to side.

  With one eye’s sight useless in the dark and through the broken glasses, the other fixated on the stretch of cobblestones in front of her, just far enough to give her time to turn when she came to a junction in the road.

  She smashed a skeleton.

  She ran.

  She scrambled over a row of ruined houses, her awkwardly-hanging possessions throwing her balance off.

  A lone undead soldier appeared in her view, and, acting on autopilot, she activated her one [Bonebreaker Charge] and crashed through him.

  She wasn’t aware she’d left the confines of the city until she gradually became aware that the cobblestones had disappeared, and had been replaced by an overgrown dirt track, though this close to the place of the dead little seemed to want to grow.

  Dirt turned to scrubland turned to thinning grass.

  Then, and only then, did she stop and turn and look back.

  It was just about visible in the darkness, and only barely did she realise the sky above her was now a natural dark, lit only by the light of distant stars and not a perpetual green-tinged glow.

  She was on a ridge, a little above the city’s level, and not far to the south she could hear a sound she hadn’t heard in a long time: the steady rhythm of the ocean.

  Another sound, this one down by her side, startled her, and she looked down to see Napoleon still by her side.

  “You came.”

  She didn’t have the energy to infuse any emotion into the statement, but a wave of gratitude rolled through her. She hadn’t known it would be able to survive… unsurvive?... outside the city.

  She stumbled back from the ridge, out of sight of the cursed city, found a scraggly tree clinging to life at the edge of a large boulder and levered herself down to her knees with the spade to slip off the ancient chest in its jacket-sling and shrug off the backpack.

  That was the limit of her energy and, as leaned against the rock and slid down until she lay supine on the ground, the last thing she saw before her eyes closed was the comforting sight of Napoleon, leg fractured and ribs missing, curling up next to her.

  [Fighter Level 12!]

  [Skill Improvement – Basic Proficiency: Improvised Weapons -> Proficiency: Improvised Weapons gained!]

  [Skill – Whipbound Pull gained!]

  [Skill – Improvise Shield gained!]

  [Skill – Lesser Toughness gained!]

  [Scholar Level 10!]

  [Skill – Rudimentary Translation (Text) gained!]

  [Skill – Improved Recall gained!]

  [Skill Improvement – Basic Reconstruction (Pottery) -> Basic Reconstruction (Artefacts) gained!]

  [Explorer Level 11!]

  [Skill – Situational Awareness gained!]

  [Skill – Resilient Threads gained!]

  [Skill – Minor Weather Resistance gained!]

  [Class Consolidation – Fighter and Explorer -> Scout]

  [Scout Class Obtained!]

  [Scout Level 10!]

  [Skill – Lucky Dodge (Once per Day) gained!]

  [Skill – Twilight Vision gained!]

  [Skill Improvement – Minor Weather Resistance -> Minor Elemental Resistance gained!]

  [Treasure Hunter Class Obtained!]

  [Treasure Hunter Level 19!]

  [Skill – Treasuresense gained!]

  [Skill – Basic Lockpicking gained!]

  [Skill – Basic Trap Disarm gained!]

  [Skill – Bargain Hunter gained!]

  [Skill – Packmule gained!]

  [Skill – Keen Grip gained!]

  [Skill Improvement – Baseline Appraisal -> Artefact Appraisal gained!]

  [Class Consolidation – Scholar and Treasure Hunter -> Ruins Delver]

  [Ruins Delver Class Obtained!]

  [Ruins Delver Level 13!]

  [Skill – Favoured Ground (Ruins) gained!]

  [Skill – Concealed Camp gained!]

  [Skill Improvement – Situational Awareness -> Dangersense gained!]

  …

  …

  …

  [Skill – Rudimentary Authority (Lesser Undead) gained!]

  Hi all! Welcome to my book, Miscast Heroes.

  I'm uploading a few chapters to start with and then will upload one a day after.

  The full first book is available on Patreon - and I greatly appreciate anyone who chooses to support me there.

  Hope you enjoy it - please leave comments below!