/// IN THE SINKING FIELD, IN THE INVERTED ZIGGURAT OF PANGINOON TUPAS, WHO IS DECEASED, AND WHOSE NAME HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM THE ETCHINGS OF THE TREE OF LIFE

“Carry her body,” said Brother Owl. “We must pay her respects.” And so did Jonathan and Mattheo carry Susanna’s corpse. They lifted her up onto one of the floating clouds, and Brother Owl carried it with them. His eyes still burned with that mournful indigo, as if to showcase the fact that his burning sadness seared through even his eyes.

There was a great silence that now pervaded the entirety of the realm of Panginoon Tupas, as the great ripping of his Ziggurat surely showcased the power of who they were upon the followers of Tupas.

“Come, they must be waiting for us.” And they hurried towards the elevator.

Jaime awoke as they were climbing up the elevators. He was being carried by Jenna, who was a lot stronger than she looked. “Let me down.”

Jenna acquiesced. Jaime stood and brushed dust off. His wounds were healing, quicker than normal. There were little pocks of strange, black stone that lay over his wounds, as if some strange contraption to heal him. He pulled his ripped hoodie closer to himself. Angela hadn’t noticed it before, but his right arm had burst into an intense map of burning indigo blood, and the tips of his fingers had turned into sharp talons, like swords.

Jaime closed his eyes and inhaled. “Poon Tupas is dead,” said Jaime. “Brother Owl has done his work. However, I did not intend on it happening in this fashion.”

Jenna narrowed her eyes. “You… are working for Brother Owl?”

Jaime nodded. “I have been friends with Brother Owl for shorter than you have, but he has saved me from the worst of Biringan. I am his… agent, you could say.”

“So what, you were working as some kind of intense double-agent for Brother Owl?”

Jaime nodded. “We worked on taking down Panginoon Tupas first, since I was already working for him by the time he got to me. It was a years long thing, and we wanted to bring him down naturally, without the use of flashy and outright force. A slow-eating violence. It was to ensure that Panginoon Tupas slowly crumbled, and the free peoples here of the Sinking Fields would take over, led by a council of merchants. However, as you can see, this is what we were trying to avoid.”

Gala swallowed. “There will be a power vacuum,” she pointed out. “His cronies will try to take over his throne.”

“Shit,” said Jenna.

“The coming of your friends does not bode well,” said Jaime.

Jenna tilted her head to the side, questioning. “Why? It’s not like we don’t get transportees here every few days.”

“No, there is something else. Their coming was the byproduct of a greater movement within the great hierarchy. The gang-kings of Biringan are scrambling for power, even the Archons are mobilizing, for the prophecy of the Twilight Devil Emperor is becoming realized.”

The elevator doors opened, and Jaime turned around. His eyes still burning, there was an indigo tinge to his hair now.

The five of them walked out, with Jaime up front. His hand was mutating once again, seemingly roiling beneath his skin. The guards of the ziggurat formed up before them, spears and shields and swords and rifles all in concert and formation.

Jaime raised his hand, and it turned normal, a normal person’s hands. However, Angela’s eyes widened when he saw that his feet had turned into the legs of a goat, as if he were some satyr. “Followers of Panginoon Tupas!” screamed Jaime. “Your Poon is dead. And you shall all subject yourselves to me, by virtue of Batala’s Law of taking what is rightfully yours.” And then the tip of his fingertips blossomed with indigo flame, and so did his hair, and his eyes, and his mouth, and he burned and he shone like an indigo sun prince.

“Let it be so, and be my decree, that Panginoon Tupas is dead, and the Sinking Fields become a place of charity and peace, of non-oppression and freedom.”

And the armies of that lust demon fell to their knees, bowing before Jaime, the taker of powers. He leaned over his shoulder and said: “I’m not going to get used to this.”

Jenna looked at him dubiously. “Sure you aren’t.”

The winds blew then, a strong building hurricane. There was the distinct sound of wings flapping against the gale. And then suddenly Brother Owl was there with them, the doors of the ziggurat blast open.

“Quickly, we must leave.”

Jaime nodded. He turned to the others. “Come on then.”

The army moved aside to let the five of them pass, and they climbed upon the Brother Owl’s Ever-Present Cloud and shot off into the night. The corpse-sun’s shine had left them, descending down below to the lower layers of the world, and they were left in a starlit sky, as if little holes to white nothingness. From here, if one would look up, one would also be able to see the long lines and zig-zags and curves that somehow appeared on the night sky. This is because of the Holy Heretic Rebellion shattering the firmament of reality, and thus creating cracks upon the sky. The cracks only showed the black nothingness past Batala’s emanation.

On the cloud, Jenna, Angela, and Gala all huddled around Susanna’s lifeless body. They gripped her tight, and they sobbed so much that no noise left their throats anymore. Their cries intertwined with the night chatter, the night noise, of Biringan, as they shot back to the edge of heaven, where the Monastery of the Moon was.

/// MONASTERY OF THE MOON, SOUTHEASTERN EDGE OF PARAISO, ON THE ISLAND OF SALAMUHA

The mood was somber, and tranquility was not something they thought they deserved. They walked about, with Brother Owl showing Jenna, Esther, Angela, and Gala to their dorm room, which was small, and had bunk beds enough for six of them. The room was of course sad. But it had the furnishings and the aesthetic of a 2020-style upper-middle class apartment room, with clean walls and floors, desks, and nice pastel coloring.

Gala took one look at the beds and said: “Yewon and Susanna would’ve slept on those…” Her eyes watered, and her pout threatening to break into a full on sob. Jenna reached out to her and pulled her into a hug.

Angela sat on the bed where they were and hugged them as well. Tears wouldn’t come to her since she still couldn’t process everything that was going on. It was all too much, all too quick.

Esther was silent. She fell to the bed beside Gala and simply put her head on her shoulder. Tears wouldn’t come to her because she was fuming, filled with anger, rage bubbling against the false lords that treated them like play things.

“First Yewon, now Susanna.”

Angela contemplated for a long time, wondering whether she would talk while everyone else was grieving and while she was sure that Esther was fuming. Then, she said: “We can’t give up, Esther. We can still bring back Yewon. That’s what we’re here for in the first place, right?”

“It’s not something we wanted to do,” said Esther. “We were just caught up in this all of a sudden. We never should’ve gone to that balete tree.” She rose to her feet. A punch to the wall. A crack. The sound was sure to have reverberated across the entirety of the Monastery.

Jenna rose to her feet and walked over to Esther and hugged her tightly. Esther didn’t move, couldn’t move. “It’s not something you guys could’ve known,” said Jenna. “The multiverse… is a much stranger and much more dangerous place than you could’ve known.”

Angela blinked and then realized something. Gala had moved to Angela to cry on her shoulder, and Angela let her. “Hey, one thing that’s been on my mind lately. How did all three of you get here in the first place…?”

“Yeah,” said Esther, her voice low and quiet, but not quite silent. “Weren’t you guys in Korea?”

Gala sniffed. Jenna conjured up a piece of handkerchief from nowhere--her Gahum--and gave it to Gala for her to wipe her face. “We were. But… I fell in love with someone who turned out to be an interdimensional spirit who lived in Paraiso. That went on for two years, and he pulled me into a balete too, which brought me to Paraiso. He wanted to marry me, but Susanna and Jenna saved me from that.”

“Marry a spirit…?”

“It’s not nice at all. He was going to string my body up to the tree that he lived in and he was going to nail me to it with calamansi thorns, and then just keep me alive for as long as he lived.” She shuddered. “That’s no way to live.”

“Let it be known that spirits do not think like we humans do,” said Jenna.

“So, what, no marrying spirits? Is that a rule?”

“Yeah,” said Gala. “Engkantos too.”

“Gotcha.”

“That sounds like a long story in itself,” said Angela, referring to the story Gala just told. “But… so you’ve been here for three years now? How did you survive…?”

“Brother Owl,” said Jenna. She was still hugging onto Esther. “He found us and took us in and trained us in the Puwersa. He protected us through the Monastery, and then he trained us in the ways of Biringan, of Paraiso. We grew stronger because of him, of course. However, he was planning on eventually letting us return to Biringan, when the time was right.”

Gala nodded. “‘All things have a right time, and now is not yet the time,’ is what he would say every day where we would ask him to bring us home. He never explained why.”

“And now…” Jenna’s voice trailed in the air, and they let it hang there, for the thought was still too hurtful, like a sword thrust into your gut being thrust deeper.

The silence was mournful, but a needed respite. There was the sound of small chatter by the students of the Monastery and the other brothers. There was the sound of water being sprinkled upon the leaves. There was the low sweeping mutter of the waves as the multicolored sea crashed against the shore. There was the whistle of the wind as it passed overhead, healing and helping.

This silence was cut when the door opened. Jaime peered inside, seeing Gala on Angela’s shoulder, and Esther standing by a wall, being hugged intensely by Jenna.

“Alrighty,” said Jaime. “Dinner?”

The dinner table had been set up and it was surprisingly small. A large square table without any chairs, only pillows. The table was low, as expected, and only reached up to Angela’s chest when they sat down cross-legged before it. It was made of bamboo.

They ate in a small bamboo stilt hut mostly outside of the Monastery proper, but still on the island of Salamuha.

Jonathan, Mattheo, Esther, Angela, were all there, sitting alongside Jenna, Gala, Brother Owl, and Jaime. The mood was predictably somber, underpinned with death.

They ate a rice meal in silence, one of fish and chicken and fried rice. A steaming bowl of sinigang soup was beside each plate, which was made of rattan and overlayed by a banana leaf. Cups of coffee grown on the island itself were given to them as well, along with calamansi juice.

The four of them: Jonathan, Mattheo, Esther, and Angela, ate ravenously. When they were done, they felt sad again, the food only a brief reprieve from the overwhelming truth of death.

The night was cold, and the wind was cold. No snow, none of that foreboding snow. The gang had showered up and cleaned themselves accordingly, to make sure that they weren’t just dreaming or whatever. But they weren’t, and even though they were dreaming, how would they know that a cold shower would wake them up?

They felt extra cold now after the shower, considering that they hadn’t thought it’d be that cold when they first got there. The night sky was pierced by the little stars, and a moon hung overhead, arising from the east like a returning visitor.

Jonathan saw Angela still battling with the burden of having Susanna gone and Yewon abducted. He reached out and gripped her hand. Angela smiled, appreciative.

“I shall be leaving your training in the hands of Jaime,” said Brother Owl, after eating and sipping a cup of coffee.

“Training?” asked Esther, after a long, awkward silence. “Our friend just got killed, and you’re worrying about training?”

“You came here to rescue your abducted friend, Yewon, did you not?” asked the Brother Owl, his voice ambivalent again. “And to rescue her, you need power.”

“Where is Yewon?” asked Angela. “Why haven’t we seen her yet?”

“She… has been abducted, and I have received word it is because some spirits believe her to be the Twilight Devil Emperor, she who will ascend the Angel’s Ladder and overthrow the Holy Trinity and rule creation once again.”

“What?”

“The prophecy--”

Esther burst. “The Prophecy,” she pantomimed mockingly. “Shut the fuck up with your stupid, cryptic, Lord-of-the-Rings bullshit and just tell it to us straight.”

“Yewon will become God,” said Brother Owl, his voice still that lilting melancholy. “If you do not save her.”

“Why don’t you save her then,” said Mattheo. “You’re all strong and mighty and you cut an entire building in half and you killed demons.”

“I may be strong,” said Brother Owl. “But I will not be strong enough to fight against those whom I attract attention from.”

“What?”

“Brother Owl is known,” said Jaime. “Too well known. A single reported movement from him and the Archons--the rulers of the Universes under the Trinity--will be upon him, and he will die, for none can face against the Archons.”

“Then why should we do it?” asked Angela. “Why should we, some stupid no use people, do it?”

“Because you have a reason to,” said Brother Owl. “Because you have not attained as much attention, and have a much larger chance of retrieving and rescuing Yewon from her abduction without shaking the pillars of heaven too much.”

Angela sighed. Jonathan spoke up. “We just have to get strong enough to rescue Yewon, and then we can leave.”

Brother Owl nodded. “If the spheres align, I will be able to send you back to the universe you came from.”

“Good,” said Jenna, and the years flashed in her eyes.

“I say that your training will be handled by Jaime in the meantime because I will be gone. I may not have the sheer power to overthrow the Archons, but I do have leverage against Pandaki and Sidapa.”

“What do you mean?” asked Jenna.

“I shall be gone for days, maybe weeks, maybe a few moons. I shall travel to Idalumnon, the bottom of the universe, and retrieve Susanna from Sidapa’s grip.”