Friction ran the assassin's neck raw, Gum had lashed a rope around his unknown assailant's jugular and was tensing his wiry arms to drag the man towards a guardrail. The pair were deep beneath the ground; the attempted hit against Gum had occurred on the deserted platform of the poorly ventilated Radasanth City Central subway station. Oil lamp shadows and the haunting echo of the subterranean setting gave the encounter a sharp magnificence. Opposed to the lithe shaman, the would be assassin was thick and hairy. Quickly depriving the muscle man of his oxygen source proved the only way for the Xangu native to withstand the mismatch. With one hand still tugging on the noose, Gum slashed at the man's ankles with his primitive axe. The man stumbled and fell, over the rail he went. Gum tugged back on the rope. The rope went taut. Choking, dangling and gargling, the assassin's feet spasmed while his eyes bulged.

Click, clack, click, clack.

That cutting rhythm was the ominous approach of an iron-booted official. “I must leave,” Gum mouthed to himself before hopping over the guardrail to descend to the railway tracks below. The good fortune of having a fresh corpse to break his fall was not lost on the Xangu shaman, it was a cushioned landing. More than that, it softened the sound.

Out of line of sight of the law enforcement representative, Gum was able to take a moment to pillage the assassin's pockets. Nothing but a crumpled piece of a paper came out of them. It was a list. It had names, locations and times of day. They were difficult to read in the dim light, but the second to last name, location and time on the list was “Fordstein's Agent - City Central Subway - midnight.” It was then that the shaman began to understand he was a new player in a terrible game. “I understand now,” he thought to himself at the sight of the kill list. Senator Fordstein had disappeared from the shaman's life and in the politician's place came one face after another. Every anonymous intermediary handed over a crumpled paper with esoteric instructions. Those notes were just like the dead man's crumpled piece of paper. The other side were taking a shot at him.

But wait, there was one last item on the list; the address was labeled, "Castigar safe house" and had a black and red X marked next to it.

“I will leave this place.”

He challenged the hungry gape of the broad tunnel, its intimidating blackness was of no consequence to the desperate traveller. Gum's midnight shadow trailed the rails as he left the yolky light of the station platform behind. Owing to the tight cord around the nape, Gum decided to drag the deceased along with him. It would be highly beneficial for his continued survival to investigate the man who had tried to kill him. With scarce illumination, the grimy coal deposits on the subway's broad arched bricks were lost on him. Squeaking scurries cleared the way, the rats were afraid of him and he not of them. The train tracks took him nowhere else, only forward. No thunderous steam engines were on schedule at that hour, but the wise old shaman kept left regardless.

Beneath the checkered veneered of the Radasanthian Revolution brewed the gritty brutality of a secret street war. Those in the know had already given it a name, the Assassin War.