The Lord of Rot

Konrad suddenly felt a weakness in his body. 

It was not something he could endure after seeing what he did.

There was blood all around him, covering not only his body but also the ground far from him. 

The force was more like an implosion. The pieces of the rotting bison were spread all over the place. Even the horns had been split apart in several pieces. 

In the night he could not see the way the ground had been painted. But in the moonlight he could see how the thick liquid reflected. He could also see the shapes of the deformed pieces of flesh on the ground. 

Even though Konrad was relieved that the creature was gone, his shock from the death of the rotting bison made him vexed. He could not comprehend what had happened, which was different from the hare-like creature. A hare was a weak creature, and its neck had snapped from the strength of a human hand. But a bison? 

The pieces left from the bison, these bloodied remains of a rotting bison, soon began to behave differently than a regular corpse. 

Moving from the inside out, like a larvae, this rippling motion moving from the bottom to the top. Then these pieces of corpse would start moving, their fleshy state seeming alive. 

He held his hand towards them, as a pure reaction trying to stop them. 

He saw the blood on his hand slowly disappearing. It looked like the pool of blood was evaporating. But there was no steam, there was nothing similar to it. Rather, it seemed like the blood was sinking into his skin. 

The blood that covered his body and clothes to seemed to move inwards. But Konrad wasn't attentive enough to react to this. Instead he would see the pieces of corpse slowly moving towards him. 

He would look at them, almost indifferent due to the shock. 

The larger piece of flesh would contort around his leg, going around it like a snake. Eventually it would flow through the open areas, pushing inside the skin of his leg. 

He would give off the most disgusted and terrified look. The thing moving and behaving like a parasite. He would scratch at his leg, like that would remove it.

He pushed off the ground, still shaking from the idea that something was moving around inside his body. 

He would walk away from the site, keeping the affected leg straight, terrified that moving it would somehow quicken the parasite. 

He would limp, walking in the middle of the night in the wasteland. The small pieces of corpse and blood slowly gathering behind him, following in the same speed he walked. 

It seemed harmless, but Konrad did not see it as such. He was still scared of the moving flesh, how utterly incomprehensible it was! So he would continue walking. 

"Get away from me! Go away! Stop following me!" 

It would be futile, no matter how much he tried to walk. It wouldn't take long before he fell asleep from exhaustion. He came to a halt and turned around.

"Fine." 

Konrad lifted his hand, surrendering to the moving mass of living flesh. His hand was above the flesh. First he would feel shock and terror of it. Konrad imagined the flesh as a parasite. But he grew indifferent to it, it was futile after all. 

The flesh halted too. The whole mass was many times larger than Konrad himself. In this moment he believed he would die. Either that, or the mass would overtake him...

In a moments notice, the flesh around him was gone. A jolt of pain paired with an incredible amount of weight pushing down on him. His body would move on the insides, he would grit his teeth and bear it. 

It was gone now...

*** 

"Damn it!"

Konrad sat on the ground, feeling the harsh climate below him. He was trying to light a fire. 

He had gather two rocks nearby, and had some leaves nearby. It was surprising that he could find any sort of vegetation, but Konrad assumed he had gotten lucky. 

Smashing the two rocks together, both moving in opposite directions, he smelled a bit of smoke and believed that it could create fire. 

In the housings Konrad had not learned many things. In these moments he wished that he had listened more, but all the Church Lords would teach were the doctrines and dogmas of the Church of the Deity. 

He would shiver as he thought of the Church Lords. He had never believed in the Deity. The one who had cursed this earth. But he didn't know of any other answers. He had learned of the old age's animals from picture books, and even that was limited. 

The one thing which Konrad was taught above all else was to value the Deity, to worship it with flesh, and to contribute to the earth. But Konrad did not know what any of these things meant. He only knew that all people were collected in various facilities to worship the Deity, and those who didn't were cursed in the wastelands. 

Those who could not conform? They would be sent in the wastelands. 

Konrad believed the world to be completely barren and void of life, except the few accursed creatures. He believed the world was small, and each of the doctrines were the truth and the absolute truth. 

What else could he have believed? 

The Deity had protected them. Those who worshipped it in the facilities were spared, given the suppressants and taken care of. What little else could they have given not to disgrace the images of the Church Lords. 

Konrad was assured of the truth of this. But he also feared it. If it was entirely true, then there was not another facility on earth that would house him. 

The Lords were strong, and he was weak. He had to survive out in the wastelands, he had no other choice, did he? 

The doctrines wouldn't help him with surviving. What is a Lord in the wilderness? 

Konrad didn't feel any hunger. His stomach seemed to have calmed down. But the thirst slowly began to irritate him. He had drunk the last of the supply for some reason whilst trying to make a fire. 

The corpse of the bison which his body had been infused with could have been anything. What if his body was being killed? Could the bison have been infected with some disease? 

He shook his head, trying to forget about the parasitic rotting bison. 

'Why didn't the second bison attack too?' 

He didn't want to know the answer. In the worst case the other bison was locating a herd of terrible things. Then his death would be decided. 

"Damn it!"

He couldn't start a fire. In irritation he started to walk in some direction. He wanted to go to sleep desperately, hoping to find a cave to sleep in. Only some place which would cover him. 

If he weren't careful, he would fall asleep on the ground. His eyes started to close, feeling sleep just around the corner. A world of dreams, a bit more pleasant than this one. 

But just around the corner, Konrad could barely see it, but it was still there. A riot of eldritch horrors, each more unimaginable than the last. Tens, no, hundreds of terrible beasts. 

He no longer wanted to sleep. The terror drew his hand over his mouth, desperately trying not to alert them...