When the Alia left him, Silas felt part of himself leave with her. He couldn’t explain the sensation, but she had taken a piece of his soul that would allow her to influence him mentally, and he felt the piece of his soul, that he hadn’t really conceived as a real thing, being manipulated, even if it was small compared to the whole of his body.
He stood on the sidewalk and watched her as she levitated and slowly phased out of view, looking down at him with a mix of anger and something like understanding. When she was gone, Silas stood for a moment longer looking at the spot above him where she had been, hoping that she really would stop Illuminatos.
Tyler attacked him on the sidewalk before he made it home. He tackled Silas from behind, and Silas would have smashed his face into the pavement if he hadn’t forced the two of them onto their sides as they fell to the ground.
Tyler held Silas down as he climbed on top of him and pinned him underneath his weight. Silas didn’t really struggle, he is strong and could have fought back, but he was more curious why this was happening.
“Where is she!” Azazel screamed with Tyler’s face that somehow contorted to look just like Azazel’s demon form in Hell. “She was here! I haven’t seen her in so long and I don’t know how much longer the father will give me before he becomes angry.”
Silas panicked underneath the rage that Azazel displayed. Silas was so afraid that he was frozen in fear and he thought that Azazel would hurt him.
“What did you two talk about?” Azazel growled down at him.
Silas stammered through the story of their interaction and by the time he was done, Azazel was smiling.
“She took a part of your soul? That is the best news I could have hoped for. Now I can find her because I can always find you Silas. I must go now.”
Silas watched Tyler’s face change from Azazel’s delight, to a blank look, then to one of confusion.
“What is going on?” he asked Silas, legitimately confused. He stood and reached out a hand to help Silas up.
Silas stood without help.
“Tyler? Is it really you?” Silas asked as Tyler looked around the neighborhood speechless.
“What happened to everything? What’s going on here?”
Azazel was gone. And Tyler apparently had no idea what the world had become since his possession before the Nights of Illuminatos.
The Alia has traveled the Earth since she was pulled from Hell. The more she saw, the less she wanted to add to the suffering of the pitiful people suffering in the time of Illuminatos. She was drawn to Africa, where she found a woman in Cameroon who could have been her twin, only she was taller and her skin was darker. The woman was keeping her children alive by evading the murderous gangs that terrorized the country and she existed almost like a rodent; hold up in a structure that seemed to be damaged and abandoned and emerging only to look for food she brought back to her children.
The city Yaoundé was in bad shape, and it seemed that there was always a fire burning somewhere to remind dwellers that civility was long gone from its streets. But the Alia saw the woman working so hard to protect her children as a symbol of hope. Ssi had killed her so long ago, but she had survived on Earth in this woman who was strong and resilient and refused to defeat at the seeming end of human civilization.
The Alia visited this woman often and she cared less and less about her grudge against Ssi and her haunting of Silas. She wanted to protect the woman and she was able to ward off danger to allow her children to play in the sun for the first time in a long time. She helped others too, the few who maintained their humanity despite the taint of Illuminatos that darkened their eyes and made their pupils red.
Then Silas asked her if she could help the entire world, and the Alia knew that she must.
She felt the darkness of Illuminatos from the moment that returned to Earth, and when she left Silas, intent on putting an end to the darkness, she knew exactly where to find the source of it.
The secret headquarters of the Consortium of Human History is located in Tshopo province, near the Congo River. Normally, the headquarters is an impressive mansion that sits like an anomaly in the rainforest, on a lawn of grasses that is not native to the area. Since Lynnette Jones, president of the board of the COHH, started her work to bring Illuminatos to Earth many years ago, the mansion has been covered in purple veins that look more like tentacles than vegetation.
When the Alia arrives at the secret headquarters, she is disgusted at the form of the mansion that is completely covered in purple tentacles like it is constructed of them. She can move through the walls of the structure, but when she touches it, she gets a sick feeling that makes the energies of her spirits feel hostile. She blows a hole in the large side wall of the mansion and more tentacles spill out, wet and slimy like she has exposed the structure’s entrails.
And then Lynnette Jones emerges, seemingly floating, but actually lifted by the tentacles that run through her body like veins.
“The Alia!” Lynnette Jones said with a voice that is not her own. It is deep and seems to echo out of her. “I thought that I felt your presence here. How do you like the world that I have made in my image?”
“This is done now,” the Alia says. “Your time here is done.”
The body of Lynnette Jones moves like a puppet on strings and it laughs uproariously.
“It has only just begun.”
The Alia charges at the large mound of tentacles, and as she approaches it, she remembers the fighting spirit of the woman in Cameroon, and the others that she saved. She remembers Silas pleading with her for an end to this, and she felt all of the souls on Earth suffering under the weight of Illuminatos’s influence and their desire to be free of it. This collective will to repel the dank weed makes the Alia glow yellow-white, and her form swells. She flies at the heart of the darkness and she seizes it, then continues flying up and away from the planet.
From a distance, it was a wonderful sight; the large, glowing form of a woman pushing at a giant mass of tentacles that reluctantly give up their hold on the planet Earth, until the final strain snaps as the woman moves faster than light to the edge of the universe.
Azazel sees the Alia with Illuminatos as a crown fly fast into Hell and dump it into a deep, dark pit. It mostly dies on impact and Azazel stands next to the Alia, peering down at the darkness.
“I sensed you headed this way,” Azazel says. “The father will be happy to see you returned.”
The Alia looks at him with a smirk on her face.
“No he won’t.”
PRL Serials 