Peter knows something.
The Church of Divine Order, which I will now refer to as its holy acronym, CODO, hired Peter Daligdig for the position of the church's groundskeeper and gardener only three months ago. He never was friendly or had a special interest in the church itself, let alone Father Thomas. But sometimes he did notice Peter staring at him, but not once did he approach or attempt to start a conversation with the young priest.
"He does seem quiet and a little aloof. But maybe it comes with age," Brother Mateo conjectured when he brought the topic up. It was another usual day at the church. The two men were walking down its peaceful garden when they spotted Peter tending to the rose bushes.
"He's not that old. He's probably around my..." Father Thomas paused, fished for a different word, then continued. "...around his late forties to early fifties."
"Maybe something happened to him to make him look...a lot older than he is," Brother Mateo withdrew.
Father Thomas didn't linger too much on the possibility that he was being watched by their new groundskeeper. There must be an innocent explanation to it. He simply waved it aside.
That was before.
He was right to assume Peter Daligdig was surveilling him.
A knock on the motel door snatches Father Thomas back from his thoughts. He listens before making any move, making sure to not get any unwanted attention by unceremoniously ending the phone call.
Tension fills the air. Quiet and palpable. Father Thomas dare not to take a breath too loudly. He strains his ear trying to identify the person on the other side of the room.
Unfortunately, his phone screen suddenly starts lighting up and blasting notification sounds of an incoming call, a missed one, and lastly a text message.
The knocking stops. Father Thomas' breath hitches.
The person behind the door finally speaks. "Father Thomas, this is Officer Tony Alarcon. I know you're in there. Open up."
Anthony "Tony" Alarcon. Special Police Officer in the SCID of the Philippine National Police. Human, just like Father Thomas. But a human involving himself with the mythfolk, just like Father Thomas.
You see, SCID stands for Special Crime Investigation Department to the rest of the topground-dweller side of the PNP. But this special unit is actually the topground's answer to maintaining the upper hand against the mythfolk in this so-called balance between the two worlds. Its solution to keep monsters out the gate and humans blissfully unaware. When the police need people to manage the mythfolk underground, SCID becomes the Supernatural Crime Investigation Department.
One thing you have to know about SPO Alarcon is that he hates mythfolk monsters with a passion. Persecuting monster criminals and nonhuman offenders is his life purpose. There is a satisfying irony to be found in hunting down the species that once hunted his kind. He had come to meet Father Thomas through this line of work.
The Church of Divine Order and the Supernatural Crime Investigation Department both have authority and jurisdiction over mythfolk underground. One to keep them from harming humans and the other to undo the harm that has already been done. Father Thomas and SPO Alarcon met each other under these circumstances.
Case file #__1: The Blight of the Batibat
Father Thomas was sent to a remote village somewhere in the municipality of Pagsanghan. This area is also famous for a mysterious city that only appears to those it chooses. I'll let you in on a secret, that's where Crisanto came from. Now that I think about it, doesn't that make Crisanto a Waray-waray?
Anyway.
In Pagsanghan during this time, locals have called to Father Thomas' church for help. Several people have been afflicted by an inexplicable sleeping illness that causes them to fall into a coma, seemingly out of nowhere. No accidents have occurred prior, no sickness, no cause for concern. One moment, a person is healthy and moving about, but come nightfall, once they drift off into sleep, they never return. No medical professional could explain what was going on. Luckily, the native healers and shamans have had their guesses. They tried to drive away the cause of the mystery illness through rituals and orations, but it was much too powerful for individuals to cast out. They needed the help of a much larger and more collectivized source. They needed the help of the only church that had acknowledged the existence of the Supernatural and the unexplained. The Church of Divine Order.
CODO sent in one of their most reputable ordained cleric to investigate the case. It was, of course, Father Thomas Domingo. He had been in this vocation officially for no more than three years, but had grew up in the church since he was twelve, entered and studied at the seminary for 7 years, became apprentice to one of the most prominent vicars of the church for five years, before fulfilling his own life mission to become a priest himself. And with all the accolades under his belt, or robe, and given that he had already had work experience way before he officially got ordained, it was only natural to assume that Father Thomas would get the job done.
And he did. He found out that the affliction was caused by an angry group of Batibat. A huge creature typically presenting as a person with a morbidly obese physique, residing inside trees that illegal loggers chopped off for lumber. They were described to sit on top of a sleeping person's chest to slowly suffocate them until they died in their sleep.
Nearly half of the forest was gone and most of its unseen inhabitants were left with no home. Anger, albeit it righteous, caused these creatures to retaliate. And they channeled all their hostility towards the locals. They were the reason many people wasted away in a coma for days. Father Thomas had to act before it was too late.
The small covered basketball court of the barangay, usually an evacuation center during calamities and disasters, have been turned into a makeshift care unit for the coma patients. Due to lack of funding, they couldn't be brought into a proper facility, miles away from their little rural town. When Father Thomas arrived, he could already feel multiple presence that didn't belong there. As soon as he stepped inside the court, he saw several of the naked fat bodies of tens of Batibats sitting atop the lying patients, making their vitriol known, hurling profanities at them, goading them to die.
After all these years, every time he encountered the mythfolk, it never fails to send a cold down his spine. It's like seeing a uncaged snake up close. A phobia unconstrained by the what if's. Always free to do whatever it wishes.
You are about to witness a CODO priest in action. The typical bulong and palaspas of a native shaman or the familiar vesper and holy water of a conventional Catholic priest is different from the weapons the Divine Order clerics carry. Here, they use the fresh blood of the priest, the Divine vessel, Divine Retribution itself channeling through flesh, as both protection and armament. It is both holy and deadly to serve the Divine Order.
His job never got easier with time. All the pain in the preparation is just as if not much more draining than the actual task. Father Thomas had to cut through the skin of his palm until the blood began to seep through. The next bit is a little anticlimactic. There's not really much of a performance in Father Thomas' usual methods of healing. Most of the razzmatazz of CODO priesthood happens in the orientation phase, mainly in the apprenticeship. You'll see. For now, let's focus on Father Thomas healing the coma patients.
One by one, he approached the patients and smeared his bloodied hand over their foreheads, drawing a cross symbol almost as big as their faces. He kept his gaze at the Batibat each time, to show he wasn't afraid, even though, deep down, he was absolutely horrified. Their enormousness paired with the homicidal look on their faces made them profoundly unnerving.
Luckily, the power of the Divine Order always works. Retribution always finds its way to rectify the scales of natural balance. Equal force pulls in the same amount of force it pushes out. What the humans did unleashed the wrath of the Batibat. And what the Batibat did to the village locals brought Father Thomas to them.
The cosmos rippled, groaning, breaking, straining itself, until it stretched back in place once Father Thomas had completed his mission. And afterwards, as if a storm had passed, Order began to settle down like weightless grains of sand, back to its natural position.
The Batibat were dead, unfortunately. All of them. The sickness and death they subjected the villagers into found another way to collect their debt.
When Father Thomas accepted missions like this one, it almost always meant a mythfolk creature would die. Rarely do they terrorize humans without intending to kill any of them. That's why it always ends with them receiving that punishment.
The day ended with the coma patients waking up, completely unaware that they had fallen ill with the blight of the Batibat. Despite feeling physically weak and generally confused, they were reported to have made a full recovery. Father Thomas went home tired, semi-anemic, but duly accomplished.