An Eternity ago
She wheezed as her vision slammed back into focus. She was lying on her back, surrounded by the sapphire glass that used to be the cockpit window and bathing in her own blood. The shuttle craft she rode in on was partially embedded in the wall, the nose crumpled in like a pinecone.
Looked like she had blacked out during parking.
She carefully levered herself up on her good arm and looked down. Bubbles escaped from the ragged tear in her ribs. The wetness in each breath told the same story. She definitely didn’t have enough oxygen to focus for more than a few minutes at a time, and the constant jostling did no favors to the half-assed seal in her bronchial tubes. Hell, the active slime nodes had enough trouble sealing off the hundreds of micro tears littering her body.
She rolled to her front and slowly stood up. She pulled her left forearm to her side; keeping that stump down would only force herself to have to fight gravity itself to keep her fluids inside.
With a few cautious steps, she left the slow drip of her blood smearing down the shuttle’s windows.
Right, now, activate the ---
She wheezed as her vision slammed into focus, finding herself leaning heavily over the door control panels. Fortunately, it seemed she managed to automatically hit the trigger, and it was already open. She picked herself up and shuffled through, keeping her thoughts as blank as possible as darkness swam around her peripheral vision.
As she walked, she could feel the rumbling underfoot as the Eternal Forge awoke from its slumber.
Relays slammed closed, generators spooled up, wires heated, pumps roared.
She hissed air through her teeth, gasping as her pulse echoed distantly in her head.
A flash of white and steel gray.
Headlights beamed down.
Armored hands clutched her shoulders as she wobbled in place. “What are you doing!? You know you can always ask me for help.”
She gave a wet laugh. “Honestly, I was a bit too excited by the--”
She wheezed as light pulsed in her eyes. “Sorry,” she managed from Delori’s hip as her vision tunneled to almost nothing. “Barely enough oxygen to think and talk at the same time.” She paused for a few seconds until she could feel her toes again. “But we won.”
Delori sank to her heels beside me, her long hair haloing her face. "That's wonderful news, my Master."
"... yeah, it is. It took me so long because I was hiding in a deadzone to hopefully shake off any pursuers."
"I can certainly see that; your body is falling apart," Delori said. "Let me help you."
The Interloper held up a stump. "No, I want to take these steps under my own power. Just ...” Her eyes drifted shut, the pupils glassy and unfocused, "... guide me there."
Ichor dripped behind the pair as they trekked, the fervor of the Forge slowly calming down. When they reached the core, the Interloper slowly sank to her haunches. "Hey Boss, we did it. That ol' R.O.B. of ours ain't gonna be bothering anyone anymore." She wiped her lips. "Took every one of us, I was the only one to survive the backblast." She gave a wet laugh. "Don't think they were expecting an attack after eons of divine excellence."
The screen above her blinked, flashed, beeped "Perfect. You've done wonderfully. We all have." A cable dangled down from the ceiling, Delori guiding it to the back of the clone's neck. "Rest, now. Your mission is complete."
The clone smiled weakly. "Pretty sure I was going to do that automatically anyways. You sending anyone else out?"
"I will need to clean up some of our messes. Send some spies to see how the ripples of our actions flow. But that's for me to worry about. Goodbye."
The clone had slumped, breathing slowing, slowing, stopped.
When the data was backed up, the Interloper looked down at the cold body. It was the last of her wartime units. Packed to the gills with combat hardware, capable of operating when more than half their bodies were destroyed, perfect control of every cell cluster within. A pinnacle of biological, and magical engineering. While her next batches would no longer need such resilience, maybe ... she could keep this one around for a time.
Eons pass
An alliance rises. Its reach spreads. Infighting simmers. Disagreements burn. A devastating civil war. Dimensional lanes shatter. Communication lines broken. A full retreat, isolation. Worlds age, die, repeat.
"A shame. Maybe next time will be better."
Eons pass
Kingdoms arise. Alliances are formed. Trade routes develop. Alliances break down. Dimensional lanes collapse. The kingdoms isolate, then slowly fracture back into their component universes.
A sigh. "What a disappointment." Her scouts scatter, and wait.
Eons pass
This new conglomeration was an interesting one. A cluster, damaged, its timeline unstable, the advancement of time held short to contain the damage.
The timelines flowing, intersecting, the bonds forming, strengthening.
With the seemingly endless repeats, the difficulties of empire holding were insurmountable, and the disparate groups could meet without any other expectation than friendship.
Thousands of years passed, and her hope grew. Maybe this was it. The one who could recreate the once great Union Hearts of old, once this artificial restriction was finally over. Everyone, together, on equal ground from centuries to millennia of shared struggles.
Then it ended.
One last life, one last hurrah of celebration.
That was it.
The Interloper scout stareed in dismay. None of them had exploratory tendencies? All of their experiences, now all gone, like dust in a desert.
A sense of weariness crawled over the Interloper. She sent out the signal to recall all assets. All this waiting, only for emptiness and isolation to reign again.
A clone walked through the Babylon Library, a section of warped space and vacuum isolated storing countless histories. The clone slides in the last book into one of its largest sections. Her suit crinkled as she made a fist, clutching the shelf. This book would also be the last entry to the Babylon Library.
Shuttlecraft, fighters, and transports file back into the Eternal Forge, their pilots slipping into cyro-pods to offload their memories and store their bodies for another time. Hangars lock shut, lights turn off, and the gamma inverters shift into low power mode. Only stripes of reflective tape illuminate the remaining open hangar, the last warrior’s craft still resting in the same hole it crashed in so long ago.
The Interloper looks on into the long dark for a few more hours, before ending the memory recording systems.
No one ever spreads out far enough to find her. She sleeps onwards.
What is this? Visitors!? Amazing! They don't give off the impression of veteran explorers, but no reason not to humor them. They've made it this far, might as well practice being the eager host.
...
...
As the visitors leave, the geas she branded herself with burns aluminum hot. The lights around her Core popped in the surge of fury, the transfer cables buzzing in the maelstrom of energy roiling within her.
Had she been gone for that long? Were they all willingly ignorant of the invasion of the divine realms? The one thing she could be proud of?
She needed to find out more.
“Is this going to be the last we see of you?”
Her thoughts pause, derail.
It has been ... so long since she’s had outside contact. Maybe something interesting will come about a temporary exchange.
Delori withdrew a jar containing a yellow slime at my request, and gave it to the purple unicorn. “Keep this with you. We will know where it goes.”
She watched as the shuttle craft left to rejoin its sister in space, then vanished through eternity. This was a situation she had not prepared for, had never encountered, had never dreamt of happening.
She knew the kind of person she was. No good person would attempt an assassinnation against omnipotence. No sane person would come out still functional after subjecting themself to billions of years of subterfuge and infiltration. Of willingly splitting a mind never designed for hive-minded operation.
But still, she dutifully collected, hoarded, recorded. The multiverse’s largest, oldest, repository of culture, characters, and creations squirreled away beneath her feet, but for what end? Habit?
She already used it to cause so much destruction. Despite only being forced to bloody her hands once every few centuries, she was far too old to make that number look anything but horrifying.
Maybe someone else would be able to make something beautiful from her dark work. But it would not be by her hand.
When the shuttle blinked out of this dimension, she sent a short signal into the black hole. A few hours later, the event horizon vanished, leaving only a massive purple and red robot behind. “Oh-One-Nine, we’re leaving.”
Moments later, both the robot and the Eternal Forge vanished.