A Good Ending That Feels Like A Bad Ending

Striding gallantly amongst the sea of man-made stars, a lord of the void hatched from nascency and immediately began to terrorize it surroundings.

With eyes of red, a mane of pink, and a crimson body made of the blood of the shattered heavens, this great lord trampled on all that lay before him. Swallowing up several space stations, moons, and small planets as he made his way towards the galactic core.

He howled into the night, his cacophonous bellows of rage sounding like the song from a great host of enraged angels. A song of madness and grief that echoed on for countless light-years. Spreading for the people of the countless worlds within the galaxy to hear.

A squadron of starships appeared and was immediately struck down by the 100,000 kilometer long tendrils that made up the Cacophonous Lord's fingertips.

All the great powers of the galaxy gathered. Forced out of the fugue of war, and awakened by the nearing threat. The mighty rulers sent their ships, the mighty heroes came in person.

Enemies and friends were all joined together in a grand effort to save galaxy. The peoples of the shattered universe all joined hands as they fought as one.

With the result being a great sea of debris floating inert in the void, a sea filled with countless frozen bodies with their faces filled with horror and despair.

The Cacophonous Lord continued his rancorous song, and brought an end to countless world. Countless armies rose up to fight him and stop his progress towards the galactic core. All of them failed.

Finally, after a year of endless death and destruction, the Lord's journey neared its end. He reached the core, a caged black star whose pulse kept all the other dim lit stars of the small galaxy aflame. This was the only 'true' star left within the entire universe. A star that had been stolen away by the denizens of the last living galaxy within the universe.

The lord reached forwards to tear open the cage and grasp hold of the star. Once he had it, he would engulf it, and the universe would be reborn.

A great hand, a million kilometers in width and length, slapped the lord's hand away. The Cacophonous Lord, of grinding metal and writhing flesh, found himself face-to-face with a being that stood slightly taller in stature to himself.

She stood ten million kilometers in height, and despite having a figure mortal eyes would recognize as that of a human female, she was a thing of awe and fear. Her entire body made of feathers, each feather sharper than the sharpest blade. Each feather a cosmic law onto itself.

She bellowed at the Lord, roaring with a rage that could snuff out entire solar systems. Her roar filling the hearts of all who heard her, with anguish.

The lord roared back, his world-shattering, cacophonous cry, filled with frustration, countless regrets, and an undying anger.

The two great one's fought. Fighting like men fight. Fighting like the ant-like mundanes that now floated around them as corpses, had fought.

They fought using palm strikes and heel kicks, they fought using punches and joint-locks. They fought using the martial arts of the mortals, despite the fact that their fight was on a grander scale than any the universe had ever seen.

Never mind that these beings were were plainly omnipotent, capable of summoning stellar storms, and weaponized meteor showers.

The two beings would fight as people did, because they 'were' people. Up until their grand transformations, they'd been mortal like most other denizens of the galaxy. Even if they were elder beings now, they were still too new to their power to be able to use them properly, so they fought the best way they knew how.

Throwing punches that shook the entire galaxy.

After two years of fighting, eventually a winner was decided. The Cacophonous Lord drove a fist through chest of the feathered-lady. He tore out her heart and crushed it, doing literally what he'd done, figuratively, so many years ago.

The Feathered Lady fell, her cry mournful. The great pale expanse of her face taking on a look of betrayal and bereavement as the lord's hoary face took on an expression of regret.

As he watched a being that should have lived for countless eons fade into nothing, the Cacophonous Lord raised his head up towards the heavens and cried out in grief. Weeping molten, blinding white tears at the death of the one person in the entire universe who still knew what his actual name was. Weeping at the loss of his last friend.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Yet this tragic life on rails was the only one he'd been able to live. Every step he'd made to avoid it only driving him further down the path that would lead to this eventual outcome. Every attempt to course correct leading back to this exact ending.

At this point, if he could just stop, if he could just stand where he stood forever not doing anything else,…. he would. Unfortunately, too much had been spent to reach this point. He'd expended too much effort. He and those who'd followed him had made too many sacrifices.

The cost in sweat, blood, tears, and lives had been too high. He couldn't 'not' continue moving forwards.

To halt things at this stage would be to make everything that had come before, have been for nothing.

So the Lord tore open the cage that trapped the last star in the universe. He grabbed hold of the star, catching it as it tried to flee and pulled it towards his yawning maw.

He swallowed dark star hole feeling its accretion disk trying to pull him into it, feeling the accretion disk made up most of his own body trying to pull it into him.

The lord waited knowing that the end would be the same regardless of who won. After a day's wait, the victor was decided, and then with a single pulse of black and red light, everything was torn asunder, washed away by the fires of creation to make way for a whole new universe.

*******

In this far off place, in this universe that no longer exists, the elder-being knelt with his head bow and his back bent. He would remain this way for ten thousand years while praying for the countless souls that were lost during the war for the universe's future.

An entire galaxy was destroyed, but inexchange a new universe was born, and the evil that had posioned the first universe was burnt away, purged by the cosmic fires that poured out from a hole from the elder being's chest.

Eventually the Cacophonous Lord would be the last remnant of his former universe, as well as the last casaulty of the eons long war. Death brought release from the uncertainty he'd spent his ten thousand years wrestling with, wondering whether or not he'd done the right thing.

As his supposedly indestructable body was finally burned away the stooped elder loosed a breath of relief. Satisfied that the future of the world would no longer be his burden. With the weight removed from his shoulders, and the doomed universe having been reborn, the elder's ancient soul would march down the path of rebirth and reincarnation, hoping that the next life would be a happier one filled with simple pleasures.