It was close to sundown, but the cicadas were still loud enough to drown out the sound of the traffic.

  The rattling thunder of a truck going past cut through the constant buzzing and clicking for a moment, and Wei raised an arm against the storm of dust sucked along in its wake.

  Xiaoling darted ahead, skipping out from his shadow with a grin and a bow of mock respect.

  He felt his eyebrows pull together then inspected his school jacket and sighed. That would need to be brushed down before his mother would let him enter the house.

  Of course, his sister was spotless. That was Xiaoling for you: silly but smart. He’d been wondering why she’d stopped to rejoin the group.

  Well, now he knew.

  Curses came from ahead as Jie and Zhi discovered they were similarly coated, and he smirked as the two tried to negotiate help with tonight’s homework from the two female classmates they were walking next to - in exchange for their noble sacrifice.

  Huiwen might have relented if Zhi hadn’t been so demanding, but Jie asking Meiyu was like the blind leading the blind.

  Maybe mother would let me visit the Li household so we could study together. If I said it was for the Gaokao…

  But his mother would say no.

  She didn’t approve.

  He was about to suggest a group study session in the Tianxin Shrine after dinner when he saw his younger sister had once again waited for the group to catch up. He sighed, and raised his arm to protect from the inevitable dust storm and closed his eyes…

  A wave of dizziness struck him.

  A faint sense of pressure.

  A chiming.

  A sound - a Voice?

  Chen Wei staggered forwards and opened his eyes.

  His arm hovered in place for a second, then it slowly fell to his side.

  Everything was quiet.

  No. Beyond quiet.

  Silent.

  There was nothing around - just a thick mist that had replaced the golden afternoon.

  He held a hand up in front of his face and moved it out into the fog until he couldn't see it any more. There was maybe a few feet of visibility.

  Then tentative voices began to call out and five shadowy blobs appeared, gradually resolving into the shapes of his friends and sister as they staggered towards the sound of each other’s voices in the fog.

  Li Jie took control.

  “Everyone stand close. Hold onto someone else. Circle up. Let’s not lose each other before we can find out what’s going on.”

  They started to form a circle, holding hands, facing outwards. Xiaoling just stood, eyes wide, staring into the mist with an expression of shock frozen on her face.

  Wei grabbed her and pulled her into the cluster, taking a position between her and Jie.

  “What happened?”

  He voiced the question, variations of it coming from the others, though the words were distorted in the strange, close air.

  There was barely any visibility beyond a few feet, just a wall of white-grey where the mist obscured their vision, but the floor beneath them wasn’t the pavement they’d been walking on, but more of a forest floor.

  Soft, thick earth, littered with pine needles.

  “I don’t like this.” Huiwen’s voice had a tremor in it, and that was what first began to tip Wei from confusion into fear.

  “Is this some sort of joke?” Zhi said, before raising his voice and calling out. “Hey! Feng? Li Ming? This your doing?”

  Wei winced as Zhi’s voice echoed strangely and he could feel the pull in the circle as Sun Meiyu rounded on him.

  “Shh! What are you doing you fool!”

  “What?”

  “We don’t know what’s out there.”

  Jie took control as Zhi began to scoff.

  “No, she’s right Zhi. Look around. This isn’t a prank. How could it be?”

  Zhi began to mumble something under his breath, and Wei caught hints of ‘nonsense’ and ‘other explanation’ before Huiwen hushed him again and spoke low and urgently.

  “There’s something out there. Can’t you hear it?”

  “No? Why don’t we just call out to them? H-”

  A ripple ran through the group again as someone let go for a second to punch Wang Zhihao though his grunt was more winded than pained.

  “-okay, so we just wait here until something happens then do we?”

  “No.” Jie took charge once more. “Let’s keep moving. Slowly; keep one eye on the ground. Make sure you aren’t about to step on something dangerous or fall down a hole or something. Keep hold of whoevers hand you’re holding.”

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  Whispered affirmations came from the other three classmates and Wei squeezed his sister’s hand before adding his own response.

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  The group started moving at Jie’s instructions before everyone’s arms were pulled taut and Zhi cursed.

  Meiyu’s voice carried an edge to it.

  “Maybe move in the same direction, Wang Zhi.”

  After a few moments, they all agreed to shuffle in Jie’s direction, Wei having to pull Xiaoling to get her to move. He bent over and whispered under his breath as they began to make their way through the fog.

  “Meimei. It’s ok. No need to worry. We’ll find our way out of here. We’ll be home eating lychee before you know it.”

  There was no reaction from her, and Wei frowned with concern.

  Before he could try anything else, there was a soft exclamation from Huiwen, swiftly followed by a familiar voice complaining.

  “What? What is it? I can’t see anything. Why do I have to be the one walking backwards?”

  “Be quiet Zhi.” Jie said. “It’s a tree.”

  “Well, go around it then.”

  “We are.”

  Zhi fell silent as the group shuffled on, but not for long.

  “操. This is ridiculous. Meiyu, Xiaoling and me should turn round at least.”

  Jie sighed, but relented and stopped the shuffle for a few moments whilst they reorganised, Wei having to turn Xiaoling and take her other hand when the girl didn’t move herself..

  “Zhi, you come up front with me and Wei. The girls can take the back.”

  There was more grumbling from Zhi, which suddenly cut off, then-

  “Woah. That’s a big tree.”

  Their walk resumed, faster now they were all facing the same direction.

  They continued in one direction as much as they could, without any markers, Zhi counting the number of steps as they circumvented the tree trunk on his side. He gave a low whistle.

  “It’s got to be, what, a hundred feet round. A hundred and twenty? This thing is massive!”

  Wei couldn’t see it, but he felt his eyebrows rising. That was bigger than the circle the six of them were forming…he did some quick mental maths…by a factor of ten. They’d have needed, what…half the class to go round it?

  Zhi’s maths skills weren’t the strongest, but it had been taking a while to get round it.

  But there weren’t any trees that big in China…were there?

  It was a minute before they came to the next tree, and this time they passed by it on Wei’s side, and he felt his heartbeat rising as he realised that, if anything, Zhi had been underestimating its size.

  The whole group was brought up short all of a sudden when someone stopped moving.

  This time Zhi didn’t get a chance to curse before Huiwen spoke.

  “There is someone out there. I can hear…something.”

  Each of the classmates paused and listened hard.

  It could have been his imagination, but Wei fancied he could hear a brief ringing, like a handful of nails being dropped onto a floor.

  “There’s…something alright.” Jie said, with none of his usual confidence. “It seems your ears are best Hui; what do you make of it?”

  A minute passed in complete silence, save for the faintest of intermittent ringing Wei could pick out, and a low buzz.

  “There’s definitely a voice.” Huiwen said, as if she was making an observation in a chemistry experiment. “High but loud. Female? There are other bits and pieces too. A metallic ringing. Some thuds. Could be…loggers maybe?”

  Wei felt Jie nodding through their connected hands.

  “Okay, well, that’s as good an option as any. We can’t keep wandering with nothing to guide us. I say we head in that direction.”

  “What direction?” Zhi asked, and Wei could hear the eyeroll. “I can’t see anything.”

  “Use your ears and not your mouth, idiot.”

  “I was. I can’t tell where it’s coming from, can you?”

  He was right, Wei realised. With all the fog, the sound seemed to be coming from multiple directions. The group stood for a minute in silence before Sun Meiyu spoke up, with a shiver on her lips.

  “I couldn’t h-hear it before. W-why don’t we keep heading the same way and s-s-see if it gets any louder.”

  Without any better options, the group moved on, Jei trying to angle towards the few louder sounds that occasionally came through the mist - dull thumps and thuds.

  They skirted a pile of rocks that emerged in their path. Wei swallowed and pulled his sister in closer behind him as he caught a glimpse of pale white amongst the grey… then they were past it and the group found themselves on a downward slope that only got steeper until Jei had to whisper for them to slow.

  If anything the fog was thicker here.

  As cautiously as they could, the six of them descended, Wei holding Xiaoling close.

  She still wasn't speaking. Or responding to his occasional hand squeezes.

  They descended like honey in winter, but after a minute the fog began to thin.

  Just as he could see the dark shape of the ground beginning to flatten ahead, there was a jerk in the circle of held hands and a sudden slackness as Xiaoling fell into the back of him.

  Cries of alarm came from the others as the whole group lost their footing and tumbled down the final incline, hands being wrenched apart. Wei tried to spin around to shield his sister from the impact but the momentum was too great.

  His arms came up to shield his head as his body bounced and rolled, thick pine needles and cold mud smashing up against his face every revolution, until he finally lay, head spinning, sprawled out on the forest floor.

  Sounds of disgust from Zhi and Huiwen told him they'd found the experience as unpleasant as he had, and he sat up to wipe the muck and detritus from his face.

  “What the hell Huiwen! I knew you were bad at sports; you could at least have kept your footing.”

  As the dirt began to clear from his eyes, Wei glanced around to see an undulating, mostly brown ground covered with yellowing fallen needles and intermittently broken up by stones. He cast round for Xiaoling, praying she hadn't hit something hard.

  “It wasn't me. It was Meiyu. Sh-”

  Huiwen’s scream rang out just as Wei found his sister, and he turned round to see what was happening.

  He froze.

  A dozen strides off, Huiwen was sat up, the left side of her body awash in red, staring at something that lay in a depression beside her.

  The two other boys lept to their feet, with Wei following a moment behind.

  Zhi was closest, and even as Wei rose the brash young man fell back and started scrambling away on his hands and feet.

  Jie went white, and a moment later Wei saw why.

  The body of Meiyu, once a pretty young woman who was better at art than arithmetic, was in two pieces.

  And her head was missing.

  She'd been ripped apart.

  He could see her organs spilled out over the forest floor, steaming in the chill of the air.

  Jie threw up.

  Huiwen was screaming.

  Zhi was still scrabbling backwards in shock, moaning denials over and over.

  Drifting through the air, the paralysed Wei heard a voice cut through the sudden chaos as Huiwen drew breath to scream again.

  “-ou hear that? Scre-”

  Jie finished puking and straightened from where he'd been doubled over. His eyes, normally so bright and full of life were dull as he turned to Wei with an expression of horror. He started stammering even as other voices drifted through the fog. His shout broke through the fog in Wei’s mind.

  “Wei. We need to run.”

  Wei looked round in a panic - where to? The other voices were drifting in from all around.

  “-e a trap. You kn-”

  Jie kept shouting.

  “We need to get everyone moving. Get your sister.”

  Nodding, Wei reached for his sister's arm and dragged her up, poised to run. Still the unseen conversation continued.

  “-f it's civilians. Or the ones w-”

  He turned back to urge the others on…

  “Now, Wei! We need to move! Zhi…”

  But Wei had stopped almost as soon as he started, blood draining from his face, and as Jie saw his reaction, he looked over and stopped.

  Huiwen went suddenly silent. The only sound that came through was from the other group in the mist.

  “-you waiting for Lio. Spread out a-”

  That, and the shape rising from behind Zhi in the fog.

  It was a dozen feet tall, with too many limbs and the wrong proportions for any creature Wei knew.

  As it stalked out of the white veil, all Wei could process was its head - rough as bark and pitted with weeping sores, almost like the face of a bear had been forcibly merged with a boar and had started to rot.

  “-es time Kira. Give m-”

  It reached down with infinite slowness, Zhi’s frantic scramble halting as he sensed his classmates' terror and looked up at the grotesque and malformed mouth opening above him.

  No sound came out as he opened his mouth to scream, but Jie cried out in terror as slowly, almost sensuously, the fanged maw closed over Zhi's head and shoulders and bit through the boy like he was tofu.

  Blood and viscera fountained up as everything from the young man’s upper torso and above was ripped away by the wrenching of the creature's head, bits of him sent flying as the creature devoured it.

  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!