The Lord of Rot

The voice which approached him in the depths of darkness must have been a kind one. Konrad wouldn't react with any ill intent. Though, as expected, Konrad would feel overwhelmed after not hearing any voice other than the Church Lords his entire life. 

It spoke of grandness, something unknown to him. In another time, Konrad might have been seen as someone in poverty, never being shown the inner workings of the world. Living in fear within that ignorance. So when a voice called out to him, the only thing material in a void so large, he must have felt something odd. 

The voice had called him a Subject - as though he was an experiment. The voice had called him Rot - like he was breaking apart, piece by piece. The voice had called him chosen - like that feeling Konrad had inside his heart would suddenly burst. The voice named the Deity, their God in this world. But more than anything, Konrad shuddered hearing the words anomaly. 

Grafted together, pieces of skin hanging from his sides, how rotted a person can become! Would that be enough for someone to be called an anomaly? Because their skin didn't fit together...? 

That the whisper gave him a choice, that was outstanding. How come it didn't also made him choose in the moment. Either way the answer promised death. If it had not spoken of it, then it would have meant it. 

Konrad would drown in the waters once more. Seeing the vastness covering him. In the furthest distance he saw darkness, and in the furthest distance there he saw something else, something the darkness too seemed to shy away from... 

The whisper seemed to be different than whatever existed there, yet somehow they were inseparable. A voice must be followed by the mouth who speaks it. All he had to do was turn around, see what spoke those words.

"Return to me..." 

Those words seemed so familiar to him, so familiar that it bore through his head with an aching pain. This pain would be followed by a loud whistling noise. 

"Return to me...", It would say, again. 

Then again he saw the floating being, but he couldn't make out what it was. A mixture of broken being, broken concept and flawed machinery. 

Konrad would attempt to flee from the void in the same way he did before. But now that he realised that his drowning would be futile, he didn't know what to do. 

Swimming all he could, Konrad would be hit with one of the flying lights of the void. It would launch unto him, and suddenly light was all he could see. 

"Agh!"

Coughing violently, Konrad would awake from his slumber with incoherent thoughts. His body would be covered in waters, and somehow it seemed that he had gone for a swim... 

*** 

Once Konrad woke the rotting mass was out of sight. There had been a lot of it, and Konrad would wonder where it had gone before the realisation disgusted him.

No matter the amount of disgust, him frowning slightly at the matter of things, his body would seem fine and so he would be fine. 

Throughout his still short existence, Konrad had not seen many things. It was the monotony of the things around him which made the wastelands exciting. But this monotony was also the sole reason his life went by so fast. 

Konrad must have been older than fifteen by now. But he had not done even the simplest of all things. Most important of those things, Konrad had never seen himself in the mirror. And therefore he was duly unaware of his appearance. 

The only thing Konrad had known about his own body was the weight it supported, the drowsy and difficult way he would walk around, and the long scars running down his arms. This part of him had been pushed out of his conscious, he did not even know it existed nor that it was different from anyone else. 

After all, the Church Lords had the same scars all over their bodies. It must have been the usual, how people looked nowadays. Nothing could make him doubt this. But ever since being in that void the first time, the scar which ran along his arm would fade. It was not gone, Konrad believed it was a part of him, but slowly it would go. 

He would jump up from the ground, trying to shake off this weird feeling. But in doing so he would realise how light he now felt. Running around wouldn't be a problem for him, his constant awkward and robotic movements would no longer inhibit his movement. Konrad would smile a bit at this, he would jump from foot to foot, feeling this strange amount of strange surging through him. 

In the housings, Konrad had not exercised much. He had been told his body was far too frail for that. That he might be injured, and not able to walk if he did. But now that he was in the wastelands, that fact must have been a lie. Still, Konrad would smile when thinking of the housings, the way they had been fed and taken care of. As time went on, he would reminisce about the place. 

"If I went back, would they have accepted me again?" 

Konrad would think of the place, trying his best to remember everything. Now that he didn't seem as frail as before, could he have been useful to humanity? There was this feeling of monotony coming over him. All these strange hopes, wishes and desires. Not that any of them were true at the moment. Did Konrad really wish to go back there? 

Konrad would empty his stomach on the ground. A viscous acid would leave his body. His throat would burn and he would begin to cough. He had not eaten, so of course it would only be acid. 

Everything was leaving his body, even the little hope for the place he used to live. 

"Forward, I must go somewhere..." 

Then, very far in the distance, Konrad saw a mountain. It was jagged, it had a layer of snow at its heights and didn't seem to dangerous. It would be a long journey, but perhaps it should be...