Surprises in the afterlife

.

..

...

??..'Am I still conscious?' Even though I'm sure my body lies completely lifeless, my consciousness has strangely not been extinguished, remaining to exist in what I feel is an oblique plane between life and death.

I don't know how long it took for me to notice that I remained conscious, but I have a feeling it was a long time.

'Is this what it feels like to be dead?'

As I questioned myself about the nature of where I am and my own, the reasoning is interrupted by the thick creak of the hinges of a gate scratching my eardrums. Even though I no longer have eardrums.

From the direction from which the opening sound came, I envision a sphere of white light, it looks huge from my point of view, as big as an elephant. She is also bright, as much as a star, but unlike the celestial bodies, her luminosity is not blinding, actually causing a comforting feeling when looking in her direction.

"Oh, you've been here all this time?..." A mature voice sounds affable, like a mother who after looking all morning, finally finds her son, who was jokingly hiding from her inside the wardrobe. "What a joy... Now come on, let's go, we're late."

A thread of light extends from the sphere, enveloping me like a scarf, one that strangely also serves to follow it wherever it takes me.

If I were still alive, seeing myself in an unknown place, being dragged by an unknown entity to another unknown place, I would panic. But I'm calm, all the while something in the core of my consciousness is telling me that it's as natural a process as breathing.

After a certain period of movement in total emptiness, leafless trees begin to appear, little by little filling in the scenery in a black forest. Through the trees, multiple other spheres of white light move in the same direction as us, each of them having a small filament, exactly like the one that surrounds me, holding a smaller sphere of light of varying tones between the yellow and greenish spectrum. ... I think I'm also one of those smaller spheres.

'What should my color be?' A silly doubt appears to me in the middle and everything.

"You are cyan, child." Managing to hear my thoughts, the sphere guiding me responds, its tone of voice as affectionate as before.

'Oh I understood.' A kind of blue, a color I like.

'Where are we going?' Since she can understand what I think, I feel free to ask.

"Towards your next life, Child..." She answers me, moving slightly to the side, allowing me to see the path ahead of us:

After some more distance through the bare trees, there is a wide gray marble bridge crossing over a river, which is so wide that I cannot see what is on the other side.

"Across these waters is Earth, your former and new home." Complete.

'The land?!' I startle at the news, pulling on some kind of mental handbrake that brings our movement to a halt.

"Yes, incarnating, growing up, aging, disincarnating and then incarnating again... You children need to go through this process a few times in the same world to mature." She explains calmly, stopping with me.

'No…' I back away, stretching the thread that binds us together. 'I don't want.'

"Do not want?" Like an orb of light, it has no face, but I can feel that she is confused by my refusal.

'I don't want to go back there.' I confirm, with some bitterness. '... That world is ruled by the greedy, who shamelessly wear masks of good character, talk about equality and justice when they really do nothing more than watch and enjoy the misery of others.'

The desperation of that place was seared into my soul during my last life. 'A broken world that rewards the unscrupulous villains and crushes the good guys...'

"Child, it may look that way, but-" The larger sphere tries to get closer, but I back away, simultaneously cutting it off.

'...Earth is a hopeless place, where heroes do not exist.' I finish my speech, freeing myself from the filament of light due to the intensity of my emotions.

Memoirs about the different comics I read, stories of worlds where people existed, truly righteous superheroes, who fought against evil, always making good prevail.

This time, the guiding sphere remains a little silent, I can feel that my words have impacted it.

"... Little one, your walk on the earthly plane was suffered, I know how it leaves marks..." She speaks slowly, her voice full of an understanding that can only be obtained by having already lived the same experience. "However, as much as your world has evils, it also has good... You yourself made many happy memories in life, didn't you?"

It comes to mind, all the good times with my family and friends, before everything went wrong. '...Yes...I have...' I direct my field of vision downwards. 'But, the war destroyed everything... It showed me how happiness in that world is something fragile, that can be shattered at any moment, without me or anyone else having the real power to stop it...'

"The power..." She seems to repeat to herself. "Ethan Jones..." She called me by name, just like a mother does when having a serious conversation with her children. "So, if you had the power to protect people's happiness, would you?"

'I would do.' My response is almost instantaneous.

"Even though the process was painful?" She approaches slightly.

'Yes, even if it hurt, I would do good.' The stoic mental image of the characters I idolize.

"Even if in your next life you were unable to meet your current family members again?" She touches on a point that touches me much more. It takes me a while to respond. 'Will they be in good lives?'

"Yes, they will."

It's all I needed to hear.

'...So my answer is still yes.' Convinced.

"I can feel your sincere desire for justice." Her white glow glows brighter, I think it's a sign of good emotions rising.

"Cyan is indeed thy color, child." I'm not sure what these colors mean, but I feel like it's a compliment. 'Thanks.'

With that exchange of words, an unspoken agreement was struck between us.

Soon, very smoothly, a new filament of light shoots out of my guiding sphere, which I allow to envelop me, and we resume our movement.

Our direction changes eighty degrees, no longer following the flow towards the river that all other souls and guides go, taking a different path that takes us even deeper into the woods.

In a few minutes there were no more souls around us, a little after that the volume of trees increased, along with the appearance of sporadic rocky structures between some of them; The structures are gray monoliths with different patterns printed on their sides, a language essentially more complex than any I have known in life. I believe they worked as informational signs, because whenever my guide stopped to read one of them, we changed direction a little.

After a period of walking that my slightly distorted temporal perception identifies as a few hours, the trees become more sparse again, the monoliths stop appearing as well and we see other souls with their guides.

The souls being taken are of different colors than the ones I saw when we went to Earth, instead of green and yellow, these vary between shades of purple and red, there being one or another bluish like me.

Peering from behind my guide, I see that we are once again in the direction of a bridge crossing the Rio das Almas, however, the marble that composes this one has a wood tone, stained black and gray in some parts.

'Where does this bridge lead?' After remaining silent the entire way, I resume communication.

"To another Earth, one where you can assert your ideals." The enlightened guide's words make my little soul ripple as I understand what they mean.

'So... Are there heroes there?' Even in thought, my voice cracking.

"Yes, a world with different rules, in which there can be individuals with special abilities, superpowers, as you are used to calling them." The guide complements, then deviating in front of me, expanding my field of vision.

"Can you see those other little ones?" Like a large sphere of light, it does not have any arms or the like, but I can feel that it is pointing to some souls being guided not towards the bridge, but towards the very waters of the river of souls.

These souls, with the help of their guides, dive into the mysterious waters. 'Why are you jumping into the water instead of using the bridge?' Feeling confused by the scene.

"These souls will also cross the bridge, little one..." I feel myself being caressed by the thread of light that surrounds me. "Keep watching."

'Okay.'

A few moments later, the guiding spheres that remained on the banks after the souls for which they were responsible had dived, extended their filaments into the interior of the waters, carefully fishing out each of the souls that had jumped.

With an attentive look, I notice that some of the souls are no longer the same as when they entered the river, before each one of them being a single pure color, after leaving the water they had developed stains or patterns of different shades.

When all the souls from before are removed from the river, a small minority with new colors, the guides take them back to cross the bridge.

'Why only some of them changed? And why did they change?' Watching it only left me with more doubts about what it was all about.

"I explained a little while ago that on this Earth there can be individuals with unique abilities, son..." She starts walking again, right pulling in the direction of the river of souls. "By bathing in this water, there is a one in ten chance of acquiring these abilities."

As we get closer to the water, I can feel a warm energy emanating from it as I see our reflections on its surface.

'So I just have to dive in and, if I'm lucky, I'll become a superhero?' If I had eyes, they would be shining right now.

"Not all individuals blessed by divine waters follow this path, unfortunately..." She's talking about those who misuse power, supervillains, to put it simply. "But yes, you can become one."

'I understand... So, here I go.' Seriously, I let go of the filament of light and floated slowly towards the water that could make me into someone like the fictional characters I admired so much.

Sinking my soul sphere in the waters, I have the feeling of getting into a perfectly heated bathtub, it's super comfortable, urging me to get in completely without fear.

...

... Immersed completely, I feel my little bluish sphere gently dissolving, my spirit coming into harmony with the water and the water coming into harmony with me... to go back to being a small embryo developing in its mother's womb, the mother by chance, being an endless river that runs through reality.

[What do you want to become?] What could be said as the consciousness of the waters directs me to a question.

This question, honestly, is the easiest I've ever been asked in my life.

When thinking about answering, the perfect, simple and clear mental image of my favorite hero of all time comes along.

'I want to be an unbeatable hero, the symbol of hope in the world... Superman!' My thoughts succeed in conveying all my excitement. 'Oh, and no good weaknesses, please!

I can almost hear him chuckling at how automatic my response was, I made a multiversal entity laugh, that's good.

[Granted.]

...

*Swoosh* Before I know it, a thread of light acts as a hook, plucking me out of the water like a freshly caught trout. The fisherwoman is a huge sphere of white light, my guide, of course.

"That suits you, child." She praises as she brings me close, in a kind of hug between spheres.

'Thank you...' I reply directing my gaze to the waters beside us, where I can see my reflection: My cyan tone from before changed to a navy blue and a red spot in the shape of a shield appeared in my center.

I remain silent, amazed by the situation, feeling a new energy circulating within me.

"How are you feeling?" Finally, ask her...

'Invincible.'

{ SERIES CARD}

=========================End Of Chapter=======================