Chapter 5: The End

The Ouroboros didn’t warp around the cosmos, but she traveled so fast there was wasn’t much difference in speed. She choose this means of travel cause it allowed her to devour whatever planets or stars were in her path.

She had a next meal in mind: thousands of light years away though still within the confines of this galaxy. By now the naga dwarfed a star in size about twice over, so she had no problem swallowing down whatever was in her path. She’d make minor detours, turning slightly to get another star along her trajectory. The lamia just opened wide and scarfed it all down: planets, stars, and whatever.

Ouroboros’s target wasn’t a star system, but a region of space between galactic arms. It was there two great empires choose to battle in an interstellar conflict ages old. Each side held armies trillions strong. They weaponized planets and entire stars. This particular fight had been going for hundreds of years, as each of the two species had long since attained biological immortality.

Yet, even their most advanced tech failed to gleam the celestial leviathan coming their way. The naga was too fast. One second she wasn’t visible, then the next she coiled her tail around the entire battle-space.

She held still long enough for their sensors to get a bigger picture of her, though not long enough for them to analyze it. Her hunger egged her on, and she swung her maw open and dived into the center of the chaotic throng. Countless war-planets and war-stars vanished down her throat. The metal-clad star-weapons were the shiniest and most delicious treats. They caught her eye and dictated where she’d dive next. Mid-fight, the two sides figured this out and sent their star-constructs onto their opponent’s sides to try and get this new variable to work in their favor. Sadly, they both had the same idea.

Their little game did get a giggle out of her though. Her mirth rattled the hulls of their fleets and weaponized worlds, but they resisted destruction to her booming voice.

She moved faster than they could hope to fathom. Even their biggest planets were dwarfed by one of her smooth onyx scales. She did her best to keep them intact as she fed, but her hunger got the better of her and many of the fleet ships in particular burst against her jet-black strands of head hair, or from an excited wiggle of her tail.

Fleets and planets perished against ropes of her spittle. That was the first danger, but if they made it past that they usually lasted long enough to pass through her throat and settle in her tail-gut. The grudge didn’t end in her insides, though. The planet and star constructs still floated there, as though in space. The battle’s backdrop of stars changed to that of incomprehensibly large, rippling walls of flesh.

The two sides fought to the bitter end, trying to dodge the droplets of acid in order to get the last laugh over their longtime rivals. Reinforcements kept coming as Ouroboros kept eating. This kept turning the tide of war one way or the other: back and forth. Both sides tried to maneuver towards the very end of the tail to make way for more of their allies at the stomach’s entrance.

Soon, there were none of the empire’s forces left outside her tail-gut. In the end, both sides lost as only star-weapons were left, one on each side, and both got smashed as her tail-stomach smashed them to pieces with a surprise kneading motion. It happened deep in the digestive organ at its end. The muscular walls had no issues crushing those advanced alien alloys like foil.

With all those meals dissolved, Ouroboros let out a great booming coo. She rubbed her hands over her naked human-half, delighting in the tingling, stretching sensation of growth.

She opened her eyes when it finished and gazed at a chunk of a galactic arm. It looked very appealing, but she needed to start at its end to fit it in her mouth. She slithered through space towards that goal.

The texture of the galaxy hit her tongue: wispy star soup in the shape of a noodle. She wrapped her lips about it and moved her body along. She never needed to unhinge her jaw; instead, she simply grew large enough to continuing taking in the galactic arm as its width grew towards the core. She engulfed more empires, and countless lone star systems. Individually, they were nothing, but together they made an airy treat which tingled her tongue ever so pleasantly.

Ouroboros reached the singularity-core of the Milky Way and just slurped it right up. The taste was so sublime that she couldn’t help but swish her tail to and fro. Quadrillions of lives dashed to dust in a flash against her smooth scales and under belly.

The rest of the Milky Way was imbibed with ease. She zipped over to Andromeda and did much the same, only bigger now and more efficient at indulging her appetites. She repeated with all the other major galaxies. Each time they seemed smaller compared to her. Andromeda was about a plate in size, then the one after that was a small dish. Soon they were the size of almonds.

Before too long she dealt with the containing super cluster itself: Laniakea. She dashed through it at an incomprehensible speed. Each pass had the lamia gulping down dozens or hundreds of galaxies. She was like a shark swimming through a school of minnows, only the ‘fish’ didn’t move. It was too easy, yet when she finished the last galaxy contained within in, Ouroboros thought of a way to make this all even easier.

Why should she keep going to her food when she could bring it here, to her? That was her thought and she acted on it.

With her size in the hundreds of megaparsecs, she opened wide and inhaled. Of course one couldn’t breathe in space normally, but her powers changed that. It would help the naga consume if she could, so she did.

She sucked in everything. Nothing was safe. Her force pulled in local groups, vast galactic clusters and even nebulae from billions of light years away. It all went into her mouth and down her throat.

Even the most advanced species couldn’t comprehend their fates here. Her inner flesh was too vast. Her immensity had her tail gut unused here, as everything could fit in her normal stomach and dissolve with more than enough time to make way for the other space stuff. Small as her celestial meals were, the bits of acid within the air of her gut sufficed to melt them down.

There wasn’t even a crumb of dust in the vast universe. Ouroboros loomed giga parsecs in size. It was enough that, if she stretched, she could tug at the vary boundaries of the cosmos itself.

So she did.

She reached out with her hands and grabbed at the universe’s border. The naga stuffed it into her mouth, and the way it warped in protest reminded her of those tent she ate one Earth day ago. The entire universe and all its billions of light years of space now rested in her tail gut. All of space-time made just the slightest bulge in her tail for the briefest moment before getting digested like any other meal.

It was just that tan naga now, alone in all reality. There was only enough ‘space’ here for her body, and it moved and disappeared with the motions of her body. The edges of the pseudo-space felt like dry jelly at her skin.

Again, she had that urge. That thought.

‘More.’

She set her hand on her taut tummy and frowned. It grumbled. She had eaten it all and still wasn’t satisfied.

Ouroboros took her tail tip in her hand and rubbed at it, trying to distract from that unyielding hunger. She wiggled it, giggling. She noticed her mouth water a bit.

Surely a lick couldn’t hurt? Just a taste? The naga wondered how her smooth scales would feel against her tongue. She wondered how her tail would feel wiggling down her throat, and how her throat would feel squeezing at her tail.

Ouroboros bent the appendage towards her mouth. She didn’t need her hands to work the prehensile tail into her maw. She slipped it into her throat, then swallowed. She tasted delicious, and wanted more, so she swallowed again, then again. She possessed powers beyond comprehension in her current state, so she encountered no physical barriers to eating herself.

Soon, her entire scaly appendage was within its own gut, but she wanted more still. She gulped down her waist, then up to her bosom with arms at her side going down. Finally, she swallowed her own head.

Ouroboros existed now as a single point within which rested all she had eaten: everything. All was one within her, and still she hungered. This infinitesimal point struggled to eat itself, vibrating at intense speeds till, at last, it exploded in another Big Bang.

Space and time reemerged. Over billions of years, the galaxies would reform much as they were before. In more time still, Earth would return as well. Deep in that planet’s crust, so too would Ouroboros. As before, she’d rest till unearthed again.

The cycle had began anew.

Fin