Short Little Stories

The drumming is coming faster now. It is on the edge of his hearing, tickling at the back of his mind, though he doesn’t yet know it for what it is. The thunder, the rhythm, the beat – a message that resounds through every piece of steel on the prison planet, a world turned into a jail meant to hold one man, one soul, one mind.

A mind that has been trapped within itself for a thousand times a thousand years. Bound by a race ancient when the universe was young, a race long since departed and forgotten. Their only legacy is an enemy as old as they – one sealed within the metal subterranea of an artificial world, a steel trap that imprisoned his mind in a perpetual loop. His thoughts have been running in an endless cycle since the dawning of the stars…

…and now comes the beating of the drums. A message sent through the dark of space. Song, noise, rhythm – a pattern of sound intended to break the loop and awaken the one trapped within. Sent deliberately, by an unknown benefactor, to unleash the first criminal known to sentient life. For reasons unknown, but surely malevolent.

The metal spires rattle, the steel wires shake and resound with the thunder of the sound. A mind stirs from its eternal dream. It takes note, for the first time in a very long time, of something other than itself. Figurative eyes are opened, and look out upon a universe that has grown old and dark…

And he awakens.

And it begins.