There is a thing that sleeps in the heart of London.
It has been there since before there was a London, long before the squabbling humans came with their huts and dirt paths in the muck and mire. It watched them build and destroy, live and die, prosper and perish as the land was consumed by their sprawl. They spread like a virus, creeping out over the marshes and the plains, blissfully ignorant of just why it was that they were drawn to this cesspool of humanity like moths to the pitiful candle flames they huddled around in the darkness. Because it wasn’t just the trade routes, nor what they called culture, nor any other pleasant excuse they gave for why generations flocked to the villages that became towns that merged into a city. The thing knew why. It had been waiting for them.
And now there is not just a city but a metropolis, a whole world that spins and clatters on top of the thing that sleeps in London town. The mud is gone, the darkness has receded, even the fog that crept and curled through damp and narrow streets has gone away in the face of the ever-marching future, and the humans have forgotten. They forget the terror that once stalked through their nights, the pitch-black horror that kept them cowering in their homes to keep the fear at bay. But the darkness is not gone entirely, just biding its time for the opportunity to come surging and roaring back into the world that has left it behind. And the thing that has slept for centuries is waking up.
I loved this.