/// IN THE DORMITORIES OF THE MONASTERY OF THE MOON, A DAY AFTER THE ERASURE OF PANGINOON TUPAS

Angela walked in, brazenly, nonchalantly, as if she didn’t know that there was anyone there. Of course, she did, in fact, know. She saw Gala quiet upon Mattheo’s shoulder, sobbing, probably. The little horns that grew on her brow seemed to shrink.

When Angela walked in, she was about to say something, but Mattheo quickly put her into silence when he raised a finger to his lips. He had an entire arm around Gala.

Angela bit her lip, and her eyes widened. “What are you doing?!” she mouthed.

“Comforting!” mouthed Mattheo back.

Angela walked back out. Then walked back in and coughed.

Gala jumped and pushed herself away from Mattheo. She rubbed at her eyes, using the sleeves of her baro.

“Sorry for disturbing anything, but Jaime is waiting for us outside. There’s food, and you should also get a shower. I know it’s cold, but we have to do it.”

“Thanks for the reminder, Angela.”

“Ate Gala, are you okay?”

Gala nodded. “Yeah, yeah I will be. Don’t worry.”

“Well if Ate Gala is okay, then I’ll get Mattheo because we need him.”

“Right, right. Please do.” She got about to fixing her bed.

Mattheo walked out with Angela. On the short hallway to the kitchen, Mattheo said: “I really did get in there to help her cope.”

“Sure you did.”

“Everyone knows she loves Susanna, right?”

Angela sighed. “Yeah…”

“Good.”

Right as they were at the lip of turning into the kitchen, Angela said: “But everyone knows you like Ate Gala too.”

“Luh-”

“Ah, there you are, Mattheo,” said Jenna, grinning. “Go ahead and help yourself to breakfast.”

“Thanks, ate.”

Jenna stood up. “I have to go back to Gala, make sure she’s okay. You guys ready up. Surely Jaime will be waiting. Don’t worry, he’s a pretty patient person.”

“That’s… good.”

There was a moment of silence, as the four of them lounged about. Esther picked at her teeth. Angela sat back down to finish her pancit canton. Mattheo grabbed some breakfast and milo. Jonathan was 3/4ths of the way through his scrambled egg pancake.

The silence pervaded them, cut them, and peeled away a layer of shock that had coated their souls for the last few hours which felt like days.

The silence forced them to think, to rethink, and then to think again, to flip over in their heads what had just happened. Eventually the four of them sat together, facing each other, unsure of what to do.

“So… the Engkantos are here, huh,” said Mattheo.

Esther chuckled. She scratched her nose.

Jonathan nodded. “It’s been a wild ride so far.”

“It feels like we’re not that deep into it yet either.”

“We almost got turned into sex slaves,” said Esther, flicking something away.

“Good thing Jaime was there,” said Jonathan.

“What a weird twist of fate.”

“It’s been weird twists of fate ever since it snowed in San Lazaro,” said Angela, rubbing her eyes. “I… I want to go home.”

“Me too,” said Jonathan, now sadly pushing around the last few bits of his scrambled egg with a wooden spoon.

“We can’t, though,” said Esther, who was staring at her blank plate. “We can’t go back now.”

“We can,” said Jonathan. “Brother Owl can send us back.”

“But we can’t leave this… whatever this place is--”

“Paraiso,” said Angela.

“--without all the members of the Engkantos coming back with us.”

Another silence as they all realized what that meant.

“We have to get Yewon back,” said Esther.

Jonathan inhaled and nodded. “Either we all go home, or none of us do.”

“Big words,” said Angela.

“Big words I will uphold,” said Esther, and her conviction was steel.

“Same,” said Mattheo, with a mouth full of bread.

Angela inhaled, and then nodded. “Then I guess… the Engkantos have to conquer paradise.”

/// IN THE COURTYARD OF THE MONASTERY OF THE MOON

Jenna stayed with Gala, since she was too broken to do anything but grieve and cry. Jenna took care of it, she assured them. The rest of the team, the surviving engkantos, all showered and put on their battle gear. That is, the clothes which they had brought with them to Paraiso, which had been miraculously washed, somehow.

“Laundry Diwata,” said Jenna. “Thank them later. They like cockroaches.”

Angela chuckled, but Esther and Mattheo both shivered.

Now in the middle of the courtyard, the four of them stood together, before Jaime. Various priests and teachers were all still doing their best to retrieve all the students that escaped through the Balete tree, a protocol issued to them by Brother Owl. They had all changed fashion: Jaime now wore a simple oversized camisa de chino, some black jogger pants that hugged his ankles, and what looked like running shoes. “Good, you’re here. We don’t need Jenna nor Gala here with us right now, since you’ll be going through the basic course.”

“Hey, sorry, can I ask a question?” Angela had worn her hoodie, which she had cut shorter because of the humid heat of Paraiso. She similarly wore jeans which she folded up to her calves, and some simple shoes.

Jaime turned to Angela, his mouth open as he was just about to say something. “Yes, what is it?”

“Did you come from our earth?”

“Yeah,” said Jaime. “I’m from Manila. However, from which time, I will not say.”

“Oh dude, are you some Katipunero or something?” asked Mattheo, who was wearing his shirt and some pantalones he had received. He had combed his hair back, and then kept it there with a black headband.

Jaime proceeded to ignore the question. “I am not sure if you are familiar with the concept of Gahum.”

“Mattheo and I are,” said Jonathan. “Brother Owl told us about it.”

“Good. Angela, Esther, let us sit. I need to explain what Gahum is to you. Now Gahum is something that can be trained, but know that it requires a great amount of Will to use, and so you must cultivate that Will by making sure you do not lose sight of your goal. Tell me: what is your passion, what is your goal, your objective, your burning desire, your fulminating ambition?”

The four of them stood for a while, contemplating, before all turning their heads to Jaime and saying: “To save Yewon.”

Jaime couldn’t help but grin. “Then you must climb the Angel’s Ladder, and make God bleed. Now, before we move further, I must tell you that you are not the only kind of Gahum users. Why is this so? Well, I would rather show you through vivid imagery than just telling you, so here, drink this tea.”

They blinked, and they saw there was tea. “What… how did you…”

“Just drink up.”

And they did. They drank up and they found the tea delicious.

“Now close your eyes.”

And they did, and behind the darkness of their eyes they saw creation.

It was Jaime’s voice whom they heard, but what they saw were three figures that burned with infinity. BATALANG MAYKAPAL, the Lord Creator, whose form they could not envision for They were Formless and All. Beside him was a flower, a gumamela, of a five million petals, each one a different sky. This was REYNA NG LANGIT. The third they saw was a triangle, and there were three of them, and this they knew was SANTISIMA TRINIDAD, or the Holy Trinity. They stood in the void between Universes, and knew the truth.

BATALANG MAYKAPAL, seeing Their inevitable end, for all things must end, even things that have none, spoke a single word and broke it into three, imbued it with their powers, and these words became living spirits, and they imbued all of Creation. These words were WILL, MUST, and NEED.

“One of you will kill me,” said BATALANG MAYKAPAL. “I am KAPTAN, and you, BULAKLAK NG LANGIT are Mawayen, and you, SANTISIMA TRINIDAD, are my children that will rise to heaven and blow apart its gates, and kill me, and I will Die. But I will inflict upon you the burning thunderbolt, of my rage, which will rip you and tear you apart, slowly, until all things are gone.”

And as soon as they heard these words, they forgot about it.

“They will be known as KARANDUUN, worthy of song and epic, my almighty lightning bolt. But the Word KARANDUUN will be a word bestowed. To become KARANDUUN, one MUST obtain Gahum. And to obtain Gahum, one NEEDS power. And to obtain power, one MUST NEED WILL. And this is the word of the law, which I have sung into being.”

And then, a sudden flash, a sudden imposition of memory, and the four of them were in the midst of a war torn battlefield, the earth parched red from the blood, the sky turned lead from the conquest. Atop a pile of corpses, two legendary figures did combat, one wielding lightning from the heavens, another fighting with a chunk of earth sharpened into a spear.

Another flash, and then they were in a serene garden, Paraiso before the rebellion, and it was holy, and it was serene, as the multitudes of biraddali sang praises to the moons.

Another flash, and the gates were torn open, heaven was ripped asunder, and far off, into the horizon, where the beautiful multicolor sky of heaven had been turned into black, where the sun glowed red as blood, where the moons each were shattered, where the stars wept and began to twinkle, they saw SANTISIMA TRINIDAD, three of them standing shoulder to shoulder, atop the corpse of God.

Then, ten stars burned, right as more and more souls began erecting buildings out of the bones of God. These ten stars bowed to the Trinity, even as the Trinity flew out into the void and enacted the Almighty Rape of the Multiverse. While they were away, ten stars were tasked to rule over Paraiso with an iron yolk. These were the Ten Empyreal Archons, and each of them ruled their own Kingdom underneath the three Empires of the Trinity.

“None can escape the Archons,” Jaime’s voice said, reverberating. “They watch your every move, and Paraiso writhes underneath their grasp. They are the demiurges that rule over Heaven. In return, they have a portion of the universes which their God-Masters conquer, as well as the Divine Mandate to rule over the Seventh Layer of the Multiverse. They stand atop the Sword of Creation, and they will know your Names.”

A last flash, one that breathed with a certain sigh of finality. They saw the ruined heaven from afar once again, that gigantic shattered infinity. She saw the vast societies, the broken governments that ruled and thrived and lived upon the corpse of heaven like maggots devouring. Then they saw the little flames, the little lights, that burned brightly, and then they knew, somehow, that those lights were some form of hope, some form of final light, right as darkness swallowed the Multiverse in its entirety.

The Angel’s Blossom tea eventually dissipated, and the four of them lay back down upon where they sat. “Damn,” said Mattheo. “I haven’t been here long but I’ve already done a lot more drugs than in back home.”

“It’s an excellent and efficient way to convey a million words worth of information in such a short amount of time,” said Jaime, taking another sip and then putting it down. “What you just saw is the uttering of the three words, and the eternal name of the one we must all attain: KARANDUUN. Along with that, you saw the holy rebellion, the warring of the Karanduun, and much much more.”

“Who are the Karanduun?” asked Jonathan, pulling his legs up to his chest.

“Simply put, they are those that have managed to accrue enough Gahum to become powerful enough to make God bleed.”

“Would the Trinity be Karanduun?” asked Angela, her head tipping to one side.

Jaime shook his head. “The Trinity, for now, are considered to be Gods. The most powerful ones. The Big Gods to the Little Gods of the Diwata, so to speak.”

“Then who can be Karanduun?”

“Beings like us, the Souled Folk. Within our souls lie the potentiality to the flame of BATALA, that ember shed from the Thunderbolt. We can become Attainers, those who would bear the Key of PRIDE, and be brazen enough to gain the power that can shake the Pillars of Heaven.”