Father Thomas has been driving down the winding zigzag road of Atimonan for the last half an hour. The time is almost half past 3 o'clock at midnight. Their van is bound to come across that infamous portal soon.
Virgil feigns sleeping. His eyes remain closed even as he heard Father Thomas mutter impatiently. He continues to wait for the right moment to make his move.
The clock progresses by the second. 56s. 57s. 58s. 59s...
Outside the vehicle, to the untrained eyes, the change is barely noticeable. You can even miss it by how similar the loop looks to the original zigzag road. But they're there. Virgil knows it. And he knows that Father Thomas has realized it too.
As soon as the clock strikes 3:33AM, when the loop portal opened, Virgil leaps from his seat and wraps his arms around Father Thomas' neck from behind, pinning his head against the driver seat's headrest. Father Thomas struggles under his grip, losing complete control of the vehicle. With how tightly Virgil holds him, Father Thomas had no way of triggering the curse to restrain the furious halfling.
"I'll deliver your severed head to Crisanto myself," Father Thomas hears Virgil say before he hears the sound of tires screeching to an abrupt halt and before he feels the impact of their vehicle slamming into something.
The van kept swerving until it came to a violent stop when it hit a lamppost. Inside, the three princes jolt awake, screaming for their lives, wondering if their vehicle had been caught in a massive earthquake. They wake up to Virgil grappling Father Thomas' neck with his arms, leaving the steering wheel unattended.
The other three princes fly to the side of the van as it topples over. When the chaos settled, Xun, Keres, and Helmar, though they struggled, managed to kick the door open and get themselves out. It takes them a minute to realize the other two are still stuck inside.
Virgil screams in pure rage. Father Thomas can feel his throat tightening. He can almost sense that he's about to lose consciousness.
"...Stop..." Father Thomas squawks, teary-eyed.
His mouth starts to bleed. But nothing happened. Virgil continues to strangle his neck like he intends to snap it clean off.
"No more curses, Father. Your trick failed."
Before the three princes could free Father Thomas from Virgil's death grip, the demigod bursts out of the minivan, blowing the vehicles door from its hinges. All their eyes could make out is a blurry figure of shadow and light jumping out of the minivan. Within seconds, the figure escapes, leaving only thunderclaps instead of the sound of footsteps echoing within a 50-mile radius. Heavy and destructive, Virgil leaps from point to point until he makes it to the Tagunlihim Hotel Lodge, where Crisanto and the rest have been waiting for them.
Upon arrival, the Encanto King greets them with a soulless corporate smile. The kind he wears to conceal his controlling nature behind manufactured courtesy. "I knew you wouln't let me down," Crisanto says to Virgil.
Virgil carries the unconscious priest over his shoulder like he weighs nothing. He throws Father Thomas on the floor carelessly. The priest lands in front of Crisanto's feet.
The hotel lobby is quiet, but not peaceful. You can definitely feel the unrest that echoes from within its dark hallways. Once you notice it, it will cling onto you like the lingering scent of jasmine, sweet yet foreboding, an invitation to creatures lost and unwanted. You would have made yourself a target.
Besides Crisanto, Virgil recognizes two other people in the mix. Mino, Crisanto's glorified bodyguard, and Tony the cop, who he thought had been left poisoned on the sticky floor of Room 305 of Canary Motels. Apparently, Xun was upfront about the sleeping powder he used to knock the cop out.
But there are two other men, one who wears a chieftain putong, and another, a much more ordinary-looking older fellow who is bound to a chair by enchanted ropes.
"I'm glad you're here," Crisanto tells Virgil. "I've got some very important news that I want to share with you. But first, I need you to wake the priest up."
Virgil nods. He knows what the Encanto means by saying that. Both of the men knew, as far as curses goes, that curses can not only be broken, but reversed. Spell source go both ways. The imprecator can become the cursed with the flip of a coin. It takes a very powerful mythfolk to know these tricks. And Virgil and Crisanto are not only very powerful, but they are connected to the ancient soil like intentions cling to spells. By blood or by virtue. No words have been invented that doesn't obey the rules of the old.
"Wake up," Virgil declares. His mouth begins to bleed. Scripture appears on his tongue, lips, and cheeks. Father Thomas' eyes shoot open. He flies into a coughing fit, gasping for air. He heaves a breath as the pain creeps throughout his whole body.
When his coughing wanes, he slowly realizes the situation he is in. He tries to get up, to run for his life. But when Virgil commands him to stay in place, his body follows. Father Thomas recognizes the tattoo that marks Virgil's lips. He sees the blood that drips from the corners of the demigod's mouth.
Father Thomas no longer had the control of the ventriloquist in his hands. His mouth and lips are free of the ancient incantation. His soul, he senses, begins to slip further and further down a dark and unfathomable pit inside his psyche. He is now the one under the curse.