Lunch for Kilel

Lunch for Kilel
The cloud bore down on the system. There was no preparing for it. How could there be? An alien fleet could be attacked. An asteroid destroyed. A dark cloud of gaseous matter and planetesimals? Where would one even start.

The outer worlds fell within its boundaries, blotted from the sky. Word from colonies on them ceased. Vessels launched in defense made some small attempt to disperse it, targeting the tiny pseudo-worlds that made it up, electrical activity between them suggesting some form of control.

Arcs of plasma tore them from the sky one by one, the vast star-creature attacking the invaders in its body. All was most certainly lost when a new figure appeared in the sky above the world.

Clad in a white and blue bodysuit accented with nearly world-sized plates of yellowish armor, the newcomer looked any other young woman, simply writ on the scale of the heavens.

Her lips turned up in a smirk, licked in anticipation. “Found you~” She declared to the looming cloud.

Darting forward with impossible speed, her form juked and dodged, impossibly agile for a thing her size. The plasma arcs responded in kind, but blasts suitable to scour a world were deflected deftly with her armor. Moving in a rolling dance she made it look contemptuously easy.

Blue-white bursts of her own flew from  extended hands. A playful waggle of fingers and the material clumps that formed the core of the creature were shattered apart.

A great cheer went up on the world in the path of the titanic battle, praise for their unexpected savior. As if sensing their adoration she even paused to slip a wink.

One-sided battle soon done, she floated deep within the cloud, extending her arms and reaching out. Gravitic fields reached out in all directions, tens of millions of kilometers, drawing in the cloud. Condensing it until only a small black orb remained before her.

Another lick of unimaginable lips. That dense black ball brought to them, bitten into. A growl of satisfaction echoing on wavelengths radio and psychic alike. The absorbed life of countless worlds flowed through her, stolen from her prey.

When it was done she all but glowed with it, stretching and flexing as her form expanded to accomadate. Lazing back towards the little world she began to inspect it. A bustling thing of lovely cultures and teeming commerce. They might provide a welcome distraction from…

Another growl, but this one centered lower. It had been a long time since she’d eaten last after all…

“Oh well,” she mouthed, fingers gently closing around the globe and its now screaming billions. “Maybe I won’t be so hungry next time…”

From below, gazing up between her fingers the inhabitants of the world could see every minute detail. Eyes as large as their misplaced moon and freckles the size of small oceans. She smiled, a slender hand brushing back wave chestnut hair as she brought them closer.

Kilel remembered in a vague sense. Remembered having lived a mortal, on a world like this. If it was….years, decades ago, was hard to pin down. Time changed so much up here. Still, she knew what it had been like, and the contrast was exciting. What had once been her entire world just a little round bauble in her fingers.

An ‘inhale’ and she gasps, taking in the sense of the lives down there. Their mixed emotions, overridden mostly by fear. Their cries are clear as day, and her eyes can focus in on their panic.

Plush lips part, and she takes her time placing it on her tongue, a strand of saliva sticking to it in passing. The taste hits her like a sledge, still unreal after all this time. To draw sustenance from dead worlds was bland but workable. From the great beasts of the stars, more interesting. But a living world, oh a living world. Each was unique, new, delicious. A solitary sensation and indulgence no other would know.

Savoring it she groaned more loudly. Rolling it about her mouth she sensed everything there was to sense about it, before the protective field she created collapsed. Just a tiny bit, not all at once. A city wiped away in her saliva, dissolved in an instant. An island, a countryside. Each tasted and enjoyed, broken down on every level.

Each erg of its essence and information flowed into her, feeding her, amusing her, the minds of millions at a go torn from their bodies and filed away. Her knees knocked together as her hands roamed across herself.

Power, indulgence, sensation, delight, her body shook with all of it. Billions of minds over the course of time she lost track of, all becoming one in her as their corporeal forms and energies fed her.

At last they were gone, and swallowing what was left, the fragile orb cracked apart, a dollop of molten matter dropping into her stomach. A warm little feeling of contentment that spread through her body.

Turning lazily in the warmth of the now slightly more vacant primary she took in took in the gleaming stars of her galaxy and dreamed. Dreamed they’d all be hers in time.