18726/Cardinal Sins: Trial Run.

Cardinal Sins: Trial Run.
Date of Scene:	14 August 2024
Location:	Woodlawn Cemetery
Synopsis:	When the sins of man are brought down on the dead, the Justice League Dark, its allies and potential new friends come together. Rick needs a new sweatshirt, Caleb needs a drink, Sara still isn't sure how it all works and Camille just might be in for the ride of her life - if she says yes. John? Well, you can find him on his stool at The Laughing Magician just like any other Tuesday.
Cast of Characters:	John Constantine, Sara Pezzini, Richard Stadler, Camille Russo, Caleb Dykstra

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John Constantine has posed:
It's right around three in the morning, why can't the shite hit the fan at noon? Because then it wouldn't be the 'things that go bump in the /night/' now would it. About twenty minutes ago, a little 'ping' went off in John's head, sent by the mystical connection he created between his head and a scrying map left to him to deal with by the daughter of a dear friend. That was a /really/ good dream that got interrupted too, bloody map - no really, it's bloody, type O if John had to venture a guess.

After sending out a 911, he was up and out the door - that is to say he was dumped right in the middle of Woodlawn Cemetery, damned House didn't even have the decency to drop him a block or so away to get the lay of the land. Short of it, he's already starting this little adventure on the wrong side of happy.

As far as cemeteries go, Woodland isn't quite as dark and spooky as others can be in the middle of the night. The perimeter of the place is at least fairly well lit. It's not the darkness that makes the place feel 'off' tonight, it's the complete lack of sound once one enters the cemetery proper from the streets outside. No street noises, no wandering late night tourists, no night insects chirping their disdain for the coming dawn. Nothing, it's just /silent/.

A pregnant, foreboding silence certain to give birth to something sinister at any moment.

So, there John stands, in the middle of the cemetery and its preternatural silence looking more rumpled than usual - he's even missing his tie, at least he has both shoes? And all he has to say on the matter is, "Bullocks."

Sara Pezzini has posed:
Who needs sleep? No really, it was a rare commodity for Sara to get sleep, and tonight was no different. The 911 reached her just as she was exiting the shower, which gave her time to throw on something she didn't care if it was destroyed and break the law by speeding to the location.

She had been expecting something, anything, but John standing there in silence wasn't it. Parking, she made her way toward him silently before saying quietly, as if the dead could hear her (and they can), "What's up?"

Richard Stadler has posed:
     Rick would have complained about being woken up out of a sound sleep. Would have, certainly, if he hadn't already been awake at this hour. There was always more planning to be done, more reports to be written, more OSINT (and less OSINT) to review for causes that concern him. Granted, he wished these things came through smartphones rather than the magic trinket he had inconceivably operating on the kitchen counter, but it isn't as if he had anything better to do.

It took him a good half hour to get up here, even with a cab driver who didn't ask questions about why he was bringing a duffel bag and a hastily filled insulated mug to a cemetery. A slight yawn as he walked up the lawn, in a pair of slacks and a University of Maryland sweatshirt.

"Who called it, and who do I expense for the cab ride?"He said, moving to set the bag down,, and take a swallow which he's not entirely satisfied with. A quick look to Sara with a nod, and then to John, with a cocked head.

Camille Russo has posed:
Shit's spooky.

Camille doesn't realize why the cemetery feels off at first or why she felt drawn to open the gate and enter. It doesn't take long for her to realize how quiet it is. Not the normal hushed energy of a cemetery at night, but a complete, unnatural silence that has the hair on the back of her neck raising, hand dropping to her holstered gun. There's an expectant stillness to the silence, the ushering of something wicked coming closer.

She notices a small gathering, and as she recognizes one of them - neutral, at least, certainly not the source of the silence or the wicked feeling - and weaves carefully around flowers and plaques until she comes to a stop next to Rick, eyes going to his thermos. "I was too asleep to even think about coffee." Cam's still got her sleep bonnet on, even, curls covered up in purple satin and one of Rhodey's shirts playing the part of dress over a knee-length pair of leggings and hastily shoved on sneakers. "Grabbed the first bit of clothing that wasn't a dress and made my way here."

Caleb Dykstra has posed:
A call was made, and Caleb picked it up. At 3:00 AM.

With all the dreams he was having - none of them good -, and on the zapping before going to sleep he found a National Geographic documentary about a hypothetical scenario about the Earth being doomed and having to evacuate it, and right after that, the movie starring Nicholas Cage, 'Knowing', you add to this the fact someone blabbed on the SMS notebook about Galactus coming to consume the planet...

Well, he's visibly upset, using that old thing called a euphemism.

He arrives on his 1970 Dodge Challenger, getting off the car and llooking about.

Huh. It's a cemetary.

"Lemme guess..." He sighs, "The dead are rising?"

John Constantine has posed:
"I dunno yet, luv," John admits as he plucks a pack of Silk Cuts from his pocket and lights up just like it's a normal Tuesday - because for him it really is a normal Tuesday. However, three words no one ever wants to hear from Constantine when dealing with the supernatural - I dunno yet. Technically that's probably four words, but it's the same either way. "No shamblin' dead yet, place doesn't seem to reek of necromancy." That's the first logical conclusion given the setting. "The silence, I don't like that - that typically means something a whole lot more bloody powerful than the likes of someone like Midnite."

Cigarette dangling from between his lips, cherry bobbing up and down with every word, he tells Rick, "Bill it to the bloody map, mate." If introductions are in order, they'll have to happen after this current situation and still yet after he's had a few shots.

"Coffee," John snorts. "That stuff'll rot your guts right out." Once again introductions will simply have to wait if they're warranted. He plucks the Silk Cut from between his lips and turns in a slow circle only to be interrupted by Caleb's arrival. "Always take the safe bets, mate?"

When it happens, it happens quickly. There's no slow churning of the earth in front of headstones, no skeletal hands reaching up desperately from the depths. At least a dozen graves simply /explode/ open, underground vaults and all - and that's just in this section of the cemetery. All of the corpses seem relatively fresh, within six months at least - with meat still on their bones.

John tosses his cigarette to the ground, grinds it out with the heel of his show and mutters, "Show time."

Sara Pezzini has posed:
Richard gets a nod as he arrives, "JLD Richard, always the JLD." Another is is offered to Camille when she arrives, and Caleb gets the final one before she looks back to John. "You feel that?"

Mere seconds before the earth explodes, Sara finds herself wrapped in the metal tendrils of Witchblade's armor. The level of threat presently unknown merely means there is more of her revealed, but after four years of this, she's grown used to it.

"Richard, John... John, Richard," she says hastily, that adds to everyone present. "John here is running this scene, do what he says or leave, there is no debating this, and no arguments."

Richard Stadler has posed:
     Rick doesn't exactly look happy with that answer, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "I'll assume that's sarcasm, but do you know how much-" He starts, before waving his hands. "I'd ask you to put it out, but I don't expect you would. Do you know how much it costs to take a taxi at 3 AM from West Central Park to the Bronx?" He says, sighing and placing the mug on the ground, and unzipping the bag and taking out both a harness with a number of pouches... and a rather good quality SKS. Bayonet still attached, of course. He's slinging it on, one shoulder at a time. "And I can only hope that's where I'm taking the pocketbook hit." He mutters.

Camille has him reach into his pocket, and toss a packet of something over to her, an easy, slow toss that should be easy to catch. "MRE leftovers. Got a plastic bag of them at home. Might give you a boost, if the adrenaline doesn't. He says, looking over to Caleb, frowning. "And I'd hope you would be getting some sleep." He still doesn't like students out this late, it seems. On a /school night/.

And then Rick looks back over to John. "Silence at a cemetery is the ideal state. It's what I'd expect at this time of night. I don't suppose it'd be too much to ask for a proper threat assessment before I have to lug myself in a taxi 12 miles down 9A-

Rick looks like he /might/ actually be up for arguing the point. Maybe the early morning made him a bit grumpy. But the undead exploding out of cemeteries seemed like the wrong time to stereotypically argue over zombie survival leadership. Instead, after a moment of shock, he's slammed a five round stripper clip into the magazine, worked the bolt, and already has two rounds headed down range toward one of the undead's skulls.

Camille Russo has posed:
"Quiet, yeah, but it's too damn silent Rick." She catches the bar with a grateful nod, pulling it open and biting off a chunk of the bar with slightly too-sharp canines that she doesn't seem to notice. "Mm yeah, the getting here wasn't great, but that's because I wasn't at home." She shrugs, starting to say something else when the graves explode open.

"Ah hell naw, who tryin to be Fester Addams playing wake the dead?"

Camille takes another bite of the bar, shoves the last bite into the pocket where her phone is, then crosses her arms as she stares at the mess of dirt, grass, flower, and coffin covering the graveyard. "The Baron's gon' be pissed. Again. Why people gotta disturb the dead? They get angry bout that shit." She finds out who did this and she's gonna smack them one right upside the head.

Caleb Dykstra has posed:
"It's generally what happens when I go into a cemetary", Caleb explains to John. "Starting to get used to it." He yawns, and grabs himself some coffe on a thermos he brought. "Excuse me... This seems like an all-nighter."

His eyes dart towards the exploding graves, stopping mid-gulp. "Well, for dead rising, that's one rude awakening..."

Oh, spirited jokes.

John Constantine has posed:
He tosses a wink and a double thumbs up at Sara when she sets down the law about who's in charge. "That's it, luv, keep'm in line." So far he doesn't seem overly concerned about exploding graves. Even when the corpses that come out of them aren't moving like any zombie move ever - unless 28 days later had a bastard child with The Ring. They're fast, but they move as if they're being controlled by a puppeteer's pulling their strings. "Map's never wrong, mate," John calmly informs Rick once all hell's breaking loose. Once again, he starts his turn in a circle, slow, methodical. He's whispering something under his breath - inaudible even to those closest to him, not that they'd likely understand whatever ancient, dead, ridiculous language he's speaking anyway. He stops whatever mystical mumbojumbo he was doing and takes one step toward Rick to shove the barrel of the man's gun up along with a firmly spoken, "No!" It all happens in a blink, John moves in just enough time to toss of the /second/ round. The first hits the head of a middle aged man, flesh still clinging to his body - including his pot belly. As soon as the putrid head explodes, something black twirls its way toward the night sky. It isn't a fog or a mist, or a cloud - it looks like torrential, inky black rain falling in the wrong direction.

"It's demons, you wank!" He might apologize for that later. "Every time we make re-dead one of these bloody bastards, we're releasing the thing that's wearing them as meat suits."

So far, only one of the 'meat suits' even seems to have noticed the group and its closing in fast. The rest of them well -

Some of them are tearing one another apart, a few of them are digging through open graves as if they're looting them, two of them look as if they might be - please, no - the dead knocking boots is something no mind should ever have to wrap itself around.

In the distance, the sounds of more exploding graves drowns out - if only for a moment - the sounds of dead puppets all doing their thing.


"Not sure this one's in the Baron's wheelhouse, poppet," John asides to Camille. He shoots a puzzled look in Caleb's direction. "Aye, safe bet's are your thing, mate. I get it."

Sara Pezzini has posed:
Once again there is a part of Sara that wants to Gibb's smack him in the head for calling her luv, but there's no time for hating on the British vernacular.

"So no shooting, or killing them, got it... what /do/ we do John!" She barked, a long metal whip forming in her right hand. "Demons in dead bodies, puppeteer out there controlling them, how close would this person need to be? You wanted control, you got control, tell these fine people what the hell to do!"

Lifting herself into the air, hovering for just a moment, she adds, "I'll be overwatch, tell you all exactly how many graves are effected so how many we're dealing with." then lifts higher into the air to get a good look at the cemeteries lay out.

Richard Stadler has posed:
     Stadler's second shot goes wide, the rifle barrel pointed up as it's fired off into the distance, before turning to John with a look of... let's call it frustrated anger on his face. His mouth works, but his brain has the stimulants to run through a few thoughts in a few moments, and it looks like he has the good sense to keep his mouth shut instead of asking how he was supposed to know. Pissing contests wouldn't help anyone right now.

"Force the muzzle down next time. I don't want to think about that bullet going through someone's skull in Yonkers." He mutters, the weapon lowering in front of him as he looks toward the aftermath of the mistake; black twirls, into the skin, and a lot of the dead doing... whatever the id told them to, it seemed. Not that Rick didn't notice the one approching them, moving his grip on the rifle to butt first. "To echo Detective Pezzini here, you have a plan? Because in places like this, mine go to 'shooting' for the short term and 'firebombs' for the medium."

Camille Russo has posed:
"And here I am all fresh out of penance stare," Camille quips.

"You right though, demons ain't really the Baron's domain. Can we freeze them? What's the whole -" she waves her hand at the herky-jerky undead. "Getting the dead unpossessed and back to their slumber, how do we make that happen? And can we shoot the person or people calling up demons, because I am not inclined to be nice after being pulled outta my warm, comfy sleep." She raises an eyebrow at John, less annoyed at him but increasingly annoyed at the situation some dipshit created. "The smack upside the head is my minimum violence threshold for someone calling demons, not my maximum."

Caleb Dykstra has posed:
"Okay, de... mo..." His thought trails off when he notices two of them apparently knocking boots. "Well, there's something to add to the list of shit I can't unsee..."

He shakes his head. "Okay, back now." Looking back to John. "So, how do we kick its ass back to where it came from?"

John Constantine has posed:
"We bloody well herd cats!" John snaps back at Sara. "I can't exorcise all of them at the same time when they're all spread out like rats avoiding a cat and I bloody well can't chase'm all down!" - rats have to come to the cat it seems. It's only the last bit of that sentence that's yelled and only because Sara's off and flying. Maybe it'll reach her ears when he bellows louder, "I think it's what's controlling them, not /who/! And we aren't going where I think the what may be!" At least not tonight. It's not as bad as it seems, maybe two dozen graves in total - so far. Sara will see another twelve or so more from her aerial view.

But the one that has seemed to notice them, he can handle that because it's now really close. With one hand in his pocket - shout out to Alanis - and the other arm stretched out in front of himself - palm out - John goes through the 'I'm addressing the entity inside, be gone' stuff that's something he says in the same way he might order a drink. Oh, there's conviction in his words, no doubt about it - but if words had muscle memory...

When John's done his job, the same inky blackness oozes from the corpse of an old lady - with that dress she's wearing, her family must have really disliked her - but this time it soaks into the ground to disappear. It's all rather anticlimatic truth be told.

After two of the corpses have ripped one another apart, a third is feasting on the remains, its hunger seeming insatiable. The silver lining - it doesn't seem anything is being 'released' when they re-dead one another. The cloud - not all of them seem intent on dismembering one another in fits of rage.

"Drive them toward me! I don't care how, start a Conga line or something!" Levitating would probably be better, or brute force carrying - none of them look like they're in a dancing mood.

Instructions given, John rolls up his sleeves, cracks his neck and prepares for incoming.

No matter how easy he seems to make it look, exorcisms really aren't.

"You get them in line for an eviction notice, mate," is directed at Caleb.

Sara Pezzini has posed:
John only confirmed what Sara was thinking, that whatever was controlling these night risers wasn't around to be dealt with, at least not right now. That will be a fun trip to take the humans on...

<"I'll go all the way to the north and starting pushing them towards you, someone go east and west, and plan to get dirty."> she states over the comm, even if that comm is just a necklace she always wears with an Avenger pendant on it.

True to her words, she heads all the way to behind the last group that came up out of the ground, and swoops in to start physically pushing them toward John and the others. If they don't cooperate, she'll start picking them up, one by one, and dropping them off.

Richard Stadler has posed:
     "So we're playing goddamn sheep dogs?" Rick says, clearly not happy about this turn of events. Not only were they zombies, and the mystical type of zombies, but they weren't the ones that he could deal with with his skill set. "Honestly, this seems like something you can get some national guardsman to do with a 2 hour course who don't have to worry about ruining a sweatshirt-" He says, before sighing and reaching forward, flipping out the bayonet from the front.

Walking forward to one of the ones that was attempting to rip another to pieces. It was at least something to take some steam out of, as the bayonet aimed for a bloated belly... from the side. Rick knew enough about t he process to avoid putrifaction... for the most part. and for once he didn't think to bring the proper mask in the JLD go bag. Well, he wasn't going to make that mistake again, 3 AM be damned.

The goal, of course, wasn't to 're-dead' the target. The goal was simply to stick a blade into someplace that stuck, and boldly /drag/ it across the grounds, flipping it off toward John, before looking for the next one. "What about the... parts? They need to be piled up too?"

Camille Russo has posed:
The vial in her hand gets tossed at the feeding frenzy nearest to them, glass breaking into tiny shards and stunning the them in place. "Bait them at the Brit, heard. Going east." Camille pulls a small handful of vials from the pouch on her left hip, checks the stickers on the lids, and hands several of them to Rick. "Blue is slow, stripes is stun." She wonders if demons can be killed by fire. The normal kind of fire, not that weird shit Johnny's passenger does before he leaves a girl with the clean-up. No, she'll never be done razzing him about that.

The other vials get rolled in her hand, and then she holds them out to John. "Stunning in a vial, please don't die Mr. In Charge Here. Paperwork for that is a pain." She jogs east, tossing a vial of fire behind the farthest zombie she can see. With luck, it'll have them moving toward where the fire isn't.

Caleb Dykstra has posed:
"Oh, that simple, huh?", Caleb replies sarcastically. He gets his hands ready, going to the couple that's doing it, and pulls one of them away, and...

*RRRIIIP! SQUELCH!!*

Caleb looks down at what caused so much resistance, only to find that what should be there is not there. He blinks. Looks to the other, and...

Yeah, it's there.

"Mr. Constantine, you will be paying me a heavy drink tonight! My whole tab's coming out of your pocket!"

John Constantine has posed:
The first one dragged in and John isn't doing a damned thing about it. It's pretty much immobile so he's leaving it be. There's probably a method to his madness that goes beyond just the desire to keep his trench coat from another trip to the cleaners? "S'long as I have three quarters, it'll work!" he calls out to Rick right before he lights a damned cigarette.

"I bloody well don't get /paid/ to do this shite! Why should any of you lot?" There's that little glowing ember bobbing up and down in his mouth again. He rolls his neck, stretches his arms over his head only to drop them again and shake his hands at his sides. What in the name of all that's holy is he /waiting/ for?

"Didn't catch your name, poppet," he says as he takes the vial from Camille. Is poppet better than luv or worse?

As more and more head in his direction, it becomes a little more difficult for him. He proves that he's not just another magic wielding pretty face when he ducks, dodges, snags remnants of clothing and basically does whatever he needs to do in order to keep the still moving, fighting or ... well, other things in place. He's working up quite the sweat, his battered lungs are starting to wheeze a little - but he's still not so much as whispered a single word that could start the process of sending even one of these abominations back from whence they came.

Richard Stadler has posed:
     Rick keeps skewering and leading over, sweating with the exertion of it (and attempting to keep the mess of a dead body slowly sloughing off skin and liquid and being digested by it's own bacteria off of a rather beloved sweater). Another one thrown over to the pile, and another, and then one body picked up and tossed toward it. "I really would appreciate a plan update!" Rick says, as he sees him not doing... much of anything.

Sure, this was all part part of the plan, probably, him waiting them complaining about the pay (And really, saying there was no money for anyone didn't exactly help matters. BUt some discussion on methods surely was warranted. He was going to write somethings down for the next meeting, mark his words.

He takes the vials handed over to him by Russo, frowning as he observes the color and patterns. Supertitously stowed in gear. He was doing well enough without them... and who knows if they would come in handy later.

Sara Pezzini has posed:
Some are willing to be shoved toward John, but not enough, forcing Sara to literally bath herself in the disgusting rot of the corpses to pick them up and carry them to John. In her head Witchblade is screaming about having that stuff all over /him/ as if that's the part that mattered, but she focuses on the task at hand and ignores him.

<"No one gets paid for this, and John... Witchblade wants to know who you think it is behind this. You can ignore him for now, but if I didn't ask he'd keep nagging the shi... oh gods, this one is oozing..."

Camille Russo has posed:
Camille laughs as she hears the comment about not being paid. "I'm not putting this shit on my timesheet, that means I have to write a report! And it's Camille. Or Cam!" She dances backwards from the zombies that did turn away from the fire as she'd hoped, shuffling in their weird, jerking steps towards the area the group had originally been at. Another vial gets tossed out, frost spreading along the ground and up the bones and bits of flesh still remaining on the group. It doesn't stop them, but they move slower, feet leaving patches of viscera behind with each stick, peel, and movement forward. It's... gross, if she's honest.

With the fire seeming to work, that becomes her plan for herding the zombies towards John, not out into the city or towards other graves. Another vial is tossed behind a group doing a mixture of things she'll definitely have nightmares about - gluttony and fornication seeming to converge together into a tableau horrifying enough that even Hannibal Lecter would be impressed yet disgusted.

John Constantine has posed:
John waits, then he waits s'more and then a little longer. He waits and he keeps the still moving that were brought to him mostly corralled. And when he finally feels there are enough, he tosses that vial from Camille down on the ground right dead center of them all - of course he's standing clear of its range, hopefully.

Finally he speaks. Loudly. "A'right then! I need you lot to stand at the other three corners around this stunned pile of rubbish!" Once again he shakes his hands at his sides and cracks his neck. If anyone sees him slip one hand into a pocket to bring out a small flask and drink from it? It's just cough medicine, surely. He makes camp at the north corner of the pile of stunned, demon possessed corpses.

... and repeat after me. "If you can't find conviction in the words, then cock on off because you won't be helpin'."

Repeat after him? It's probably easier said than done - once everyone that wants to be in their places is there - he begins. It starts out normal enough - addressing the entities inside and all that. Then it shifts into a little Latin, then maybe some Aramic, was that ancient Egyptian or was it Pig Latin?

It's a hodgepodge, implausible, impossible, absurd mixture of a little of this from that and a little of that from this, but John makes it work. His magic isn't pretty or refined, but it /works/.

Sara Pezzini has posed:
With the last one dropped in the pile, Sara lands at the back of the mess. She's trying not to breath through her nose, but that's nearly impossible. No one shower will solve this, she's going to have to bath in bleach at this rate.

Glancing around to ensure the others heard John, and are actually doing what he said, she looks back to the man with the plan. The words out of his mouth way as well have been a toddler rambling, but thanks to Witchblade she can actually repeat the words back. She has no idea what she's saying, or what the point is, but she knows just enough to put her conviction behind it and to allow Witchblade some access to the situation as well... throwing his power into the pot.

Richard Stadler has posed:
     There was another corpse throown into the pile from Rick, and then the call into the next phase of things... some magical hocus pocus. And Rick closed his eyes, and sighed. All right. So this needed conviction, right? That should be... well, doable, as he stands there at the west corner of the diamonds they've created. Maybe... just consider words like this as ordering some strike from someone you couldn't see. A weapon system in itself. It at least allowed him to go through that... claptrap on addressing demons and then speaking a bit of Latin. BUt if it worked....

Camille Russo has posed:
Camille definitely stumbles on some of the words, but conviction to return to sender these demons? She's got that in spades. The fire she tossed earlier is burning itself out, embers smouldering into the dirt and eventually out as she does her best to repeat after John. The vibes seem slightly more important than the words, so while she does try to be correct, she focuses harder on staying absolutely convinced that these things do not need to be here, please return to sender and charge them for the postage due, thank you very much.

If the dead and the graves would like to put themselves back in order, that would be a nice treat, but the important thing is no more of these demons here.

John Constantine has posed:
With the words being spoken in loop, John's voice grows louder with each refrain. Louder, more intense until he sounds almost crazed. Some might even say that he is - crazy that is. Many /have/ said it. But if crazy gets the job done, nothing wrong with a little crazy.

A blackness falls over the cemetery that's nearly complete - or at least in the area immediately connected to the magic. The silence falls once more, but not nearly as foreboding as before. It's more like the world holding its breath in anticipation, not of something evil and vile, but of something at least less evil.

It all really begins when the darkness ends, when it's replaced by a light so bright it will, quite literally, leave everyone blinded for a least a moment or two and seeing spots for a lot longer. The sheer amount of power that runs through the spell, through the earth, through the entire cemetery is something that can be felt on the soul level.

Exorcisms, John makes them look so easy, but they're not.

Expecially one of this magnitude. An unseen force rushes toward the pile of corpses just as they're beginning to stir again and it's that same force that blows outward and into those committed to the spell.

Each little bit helps, every word said with conviction makes it just a little easier for John to cast out the demons, to return them, to /release/ them back into hell and out of the servitude of whatever's behind this. But when it's done, when it's finally over, John's been tossed ass over tits to about ten feet from where he was standing. It's a tall tombstone that 'broke' his fall.

When he struggles himself back to his feet, he watches as the that inky blackness is forced back into the ground, chased by tendrils of fading light. What does he do next? Well, he lights a cigarette and announces, "Well, that went better than I figured it would. Guess it's time for bed now, innit?"

Sara Pezzini has posed:
Rare moments like this remind Sara that she is in a world filled with powerful magic, and although Witchblade is one of the single most powerful artifacts in existence, she was still extremely clueless as to how it all worked.

The whispered words in her mind from Witchblade allowed her to throw all of her own will and conviction behind repeating them, each new time a little more of the very essence that is the god encased in the bracelet seeps into the spell for John to call on and use.

When it is over, and the cemetery returns to normal (as normal as numerous rotting corpses laying around could be considered), she looks toward where John had been standing. Blinking once she looks past and finally spots him on the ground. The force required to knock him that far...

"I'll take care of it from here," she states with a nod, deliberately /not/ looking down at the corpses again. "I'll have to get in a forensics team to identify who is who and get them back into the proper graves."

Richard Stadler has posed:
     Rick was many things; rock steady in taking explosions metaphysical wasn't one of them. The hocus pocus around them was bad enough, the way the darkness rushed in and seemed to choke out the moon and the stars more than any cloud. But then it was as if a flash bang had gone off, and in addition to being blinded, he felt himself lifted off his feet; perhaps it was the fact that his words simply didn't have the conviction a man of biology could bring to any of this. But he found himself flying back, thumping on the ground, sliding over grass and dirt, the wind knocked out of him, the rifle thrown to the side.

A few moments laying there, before he struggled up to his feet, slowly walking over to the rifle; the darknesss seemed to be back into where it... should be, and it had to be close to dawn. "Next time, we have a briefing." He yells over to John, moving back to the duffel bag, wincing in pain.

Next time the call went to voicemail.

Camille Russo has posed:
Her voice doesn't falter even when the blackness falls over the cemetery, but it's a near thing. Camille keeps chanting, stays absolutely convinced that these beings do not belong and need to go back. Her eyes are already shut in concentration, but the flash of light that comes is so bright that it's searing even through her eyelids, and the power rushing through her is akin to only the biggest workings that she'd only barely had the opportunity to attend before... well, Before. It's heavy and immense, unfamiliar. The blowback sends her into an unexpected backflip, but she lands lighter than expected, crouched and ready to spring forward.

Well. That's weird.

She pushes the thought aside, wrinkling her nose at the paperwork all these corpses and mess are gonna need.