He was burned all over. Every last square micron of his body burned.
It had taken only the tiniest fraction of his power to heal his body whole, but the fire had never truly gone out, and so he burned inside. He probably could have ended that, but he didn't want to waste anything in the effort. He needed it all for this.
There had been failures, so many failures. Failures beyond counting, in ten thousand million ways, all beginning the same way, all progressing a different way, all ending the same way.
And at the end, there was always burning.
So for the first time in an eternity that spanned less than a picosecond, there was a new idea. No one knew from whence it had come, no one cared. Perhaps it was an echo from one of the failures. Perhaps it came from the shared moment of burning. But it was there, and he was going to try it.
He phased through the door. The pain of seeing it so brand-new was its own burning.
A beautiful young woman was naked and straddling a fairly good-looking man, who was also naked, and not by coincidence. The pain of seeing them together was intense, but he knew the cost of failure. Her hands were gripping his pectorals as she slid back and forth; his hands on her firm, just-shy-of-generous breasts. Suddenly she threw back her head and moaned just as his hips bucked and his face contorted.
There. This was the moment. He would destroy more than he'd ever wanted to destroy, but this should avoid all of the failures from before, all of the failures that burned for eternities in their own rights. He put aside his guilt, said a prayer for forgiveness, and power lashed out, destroying the man and his wife, the room, everything
FIRE
