Noah stepped back as the supernatural hunter approached him casually. With a flick of his wrist, Hadrian made a knife appear in his hand.
There were cars on the road, nobody was on the street with them now, but Noah could see lights in the apartment building across the road.
"You wanna do this here?" Noah asked, voice steeled. "Let's talk about what happened in the forest."
Hadrian paused, raising an eyebrow. "That was you?"
The gears in Noah's mind kicked into motion; they didn't have a way to track him. He shook his head calmly.
"No, but I know why he's going after the mob. And I can provide you with information. As you can see, I'm fully in control of myself. I actually… I'm part human."
Hadrian's gaze was unreadable under his sunglasses. His posture and the suit made their confrontation look a bit silly.
"That's nice, but I don't work with Phantasms. No matter what kumbaya shit management spouts in the seminars. I haven't had a good opponent in a while, so—entertain me."
With finality in his voice, Hadrian reached up and stabbed the air with his dagger. Then his hand blurred in rapid strokes as he drew red lines in the air. Before Noah's mind was even done grasping the shape, Hadrian had drawn a complex diagram in stylistic red lines that hovered in the air.
Something pulsed through the air once the diagram was completed. Noah's belly was filled with that familiar shocking sensation. But this pointed him in four directions.
In four different points in space, Hadrian had drawn four complex, different symbols. With the completion of the fourth, a strange phenomenon rippled through reality.
The world's colors changed, from dark blue and heavy shadows to lime green and black.
It was like he was suddenly inside the cutscene of a game. All the people on the street disappeared, the cars swerved out of control and crashed into buildings.
An eerie silence enveloped this green world, and Noah's sense of danger was raising a storm.
"What the hell?" he murmured.
He took one look at Hadrian's smile then became intangible, sinking into the ground. He let himself fall through the the earth for at least ten seconds before becoming tangible.
He angled his body to the side just before the earth spat him back up. Once he was back above ground, his figure shot into the sky. The harsh winds at this speed were immense, so he became intangible once again.
The wind flowed through him, killing all resistance and exponentially increasing his speed. He glanced down at Hadrian, whose form was shrinking into the distance.
There was a smile on the hunter's face.
He turned back to the green-tinted sky, cursing his luck.
"Well, it looks like those guys can't be reasoned with, I have—"
He hit a spot on the horizon and suddenly everything turned black. His eyes widened; something just happened.
Then the darkness disappeared in a flash and he returned to the green world.
But now he wasn't flying into the sky—he was shooting towards the ground like a falling star.
Why am I going backwards?!
His intangible body retained so much speed that he shot back into the earth in seconds. Before he could go too deep, he returned to a solid state.
His body shot out of the ground with less force than it entered, but still a lot. He slammed into a building, shattering all the glass and filling the wall with a network of cracks.
He coughed for a moment as dust rolled over him. Rocks were falling from the man-shaped hole he put into the wall.
"What just happened?" He muttered.
"It's called a Liminal Room," Hadrian's voice called out from the street below. He casually walked toward Noah with a grin on his face. "You can't leave, it'll just turn you around."
"It is the most foundational Dark Art. You can't become a Keeper without learning this one. Many skilled fighters are rejected every day because they can't do this. They have to pair up with competent Keepers to find work."
Noah groaned, pulling himself out of the wall and jumping down from the five-story building. His body flickered in the green streetlights before landing softly on the ground.
"Can we talk?" he asked once again, suppressing his anger.
Hadrian completely ignored him, Oxford shoes clicking over the tarmac as he walked toward Noah with his hands in his pockets.
"The Liminal Space allows us to work in the normal world without interfering with the mundanes. Any damage done in here is forgotten the moment the world returns to normal. Like a dream."
"Mundanes?" Noah murmured, pacing around the man as he drew closer.
"Well, normal people, if that offends you," Hadrian waved off. "I don't care what you were before you became a demon."
Noah was starting to understand; the guy didn't care about rules. Maybe he was an outlier, but he guessed that demon hunters were meant to do some investigation before fighting a Phantasm.
"You were just around the corner while I spooked those kids," Noah concluded, trying to bait him into an answer.
"Yeah, standard patrol since your other friend is on the loose," Hadrian sighed. He tapped his sunglasses. "When you use your abilities you release some energy that I can follow with these."
This was the worst situation. If he got a more reasonable Keeper, maybe things would have been different. But the way Hadrian was talking, he wasn't leaving here without somebody dying.
"I don't suppose you'll tell me how to leave this place," he joked partially.
But Hadrian found it amusing; a bright smile lit up his handsome face.
"You don't want to kill me, roach? What happened to you Phantasms? The easiest way to leave the Liminal Room is to kill the caster or break the boundary of the room."
That was rather nice of him. The boundary—Noah must have reached it in the sky; that was why it turned him around. There should be another boundary on the ground, at the edge of the room.
"But don't think I'm helping you," Hadrian mused. Hadrian's dagger rose into the air again, drawing a new diagram before Noah could even react.
A horrifying screech filled the world, like something dying.
The sounds of glass cracking tortured Noah's ears, making him clap his head. Something appeared above Hadrian.
Its body was thin, spiny, and black. It was an unholy combination of a snake, porcupine, and darkness.
Its long body whipped through the air like a black whip. Then hundreds of eyes opened all over the length of its body, each one red and murderous.
Hadrian smiled. "Only way out of here is if you kill me—or I kill you."