Entering the Tau metropolis along the coastline of T'gor was a subtle shift between a lush green forest of pine trees to a low-lying series of prefabricated housing units laid out in a perfect grid pattern. At first glance, everything seemed calm and quiet, yet… by the same metric oddly 'off.' It took the Fire Warrior a few moments to determine what exactly was wrong with his surroundings because honestly… it was the last thing he expected.

There were no people here. Not just Tau, but no human Guardsmen either. Everything was eerily slient, and an ominous calm filled the air leaving only the sounds of crackling fires and idling engines to fill the vacuum of noise. This was despite the numerous primitive bulky Imperial war machines blocking off certain streets. It just seemed wrong. The outlying areas of the coastal city were just empty.

Kais continued to drive his captured enemy vehicle down the perfectly straight city streets as allusions to combat damage appeared randomly around the surrounding vista. Blood stains upon the roads and lawns, burning pyres of… what? Kais stopped his vehicle, stood upon his hooves, and craned his neck to see down a nearby alley. What were they burning? Unfortunately, he couldn't tell from his angle. A thick grey haze slowly crept into the heavens blotting out the sun.

Kais jumped for the guard issue vehicle and walked at a slow trot down the alley. The stench of cooking fat made his mouth water as he slowly crept closer to the roaring bonfire blaze, and it wasn't until he was close that he finally noticed them. Bodies, Tau and Gue'la alike, thrown unto the bonfire, burning. Even at fifty paces he could see the blackened charred skin of the corpses cremated down to the meat and bones. Any skin, hair, uniforms, or other form of identifying marks had long since been scorched away from the remains upon the pyre leaving contorted gaping maws moaning in eternal agony.

Kais watched them, his eyes like daggers glaring into the flames, and he saw it… the screaming. They were still alive, waling in pain and sorrow.

He slowly backpedaled down the alley with his stolen Lasrifle at the shoulder one step at a time, scanning the corners for hostile contact. For the first time, he started to hear noise all around him, the sounds of shuffling footsteps, slow, methodical, like infants learning how to walk. Kais turned and ran towards the stolen Imperial vehicle as fast as his feet could carry him, and as he leapt into the driver's seat… they appeared. Men and women, Tau and Gue'la alike, all stumbling from the ruins of the suburban utopia which was once part of The Greater Good. They shambled forwards upon gored bodies, broken bleeding limps, skin and hair torn asunder by lances of las fire.

Kais didn't need to think about it. He simply slammed his hooved foot upon the forward movement peddle and ran over the nearest corpse in his attempts to escape. It was a Gue'la woman, missing her right eye. She broke off at the knees and rolled up onto the hood of the vehicle spraying blood like a fountain from her sundered sockets. The Fire Warrior watched the wretched creature press her face against the glass before his face and leave a sickly bloody mouth print from her lips as she tried to eat her way through awning. He instinctively swerved hard to the right causing momentum to throw her off the hood and into a lamp post breaking her undead spine with a crackle.

More of the things were appearing the further Kais went into the city as the lower personal habitat units phased away into towering skyscapers. The sounds of sporadic las fire echoed throughout the broken ruins of once mighty monoliths of Tau engineering.

The city was in bad shape with giant shards of broken metal and masonry collapsed onto the roadways in giant mounds two to three floors high. Smoke trailed from hundreds of bonfires dotting the numerous buildings which due to shattered glass almost seemed skeletal in nature. Yet, the sounds of combat prevailed all around him within the shadows and backdrops of lingering long since passed disaster. It was clear that those still fighting… were survivors rather than an organized army.

Kais continued to drive slowly through the sundered remains of the city, listening to the roaring flames and the cries of the damned as they echoed the frantic fears of numerous last stands. And then… a lone Imperial guardsman dressed in tan combat fatigues and green flak armor stumbled out into the street with his arms raised, one hand holding a lasrifle by the barrel, as he stepped in front of scout vehicle to flag it down, "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!" he yelled. The Fire Warrior thought about running the trooper over and flooring it to escape some sort of unknown encircling trap. However, it was something about the Gue'la's eyes, the fear perhaps, which made him reconsider.

"Identify yourself!" yelled Kais, coming to a stop and rising from his seat while sighting the trooper with his stolen lasrifle. They locked eyes as the guardsman did a double-take down the alley he had just come from and swallowed a knot in his throat.

"Guardsman Janok, 401 Kaltorian Light Foot… I… I… I…" Kais stopped the man before he could piss himself, "Are you alone?"

"Yes sir," simple and to the point.

"Get in," the trooper obeyed, and no sooner than he had hopped into the passenger seat than a small horde of shambling undead erupted from the alley as they sped away. Kais considered things as the guardsman looked over his shoulder at the undead mob before turning back around with a look of immense bitterness.

The trip, or drive… was brief and awkward. Together they sat in silence while slowly moving through the crumbling burning city seemingly abandoned by any military presence. Finally, Kais spoke to break the gulf between them, "I just woke up yesterday," he admitted to Guardsman Janok, "Anything you can tell me…" The Fire Warrior stopped instantly and in annoyance as the human suddenly pressed the barrel of his lasrifle against the side of the Tau's head.

"Pull over." Kais did as he was ordered, and after exhaling sharply from anger turned to face the trooper so that the gun barrel was pressed firmly up against his forehead. The guardsman eyed him nervously, fidgeting in his passenger's seat while keeping the lasrifle leveled against the Fire Warriors head.

"You sure you want to…" the trooper interrupted Kais while motioning with his head, "Get out."

The Fire Warrior raised an inquisitive eyebrow, "Your safety's on," the trooper was just dumb enough to shift his eyes away for that very brief second to check. In that instant Kais rapidly used his left arm to push the rifle away from his forehead. Guardsman Janok panicked and pulled the trigger a fraction too late. Kais's vision distorted wildly as one eye went white and faded into blurry post flash images of awkward shapes, while the other retained perfect clarity of Guardsman Janok being impelled upon a combat talon along the left flank, under the ribs. Blood seeped through the Gue'la's clenched teeth as Kais pulled the talon free and stabbed again except harder and into the exposed side where the flak armor didn't protect the mans liver. A thick and warm trail of crimson trickled down the Fire Warrior's knuckles as he looked the trooper in the eyes.

"Why?" asked the human, bewildered and with a whisper.

Kais nodded disapprovingly, "because you're too stupid to let live."

The Gue'la clenched his jaw in defiance and then with heavy eyes nodded approvingly before he expired. Kais unceremoniously tossed the corpse from his stolen Imperial vehicle and drove away, stopping only briefly while resting his forehead against the steering wheel of the vehicles primitive controls. The Fire Warrior mumbled bitterly to himself and looked in the rearview mirror. What he saw next made his skin crawl and blood freeze.

Standing erect in the center of the road, bleeding crimson vita from his still torn wounds was the Gue'la trooper known as Janok with black bulging veins protruding from under his skin. The undead trooper smiled; actually smiled, while flashing two dark orbs for eyes, and then started to slowly walk towards Kais's vehicle with a slow yet determined stride all the while encompassed within the shadowed awning of a skyscraper's bulk.

The Fire Warrior knew that the human was possessed, but by what remained unclear. He could have stayed and killed it, but some part of him, some small remaining part of his numb survival instincts made him reconsider. So, Kais drove away and watched in the rearview mirror of the scout vehicle as the trooper vanished behind a wall of smoke blowing over the street. Part of Kais thought himself cowardly as he shied away from the unnecessary confrontation. Another part of him understood the rationality of fearing the dwindling daylight given his experiences within the hospital. He had hoped to reach the coastline, and meet this human who claimed an ability to render aide against this thing… this thing which was chasing him, but it was becoming evident that time was going to run out before that happened.

It was growing late into the evening with shards of red light ebbing through the smoke clouded sky as Kais continued a winding path through the battle worn city, the tires from his stolen vehicle grinding against loose stone strewn across the roadways. It was all the debris crowding the city streets, and the fact that the Imperial vehicle couldn't hover. Sure, Kais had considered stopping to find another slightly more agile means of transport, but… those things, those walking corpses could find him anywhere. Then there was also the risk of being shot down from some sort of gun wielding psychopath hiding within one of the towering habitat structures strewn across the crescent bay. The greater risk, Kais was certain, was in attempting to fly to safety threw a war-torn cityscape filled with undead and panicked survivors.

And so Kais continued forward with agonizing slowness, his knuckles gripping the steering wheel of the primitive craft as if his life depended upon it. Occasionally, one of those things would stroll out into the street, a shambling dead thing being either Tue or Gue'la, with broken limps and lifeless eyes. The Fire Warrior merely swerved to avoid the shambling husk rather than risk catapulting it up over the wind screen of the craft and into the exposed passenger compartment.

Of course, there were other concerns. Concerns that Kais always felt lingering at the back of his mind with some hint of awkward wariness. Last night, the hospital had proven the cruel dangers of demonic threats hunting him down during the abyss of the night. He knew that this thing was stronger when the sun set. It moved more quickly and could do things to inanimate objects which bordered upon insanity. The Fire Warrior knew he had to avoid a direct confrontation until he knew exactly what he was dealing with… and more importantly how to properly protect himself.

Unfortunately, his worst fears were realized as the sun finally set, and a sharp cold wind started to speed across the terrain causing ice crystals to rapidly freeze and form upon exposed window panels. There was also a faint drape of white creeping fog forming over the road surface as the shadows moving across the broken skyscraper surfaces began to feel more unnatural as they twisted into illogical patterns inconsistent with the above shining moonlight. The sky also started to darken until it was an unnatural swirling cloud with a massive red orb at its center… except… this wasn't a moon. Kais felt his skin crawl and his blood run cold as this giant red sphere slowly opened like an eyeball and blinked revealing a single reptilian slit. It was watching him. He could actually feel it watching him, but that wasn't all…

Kais could feel himself starting to change. Once more it was like a light switch. One moment he was serene, calm, at peace despite his obvious faults; and the next he was afraid, more afraid than he had ever been in his entire life. It was the night. It had to be. That was the only explanation. Something about the thing hunting him was messing with his internal psyche, making him feel more afraid during the night. That was it! Yet, this realization came far too late to be of any proper assistance.

The Fire Warrior continued to feel his soul being crushed by fear, his fingers gripping the steering wheel with dread, as he continued to wind through the city streets. And then it started, at first as a quake and then as something… more.

There was a woeful wale bordering upon a shrill screeching scream coming from everywhere as the monstrous skyscrapers glimmering within the crimson moonlight suddenly fractured their glass panels causing slivers of sharp projectiles to rain down upon the streets. Undead were impelled and gored by broken glass in all directions as Kais hunched over in his driver's seat hoping to avoid being struck by the solid carbon rain. All around him things were turning hectic. One foul undead took a large shard to the neck slicing necrotic flesh in twine down to the pelvis. He swerved to avoid the worst of the glass rain as the shadows began to twist and converge, breaking steel girders, snapping them like twigs.

Those shadows, they were consuming the skyscrapers from within, forcing them fail structurally and collapse into ruins of broken masonry. Kais floored the Gue'la vehicles propulsion peddle and started to roar down the causeway leading towards the coast. Behind him the skyscrapers were beginning to fracture, belching large clouds of pure darkness, twisting and contorting into awkward irrational geometric shapes. They fell in roars of twisting metal beams and tattered rockcrete, crashing into the ground behind his vehicle.

It was unnatural. The clouds, the clouds emerging behind him were funneling up into the sky like tornados of pure darkness, propelling broken bodies and fractured buildings alike into the red glowing eye hovering over the city. Buildings, cars, broken things all crashed down around Kais, all propelled by terrifying winds almost as if he were driving through a hurricane. It was like a vortex of power evil sweeping through the city and picking up the dead walking corpses of Tau and Gue'la alike.

He continued to run, pushing the vehicle to its best. Behind him, in the rearview mirror, the black tornados swooped up into the darkened skies where white lightening crisped the heavens, only to come crashing back down again and disappear underground. The streets started to buckle. Buildings were collapsing all around Kais as the road started to irrationally rise upward. He had no choice, he had to escape.

Kais ramped off the road and came crashing down upon the rubber tires on another road surface. Briefly, the scout vehicle scraped its bottom against the pavement of the causeway as its shocks contracted from the impact. Behind him a vortex of darkness swept up from the fractured ground… all under the watchful gaze of that single red eye in the sky. The Fire Warrior was certain, whatever that eye was… it was the sign of the thing chasing him, and there was no doubt that it was powerful.

The Fire Warrior was running scared as more rubble rained down all around him including a Gue'la Imperial Guard Baneblade tank which did a summersault while crashing onto its side amidst a broken habitat structure. At first Kais didn't think much of the sundered war machine, and then he noticed the darkness, the vortex of blackened wind swirling around the machine. Shortly thereafter, it came to life, possessed by unnatural power way beyond the capabilities of Tau science to explain.

The Baneblade lurched to life and ran sidewalls along the side of the habitat structure, landing down behind Kais's scout vehicle. It crashed with a boom of broken metal tarring beneath it's treads, sucked under and rendered into flattened waste, as the tank emerged through a cloud of torn rockcrete sundering before its bow. These things did nothing to slow the vehicle as it roared forwards trailing behind Kais, cutting a groove through anything solid and stupid enough to get in its way.

Ahead of Kais, the road started to collapse into a sheer drop of broken rocks. Instinctively, he rounded a jagged corner and upon seeing no other alternatives blew through some improvised fencing. Darkened yards and lawns blew past the scout vehicles exterior as Kais rampaged through numerous improvised suburban barriers made of wood and greenery. He also hit at least four shambling corpses. One of whom was a Tau woman missing half her face and shambling upon a leg burnt down to its exposed ligaments. When Kais accidently slammed into the creature, it exploded in a puff of gore upon his vehicles hood as the upper part of her body was sucked under. Briefly, the vehicle lifted up into the air with a mild thump as the rotting corpse flew beneath the tires in a streak of broken meat and blood.

In the rearview mirror, Kais watched the Baneblade swerve in its tracks to avoid plunging into the sudden drop of broken terrain. He found it stunning how something so massive could prove so agile… well… before it resumed trying to kill him. The Baneblade, after briefly recovering, pushed forward into the same suburb hot on Kais's heels, crumpling down several habitat structures as if they were made of cardboard. Then one of its side turrets started to track the scout car, and fired.

Kais swerved back and forth taking evasive maneuvers as excessively large caliber stubber rounds blew out chunks of the ground and nearby buildings, throwing up large bits and pieces of sod and timber shards as if they were chaff or confetti. However, before the sudden usage of enemy munitions could become a more pressing problem, the demonic thing hunting the Fire Warrior decided to compound the issue with yet another unorthodox threat.

In a grandiose display of raw power, the demonic entity hunting Kais dropped a massive twenty story habitat structure in its entirety right from the heavens and into his path. The windows of the buildings exploded outward from the sudden compression of physical mass and slowly but surely the building started to fall backwards with an agonizing moan as rockcrete collapsed from the surrounding terrain into a darkened pit down below.

Kais saw a brief opportunity to use this sudden and unexpected change in fortunes to escape the Baneblade, and gunned the scout vehicles engine while aiming for a large shard of broken rockrete jutting out from a partially collapsed habitat building. He hit the masonry wall and used it as an impromptu ramp, launching himself into the collapsing building, driving through a small office complex and out the other side as the interior within compacted flat like a pastry cake amidst a grinding of collapsing girders and broken glass. The Baneblade, through raw force of simply being excessively big, blew through the collapsing office building and out the other side in a cloud of glass and broken rubble in hot pursuit while void of all consequences to its demonic possessor.

However, the Fire Warrior was near the coastline now… and he saw something off into the distance. It was a marina, light up with spotlights. Slowly, those lights converged upon his scout car and then upon the pursuing Baneblade tank. In the rearview mirror Kais watched the lights gouging huge chunks of molten metal, bleeding the Baneblade like a gored animal, peeling away from the tanks exterior armor plating almost as if those basic spotlights were somehow plasma based weapons. The tank started to slow with a whimper of gasping demonic cries and then as the spotlights continued to gore its hull eventually it simply exploded into a cloud of black smoke and broken metal.

Sundered steel rained down around Kais as he gunned the engine and made a mad dash for the marina. The vortex of black clouds continued to pursue him up until the spotlights started to phase into them causing the demonic entity haunting the city to scream a shrill cry of agony.

And just like that, Kais pulled into the marina and slammed on the brakes coming to a halt. Behind him the skyscrapers continued to twist and distort through warp sorcery as the lights of this one last refuge kept the darkness at bay. Without warning a fellow Fire Warrior, and a much unexpected Imperial Guardsman appeared by his side.

"You friend…" said the Guardsman with a smile, "Are one fraggn' lucky bastard!"

Kais turned back towards the city and at the edge of the darkness where the lights ended stood the demon possessed body of Trooper Janok. Kais smiled fondly at the corpses sour expression, before the foul thing faded back into the shrouds of ink surrounding the marina.

It was now that the fellow Fire Warrior spoke while also looking at the shroud surrounding their position, "What did you see?" he asked. Kais didn't bother lying. He was far too tired to even try, "Someone I once killed."

The fellow Tau nodded sagely and walked away. It took the Gue'la Imperial Guardsman to elaborate, "You will find that all of us see things in that damned demonic fog. People we've killed, regrets mostly. My advice is to not look at it… it's easier that way."

Kais raised an eyebrow and ventured a question, "Tau and Imperial Guard working together?"

The Gue'la trooper frowned deeply out of mentally ingrained disgust from the Imperium's dogmatic indoctrination to hate anything not Terran in origin, "An alliance born of desperation. That thing out there," he indicated with a finger towards the darkness, "Took just as many of us as it did you. The whole damned planet is 'infested,'" that last word spoken with much bitterness, "With arisen corpses and possessed people."

"And this marina?" asked Kais, pressing his luck.

The human trooper nodded calmly though the Fire Warrior could sense an underlying layer of hurt pride, "It was an Imperial Guard Med-evac point during the invasion. Lots of lights and plenty of generators to keep them a-going so that the Valkyries could make their runs. During the first night when everything went to shit… the Tau moved right on in, overrunning the barricades with sheer numbers. We weren't happy about it at first, but once the undead started eating people… and the transports stopping a-coming… well… survival makes strange bed fellows."

Kais leaned against the scout vehicle as he considered this. He considered how he had just a day ago been murdering Imperial Guard soldiers as if it were a sport. He considered how he had murdered trooper Janok. And then… upon already lingering at the edge of exhaustion from not sleeping for almost two days straight… he collapsed. The last thing he heard was the Gue'la trooper yelling for a medic.