PRL Serials

The Alia knows danger when she sees it; it doesn’t take preternatural ability to know that her life is threatened. 

“What will it be beautiful?” Selassie asks and he brushes his lips against her face. “He is coming, Red sent me, and he is just waiting for my word that you are well in hand. When he finds out that I have you, he will come to kill you. I can stop that. Just kiss me.”

Alia closes her eyes and winces as the man moves to kiss her, and when she feels his lips on hers, there is an explosion in her mind.

She sees the land that Selassie called home, the ancient African landscape that was beautiful; she sees the people desperate before Selassie, bowing low on their hands and knees, foreheads on the ground; she sees clashes between two groups of people and a being that looks like Selassie looms largely over the destruction with an evil smile on his face. The first Alia sealed him away from this realm so that he could never bother anyone again. She met him to battle under the sun and she was too much for him.

With more information about her foe, Alia returns to the present and her eyes begin to glow a blinding white light with hints of yellow around the edges. The light burns Selassie and he backs away. Then he holds both his arms at his sides and squeezes his fists tight until they explode in a red smoke that moves down to his feet. He opens his hands and directs the red smoke at Alia, and it moves fast through the air toward her. When it hits her, there is a force that takes her breath away. Selassie shoots again after gathering more of the smoke at his hands, but Alia manages to deflect it and send it smashing a wall of the backroom to rubble. 

“Are you the same woman who sent me to the darkness?” Selassie asks. They both stand, waiting patiently for the next move. “You could be her, she was beautiful, even when she was old. We didn’t have to be enemies, we could have ruled those people together. I guess she wanted it all to herself. Are you selfish like her? You want to be the only power around?”

Alia regrets the destruction in the backroom and she curses to herself when she sees other employees of the store approaching. She has to move the fight to a safer location, and there is really only one fast way to do that. She has to break another wall. 

“Listen, you orange asshole, I don’t know you. I never have, and I really regret meeting you. Please stop trying to reminisce with me about things I wouldn’t know anything about.”

Selassie growls and then they hear other employees calling Alia and asking her if she is ok. 

“Leave them alone,” Alia says, “this is me and you.”

“Fuck them,” Selassie says and he waves a hand. Everyone approaching gets a dumb look in their eyes and they return to their jobs. No one in the store pays anymore attention to the destruction the two cause. 

“You don’t know who I am, so you have no problem underestimating my skills. But you are here because of me. That family and that house you love so much, that is me, and I will take it all away from you now. We can build something much better. Something beautiful together. Love me Alia.”

Selassie extends a hand. Alia arches an eyebrow at him, and then the white lights from her eyes intensifies into two laser-like projections that burn right through Selassie’s hand, leaving two smouldering holes. 

“Bitch,” Selassie grumbles. He thrusts his uninjured hand at Alia and a cloud of red smoke covers her, and then lifts her from the floor. Selassie thrusts her through at least four walls before she tumbles into the grass at the back of the store. 

“This isn’t right,” Selassie says as he floats in a cloud of his red smoke to land before Alia. He kneels next to her and strokes her hair; she is in pain and can’t resist him. “We should not be fighting. I will give you time, take the day to think about me and what I can offer you. When I see you again, I hope that we will no longer be at war. If we are, then I will give you to the Red Father to complete his plans. Get yourself together Alia. Together, we can end the Red Father. Or you can let him win.”

Selassie turns back to the grocery store and soon it is covered in his red smoke that quickly dissipates, leaving the entire building intact. A dark red cloud materializes next to him and he steps onto it, then flies away, never taking his eyes from Alia.

Alia exists in a long line of extraordinary women, and if she knew any of them first hand, she would ask why it seemed that they had more dynamic abilities than she had manifested. Previous Aliae manifested abilities to control fire, water, and metals, and the first Alia was powerful enough to repel an army all on her own. The current Alia seemed to only have the ability to access the futures, until Selassie kissed her and she felt the essence of her being recoil in disgust. It had to happen, his mind was inaccessible to her and she hoped that if they touched she could be given the insight that she was denied; the kiss proved to be extremely effective. Not only did it unlock Selassie, but it repulsed her just enough and she managed to manipulate the starlight that her body had stored up for all these years as she sun gazed and looked naively into the futures. 

Alia is very shaken at Selassie’s display of power. He is more powerful than anything she has ever encountered in any parallel of existence and she hates that it is his infatuation with her that is probably the only reason she is still alive, though that starlight power had emerged at a most opportune time. She could beat him, though, she knew it. The starlight could burn right through him, and she had noticed that he fixed everything before he left except the holes she had burned into his hand. She just had to figure out where the heart of a man like Selassie was located. 

She couldn’t go back home. None of it had been real, everyone had apparently been manipulated by Selassie which meant that they were still strangers. She felt bad that she had lived in their house while they were under the influence of whatever Selassie is. 

What is he, Alia asks herself. She had witnessed a lot of extraordinary things, aliens and monsters and men who could make things appear out of thin air, but Selassie and his smoke was more impressive than all of them combined. He wasn’t human, but he also wasn’t an alien and Alia wondered what else existed. 

She thinks of Ivan and his connection to ancient magics and she decides that if anyone can help her it’s him. She leaves the grocery store and stumbles into a nearby cemetery. It is green and well kept, and most importantly it is quiet and empty. She sits cross legged away from headstones and she closes her eyes to recess into her consciousness.

When she opens her eyes on the mental plane, she is in a familiar park. It is the place that she established for her friends, for people like Ivan who could access the mental plane of existence that connected all sentient minds of the universe. Alia is gigantic on the mental plane and she shouts loud enough that the sound echoes out across the plane like an alarm specifically for Ivan’s mental form to receive. 

She hears a call and runs at an extremely fast speed in the direction of the response, eager to see Ivan. She leaves the park in pursuit of the response. The edge of the park that Alia had created bends gently like cellophane wrapping and she pushes her body against it, and it snaps easily when she reaches the bounds of its strength. She breaks through to the unformed regions of the plane, the uninhibited areas that are not moulded to fit the comforts of the inhabitants, and Alia creates an easy path through that allows her to continue running. As she maneuvers the unformed spaces, that are like a kaleidoscope of shapes and colors, she passes different constructs made by others occupying the plane; she sees into some clear as glass, others are opaque.

The response from Ivan comes from a space that is easy to see into before she arrives there, and when she does, she is impressed at the detail of the wilderness setting that is almost like her park, but with different trees and lions lazily roaming the distance. She lands next to a tree and crouches her gigantic body in the shade. It’s a strange spot to meet Ivan, but then she realizes who had summoned her. 

He is glowing red and as gigantic as she is when she stands to meet him. 

“Where’s Ivan? Who are you?”

The man laughs. “You know me. You know what I am. And the pervert is no more, I sent him somewhere even you cannot help him. I am glad to hear that you care for him. It makes it much sweeter to know that I violently hollowed his shell and I use his body like a puppet. His conduit is strong and it will end you Mou. I will finally watch you burn.”

The man swings at Alia and she jumps back, and then out of the mental plane. She startles into her body and stares out at the cemetery. She closes her eyes again, remembering Ivan’s lover Clay and searching for his mind. 

Alia wakes in the cemetery early the next day. Selassie is standing over her, casting a shadow. He offers her a hand and she climbs to her feet, brushing debris from her clothes.

“What will it be?” Selassie asks. He stands close to Alia who looks away at the horizon. 

“I don’t know who or what…” Alia starts. 

“I am Jinn. A brother of your foremother’s first love. And she hated me because of her misfortunes with him. She saw me as a tyrant to my people and she unfairly banished me. But maybe that was fate so that I could meet you and we could help this world realize it’s potential. Or reject me, and we both die at the hands of Red. You saw him.”

Alia shakes her head. “I have to find my friends…”

“They can’t help you. They can’t even help themselves.”

Alia sighs. “So are we fighting to the death then?”

Selassie growls and raises both his hands over his head. Trails of red smoke issue from his hands as his body grows taller than nearby trees. 

“Die!” he yells and throws bolts of lightning down at her. 

Alia retreats into nearby woods and she knows what she has to do.

There is a blinding white light that catches Selassie by surprise. He stumbles, unable to catch his bearing. 

Alia moves from the woods and watches him knock into trees. And then she focuses, uses her repulsion to the man to call forth the starlight. She yells and the light issues from her mouth in a beam that slices the jin in half from tip to toe. When his two sides hit the ground, they disintegrate into thick swirls of red smoke.