Alaric was currently flying at the speed of the soul.
He could not see anything. He could not feel anything. He could not hear anything.
All he sensed was a kind of a rushing sensation, as if he was traveling at extremely high speeds through a dark, silent, vacuumed void.
But he was too busy cursing the noodles to pay much attention to his situation. He was currently absolutely filled with regret. He had died. He could only imagine what kind of grief his parents were in because of him. And there were so many things he had not done in his life. He had never fallen in love. Not married. Not had children. Not become old, watching his family grow as the years pass by.
He had died too early.
And there were multiple things he felt about it. Anger. Sorrow. Regret. Still a slight bit of shock. Some bemusement at how he had died.
Then he realized it.
He could think. He could feel emotions. That wasn't what he imagined death to be like. He had thought it was an endless sleep, an end to the consciousness. But he was, by all means, perfectly conscious and full of emotions.
But as he turned his attention to himself, and his thoughts and emotions, something surprising happened.
He regained all his senses. He could see, hear, smell, and feel. And he was no longer in a void.
The world around him had shifted.
---
Alaric sat cross-legged on a stone platform, surrounded on all sides by a massive ocean stretching as far as he could see. The waters met the night sky at the horizon, with nothing else in sight. It could have been a beautiful sight, if not for a slight issue.
He was in the middle of a storm. The sea around him raged, as massive waves of water surged up to the size of houses. Dark clouds covered the night sky and lightning violently struck the rising tides. The wind swirled around with enough force to uproot trees. And at the eye of the entire storm was firm circular stone platform, just large enough for Alaric to sit on. But not a single drop of water touched him. when he tried extending his fingers beyond the platform he sat on, he found that he was circularly surrounded by a barrier of sorts. An invisible wall between him and the world. It was, for a normal person from a normal planet, a rather shocking sight.
He flinched as a lightning bolt struck the see a few feet away from him. The waves soared higher but they seemed to be faltering, almost as if… confused.
But it didn't take long for him to realize that even this place wasn't going to help him go back to his life. He became consumed by sorrow and anger again.
The faces of his mother and father crying in grief burned themselves into his mind. Tears streamed down his face. He was filled with boundless grief and regret. So much that his anger at the circumstances that caused his death faded away. In his heart was only sorrow.
Suddenly, he felt the noise around him reduce. He looked up. The ocean had somewhat calmed down. The waters still swirled agitatedly, but did not rise to become waves. The lightning had stopped, but the sky was heavier and even more overcast than before.
Alaric's eyes widened. He seemed to realize something. And with that realization came shock, and with that shock came lightning.
BOOM
A bolt struck the ocean, scaring Alaric. And with the fear, a large wave rose from the waters to splash back into the sea.
Now Alaric was sure of it…
The world around him was a reflection of his heart. His emotions expressed themselves to him in the form of the raging of the tides, the rumbling of the clouds, the striking of the thunders.
The natural conclusion was that he was… in his own heart.
He tried extracting himself out of this world. But he couldn't. He had come in because he was focusing on his emotions. Now they were the world around him, not letting him leave. He was trapped by his own emotions in his own heart.
He decided to calm down first. First he would bring the world around him in his control, the decide what to do.