[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.

[Gallagher]

Odd that the minnow-somethings would so easily move on, considering the countless bodies they left behind them. Odd, but interesting. Much better than food. There was no question that he would follow, at least for a time.

Where they ended up next, however, nearly made him question that choice. Dirt. Stone. Silence, beyond the minnow mutterings. No signs of movement anywhere, even after the somethings took to their digging. Nothing.

Until there was.

Everywhere.

The somethings took to action as quickly as life rippled through the bleak land. Different from the minnows and the young before, these things weren't about to ask pointless questions or speak to the skies. No. They were there to kill and feed. Hardly worth his time.

He only watched the unfolding war for a moment before he turned, looking for the entrance that wasn't there, then turned again, to find where it had gone this time.

[Espy]

"THE CHAPE--!"

Dante's yell was cut off as the bucking ground threw him to his knees. Half prone, he instinctively grabbed at his gun and blasted two shots into the...creature's...skull. But still it flew towards him, animalistic hunger and all.

Wrong gun.

With no time to react otherwise, he pulled his right leg up and sent it crashing through what he was sure was the monstrosity's rib cage, launching the corpse back. It landed a few feet away...and rose up, seemingly determined to devour presumably the only life forms that had unfortunately made their ways into the barren lands in decades. Dante staggered to his feet and reached for his blade.

Then something landed on his shoulder, and Dante whirled around, his fist taking out the lower jaw of his latest assailant.

And then another hand grabbed at his legs, the arm to which it was attached meeting its demise through the same means by which the ribcage had earlier.

And yet they came. With no time to check on how the others were doing, he lunged forward, his fall-breaking roll interrupted by even more gaunt graying limbs. And they were too close, and too many...lights raced each other around in his head, knocking him off balance for what seemed the hundredth time.

With a guttural scream of pure rage and annoyance at having gained no ground, Dante barely managed to unclip his sword and lashed out indiscriminately. Having cut a route out of the tangled mess, he left his weapon lodged in a mass of writhing bodies and finally pulled out the gun he had wrestled from Lev months ago.

He fired until the gun was empty, then exchanged it for his smaller blade and flew at the creatures with new-found bloodlust, disengaging the larger sword as well and fleeing towards the lit chapel.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

As the earth explodes out to the horizon, Thomas wastes no time in letting his soldiers loose upon the encircling horde.

The five hulking, power-armored forms brace themselves back-to-back, hefting their grenade launchers and waiting just a moment for the blasphemous creatures to form into a tight-packed mob before opening fire. In an instant, the silent yard becomes a cacophony of erupting barrels and automatic fire, incendiary grenades bursting among huge clumps of the attackers, filling the air with the reek of chemical murder. Hundreds die in the initial barrage, before the enemy pushes too close, and the soldiers -- as one -- switch to their massive, six-barreled autocannons, beginning to spread a fanning line of streaking, supersonic lead in an arc across the cemetery.

Thomas adds his own automatic fire to the ruinous hail, but it is not enough. None of it is enough. Thousands of the abominations lay unmoving, but thousands more still advance, at a dead sprint now, and as they draw near, each reaches within its own mouth -- grasping fingers reaching impossibly into bulging necks -- and draws forth a burning bronze sword, immediately casting the graveyard in an incandescent glare.

They make no warcry, their eyes remain dead and void of the passion of life, but nonetheless, they come, flailing in fury with the mighty warswords even as hundreds die every second.


Diogenes follows the standard procedure for engagements, breaking away from the main group and launching himself from tombstone to tombstone, backflipping and cartwheeling and spinning in midair, landing perfectly each time. With inhuman eyes, he aims both pistols in his leaping flight, firing with perfect precision, destroying the creatures and never letting a single one come close to touching him.

When both magazines are empty, he lands, and sprays fire from his flamethrowers to clear himself a path, then unsheathes his khukri, and pauses for a second. Breathes. Focuses his mind.

And attacks.

A streaking blur of black cloth and black steel, his moves among the fiery specters, cutting and slashing and severing: limbs and heads, again and again. Every foe to draw near is dismembered before it can begin its first lumbering swing. His free hand lashes out, open-palmed, and collapses chests, explodes skulls, a fatal telekinetic resonance thrumming audibly from his entire body.

It is not until he finds himself broken free of the seeming-endless horde, surrounded by darkness broken only by the distant gleam of still thousands of burning blades, that he takes a moment to breathe. He reloads both pistols and sheathes his blade after cleaning the gore from it. Expending himself in a single burst like that was daring -- dangerous, and the fatigue he feels now is near-crippling, though he knows it will pass. Gasping for breath, he watches the slaughter unfold, content with the seven-hundred-and-ninety-four he laid low.

Even still, there seems to be no end to their swarming ranks, even as he watches from afar. For every dozen to fall, a score more rising from the devastated earth.

The priest was right, he muses. We are in Hell.

His weapons readied, the killer advances once more into slaughter. Two-hundred and forty rounds remaining, the batteries in his flamethrowers half-depleted, and a dozen nicks along the edge of his blade, and the night is only barely begun.

This will not last....

[Quiet Man Cometh]

She had long since abandoned any kind of focused attack. The swarm proved too numerous, and as they closed in she sent another wave of psychic force blasting indiscriminately around her, sending desiccated bodies flying to collide with the next, and then the next, and then the next. Undead skin started to hiss, blister, and grow white hot, finally bursting into flame, spewing black and acrid smoke where unholy flesh burned to unholy bones. Broadswords dropped and knees buckled from muscles and bones no longer able to hold themselves together, but new, whole bodies kept coming, stomping or crawling over their wounded brethren, if brethren they may be called. Tarja hissed at them, gazing down another line of undead that suddenly erupted into flame. Mentally, she raised a clutch of flaming bodies and flung them about erratically like crude incendiaries, cursing the lack of any half-way decent projectiles besides the headstones that marked the graves the corpses crawled out from.

The swarm had moved in close again and she loosed another indiscriminate blast of psychic force, sending bodies and headstones flying in a wide arc as she cursed her growing headache. The air around her began to waver and buzz as half a dozen headstones were yanked from the ground, starting a slow orbit around the psychic and picking up speed. At terminal velocity they cracked into the approaching horde, breaking against undead bodies even as they crushed ribcages and skulls and shattered limbs. There was no shortage of headstones, but there was also no shortage of undead. White flashes darted across her vision with the throbbing behind her eyes.

“The stairs or the chapel, priest?” She yelled out, not letting up with her cyclonic headstones, still finding moments to cast out a line of super-heated air even as she was starting to go blind from the pain.

[Salone]

At once chaos erupted all around Lev. Scores of the undead monsters hurled themselves in a wave of rotten flesh towards him.

BOOM

The concussion and blast of light from the first shot left an afterimage in his vision, but he ignored it. The slug launched itself from the barrel of his ancient rifle, hurtling through the air and ripping its way through the skull of one of the many many foes before him.

Slide back. Slam forward. Chamber. Fire.

Another one fell, several dozen filling the space where it had once been.

Slide back. Slam forward. Chamber. Fire.

The sea of dead surged forward towards their little group.

Slide back. Slam forward. Chamber. Fire.

He caught one in the chest with his fourth shot. Its back exploded as the slug fractured inside the rotted flesh, exploding in to shrapnel as it exited. It wasn't enough. It would have been easier for him to empty an ocean with a spoon.

You will never be enough!

His final shot was cut short. Rushed by one of the undead things, he was stuck to the ground by its assault. In the same moment the creature was on top of him, malformed and rotted hands scrabbling at the vest of body armor he wore. In a fit of defiance he threw the creature off, assaulting it with the barrel of his rifle. He pierced the underside of the jaw with sheer force, firing his last round directly in to its skull. Bone and brain erupted in his face, showering him in putrid flesh.

You are losing.

He pulled himself to his feet. The horde was closer. Ever closer. Always closer. His rate of fire would have to equal the rate of their advance.

He unslung his AKS-74U submachine gun with one hand while shouldering his Mosin-Nagant with the other. A magazine was produced from the many folds and pockets of his person. And as he brought it up, teeth came sinking down in to his arm.

Lev went down with a feral scream, shouting fury and pure rage as his body was overtaken by the scores of undead. Desperately he tried to fit the magazine to the gun. Claws and mouths hungered for him, pursued him to the ground, ripped and tore in to him, covered him, began to overtake him. He was lost to the masses.

You will not prevail!

Overpowered by the screams and moans of thousands of corpses, there was a quiet click as the bolt of a submachine gun fed the first round in to a chamber.

"No ya ne sdamsya!"

Automatic fire blew the top half of one of the monsters away. Another, and another. The pack atop Lev became a mass of tissue and gore as they fell to pieces on top of him. As he ate through the magazine, the lead he put forth ate through his attackers. He fought through the muck and blood to stand. He kept firing, finger caught against the trigger in a death grip as he retreated back. His clothes were shredded, tattered. Blood poured freely from his arms and legs. Tissue exposed itself from a deep wound on his cheek, and cuts and gashes decorated him like some sort of nightmarish Christmas tree of flesh. And through it all, he fought.

Each change of magazines let them gain ground towards him, and each load of fresh ammunition pushed the tide back. The sea surged, but for now Lev Gurevich was holding as much as he could.

You falter. Flesh will consume the flesh that consumes flesh here. Rotted putrid flesh. LISTEN TO ME.

Blood stung at Lev's eyes. His wounds were many. The barrel of his submachine gun burned at the hand clutching it, searing the skin. His head was swimming. Blood, so much blood. Too much of his own had been spilled in the sea before him. He had escaped, but not unscathed, untouched. And like the wall of flesh before him, his own mind was being pressed in against. Assaulted. Pulled at.

Let go...

[Espy]

Dante nearly fell again as the ground trembled under his feet, but soon, he was only a few paces from the chapel. He glanced back at the fighting.

Maybe this would help them.

Or utterly wipe them out. For once, he was willing to take on the brunt of any possible attack from the chapel.

Several of the corpses had followed him, their arms and gleaming weaponry held high, and without further considering consequences, Dante stood to one side, swung his sword into the nearest window, then whirled around to climb into what he assumed was a sanctuary.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Smashing the window, Dante is confronted with a gusting, chill breeze wafting from below the window, enough to make him pause at the contrast to the air outside.

At first, he can discern nothing but the cold, but after a moment, something manifests far, FAR below, a haze of distant power -- something... something appalling.

[Lawtan]

Kadia watched while the titanic mercenaries fought what appeared to be a boundless horde of abominations. 'Gods, I wish I was back in the gang right now,' she thought. Rurik at her side whimpered and pawed at her “invisibility” staff. The power source, something she increased to last hours, was almost dead.

Kadia looked at the group, knowing that regardless of the battle’s outcome, she would be damned. Mercenaries, especially veterans, did not take kindly to followers. However, the demonic dead lacked even the capability of mercy. Her only hope laid in helping the mercs, hoping they would have mercy on her.

The staff went dead.

"Verdammt! Scheiß drauf!" she said under her breath. She made up her mind, and mentally reviewed what her father taught her.

Kadia mentally lifted the flame wheels from her back. She used her bionic eye to pinpoint a group of foes. She sent them spinning into the fray, mentally lighting the fuel inside.

‘Dybuuk can’t be destroyed with fire...and these guys seem to be coordinated by something...perhaps if something were to surprise them...’ she thought. So, Kadia rotated the wheels around one another in the forms used by the martial artists of the past. It appeared as a spinning column, a blazing sphere. Some of the Dybuuk appeared to follow it.

Activating her shuriken-wristguns, Kadia heard a smash over by the chapel. Rurik gave a mechanical growl as she felt a dreadful force…

[Espy]

Would this...Is this...Is it controlling these things?! But it's too far down... He made a mental note before he was snapped back to the current situation by footsteps behind him.

Sensing no immediate danger coming from the chapel, Dante swung the sword back just in time to catch a gleaming golden one on its edge the impact sending vibrations up his arm. Feigning being pushed back, he let the corpse tower over him, then kicked it sharply in its gut, sending the thing flying reeling backwards into another of its companions.

But the force of the blow also knocked Dante back into what was now a half-wall with broken glass sticking out, and a third, fourth, fifth monstrosity veered towards him. Grasping the sword with both hands, he swung -- managing to cleave two of them in half -- then ducked under golden death, grabbed an arm, the skin almost sagging off it, pivoted, and flung the last opponent into the depths of the abyss he had just discovered.

Half content to just stay outside the main battle and just pick off foes as them came after him, he took a good look at the rest of group...and made his mind.

With the larger sword to the side, he ran at full tilt towards...

...a newcomer? No...he had felt something of this person's presence all along. He'd have to ask her exactly how she had hid herself. But for now...

A few more steps brought him face-to-face with a group of creatures behind the girl, and he used the momentum from his mad sprint to whirl the blade around him, its segments flying apart, whiplike. Finally. It made a satisfying whirring sound as he spun it into a black disk of dismemberment.

It's been a while since I've been able to wreak wholesale slaughter, huh...

[Salone]

And then Lev let go.

The chatter of lead ceased, and the wave of flesh in front of him surged forward. Lev held his arms up, grinning in a maniacal manner as the hordes of undead pressed on to him.

He was knocked to the ground, once again set upon by another frenzied creature. But this time would be different. As the thing fell on top of him he reached out to sink his finders deep in to its eye sockets. He pierced what had once been eyes, dug in deep, gripped his fingers in against the bone. And with a great heave, he ripped the skull from the body.

A sickening series of wet popping noises followed as ligaments and spinal tissue were ripped loose from their anchors. Muscle and bone tore free and protruded uselessly from the stump that had once been a neck. But no matter now. With a kick Lev dislodged the thing from him and raised himself, fighting hand to hand with the rest of the large group now. But he was different now. Stronger, violent, even more crazed. He ignored the bites and the tearings now, the attempts to rip away his flesh from his bones. For now, he was doing the same.

With a guttural roar he tore in to a rib cage, literally burrowing through it with his arms before it split apart in a shower of gore. With a pair of broken ribs he whirled in circles, stabbing and gashing at everything around him. Hands found limbs, limbs easily ripped from their sockets. Teeth sunk in to rotted throats that were quickly ripped out, or even devoured while still attached to their bodies. From somewhere the crazed man had found his knife, and really set about going to work. Claws found him, dug in to him, and were promptly crushed. Skulls were crushed or caved in by the force of his blunt assaults with various body parts. He bathed in the chunks of flesh and gore surrounding him. He tired not. He pained not. His blood ran freely, mixed with that around him and was consumed again as he fed and fought. Madness had taken him. Hunger guided him. He was beyond control.

Crack!

A Dybbuk had been lucky enough to be faster than him, and teeth sank down on to his fingers. It gnawed at him, trying to chomp and chew them apart. It only had the moment. Fingers curling downward, Lev gave a great heave to rip the jaw from the skull. With a hollow "pop" it came loose, trailing several muscles before they as well popped free. Lev raised the jaw high, then brought it back down atop the creature's head. He beat at it severely, smashing the head and squishing the brain like a ripened cantaloupe. And in the shower of brain matter that it created, he bathed in triumph. He swam in a sea of flesh. And where others would drown, he would now consume all.

[Lawtan]

The blazing disk-like weapons continues to weave their way, drawing away several corpses with their propane dance. Kadia directed her tools with her mind. She set her “Shuriken-WGLite” prototype wrist weapons. Pressing a button, the devices began roaring to life, accelerating the spin and heating a small store of shurikens. Another button, and an aiming panel rose. Kadia aimed…she fired at the hordes mobbing the heavy gunner. With satisfying splunches multiple targets fell headless or limbless. The shots were as two streaks of pointed light, blinding white, scythes to puncture and burn through their targets at great velocity…

Sounds from behind! Kadia, her heart hitting bottom, began to turn. Rurik growled. A corpse-demon was upon them. He reared, metal clanking. He pounced on a Dybuuk about to nab Kadia. They struggled, though really a robotic canine had an advantage or two over a possessed corpse. Though the cyber canine lacked many conventional weapons, his strong jaw was more than enough to sever the rotting head easily.

More Dybuuk appeared. Kadia began to fire shuriken wildly at close range…until the device jammed. “Der Hölle!” Kadia’s hand reacher her sides, and whipped out her poi-spikes, swinging them like miniature flails. Rurik prepared to charge…

…and the blind man arrived, aura strong and fierce, sawing through the foes. Dante, a shade of war, seemed (to Kadia) to just move to the enemy before they fell in a heap. Meanwhile, she went about crunching bodies with the musket-ball force of whirling spiked balls. Rurik chewed through still moving body parts. In a glorious release of decay, the enemy fell to them.

Kadia looked around. The hordes were still vast and other mercs were in trouble. Her wheels were still spinning, but the –mind – controlling the Dybuuk directed them to ignore the items, and they began to return to the main group. This looked very grim, unless…

The Staff! It had a faint aura – energy - It may have enough in it to fashion an explosive!

“Umm…hey! You! Have any ideas…because I think I may…"

[Suzerain of Sheol]

This will not last.

I am coming.

How long?

Soon enough.

Death spirals, snaking through the endless thousands, bodies annihilated in nearly incomprehensible slaughter, thousands upon tens of thousands, empty vessels laid to waste. Meaningless murder.

And endless.

Even now, after ten shrieking minutes of hellish battle, there are more of the foe than there were to begin with. And just as they mass once more, just as uncountable swords are raised for yet another charge, it comes....

CLICK.

CLICK. CLICK.

...and silence.

The moment seems frozen. The horde impending. Impossibly vast, climbing a mountain of carcasses to reach the party. They have no morale to break. No reserve to exhaust. Manifest hunger, and infinite gnashing jaws.

In the first stunned breath, Thomas is swift to act. Hurling his fist heavenward, he launches his power outward. There is a flash like intimate lightning. Blinding. Paralyzing.

And two thousand bodies fall to ash.

A hundred thousand more slaver in their wake.

But the priest is not finished. So very far from finished.

"Clear a path!" he screams to his men, who as one begin hauling bodies away from the staircase leading below.

Striding out into the carnage, Thomas hurls off his cloak, revealing... inhumanity. Cybernetic evolution.

A dozen tendrils of gunmetal steel, each articulate with a thousand interlocking joints like knuckles, writhe as prehensile limbs out from his back. A nest of whipping metallic vipers, and along their length course sparks of violet electricity. Each is tipped with an 8" diamond-edge drill bit.

With practiced ease, his mind manipulates the synthetic appendages as he walks into the heart of the enemy, a writhing crackling cloud surrounding him.

He rolls his wrists, and twin dagger-blades, nearly two feet long and so thin as to be invisible, erupt across the span of his hands. As the monsters surround him, he systematically destroys them, boring through eye-sockets and mouths, exploding nerves, choking, tearing, dismembering. The tendrils move with such snapping alacrity that the lightning they conduct weaves a blinding, searing net around the priest.

He makes it, perhaps, thee-hundred feet from the central grave.

NOW! he roars into Diogenes' mind.

Well out of range still, dripping head-to-toe in gore and melted bone, his khukri snapped in the middle from the sheer forces to which he has subjected it, the assassin advances. He can feel his last reserves burning away, every burst of strength to hurl back his attackers draining something essential. Every breath is one he could not take unaided, and still he advances.

Into the minds of all the party, he screams,

FLEE! BELOW! NOW, OR WE ALL DIE!

He catches sight of Thomas across the field, sees the priest's vicious nod, and reaches to his belt.

Pulling forth his bandoleer of Ectoplasmic Dispersion Grenades.

Readying them all.

And throwing.

There is no sound. Rather, an implosion of silence. A concussion of nothingness. A denial, spreading two-hundred-fifty feet around the stair. Driving away the controlling spirit from these creatures.

For fleeting seconds.

Innumerable bodies slump lifeless.

And with a final gasp, both priest and assassin fight their way back to the descent, stumbling over each other and falling, both unconscious, into the darkness below.

[Quiet Man Cometh]

Corpses and broken stone now made a ring around the psychic. All but blind, she stumbled around the few headstones she hadn't yet torn from the ground, guided by the glow from enumerable bronze swords that lay smoldering in the earth.

FLEE! BELOW! NOW, OR WE ALL DIE!

Tarja cringed, grit her teeth and sent a flash of annoyance back at the assassin, which had all the effect of a whisper in a strong breeze when she felt his mental presence suddenly slip away. “Fine, you’re forgiven this time.”

Tarja let out a heavy, relieving sigh and broken stone and grave markers hit the ground around her, no longer suspended in the air. She blinked away the white blindness from her eye and drew her axe from its holster across her back. Her vision began to clear, but black spots still danced about and the ground arced towards here in a nauseating pattern.

She was blessedly close to the stairway, and with each step the ground started to settle beneath her feet, though the black spots still dotted her vision. A few crude swings with her axe disabled the few undead that had started to push back into the clearing, and when she reached the stairway she grabbed one of the bronze swords that lay scattered about the cemetery like glorified firewood. The flames that still lapped at the blade lit the stairwell, and the still bodies of Thomas and Diogenes at the bottom. She descended as fast as she dared.

[Espy]

"Forget about ideas!"

Dante made a motion to grab the girl's arm and pull her towards where Thomas and Diogenes has presumably just fallen down, but realized she would probably be better off running on her own and simply started sprinting towards the hole. Grabbing the tombstone, he swiveled around and swung himself down the stairs nearly colliding into someone at the bottom and tripping over the prone forms of Diogenes and Thomas.

"Move!" he yelled as he struggled to drag the two to the side. "...Or help me; that'd be great as well."

Fucking hell, why are these idiots so damn heavy?

Inhaling again, the dank air flying into his lungs faster than necessary, he pulled again, his fists clenched around their collars.

The hell you need to pass out for when you'll just make a goddamn roadblock?!

[Quiet Man Cometh]

Tarja pushed herself off the wall she was pushed into when Dante came hurtling down the stairs. Idiot!

“You want to impale yourself after all of that?” She hissed, holding the bronze sword upright in front of her, the light falling over the bleached deer skull rather than on her own face. Realizing the blind man possibly bad no clue what she was talking about, she just shook her head and grabbed Diogenes by his robes, lifting him off the ground with ease.

“I’ve got a splitting headache so if you would kindly tote the other one along we can get moving.”

Exercising enough telekinetic power to lift the two men off the ground, Tarja pulls Diogenes along and pushes Thomas in Dante’s direction with her knee, her other hand still holding the flaming sword.