A Serpent's Revenge: Bakunawa's Bloodline

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

[MAYA]

It has been years since the massacre happened in the academy, and yet Maya is the only one who can't seem to get over that incident. It wasn't just the serpentine children who died; there were also other children of the gods and forest spirits who were killed in the chaos.

Maya walks around the now-unkempt grass where the serpentine children's bodies are buried, with no tombstone to separate their carcasses. Still, she can't help but visit, hoping that his body might be buried here like the others.

She squats on the ground, laying the flowers that she picked from the forest on the clumsy tombstone that she created. She's not sure where his body is buried, but since they are all buried in one hole, she just puts the tombstone on top of it.

"Ingko, I'm here." She whispers gently and tries to smile. All these years later, she still misses him. When Maya first enrolled in the academy, she has nobody. She is an orphan, unlike the others, who have a loving family. No one wants to associate with a girl with no background, especially when she's the daughter of Mayari.

Mayari, her mother, is one of the children of Bathala, the greater god in the Philippines. Bathala has three children namely Apolaki and Mayari. Among his children Apolaki and Mayari are the most known as the two have a history of battling each other on who would rule after their father. Apolaki won after he managed to blind one of Mayari's eyes. Because of that, Apolaki is now the ruler of the day, while Mayari is the ruler of the night.

Here in the academy, the goddess Mayari is considered to be a joke. It's because the children of Mayari are weak. When it comes to fighting, Maya is always at the back of the class. Contrary to her is Axel, the child of Apolaki and the person that everyone respects. He was the strongest of them all, but due to his actions years ago, he was expelled.

Since Apolaki and Mayari are the children of Bathala, it is only natural that their children will be treated differently compared to the other demichildren. But because of how weak the children of the moon goddess are, they always get bullied, as the students do not agree that they get treated better than them.

This is also the reason why Maya has few children that get sent to the academy. It's because they would either die of childbirth or get sick before the academy finds them.

Maya often ate in the woods because of this and that's where she met Ingko, the very first student to treat her kindly. He would tie her hair, give her snacks, console her, and play with her when she was alone. They say that the child of the serpent Bakunawa is evil, but to her, they're not. They are just children who want to live peacefully despite the heavy discrimination that they are getting from the other demigods and aswangs.

"Would you be alive if I were stronger?" She asks, feeling stupid that she's talking to no one in particular. The night of Ingko's death, she couldn't remember a certain part of the incident. She remembers asking Lobo for help to rescue Ingko, but after she met up with Ingko, it would seem like she parted ways with him all of a sudden.

She woke up the next morning to find out that she's in a hospital bed having missing memories of the night. The albularyo, what they call healers in the province, says that someone cursed her—that it is probably a child of the serpent.

Though she lost her memories, she knows that what the healer said isn't true. Despite how evil they try to showcase the cabin where Bakunawa's children lived, they are not evil at all. In fact, they are scared of the other demigods and enkantos in the academy.

Truth be told, Maya thinks that they are more like monsters than the children of the serpent.

Maya starts to caress the grass and notices that there's a flower on the ground near the tombstone that she made. She is certain that she has never brought this type of flower before because it is hard to acquire without leaving the academy.