He observed how his chest would expand and contract, the flavor of the devil dogs acrid flesh still faint on his tongue. Relief lovely and ephemeral, flickered in the wasteland of his heart He had made it, again. The gnawing emptiness that had driven him down into that primitive, mindless frenzy retreated in place of the leaden throb of an ache deeper than any physical injury Nothing had really changed the Void was still there the hunger would return, and the cycle an ouroboros of despair would simply tighten.
A low growl rumbled in his belly. This was not the insistent emptiness of human hunger. This was something else, something else entirely his body was rejecting the substance even that devil-hound was made of.
Mattias murmured, husky tone, half to himself and half to the crushing black, "It tastes like a rotting corpse… one that has been gone for a while, I have no idea how these things are still alive. How can they eat this?" he coughed, black spittle droping away from his lips, "the positives is at least I can breathe. At least it won't kill me immediately. I am most worried about the feeling in my heart."
He suddenly collapsed to his knees, clutching at his chest a burning and sharp pain went through his heart making feel his heart slowly get crushed .
A wave of painful heat built up in his body, then it was as cold as a knife. He realized, sickly that the flesh of the creature was not food it was poison. Corrosive one at that. His heart clenched, locked tight, and then convulsed again. He gagged, scraping his own ribs to try to pull the pain loose.
Between the pain and the watery nagging of his own vision as he fought to stay conscious, something vast blotted out what little light he had been able to see in this world. Above him hovered a grotesque mountain of meatfat, sagging, a hive of mouths, each gurgling, drooling, snapping wetly at the air. A huge horror Watching.
I wasted time, he thought as the pain rang intensely throughout his body, I should have hidden. Should have moved.
The monster did not wait. Its many tongues coiled up, coiled around him, and began dragging him to one of its gaping maws. Mattias beat against the inside of the bottomless pit with what strength he had left, but the poison had already disintegrated his strength inside. He felt himself begin to slide into darkness.
The Horror swallowed.
And in the split second that his body slid into the furnace of acid and bile Mattias thought, with the very last bit of himself: If I were stronger… I would be the one devouring it. If I were stro...
The thought broke cleanly. His heart compressed and then then burst
The intensity of his pain was indescribable . His chest cavity was filled, not with blood but with a thick black substance, searing through his veins like melted tar. Blood poured from his pores hissing and steaming as the Horror's stomach acid licked at him and begun dissolving his flesh.
Mattias should have passed out. Any man would have. Somehow, some cruel, relentless instinct kept him awake. His brain burned as it reconfigured itself, his bones crackling with fire like lightening inside his skull. His very cells ripped themselves apart and re-formed ad infinitum.
He screamed.
The sound was muffled in the Horror's belly, as it was drowned in boiling fluids. However, he screamed until his throat split. He screamed until his vocal cords split to threads in order to form back together.
His black blood streamed down his chin as his lip tour, and his screams morphed into guttural shriek even without the ability to make sound, he still screamed as his body simply refused to let him die. His skin melted and sloughed off in ragged sheets of flesh and then re-grew but not in the same tortured space. His bones cracked again snapped twisted and yet, they still reformed denser ,stronger. His very nerves 'rewired' themselves and pushed to the forefront the budding hot coals of pain and anguish of every second he was maligned.
Mattias pounded against the end of the warm, fleshy walls of the Horror's stomach, his nails eroding off his fingertips. And still they grew back, jagged and sharp only to rip off again as he clawed He bit into the stomach wall desperate gnashing with his mouth filling with burning acid and melting his flesh. He coughed and vomited but bit again like a rabid anime.
The Horror rumbled. For the first time, something had not dissolved in it. It growled, confused, and the belly twisted violently around him trying to crush him like pulp.
Mattias clawed, bit, screamed, bled. Over and over. A cycle within the cycle.
Let me die. Let me die! he thought, but the black liquid in his chest filled even more refusing him the right of death.
Hallucinations flickered in front of his eyes, faces he can't recognise, voices he doesn't remember, broken shards of memories of a life not his anymore and a name? One He finds familiar He reached for them but they dissolved into static, taunting him.
He started to laugh , a ragged and choking laugh. Tears black as tar, streamed down his face, mixing with bile.
"This is my eternity. Not death. Not life. Just this." He cried
Outside, the Horror shuddered Its bloated form staggered. Other Horrors, those with crawling limbs, those that whispered, stopped, sensing something was wrong. They stopped to watch as the colossal, many-mouthed beast clawed at its own gut and roared.
Inside, Mattias was still climbing, clawing at walls slick with acid. His hands blistered, healed, and blistered again
His muscles screamed, his skin bubbled peeled, and re-grew. He cursed, wept and begged. His voice cracked then shot into a howl that shook the chamber.
"I don't want to die, I want to live. I don't want this"
The Horror jerked again. Mattias slipped and fell back into the searing lake of acid. His flesh dissolved from the bone bones glimmering behind his flesh then formed back. His brain shattered, and reformed, shattered again and again.
And then, he felt it. The black liquid coursing through him beat again, stronger than before. It filled his veins, replacing his blood entirely. His body jerked, spasmed. His vision turned red.
He rose.
For the first time, the Horror inside the Horror did not crawl. It stood .
His hands had turned to a jet black he began clawing tearing through the horrors belly giving a menacle laugh. He laughed and laughed and tore the huge beast from the inside out. He then emerged as the horror fell tearing it's own stomach open and killing itself. The other horrors which were watching rushed and began devouring it. Mattias or whatever he had become did as well biting it and eating it