Achilles had the consciousness of this body flicker in and out, cognizance slipping through his grasp like water through fingers.
By the time he came to, even his sense of time was distorted. Hours could have passed, or days, or weeks. When he opened his eyes and expanded his existence, he found himself standing at the center of a region pulsing with morbid life and corruption.
He was inside something living.
The surroundings stretched around him like the interior of a vast organism, biological despite being constructed from crystalline growth. Countless thin veins and arteries connected to his body, shining weird purple and obsidian-white, all flowing toward his form as if he were a heart pumping corruption through a circulatory system he never asked to join. They pulsed with organic rhythm, carrying something through channels that spread into darkness beyond his perception.
