D
Day 452 of the Voyage. The stars are getting thinner.
Captain Harlock stared at the logbook, the ink barely drying in the arid air of the bridge. The Aether-Wing was not sailing water; it was sailing the space between realities. The Void. A purple, bruised expanse where physics was a suggestion and monsters swam in the nebula.
"Soundings?" Harlock barked.
"Depth infinite, Captain," the helmsman replied, his eyes bandaged. You didn't look at the Void directly. Not if you wanted to keep your sanity.
They were hunting the Leviathan of Light, a beast made of pure stardust that had swallowed the moon of their home world. Without the moon, the tides had stopped, and the oceans were dying.
"There!" the lookout shouted from the crow's nest. "Starboard bow! A glimmer!"
Harlock raised his telescope. It was a lens of enchanted diamond. Through it, he saw the beast. It was beautiful and terrifying—a whale the size of a continent, its skin a constellation of burning suns.
"Hard to starboard!" Harlock roared. "Prepare the harpoons!"
The harpoons were not steel. They were grounded lightning, captured in iron rods. The crew loaded the ballistae.
The Leviathan sang. It wasn't a sound; it was a memory. Every crew member suddenly remembered their first love, their greatest loss. Harlock remembered his daughter, waving goodbye on the pier.
"Block it out!" he screamed, shaking his head. "It's a trick! Fire!"
The bolts of lightning flew across the dark. They struck the beast's flank. It didn't bleed blood; it bled light. Liquid gold poured into the Void, illuminating the ship.
The Leviathan turned. Its eye was a black hole. It looked at the ship, and Harlock felt his soul being weighed.
Why? the voice echoed in his head.
"You took our moon!" Harlock shouted back.
I was hungry, the beast replied simply. And it was just a rock.
"It was our guide in the night!"
The Leviathan paused. It seemed to consider this. Then, it opened its massive maw. Harlock braced for death. But instead of fire, a sphere of white rock drifted out. The moon. Safe. Whole.
Take it, the beast said. It tasted like dust anyway.
With a flip of its tail that created a new nebula, the Leviathan swam away into the deep dark.
Harlock slumped against the wheel. The moon floated beside them, tethered by gravity.
"Captain?" the helmsman asked.
"Tow it home, boys," Harlock said, wiping sweat from his brow. "And remind me never to argue with a star-eater again."