CHAPTER 1
Galactus awoke. The Planet-Eater. The Devourer of Worlds.
He knew not where he was. He knew not how he came to come here. He knew only one important thing: he was no longer aching with...The Hunger!
"Where has the great Galactus been brought?" said his god-like voice in a featureless realm so unlike any the more than 13 billion year old giant in purple had seen. A thunderous, reverberant voice demanding attention. Demanding answers.
He would be, for the first time in untold ages, surprised at the source of said answers...
"Death!"
Slowly solidifying into a form long feared by beings throughout the known universe, that of an eerily active skeleton clothed in flowing black hooded robe, Death turned eyeless sockets to stare deeply, fearlessly into the glowing cosmic cube-eyes of mighty Galactus.
"Galactus!," said Death, currently as massively tall as the Planet-Eater, in a voice that could freeze a mere mortal's soul while only amusing such as Galactus. "How are you, brother? Confused? Have you ever been so before?"
"I will admit, sister, that I was, for the span of a single heartbeat, disoriented! Clearly I am no longer in the space-time to which I have been accustomed since this universe's birth! I can only deduce, most especially since you have deigned to appear before me here...now...that I have, in some manner not immediately conceivable to my vast space-spanning mind, entered into a state of corporeal nonexistence!" Galactus said sarcastically when addressing what had, since the moment of his miraculous rebirth as the third force of the universe, been ostensibly his closest living, albeit cosmic, relative along with the embodiments of Eternity, Infinity, and, of course, Oblivion.
"You died, Galactus!" was Death's only cosmically blistering reply. "Do you not remember?"
"Vaguely!" said Galactus, as he willed his gargantuan form to drift closer to the hooded-and-robed skeletal specter of immutable, never-changing, ever-present Death.
As Galactus drifted closer still, Death stood her ground, a state of understanding more than fact in such a featureless realm, and said, "Your former herald, the Silver Surfer, waited until you were, quite literally, starving for life-energy and, then, just as you were desperate to appease The Hungry, turned your own Elemental Converter on you! And, thus...!"
"I consumed myself!"
"Exactly, Galactus, now why not take my hand so that I can guide you out of this cosmic limbo?" Death said with an eerie laugh, while lifting a single cloaked arm and exposed skeletal hand in a beckoning fashion that would, with any mortal entity, freeze them with fear, yet which still only amused such as Galactus.
For one brief instant, as far as "instants" could be measured against the immeasurable, Galactus started to take hold of the only hand in all of existence from which, once touched, there would be no reprieve nor escape. But, just then, the majesty which was the mind and soul of Galactus resurfaced with a vengeance.
"No!"
That single syllable utterance was enough to, for the first time in endless ages, force Death to withdraw. Her own cosmic senses detecting Galactus' desire to exist as a physical force of nature once more. Surrounded by a physical space-time universe. A universe within which, like it or not, he must inevitably feed. Upon worlds without end. Energy without end. He would, once again, be forced to endure The Hunger.
Yet Galactus would do so, gladly, in order to become eternally physical once again.
"Not even such as you can deny Death!" said the hooded-and-robed entity in a rage such as she had seldom experienced. "Not even the great Galactus can undo my handiwork!"
Suddenly, something happened that had not since Galactus was known by his mere mortal name of Galan on the planet Taa in a mere mortal existence just prior to the universe's 'Big Crunch' demise...he smiled.
"If that is a challenge, dearest Death," his cosmic voice rumbled, "I accept!"
END OF CHAPTER 1