The shadow of the glass serpent fell on Noah with ruinous force. Noah threw himself aside just before it hit.
BOOM!
The tarmac road exploded. All the buildings around them trembled a little, and a wave of dust washed over Noah as he ran.
He braced himself and jumped, soaring over the glass pane windows of an office building. He placed his hand against the cool glass to balance before kicking off the wall.
The glass exploded behind him; his jump carried him over to the next office building, his reflection flickering in the windows.
It was all black with no color. The section of the Liminal room, which Hadrian called Tezcatlipoca's domain, was all black and white.
It also had the irritating effect of taking away one of his abilities. Hadrian had taken away his most useful: his intangibility.
Without it, I can't use invisibility or possession. I need to get out of here.
Even the green world is better than this; Noah had no idea what Hadrian's powers were there, but they didn't hurt him. He turned back and the glass serpent was rising.
In this black and white world, it looked like a jagged line with spikes. It whipped its body towards him, the air screaming before it slammed into the office building.
Noah jumped just before it hit. All the windows exploded before him, peppering him with bits of glass that made him flinch.
A painful shock ran through his belly, pointing to Hadrian, who was standing on the street.
The suited man had gleamed his attempts to escape the northern quadrant. So Hadrian took out his dagger again and slashed red lines into the air.
These angry cuts on reality formed a symbol floating in front of Hadrian. The moment they were completed, they disappeared and five balls of light appeared in the air.
The white lights formed five floating eyes in the air, each beady, holding the only color in this black and white world: bright gold.
Noah was coming down from a jump; he was in no position to dodge right now, especially without intangibility to increase his speed.
But that wasn't enough for Hadrian. He pointed at Noah with a small smirk on his lips and said,
"Die."
The pain made every white light in the world flare in Noah's eyes. The edges of his vision blurred as the hot pain ripped through him. The simple word made him feel like he would actually die.
But he couldn't lose focus now.
Hadrian's use of the "Die" command canceled out the restriction on Noah's inability to use intangibility. His only guess through the maddening pain was that Hadrian could only use one at a time.
Noah screamed, fighting back the pain, before going intangible. He swung his body acrobatly through the air, kicking off a ledge on the building behind him to change his direction.
The five eyes Hadrian summoned each fired off a laser of golden light that seared through the building; their heat made the air hiss, and Noah flinched just from passing them.
The eyes turned, tracking Noah through the air. He grabbed a balcony and swung his body into the apartment, smashing through their patio window, before hitting solid ground.
He hit the ground running, though; even while intangible the eyes could track him. It wouldn't be a stretch to imagine they could follow him through walls.
The golden lasers tore through the walls with surgical precision, melting stone like it was nothing, and starting small fires in the apartment.
Noah slammed his shoulder through the apartment door, taking it off its hinges, and entering the hallway. He sprinted through the halls of the apartment, a blurry figure chased by lines of golden light.
There was a smashing sound below him that sent a shocking feeling through him.
The glass serpent is smashing through the floors. It'll bring the entire building down.
But his intangibility was back. Noah held his breath and sank through the floor to dodge the encroaching golden beams.
I have to kill Hadrian.
It was unfortunate but he no longer had a choice. At this rate the man would destroy him, and he had no way of using the ice powers he thought he had.
Hadrian said something about evolution. Do I need to evolve to unlock this ability? Like a game trigger.
What did he need to do? He sank through the floors of the building and into the earth, swallowed by the endless darkness where light couldn't reach.
The moment he was underground and had a moment to think, he inspected his wraith body with his mind.
He still had a large store of energy despite the amount of damage he had taken from Hadrian's "Die" command.
In fact, this energy felt closed off to him.
The evolution. But how do I activate it? When did I even get this? Was it from killing Isaac?
Killing the damned was part of his powers after all. Maybe battling and defeating powerful scumbags was the path to this evolution.
But how—
He heard whispers in his head, the same he always heard when he was hungry. The voices that told him to kill and take revenge.
Place your hand over your head, whisper the words…
The words that the voices whispered to him were incomprehensible. The mad ravings pierced his skull and forced him to release his held breath.
His intangibility ended, and his downward descent into the earth was reversed. He was so deep in the earth that he was shot out at extreme speed that he had never experienced.
The mad ravings in his mind condensed into three words just as he shot out of the ground.
Hadrian had been standing there, cursing himself for lifting the restrictions on Noah to use a command, when a black figure shot out of the ground with explosive force.
The impact of his expulsion from the earth was so great that a sonic boom ripped over the ground.
Hadrian was blasted off his feet; his glass serpent shattered and was blown away. The buildings around them caved in and fell.
Noah was only a hundred feet into the air, when his voice was forced from his mouth. He grabbed his black flaming head and said.
"Void ice evolution."