Chapter 96: You Don’t Get a Third (2/2)

“I hope you let me keep doing so,” Jason said. “I’d prefer that to having it based on what I do to you.”

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 clearly not good, most of the shards being 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 as 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 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 started looking 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.”

As they watched the shadows, they neglected to realise that not every patch of darkness in the tall arcade was at ground level. None of them saw Jason floating down until Jason let his weight return, using the weight of the fall to plunge his dagger through the startled man’s eye. Their leader slid off Jason’s blade and dropped to the ground, dead. The others stared at the shadowy figure standing in front of them like deer in headlights. Even though he was right in front of them, out in the open, none of them made a move.

Jason looked down at the man whose head had been stomped on by the now-dead leader. He was in a very bad way, but still alive. Jason walked closer to the group, who flinched at his approach. Jason took a potion from his belt and held it out.

“Heal this one and go,” he told them, gesturing to the hurt man on the ground. The thugs looked at the potion like it was a venomous snake, but finally one of them reached out to take it. As if that movement was a starter’s pistol, the others all ran. The one who took the potion knelt down to feed it to his fallen companion. It didn’t bring about a full recovery, but with his friend’s help, he got to his feet. The thug who had taken the potion from Jason gave him a look of wariness and confusion.

“Thank you,” he said. “For the potion.”

“You won’t thank me if we meet like this again.”

The pair hurried off, one supporting the other. Soon after, Dean cautiously approached with the recording crystal still over his head. Jerrick was walking behind him.

“Give me that,” Jason said and Dean nervously took down the recording crystal and handed it over. Four of the five dead men on the ground had been beside Dean himself when they first confronted Jason. If Thadwick hadn’t needed Dean for his summoning power, and if Jason hadn’t needed Dean to use against Thadwick, then Dean himself could have easily been one of those bodies.

Jason looked at Jerrick, who was also staring down at the bodies.

“You’ve had your two chances,” Jason told him. “If you and I run into each other again, after all this is done, I hope you’ll be smart enough to run.”

“Are these all adventurers?” Jason asked.

“What?” Dean asked, looking up from the corpses, distracted. “Oh, uh, yes. Those who couldn’t pass the assessment themselves, Thadwick had slipped through. That was a while ago, though. It’s harder since the new director came in.”

Jason started shuffling through the pockets of the fallen, eventually digging out their Adventure Society badges.

“I’m a little surprised they carried them,” Jason said. “It’s not like they do any adventuring.”

“We all carry them,” Dean said. “It gives you some weight to throw around.”

Standing up, Jason looked around the arcade.

“What’s the local civic authority here?” he asked.

“The what?” Dean asked.

“Who’s in charge here,” Jason said. “Who do we tell about the killings?”

“This is Dorgan’s territory,” Dean said.

“Dorgan? He’s one of those three crime lords, right?”

“The Big Three,” Dean said. “They run Old City because people from the Island don’t care so long as the money keeps coming.”

“What about some kind of local government authority?” Jason asked.

“There’s the Duke’s guard,” Dean said, “but they only come over if there’s some kind of threat to Island interests. The Big Three makes sure there isn’t.”

“Five dead adventurers is a long way from nothing, though,” Jason said. “The Adventure Society will be looking into it.”

“So what do we do now?” Dean asked.

“Stick to the plan,” Jason said. “Get you to your family and I get things settled. This is just one more thing to settle.”