Even screaming, Marie didn’t drop the chest.

  The undead bowman drew another shaft and she flung herself to the side just in time as a second arrow zipped past her ear and ricochet off the stone wall behind with a sharp clink.

  Instinctively, she ran at the skeleton, pulling the chest higher and ducking her head, scream growing more high-pitched as the arrow embedded in her left shoulder grated at the wound.

  Putain, she could feel it inside her.

  There was a dull crunch as she hit the skeleton, precious chest used as both shield and battering ram, and continued on through the adjoining antechamber and into the ruins of the grand entrance hall.

  Arm burning, she let the chest drop down to her waist as she took her first breath, but before she could look back at the skeletal archer she was brought up short by the sight of seven or eight more undead figures arrayed between her and the path to escape.

  They were larger than the ones she’d seen before, and better armoured than the skeletal soldiers in the city. Bits of chainmail and ancient leather straps still clung to their bodies, and the weapons they carried looked sharp.

  There was another bowman amongst them, and it pulled back to loose an arrow, forcing her to duck behind a pillar. She saw the shaft splinter on the wall, but the next second she saw nothing as everything went white.

  A blast of arctic wind, with a solid force at the centre, slammed into her, knocking her back into the wall. Her head hit it with a resounding crack.

  Had her hands not been protected by her thick work gloves, they might have frozen to the chest, or turned blue with frostbite, and had the chest not borne the brunt of it the flash of ice would have blistered the exposed skin of her core as the air around her dropped a hundred degrees in a second.

  Her forearms felt like they were buried in snow. Her eyelashes froze as the broken lens of her glasses cracked and her face went numb.

  She slumped down until she was almost sitting, the chest dropping from her hands and bouncing painfully from her knees to the ground as she exhaled a plume of thick, misting breath.

  “Hhnngghh.”

  Eyes swimming from the collision and the pain she glanced up to the decrepit mezzanine to see a skeletal figure flanked by two more warriors, its tattered robes billowing as the backdraft of its spell washed over them, and flinched as the undead mage lifted its other hand, and fire grew in its palm.

  Scrambling in a daze, pushing off fallen stones and piles of rubble to keep from falling, she lurched forwards as its bony fingers gestured in her direction and a streak of pure fire lanced down to incinerate the space she’d just vacated as she stumbled further into the foyer.

  Merde!

  Barely thinking, she activated her [Adrenaline Surge] and made for the one exit that wasn’t blocked by an undead body or a pile of rubble: the passageway beneath the grand staircase.

  Even as she shot up from her position like an olympic sprinter she saw another pair of skeletal soldiers that she’d missed, rushing down the double stairs in a shambling run. One reached a section where they’d collapsed half way down and simply launched itself at her, legs flailing, battleaxe already swinging for her head.

  “[Bonebreaker Charge]!”

  She knew the Skill had activated as she sped up and it was all she could do to turn her right shoulder towards the figure as she hit it and blew it apart. Some of its bones broke as she cannoned into the wall of the passageway and rebounded off, eyes wide with pain as the arrow in her shoulder scraped along the stone. She threw herself at the other side of the corridor and kept running, feet finding sure passage over the debris and rubble as she came out into a vast chamber.

  She glanced back, and saw the other skeletons charging after her.

  Merde, she didn’t have time to think.

  Scooping up a fist-sized stone, she hurled it with all the strength her adrenaline-infused body could muster at the first to make it to the corridor, cursing as it bounced off a helmet, barely slowing it.

  A second stone was already in her hand though, and that one caught it square in the chest, pulverising three of its ribs.

  But it didn’t stop, and with a surge of fear, she saw the scattered bones of the one she’d charged through beginning to shake and draw back together.

  “Mon dieu!”

  She turned and ran, searching frantically for a way out.

  The beam of her headlamp failed to illuminate the enormity of the room in its entirety. There was no time.

  “[Glimpse of the Forgotten]!”

  Her scream echoed round the cavernous space as lines of light began to flash around the room, and as her feet thundered over the scree of pulverised rock and fallen stone, the visage of an exquisite ballroom resolved around her.

  At any other time Marie would have been mesmerised, but the only thing she was looking for through the one good lens of her glasses now was an exit.

  Where the two nearest had been millennia ago, now was only rubble, so Marie headed for the closest one she could fit through, sprinting down corridors, taking corners and diving through rooms at random as she tried to lose her pursuers.

  A javelin went whistling past her head and she suppressed a shriek, pulling a dangerously-leaning pillar down behind her as she ran past in an attempt to slow them.

  It barely worked, though she was keeping ahead.

  She spat out a curse as she turned a corner and found herself facing a dead end, and spun instantly to dart through a doorway opposite instead.

  She grabbed the rope from her belt as she ran. It was no spade, but she had nothing else besides the rocks she’d thrown.

  She maintained her lead for another thirty seconds… until she ducked through a partially-collapsed doorway and came face to face with one of her pursuers.

  As soon as she saw it start to swing its sword she kicked out with one foot and sent it stumbling back.

  The effort sent her backwards too though; these undead bodies were denser and better armoured. They had more mass to them than the ones out in the city.

  But she’d saved herself from a decapitating swing, and lashed out with her improvised whip as it recovered.

  The rope wrapped round the top of its torso and, blanking out the pain where the arrow stuck out of her shoulder, she heaved with all her might, and spun out of the way when the skeletal warrior came hurtling towards her.

  It impacted the doorway behind her with a crunch as its upper half crashed into the collapsed frame and its legs continued further, shearing the body in half as its pelvis detached from its spine.

  She didn’t stop longer than to draw a breath though; even as she watched it fall to the ground, it kept moving.

  It started to drag itself towards her until, with a bone-shattering stamp, she brought her boot down on its unarmoured head.

  That seemed enough to destroy it, at least for now.

  She took off running again, relying on the mental map she was building to attempt to navigate back to the ballroom. Only then could she pass through the passage to the entrance hall and out of this deadly manor.

  —

  Ten minutes later her [Adrenaline Surge] had well and truly run out, but there was some comfort in the fact that her pursuers had lost her.

  For now.

  As best she could tell, there were a dozen of them, including the mage.

  She’d encountered two more, over the course of her flight.

  In a stupendously stupid move, she’d tried to knock the arrow off a skeletal bowman’s bow as it had loosed at her. Fortunately it had only pierced the cloth of her jacket.

  It’s [Basic Proficiency: Improvised Weapons], idiot.

  Then, a few minutes ago, she’d managed to trip up one who’d run at her with a mace, but the simple fact that it had been wearing a helmet had been enough to stop her destroying its head, and she’d had to skip around it.

  That hadn’t gone so well, and she was still clutching her leg where it had clipped her and waiting for the feeling to fully return.

  It would take a little longer, but as soon as she felt able to walk without hobbling she’d go out and investigate the corridor outside her hiding spot and the rooms that led off it.

  Massaging her calf, she took a few deep breaths.

  She wasn’t too concerned about being ambushed again; the skeletons were clanking around in their attempts to find her, all trace of subtlety discarded as they searched the place.

  Were they trying to intimidate her?

  She was in too much pain to be frightened.

  The arrow in her shoulder was killing her. She knew she wasn’t meant to remove it, but every time the shaft caught something it sent a lance of agony down her arm. Even when she was running, the bouncing motion and air resistance made it dig into the flesh a little more.

  Making a compromise, she grabbed the arrow with both hands as near as she could to the wound and, bracing herself and gritting her teeth tight, snapped the shaft.

  She felt light headed and let out a quiet whimper as she was left with a few inches of the shaft jutting from her shoulder.

  Better than nothing.

  She got to her feet, taking deep breaths as she began to sway. She couldn’t pass out. Not here.

  She wouldn’t wake up again.

  —

  The ballroom opened up in front of her, bereft of the softly glowing lights that had outlined its past grandeur before. They’d run out a while ago.

  It was a short dash to the passageway, a shorter one through it, then a final sprint to the front entrance and freedom beyond…

  …well, to the city full of other undead at least.

  At least those ones weren’t hunting her.

  The only thing that lay between her and her freedom? The undead mage guarding the entrance to the passageway.

  …they had to have some measure of intelligence.

  Think Marie. Be logical about this. What do you have? What are its weaknesses?

  She took a moment, crouching down out of sight, and closed her eyes to think.

  [Silent Steps] is my best bet, to try and sneak out, but if it comes to a fight I still have my [Swift Blow].

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  Will that work with a thrown rock?

  She felt a rock beneath her hand.

  No. But maybe the improvised whip…

  It was going to be a hell of a time to find out.

  Beyond that, there wasn’t much.

  Her headlamp - which she’d turned off as soon as she’d found somewhere to hide - might have blinded a living opponent, but the undead didn’t need eyes to see, did they?

  And that was all she had.

  Or if there was anything else, she was growing too woozy to think of it.

  Okay. Focus Marie. Weaknesses.

  The other skeletons look like they are some sort of bodyguards for the creature, or at least, they went on ahead whilst it waited behind.

  Is it a poor fighter?

  Not from afar, certainly.

  It had thrown ice and fire at her. Magic.

  In some part of her mind she’d been praying that there was a rational, scientific explanation for the animated bodies of the dead, and that perhaps the voice she’d been hearing in her head and the Skills she was using were the result of a delirium, but after watching that skeleton conjure pure cold and a blast of heat out of nowhere and feeling them…

  …she had to accept the evidence as it was presented to her, and the last vestiges of unspoken hope, the last tiny bastion of potential denial, fell away.

  This place, is not Earth.

  With a jolt she realised her concentration had been slipping, and she forced her eyes as wide as she could, focusing on the creature that stood in the way of her escape.

  Right. Sneak in close. Prepare to attack. Try a [Swift Blow]. If all else fails, push it over and run like hell.

  Her heart hammered in her chest so loudly as she approached that Marie was sure the undead would hear it.

  She was at the very end of the room - on the opposite side of the doorway she’d taken out of it in the first place. The wreckage of the upper floors and surrounding chambers had fallen into this place, creating mounds of ancient detritus and rubble she could hide behind on her approach, but even so the ballroom must have rivalled the largest from her world and there was sixty feet or more to cover to get to the passageway in the centre.

  Thirty feet from the undead mage, she ran out of places to hide.

  Debating whether to launch a rock to catch him off guard, or to try and sneak out in the open, the choice was made for her as one of the skeletal warriors came clanking out of the side room she’d just vacated, and turned its eyeless gaze right in her direction.

  For a second, neither did anything. Then they both exploded into action.

  Marie span back to the mage even as she was rising out of the rubble in a sprint, rock already being drawn back to throw at the mage’s head.

  Behind her, she could sense the skeleton charging out, but her attention had to be completely focussed on the mage.

  In the moment, where time seemed to slow, Marie felt her heart stop for a second as the mage’s skull whirled to regard her, and as she took her second step she saw the bones of its hand glowing cherry red.

  Without conscious thought, Marie altered the trajectory of her arm as it was in the middle of hurling her stone missile, aiming for that hand.

  Whether the mage reacted to it, or whether her throw was guided by fate itself, milliseconds later Marie saw the firebolt and stone collide in midair, the force of the magic exploding the stone and sending shards of molten rock cascading around her.

  They stang, as she sprinted through the falling globs of fire, but not as much as taking a firebolt to the face would have.

  She closed the distance before the mage had the chance to hurl another, and gritted her teeth and leaned in with her right shoulder as she sprinted.

  She wasn’t big, but she bet the skeletal mage had never had someone try to smash them in the face before, especially not with a -

  “[Mighty Leap]!”

  She threw herself the last few feet, clenching her jaw and half closing her eyes against the impact and the shattering of bone that was about to follow…

  …as she slammed into an object as unyielding as stone and twice as sharp, and careened off of it and onto the floor.

  She stared back up behind her, feeling like she could add a tearing in her arm to her litany of injuries, and saw the undead spellcaster turning, cracking the sheet of ice that had risen up to encase it.

  “Putain!”

  The mage’s hand was beginning to glow red again, and with her hand - that was struggling to respond - she went for her rope.

  “[Swift Blow]!”

  The rope licked out, but rather than the creature’s neck that she was aiming for, it wrapped round the upraised hand the mage was about to ignite her with.

  With a desperate pull, she yanked the spellcaster off its feet and sent it toppling into her.

  She shifted her hand up to protect her face and gave a primal shriek of pain as it met the mage’s fiery hand. She twisted the appendage away as it grasped for her head, and in the second it took the air became a furnace and her glove and her rope-whip both ignited.

  Her scream rose in pitch and fury as she wrenched the skeletal hand away and rolled, dropping the burning rope and tearing the glove from her hand, staring at the flesh blistering and blackening underneath, small chunks fused with the melting glove ripping away with it.

  Her voice cracked, and the scream turned to a harsh rasp before failing altogether as she rolled away from the mage, trying to give voice to her pain but unable, rising to her feet and kicking its head before it could get up itself.

  The blow didn’t destroy it, but it brought her a few more seconds to run - a few more seconds she took full advantage of as she realised they’d been in the passageway, and she sprinted out into the entrance hall.

  Run. Runrunrunrunrunrunrun.

  She couldn’t feel the pain in her hand any more. Or her shoulder. Or anywhere really.

  Like her vocal cords, the part of her brain that was trying to process the injury to her body simply shut off.

  It would have been a relief if the implication hadn’t been so terrifying.

  She was half way through the hallway when she saw the mass of dark wood out of the corner of her eye.

  There wasn’t even a question of whether she’d leave it behind.

  Not when she’d come this far.

  She bent mid-stride and picked the chest up by the handles. If there was something delicate inside… well… it would break or not. There was no way she’d know if she didn’t take it.

  The grimace of pain that had been on her face transformed into a manic grin, and her chest heaved as she sucked in air, laughing in silent hysterics at the same time.

  Schr?dinger's Cache.

  As she passed under the cracked archway of the ancient manor’s main entrance she saw to her despair that there was one final skeleton left in her way.

  One of the archers had strayed outside.

  It was only as she realised it was facing away from her, and saw it swipe down at the ground, that she realised it was being kept at bay by her one ally here, and a prayer sat on her lips for the undead hound.

  Her head swam.

  The dog-like creature darted in and bit at the bowman.

  Bowman? Bowskeleton?

  She stumbled towards them as fast as she could, picking up speed as she adjusted to the weight of the chest.

  Bone bow?

  The dog must have got its attention when she’d been fleeing into the mansion.

  You’re definitely a good boy.

  The skeletal hound managed to rip one of the bonebow’s femurs out of place. It skipped back with the thigh bone in its mouth and the rest of the bonebow’s lower leg scattered across the broken earth.

  It was hopping as it tried to beat the dog off with its bow stave.

  As she rushed over, it connected with a huge swing, and it was the dog’s turn to fall back, leg cracked and half of the ribs down one side of its body shattered into pieces.

  She snarled mid-run, letting loose a soundless howl of rage, and swung the chest one-handed at the bonebow’s head.

  The creature collapsed as its skull split and flew two dozen feet through the air to land in the churned and torn ground of the long-dead gardens.

  There was no time to stop, so as she recovered her balance from the swing, she wedged the chest under one arm, ignoring the pressure and the pain she couldn’t feel, scooped up the dog with the other, and ran for the gate.

  Pausing only to put the hound down, she squeezed through, heedless of any damage to herself or her clothes, and dragged the chest through behind her.

  As quickly as she could, she threw one arm - the one that didn’t have the tip of an arrow sticking out of the shoulder - through a strap of the backpack and hauled it onto her back.

  She staggered but kept herself upright.

  That left her with a chest and a spade.

  It was awkward to grab both, but in the midst of the exertion she felt the adrenaline pumping - not from a skill this time but from the stress and nerve-rattling fear of the moment. High on adrenaline and endorphins, she gathered the rest of her gear and rushed out into the city, away from the ancient mansion, her undead protector limping at her side.

  —

  She’d run until her natural surge of adrenaline had worn off. Then she’d forced her feet to move as fast as they could for another half an hour, her shoulders and arms and charred right hand screaming at her to stop, but the only moments she’d relented were when she’d had to duck into the shell of an abandoned house to avoid notice from one of the undead denizens of this place.

  She’d chosen a longer route, despite her injuries. Her [Precise Cartography] had left her with a mental map; she’d noted down areas with fewer skeletons massing and where the ruined buildings provided a little bit more cover than the rest, and she made use of it.

  She didn’t want to fight.

  She wanted to collapse.

  But she didn’t want to stop.

  Back to the townhouse; back to safety.

  That was the thought that was keeping her going, repeating over and over in her head, too risky to say aloud, even if her voice had been working.

  Minutes later that changed when she realised the distressed croaking she’d been hearing for the last few hundred yards - a sound that had made her slow and glance to nearby ruins in trepidation - was in fact coming from her overtaxed throat as she’d been unconsciously muttering her mantra. A new thought stepped in to replace it.

  You are going to pass out. You need to stop for a minute.

  As soon as she saw a semi-collapsed wall big enough to hide behind, she staggered into its shadow and fell to her knees, the pain of them hitting the rubble barely registering over her other injuries.

  With relief, she let the chest and spade clatter to the ground as she swung her rucksack round and tried to loosen the clips and drawstrings.

  It was awkward, with one hand burned so badly she could feel the blisters bursting as her fingers moved and the other twitching as the remnants of the arrow in her shoulder sent intermittent waves of pain down her arm. She was only thankful that she’d kept the first aid kit near the top.

  She took painkillers first - as many as she dared.

  Then she tried to deal with her hand.

  Looking at the charred lump of meat that had once been her right hand, she wanted to be sick.

  But there was no one else to deal with it.

  Her skeletal companion sat in front of her, watching, ignoring its own injuries; it seemed to be doing better than she was, despite its fractured leg and a section of its ribcage being missing.

  She unscrewed a canteen with her clumsy left hand and began to pour a slow stream of blessedly cool water over the burn, before realising it was running out too fast and soaking a cloth to drape over the area instead.

  The relief was euphoric, and the choking gasp that rose from her throat unleashed a wave of tension as she began to cry.

  She sat like that for a while, occasionally dribbling some more water on the cloth to keep it moist, until the water ran out.

  Then came the unpleasant part.

  Inspecting the hand through the one intact lens of her glasses made her want to hurl again, but she clamped down on the little she had in her stomach and forced herself to do it.

  It was bad. Especially in a line around the base of her fingers and along her thumb. That was where the skin had turned black. The parts that looked even worse were where bits of her skin had been ripped off when she’d removed the glove. The sight of the bright-pink inner parts of her hand exposed in the swathe of black sent another wave of nausea through her.

  It was really bad.

  All around the palm was red and blistered, as were the fingers themselves, though at least the back of her hand had escaped the worst of it.

  She sobbed.

  Il faut se contenter de peu.

  Working with her limited first aid knowledge, she picked out the few strands of fibre that remained from her gloves, then dabbed at the open wounds and burst blisters with the antiseptic wipes.

  It stung, but she’d started the process. She had to finish.

  There was a sachet that said it was for use on burns, though she didn’t recognise the name, and she silently thanked whoever had put the kit together for the dig and their foresight of what the team could have gone through under the Tunisian sun, even if there was no way they could have foreseen the treatments being used in this specific situation.

  Once she had done everything she could, she took a length of gauze and wrapped it as gently as she could around the hand and each individual finger.

  It didn’t look pretty when she’d finished; the bandage round her left arm was much neater, but then she’d been working with her dominant hand that time.

  She took a few moments to breathe, but now that the overwhelming pain from that injury had been partially soothed, there were others that reared their heads.

  She took stock of the rest of her wounds as she sat, recovering, and, one by one, began to deal with them too.

  The arrowhead she left for last, putting it off as she slowly cleaned the multitude of cuts and scrapes that her [Thick Skin] hadn’t been able to save her from. She shuddered to think what she’d have looked like if she hadn’t had the Skill.

  Eventually though, she couldn’t put it off any longer.

  At least, not after she’d taken a deep glug from her dwindling wine reserves to steady herself.

  She couldn’t use her right hand - not for this - not in the state it was in, so, slowly, awkwardly, she reached up with her left hand and tentatively touched what remained of the arrow shaft.

  A lightning bolt of pain ran up into her head and down her arm as arrow ground on bone, but she gritted her teeth and closed her eyes and kept on.

  There was a tightness to it.

  She prayed that it wasn’t barbed, and that it wasn’t sitting next to anything too vital as she grasped what was left of the shaft and pulled outwards, trying to draw it out on the same path it had gone in.

  Nothing happened, besides an explosion of pain behind her eyes that left her gasping.

  As soon as she was able to think again, she reached back up and, much more cautiously, tried wriggling it to loosen the head.

  It was as if she could feel it cutting into the meat of her shoulder, and she leaned to the side and retched, though nothing came up.

  She worked at the wound for long and painful minutes, with tiny movements as she tried to dislodge the arrowhead, until at long last she felt a looseness that hadn’t been there before.

  Relaxing her body as much as she could, she grasped the shaft one more time and yanked, clenching her teeth to stop the hoarse yell of agony that erupted from her throat.

  She slumped where she sat, and tried to remain conscious as the skeletal hound got up and came over to …what… sniff at the arrowhead she dropped to the floor?

  Her vision blurred as she felt a pressure building in the back of her head, and only the ruin of the wall behind her held her upright as she fainted.

  [Fighter Le-

  Marie woke, body cold and sweating.

  The undead dog had left the arrow and was walking to a gap in the wall, skull tilting to one side.

  What’s happeni…

  The thought died as a chill current ran through the air.

  Something was coming.

  Something was out there.

  Had the mage left the manor? Was it a spell?

  No. This was something else. Something more.

  The feeling was undeniable.

  A sliver of pure fear entered her body and worked its way to the base of her skull.

  Terror. Unspeakable terror. The kind that even nightmares would run screaming from.

  She couldn’t move. Even if she’d wanted to, her reaction to it was so visceral that it was as if someone else were in control of her body. Someone that knew that death was out there.

  Don’t move. Don’t breathe. If you do, it might sense you.

  If you do, it might get you.

  Her body locked in place, eyes staring ahead, fixating on a single piece of broken stone in the rubble.

  An echoing thud.

  Then another.

  And another.

  It moved, slowly, up a street.

  The presence grew.

  She didn’t even know if it was on the same street as her, only that she couldn’t let it know she was here.

  Lumbering footfalls, like those of a giant, and the faintest clattering of chains.

  Then they stopped, and she could feel something searching.

  Seeking.

  Marie wasn’t religious, but in that moment she started praying in desperation

  God. Allah. Buddah. Yahweh. Anyone, please.

  Nothing answered, but as she sat, tears leaking silently from the corners of her eyes, she heard a gentle, irregular clicking.

  In her terror it took her a moment to recognise what it was, and when she realised, her heart stopped in her chest.

  Her small canine companion was limping out into the street.

  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!