Wonder

The Furies had existed for 2500 years. They had performed wonders, great and vile, for their Empress throughout that time. Some thought of them as goddesses - not nice ones, but deities nonetheless.

All four are stunned by the sights their lost sister, Astrida, was showing them now. World after inhabited world filled the Deneb system, populated by creatures that not only resisted but thrived on the high temperatures and radiation levels near the supergiant star.

"Being a very luminous star, Deneb provides the Prihnha with a vast habitable band. So every several million years, they relocate their entire civilization from one supergiant star to another."

"Habitable if your blood is molten glass," Minerva mutters. "So, if they come in after the debris field clears..and before the star balloons into a red giant?"

Astrida nods, then frowns, glancing nervously at the vast white-hot disc of Deneb. "They'll stay to the last moment - they always do. Already, they are removing populations from the ten innermost surviving worlds ahead of the next of Deneb's expansion phases."

"Why do they stay? Seems very dangerous," Medusa speculates.

Astrida fidgets; none of the Furies miss it. "It's more dangerous than you think. Something ... always comes when a star implodes. Something terrible, something even the Prihnha fear. Something from the distant past, even as they reckon the ages."

Category:

Music

Tags:

• classical music
• music