The leader grinned and stomped the ground with his foot. Stone erupted from the ground, flying at Jason in shards. His ability to aim the power was weak; most of the shards were intercepted by one of the fruit carts in between them. Gobbets of pulped fruit flew as the stone tore into the cart. Jason was unconcerned by the attack, having already dropped into a shadow on the ground.

“Where did he go?” the leader yelled, looking around.

Blood from a slashed artery sprayed over them. They looked behind and realised one of their number had already fallen. His body dropped to the ground, falling at the hands of a shadowy figure in their midst.

Spattered with the blood of their companion, the thugs were startled into a brief, but critical moment of inaction. Jason’s wicked-looking red and black dagger didn’t stop as he moved like a ghost, finding the back of a neck, a throat and then burying itself in the side of a head before Jason vanished into the shadow of a dropping corpse. None of the spooked, bottom-feeder adventurers reacted effectively in the few startled moments it took Jason to appear, kill and vanish. In the aftermath, some of them realised the dead were Dink and the others Jason had pointed out.

“Last chance,” Jason's voice came from the darkness.

“Leave now,” his voice came again, from the opposite direction.

The group looked at each other nervously and the leader slapped one of them across the head.

“Don’t let him get to you. It’s just games because he’s scared to fight us straight-up!”

His own voice didn’t sound completely convinced, and the others looked at the dead bodies at their feet.

“No way,” one of them said and started running.

There was a rip of cloth as a huge rat tail emerged from the leader's back. To Jason, watching from the shadows, it looked like the prehensile tail of the rat gorger he had fought. It wrapped around the fleeing man's ankle, tripping him over and dragging him back to the group where the leader savagely stomped on his head.

“NOBODY RUNS,” the leader announced fiercely. “Everyone keep an eye out. He can’t pick us off if we see him coming.”

They all looked around them, peering into every shadow.

“Don't forget the shadows at your feet,” the leader said. “Catch him quick and you can drop him while he's disoriented from appearing.”