ANTS! There were carcasses of ants everywhere. From the entrance of the door till the limits their eyes could see, there were the smashed remains of ants lying everywhere that probably numbered in the hundreds.

The ants were as big as their feet, so they posed quite a threat towards their current selves with such huge numbers.

The couple sported grave expressions as they each carried a refill with them and rushed in at a steady pace.

'zzzzz'

'zzzzz'

'zzzzz'

'Swoosh'

Something flashed near them. It felt like a streak of black lightning as it whizzed past their vision.

"This familiar sound…." Anita murmured as she tightened the grip on her refill and swung it towards her left.

'Swish'

She felt a reaction from the shaft of her refill; it seemed to have made contact with the black lightning.

'Thud'

A noise that was barely audible to them went off as a tiny insect that was a bit smaller than their heads fell down. It seemed that Anita's swing had luckily grazed with one of the insect's wings.

"It's a mosquito." Prakash frowned upon the realisation as he immediately dashed towards the injured mosquito and stabbed its body with his refill.

'Squelch'

A gooey substance oozed out from its nasty body as a pungent smell wafted out.

Suddenly, Prakash's eyes widened in shock and surprise as he saw a purple snake rise out from the dead mosquito's body and enter his body like a purple lightning bolt.

'Thump' 'Thump'

Prakash's heart began to beat like crazy as it seemed to want to jump out of his chest.

"Aargh!" Prakash roared as veins bulged on his arms, legs, neck, chest, abdomen, and on his face. His hair also suddenly turned purple, and his pupils shone with a purple radiance. He looked like a poisoned banshee.

"Dear!" Anita rushed towards Prakash, but as she reached within an arm's distance of him, her body abruptly stopped in place, immobile. It seemed she had completely lost control of her body as a formless aura radiated out from Prakash. Her voice couldn't leak out and even her eyes seemed to be stuck in place, unable to even blink.

As abruptly as it began, after a span of 3 seconds, his hair became white again, his skin no longer had bulging veins and his eyes reverted back to their clear sky-blue shade.

His eyes were originally brown, but after his hair turned white, his eyes became sky-blue in colour, something the couple didn't seem to care about much. After all, their entire bodies had shrunk to such an extent that they could become buddies with butterflies; a change in their eye colour didn't seem to faze them much at this point.

'Thump'

Prakash kneeled on the ground as he wheezed for more air, his body drenched with sweat and his eyes were clearly unfocused.

As soon as that weird transformation wore off, Anita regained control of her body as she rushed to the aid of Prakash. But, Prakash seemed to have not noticed her approach as his body showed no response even after her prodding.

'zzzzz'

'zzzzz'

Anita's ears began to hear many buzzing sounds coming towards her direction as her eyes could make out occasional flashes of black lightning in her vision range.

The mosquitoes were closing in on their location in a haphazard manner, just like their usually irritating selves with that high-frequency buzzing.

Anita took Prakash's refill in her left hand, with her own refill in her right as she calmly stood before Prakash, fully intending to defend him to death.

A buzz went off on her left and she took a wide swing in that direction and propped her right hand beside her hips, ready for a thrust.

As her left slash missed on its target Anita twisted her hips, pulled back her left arm and sent out a thrust with her right.

Her hands felt a small resistance before the feeling disappeared. Not losing her vigour, with her wide outstretched right arm, Anita took out a wide swing that almost made 180 degrees in the vertical direction and seemed to have grazed against another mosquito.

'zzzzz'

A mosquito suddenly closed in on her left. Anita immediately pushed her left refill forward when the mosquito gracefully landed on the outstretched shaft and immediately lunged forward with its mouthpart.

Anita decisively let go of the refill on her left, backtracked a couple of steps, clutched the shaft of the refill on her right in both arms and took quick, short-consecutive thrusts at her assailant.

She missed once, she missed twice, she missed thrice….she missed 23 times when she had to roll sideways and swing her refill towards another mosquito that showed up beside Prakash.

She hit it squarely on the body that sent it reeling for a few centimetres when its previous nimble opponent lunged at her knees.

'Rip'

A small strand of her skin got ripped off as Anita timely avoided it when the shaft of a refill abruptly smashed on the head of the mosquito, knocking it unconscious.

"Prakash!" Anita shouted out in joy upon seeing the conscious Prakash that slowly pulled back his refill from atop the head of the now unconscious mosquito. His previous condition had freaked her out completely.

"Don't kill them! Just make sure you knock them out." Prakash said as he swung his refill towards another mosquito.

"Alright," Anita didn't know the reason for his command but she just decided to follow his instructions for now.

"Happ" Anita screamed as she fiercely thrust her refill out, her battle style becoming more proactive and ruthless as compared to her previous conservative stance when she had to protect Prakash from harm.

'zzz…zz…zz' A mosquito struggled to escape as the pointed end of the refill had pierced through its lower body.

Anita pulled the refill back and swatted the injured mosquito to the side and swung with her left hand on the other side. Her hand smashed into one of the legs of another mosquito that tried to ambush her from behind and shattered it.

Her hand then caught onto another one of its intact legs and pulled it fiercely. The mosquito lost its balance in the air momentarily when its wings were pierced by the tip of the refill that came its way and tore it violently.

Anita pulled the leg of the mosquito that lost one of its wings and smashed it on the ground. Making use of the rebound, she smashed it on the other side and stopped. She didn't want to kill it yet since Prakash said her not to.

The last remaining one was finally beaten to the ground by Prakash as he looked toward his fierce wife, a natural-born fighter who was mistakenly given birth to during the peaceful era of the 21st century.

"Just watch me," Prakash said to Anita as he stabbed his refill into a twitching mosquito and killed it. He immediately saw a purple snake rise up from the now-dead mosquito and enter his body.

"Gghh" Prakash gritted his teeth as his hair turned purple once again, veins bulged on his skin and his eyes shone with a purple radiance. The effect this time seemed to last for less than a second before it faded and Prakash regained his bearings two seconds later as his eyes regained their focus.

"So it's true!" Prakash exclaimed aloud.

"What is?" Anita inquired. Her face was full of worry but was also tinged with a slight sense of curiosity.

"It's better to experience it yourself. It's really painful for the first try. Just be careful after you kill this mosquito." Prakash said as he gestured for her to kill a particular mosquito.

Anita had witnessed everything that happened to Prakash, she could somewhat guess as to what may happen next but she couldn't understand why? Why did her husband tell her to not kill the mosquitoes initially but gave her the green signal later? What happened to him when he first killed the mosquito? Finally, what was with his hair and eyes turning purple?

Her list of questions was endless, but she just decided to take a leap of faith first and see for herself. If something unexpected happened, she would die with regrets but, who in the world could say with 100 percent assurance that everything that occurs around them is well within their control?

Prakash gazed with anxiety as the refill Anita thrust out claimed the life of a mosquito. Anita saw a purple coloured snake rise up from the body of the dead mosquito and enter into her body.

Everything occurred in the fraction of a second.

"Aaaaaa" A high pitched scream erupted out from Anita as her hair turned purple, veins bulged all over her skin and her pupils shone with a purple radiance.

3 seconds later, everything became normal as Anita slumped to the floor, heaving ragged breaths while her eyes were cloudy.

Almost 10-15 seconds later, Anita abruptly opened her eyes and slowly regained her bearings. Her eyes still retained shock as to what she had experienced and witnessed just now.

She then slowly picked up her refill and proceeded to kill the next mosquito. Each time she killed a mosquito, her eyes and hair became purple while veins bulged on her skin after which she seemed to go into a trance for a second. Just that each session lasted for a duration lesser than the previous one.

In the initial 10-15 seconds that she was in a trance after her first kill, a series of memories rushed into her brain. The memories consisted of vague humanoid figures killing various other creatures in battle, absorbing the purple snakes that emerged out from the dead creatures they killed into their own bodies and then morphing a part of their bodies into the creatures they had felled.

Some purple snakes were long, some were short, some were thick, and others were thin. Sometimes, they flowed into the bodies of the humanoid silhouettes very slowly, often times, they were lightning quick.

The humanoid silhouettes either partially or fully turned into creatures both large and small, sometimes suffered rebounds of their transformations, sometimes they just burst like balloons that had been pricked by a needle, etc.

As Anita slowly connected each disjointed memory fragments, she finally came face to face with a very large ball, three-fourths of which were blue and the remaining one-fourth was green. There were also patches of white moving about on its surface.

It seemed alive and tried to convey some meaning to her but the memory seemed to fade out arbitrarily. The large ball that was three-fourths blue and one-fourths green abruptly greyed out as a feeling of desperation, desolation, love, longing and hatred all in one giant bundle of mixture wafted out from it before they too were abruptly cut off.

Slowly, a row of unrecognisable characters formed in her head when at the next moment, her eyes regained their clarity.

She mysteriously came to know the meaning for the row of unrecognisable characters that had formed in her head, "The final wave of retaliation by Bhoomi against its invaders- Karma Incarnation"