Author's Preface
Just as Yuna finished her warning, the Dreameater's wisping arm grew out of its festering body, contorting and bubbling as it swept the town floor.
Naren barely jumping over, while Cairo jumped backwards, Yuna holding onto him as they both narrowly missed being grazed.
The arm clawed through the ground, which peeled off like warm butter. A dark void peering out from underneath.
Cairo slid through the stone pavement, Yuna close by. She tore open his black tunic.
"Shorty, the hell're-"
"Quiet. Your stomach's going to spill out with all this movement."
Yuna pulled out a roll of gauze, wrapping it tight around Cairo's cauterized wound. It was a makeshift remedy, barely providing any support for the real problem inside his organs. But even that slightest benefit was necessary now.
Yuna pat his chest, pulling her cloak closer around her body.
"Alright, now do your worst Stain."
Cairo clicked his tongue, taking help from Yuna. But regardless, he flipped his gaze to the Dreameater.
Naren was flipping through glass shards as the hundreds of festering eyes locked onto him at every angle. His bare feet were scratched up while his lungs filled with dust and debris thrown up into the air.
"Yo! COUGH Where'd all my friends go!"
A shuriken cut through the pillars of raging embers, the metal blade twirling through the air, wrapping around the beast multiple times before finally etching itself into the flesh of the beast.
If it could even be called flesh. The festering body acted more like a sludge of slime than something like flesh.
With a click, Naren jumped back, watching an invisible line light on fire, traveling the same path as the shuriken.
The beast's body contorted as hands materialized smothering out the flames as it climbed its bodies.
Cairo jumped out of the dust, his body midair drawing in a large breath.
In the next second, a maelstrom of lit dust blew out of Cairo's mouth. An inferno spinning through the air as a giant ball of fire grew out of his lungs and engulfed the beast.
Naren watched in awe as Cairo beat his chest midair, heaving while the eerie grin never escaped his face.
But without skipping a beat the beast wound its arms, ready to crash into the airborne Cairo, completely ignoring its burning body.
Naren's golden eyes caught the glimmer of Cairo's broken blade steady in his hands, his scratched up bare feet appeared there a moment later.
Naren kicked downwards, pushing Cairo out of the way whilst also propelling himself over the swiping hand. He spun over twice mid-air, preserving his momentum as he threw a shard of glass into the air.
But he didn't teleport. Instead he let himself be done in by gravity, his body continuing to spin as it fell. Each rotation adding weight, adding angst, until he became a blur. Until the last moment when he finally switched with his reflection.
Just as when he first fell into this inverted world, Naren realized something about his reflections. They all preserved momentum.
Appearing from thin air, his momentum trekked as his leg exploded outwards, his heel leading the charge as all the momentum drilled itself into the head of the beast like whip snapping after being tightened for far too long.
His heel sank deep into what must've been the skull of the beast, if it even had one. The force rippling through its effervescent surface as arms grew out, trying to grab Naren.
But he was already gone, his body reappearing atop a smashed window, rolling out to absorb the rest of his momentum.
Though his face quickly changed as he watched the abomination fold over itself, completely smothering the flames and essentially remedying the massive dent Naren placed in its dome.
Naren stood dumbfounded, pointing at it.
"Is it allowed to do that?!"
Cairo paid no mind to Naren's comment as he had just gotten up from being kicked down. Instead his right hand gripped over his broken katana, the blade shaking in his hands as flames traveled from his arms to the tip of the blade. As if it was sucking it up.
He took a step forward, digging his feet into the stone ground, the heat from his body imprinting his print onto it.
The stone squares around him began chipping off, an endless void being left behind as it slowly crawled to Cairo.
At the same time beast lunged forward, a bubbling arm reaching out first as it howled.
But Cairo didn't retreat. Instead, he wrapped his left hand around the katana as well, rotating his hips.
Leaning in, in one fluid motion with no hiccups, the broken blade caught a firelight, zipping through the air.
Naren held his ears shut, stepping back to Yuna hunkering down behind the ravaged remains of a house. But before he could speak Yuna had done so already.
"It's fine. That weapon he has, its pretty well-known...A king's favorite weapon."
The Dreameater had entered Cairo's range, its arm now sizeable to a house on its own, ready to swallow up the one-eyed man whole. But at the same time, Cairo slashed diagonally upwards, flames wisping in its afterimage.
"Skin 'em Pride...nah...Excalibur!"