A/N (1/3): Apologies for the long wait. I was trying to build up a stock of chapters, or at least draft enough of them so posts could keep up at a reasonable pace. Daily updates are gone for the foreseeable future (maybe weekly?), and if this takes up more of my time, I might need a to support myself. Anyways, hope you enjoy.

A/N (2/3): Special thanks to Skyborne for acting as a sounding board, and reviewing some of the sections of the story. Your feedback was greatly appreciated.

A/N (3/3): I've added some links with music to the Spacebattles version of this story. The music notes are linked, but just to reference them all:

1:F/SN HA OST: Legend
2:F/SN HA OST: Back to the night
3:F/SN HA OST: Stranger

"The bridge crew will now move to the secondary command bridge, My Lord." The human, Lysander, announced while saluting the Master of Mankind.

Isha watched as the mortal humans and Custodes exited the bridge, leaving only her and the Emperor.

"What are you planning?" She said, after only the two of them were left.

"I merely asked for privacy while you call and speak to your people." The Emperor stepped down from the raised platform of the command deck that held the holomap and captain's chair onto the one below where the various technicians, comms officers, and other crewmen necessary to operate the bridge usually worked. Raising a taloned hand, golden lights began to rise out of him. "Additionally, this vessel is the bait for when your efforts fail. The bridge is the first place your people will attack. You and I can survive most things, but not them."

"And is that why you told them it would be your 'unique abilities' that would call my children?" Isha crossed her arms, tone accusatory.

"There are certain things people should be ignorant of."

She scoffed at that. What poor efforts to conceal her divinity. If he wanted to do so, he should have never let anyone talk to her. Life was what she embodied. Even to an alien race, her nature seeped out; whispering to them, calling to them.

"Was that the reason you erased my name?"

"Names hold power. Not only in the immaterium, or Enuncia." The Emperor replied as the golden energies gathering around him formed a golden sphere that rippled, forming various tunnels between its infinite surfaces, a map of Warp portals that connected different starsystems; systems she had seen the Emperor go over while he was at the holomap. "Giving a name to something is the first step to understanding it; to empathize or sympathize with it." The golden sphere expanded, matching the points drawn on itself to the space around them, turning invisible as it spread out through the walls of the ship.

"Your specialities lie in all life. Even without knowing your name or nature, it affects others. It draws them to you, and distracts them." The Emperor said, turning back to her. "I would prefer them to remain my subjects, than have them become an obstacle."

"Is that why you objectify me? Refer to me as 'it' and Catumen?" Isha snorted. Those were the first steps to alienate the other. To remove the mast basic identifiers that made them. She was a goddess, not an object. Neither was she an ambassador. She was Isha, and her many titles. By hiding her identity, and removing her gender, the Emperor made her out to be something unrecognizable.

It was a process Isha remembered well.

Humanity arrogantly called the process dehumanization, but in truth it was the destruction of empathy through the removal of the moral burden of knowledge. Striking a rock with a hammer does not invoke images of suffering. If one could make something the same as a rock, then one could easily swing at the head of a babe.

"Your people erased the name of you and your kind millenia ago." The Emperor snorted. "I find it hard to believe that my efforts to keep my people ignorant of your nature to be as equally offensive."

Isha's fingers dug into her arms. "I had no choice but to endure that."

"And do you have a choice now?"

"No… I do not."

A bitter silence remained between them; Isha turning her head away from the Emperor as he climbed up the steps back to her.

"I will stabilize a path between us and your people. Call them, and direct them here. After that, you may speak with them as you wish."

Isha nodded, not trusting herself to speak any further.

The Emperor's eyes glowed, and infinitely small beams of light radiated from his aura, piercing multiple microscopic holes that burned away into the immaterium.

Beyond those holes, were the lost children of the Core worlds of the Empire.

Isha lifted her head, and sang. Silent tunes that could not be heard. Noises that could not be measured. But, the meaning struck at the soul of all those beyond the portals. For the first time in over 50,000 years, Isha felt the souls of her children once again.

The contact was brief, but it was enough for her to grasp their individual psychic signatures, the silent names she would need to call to impart knowledge to them.

Once it was done, Isha closed her mouth, and the Emperor's light disappeared.

"Now we wait." His tone was almost expectant, like a fisher who had just cast a well laden hook.

Regardless of whether she succeeded or failed, the Emperor now had what he wanted.

Isha crouched down, arms crossed across her stomach. The brief touch with her children's souls had brought up dark memories of their history; of the deeds of Shaimesh the poisoner, and the 12,000 years of cultural destruction and depravity that followed.

Her children had forgotten who she was, who all of their gods were. For the past 6000 years, only Cegorach's Harlequin worshippers and the youngest of her children who had yet to feel Shaimesh's poison ever bothered to remember her or the Aeldari pantheon.

The Aeldari of the Core Worlds, and those of the city called Commorragh all followed in the teachings of mortal beings they called Dark Muses.

Many had forgotten the term's meaning. They believed it referred to a creator or leader of passions that went beyond the mundane. A person who knew a truth that was too hard or terrible for the normal mind to understand.

In truth, it was a simple cruel joke. A muse was a concept of creation and inspiration in the arts and sciences.

A Dark Muse was the opposite.

They were the usurpation and destruction of heritage and knowledge; themselves deceived by their own self-perception of enlightenment.

—-

—-

The Dark Muses' story starts with the first Dark Muse; Shaimesh, the Lord of Poisons. 1

Although the fake followers that remained after him likened him to the Cosmic Serpent; Saim-Hann, Shaimesh, like all Dark Muses that came after him, he was a mortal Aeldari. Born in the 15th millenia of the universe, he came into a time of Aeldari expansionism and imperialism.

However, Shaimesh was not blessed with the same amount of psychic power as his peers, and was forced to live in poverty for most of his life.

Instead, he had a burning passion for knowledge of the unknown; especially Xenobiology.

What he earned he spent traveling across the various colonies and exploratory worlds across the stars, endlessly studying and researching new creatures and cultures for much of his first 1000 years of life. Others his age would focus on their psychic abilities, reaching out to reacquire their memories of past lives from the Sea of Souls, and divining the future for themselves.

Shaimesh was not troubled by this difference between himself and his fellow Aeldari. He enjoyed his research and his adventures far too much, crafting devices, chemicals, and technologies he could use to replace the psychic abilities he didn't have.

But, one day, after borrowing too much for a trip to a different planet, Shaimesh offered a nerve stimulant he had created to mimic the enhanced reaction times of his psychic brethren as collateral for the debt. For Shaimesh, it allowed him to catch up with the slowest of the other Aeldari. In the hands of a normal Aeldari, it was a psychostimulant that increased sensations to the point of near eternity.

This stimulant ended up in the hands of one of the nobles of the Aeldari empire; actual aristocrats with real political power, and greater psychic abilities at the time.

Shaimesh was taken to the noble, and after entertaining him and his family with tales of his adventures, and the various delicacies he had collected from the creatures he had investigated, Shaimesh found himself a patron in the nobility.

From then on, Shaimesh had no worries for money. His patron paid his traveling expenses, his requests for research equipment, and provided the spaces needed for him to keep all his specimens.

In return, Shaimesh provided whatever new potion, pumice, or perfume he found or developed during his travels.

Those were the happiest moments of his life; traveling from world to world with Vileth his pilot, Hekatii the archeologist, Qa'leh his guard, and Lhilitu the daughter of his noble patron and future consort.

Many others came to hear of his tales, and sample the things he brought back. The Feast of Shaimesh was originally an eating contest where he would bring back the most strange and bizarre things he had eaten during his travels; only some were poisonous.

Eventually, Shaimesh's journey came to the end of the Aeldari empire at the time.

Although gifted with the knowledge of restructuring the Webway, the Aeldari were never taught how to create one. For that, the limits to their empire eventually became that of the available gates left over from the War in Heaven.

Ever hungry for adventure, Shaimesh petitioned and pestered his patron noble for future expansions of the empire, until one day the noble replied mockingly.

'All that knowledge, and you still haven't reached Saim-Hann(enlightenment)?'

The comment was meant to be a joke, but it struck Shaimesh like a thunderbolt.

He had run into many barriers; monetary, social, physical, but overcame them all with his wits, his knowledge, and his ingenuity.

Why couldn't this problem be solved like all the others?

But, Shaimesh was no psyker. He never saw the immaterium, nor did he know how to pass through it.

So he gathered all his friends and followers to help him.

He pestered Vileth to teach him what it was like navigating through the immaterium.

He rummaged around with Hekatii in her piles of legally and illegally acquired artifacts looking around for legends and stories of the gods.

He had Qa'leh watch his back as he snuck into ancient libraries and temples for stories about the War in Heaven.

And he asked Lhilitu to show him what it was like to see the Sea of Souls by sharing his mind with hers.

Many others helped him. Those with weak psychic abilities; those among the lower castes of society, aspired to be like him, to live in a world where they too could live freely like he did.

After another thousand years, Shaimesh replicated the feat of a god. The creation of a new Webway.

He bound it to the existing portals, and linked it to thousands of new systems and stars; creating the great trading port of Commorragh.

A new social order grew there. A place where anyone with any skills could find a place to belong. A place no longer bound by the order of the Aeldari empire.

For this act, Shaimesh's patron was tried for treason against the empire, and he himself was imprisoned with his followers.

However, that was not the end for Shaimesh. 2

The many potions, pumices, and perfumes Shaimesh had provided to his patron over thousands of years had addicted the entire nobility. Things that allowed Shaimesh to barely keep up with his fellow Aeldari sent those already gifted with psychic abilities to heights of sensation unimaginable by Shaimesh.

Knowing that he was the source of all of the concoctions they enjoyed, they tortured him and his followers to force him to divulge his secrets.

Shaimesh knew he would be killed regardless, so he planned to take his secrets with him. The addiction these nobles had afflicted on themselves with his work would be his revenge. Their memories of pleasure and sensations would be passed on between their reincarnations, forever tainting their lives.

'If we are to suffer eternally, then we shall do the same to you.' said one of the nobles.

One by one, Shaimesh's followers were imprisoned in blackstone coffins, souls forever trapped, never to return to the Sea of Souls; unable to reincarnate. Each coffin was sent out into space, to drift forever out of the sight of any psyker; any Aeldari.

But, the nobles didn't want to suffer. They had acquired too much power, and life without Shaimesh's products was unimaginable.

So, they decided to use one of their own to break him; Lhilitu.

She was drowned in every pleasure chemical, aphrodisiac, and sense stimulant they had from Shaimesh. Then they locked her in a sunless cell, and waited for the addiction to destroy her.

When Shaimesh saw Lhilitu, she was a broken woman.

Her nails were gone from trying to scratch her way out of her cell.

Her skin was discolored from the lack of sunlight.

And her dead eyes showed him the damage that had been done to her mind.

'If we are to suffer eternally, then we shall do the same to you.' the noble said again, and Shaimesh knew that if he took his secrets with him, Lhilitu would suffer the same fate as the nobles that had wronged him.

Shaimesh gave them what they wanted on one condition. He would only give his knowledge to Lhilitu; the only way he could guarantee her safety.

The nobles agreed, for they had already bound Lhilitu's soul with psychic spells. She was their slave, and could never raise a hand against them.

So, for one last time, Shaimesh shared his mind with Lhilitu.

After it was shown Lhilitu could replicate Shaimesh's work, he was locked in his own blackstone coffin, and thrown into the void.

The treacherous brother of Saim-Hann, Shaimesh. That was the title they gave him.

The Aeldari who betrayed his empire, while recreating the work of a god.

The Aeldari who poisoned its people against its rulers.

The Aeldari who addicted the entire ruling class with his inventions, and infected the lower castes with his ideology.

But, Shaimesh did not accept his doom quietly.

In that last moment with Lhilitu, he gave her all his knowledge of chemistry, potion making, and biology.

The knowledge to replicate his work for the nobles, and the knowledge to cure herself of her addiction.

The knowledge that had kept him alive, and had been his passion for living.

It took years of pretending to be a dutiful doddering slave, but Lhilitu eventually freed herself from the chemical bonds that enslaved her. But, the psychic bonds remained unbroken. Even if she killed one, the others would realize what had happened and end her.

She was already being forced to educate a new group of potion makers that would be her eventual replacement.

So she used Shaimesh's knowledge to win her freedom.

Lhilitu slipped the same pleasure chemicals, aphrodisiacs, and sense stimulants that had enslaved her into the food and drink of her replacements.

She used Shaimesh's own stories to help her, pretending that the Feast of Shaimesh was an opportunity to experiment on themselves and on each other with poisons of different combinations.

Once she had created her own servants and slaves out of the men and women who would replace her. Lhilitu paralyzed the minds and bodies of all the nobles during one of their banquets, and slit every one of their throats with a blade poisoned in such a way that it would provide the most amount of pain imaginable.

Free after almost a century of slavery, Lhilitu ran to Commorragh.

The nobles would reincarnate eventually, and they would be looking for her when they returned.

Returning to the trade port Shaimesh had built, Lhilitu began to create an army of her own to defend against the coming of the nobles.

She recruited them with pleasure concoctions, threatened them with poisons, and tortured paralyzed victims to show the rest what would happen to those who betrayed her.

She enhanced the various devices Shaimesh used to capture his biological specimens, creating paralytic barbs and poisoned blades that stimulated nerve endings to the extreme, preventing their victims from striking out with their psychic abilities.

The new social order of Commorragh was swiftly replaced by a society with two choices; obedience or death. A grim reflection of the imperial society of the Aeldari nobles Lhilitu had been born into, and had just escaped.

It didn't take long for the same addiction that poisoned Shaimesh's enemies to flow in the veins of the people of Commorragh; poisons and pleasure chemicals made by his lover's own two hands with his own knowledge.

Seeing what she had done, Lhilitu was driven insane with guilt. Although no longer vulnerable to addiction thanks to Shaimesh, she no longer wanted to understand or see what her fear had done to the very city Shaimesh had built.

Not wanting to think about or even remember anything, Lhilitu descended into the pleasures of the flesh as much as she could, but total oblivion never claimed her. Every bed-partner she took left without their eyes. For Lhilitu would bite them out, as her nailess hands could not claw them out. They were not Shaimesh's eyes, and she could not forgive them for that.

After years of madness and unfulfilling hedonism, Lhilitu locked herself in a blackstone coffin of her own; in order to suffer eternally as Shaimesh did, to be one with him in his pain, eternal penance for her betrayal of him and all he had stood for.

When the nobles reincarnated, they found no trace of Lhilitu; only pleasure seeking covens, and macabre poison makers; the remains of the army Lhilitu had made for Commorragh.

It was here that the idea of the Dark Muse first arose, for in their search for Lhilitu the nobles could only find the tales of her most depraved acts, and cruelest deeds.

No trace of the lover of Shaimesh who had created a new Webway remained. Instead, all the people remembered of her was a cruel whore who tortured her lovers in the most diabolical ways imaginable before disappearing into the void; rumored to have gone into oblivion to find new ways of despoilment and fornication.

Lhilitu, Consort of the Void. That was all that remained.

Any who followed her, followed what they thought she represented through her deeds. A hedonistic wytch of poison and blade bound to the void for all eternity.

Total destruction of a person's memory was a rare thing to the Aeldari. With reincarnation, no lie to a person's tale could really stick, for the individual would eventually come back to life to rectify it.

But for Shaimesh and his followers, no reincarnation existed for them.

So they chose to use his name and the names of his followers to forever prevent the rise of another Shaimesh.

Young inquisitive minds were indoctrinated into the Dark Muse of Shaimesh, exposing them to the craft of poison making and flesh-sculpting. Perversions of the potioncraft and xenobiology that Shaimesh had loved.

Veleth's skills as a pilot were reduced to the base combat skills required to protect the empire. The dream of exploration and eternal expansion were replaced with the concepts of aerial domination, and the picking apart of lesser creatures from the sky.

Hekatii's troves of artifacts were thrown in the pits of Commorragh, her love for knowledge replaced by the simple need to steal and take items of religious and cultural significance from others.

Qa'leh's strengths with the blade were twisted to those of self-aggrandizement. The woman who trained and fought to protect others now only fought for herself and her own glory in their stories.

For every aspect that could have led to the rise of another Shaimesh, another Dark Muse was created to destroy that same aspect.

Empathy. Curiosity. Adventure. Heritage.

Even the knowledge of their gods became a threat, for it was that knowledge that had allowed Shaimesh to replicate a divine feat, and become as elevated as he had.

Temples of Asuryan, Khaine, Morai-Heg, Isha, Kurnous, Lileath and all the other gods were first left behind, treated as archaic and uninteresting. Then, as the destruction of Shaimesh and all the future people that could follow in his footsteps continued, the twisted followers of Hekatii came as iconoclasts, stealing and pillaging religious idols, artifacts, and scripture from temples and shrines, before burning them down.

'We have no need for gods! We are the gods incarnate!'

That was the cry that sounded throughout the streets.

With their ability to reincarnate and recover memories from their previous life, the Aeldari believed that they could live as long as the gods.

But…

Without the gods' purpose, or their power.

With their mortal flaws, and limitations.

They eventually descended into a state that was lesser than the lowest scum in the universe.

The 6000 years of destruction continued, even when the reason for it all was forgotten.

It was no longer destruction done out of fear, but destruction for the sake of freedom.

Freedom from memory.

Freedom from responsibility.

Freedom from inhibition.

Even the first nobles who created the first Dark Muses forgot why they did what they did. The insanity they had started now infected all their subjects and themselves.

Soon, even their titles and responsibilities that came with power become cumbersome and restrictive.

They became nobles in name and name alone, and the guards and servants they had either left to find their own sweet satisfactions, or remained to fulfill some masochistic urge in their service to them.

Now, with no one to guide the destruction and madness they had wrought, new Dark Muses arose organically from the muck. New idols to replace the ones they had destroyed, for now it was boredom that threatened the Aeldari's sole purpose for being.

Pleasure. Endless Pleasure.

Whether it came from the catharsis of suffering, or the simple stimulation of nerve endings.

Whether it came from the glory of the arena, and the screams of thousands of bloodthirsty onlookers from the stands.

Whether it came from the satisfaction of macabre curiosity and the slicing sensation of the scalpel.

Whether it came from the superiority complex of the iconoclasts, eager to lord their perceived divinity by destroying the temples and shrines of Aeldari and alien gods.

It was the never ending pursuit of fulfilling life without purpose, life without limitation, life without balance.

And that was how almost all Aeldari lived for the next 6000 years.

6000 years of destruction.

6000 years of despoilment.

12,000 years spent chained to an arboreal throne weeping and raging as Isha writhed and thrashed against her bonds, cracking even the bark and trunk of her own throne.

'Let me speak to them Asuryan! If we can correct this now, we can save them!'

She had cried to the figure in silver armor of chains and fire, only to be met with silence.

'Lileath, show them what will happen! Tell them of what awaits them!'

And Lilieath did so with tears in her eyes, only for the message to fall on deaf ears, or drive those who saw them to further madness.

'Kurnous, Morai-Heg, Atharti, Hekarti, Khaine! Someone! Someone save them!'

For the first 6000 years she had screamed endlessly for the other gods to act, knowing that they were bound by the same edict she was.

Her cries achieved nothing.

After the destruction of everything the Aeldari had stood for was complete, all she could do for the next 6000 years was suffer as she watched her children grow a new god with their empty meaningless lives.

This was the poison of Shaimesh.

The unintended curse he left upon all the Aeldari who had tired of life.

The loss of past purpose replaced with present pleasure and now followed by a future of eternal torment in the belly of She who Thirsts.

In the end, only the Aeldari with young curious souls, educated by the eternal harlequin followers of Cegorach, thought of her or any of her family.

They heeded Lilleath's warnings; either becoming wild Exodites, travelers of the stars as traders, or refugees from the empire leaving at the last minute in their Craftworlds.

They had saved themselves, and although their souls were still in Hir grasp, they were on the path to salvation. They did not need Isha at the moment.

But, the children she had called could not save themselves. They had spent too many life times, too many reincarnations in the same rut to change their ways.

Gods exist to save mortals from what they cannot save themselves from.

That was why they appeared during the War in Heaven; to fight alongside the mortal Aeldari against the Star Gods that could not be understood or defeated with their hands.

That was the duty, and purpose of a god.

If she were mortal, she could have hated them. She could have blamed them for the death of her family, the destruction of their culture, and themselves.

But, that could not be forgiven. A god without its people was no better than a daemon.

Even if she could not forgive them, she would still have to try to save them.

And in her infinite memory from her position in the Sea of Souls, she had seen them all at the very beginning.

She could still remember the true first breath in their long reincarnating lives they took, the true first step, the true first word.

Even if she could not see their entire life after that, and especially after they had forgotten her, she could still remember the innocent mind that came into this world; before it took the long road down damnation.

That was the story of Shaimesh the poisoner; treacherous brother to Saim-hann the Cosmic Serpent.

A story that existed only in divine memory, and the plays of the harlequin.

Scientist
Adventurer
Good friend
Faithful lover

Betrayed by those he served.
Forgotten by those who followed him.

Bound eternally in a blackstone coffin, forever lost from the sight of god and mortal.

—-

'I once asked Morai Heg, whether another path was there.' Isha thought to herself, back on the bridge of the Bucephelus. 3

"There are many paths, daughter." The old Crone cackled, as her crows looked down from their various perches. "Paths where Shaimesh was eaten by Q'orl during one of his adventures. Paths where Veleth misjudged the distance between asteroids, and crashed on his first training flight. Paths where Hekatii or Lhilitu were never even born, or even their parents for that matter." Morai Heg pulled various wisps of strings out of her rune skin pouch as she spoke, fates that could have happened but didn't.

As the strands of fate came from the pouch, more and more strings were dragged out. Some were wisps like the ones in Morai Heg's fingers. Others were bright full strands, things that had happened, and were happening. Then, at the end of all those fates of various opacity, was a single black knot.

"She who Thirsts comes from all Aeldari." Morai Heg spoke, swinging the tangled mess of fates that formed the black knot in front of Isha's face. "Shaimesh is just one route to Hir. It could have been any one of your children that bore his titles, or it could be none of them; merely the slow death after achieving everything they needed or wanted."

"Do you validate what they've done then?" Isha asked angrily. If what Morai Heg said was true, if Shaimesh could come from any Aeldari, then that justified the fear that caused the nobles to prevent the coming of another Shaimesh, even though it was self-defeating.

"We are gods, Isha. It is not our duty to manage the matters of mortals. We exist only to provide our truth and power when they need it. I am the goddess of fate, but my fingers only feel the strings, not pull them. Otherwise I would only be a puppet master, and Cegorach is enough for that." The old Crone shrugged, before cackling to herself. "Besides, that would be boring."

"Then, are we all doomed?" Isha could feel her heart blacken and her vision darkened.

"Do not worry daughter." The old Crone said as she put her remaining wrinkled hand on Isha's shoulder. "We may die, but you are life itself. You should know better than anyone, life always finds a way; and children always outgrow their parents someday."

'Mother…' Isha buried her face in her arms.

Blaring alarms brought Isha back from her reminiscences.

Red lights criss-crossed the bridge, and the holomap flared to life; multiple red circles with alarm signs attached to them appeared in front of the Bucephelus.

"Warp signature detected. Multiple signals incoming." A mechanical voice reported. "Unknown signatures. IFF tag assigned. Classification: Bogie. Activating ship-wide audio systems."

Isha felt the ship move beneath her as its powerful engines roared to life, turning it to the purple portals opening up in space.

"General Quarters, General Quarters." The ship's voice echoed through every hall and every deck. "All hands man your battle stations. Xenos contact imminent."

Isha's children had arrived.