Zarathos's New Body

In the depths of the End of Time.

The air was utterly still.

"Sure enough, it's here."

Zarathos had a premonition that the thing he was searching for was close at hand. He murmured nonstop, the flames in his eyes leaping violently.

He continued deeper, passing between slab after slab. Those slabs recorded countless forgotten secrets—how the last universe had been destroyed, how the next universe had been born, where the beings that had survived the universal reboot had gone, and where the ancient powers that had existed before the birth of time lay sleeping.

Zarathos did not linger at those slabs. He knew these were not what he was looking for.

The thing he sought was older than these slabs, more hidden, more—

Dangerous.

Suddenly, a figure flashed out from behind a slab.

It was a woman, or rather, she had once been. She wore a tattered black bodysuit, and her long silver hair drifted through the void. Her face was beautiful, but that beauty had been twisted. A crazed smile hung at the corner of her mouth, and her eyes were filled with the desire to kill.

"Gamora," Zarathos said a name. "Or rather, some clipped Gamora."

"You know me?" The woman tilted her head, the broken longsword in her hand pointing at Zarathos. "You recognize me?"

"I don't know you," Zarathos said. "But I recognize the aura on you—Thanos's daughter, an abandoned child discarded by the timeline, a lunatic insane enough to want to kill every intruder who comes in here."

Gamora laughed, the sound sharp and grating. "Then do you know what I want to do?"

"Kill me?"

"No." Gamora licked her lips, the motion filled with a sick craving. "I'm going to eat you. If I eat you, I'll be able to leave this damned