Onetwothreefour, onetwothreefour, onetwothreefour...
The continuous loop of the drums, never ending. Forever. That's how long he would be left with it. Even when his mind was alive, bright with brilliant ideas that only he could think of... even then, in the back of his mind...
Onetwothreefour, onetwothreefour, onetwothreefour.
There was never a silent moment. Never. For everyone else, maybe... but for him, he would never know silence again.
8 years old, looking into the Vortex. He saw things no other being would ever see, and it gave him the drums, the drums that made him mad.
The moment before the vortex. That one tiny, miniscule second before he opened his eyes and stared into the depths... the last moment of silence. The last moment of any amount of sanity.
Pounding. Drumming. Beating. So many words for such a simple thing. The drumbeat, the Master of the Master.
He could kill and wound the human race, he could imprison countless people, and he could even turn his greatest enemy into a withering old man. So many great things, yet he couldn't get be rid of the source. The source of his insanity.
Because that's all it is, in the end. The thing that made him insane. Would he be different, if it weren't for the drums? But how could he even imagine how things could have been without them... he didn't know life without them.
Can you hear them? Can you hear them... they are coming. The sound of the drums. A signal in my head. Can you hear them?