[Suzerain of Sheol]

"We are in Hell." The priest speaks to no one in particular.

After a moment passes, he suddenly whirls around, gesturing to his soldiers.

"I want these tombs opened." His head jerks to the three in front of him. "Be quick about it."

And I want you to watch that staircase. If anything moves down there... stop it from doing so. His thoughts flash taut and harsh to Diogenes, who moves at once to obey.

The soldiers waste no time, unsheathing military shovels and setting about the graves, their powered suits flexing with inhuman strength and clearing the dirt in minutes.

Thomas stalks over to the first opened burial site, and staggers back, a look of sheer revulsion twisting his face. Heartless prayers escape his lips, "Dio domini omnipotentis..."



Gritting his teeth at the priest's moment to falter, Diogenes stomps over to the open grave, keeping an ever-vigilant eye on the subterranean stair behind him with his psychic sight.

Arriving, he glimpses the occupant of the tomb, his shorn hair, great thick beard, the punctures encircling his skull, the pearlescent robe stained crimson, the weeping stigmatic wounds in his wrists and feet... Lifeless. Soulless.

He sees now Thomas' dismay.

Moving to the next grave, the site is the same. Exactly identical, down to the merest molecule of blood. And he realizes, those were no prayers at all but an identification.

Ieshua Christos. The Prince of Peace. In every single one of these graves, thousands upon thousands. Clones of Christ.

He hears the intake of breath just before those lifeless eyes open with unearthly hunger, and his gun is already in his hand, a consecrated psycho-active HEAP round careening through the intervening space, detonating as it crashes against the corpse, blasting its skull apart.

"Beware!" he shouts. "They rise!"

Pushing himself to his feet, Thomas barks a bitter laugh. "What are three Heavenly days, anyway?"

He shoulders his rifle as the graves all across the yard begin to swell and burst with exploding earth, pale forms -- mocking divine -- crawling from the darkness below.

Something shakes the ground beneath them, a vacuous moan from the bowels of the world, shuddering the chapel in the distance.

Something speaks to these unholy creatures. And they answer murderously.