Even after entering, I could see nothing. There was only blackness. Blackness all around me. But one thing was immediately clear: there was not the emptiness that I'd expected to find. There was an energy, a heat. I could feel it everywhere. My skin buzzed with it. I took a few steps forward, groping my way through the darkness.

Suddenly I stopped. I could hear something. Far off in the distance, there was a soft, quiet humming. Someone was singing.

I tried to turn back. To crawl through the hole. But if it were still there, I had no idea where. I reached out my hands, desperately clawing about, floundering helplessly. But I couldn't find the hole, or anything, for that matter. It was all just empty space.

Finally, I gave up, and instead stumbled forward. All I could feel was the strong force of energy which floated about me. It was palpable.

Suddenly, I realized that the energy was getting stronger. The humming, too, was getting louder. Stronger and clearer, until it seemed the singer was very close, perhaps only a few feet away. And then, without warning… it stopped. Abruptly. I tried to stay very still. I cursed my human form, which required me to breathe. I stood there for what seemed a long time.

All of a sudden, I saw a flash of light. A blazing fire seemed to explode right in front of me. It illuminated a figure, a woman, dressed in what looked like a long evening gown. For a second, I could see her face. It was strikingly beautiful, excepting her hair, which danced fiercely around her shoulders. It was made of pure fire.

I shrunk back. I knew that this was no woman. I had never felt anything like her energy. And on her face was an expression of raw, smoldering rage.

Feebly, I groped again for the hole. But everything was still dark except for the fire that blazed in front of her.

She walked right through it, grabbed me and flung me to the ground, pinning me down. She was strong. Very strong. I could feel her energy coursing all over me. It could barely be contained in her form. Her energy was hot. So hot it burned, scalding my skin. But despite the pain, I felt a rush of excitement. Her energy was gently igniting my own. I could feel it, a growing fire within my core. This was what I had wanted. What I needed.

"What do you want!?" She yelled, her voice echoing in my ears. "Are you here to steal my power!?"

"No." I said firmly, but with as calm as I could manage.

She went quiet. I looked up at her. The look of pure fury seemed to slowly dissipate, replaced by intrigue. Still, her next sentence came out a snarl. "What kind of energy do you have?" And then, louder. "Show it to me!" She buzzed. I didn't have to ask her what kind of energy she had. I could feel it all around me.

I acquiesced. I ripped open my chest and let the heat and radiation pour out. She stared up at it, watching it slowly dissolve into the blackness. Her eyes got wide. Then she smiled, a cruel, mischievous smile. Looking back down at me, she ran a finger down my open rib cage. "You'll do…" she said, staring greedily at the hole in my chest. "You'll do indeed."

She stood up over me, her body seeming to elongate until I felt as if she were towering over me, peering down at me from on high. She released her grip, but despite my best efforts to move, I remained stuck, frozen in place. Her power had completely overcome me, cementing me to the ground. And then, she began to carve. To scrape out my insides as though her energy were an ice cream scoop, tearing the force out of me. I cried out. But it was not in agony. Because in that moment I felt the burning. The heat. The intensity. The power. This was the closest I had felt to my first moments of creation in years. I wanted more. She seemed to sense this, and smiled mockingly.

She kept burning, pouring into me and scraping me raw, until a fire started blazing out of my open chest. It grew and grew, becoming bigger than any sun my wife and I had ever created. Finally it erupted, spinning out like a tornado of flame and roaring off into her blackened universe.

She laughed.

I needn't have worried about not coming back. As soon as she was done with me, she threw me out. Literally, flung me back through the hole. She had no trouble finding it. I landed face first on the garden floor.

I had been used. Utterly humiliated. But finally, I'd been able to burn. To burn brighter than I had in hundreds of thousands of years. There was no question: I'd be back. I couldn't have stopped myself if I tried.