I open my hands and gesture toward Marshall.

  "Then, what should we do?"

  "I'll be frank. I think it's a load of crap to scare us."

  "We have reports he's gone to other capitals, though. Story after story is in the news. Nations ARE capitulating."

  "No, I mean, the space war. If he's that strong then why bother with Earth?"

  "America's so strong, why bother with the Virgin Islands?"

  "Ughhh, that's not the same thing."

  I frown a bit.

  "It's not, but we don't know what galactic warfare is like."

  "Well, what. You believe galactic warfare is a thing just because a shiny dragon shows up and says so? I don't buy it."

  "Except the scale matches perfectly. If he was going to make an absurd claim like trillions dead, nobody would believe him. A few million, how'd he manage such a low death toll? We're both generals. We know how war works. It's sad; it should never happen— but civilians die."

  "And I suppose the part about him not knowing the full death toll was proof rather than masterful storytelling?"

  "We don't know his true power, but we've seen a sliver of it. Even if we say that's the full extent of his strength: he can still appear in front of every world leader, kill them, and vanish."

  "Which is what he did to several who tried to hide."

  "Right, so?"

  "Why don't we ask him to show off his power?"

  "He also claimed he ate black holes. All of them. If he did show off, we couldn't comprehend what we were seeing. Which might be why he doesn't bother with theatrics."

  "You line everything up so nicely for Chronovoid."

  I wave my right hand side to side with two fingers raised dismissively.

  "He did that himself. I'm saying— if we wanted to take military action, we need to be sure we're not rubbing our faces against a giant landmine."

  I hear a strange voice.

  "You could also ask me."

  "Euh!"

  How the hell... That chair was pushed in. Now he's sitting in it, somehow?

  "Hello, Chronovoid."

  "Hi. I really am a big landmine. I don't recommend said face rubbing."

  "You... Heard our conversation?"

  "Deity."

  Um, seriously?

  "Yes, seriously."

  Is he reading my thoughts?

  "Yes, I am."

  42

  "No, I'm not reciting your favorite number."

  I didn't even think about that part!

  "Deity. Now— do you get it? I didn't read your president's mind to be polite, but she's being stubborn if you all think you can actually contest me. The notion is absurdity itself."

  "Then why bother with any of this?"

  "Why do humans conquer other nations? Is it because they must or is it for material desires?"

  Hmm...

  "Depends, but it's usually greed. On both sides."

  "Dragons are famous for building massive treasure hoards, are we not?"

  Marshall interjects.

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  "Hey, what is this stupid conversation? If you're going to kill us, just do it and be done with it."

  He turns to General Marshall.

  "Are you eager to die or something?"

  "I thought you could read minds?"

  "I was asking that sardonically."

  I roll my eyes, then explain Marshall's sarcasm.

  "Chronovoid, we want proof of your claims."

  He looks at me.

  "Why?"

  He looks to Marshall, who starts speaking immediately thereafter.

  "He means we think you're full of crap. If galactic wars are a real thing, it's probably better to die fighting you if you're weak, rather than side with said weakling and get killed in some of the worst ways imaginable."

  I interject.

  "Uhh, Marshall. What the fuck?"

  Chronovoid turns to me.

  "No, he has a point. I screwed up negotiations with your president, so I don't mind being prodded. What proof do you want?"

  "Our president? Not yours?"

  "Do you have citizenship for dragons?"

  "Uhm, I suppose not. But I meant—"

  "I'm not Rafien Halid. I'm Chronovoid. It means time void. That's literal."

  He phases his spiky arm through the table.

  "Huh. That's a neat trick."

  "Thank you. It's very useful in combat."

  "But how are we supposed to...?"

  Unless I'm misunderstanding, he's not only strong enough to eat black holes.

  He's beyond all human comprehension.

  "Reeeyap, you're exactly right."

  He smiles at me. The hair stands up on my whole body.

  Holy crap. Why's he scaring me like that? No, how?

  Marshall speaks. Chronovoid turns, but he's no longer smiling.

  "Why don't we throw a really big bomb at you. If you live, hell, I'll kiss your feet or whatever."

  "Sure, minus the foot-kissing. The last two dragons who tried that cut themselves."

  Wait, he's fine with a hydrogen bomb? Is he serious?

  "Hey, you're okay with that?"

  He turns to face me again.

  "I can eat a black hole; it's barely a snack. Do you have something bigger than a black hole?"

  I speak up, my interest now piqued by his oddly scary smile.

  "Wait, how DOES that work?"

  "How do I eat black holes?"

  "Yeah."

  He immediately launches into a ridiculously detailed explanation.

  "Hyper-dense matter externally expresses asymptotically zero forces because its quantum vectors are occupied by clashes with other nearby matter. Think of it like a magnetic field becoming more focused on the magnet itself rather than expressed outside the magnet. Therefore, particles and photons— or any quanta, really— they can't escape because time dilation inside the event horizon multiplies the quanta's loss of energy to the black hole when internal collisions occur. As a result, all of a quantum field's vectors tend to become trapped within the far larger mass before it can exit said mass. Any quanta which do manage to escape are expelled by directly impacting the immensely dense core, therefore regaining the energy they've already lost to the black hole. These few hence retain sufficient energy to overcome the black hole's event horizon. In other words, said quantum vectors remain expressible outside of the event horizon, therefore they remain able to exit the black hole's gravitational singularity. Not that they necessarily will, depending upon their angle of incidence relative to the event horizon. This is what you humans know of as conservation of energy; the so-called 'equal and opposite reaction.' However, a black hole's core is so small that the chance of any quanta exiting a black hole are virtually nil. Impacting the core and not eventually merging into it would require the quanta to enter the event horizon at an angle of incidence measuring almost exactly pi radians; asymptotically parallel to the point of no return. Additionally, the black hole's core gets even smaller as the black hole grows. As if that weren't enough, this quanta also can't face insurmountable interference from other trapped quanta, whether direct or indirect. Almost no quanta ever manage to achieve this escape mechanism. It's even rarer for a concentrated quantum field to enter the event horizon with immense energy, exit while still retaining enough field intensity to travel who knows how many parsecs, and then happen to be picked up here on Earth. To you humans, this infinitesimal chance makes black holes seem to express infinite gravity. Black holes aren't infinite gravity wells."

  What the hell? I was not ready for the sudden science class. How did he come up with this on the spot? I don't know enough physics to say whether he's bullshitting us, but it sounds legitimate enough.

  He shakes his head, then continues.

  "To rephrase and simplify: rather than infinite gravity, black holes possess almost zero gravity. Gravity repels, but dense matter constrains gravity, thus dense objects seem to pull at each other. All the matter in the universe is pushing light into the black hole, and once it gets in there, the black hole turns that light's velocity into the black hole's own via time dilation. You could say nigh-zero gravity creates nigh-infinite time dilation. Barring special circumstances, the light won't come back out."

  He points his right index claw at me, then continues again.

  "You humans got the calculations right but the root variable backwards. Since a black hole isn't infinite gravity, I can eat it by overpowering its internal forces."

  He lowers his hand and nods his head.

  ...

  Silence prevails for a moment.

  ...

  Is this dragon an astrophysicist? Or does he know that because he's actually a god?

  He abruptly crosses his arms and continues in a rougher tone. It sounds almost like a continuous growl.

  "Rah, right. Anything I eat becomes a part of myself. I had to try super hard to avoid eating everything. End of existence and whatnot, you know? Sometimes I get reeeeeeeally hungry, though."

  I shiver.

  Why did that make me shiver? I didn't feel fear that time. Why wasn't that scary? I don't understand what's happening.

  I finally hear Marshall.

  "Aight, whatever, don't care. Go to the Pacific at en one-four, dubya one-seven-nine. I'll blast you back to hell."

  Growls out his words again.

  "That's fine with me, but use your biggest bombs. I might get hungry while waiting; I may want a light snack. Hraw, light. Like a black hole. Hraw."

  I shiver once more.

  Is HE doing that, somehow?

  "What? What am I doing? Hra. Roh."

  He facepalms.

  Never thought I'd see a dragon facepalm.

  He looks at me, still growling out his words.

  "Sorry, I call myself 'deity' or 'god' to seem nice, but I really am a reality-eating monster. I get stuck on eating sometimes. Don't know why I'm so fixated on eating right now, though. I ate a lot already; I shouldn't be hungry. Eating too much is not good. I'm not eating at all."

  I notice he's heavily salivating as he chomps his teeth.

  *KLAK*

  That's. Hmm. Hmmmmmm.

  I turn to Marshall.

  "Can we submit without the stupid test, Marshall?"

  He annoyedly turns to face me.

  "What? Why the heck would we do that?"

  I point at the... Dragon.

  "I have a bad feeling he's telling the truth."

  "No! He said he would. Just ignore that."

  Chr... That thing— smiles, and speaks.

  "It's fine. I'm fine. Let's be fine."

  Oh crap. I'm going to die.

  ###I'M FINE###

  only quantum vectors. It's basically the same system as the Standard Model but with a different set of mathematics defining the supposed collapse of the wave function. There is no wave function: just quantum fields that become quanta. However, Chronovoid fails to explain how those quantum fields turn into discrete quanta. That is a part of my theory, but Chronovoid hasn't yet comprehended that part.