The rain fell like a heavy burden upon the palm trees and sodden Earth of T'gor as the ocean waves crested and crashed down below the cliff face. Kais felt the tropical heat gnawing away at his dry blue skin. Had it not been for the bodyglove lining recycling the moisture from his pours the Tau was certain that his combat fatigues would have been covered in the stinky sweat from extreme physical activity. And, so it was with each wet and slow step of hooved boots sinking ankle deep into mud and sod, he crept through the jostling jungle foliage after having since been forced to abandon the stolen Imperial Guard scout car two Tor'kan out from the lighthouse.

Kais knew the dangers of approaching the lighthouse in a vehicle. The 'Taken' were expecting him. They had always been expecting him, hunting him, ever since escaping the hospital. No, they had hunted him long before then… Perhaps, they were just now catching up, and this was merely a formality of demonic lions going for the kill. Such imagery did not sit well in the Tau's mind as rain blasted down upon his exposed scalp in a torrent of razor sharp and cold saltwater. It may have been daylight, but he was certain that the facility up ahead was heavily defended in preparation for this one-man raid.

Lizards ran along the ground as a harsh wind blew through the palms from the heavy storm brewing and blowing in along the coast. The Fire Warrior could feel the drizzle of water running down his face, soaking his combat fatigues, and making him cold down to the bone. Yet, still he pressed on one step at a time until he saw it looming like a leviathan from a hilltop knoll.

The immediate area around the lighthouse had been cut-away leaving a fifty Tor'lek of open ground between the jungle and nearest structure. Of the nearest structure, there was a small perimeter wall of loose stone running around the base of the main complex topped with sporadic sandbag emplacements.

Loose raze wire bales dotted parts of the perimeter and were draped in rotting corpses being both Tau and Gue'la alike with their fleshes crisped by unknown flames until the pink of muscles darkened from rot lay exposed upon tattered backs of torn clothe. There was a smell about the area, a smell of cooked meat and rotting sewage as scavenging flies moved from corpse to corpse eating their fill of rotting flesh.

Kais scanned the lighthouse with his scout monocle while hiding amongst the jungle shrubbery. The lighthouse complex consisted of several small one story structures spread like a starfish at the base of the five hundred Tor'lek tower. Nothing visible moved amongst the darkened interiors of the buildings about the exposed perimeter. Thus, Kais stepped forward from his cover and slowly moved towards the facility while hunched over to present the smallest possible profile for las-lance fire.

At ten Tor'lek he sprinted the remaining distance and threw himself back first against the flimsy rock wall. Here, he listened. Only the sounds of crackling flames spoke from the surrounding ruins. With the grace of a burdened Grox, Kais hurtled the rock wall in his bulky combat armor and as a red flash ran towards the exterior wall of the nearest building. He crashed against the wall and peered nervously around the corner.

Nothing. Not even a single undead. Kais took a deep breath, feeling the hot air expand within his aching lungs, and peered around the corner again, "AHHH!"

This time he shouted out in fear as a ghostly transparent face stared him down. The Fire Warrior tumbled back upon his haunches and let loose a pulse blast from his rifle into the stomach of the ghostly apparition. If the creature took it as an offense… it did not show any annoyance. Instead, it simply loomed over him with a look of blankness upon its face.

Kais had seen two earlier ghosts within the hospital, but this one was different. It was a weathered old man with a wrinkled face and gnarled white hair. He wore a commissar's uniform with a peaked cap. The Fire Warrior noted the ghost's decorative sword and sash as the thing turned to walk away.

Just like the others, Kais thought, it was leading him towards something important. The Fire Warrior quickly pushed himself up off the ground in a grunt of pain and jogged after the ghost. He trailed behind it, following, always following.

"Who are you?" he asked. The ghost did not respond.

"Why are you here?" he asked. The ghost did not respond.

At last the ghost stopped and pointed towards a burnt out Gue'la scout walker laying crumpled against the collapsed wall of one of the perimeter buildings. Kais looked around the surrounding plaza and didn't notice any potential threats of merit. He turned to ask another question of the ghost… but by then… it was gone, vanished into thin air without a trace.

The Fire Warrior could take the hint at face value and quickly jogged out from cover to inspect the fallen scout walker, stopping briefly as he felt some intense heat blazing from some nearby associated wreckage. The vehicle was badly damaged. Plasma scorching had burned away a large chunk of the pilot cabin leaving melted metal leaking unto the rockcrete floor. Nothing, nothing to merit his attention. As Kais turned to leave, the demolished vehicles radio activated, "You there blue-skin?" asked the exact same male voice from the hospital.

Kais quickly leaned into the vehicle and grabbed some sort of primitive radio speaker. He fumbled with the device, pressing buttons at random, chanting back into the machine's speaker phone with every attempt, "Hello, hello, where are you?"

At last he managed the correct buttons and the male voice laughed back bitterly, "I can hear you blue-skin. No reason to shout."

Kais felt a faint hint of rage kindle within his breasts from such cheap mockery. He had crossed a city of undead monsters and braved the horrors of a demonic incursion only to made fun off by the same Gue'la he had risked life and limb to save. "Where. Are. You?" he asked angrily.

There was a short pause followed by the human unleashing a bitter sigh and responding, "I'm in the basement. Look… I don't know how to say this but you are in serious danger right now! Look around you, what do you see?"

Kais peered away from the crashed walker and took in his surroundings. There was nothing in sight, "I see nothing Gue'la," he replied nervously.

"I thought so," replied the Gue'la knowingly, "But that's not the case. Listen, I don't know how to tell you this so I'm just going to be upfront. Things… are not as they actually appear. You've probably already experienced 'flashes' by now when things shift. One second there is nothing there and the next… things trying to kill you randomly show up."

Kais remembered back to the illusion of first waking up, of first roaming the hospital, of first fighting the undead and meeting the illusion of Captain Ardias. None of that had been real… had it? It was now that Kais started to question his own sanity. It had all felt so real at the time, but to awaken again at the hands of a vicious beating by Imperial Guardsmen… None of it had been real.

"That actually happened," said the Gue'la. Kais felt his hands go numb as the hand speaker slowly slipped through his frightened fingers. How had the Gue'la known… he wondered, as he rapidly fumbled to reclaim the device slipping and falling from his grasp.

"Because I'm a Pysker," continue the Gue'la without skipping a beat, "And I can hear your thoughts as clearly as if you were standing right next to me."

"Then why the radio?" asked Kais snidely. To his surprise the Gue'la gave a jovial laugh, "Because Blue-skin… I'm not actually using a radio right now."

"I…?" asked Kais in confusion, "Come again Gue'la?"

"I've been imprisoned here deep beneath the lighthouse. Under normal circumstance… this wouldn't be a problem, but this is hardly a normal circumstance. As fortune, may have it, the warp runes keeping me bound to this place are… flawed. I'm using them to hone in on your spiritual aura even as we speak. As for the radio… that will be explained when we finally meet… face to face. However, I realize that this explanation might seem lacking so allow me to give a brief elaboration. You shouldn't place a lot of faith into what your eyes tell you. Not everything is as it seems at first glance. When you enter this lighthouse… you will understand. My advice is as follows… do not let your guard down even for a second."

And with that the radio went dead. Kais turned on his heel and skimmed over the lighthouse lawns. Briefly, ever so briefly, he felt as though something or someone had been watching him from up above. That feeling vanished almost as quickly as it had first arrived. Kais looked at the giant looming tower beacon sending its rotating cone of light out over the oceanic shoreline. He considered things, the risks and rewards of continuing with this fool's errand. And then, he shook his head of such nagging concerns and opened the door to the lighthouse.

Before him was darkness, damp and endless, and with a single step forward he heard a creak of whining metal… before the door self-closed behind him. Then it laughed, the walls and halls laughed as a sharp bitter cold crisped the air frigid forming crystals of ice across the Fire Warriors armor and fatigues as rain water went rigid and stiff in the warp tainted breeze. Kais felt his eyes narrow as the air froze the moisture upon the surfaces of window frames towards the day's turbulent storms along the coast as a sharp crackle of thunder boomed overhead. Alone, in the dark, he decided to switch weapons for the Gue'la scattergun given the potential for a close quarters fight. The Fire Warrior deactivated the safety, and shouldered the weapon firmly as instructed. By then… the first Taken had appeared.

…..

The possessed Tau and Gue'la wore corruption like a badge of honor. The first such creature to appear in the corridor was a Tau woman dressed in rages, with the skin of her body and face riddled in black bulging veins which seemed to pulse and twist with a mind of their own. She ran at him, laughing hysterically with black teeth salivating in blood lust. Kais waited until she was close, ten paces close, and pulled the trigger of the Gue'la scattergun. Instantly… he had a new favorite weapon.

The recoil from the scattergun was brutal. The Fire Warrior, unaccustomed to such unwarranted brute force felt his stance waver briefly as the firepower thrust him backwards against the demonically latched door. However, Kais did see what that single shot from his lovely lovely new weapon was capable of as the possessed woman's torso liquefied into a blue mist popping her arms, legs, and head like corks outwards into different directions as if shot from cannons. The Tau grinned wickedly as he saw his image within the small blood stained ball bearings rolling along the floor while the broken remains of what was once a physical body crumbled to the ground in a gory paste.

Kais couldn't help but laugh. He laughed loudly and bitterly as more Taken rushed him like a pack of feral animals from the adjoining rooms, but… he stood his ground. The scattergun rang out again and again, filling the hallway with broken bodies and gory meaty mounds of broken flesh. The dastardly weapon was like a meat hatchet at close range blowing people apart like ragdolls. As for the recoil, it was like being hit with a sledgehammer in the upper chest yet none could deny the damage being dealt. The Fire Warrior reveled in the carnage as men and women, people reduced to 'things,' with their minds and bodies stolen by something foul and wicked were blown apart.

One man, a Gue'la, took a shoot to the legs and toppled over like an empty sausage casing. He crawled closer to Kais upon his hands and elbows, blackened blood draining from his wounds like a paintbrush stroking a wall. At one pace away from Kais's position the Fire Warrior pointed his scattergun at the possessed humans face and rendered it into a fine example of modern art upon the lighthouse's carpeting.

The rush of possessed things ended in mere moments leaving the hallway littered in broken bodies and tainted black, blue, and red blood oozing into the carpets and floor paneling. A mist of gunsmoke filled the air as a woeful screech, like fingernails running along a chalkboard, echoed through the building. The tainted shroud of darkness seemed to receded in bitter defeat, and for the first time in apparently a long time… the lights of the lighthouses' interior light up in a dull yellow glow.

Kais kept the scattergun up against his shoulder as he walked forward over the broken bodies underfoot. He could feel and hear the squishing paste of meaty chunks under his hooves as he briefly scanned each room for hostiles. Nothing. No one. He was alone… or so he thought.

The Fire Warrior heard something in another room, a scuffle of papers and something less clear. He quickly turned the corner and found it empty… except… it wasn't empty. It was there, sitting in the chair, although just barely visible like someone had erased half of his physical appearance leaving a mere shell of the actual person.

Kais took a cautious step into the room and glared right at it. It was the man from earlier, the one called Templeton. He was sitting in a wooden chair before a plush wooden desk, smoking calmly with an open leather bound book before his eyes. As if sensing Kais in his peripheral vision he calmly closed the book and looked at the Tau with calculating Azura blue eyes, "I see you cleared the lighthouse of its taint?"

Kais grimaced and rounded the table to place his back up against the wall as a strong wind shook the building from the torrent outside. Templeton glowered at him and sniffled within the lingering cold, "You might have noticed that they were both Tau and Human. This place…" he motioned with his hands, "was once a holdout just like that marina. It served as a bastion… a refuge… but, the demon needed it for a task much more self-serving."

"What are you talking about? And what are you?" asked Kais while keeping his scatter-gun leveled at the ghosts bespectacled head. The thing known as Templeton laughed bitterly and took a deep drag from his imho stick before continuing, "I'm a ghost, a lingering fragment of the man I once was. The real Ambrose Templeton died in the Dolorosa Coil, but part of me… part of him remains."

"So, you're what… a demon?" asked Kais spitefully while slowly pressing down on the trigger. To his surprise the ghost actually laughed, "No blue-skin, I'm not a demon. Neither is the man in the basement. Neither is many of the people you've already encountered thus far. Surely… you've met them?"

Kais felt his nerves rattle as he remembered the other ghosts. The ones which never spoke yet which always seemed to lead him where he was most needed. Templeton seemed to read his thoughts and for the first time since randomly appearing to converse… he relaxed his posture. "Those… are something completely different."

"What do you mean… something completely different?" asked Kais.

Templeton took another long drag from his imho stick and leaned back in his chair. Oddly enough, the action actually caused it to squeak although the man clearly possessed no physical space and mass, "I like to refer to them as 'shades.' Technically, those are demonic entities who serve as tormentors to the man or woman he had wronged them. They aren't actual people so much as… there," the ghostly Gue'la took a moment to wrap his tongue and mind around the correct word, "let's say, 'regrets.' Demons, absorbed the regrets of those wronged in life and created a shade dedicated to haunting the guilty party in life. In your case… they appear to have wondered off track from their actual duty to assists you in… surviving?"

"Why? Why haunt, or help me?" asked Kais with great unease. The idea of 'friendly' demons didn't exactly sit well in the blue-skins world view.

"Because blue-skin," said the ghost of Templeton, "They need you alive. They need you to save the person they are still haunting so that they can continue to condemn and drag down that person's soul. Helping you… helps them conclude their duties to the victims of the villain who wronged those in life and to whose memories they now carry. There end goal is to condemn that man in the worst possible way that it is to be condemned. In order to do that… they need you alive."

"And why are YOU helping me?" asked Kais. Templeton nodded sagely and grinned, "because blue-skin," he said, "I want to see you succeed."

"Succ…?" asked Kais only to be momentarily distracted by a loud boom of thunder. When Kais looked back, the ghost of Templeton was gone leaving only the pushed away wooden seat and a burnt down imho stick sitting on the desktop. Wide eyed and startled by the encounter, the Fire Warrior backed out of the room and marched briskly towards the central tower. The lights continued to glow within the structure as the bitter warp cold dissipated from the air leaving a slight trace of warmth within the lighthouse complex.

Quickly, Kais started down the winding steps of the lighthouse tower and slowed once he noticed a faint golden light glowing as he came closer to the bottom of the staircase. It was majestic and warm. The Fire Warrior felt a bizarre calm feeling ease his tensed muscles as he edged closer and closer until at last… he saw the man upon his knees with chains wrapped around his body. At first Kais was surprised, with surprise fading into happiness, and then concern…

…..

At the bottom floor of the lighthouse, beyond the wards and terrors of the 'Taken' fiends, was a single room carved from bones and solidified blood. Scribbles, etchings, echoing dark whispers from the warp void murmured incoherent promises of menacing power from things so demented and psychologically damaged that mere mortals of the material world could hardly fathom the depths of their insanity. As Kais descended the rockcrete steps into this chamber he noticed something, something unexpected. It was a single man, a man of the likes of which the Fire Warrior had seen but once in his entire lifetime.

He was a creature of myth and legend, a giant among the breed known of as Gue'la, born unto the flock but elevated by station to something far more grand in the defense of the Corpse Emperor's realm. Upon his sullen frame tangled into a kneel by rusty chains the man wore blue armor with a sigil upon his right pauldron. It was the sigil of his legion, an inverted white omega contrasting the blue of his power armor. But, this one was different for he did not wear a helm or go barren in scalp. No, upon his head was a crude neural limiter, a pysker hood which glowed with golden light.

"At last you arrive blue-skin," spoke the human before Kais could enter his line of sight. The Fire Warrior faltered for that brief instant much to the Gue'la's amusement, "Don't be afraid… I have known of your coming for quite some time."

Kais resumed his march down the steps and turned to face the aged and troubled vision of this Gue'la captive. Much to Tau's surprise, the man had a firm gaze of sharp green eyes with crow's feet around the edges. Upon seeing Kais in person, the Ultramarine grinned with pleasure, "At long last… we meet face to face."

"Who are you?" asked Kais. Clearly, this human knew him, and not just by some strange legend or twist of fate. The Gue'la closed his eyes and chuckled with a laugh which made his chains rattle, "Now that… is the question is it not?" replied the human, "Who am I?"

Suddenly, he looked sharply at Kais and muttered uncontrollably of some long ago slight to his honor, "That bastard broke me when it… 'carved,' its way into the 'Enduring Blade.' In my last moments, I tried to stop it, I tried to…" the Gue'la trailed off, "It played us for fools you know? You and I, we were used like pawns in its sick little game."

Kais's eyes suddenly light up. The Enduring Blade was the name of the Imperial Cruiser infiltrated by demons over Dolumar IV. But, that was so long ago? "Who are you?" asked Kais once again, seething with anger in-between gritted teeth. The Gue'la looked at him appealingly, "Who am I?" he asked mockingly, "I'm what's left of Brother Librarian Delpheus of the Ultramarines Second Company. A shard of his mind… A mere fragment of who he once was."

"What!?" demanded Kais, "That's not possible!"

The Librarian laughed bitterly at himself and looked Kais right in the eye, "Tell me blue-skin… what is very last thing you remember about Dolumar IV?"

Kais felt his gut churn unexpectedly as his mind spun backwards towards those dark days when he was more naive and far less experienced. He remembered the war, boarding, capturing, and then fleeing the demonically possessed Imperial warship. He remembered destroying a Demon Titan Engine, of venturing into that dark fortress with Captain Ardias, and of fighting the demon Tarkh'ax. He remembered… he remembered…

"No," a simple shallow word spoken in a whisper from the Tau's thin lips. He remembered how the demon had picked him up with unnatural powers, and used Kais's fierce internal hated of his own father to burn a hole right into his soul. The Librarian smiled fondly and laughed bitterly once again, "So tell me blue-skin… how does it 'feel' being in the warp? How does it 'feel'… being possessed?"

Kais realized at that exact moment… that he was still on Dolumar IV.