"Mmm…” I droned upon seeing what appeared to be waves dancing across my skin.

They appeared as varying shades of light that swayed back and forth, adding to my already ethereal appearance.

I wasn’t in my doll, which maintained a pale grey appearance and closed its eyes whenever it was vacant.

I assumed a planetary perspective and gave my moon and myself a look over since aeons passed me by whenever I studied the stone tablets.

Not only was the information they held vague but some of the topics were really hard to understand without actual demonstration. Like the concept of the soul. The Pāttiram knew of its existence and could once transfer it from one vessel to another but they had since lost the knowledge required to do so. All that remained was the Law of Uyil and according to it, all things were once part of some greater whole.

I could easily further research the soul if I had someone to use as a guinea pig but I was alone and I was definitely not going to temper with mine.

Any time that I didn’t spend reading and rereading tablets was testing the five other laws but I had to be extremely careful since I only had so much Glass.

I resumed my self-analysis.

My moon and I had settled as far as major geological changes.

We also hadn’t been hit by anything in a while but the most notable development was the formation of oceans on my surface.

All the ice and dust that once orbited me had fallen and joined in what must have been a million-year-long rainstorm.

The presence of the oceans meant that I had four major landmasses.

Well, five if I count the island at my equator, between the four continents, two of which were located at my north and south poles and two others which were close to my equator, separated only by a few hundred kilometres of water.

The island between the two central continents housed the Mega Crystal and the place I dubbed The Temple of Tablets.

This was my base of operations.

I had since cleaned the mud and debris out of the Temple but I had no plans to do anything to the Temple itself.

I had tried to commandeer one of the Pāttiram vehicles but it was far too damaged to put to work.

I had located another one in my northern pole but it was taking me forever to dig out since I was using magic sparingly.

My doll had enough fuel to last a few hundred years but it never got tired so it wouldn’t be too long before I got the machine out.

With its help, I could do more physically demanding jobs without risking my precious doll.

I could have easily created several spare dolls but, as I repeatedly told myself to ensure I was careful, Glass was incredibly rare and even if my moon had some, it would be wasteful to use up Glass trying to get there immediately if that was even possible.

I also didn’t know just how far away my doll could go.

My ethereal self couldn’t leave my surface so there was no telling what would happen if I somehow managed to build a rocket of some kind.

I returned my focus to my surface and watched as the sun bathed my eastern hemisphere with light.

Thanks to the collision with my moon, I had an anticlockwise rotation although I didn't know the exact length of my days.

My years were also around three hundred and sixty days long which was convenient.

I was about to return to the temple when I noticed that something was happening to my atmosphere.

Although it had gotten a lot clearer, it was still pretty smoggy.

I had no way of measuring but I assumed that the air was made out of mostly carbon dioxide.

That, however, was slowly changing, with my skies steadily becoming clearer, and my mind trembled upon realizing the potential identity of the culprit.

I took my perspective into the ocean and peered into it on a molecular level and it was here that I beheld something that almost made me yell out in shock.

I watched as trillions upon trillions of little green organisms photosynthesized.

They appeared to be simplistic single-celled creatures which floated in the ocean.

I was filled with both excitement and dread as I almost missed the birth of life on my surface but wait-

I went deeper into the ocean and, even though it was pitch black down here, I could see clearly since my vision was that of an ethereal being.

I saw countless organisms divide and reproduce but my search was for their source.

I spent an unknown amount of time in the ocean deep but no matter how long I looked, I couldn’t find what I was looking for.

Wait-

What was I even looking for?

I had missed the genesis of the first biological lifeforms and there was no way to go back to the time when they came into existence.

A wave of disappointment rushed over me but I chose to instead focus on what looked like trillions of bacteria and other such microorganisms that swam within my oceans.

Stolen novel; please report.

I may have missed the development of singular-celled organisms but I was determined not to miss the appearance of multi-celled organisms, although I was prepared for the possibility that they didn’t appear.

After all, life back on earth was, up until now, the only case of a planet bearing life in a universe of trillions.

Regardless of the odds, I waited.

Years passed.

Then centuries.

I waited for countless millennia and to my frustration, no complex life formed in my waters.

I let out a defeated sigh before making my way back to the Temple, at the side of which sat a broken vehicle, where I entered my doll.

I then flew over to the North Pole where my excavation site was.

The target of my interest was one of the larger, hulking ones and, after removing its dead pilot, I had entered its head to find that its systems were mostly functional. I had done this by using my ethereal self to unlock it as it appeared that the Pāttiram used some kind of soul-based biometrics to control their machines.

The only problem was that the vehicle was buried in rock several meters underground.

I could’ve entered it and tried forcing it out of the ground but I didn’t want to risk further damaging it so I grabbed my shovel, which was made entirely out of diamonds, and dug.

My doll was extremely strong and I could dig up tens of tons per hour.

What absolutely drove me nuts was the rain.

I could be having a good day, digging and then suddenly, all I had dug would be flooded with water.

This was the only time I excused the use of Gravity Magic.

It was fine in these cases!

.

..

A long day of digging passed and I had already reached the vehicle’s feet.

This one had two thick legs which stood on two wide paws.

It, like others of its kind, had two large arms which had large hands.

Those would be really handy.

I let out a sigh before sitting on a mound of dirt.

I then watched the sun as it set, bathing the white stretches of land in vivid but dimming shades of orange.

My only company was the whistling wind.

I… didn’t mind it.

Being alone.

I had a great mystery and goal to keep me busy so…

Yeah.

“Mmm?”

I looked up and gasped upon sensing something as it entered our solar system.

My eyes widened slightly upon seeing, rushing towards me from beyond the only other remaining planet in our solar system, a group of meteors.

They were still millions of kilometres away and so I stood up and turned to the vehicle which stood before me in a near four-meter-deep chasm.

I then gracefully jumped onto its head, which was open, and tried moving.

I started with the arms which, even though possibly billions of years had passed, moved smoothly.

I controlled its movements via a telepathic interface within the head.

Once it closed, I wouldn’t be able to move so I simply used my mind.

I would have loved to know how all this worked but the sheer incompetence of the Pāttiram meant that it would remain a mystery to me until I somehow figured it out.

I tried moving its legs and it worked, the vehicle took a step forward and, unlike the last one which fell apart as soon as I got it moving, this one remained standing.

“Yes!” I cried joyfully although I was somewhat startled by my own voice since I rarely ever spoke.

I moved the vehicle out of the chasm, shaking the ground with every movement it made, and rushed to the southern coast.

Part of the reason I forced it to run was to see if it had any problems I couldn’t see.

It… was also very fun.

I eventually reached the southern coast and greeted the ocean with open arms.

I knew how to transport the vehicle to the Island of Tablets but I wanted to stay out a little bit longer so I ran along the shore with the biggest, stupidest smile on my face.

That smile, however, quickly faded and I came to a stop upon seeing a dark figure a few hundred meters in front of me on the coast.

Plumes of black smoke rose from his form.

The ground beneath him was blackened and the ice seemingly cracked under his weight.

He held in his right hand a hammer and before another moment could pass he disappeared only to suddenly reappear directly in front of the vehicle's head with his hammer raised.

I raised my hands to grab and crush him but I grabbed nothing.

I blinked a few times and saw that there was nothing there and the ice ahead of me was untouched.

I bit my teeth and tried forcing my heart to calm down but it proved quite difficult.

I cautiously exited the vehicle and rushed back to the Temple where I exited my doll.

I then shifted my perspective back to the vehicle and used gravity magic to carry it back to the Temple.

Its dark, insectoid form made my fearful heart race but I had to conquer this fear.

I also needed to stop those inbound meteors from hitting me and so I looked up and watched as they approached.

I estimated that they would reach me in a few decades and so I allowed that time to pass.

With each year, I orbited around my sun but I knew we were set to collide so I watched the skies carefully.

The time eventually came when they entered my upper atmosphere and it's in that I tapped into the power of the Glass on and beneath my surface.

Since my presence extended to every part of me, I could easily reach out and contact one of the thousands of Glass chunks within me.

The meteors grew closer but I didn’t just want to deter or destroy them.

I wanted to harvest them for materials and so, as they shot past my moon, I used Gravity Magic to slow them down.

This pushed me slightly towards the sun but I could always fix that after I gathered the meteors which now levitated high in my atmosphere.

I gently brought them down near the Temple and let out a pleased scoff after seeing that many of the meteors were filled with large chunks of Glass.

I returned to my doll body and exited the Temple to find that the coast of the island was littered with meteors which averaged around one hundred meters in length.

I also noticed that it was the air was a little bit hotter so I temporarily left my doll and nudged myself back into my original orbit.

I returned to my doll and walked up to one of the meteors to find that it was blazing hot.

The island which I was on had no life on it but if it did, it would have been drastically affected.

I placed my glass hand on its hot, rocky surface and tapped my chin.

This was good.

I could gather Glass for a while and eventually use it to fashion a barrier or something.

I gave myself a nod before returning to the temple.

What about the life in the oceans?

Eh.

I didn’t care what came of it.

The fate of all those little creatures was in my hands and if I died, I imagined they wouldn’t have an easy time either so it was best for me to focus on creating a means of defence against the silent violence of the cosmos.

And so, I made my way to the Chamber of Tablets where I re-read documents that detailed the material makeup of the ships the Pāttiram used.

Disappointingly, I couldn’t find anything that gave me the technical specifics.

All they knew about their machines was that they were complex and made of durable metal alloys.

I wanted to mock their incompetence but I looked back at human history, I wondered just how much knowledge was lost in the handful of millennia we held dominion over the earth.

The Pāttiram had been travelling for millions of years and according to a few personal records I found, they spent most of that time sleeping or desperately trying to keep each other from fighting.

Such a… pitiful existence. I thought.

I thought back to my desire to become indestructible.

This was going to be tricky since everything in the universe could break under the right conditions.

I had tried using Glass to make some imaginary unbreakable material but all that did was make a few diamonds.

This was bad because not only were diamonds breakable under extreme conditions, I would need a lot more Glass to reinforce my structure with diamonds since the Glass to normal matter conversation ratio was one-to-one.

This also meant that by stopping meteors, which weighed millions of tons, I had lost millions of tons of Glass.

I let out a sigh as no realistic solution came to me.

Glass existed.

A supernatural material born in the beginning of time.

If it could exist then surely something out there also existed that was completely indestructible.

I pondered on this as time steadily passed me by.