/// ???

Nothingness spat them out into an alleyway of stone, flanked by large bahay-na-bato, looking straight out of colonial Manila. Mattheo fell headfirst onto a stone wall, his body cushioned Esther’s, Jonathan managed to fall onto the stones and rolled, and Angela kept her balance even as some sort of momentum that she never gained spat her out.

“Are you guys okay?!” Angela went over to them, began patting them, looking for bruises, asking if they truly were okay. Esther brushed her off, saying that she felt fine. Mattheo simply nodded along. He did get a bruise to his shoulder from slamming into the stone wall, but that was nothing to him.

Jonathan, who didn’t fall over, said: “Where are we?” And they looked around, and they saw that the sky was a leaden gray, the color of ash, but the sunburned with a weird orange glow, as if blood spilled from its rays. The noise that wrapped around them burned their ears. The alleyway was flanked by wide roads on both sides. Crossing to and fro were not human beings, although some of them seemed humanoid. Angela looked as well, and she saw floating clouds with eyes, serpents with human torsos, gigantic birds that walked on three legs and had human teeth, huge giants with skin so black they melded into shadow, and smoke billowed from gigantic cigars. A pure white dog that vibrated with white lightning, blitzing to and fro. A gigantic stone alligator crossing across the street, every step somehow supported by the road. Within the stone alligator were holes, and peeking out of those holes were beaked humans, six-legged dogs, feathered otters, and scaled rabbits. There, the occasional human, looking out of place with a shock of white hair, a camisa de chino turned into a crop top, and with a single horn sprouting from her brow, and her eyes were the color of rainbows, and her makeup was immaculate and unspotted.

“Where the fuck are we?” repeated Esther.

Angela turned and saw that across them was a balete tree, but this balete had its opening seemingly shut closed by the parasite roots of the predator tree. “We can’t go back.”

“What?”

They all looked at what Angela was looking at, and their voices turned melancholy. Jonathan turned to them, and with simply his eyes seemed to plead what to do next.

Mattheo stepped up. “Let’s get out of this alleyway first, I guess? Maybe there’s an… iunno, a Jollibee somewhere here?”

“What makes you think we’re still in the Philippines?” asked Esther, incredulous.

Mattheo shrugged and then gestured at the bahay-na-bato. “For all I know we could be in a cosplay convention taking place in Vigan.”

“Mattheo is right,” said Angela, walking. The doubt, however, was hard to hide. “Let’s go and find a safe place first.”

As they left the alleyway, screaming ships roared overhead, shaped like flat dragons, flying on wings of wind and air, seemingly made of a mixture of bamboo, hardwood, and gold. Mattheo looked up at them to see that there were beings seemingly made of bone and gold walking to and fro the decks of the ship even as they sailed past.

The four of them walked out into a bustling street. This looked like something straight out of old Divisoria: the roads were completely flanked by booths and stalls of vendors and salesmen (which were borne out of thrown together used steel and bamboo and stone and tied with manila hemp or abaca, looking like a chimeric frankenstein of a store) and the actual section of the road left for public transport vehicles was woefully small, creating a bottleneck in the traffic. They walked past it, and the people didn’t look at them twice, despite Angela noticing that they were all wearing completely different clothing than them: most of them wore colorful barongs, balloon pants, baro, camisas, others had waistcoats, large saya skirts, butterfly-sleeved blouses, some of them wore top hats, other more humble salakot. Some had ruby spectacles, while others didn’t have eyes. All of that fashion on top of the already weird assortment of… beings living in this weird, weird place.

“Hoy, girl! Buy now, buy now! Assorted potions to make people buy from you!” A six-armed bug girl, looking like a mix between a grasshopper and a centipede, was holding out six potions at the same time. The four of them shook their heads and walked past.

“How about some feisty little trinkets from the bullets of Servants? Trinity blessed and Devil Accursed-OK, sure to protect you from any harm!” A serpent person called out from behind a booth, holding out with one arm an entire sleeve of golden trinkets that looked like the anting-anting one would find in a place like Quiapo.

They shrugged away from that as well, even though Jonathan’s eyes had opened up at that and he wanted to look through the wares. Esther managed to pull him away. “Come on Mattheo, now’s not the time for that, you know that.”

The labyrinthine maze twisted Angela’s mind, who walked up front, trying to cut a path through the thongs of strange people. She sniffed and smelled overpowering tobacco smoke from an oncoming kapre. She had to pull her hand away from a walking pond… thing? A berberoka. Then, she finally saw it, strangely enough sitting nestled underneath a stack of bamboo huts. A simple karinderya, similar to the ones they would have back in San Lazaro. Angela turned around to call the others when she met eyes with a man who had a head full of white hair pulled back into a bun and a horrible wiry mustache and goatee. He wore a simple red and gold baro and bahag getup that reached to his knees. Wrapped around his body was a chain of pure gold. Hanging from his ankles and wrists were burning gold bangles. He held no weapons.

“Make God Bleed, child.”

Angela blinked, and then when she opened her eyes, the man was selling something to Mattheo, who was looking at the numerous weapons laid out before him.

“Hey, I found a karinderya,” said Angela, and she pulled Mattheo away from the man, who seemed to leer at her. “That guy was creepy.”

“Really? I thought he was pretty cool.” Angela shot him a look.

Eventually, Esther and Jonathan joined them, and Angela led them into the karinderya.

Unlike the usual karinderya one would find nestled in between smushed together shanties, this one was large, almost feeling like a restaurant, which was nice. Fans turned on the ceiling. They ordered food, with all of them kind of surprised to find such familiar food such as adobo and sinigang. Angela ordered a bowl of sinigang soup, Esther picked up two pieces of fried chicken, Mattheo got the Adobo, and Mattheo settled with fried bacon and egg. All of them ate this with a cup of rice.

“Ya’ll new here?” asked the woman behind the counter, a strange white skinned lady with her muscles transparent through her skin. Her fur was grass, and her hair was leaves, her eyes were dewdrops in the morning, and her skin was a verdant green hue.

“U-uh,” Angela looked to the others, and then back at the others and nodded. “Y-Yes.”

The lady stared at her, top to bottom, before shrugging and nodding. “Have fun,” she said. Before Angela could ask any more questions: especially where they were and how they could understand each other, the lady ignored them to serve a large, big-gutted creature with huge tusks like a boar.

They ate on a far table, where a fan hung over. The food was good, evenly seasoned, and perhaps a bit too good for a simple karinderya, which is sure to have raised some red flags in Angela.

“Alright, so, now that we’re in a relatively ‘safe place’,” said Mattheo, with appropriate aerial quotation marks. “Can we discuss where you think we are, currently?”

Angela looked around, and so did Esther and Jonathan. Around them that same weird gathering of creatures. While some looked more or less human, others were cat creatures or talking musang (civet cats), or bipedal crocodiles, or minotaur-karabaws.

“I have no idea,” replied Angela. “I don’t know anything that’s happening right now.”

“And Yewon…” said Esther. “Yewon’s not here. She’s nowhere to be found.”

Mattheo rubbed his face. “First, Yewon gets kidnapped by a tree demon thing, and then we follow after her, and then we end up in a place we have no idea about and with Yewon nowhere to be seen. Just great. Fuck, what the hell is happening?!”

“They called Yewon an Empress, too,” added Jonathan, who was pinching himself. Angela told him to stop it. “Sorry, I was just wondering if this was a dream or not.”

“What do we do? I don’t know if we run or hide or…” Esther ran a hand through her hair, and then instinctively pulled the scrunchie on her wrist and tied her hair up in a tight and high ponytail. “We have to find Yewon, wherever she is, but first we need to know where we are.”

“Maybe…” Angela inhaled. “Maybe we can ask. That’s always the key when you’re in a place you don’t know. And this is a karinderya, people will be friendlier here.”

Angela rose from her seat and began approaching the lady manning the front counter when shouts broke out from the vendor labyrinth outside of the karinderya. A beat, and then the entire top half of the karinderya was cut open by a sword of bone and viscera and then thrown to the side.

It was like a helicopter descending upon them: hot air billowed and flowed and gusted the entire karinderya, and a deafening wail similar to a jet plane’s filled the entire room. People began jumping out of the way, running, shrieking, eyes wide, cursing: “Servants, Servants! Run, quick, we haven’t done anything wrong!”

Angela gulped, and then looked up. There she saw a giant being, probably three times her height, with six wings burning brightly upon its back, seemingly made of hot wind. Its body was strange, seemingly made out of embossed bone and ivory and gold. Its face was a strange caricature of a face, with a vertical mouth cutting through the middle, and with three eyes on each side. A broken crown sat upon its brow, and above the crown, a crooked halo of light-thorns.

“YOU BEAR THE TWILIGHT DEVIL EMPRESS.”

Angela turned to them. “Run! Quick!”

“What?! We can’t leave you!” Esther had to scream over the burning sound. And they all rose, ready to run over to Angela and then get out of there.

“NAY, HERETICS. FLEEING IS NOT AN OPTION I ALLOW THEE.” And he raised his hand, and white lightning descended from the leaden black sky to strike his hand. That bolt of lightning was shaped and then smithed into a bolt of lightning. “THE PROPHECY SHALL NOT BE FULFILLED, IN HIS NAME.”

And then it brought down the bolt of lightning upon the karinderya, and then everything was pure, soundless white.

/// THE RED RIVER, IDALUMNON, THE BOTTOM OF THE MULTIVERSE

The whiteness receded eventually, and everything came back. Angela opened her eyes and found herself in a place devoid of color, a place of pure whites and blacks--white soil, black trees, white grass, black roads, white souls and black souls. The only thing with color was the river running in the middle and the sea where the river opened up to. They were the stark color of freshly running blood.

“Wh-where am I--” She gasped as a black shadow walked past her, a pure black shadow, with a face sculpted from that darkness. She fell back, to her butt, and she looked down only to realize that she had also turned into a shadow of herself. Her entire body was a bleak black shadow in the vague shape of a human. The somber figure didn’t look back at her. Simply kept on walking forward. Around his neck was a gold chain, and he kept a silver gun in one hand.

She looked around, trying to find where everyone else was. As her gaze swept the monochrome dystopia, she saw that there were almost millions, BILLIONS of these black souls slowly trudging toward a single point, down by the bank of the river. Over there, she could see a single tall being, clad in the colors of the deepest sea, with a head a shock of pure white hair. Her eyes gleamed red as well. She was gigantic, easily towering over them all. Behind her was a large wooden… boat, shaped like a karakoa, with an actual head of a serpent on its prow. The being was reading off of a list, scratching things off, looking at the shadow beings as they passed.

Flying overhead was a young, handsome spirit, with wings thrice his size, and with armor the color of pure gold. He flew down, grabbed a shadowy soul spirit that was covered in gold and expensive clothing and wielded an expensive-looking key, and hauled it out of the throngs of walking shadows. The guy flapped up once, twisted, and then suddenly burned bright, and then was engulfed by a ray of light. And then, he was gone, along with the shadow spirit.

In the next instant, he was back with another flash of light and circled the crowds once again.

“Angela. Psst, Angela here!” Angela whipped her head around to find Esther, Jonathan, and Mattheo--wait, no. They’re shadows with her friends’ faces. The shadows looked out from within a small cave built by white rocks.

Nevertheless, that being the only familiar thing, she crawled toward them. “Is it really you guys?!”

“Yes, oh my god yes. Are you alright?!” Esther grabbed Angela, pulling her into a tight hug. Their shadow stuff smoked.

“Where the hell are we?” asked Jonathan, peering out of the entrance of the cave and at the infinite amount of shadow beings walking toward the red river and the sea-dressed woman. “Did we die? Did that angel thing…”

“Shit.” Mattheo put his head on his hands. “Are we in actual Hell?”

Angela turned around, her eyes wide. She looked at the red river, looking like a river of blood. At the bleak surroundings. At the strange shadow beings. “Are we…?”

“No, no that can’t be it. That’s impossible.” Esther pressed herself against the wall, hugging herself, looking straight at the wall. That pure, ash-white wall.

“This is strange,” Jonathan said, sighing and leaning back against the wall. “How is… What just happened? What the hell was that demon angel looking thing? Did it really kill us?”

“Whoa, hey! Look at that!”

Mattheo was pointing at a patch of black dust outside of the cave that had begun to swirl. Slow at first, but it began to pick up in speed. Quicker and quicker, a dust devil in hell.

Mattheo spread his arms out and held the rest of his friends back, standing in front of them, making sure he would be the first to be hit if anything bad happens. Angela clutched his shadow stuff.

The black dust wasn’t just swirling. Pieces of it were lumping together, conglomerating, materializing. The swirling dust became a dust devil became a miniature tornado that would’ve swept the friends off their feet… if they had feet.

Angela watched as the tornado eventually dissipated, and the lumped together black dust materialized into a huge and muscular figure, built like a carabao or a water buffalo. His skin was the whitest of bones, and he wore a pure black bahag that covered his thighs, and that bahag was bound together by bones. His eyes glimmered red, and his hair shone with the milky abyss of uncertainty. Above it all, a carabao skull for a helmet, his bone crown.

He looked down at the four friends (which he towered over) and spoke, with the gentlest voice: “You’re not supposed to be here.”

Mattheo blinked. Jonathan gulped. Esther opened her mouth to shout out something but Angela went ahead of her and cut her off. “Y-Yes! We’re not… supposed to be here. Whatever here is.”

“I mean technically we were lightning bolted--” But Angela pinched Mattheo and Mattheo stopped with an “Ow.”

The being looked down on them with a curious look, eyes raised and discontent. The doubt was palpable. “You can speak. You are not passing over. We are in SULAD, the Underworld.”

“Yo, Sidapa! What do you have here?” The winged boy perched on one of the gigantic horns of his carabao skull helmet.

‘Sidapa’ didn’t look at him when he replied. “Lost souls. Wandering souls.”

“Wandering… souls? But aren’t those supposed to be like, dead souls wandering in the Midworld.”

“Yes,” said Sidapa, still staring at the motley crew. “But these seem to have gone the other way. The four of you… are an anomaly. There has been a mistake. Come with me.” And Sidapa snapped his finger, and the five of them dissipated into dust, whisked away by the divine wind.

“Hey, Sidapa! Damn ghoster. Don’t do that!”

/// MOUNT MADYAAS, THE HIGHEST POINT BELOW HEAVEN

The black dust reformed, and it spat out the four of them. They had somehow regained their bodies, their forms.

Looking up, they saw Sidapa, standing before a gigantic tree. So gigantic that its roots, which dangled over a complex gold and stone house-on-stilts, were the size of skyscrapers back in Earth.

“Whoa.” Mattheo couldn’t help but let himself be overwhelmed by the gigantic tree, with its immaculate golden-brown bark and emerald green leaves. Various majestic humanoid creatures with huge avian wings flew about the gigantic tree, wearing bahag and vests and wielding spirit bows and spirit swords. “Where are we?”

“Madyaas, Mattheo,” said Sidapa. “We are atop Mount Madyaas, the highest point below Heaven, the Land of God. And this is the Tree of Life.”

“What?” Esther said.

“The Tree of Life.” Sidapa turned around and gestured at the tree. “Here is where your names are written, and the length of your lives are placed. From what I can see… you’re far, FAR too early to die yet.”

“Whoa,” Angela gulped. “So what does that mean?”

“That means you’re not supposed to die yet. This is also doubly strange, since usually if your fate had changed, the length would also have changed. But such is not the case. Exceedingly strange.”

“Um,” Mattheo was poking at Sidapa’s arm. It was built like a solid rock. “If it’s alright for me to ask… what’s with the huge house?”

The other three looked up at them and found that the house was filled by all kinds of different creatures. Small people with large heads, large people with small heads, thin people, fat people... people of all races across every culture and timeline. They were running to and fro, others farming on the arable soil in front of the tree, others walking around with a tray of food, others just playing. All of them were clad in the most regal of robes, gleaming with gold jewelry and accessories.

“That is my house,” said Sidapa, sighing. “I usually live alone, and truly I do, but ever since BATALANG MAYKAPAL died and the Seventh Layer of the Universe, Langitnon or Paraiso, was shattered, most of the souls that were supposed to be up there we brought down here. Other souls agreed to become guardian spirits for people in the Midworld. Even others settled on becoming servants of the Trinity.” Sidapa sighed. He turned around, his face shadowed and looking more tired than ever.

Angela spoke. “What about Yewon? Do you see her on the tree?”

Sidapa froze. A few moments passed. Then, he slowly shook his head, worry wrapping him. “Strangely enough… I do not. I wonder why that is the case. This is… most upsetting.”

“What?” Jonathan looked up, inquisitive. “How? Don’t all creatures get their names written on the Tree?”

Sidapa shook his head. “Not all creatures. Those that are immortal are outside the confines of temporariness. I am not in the Tree for example. And so are countless other spirits and deities.”

“So it’s true,” Jonathan said, looking down at the ground. “Yewon is going to be that Empress or whatever.”

“No! We can’t let go of Yewon,” said Esther, from behind all of them. “Sidapa, whatever you are. Take us to where Yewon was taken. Help us get her back. We just want to go back to our lives and have Yewon with us.”

“Yeah,” said Angela. “We didn’t want any of this. We just want to go back home.”

“Help us,” Mattheo said, looking up at Sidapa. “Please.”

Sidapa ruminated for a moment, staring up at the great tree.

Presently, he sighed and spoke without looking at them. “Yewon has been taken by the spirits of Paraiso. I am presently unsure as to exactly where and exactly why. Their enchantments… occult themselves from my vision. I am not omniscient.” He looked down on the four. “I see the contents of your heart and understand that you truly do wish to bring Yewon back, even if some are more half-hearted than others. I will send you to Paraiso and you must seek out Yewon.”

“Yes!” Mattheo jumped up. “Thank you. Thank you so much Sidapa.”

“However, frail human bodies and physiologies will not help you last long in the dangerous broken layer of Paraiso. So here,” he waved his hand, and a few spirits with wings made of starlight and perpetually smiling eyes came in, bringing with them a wooden table and four pieces of deliciously cooked meat. “I do not do this for every person, but your souls have shown conviction, and I believe you can use this strength to a great use.”

“What do you mean?” Jonathan asked. Angela, Esther, and Mattheo couldn’t stop staring at the food on the table.

“All will be revealed in due time. Presently, your body is with a disciple of mine, whom you will meet soon. To escape this purgatory, however,” said Sidapa. “You must eat these, cooked livers of celestial eaters.”

“Oh, so it’s sundae ?” asked Jonathan, walking forward to one of the four plates and picking up the piece of liver. He ate one of them, ate it whole, and his eyes brimmed with deliciousness.

However, before he could turn to his comrades, he blinked out of existence, disappearing with a great flash of multicolor light.

“Follow after your friend,” said Sidapa. “It is the only way you will be able to save yourselves.”

Esther, Mattheo, and Angela all followed suit. Grabbing the deliciously cooked piece of liver (which, Angela noticed, was diced up, meaning what they were eating wasn’t the whole liver either). They ate it. It was delicious

Before Angela disappeared, she looked up at Sidapa. Sidapa nodded. “Make God bleed, young ones,” he said before her consciousness leaped into the void…

/// MONASTERY OF THE MOON, ON THE ISLAND OF SALAMUHA, IN THE FAR SOUTHEASTERN EDGE OF PARAISO, THE SEVENTH LAYER OF THE MULTIVERSE, HOME OF THE DEAD GOD

...and then back into her body. The three of them awoke, all at once, and found themselves lying down on banig, covered by stone walls. Jonathan was already walking around, still wearing that huge oversized shirt he wore for school. All of them had their bodies back.

The wooden door opened, and in walked a middle-aged man who was… far too good looking for his own good. He wore a priestly frock, and held a black staff in one hand, and carried a tray of liquids in another. “Ah, you’re awake.”

“They’re awake?!” From behind the door, a voice resonated. Angela and Esther both looked at each other.

The man stepped aside and nodded. “Yes, they are awake. Apologies for the abrupt introductions, wandering souls but…”

A tall woman, hair platinum blonde and immaculate, wearing a white dress underneath combat straps and a steel breastplate, appeared by the doorway. Her angelic features burst through, her pale skin seemed to lighten the room. She looked like a war angel.

“...I am Brother Owl and this is…”

Esther and Angela beamed.

“...Ate Susanna!”