Our tale begins whence upon a supernova I stumble, ripe with the most scrumptious, nebulous froth as it explodes into the night.    

A favorite treat of mine. 

My eyes widen, a spot of drool hanging from my mouth at the thought of my next meal. Flying closer, I let the expanding corona engulf me, only half-noticing the web-like ripple around its contours. A tear in spacetime? I wonder. The laws of astrophysics have been known to misbehave at this level of quantum foolery, so I shrug off the mystery.

As I descend through the layers of plasma, ever more scalding towards the erupting core, I can tell that this star has exploded prematurely. It feels too... healthy, too young; but who am I to turn down such a delicacy? At the center of the succulent fusion, hot as hell and blazing radioactive, I burrow deep like a cosmic tick, sinking my teeth into its yolk. What luck! I think, gorging on the heavenly innards of the dying dwarf like fluffy butter. 

Euphoria takes hold as I feast uncontrollably, and the tang of radioactivity satisfies a deep craving. My body hums pleasantly as tears of decadent ecstasy melt from my face. My frenzied gluttony persists long after the core’s crunchy exterior sends tremors of delight up my spine. Mouth full of star, I revel, “Mmmmm!” Scrumptious.

As I slurp up the plasmic river, compressing it into subatomic nutrients, the nova expands until it is too thin for my liking. I gorge on less piquant sections more slowly and with less verve, the leftovers going down more like dinner than dessert.

It is when I reach the end of my buffet that I fall victim to the spell laid upon the booby-trapped star. An entire web of woven sorcery collapses along with the last remnants as I gobble them up. As the net collapses around me I feel groggy and inhibited, suddenly numb all over. There’s a paralysis agent at work, and a slowing spell to be sure. 

I try to keep calm. No use panicking, I tell myself. Move with the spell. I breathe deeply, and let the working slow and entrap me as I feel into its matrix for holes or weaknesses, finding none. I settle on morphing into a jellylike pulp as my flesh bleeds through the spell’s intricate weave and out into space. Once free, my globulous form clumsily gathers itself until I am once again anthropoid. 

They set off that supernova! I deduce as my mind forms from the astral sludge. I shake off the headache and inspect the net, now a matted clump of dark matter, the only kind of net that would be able to contain me. My skin goes numb where I pinch it between my fingers. I listen to its energy signature, intuitionally retracing its origin.

Nearby, I realize, suspicious of how easy it is to locate the source. Another trap? A scowl rearranges my features as I toss the net away. Facing the direction my gut steers me, I make my way across the galaxy at post-warp speed. I could teleport, but that would require more concentration than I could easily muster. Besides, ripping through spacetime with such a flourish makes me feel powerful, and I want to feel powerful right now. 

*

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As I approach the small, mostly white world, frozen with perpetual storms, I sense the object of my vengeance somewhere on its surface. A perfect place for a dance, I muse, grinning darkly. If there are traps I cannot tell from this distance, but I can feel her presence; practically a deity with all that hoarded, swirling energy. 

Sorceress. 

I circle cautiously to the turn of her spell, which I can barely make out as a web of sorcery woven into the atmosphere. A bolt of bewitched lightning, sudden and sharp, moves away from the surface and straight for me. Backed by the witch’s art and telestially supercharged by the planet’s own electricity, it comes at me faster than I can dodge. Only by raising my vibration to match its piercing whiteness can I stand to absorb it into myself, so powerful is the crackling missile. 

It goes down rather spicy. 

I close the distance with a tearing and a blur, zeroing in on the bolt’s origin. As I breach the atmosphere, bubble-like mines of unseen sorcery stick to my body, causing me to drag. Because I have to keep moving to avoid getting stuck, the barrier she has set around herself in a titanic, multi-sided hexagon hits me rather hard, stunning me. 

Atop an icy mountain peak I can see her dark cloak billowing in the wind a black dart against a backdrop of endless white. In my debilitated state she catches me off guard, upon me in full force before I can react. 

Her swirling, bitter form brings down a scepter of anti-matter, its handle as black as she is and topped with spherical magic, baby blue. Its apathetic flame hits home, exploding into my right shoulder as she batters me again and again. The relentless, unwelcome torrent of blows come dizzying in their succession and authority. 

Not used to being had, I pull back in fury and annoyance, metabolizing starlight. My wounds heal almost instantly as I land a blow to her abdomen with enough force to crack diamonds. She only smiles wickedly as her ensorceled flesh melts into my fist, sinking a thousand tiny hooks into my arm. Reflexively I jerk my hand back, tearing open my own skin. Effervescent starlight twinkles into the wind as dark blood splatters across the witch’s face. Her fiendish laughter, a spell unto itself, reverberates hideously through my bones.

I compose myself, loosing a deep breath to shake off the drudgery of her malice, burning with a malice of my own. My skin turns a blackened, tasty red as I summon a burst of energy, and before she can make her next move, I flare with radiant light, brighter than any star. The miniature nova flash blinds my opponent, who cradles her head in the lingering stun.

With a moment to spare, my mind flits through our fight up until now, searching for patterns in our cutthroat dance. Her energy is passionate, chaotic; almost uncontrolled. And as inspiration strikes, I consider a gambit. Risky move, I admonish myself, then perhaps stupidly, I move closer as her vision returns. She smiles hungrily as I draw near, and moves to eat me. 

At least, you could call it that. She’s made of sorcery and I eat black holes for breakfast, so I have to speak metaphorically here. 

I am unsure how she had been planning to do this. I might have assumed she would try to kill me and feed on my corpse. But for all her cleverness, she is unsuspicious of my surrender. 

It feels like falling as I lose myself in her enshrouding folds, but I do not repress the panic that seeps through my being. Sensing my fear only makes her more excited as she swallows me whole. Absently I savor the curious sensation. Maybe this is what stars feel like when I devour them... I’m losing consciousness, nearly more a part of her now than myself. This is it, I think, and my last act is to throw myself into her as far as I can.