"Many injuries", it would seem, was a vast understatement. The heat blasted and berated me, over and over and over again. The surface of my body was peeled away and broken down into its composite subatomic particles. I had thought, rather naively, that after a handful of seconds, the universe would grow to a sufficient size and that the energy present would spread out, rendering the space much less hostile.
On some level, I was right. The universe did rapidly expand and the heat did lower. The rate at which this happened was, however, much, much lower than [ANALYSIS] had originally predicted. Rather, the speed at which space grew was becoming exponentially slower. At the current rate of slowing, it could take thousands of years before the heat was low enough for matter to even form.
I needed more data. I needed to find out how long this process would take. Under assault from the heat however, I could not spare much energy for [ANALYSIS], the majority of it being funnelled towards [REPAIR] and [PROTECTION]. Despite my body's capacity to generate energy from nothing, I could still only generate a certain amount at a time, barely enough the slow the current assault.
This would not be sustainable. I was unable to stop the heat, only attempt to mitigate some of its effects. Eventually, the heat would win and I would be left a burnt husk. I needed that data. I could not afford to run [ANALYSIS], I needed something quicker.
At that thought, [FORESIGHT] offered itself up. It could, for a high price, unravel the fabric of spacetime and peer into the future. Due to my limited reserves, I could only activate it for a short while, less than a fraction of a fraction of a second. It would have to do. I activated [FORESIGHT].
And before my eyes, reality unfolded. Time and space separated; time into an uncountable number of threads and space into an infinitely folding fabric. I followed along the threads of time, as far into the future as possible. My lack of energy restricted my movements, I could only move forward 100,000 years. It would be sufficient. I began interweaving the threads of time with the fabric of space at this moment and looked inwards.
What I saw filled me with dread. Even after such a long time, little progress had been made. The universe had certainly expanded, becoming hundreds of millions of light years across. This had allowed conditions to cool enough that neutrons, protons and electrons had formed. Some protons and neutrons had even formed into hydrogen nuclei. This would not be enough to allow my survival. I would still be ripped apart atom by atom.
Even worse, I would be long dead before I even had a chance to experience it.
My consciousness slammed back into my body and the vision before my eyes cleared. What I returned to was less than ideal. [FORESIGHT] was much more expensive than initially predicted. It seems that the solidification of spacetime over thousands of years caused the initial predictions to be vastly below the actual price.
My meagre reserves of energy were completely empty, my clusters now running entirely on the energy I passively generate. I could no longer spend any power on any other cluster. I could spare no energy for some last stand or final attempt at survival.
I was going to die.
And yet, my will refused to waiver. Even in the face of such impossible odds, not once did my desire to live, to survive, decrease. I would not give up. I would not simply roll over and accept my fate. I would defy the nothingness itself in order to survive. I would not die-
Inspiration struck. I could redirect the smallest slither of energy away from [REPAIR] and towards [FEEDER]. It would allow me to absorb some of the energy in the surroundings and use it to power [SLIP]. The main purpose of this cluster is for faster than light travel by using an array of methods. The one most crucial to my plan was the ability to warp space. Usually, this would be used to reduce the distances between locations to cut down on travel. However, if I gave it sufficient power, it would be able to release a wave throughout space that would expand every area it interacted with. If used at any other time, the expansion would simply revert after the wave had passed, but now, only a few milliseconds after the big bang, whilst the laws of physics and space was so malleable, the changes would be permanent.
This plan wasn't without its downsides though. As [FEEDER] would only be provided with the bare minimum amount of power required to absorb the energy into me, it would have almost no control over it. This would allow it to rampage throughout my body until I expelled it with [SLIP]. I could be left with potentially permanent damage to some clusters, and temporary but severe damage to others
I had no other choice. I diverted the smallest possible amount of power that I could away from [REPAIR] and towards [FEEDER]. With the slight reduction in power, the speed of repairs reduced and damage started to accumulate. I needed to be quick.
Energy began to flow past the barrier at the edge of my body and towards [SLIP], damaging every cluster, every shard that it passed. With such a vast amount of energy available to me, in such a dense area, it was a matter of an instant to absorb the required energy. But in that instant, it ravaged my body. [CONSTRUCT], [CLOAK] and [HINDSIGHT] had sustained serious, but fixable damage. Despite that they were left almost completely useless until they were repaired.
[CONSTRUCT] could now only create its constructs with the resilience of wet paper, though thankfully the ability to connect them to other clusters is unharmed, though separated from the rest of the cluster. [CLOAK] was only able to hide from visible light scans, and only protected from passive precognition. [HINDSIGHT] was almost completely useless now, only able to see up to a week into the past.
Thankfully, they were not damaged beyond repair and should eventually return to their full strength, although exactly when that was would be was uncertain.
[BROADCAST] was not so fortunate. All that remained of this cluster is its ability to communicate within my collective. It could no longer communicate with others of my species or broadcast large amounts of information. Worse still, [FACTORY], the cluster in which blueprints for my shards are kept, was damaged. The knowledge on how to recreate or repair [BROADCAST] was lost. It was permanently crippled.
I did not have time to ruminate on this, I had to release the spacial wave from [SLIP]. With a slight flex of my will, the cluster fired.
All around me, space flexed and twisted and was pulled taut, until it gave in and began expanding. In every direction, space expanded and grew, hundreds, thousands, millions of times faster than before. The energy began to dissipate, to spread out and fill in the empty gaps left by the expansion. My surroundings cooled. The subatomic particles came together, forming protons, neutrons and electrons. These again joined together, making matter, making hydrogen.
As the energy density decreased, colours other than blinding white won out. Beautiful arrays of purples and reds and yellows saturated every corner of the universe, reflecting off the matter that formed.
Currently, the universe was filled with, almost exclusively, clouds of matter. Specifically, hydrogen and helium. No stars had been born yet and so not elements heavier than these two could be formed.
Despite the lack of stars, the universe was still bright. The concentration of ambient energy still high enough to illuminate every corner of creation, creating a breathtaking tapestry.
And yet, as I floated stationary in space, a single thought couldn't help but pervade my mind.
How dull.
I had created… well everything. Every beauty laid out before me had been my doing. I should be feeling proud and filled with overwhelming satisfaction.
Yet, none of that was present. I simply felt… bored.
In fact, since I've arrived here, hidden below a thin veneer of panic, all that I have felt is boredom.
Except for… except for when I fought that strange being. Well, not really fought per se, more of a couple attacks and a retreat. But even then, when I was preparing that final attack, when my body was under assault from the nothingness, I felt more joy than now.
No. That can't be right. Maybe… Maybe I just need to find the right thing to create. Then I will be satisfied. Then I will be happy.