A/N: I've added some links to music and ambient sounds. These are just my personal opinion, so take them or leave them. Put the name in quotes ("") if searching on YouTube, otherwise you'll get a lot of unrelated search results.

1 Tsukihime [月姫] -A piece of blue glass moon - Track #27 (EXTENDED)

2 Tsukihime [月姫] -A piece of blue glass moon - Track #19 (EXTENDED)

1

The golden tip of Isha's spear hit the Emperor's sword, and both were repelled. However, where the Emperor's sword was merely deflected, Isha's spear shattered into dust.

However, even as the Emperor's surprise slowed his return swing, Isha dove under his arm and over the knee that kicked out at her, diving through the gap between his arm and leg, as if she had expected her own weapon to break when it did.

The golden strand of hair that had been wrapped around the stone spear followed her, trailing behind her in a jagged golden line, like the waveform of a heartbeat displayed on an electrocardiogram.

Another spear shot out of the ground into Isha's hand, allowing her to vault away from the Emperor as she used its remaining velocity like a counterweight as he turned and swung behind him, giving the strand of hair time to rebind itself to the spear tip.

The Emperor's eyes narrowed when he saw the stone spear again.

It was not a simple construct of stone, but an extremely life-like replica of a worn wooden spear. There were numerous nicks and notches near the tip, as if it had parried swords or axes multiple times in the past, and even the grain of the wood was replicated on the stone's surface. However, the most concerning part of the spear was that the second was exactly the same as the first one.

"That's not your spear, is it?" The Emperor asked as he lunged at Isha again.

"Correct." Isha nodded as she parried again with just the point. This time the entire spear did not break, but the point wrapped in Isha's golden hair snapped off.

The Emperor released his aura, removing Isha's influence from their surroundings, and also subjecting her entire body to his immaterial hating Truth. It was not as potent as the supernova he had planned to release when Isha charged at him in that gradual spiral, but it should slow her movements long enough to prevent her from escaping like she had the last time her weapon broke.

However, Isha sidestepped the Emperor's blade as he swung with more force than was necessary, expecting her to be immobilized and therefore only capable of blocking.

In return, she threw the remains of her weapon at his face, forcing him to tilt his head out of the way and buying herself a few seconds to step back as another identical spear launched itself from the ground into her hand.

"This is the spear of my consort, Kurnous." Isha replied as her hair wrapped itself around the point once again. "Or at least, it is the best replication of his Truth that I can make with mine. He wasn't spared my wrath either during the war within our pantheon."

The Emperor lowered his stance, watching Isha warily as she spoke. He had been continuously decoding the information Isha had forced upon him from the very beginning, and there were no mentions of her using a spear like that.

It appeared to be just a wooden spear replicated out of stone, but it was dangerous to the Emperor. It was not a threat when used against him, but he could feel that should he ever attempt to wield or grab it he would lose. He had attempted to suffuse the third spear with his immaterium hating Truth as it traveled upwards towards Isha, but he felt an unpleasant sensation as he drew close to it with his psychic essence and withdrew.

"It is a good thing you didn't attempt to touch it." Isha smiled as she ran her fingers over the spear. "My consort was the God of the Hunt, and his legend was that he taught all the Aeldari how to hunt in order to survive." She twirled the spear in one hand, before catching it in both and pointing it at the Emperor. "Of course, my beloved Eldanesh made sure to obfuscate what exactly we hunted to survive in all our legends before his passing."

"The Necron and their Star Gods" The Emperor muttered grimly.

"Indeed, this spear is a representation of his miracle. His gift of knowledge to my children so they could survive during the War in Heaven." Isha chuckled as the two began to circle each other. "Its effects are close to that Apollonian version of the twin spears you made."

The Apollonian and Dionysian spears were twin weapons the Emperor forged upon Terra. Both weapons were well made, but their true power lay in their esoteric abilities.

The Apollonian spear would show the 'truth' of whatever its blade impaled to the wielder.

The Dionysian spear would show the 'truth' of whatever its blade impaled to the victim.

The Spear of Kurnous itself was only a weapon when wielded against the Emperor, but should he ever try to wield it himself, he would experience the same thing as when Isha forced her memories upon him.

No, it would be far worse. There was no guarantee that it would only be 40 or 50 thousand years of information that he received. That spear contained 60 million years worth of war knowledge and battle tactics and its miracle was the provision of knowledge. The speed of data transfer would far exceed Isha's.

"So, knowledge really is power." The Emperor snorted. "I guess I have your Eldanesh to blame for this situation as well?"

At every turn, he had been outwitted by the Aeldari goddess. What she did and how she acted did not match with the plain reading of her legends. It was as if someone had rephrased everything, disseminating the details with context clues that formed a sort of code that could only be deciphered if one understood all Aeldari history.

"Indeed." Isha nodded. "He knew that his death would make the edict permanent, so he ensured both the Aeldari that came after him and his followers as well as any other alien would never know how we functioned or what we really were. Our legends would be accurate enough to maintain us, but be too vague to understand without the appropriate context."

The Emperor grimaced. He had been decoding more and more of Isha's information, and there was an unsettling fact about the type of information that was being decoded.

As a Goddess of Life, the Emperor expected there to be large catalogs of genetic information and biomantic knowledge. However, although there was information relating to those subjects a greater percentage of the information seemed more to do with geology, meteorological manipulation, fluid dynamics, and other seemingly unrelated subjects that dealt more with physics and chemistry instead of just biology.

At first, he thought it was simply because she was perceived to be a maternal spirit of the earth, but the concepts contained in Isha's information were diverging further and further from his original assumptions.

AAAA curse BBBB …

CCCC possession DDDD …

XXXX overwrite YYYY …

These few bits of this particular portion of her information were all linked, and composed an entire process that took up a large portion of what Isha was. However, they seemed utterly disconnected from the concept of life, motherhood, love, or mercy.

'Is this what she inherited from Khaine?' He thought to himself.

Isha was the daughter of Khaine and Morai Heg. The function of this portion of her was a mystery to him, but whatever it was it did not have a positive connotation. It was like looking at a massive machine made of some sort of obsidian alloy that oozed black tar from every joint and rivet. Whether it was an industrial tool or weapon of war was impossible to tell. All he could understand was that it was large, and it was dangerous; like staring up at a tunnel boring machine meant to chew threw the ocean floor with massive grinding diamond coated teeth.

The Emperor lept forwards again, and retracted his aura for a brief moment before letting it out in a small pulse as he swung with his sword, and swiped with his talons.

Isha's spear tip met his sword and deflected it without breaking, but his talons cut right through the middle of the spear's shaft between Isha's hands. However, as his pulse enveloped Isha, her skin flashed gold for a moment and both gods jumped backwards away from each other.

"I see now." The Emperor muttered.

Isha had taken in his Truth, but she was still as vulnerable to it as she was back on the Bucephelus. He had wondered why only her hair and nails seemed to hold his Truth, but with that flash of gold from her skin, he fully understood how exactly she was using his Truth.

"Nails, hair, the very surface layer of skin. All of those are dead tissue. That's why you can use my Truth."

Isha had first blocked the Emperor's sword with a dead tree binding. Although it was mostly to block the spell of forced slumber, it was also to protect herself from the burning touch of his Truth. That was why Isha was both vulnerable to his Truth, yet still capable of wielding it against him. She expressed his Truth on the parts of her that were 'dead' and hence not affected by his Truth.

Her skin was currently coated in a very thin layer of his Truth, for only the very top layer of skin is dead. It was too thin to provide any protection against a blow, but it would reflect any unfocussed pulse of his Truth like sunscreen.

"That spear has also been restricted." The Emperor said as he raised his sword once more. "It's not supposed to be so brittle." A brief image of an Aeldari man wielding the same spear, but composed of actual wood flashed in his mind. "Generations. That is the part of your Truth that allows you to use Kurnous's spear."

"That, and the fact that it only works against lethal force." Isha shrugged slightly, admitting to another weakness of her current weapon. "Only the most extreme selective pressure allows me to improve it, and all those improvements are eventually lost to me when I pass them on. All of these are restrictions Kurnous never had. He would have figured out what you were far quicker than I ever could." She smiled as the Emperor grimaced.

It was as she said, the Emperor was attempting to kill Isha. There were no more flashy moves; no more excessive blasts of psychic energy fired in the hopes to deplete her faster than himself. All his focus was upon his weapons and his body, just as it had been when he slew the Void Dragon.

This was no longer a battle of stamina for the Emperor.

He may be able to deplete Isha's reserves eventually, but realistically speaking it was not the best option. He was acting as Isha said he would. All who learned of the Emperor's plan had to be killed or kill the Emperor. Whether they were alien or human, it didn't matter. Neither side could be trusted with this knowledge.

Additionally, Isha was now using Kurnous's spear against him. He was the God of the Hunt, and his miracle was the act of teaching the Aeldari how to hunt the Necron and their Star Gods. However…

"He was not an omniscient god." The Emperor said as he charged forwards again.

"He wasn't, for how could he. He was meant to be the teacher of my children." Isha replied as she caught the Emperor's sword with her spear tip in a brief bind, sliding the golden point along the blade before jabbing forwards, forcing the sword to pass by her head centimeters from one of her long pointed ears.

"The only way for him to learn what he had to teach was by finding it out himself, so he walked amongst my children as one of them and found ways to defeat their enemies with only mortal means." She swiftly unbound her weapon from his, and swung it so the point knocked his talons aside as she ducked under the return swing of his sword.

"He learned from Vaul, sparred with Khaine, borrowed Hekarti's sight, and took the bodies of all those who believed in them so he could see the world through their eyes and feel it through their hands, all so his spear could better fit their fingers."

The Emperor kicked out at her, both of his weapons having missed or been deflected, and his boot landed in the middle of her spear, shattering it in two and pushing Isha away from him where another spear was already shooting out of the ground to replace the one she had lost.

"A learning and training program for the biological weapons that were the Aeldari." The Emperor muttered as he regained his footing.

That was Kurnous's role in the weapon system that was the Aeldari pantheon.

"If you wish to phrase it that way, then yes. That was what he was." Isha said with a sigh.

"And this is his legend recreated with your Truth." The Emperor frowned as he decoded another line of the information Isha had forced upon him with the symbolic visual effects Kurnous's spear displayed. "A fundamental improvement of capability over generations."

"The passing on of lessons from the old to the new."

That was how Isha used a Truth that was not her own. Kurnous's Truth was the process of learning and adapting mimetically and technologically to an obstacle. Isha's interpreted that as the physical adaptation of things due to external pressures, in other words, evolution.

Isha's version of Kurnous's spear was getting stronger. Every version took longer to destroy, and the golden hair that had been simply wrapped around the tip was now forming a visible golden edge on the spear's point while stretching downwards as well. Numerous new bindings had begun to reach from the point to the base of the spear, forming a sort of gilded pattern that resembled a conjoined set of runes written in cursive script.

No, it was no longer just stone. He could see parts of the obsidian rock had been replaced by a brownish metal; copper.

"You called my love and my Truth evil." Isha gave a sad smile as she spoke. "I admit it, you are not wrong. There is evil in my love, and to live is to suffer, but life itself is not suffering."

"Then what is it?" The Emperor asked as he charged again.

"The purpose of life is to eliminate suffering." Isha retorted as she met his sword with her spear, binding the two as she leveraged her longer weapon against the tip of his. "Creatures grow, mate, pass on genetic traits, and eventually become intelligent enough so mimetic ideas can also be passed down to better adapt their offspring to their environment." She stepped back, avoiding a swipe of his talons, then shifted her spear, forcing his sword outwards while putting the shaft between her and his armored knee. "With each coming child, their lives become easier and less harsh as their bodies and minds become better suited for the world around them." The black obsidian rock snapped in half upon impact with his knee guard, but the two halves of her weapon remained connected with a single strand of her hair. "The past generation should leave a better place for the present and future ones, for a child shall always be ignorant of their parents' pain." She jammed the bottom half of what remained of her spear's shaft in between the Emperor's talons, and jumped back as the Emperor overpowered her other arm and brought his sword back, cutting the air she had occupied before.

"That is the Truth of life as I define it." Isha said confidently as a new spear made entirely of bronze shot itself in her hand. "As the mother of all Aeldari, I shall take all that they suffer within my breast, and cleanse its source with my sorrowful tears." The golden strand of hair left the remains of her previous weapon, shooting towards her in a zigzag line and binding itself on her new one in an even more intricate pattern. "That is my miracle. That is the blessing of the Goddess of Life, and the nature of my love."

The Emperor paused for a moment, as he felt something ripple within him.

"You have a similar concept within yourself, do you not?" Isha spoke as she raised her spear to his face.

The Emperor snorted and continued his attack, but he felt her words seep through to him. No, it was resonating with the information she had given him as they fell through space. Her concepts of life and love had been given to him in data format, and he could unpack them now that what they contained had been expressed in a language they both shared.

'Humanity is a species of failures, losers, and fools. But, they always rise no matter how arrogant or ignorant their actions may seem.'

Those were the words the Emperor himself had expressed to Isha when he threw off the shadows that were the Aeldari memories Isha forced upon him.

He too had seen the social, economic, and technological rebirth of human society many times. Each time there were failures. Each time there were losses. Each time there were fools who brought the end to ages of peace and years of combined labor. However, the story never ended there.

Separated tribes gathered together, forming kingdoms that consumed each other to form empires.

These in turn crumbled under their own weight as their own mistakes built up over the eons, giving birth to new kingdoms and fiefdoms.

Such smaller countries eventually collapsed due to or evolved in fear of revolution of their own people, morphing into constitutional monarchies which eventually turned into democracies.

All the while, new technologies grew, were forgotten then rediscovered, and evolved allowing more and more people to survive and flourish.

And through all of that, every group produced their own hero. Not all were good. Not all were successful. But, they all stood up with the best intentions.

Even as their dreams burned to cinders around them, they looked up to the sky in defiance, ready to rise again if only given the chance.

'Vive la France!' A young girl with brunette hair shouted out under a blue sky with a sword raised high while riding a horse in knight armor.

'Vir triumphalis!' Hundreds of people in white togas cried out as a man in purple robes and a golden laurel crown stood on a marble balcony overlooking all of them.

'For home and country!'' A battered man in an old olive green military uniform yelled as he clambered out from a muddy trench with a bolt action rifle and bayonet, only to be followed by his entire platoon across a torn battlefield filled with barbed wire and machine gun fire as artillery boomed in the background.

African ululations and Native American war whoops rang in his ears as the conjoined memories of every hero who had reached him, all those who he thought had merely melted into his essence stood at his back.

Men and women of good and evil, selfish and selfless in their nature returned from the ancient and recent past.

He was them, and they were him.

Humanity as a whole might have failed themselves, but it did not mean that every single one was unsuccessful. If they were, he would not have been made, and these heroes and heroines would not have risen from the mortal realm to meet him at the golden double doors before the golden halls that composed his heart and mind.

A small smile crossed the Emperor's lips and the same one alighted on the face of every past hero who stood at his back. They suffered as he did, and rejoiced when he did. Now, they remembered themselves as he remembered them. He was God of the Heroes of humanity, and it was from their fortitude that he drew his strength; their resolve to remain in this dark world despite everything that allowed him to continue.

He himself had said it. Humanity would rise no matter what.

"I do!" The Emperor roared out as his sword sliced through Isha's spear in a single blow, forcing her to hurriedly hop backwards. "Heroes fight against evil, and even if they fall their legend is taken up by the next. A single failure gives no reason to abandon all hope for eternity. Humanity rises from its failures, and in doing so progresses forwards! They may at times take more steps back than they do forwards, but that doesn't mean the dream to take that leap forwards is meaningless!"

That was something Neoth had always known, and the reason his words resonated so with all humanity. But, just like the act of riding a bike or driving a car, he had left that knowledge in only his motor memory, forgetting to think about it with his conscious mind.

Now, the rust fell off of his heart, and the golden glow of his eternal resolve shone through.

"That is why I walk this path!" The Emperor shouted as he chased Isha while she backed away from him, buying time for the next generation of Kurnous's spear to form. "I am the hero of humanity! Even if the solution damns me and everyone else but them to eternal suffering, as long as humanity is saved, the method does not matter!"

That was the reason for proceeding with his plan. He could no longer stop, and no longer relent. Isha may have rekindled his flame, but she had also rejected his plan. Therefore, the only thing he could do was strike her down faster and stronger with the power she had reawakened in him.

Another generation of Kurnous's spear splintered under the Emperor's assault, but his frown deepened. The materials making the spear were no longer a metal he recognized. Hundreds of generations had been struck down, but each time a stronger variant shot into Isha's hand. The golden strand of hair now gilded the entire weapon, splitting apart into hundreds of runes that emblazoned both the shaft and spearhead. Furthermore, it no longer returned to the strand of hair between generations, but appeared on the new generation as if it had been premade with his Truth.

He could not allow this to proceed any further.

Aeldari material sciences may be an alien topic to him, but he knew what the greatest and most ubiquitous material they used was.

Wraithbone.

That was the current pinnacle of Aeldari materials, and that was where Kurnous's spear was proceeding towards.

That spear was the representation of Kurnous's legend and miracle. But adaptation was only the first half of its story. The second half was the teaching of the lessons learned by Kurnous to the children of Isha. If that spear reached the generation that was made out of Wraithbone, it could be used by any Aeldari who learned of it. He could not let its evolution proceed any further, and he could not allow Isha to exist now that she had learned of his plan.

As Isha stepped away from the Emperor, he suddenly turned and shot away from her; towards the valley where Kyrazis's ship fell where the delimbed remains of the Psychomatons lay.

Isha narrowed her eyes while letting out a brief snort as a thin angry smile crossed her face.

"I guess he's started to use his head a little."

Then the ground opened up and swallowed her.

The Emperor ran towards the Psychomatons. He did not use a Warp portal, nor did he run at full speed. He did not want to take them hostage or kill them outright. All he wanted was to give Isha a reason to attack.

Every blow between them came out in the Emperor's favor, but his inability to predict when her weapon would shatter and when it would withstand him meant Isha always had the upperhand in the mental portion of their melee. He could predict and feint as much as he wanted, but he would have to strike Isha if he intended to kill her. Meanwhile, Isha merely defended against him and retreated perfectly whenever her weapon finally gave out, taking in its failure as part of her retreat. Thus, only her weapon was destroyed momentarily before it was reforged into a new evolved and improved form.

At this rate, Isha's spear would reach its final form, and whatever plan she had been fomenting in her alien brain would come to fruition.

Whether it was good or bad, he could not foresee, but he still saw the same two possibilities for humanity he saw on the Bucephelus before him.

The island across the ocean, and the stone coffin that turned into a crystal prison.

Quite frankly, he didn't know which outcome led to which. It was possible through some twisted trap his victory was what entombed him in that new future Isha brought with her, but as long as Isha rejected his plan to save humanity he could only act against her in order to complete it.

The ground before the Emperor opened, and he retracted his touch from it to allow Isha to burst out towards him. His objective was her death, and not to delay her. The faster she approached him, the faster she would attack, and the faster he could counter-attack.

"Paradoxical problem solving." Isha smirked as she shot out of the ground at him. "You're no longer just a charging bull anymore."

It was a contradictory conclusion that the Emperor reached; pulling back in order to draw her in so he could go to the next step of killing her faster. At the same time, he put her at a further disadvantage.

Isha could only attack him if she had her weapon. Therefore, if she allowed him to destroy her spear, he would proceed towards the Psychomatons while she reforged another one and eventually reach them. Thus, she could not afford to allow her weapon to be destroyed, despite that being the method by which she improved it.

Even if she allowed her weapon to be destroyed, and attacked him barehanded, that would only work to the Emperor's advantage.

Retreat to attack. Forced offensive resulting in compulsory conservatism that would stifle Isha's progress.

Contradicting concepts that led to the outcome the Emperor would benefit from most.

"Don't you have some other insult to throw at me?" The Emperor snorted as he blocked her first stab with his sword, binding the two blades together, and struck out with his talons.

"Why?" Isha snorted as she twisted her body sideways, avoiding his talons as she shoved her spear forwards, sparking against his blade. "These actions are in perfect alignment with what you are. To call it underhanded or unfair would be like being angry at a rock for being hard or calling a dog a mutt." She shoved her spear with both hands, forcing his sword out of the way as she stepped onto his knee, burning her foot, and kicked off to bring her other knee rocketing towards his face. "You think of yourself as the cheat here, but rest assured, I have watched my beloved Eldanesh do far worse."

"You called them your children." The Emperor retorted, referring to the Psychomatons, as he twisted his head while leaning sideways simultaneously, causing Isha's knee to only tear the collar of his chest plate. Smoke rose from where his armor contacted her bare skin, but she continued past him with her remaining momentum. However, even as she traveled past his ear, he spun around, swinging at her with his clenched left gauntlet.

"And I stand between them and you because of that, but I cannot insult you for your actions." A green barrier appeared at her back, deforming like a pillow and dissipating his strike, slowing his fist long enough for Isha to travel past him. "Your actions are made to survive, and from that perspective there is no good or evil in my eyes." She twirled mid air, preparing to slash with her spear only to retract as the Emperor's sword prepared to meet her weapon. "I merely oppose you because I do not like what you do. Not because you are evil and I am good."

"This is what the hero does." Her feet dug into the dirt as she landed before launching herself at him again. "No matter the cost, they achieve victory. Even in death, martyrdom is the prize they claim with cold fingers. There is no good or evil in that, merely victory or defeat."

Survival of the fittest. That was the mercy Isha allowed.

Her own hero, Eldanesh, sent his own species into the grinders of war many times. Each time, his hands caused the deaths of many, but he and his species survived every battle.

After the War in Heaven, when the Krork he had allied with appeared too aggressive, he tricked, lied, flattered, and lost on purpose in order to fatten them with so much confidence that they began to tear at each other; destroying them as a species and devolving their genetic code and culture to the point only tangled garbage was left.

Those acts and many others were not done honorably or sincerely, but all of them were eventually forgiven by the mother of the Aeldari.

Thus, the mother who wept for the suffering of the Psychomatons stood between them and the Master of Mankind without angry insults or harsh words. She could both forgive and never allow his actions at the same time.

Neoth felt something pass through him, another concept forced onto him from Isha resonated within his own psyche.

The single line that was the spectrum between hero and villain, depending on perspective, swayed and bent. Then, the two opposite ends twisted, slammed into each other, and were welded together with golden sparks forming a single circle with no inside or outside.

Hero or villain, they may walk in opposite directions, but the role each character played in every story of humanity pushed his species forwards. They existed on opposite sides of the circle, diametrically opposed to the other, but even as they faced away from each other, their feet rotated the contorted circle in the same direction.

No, it was not just a circular möbius strip they moved, but a golden wheel that rotated around the axle of humanity. This burning core at the center of the wheel occasionally sends up blazing comets from it that trail flaming tails behind them like the spokes of a bicycle tire as another hero or heroine joined with the God of Heroes.

He was still the Anathema. He was still both hero and villain, but he was no longer conflicted about what he was.

He was the God of humanity's Heroes, and the eternal symbol of their progress. Within him was their entire history, with all their failures and all their successes.

Whatever humanity did, whatever mistakes they made, they were still worthy.

Neoth turned away from Isha, and proceeded towards the Psychomatons again.

Isha charged towards him, but was forced back by a series of blows that threatened to cut through her spear. But, even as she retreated away from him, Neoth did not give chase. He merely turned away from her, and proceeded towards Isha's remaining children.

He proceeded forwards, but his passage was no longer that of a berserk steam engine; boiler on the brink of bursting open from overheating. There was only a being of pure determination that would not relent in its purpose.

"How does it feel to have a portion of your sanity restored, Neoth?" Isha called out at the golden armored figure turned away from her.

"It only makes me doubt yours." He retorted as he slowly accelerated forwards, increasing his pace from a fast walk to a brisk jog. "Whatever you do, I cannot stop."

"True." Isha smirked, and her spear split apart into multiple sections with a flick of her wrist. "But, at the very least your choices have increased from simply crashing into a wall or smashing through it."

"Then can you stop me?" Neoth called out as he broke out into a run.

"That's a choice you'll have to make yourself." Isha laughed as she flicked the whip her spear had turned into towards Neoth, wrapping around his sword arm and pulling him back towards her as she leveraged the handle and chains of the whip around the elbow of her other arm. "I told you before, 'It is you who sees the crossroad that must choose which direction to go in order to end up in the same place.'"

"Stop repeating yourself!" Neoth cried out as he wrapped the chain links of the whip around his arm and pressed his sword against it in preparation to cut it. "As long as I am human, and you are an alien, there can be no peace between us!"

"Do not worry, I'm not that idealistic." Isha chuckled as she unwrapped the whip from her elbow, slackening it before flicking it again to snatch the other end out of Neoth's grip. "But, my objective is not to confuse you. Besides, it has the opposite effect of slowing you down. You accelerate towards your goal the greater number of uncertainties exist."

"Then what is your plan, Isha?!" Neoth roared as he jumped away from her again, free from her whip, closing the distance with the Psychomatons. He was in range to fire a psychic beam, and it would pierce right through Wraithbone and blackstone bodies of the Psychomatons there. They would not be able to avoid him with their missing and broken limbs. "You said that the act of preventing unnecessary deaths and the act of saving the greatest number of people are effectively the same thing, and I agree! I do not want to kill needlessly, but I cannot stop without an alternate answer!"

The whip retracted back into a spear, then arched itself while sending strings of psychic energy between point and base to form a longbow; psychic energy gathering in the center forming 3 bone white arrows with golden points.

"Even if I told you now, you wouldn't stop." Isha called out as she let loose all three arrows, guiding them along separate paths with her psychic touch as she leapt forwards, chasing them as her bow reformed itself into a spear. "Afterall, I only came up with my plan after seeing yours."

"Then there is no other path for us." Neoth turned to face Isha grimly as she and her arrows approached. All four attacks came from above, the sides and straight towards him near simultaneously. Isha traveled only milliseconds behind the arrows.

"I told you already, there is only one path." Isha smiled as she shot towards him. "For better or for worse, you and I are stuck together for the foreseeable future."

Neoth's sword slashed through the arrow on his right with his sword straight down the middle from point to fletchings, and his taloned gauntlet caught the one coming from his left. A psychic bolt deflected the one from above, allowing him to tilt his head to the side to let it shoot past his ear.

Milliseconds later, Isha's spear punched through his chest plate, then stopped at the skin underneath; the flesh and blood of the God of Heroes containing the now unwavering core of the original Truth held firm against the alien copy.

Neoth kicked out at Isha with his right boot, and fired a series of psychic bolts that twisted like drill bits at the same time.

Isha's green brown barrier reappeared, but the soft surface was pulled taut as Neoth's psychic beams drilled into it. Each beam rotated counter to the one opposite to it, stretching the flexible membrane and allowing the full force of the golden boot to tear right through it slamming into Isha's chest.

There was a crack, and the Aeldari goddess was flung backwards, bouncing across the ground like a skipping stone thrown across a lake, sending clouds of debris with each bound.

1 END

Neoth's breath was heavy with exhaustion as he watched the alien eventually come to a rest far off in the distance and obscured in a dust cloud. His right gauntlet crushed the arrow still held between his talons before yanking out the spear still trapped in his armor and snapping it in half.

It was only because Isha traveled milliseconds behind her arrows that he had gambled with his life.

Isha's version of his Truth came from himself before she had forced her memories upon him, and before he reconciled what he was. Thus, it would be weaker than what he was now, just like Kurnous's spear was a weaker version of the original. The fact that his sword could cut through her spear even though it was gilded with his Truth, and the fact that he cut through one of the gold tipped arrows Isha had shot at him provided further evidence. He hadn't expected his skin to be what stopped her, but it didn't matter now. He had won the gamble.

The hole in his chest plate closed as Neoth recovered his strength.

He could still feel Isha's presence in the distance, but she wasn't moving. Whether it was another trap, or she was so injured she was no longer mobile he couldn't tell.

For a brief moment, he couldn't decide whether to proceed towards the Psychomatons to force Isha to attack him again, or walk towards the goddess.

Far off in the distance, he heard a cough, then Isha's voice sent a shiver down his neck.

"You wavered."

2

The dust settled slowly as Isha's words reached him. The goddess was lying on the ground with her back to the sky, looking up at him with a pained smile. Her voice was shivering, as if she couldn't get enough air to properly speak, but her silvery eyes were unwaveringly fixed on Neoth's own brown eyes.

"If you wanted to kill me, you should have proceeded towards my children. That was your solution in order to shift the balance in your favor, but you wavered."

Neoth tried to turn away from her, back to the Psychomatons, but his feet wouldn't move. The remains of the shadows that he had discarded, all the information that Isha had forced onto him he could not understand were wrapping around him again.

"It would be hard not to feel sympathy or empathy for the thing that helped you, and the alien you once sought help from. The insane madman would not be able to hear my words with his ears filled with his own crazed laughter, but you can. Those emotions will be enough to connect you to the remains of what I gave you."

Neoth grimaced and struggled against the shadows, slowly lifting himself out of them as they sucked and sapped at his limbs, like the thick wet substrate that makes quicksands.

"For the briefest of moments, you saw me as a maternal figure." Isha's voice regained its strength as she slowly pushed herself to her feet.

A pained glare was all Neoth could manage. He had been conflicted for the briefest of moments, unable to understand whether the creature before him was here to help or hurt him. To tell the truth, he wasn't sure whether this was a malicious act either.

All he could tell was that, whatever she was planning, it linked back to that massive machine mentioned in the information he couldn't comprehend. It composed a large part of her being, and he visualized it as being made of obsidian alloys and leaking black tar. However, it was not made of any actual material. What it was actually created from was emotions; the blackest and darkest emotions imaginable condensed and hardened into a horrid construct.

"Don't worry, this isn't enough to enslave or affect you in any permanent way." Isha chuckled as she dusted herself off. "But it is enough for you to understand the rest of what I gave you."

The emotion slowly drained away from her face.

"You wanted to know of my plan, but you wouldn't be able to understand it without knowing what sort of god I am."

Isha's wide open eyes began to water, filling with blackish red liquid the color of partially clotted blood.

"My children know what I am instinctively, and their memories now lie within you, Neoth. They remember me with every fiber of their being. I just needed the right emotions to form within you to connect them."

The tears in her eyes overflowed, trickling down her cheeks and dripping down her chin into her raised palm.

"Synesthesia is what you call it, isn't it? The psychological illusions of sense brought up by conjoined memories, like remembering a person after seeing the place you often met them, or imagining gentle forest sunlight when hearing the conjoined songs of bright birds. That emotion you felt will allow you to access everything else, although you are actively resisting it."

The trickles of tears grew, forming rivers that washed down her face and pooled in the open hand held in front of her beast.

"Fine then. Allow me to assist you with a lullaby."

Isha's mouth opened, and the lullaby she sang to the child on the slave carriers slithered its way into Neoth's ears, connecting his synapses with the shadows, allowing everything to be understood and experienced in a single instance.

Hush my child, close your eyes.

The time has come for you to rise.

Bone and body made unbreakable.

Heart and mind made indestructible.

Hush my child, close your eyes.

Forever shall I be at your side.

Rest and slumber, dream and doubt.

I shall love you, where they shall not.

Hush my child, close your eyes.

For when you wake, you shall fight.

This war is yours, this strife your right.

And when you cry, I will see your spite.

Hate me. Hate me, with all your heart.

My tear will fill with all your might.

Hush my child, close your eyes.

Your story ends, but not your life.

"Now, Neoth." Isha said with an empty smile as burgundy tears continued to flow from her wide open eyes. "Watch a brief moment from the War in Heaven."

The blackish red liquid that flowed from Isha's eyes pooled and congealed in her palm as it began to crystalize, slowly growing into a glowing teardrop the size of her head that bathed the ground around her in red and black lights.