Gore Knight Gerhart

It was as if the sun started speaking.

Man, demon, and every creature in between looked up to the sky in search of the voice. It spoke in a tongue unknown to the world, but it was clear for all who listened.

They felt the voice singing in their minds. Echoing within their bones. Vibrating in their teeth. The voice descended upon them not as a sound.

But as knowledge.

The very fabric of the world unspooled. Space and time were brought down to their knees. The laws of reality were not broken. They were simply amended. Repurposed to suit the unfathomable desires of a being beyond existence.

The One Who Stares Behind the Window.

But the being itself had no interest in the world or its denizens. All it did was lower its finger. A mechanical click that spoke in ones and zeroes. And with this simple gesture, the world accepted its fate.

In only a matter of seconds, reality returned to its original form, no longer a collage of broken, misshapen pieces. Time and space crept back to their positions, upholding the basic precepts of their laws once more. It was as if the universe started to breathe again, a sigh of relief after holding its breath for an eternity. But even as everything returned to normal, there was a difference. One felt by all living creatures.

The world chose to euthanize itself. Willingly. Contently.

This was part of the knowledge that was unveiled to its inhabitants; the tacit understanding that all of existence would cease in one year. Most saw it as the apocalypse, a final ploy of the Demon Lord even in his death. Others interpreted The Deletion, as it was known, in a different light, trying to make sense of the phenomenon in a way that did not hurt the soft, feeble brains tucked safely within their skulls. Some even chose to reject the inevitable.

But the undeniable truth of the matter was that the denizens of the world had been corrupted by this knowledge, some more than others. Insects, animals, the lower life forms were least affected.

But those who opened their minds to the complete truth were no longer the same. Those who attempted to look through the Window and perceive the nature of the one behind it were crushed by the weight of their knowledge. Logic and reason would be replaced by an incurable madness. Men reduced to their primal, beastly states of being. Fathers turned on their family. Neighbors turned on each other. Kingdoms brought to the brink of ruin. Civilization teetered on the tip of collapse by the uncivilized.

Knowing humanity was on its last legs, a lone knight wandered off into the fringes of the known lands. Into the icy wastes of the demon realm. Wandering for an inordinate length of time.

That was where Gerhart found himself. Alone. A grey, broken figure in a field of white. Snow stretched as far as the narrow slits of his helm could see. He dragged his cumbersome steel body across the pale expanse, limping with each heavy step that sunk into the earth beneath his heel.

Slow. Languid. Every step he took was heavier than the last. Yet, even as a trail of his blood followed him like his shadow, he did not stop. Rather, he welcomed it. So when the wound in his thigh started to close once more, he repeated his ritual.

Gerhart knelt, unsheathed the misericorde hanging beside his sword, and jammed the blade into his flesh. As he pulled the dagger out between the gap of his armor, warm red fluid flowed out, free from the iron prison that wrapped around his skin. Then, relief.

It took some time for the pain to register, his receptors numbed and used to the sensation. But when it hit, he felt his mind sharpen. He felt the weight lifted off his extremities once more. He could feel the cold air brushing against his armor as if it were touching his skin. The howl of the wind grew clearer. It told him where he was.

And he was exactly where he wanted to be.

The knight flicked the blood off his dagger, wiping the rest off with his tattered, discolored cloak before returning it to its place. In exchange, he glided his metal fingers over to the hilt of his sword. But he did not draw his weapon. He waited.

Gerhart closed his eyes. And yet, even as the field of white was replaced by a sea of black, he had a clearer picture of his surroundings. He felt the gaze of a pair of eyes watching him from the distance. Then, several more joined in, locked in on him. Bloodlust. Desperation. Hunger. Underneath the frigid, bloodcaked steel of his armor, he knew exactly what was looking at him.

And he waited.

His once-towering figure, bent and beaten, was like a statue unable to bear its weight any further. As he remained motionless, his blood continued to ooze like wine spilled from a table, its heat hot enough to leave a misty vapor that rose like billowing smoke amid the freezing cold. He felt the pairs of eyes surrounding him. Getting closer.

But still, he waited.

He could perceive their shapes. Their sizes. The pace at which their hearts beat as he slowed his own. So when one of them started pounding, charging at him with inhuman speed, his muscles tightened.

In a single moment, the dead man rose back to life, slicing the spine of the lunging wolf as he reappeared behind it, as if he had phased out of existence only to return with victory in hand.

The other wolves were stunned, seeing one of their brethren fall helplessly into the snow. The pack had been tracking this injured prey, drawn to the scent of his weakness and mortality. They could not comprehend the man wounding himself on purpose, using his own body as bait. And for their lack of foresight, they were blindsided.

They never saw Gerhart’s hand leave his scabbard.

But before the rest of the pack could react, the knight removed his helm, got down on all fours, and started devouring the fallen wolf, still twitching from its sudden paralysis. His teeth tore away at the animal’s pelt, diving straight into its liver, the most nutritious meal amid the meat.

Gerhart feasted on the still-living wolf in front of its pack, claiming his prize like an apex predator, undeterred and unphased. Like a lion unbothered by ants, the man continued to rip chunks of flesh and meat with his mouth, swallowing the internal organs like a ravenous beast.

Because in less than a minute, as the last bits of the wolf’s life were finally snuffed out, it vanished. Where the corpse was supposed to be was now a void. A dark, empty space that glitched in and out of reality.

It was the curse of corruption. The curse of knowledge inflicted upon all beings capable of thought. In place of death, there was only defragmentation.

Gerhart wiped the grume and the drool dripping from his mouth with his cloak as the rest of the pack scattered, spooked by the unnatural cavity that had manifested into the material plane. The knight took his helm and donned it once more, satisfied that he sustained himself for another day.

For in this desolate tundra where vegetation hardly grew, the only way to survive was to consume your prey before it defragmented.

Gerhart got up, stepping away from the wolf-sized void in front of him, and ventured forth into the tundra anew. Just as his body’s natural healing attempted to mend the gash in his thigh once more, he repeated his ritual, hoping to lure his next meal with a trail of crimson that cascaded from the folds of his armor.

But food and drink were of minor concern for the knight. If he so desired, he could easily indulge himself back home—eating, carousing, losing himself to worldly pleasures like the rest of the nobles in the kingdom, hellbent on hedonism as a way to preserve their sanity and prolong the effects of the corruption. But even before The Deletion, he was already accustomed to sustaining his fractured mind with a single goal. His reason for wandering into the hinterlands, this purgatory of eternal winter.

He roamed this hellscape in search of any demon still hiding in the furthest reaches of the known world. To seek out the last vestiges of the enemy of mankind. To kill every last one of them.

For that very reason, Gerhart continued to shamble across the plains of snow that stretched into the horizon, his threadbare cloak fluttering in the blizzard like a forgotten, moth-eaten flag. Even as the temperatures danced around the freezing point and the sleet battered his cage of metal, he was warm. But not warm enough.

Even as his rage, his burning desire for vengeance kept his body going, he would not rest until the warmth from the last drop of demon blood covered skin and painted his armor black.

This was his reason for being. Of the one they call Gore Knight Gerhart.