Nice to finally be able to read this. Definitely an interesting approach to the challenge.

Made two tiny changes. Just for the record.

Whew. Okay, geek moment here, but this reminded me of a comic book wherein Galactus has a little throw down with Phoenix. This has that same sort of epic, cosmic, ‘gods at war/play’ sort of feel to it. Beautifully described. I would have titled it “Gods and Soccer” myself, but your title works nicely to set up what is going on in all this crazy, magical stuff.
[I’d like to apologize for the geeky reference, but I couldn’t help myself.]

While I wouldn’t want to say too much about the piece, my idea was that they actually use masses, gravitation and energy to manipulate the ball. Hence, “as if by magic”, but not by magic.

That said, all hail Galactus, Eater of Worlds.

I love it. I don’t like ‘thin air’, though. In space, nobody can hear you GOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAALLLL

This is a good story, but there signs that your attention lapsed occasionally.

One, “faster than the beginning” surely should be “faster than in the beginning”.

Two, “the object turned ’round” … really? Turning around implies that it has a front side that always points forward, but why would it have that? It’s a spheroid. It shouldn’t turn around; it should just change direction, like a ball.

I like the ambiguity about why things are happening. Personally, I imagine that the players are disembodied cosmic-scale intelligences with very developed powers of telekinesis, but the story leaves other interpretations open as well. I also like how the players utilise the laws of physics, though the mysterious white mass doesn’t seem to fit.

One pacing issue. There’s a bit of a dead moment when the orange ball is forming and shrinking, because we don’t know why the other player can’t intervene.

(A sequel idea would be that the games, like the original Olympics, are a training for war.)

Zerrikhi:

One: Edited to reflect the appropriate preposition.

Two: A “spheroid” is a genus of 3 dimensional shapes that includes various shapes that deviate from a perfect sphere. This includes shapes like a football or rugby ball. That is basically what I had in mind. Otherwise I would have chosen the word “Sphere.”

Three (or what I assume to be three): I leave it to the reader to decide why the other player cannot intervene.

I thought of the white mass as a small super dense object steering the ball by way of gravitation.

The basic idea was to imply that the “Intellegences” could not directly “Touch” the ball. They have to use masses or force generated by their created objects.

I hope this clears some things up.

Some clarifications on my comments.

Rugby balls don’t have a front and back; they spin, which is what I’d expect your spheroid to do. So my criticism of the “the object turned ’round” thing holds.

All I was saying about the point you’ve labelled three is that I think it’s a dead moment, a lapse in the sense of drama and suspense. Imagine an earthly sport in which a player, observing that nobody from the opposite team is in any position to stop them, puts the ball down, casually walks several paces backwards, pauses and waves to the crowd, and then finally kicks the ball into the goal. That part of the story sort of comes across the same way, I feel, like the player is showing off because they know they can’t be threatened.

I didn’t label that point as three because the labels one and two referred to things that I perceived as lapses in attention.

Wow.

All other points well taken, but I’m not letting go on “turned ’round”. A ship is nearly a hemisperoid itself and a ship, as my metaphor indicates, can obviously “turn ’round”.

I’m all for creative criticism, but your insistance on this particular point verges on arrogance. I think the metaphor is appropriate and the image is as clear as anything you’d typically encounter in a story.

I am sincerely puzzled about what makes you feel that my criticism verges on arrogance. I could suggest, at least as something to think about, that it verges on arrogance to think that it verges on arrogance, but that could lead to infinite recursion.

I believe I’ve made a fair criticism, that objects only turn around if they have a “front” side which always points in their direction of motion. A ship is such an object, not because it is a particular shape, but because it is steered. An object in space propelled by a shockwave from a collapsing star is not. You don’t have to agree with this crticism, but there is nothing unfair or inappropriate about my making it.

Your suggestion that my own comment verges on arrogance would not, in fact, lead to infinite recursion:

We could both be arrogant!

All in good fun; and I’m sorry if I came off the wrong way. “The object turned ’round like a ship headlong in a storm.” Just happens to be my pet favorite of this Ficly; I was just feeling feisty about it.

Congrats on the win!