To be completely honest, when I awoke again, I absolutely thought that I would be waking up in that tub with the turquoise water. When I felt cold dampness about me, I immediately thought it to be true… that is, until I realized that I wasn’t lying in cold water.

My eyes split open, and I almost sat up and would’ve swung whatever was in my hand at the moment, until I realized that a middle-aged woman sat beside me, leaning over me and placing poultices upon the part where I was scratched by the poisonous claws of Alessandra. I wasn’t wincing when I woke up anymore.

“H-Hello…?”

The woman was wearing a great veil—the kind that women that went to church on Sundays would wear. She also wore a simple butterfly-sleeved blouse and a dark skirt embroidered with square patterns.

Beside her was an abaca bag, which had fallen over, spilling some of the wood flasks onto the floor. I tried to sit up, but the woman shot me a horrible look, and suddenly I lay still. She had a look of a frustrated and tired mother, and somehow that made me not question her.

“Umalagad,” she spoke, and her voice was hoarse. “Is your descendant—“

“Yes, witch, she is.”

She smiled demurely, laying plants and herbs over me and then proceeding to massage it, placing pressure upon the wound. To my surprise, it didn’t hurt. “Why so apprehensive?”

“A mambabarang who knows the way of Hilot is not to be trusted.” Hilot.... Even in my hazed mind, something popped up into the sight of my soul.

Hilot.

Albularyo Rank 3 Skill

This skill lets you remove all ailments and heal all a person's GInhawa, as long as you have 3 hours to tend to the injured.

The lady pressed her lips together. “I wield a dual-profession Agimat, umalagad. It’s not something to be surprised of.”

“Still, I am cautious. However, I am appreciative of you healing my granddaughter.”

“It is no problem at all.” She turned to me. “Hello, sweetie. Are you awake? Come now, you must rest a bit more for the healing to quicken. Here, rest.” And then she leaned down and kissed my forehead. There was a brush of drowsiness that suddenly filled my head, turning my thoughts into cloudy mush.

And then, nothing. Back into the well of blackness and unconsciousness I went.

When I woke up again, I was still there, and my entire body felt like it hasn’t moved. More and more I grew to hate this feeling. I had to go about, I had to jump around, to leap to the skies or to challenge the deeps.

I looked around me and saw that I was in a simple room. One of those bamboo slat houses with bamboo walls and cogon grass roofs. Earthenware jars, or tapayan, as they are called in this world, adorned with designs of winds and waves, laid on the far side. I knew that these jars would be everywhere, as they were a great way of keeping heat and preserving food.

They had removed my shirt, replaced by white bandage tape wrapped around my lower torso. I put my shirt back on when I saw it folded on the side.

“Ah, you’re awake, again,” said Orlok, by my wrist.

I smirked. “You didn’t go out to look for something to eat this time?”

Orlok shook her head. “Not anymore I’m afraid. I'm bound to your forearm, you see. And to be fair, I never needed to eat. An ancestor spirit just does that for fun and to relive the good old days.”

My eyebrows furrowed. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I could remember a distinct ritual that would always occur at the ends of days. We would always have little wooden larawan where we would pray to the umalagad for. Larawan being the name for the wooden idols of the old gods. “Then why do you require so much food when making offerings?”

“We don't need it,” said Orlok. “You needed it. To get to us.”

Eventually, I rose to my feet, feeling strong as ever. In my mind’s eye, I saw 3 hearts + 2 green hearts. “Whoa, what’s with the green hearts?”

“They’re temporary. When you get damaged, it goes to them first. When you heal back up, they don’t come back.”

“Makes sense.” I did some stretching to limber up a bit. I was getting used a bit to living in my body, although I still don’t fully feel like I’m Dalita. I guess I’ll just have to get used to it. Whatever it was I’d gotten myself into, I’m sure that I can only fix it if I fully become Dalita. That train of thought felt like instinct.

When I was done, I grabbed the sack filled with krises and also put my own rusted kris around my hip once again. “I think I'm ready to hit the road.”

“Oh, really?”

“Wait, shit, this was the village I’m supposed to get to! Right, right.” I went out of the house that I was in—which was very cool despite the tropical heat. I was pretty sure that was because of the architecture: a house built upon stilts, with bamboo slat floors, bamboo walls, huge windows for airflow, and cogon grass.

I walked down the short bamboo ladder that led to the raised front porch of the house, and as soon as my feet met the dirt, I was hit with an overwhelming sense of dread and sadness. My senses were flaring up at all angles.

“Your Superstition Trait is pretty high, after all,” said Orlok, as if feeling what I felt.

I looked about me, and while the housings were sparse—it was built on a hill, after all—it still felt overwhelmingly empty. I could see only, what, five other houses? And then atop the hill, seemingly crowned by trees, was a simple church. The sun actually seemed to shine a light upon it, as if it was telling me that that was important.

Gripping my kris, I walked over to one of the other houses, walking across the length of an empty plaza. “Hello? Is anyone there? Tao po.” An invocation, to make sure people inside know you are a person, for creatures always try to get in your houses. It meant “I am a person.”

However, there was no response. “It’s strange,” said Orlok.

I raised an eyebrow. “What is?”

“I sense no life, and I am a spirit that is long dead.”

“Well, it was you who told me to go to this village in the first place.”

“in search of help!”

Biting my lip, I made my way up the bamboo ladder and onto the closed bamboo door. I knocked again, and said that invocation once more for good measure. “Tao po.” Still, no answer.

“You think we should go in?” I asked Orlok.

“There is no one inside.”

I pouted, and then forced the door open. Within was… nothing. It was a melancholy picture, actually. A bamboo stilt house, complete with a square table set low to the floor, with square butt pillows for people to sit upon. The house was decorated with colorful draperies of great textiles, geometric patterns that resembled the universe, woven into tapestry. Okir, as the design was called.

On the far corner, right outside of a room partition, was a small little grove for cooking, and there I saw that there were still unwashed utensils. There was a horrid stench, and it was a stench I did not like at all.

I stepped out. “Where is everyone?” I expected a bustling town, or at least some kids playing outside. But there’s nothing here. A few houses strewn about a small hectare of land, but other than that, nothing. I shouted, a deep voice into the void.

Of course, no response, even after three times of doing it. Three times too, Orlok tried to stop me, but I didn’t heed her call.

“Pipe down. You’ll wake the ghosts.” I jumped, another little squeak, when I saw the veiled figure standing over by the well. She had with her two buckets of water, scintillating and clean. “Come over here and help me.”

I nodded and went down to help her. I mean, It was the least I could do, right? Especially since she did save my life. I went over to her and picked up two buckets filled with well water, while she did her best to carry one. Thankfully the buckets had handles upon them.

Eventually, we made our way to where she was headed. I was mostly quiet the whole way through, not wanting to disrupt… whatever she was doing. However, when I realized that we were heading up the hill and over to the church crowned by trees, I began asking: “Hey, isn’t your house that way?”

She shook her head, simply. “Just follow me,” she said, and of course without explanation. I hated that, but hey, what could I do? This entire world didn’t seem to want to explain itself to me anyway.

Eventually we reached the large wooden doors of the stone church. “Are you a nun?” I managed to ask, before she got inside. She didn’t respond and simply slipped in through the door. Unfazed at what I had—or had not—heard, I went in with her.

When I saw what was inside, there was that feeling of a dewdrop tinkling down from the leaf of a tree and then falling to the dry soil below. I don’t know why I felt that, but I did. The church had a huge hole blasted in by its right side, and on the edges of that hole seemed to creep in vines, like nature trying to reclaim what people tried to take away from her.

Pews upon pews were stacked atop the side of the church that wasn’t yet blown open. On the corners and beside the tables and beside the altars were rows of tapayan, presumably filled with whatever thing she wanted preserved. Then, on the altar where the priest would preside over a mass, or a candelabra, there was instead a huge wooden idol of a man with an overly large head and an overly small, sitting figure. His face was contorted, in that weird way that only a human could contort. Upon his legs were piles upon piles of bananas, apples, and other unsalted food such as sticky rice, rice, rice cakes, and chicken legs.

And then, on a table in the middle of the church, parallel to the hole, was a long wooden table, whereupon great scrolls fo bamboo and long flaps of parchment fell. Writing steles and other such implements fell across it. It also showcased an array of little elixirs made, along with ingredients, each of them labeled in the native language. There were a mortar and pestle, a water heater, and some glass flasks.

“Alchemy?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Nay, not alchemy. Alchemy is superstition imposed by reason. This is witchcraft, pet.” She removed her veil, revealing the lady beneath. Her hair was short, styled into a messy bob. Her lips were a dark blue, and so too did she have black paint around her gray eyes. Her hair was the color of the day as it sunk beneath the horizon: leaden gray with a hint of pastel violet.

“I am Aling Assunta,” she said. “And yes, I am a witch. A mambabarang, as we are called in this world. Now, what are you?”

“Uh… I am Dalita, and I am… an Attainer? And also, I am unemployed.”

“Right,” she said, nodding. She was still wearing her butterfly-sleeved blouse, although it was made of piña fiber, meaning one could easily see through it. I saw that she wore nothing else beneath the see-through fabric.

She turned and walked over to her writing implements. “Hay. You must be so glad that you’ve caught me at a time when I am the most bored.”

“Yeah?”

“I hate Attainers,” said Aling Asunta, suddenly looking over to me with a seething gaze. “But you’re beautiful and young. And also your umalagad was very persuasive, and so,” she raised a writing implement—which dripped with blood—and she shrugged. “I will educate you with some basics of this world.”

I raised an eyebrow. “And what do you get in exchange? What could this damn snake have accorded with you to get you to teach me?”

“Your life,” said the witch, and she wrote something with the blood. Only then did I realize that that was my blood.