The moment Ugly Shaggy entered the mind of the last remaining bird, the vision transmitted back to Prakash abruptly changed. It felt like the world around him had transformed into something alien as Prakash gazed at the surrounding pitch-black space where not even a single speck of light existed.
In the outside world, the moment Ugly Shaggy entered the last remaining bird's head, the emerald-black bird immediately caught hold of the thrashing bird and placed it on the ground. It then used its legs to prop the neck of the bird and then pressed it onto the floor so that its resistance wouldn't be severe enough to trouble Ugly Shaggy.
In the surrounding pitch-black space, a mass of white smoke converged towards one spot from some unperceivable location and condensed into a cloud-like figure. The cloud-like figure had a concentrated ball-shaped structure in the middle around which a hazy mass of white clouds revolved. There were faint projections among the hazy cloud that looked to somewhat resemble a bird-like figure but it was difficult to make it out clearly since it was constantly revolving.
It was a hulking gas giant that loomed before his eyes and was slow in its motion. It was so slow that just moving forward seemed to take an eternity.
It was only then did Prakash notice the way he looked in this strange space. Spring laden legs possessing brute power, a long slender body structure, robust muscles, a well-coordinated pair of eyes and ears and a long protruding nose. It was the ever-familiar German Shepherd, the original appearance of Shaggy. Currently, its entire body was a plethora of purple shades, so much so that he had never imagined so many shades of purple colour to have existed till date.
The tail of Shaggy looked to be never-ending as it extended and went on till the farthest he could see. The moment the cloud-like gas giant had formed, Shaggy immediately sprinted towards the giant.
All Prakash could do was take the role of a spectator since the body of Shaggy was actually controlled by Ugly Shaggy, but, he felt his blood boiling in excitement as Shaggy sprinted through the void as if it never required any support for the movement.
The gas giant gazed at the approaching purple dog beast in fear as some amount of its white smoke converged towards one corner of its body that faced the approaching invader and exploded.
Shaggy had just neared the gas giant when the explosion of the white smoke enveloped its body.
Without a pause in its momentum, the body of Shaggy rushed out of the white smoke and pounced towards the outer edges of the white smoke revolving around the gas giant.
Opening its jaws to reveal a set of canine teeth, Shaggy bit into a lump of the swirling white mass and swallowed it.
The body of the gas giant shivered in response to having a part of its body eaten and began to converge a large amount of white smoke to the area, intending to blast Shaggy once again.
But, Shaggy was so quick while it was so slow that it had taken a hundred bites out of its body before the gas giant could launch another attack.
There was neither sound nor any physical impact as the shock wave produced from the exploding white mass hit the body of Shaggy. Shaggy continued unhindered and proceeded to consume large parts of the gas giant. It had almost consumed the scattered white mass that was revolving around the denser clump at the centre.
Prakash noticed that after bracing each of the explosive attacks of the gas giant, the body of Shaggy became slightly dimmer. It was barely noticeable only because of the absence of any other light sources in this pitch-black space. There was the dull but sharp purple light that radiated out of Shaggy and the dull mellow white light that the gas giant emitted.
"So, any and all attacks decrease the constitutional makeup of our body and only that since all the conventional physical laws seem to not function here," Prakash inferred some basic insight after gazing at the ongoing fight between Shaggy and the gas giant.
The body of Shaggy looked incredibly condensed and almost looked solid while the body of the gas giant looked like scattered mist while a small region at the centre looked like a ball of cloud.
Even though it was a lopsided battle, it took a long time for Shaggy to slowly consume its way through all the swirling white mist until it reached the dense clump of white mass at the centre.
This part seemed to be the core of the space and each of its attacks were both faster and stronger compared to its initial scattered mass. But, Shaggy simply brushed off its attacks and tore into it.
After Shaggy had consumed half of the remaining dense cloud of white mass, the remainder of it actually shattered and evaporated into a thin mist that scattered towards all corners of the pitch-black space.
The entire surroundings were faintly lit up with white light that finally enabled Prakash to measure the size of the pitch-black space. It wasn't as big as what he had initially assumed when it was all pitch black. It was only wide enough for a hundred Shaggy to stand side-by-side and was also shaped like a sphere.
Shaggy stood before a small sphere of white that looked almost solid and sniffed at it. The sphere of white was only as big as its eye as Shaggy opened its jaws and carefully swallowed it.
After swallowing it, Shaggy sat on all fours in the void as if it was sitting on a floor and closed its eyes. The vision presented to Prakash immediately blanked out until Shaggy opened its eyes after what seemed like a long time.
Shaggy stretched its forelegs wide and brought its hinge legs forward. Carefully lifting its forelegs up until its bottom faced down, the face of Shaggy slightly twitched while Prakash felt his vision flicker erratically.
After a short period of struggle, a tiny purple sphere was shot out from its bottom like a bullet. The purple sphere sped through the surrounding space and hit what seemed to be like a barrier that held this space intact and bounced back.
Everywhere it went, the surrounding sparse white mist converged towards it and formed a layer over its surface. The white mist was then dyed purple as the size of the sphere grew bigger.
When all available white mist was absorbed by the purple sphere, it calmly hovered at a place that seemed to be the centre of this space, just before the face of Shaggy. On closer inspection, there was a faint trace of blue mixed into it and also seemed to be growing, although at an infinitesimally slow pace.
Shaggy gazed at the purple sphere one last time before its body was pulled back. Prakash felt his vision black out immediately, and the moment it was restored, he gazed at the figure of the bird that had vacant eyes and at the visage of a tired Vikram.
His vision was cut-off at this moment when his ears perceived faint sizzling sound coming from all across his body while a greater part of it was coming from his eyes. Prakash flailed his hands around him until they came into contact with the cup of water.
Prakash scooped out a handful of water from it and splashed it on his face. Immediately, the sizzling sound became louder and louder until it was almost deafening to his ears. Ugly Shaggy soon returned to hover beside him for a few seconds before dissolving into purple smoke and entering his body.
Two minutes later, all the sizzling sounds had stopped as the eyes of Prakash shot open to reveal a pair of pale blue iris.
"Ah, ahh, ahhh," As he gazed at his surroundings, tears streaked out of his eyes while his vocal cords failed to form a proper sentence. The act of losing one's vision was a traumatic experience where he felt like the world had become a scary place, hundreds of times more scarier than what it already was.
Prakash looked at the small pool of water remaining in the plastic cup that splashed a little around the edges. There were also small ripples across its surface while its transparent colour brought a sense of peace and serenity to his mind.
The splashing water looked like the manifestation of gentleness and peace and also invoked in him the feeling of wanting to protect it. It was due to this very water that he had regained his sight.
As his feelings of wanting to protect the water increased the more he looked into the source of the all curing hope, his eyes glazed over until it rendered him unconscious.
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Prakash found himself standing in the void, the surroundings filled with empty blackness. Slowly, a mass of blue and brown converged together out of nowhere and formed into a humongous spherical object.
Compared to its huge body, Prakash felt like an insignificant atom floating aimlessly through the universe.
The sphere surface was three parts blue and one part brown and continued to rotate in place. It was then he noticed a bright source of illumination appear behind him.
Turning his head to his back, the eyes of Prakash lit up in shock upon gazing at the all too familiar celestial body of flames. It was something he had seen and prayed to every day of his life since childhood. He had witnessed it through his own eyes, gazed at hundreds of close-up images put up by space agencies all across the world and also saw 3-D models of it manufactured by related agencies.
It was the prime reason that enabled life to be sustainable on their planet, it was their solar star, the SUN.
Upon seeing another small white mass that had formed nearer to the body of blue and brown, Prakash came to a realisation.
"The Sun, the Moon, and the Earth; so, this is our world," Prakash remembered another instance when he came to this place; it was after his first kill after becoming small.
The moment such a realisation hit him, time seemed to be suddenly fast-forwarded as the Earth before him began to spin faster and faster while his body too began to get sucked towards it.
Prakash could no longer control his body as it travelled at blinding speeds and entered the Earth's atmosphere. The moment he entered the atmosphere, time seemed to slow down as the speed of Earth's rotation slowed down to a crawl.
The Earth he saw now was significantly different from what he had seen in pictures. It looked barren, with the only two elements present being that of land and water.
Even the mountains that littered on its surface seemed to be smaller as compared to the present, almost as if the Earth he was currently seeing was the juvenile form of the Earth he knew.
The formless force that was controlling his body slowly brought him towards the surface and made him hover a metre above the ground surface, almost as if it didn't want him to land on the ground.
It then brought him forward, crossing thousands of kilometres in an instant until arriving at a place where the five primary elements converged.
A volcanic mountain had erupted and was spewing out molten lava in large volumes. The lava that had erupted out flowed along the mountain slope and touched the surrounding water.
Immediately, intense mist rose up as a result of their contact and created fierce winds that billowed due to the change in weather. Thick dark clouds had also formed in the skies above that spanned for hundreds of kilometres, with its tip hovering just above the volcanic mountain.
At the point where the lava touched the water, a thick bolt of lightning descended from the dense over-clouds and impacted the region, immediately giving rise to a startling phenomenon.
Something mysterious emerged out of the Earth like vaporising mist that looked like a clump of blue smoke. This clump seemed unaffected by the surrounding phenomena of roiling elements as it entered the chaotic region.
Fire, Earth, Water, Wind, and finally Lightning; all five elements had converged at one spot, and by the action of the mysterious clump of blue smoke that entered their midst, something spectacular had emerged into existence.
A sentient creature had been created!