Ispiritong Ligaw (Lost Spirit)

A humanoid being gradually walks towards us, his body is all black and a dark mist surrounds his body. He stops in front of me and stares at me with a hunger on his eyes. The being stops the scream of Eric by just looking at him and smiling with those sharp teeth. Then he slowly makes its way into my neck sniffing it like a fine wine. He moans in my ears and whispers "I miss your smell."

"Submit to me and all of your dreams will come true. I will protect you and guide you to a triumphant end." He seductively said to me while caressing my cheek with his hand.

"Who are you?" Carlo bravely asks him. But the creature ignores him. So I repeat his question, he looks at me indignantly as if I said something wrong.

"I will ignore your insolent but you always know me. Just ask your heart my beloved." I stare at him intently looking for something that indicates me who he is but because of the dark mist surrounding his face I barely recognize him. A sorrowful sound is produce as he looks at me knowing that I don't recognize him.

"I'm sorry." I said as it hurts me to hear him in sorrow. He snarls at me when I said that.

"It doesn't matter now; you will know me when you submit to me."

"I will never submit to you. So please let us go." I plead to him as he hugs my waist and put his head on my shoulder, that black mist is slowly envelopes us and I felt a raw power trying to possess me.

He looks at me again with sad eyes this time. Reluctantly, he let go of me and said: "I will wait for you, because I know that we belong together. You promised me we will stay together until the end and I will make it happen." Then he disappears right in front of us.

We collapsed to the ground as our bodies finally can move. The two of them are sobbing because of what happen and we stay that way for five minutes. When I can finally stand, I help the two of them to sit in a rock I found nearby. I collect some woods that I destroy from the furniture I found when I went back from the building and create a bonfire. It is cold outside but they don't want to get inside in fear of encountering that being again.

"Are you okay?" Eric whispers at me when I turn to look at him, he looks away.

"I'm okay… How about you guys?" He frowns at that and he just glares and nods at me.

"Barely alive but thanks, that creature scared the shit out of me. Thank you for talking to him and making him disappear." Carlo said to me smiling.

"It is a she… not a he." Eric mutters as we talk about that being again. He looks at me, blushes and stares at the fire. I know he is thinking about the time when I am naked.

"Huh?" Carlos looks to him dumbfounded.

"The creature that you always thought as a he was actually a she." He told us with the "duh." voice.

"How do you know?" I asked.

"She got breast." Then he proceeds to hold an invisible breast in his chest. "You didn't notice it?"

"I am actually busy fearing for my life to notice anything." Carlo retorts sarcastically.

"I always look for a sign of masculinity if someone approaches me and it became an instinct to me." He said to us defensively.

"He's right too you know." A child voice intervenes to our conversation. We search for the culprit when a kid appears from the trees. He looks like a twelve year old boy, thin but not sickly. His clothes are in tatters and his body is full of dust. He timidly walks near us and sit beside me. There are humans here?

"I'm Cedric, are you all new here?" He looks at us inquisitively.

"Where is here exactly?" I asked back at him. He ignores my question and starts to describe what we encounter earlier.

Apparently, we encounter a being called Ispiritong Ligaw, a lost spirit trap in this world because she died in a horrible way that her spirit became tainted. Cedric explains that the human body has three components, the human body, the human spirit and the human soul. The body connects us to earth and will eventually die and rot. The soul connects us to "dako paroon" and lives there depending on how we accumulate our good and bad deeds on earth. While the spirit connects us to the deities in the Kaluwalhatian, the spirit is a pure energy; strong but fragile at the same time. They can be tainted and can cause destruction to our world. The deities or their patrons absorb the good spirits as an offering and discarding the tainted ones into this plane. The tainted ones gradually remember who they are and became an Ispiritong Ligaw.

"How do you know all of this?" He is young but he knows a lot about this stuff.

"From all of the knowledge this plane has to offer." He proudly said to me.

"Plane? Where are we?" Carlo asked again, he can't wait anymore and wants to know where we are.

"Hey… That's unfair; you tell me who you are first… you are all strangers to me" He asks us glaring.

"You are the one who basically talks to us first. You didn't let us introduce ourselves." Eric accuses him. Cedric then let us do it when he is satisfied then he interrogate us once again.

"What sends you here? Typically when humans send here, someone's with them. It is usually sent near the city too." That surprises me, there's a city here? So there are other people in this plane? "But it is in ruin of course and there are few of us, most of us are starving or nearly dying." He added when he saw us in hope.

This makes us quiet in dread again, thinking about our situation and how we will get out of this predicament. I observe them again, Cedric still assessing us testing if we can trust us; Carlo is staring at the bonfire as if looking for comfort and finding it in them. Cedric also looking at it but glaring at it as if it is the fires' fault that we are here. When he notices me looking at him, he turns the glare at me he gasps at me indignantly when I smirk at him.

"Can you help us? We swear that we are harmless. We are also victims here, please believe in us." Carlo looks at Cedric pleadingly. He stares at Carlo looking for an answer and sighs.

"Okay… Fine, you can come with me, no monkey business though." He starts to stand up and walk towards a path to the city.

"Can you tell us now where we are?" Eric asks him as I distinguished the fire and follow him. He looks at us and said proudly:

"We are in Biringan."

Note:

Terms and its English equivalent

Babaylan: Priestess (Punong babaylan means Head Priestess)

Ispiritong Ligaw: Lost Spirits

Dako Paroon: Filipino equivalent of the After Life Plane for the souls

Kaluwalhatian: Filipino version of Heaven's court. All the deities lives here and govern by Bathala

Biringan: Plane where the mythical beings resides.

Engkantos: Mythic Beings in the Philippines, but I made it as the terms for the fallen diwatas.

Other Information:

1. All of the terms here (Excluding the Iroga Arma, and the Factions of the Diwatas) are all Filipino Mythic and believed by the ancient Filipinos before the Spanish Era.

2. The three components of the human being (Soul, Spirit, Body) is a Christian belief not a Filipino mythic. I just added it here for plot :p