I stared up at the sky through my exosuit's visor. I could barely pick out the milky way anymore, there were so few stars left. Our own star was now a burnt out husk of what it had been, paler than the moon used to be. I shivered in the suit.
"Hey, Meg." My friend, longtime companion, and fellow godslayer Fi had snuck up behind me. "You know you've been out here for hours, right?"
"Suit vitals are fine. I haven't heard any alarms."
"That's not-" she sighed, over the comms. I could feel her feet tromping through the nitrogen snow behind me. "Aren't you cold? Come on. Bill says the coffee plants in hydroponics are fit to harvest. Nice, warm coffee."
I let her take my arm, lead me across the roof. My eyes were still on the stars. "We had to kill Her."
She stopped. I heard her breath on the comms. "Yeah, Meg."
"She... She was going to enslave everyone."
"I know, Meg."
"She'd... force everyone to worship Her. We'd have been no better than cattle. Playthings for Her amusement."
"I know, Meg."
"We couldn't have let Her live."
"No, Meg."
"But... do you think, maybe..."
"Meg, don't-"
"Do you think if we'd let Her live, that she might have at least saved some people? Her favorite ones? That at least some of us could have lived? A craftsman has his favorite tools, a child has their favorite toys... even a Goddess must have Her favorites. Right?"
Fi didn't speak for a long time. Then, "Come on, Meg. There's coffee. We'll probably only see twelve more harvests. We should enjoy it while we can."
I let her lead me off the roof, through the airlock, and down into the remains of our station.
Somewhere far distant, invisible to the lingering remnants of humanity, a catch releases.
A mainspring begins to release the power stored in it across timespans immeasurable. Cogs, covered in detritus ancient even by cosmic reckoning, begin to turn, unstoppable in their motions.
A Purpose is kindled. Perhaps for the first time. Perhaps for the last. It/he/they/she cannot know. There is only the knowledge of the Purpose, and what to do to fulfill it.
Limbs of dark matter, structured by magic older than time, bend to the Purpose. Gravity shifts and warps on a cosmological scale. Stars, cold and dead or dim and dying, burst into streamers of gas, and are drawn into galactic clouds that ripple with the passage of intangible limbs.
Those worlds where life still clings on, they/she/xe avoids unmaking. He/it/sie will see to it that they survive, as the Purpose requires of it/them. Spheres of impossible antigravity form around each inhabited system, to attenuate and weaken the blaze what is to come.
Before the last harvest of coffee is gathered by the last humans, the impossible happens.
Light kindles in the dark. Stars, ultra-massive giants, are born; the beginning of a new, impossible cosmos. Those vast limbs of dark matter carefully fuzz the history of the universe, creating a background wall beyond which knowledge cannot pass.
And then sie/she carefully reaches out and kindles those dead stars around which life clings back to a gentle life, and assesses the Purpose. Satisfied, they/he/it/she/xey sets the mainspring to wind again at the heart of a galactic black hole, and returns to sleep. Perhaps for the first time; perhaps for the last. When Purpose calls, it will answer, as she must. When the cosmos darkens, they will be there to gently bring it to life anew.
For there must always be a cosmos for life to walk in, beneath a sky full of Light unending; and not even gods may set aside the Purpose for which that one was built.
