Old Stars and Dead Gods

I covered my eyes, but nothing changed.

It was still there; I could still see it, all magnesium fire and bloody claws and giant, gaping maw.

It had killed everyone on the starship except me. I never thought the Demon of Horizons was real; some said it was one of they fey folk, and escapee from some long-dead planet humans used to inhabit. Some said it was the product of a black hole and a neutron star.

Most said it didn’t exist, but you could always find those superstitious few.

They usually disagreed on everything, and that alone should have meant it couldn’t really exist, but... well.

They hadn’t disagreed on everything, and that alone should have told you not to let the captian sail you all to your deaths.

Anyone who said the Demon of Horizons was real said it could be warded off with silver. Pure, undiluted silver, the kind that the First Alliance would pay billions for.

I don’t know why I’m not dead.

I don’t know why I can still see it, see it…

See it walking away.

The Demon of Horizons casts one last glance back at me as I lower my hand.

“Wh-wh-why?”

It blinks, and when it turns to face me fully I feel my heart skip a beat.

“The horizon has no quarrel with the stars,” it says, in a voice that is old, older than the Alliance, than the planets comprising it, than the discovery that led to it.

Older than starships.

I can almost hear the eons contained within it. A voice from a time when stars were pinpricks of light on black velvet. A time when the word ‘horizon’ had a meaning beyond ‘the line between the sky and whatever planet you’re on this week’.

The Demon of Horizons, all at once, is gone.

I look at the bodies of my crewmates around me.

Nina. She’s the first one with a face intact enough to recognize, despite there not being much else left.

“Nina?” I whisper.

No. Not in the voice of stars that are gasses and fire. Not in the voice of stars that simply pull you in and burn you up.

Different voice. The voice of stars that mark unreachable mysteries. The stars that are glimmers of diamonds stitched into a velvet sky.

“Nina.”

I say it, and I hear it; different than the Demon of Horizons.

The voice of heavens that have watched over things for millenia, the voice of little glowing eyes peering down to make sure that brittle, brittle life wasn’t broken completely.

I say her name, in the voice of old stars and dead gods and lost wonder, and I feel a grin spread across my face as her eyes flicker over to meet mine.

She smiles back.