The Inseparable Princes

99. The Ultimate Duel - Hidden Powers

The afternoon sun shone brighter than ever before, sucking energy out of Rama who ensured that he would kill all the demon soldiers he possibly could before Ravana returned. There was no way he was going to sit idle and watch as the demon soldiers marched forward to kill his men. And what happened was just that. Hundreds of thousands of demons fell into the dark of death, but death at the hands of Rama was certainly not as dark as it seemed. Moksha, wasn't that better than most things, if not all?

Ravana still hadn't returned, and it was quite frustrating for Rama. How could somebody possibly be such a coward, he thought, not quite understanding how their minds worked. Why would someone retreat? How did they have that instinct to return without doing anything? Frankly, he just found it absurd, and decided not to waste him time and energy thinking about the mindset of a stupid demon who had just rotten things in his mind, really. Had he really ever done anything that could be of even the tiniest bit of help to anybody? Anybody at all? No? He was not worth Rama's precious time, really, at this point.

Finally. After some ten million seventy thousand three hundred twenty nine years, Ravana returned. Surprisingly enough, the charioteer still had his head attached to his body, and even had his limbs as they had been earlier. Everything was fine with him. He didn't even look like Ravana had simply attempted to pull his head off of his body. He even had all of his ten fingers, it seemed!

"I thought he would have literally shredded this man to pieces! He's back in one piece. This charioteer deserves an award! I am telling you, he has some supernatural power to withstand the nonsense, and even counter Ravan! Woah!" exclaimed Nala. Sugreeva smacked him on his head lightly, laughing. "I'm sure this hypocrite must've said that he is a real big hero, and so the charioteer shouldn't have brought him back to safety where he could sit and cry all day long, exhaust all his tears, and then come back to fight Prabhu, so that he can go back and sob when he returns again."

"How do you know?" asked Lakshmana. "Okay, I understand what you mean, you're just joking, but it all seems really true. Really."

"I mean, if you just spoke up when your Bhaiya is going to fight, it means it was a truly 'moving' speech from Nal!" laughed Neela.

"And I think the charioteer would've said something more logical than Ravana could've ever imagined in his entire life! And he's older than my great grandpa's great grandpa's great grandpa would have been now!" said Nala. He was certainly not wrong.

"How do we believe this, though? Any evidence you have would help."

"Okay Neel, now you're taking this too far. You think this really happened?" asked Jambavan, rolling his eyes. (LOL I just realised, I think jambavan is there ever since like Samudra Manthan! O M G!)

"Maybe it did." Lakshmana shrugged. "I'm sure the charioteer has more rationality than Ravan. Otherwise he couldn't have been here in one piece, holding the reins of the chariot instead of being under it."

★★★

And so the battle resumed. The embodiment of Dharma against Ravana, the man who never understood virtue. Ramachandra went even harder on Ravana this time. Every arrow he shot seemingly reacted differently with the arrows that Ravana shot to counter those. One seemingly disappeared, giving Ravana a moment of pleasure, before it reappeared and burnt down Ravana's arrow. Another time, Rama's arrow cut through the arrow laterally, which his arrows had done before, so although Ravana was stunned, he didn't quite let it show. Another time, his arrow didn't even counter the arrow Ravana had shot. Instead, it went straight inside his chest, and Rama allowed a smile even while shooting more arrows at the enemy, to attack him and not to defend himself.

So what about the defence? He had made a shield. Simple enough. Unless Ravana shot a celestial missile, which he didn't look like he would do for a while, the shield wouldn't budge for the normal arrows that he had been shooting. The arrows hit the invisible orb like shape and fell to the ground like used up sparklers, so many in number now that the entire path had a heap full of them. Nobody could come to clean up, though, for Rama and Ravana were fighting. With real arrows. They weren't, say, playing badminton that people would just go under the shuttlecock while it was in the air and get whatever they wished for (sorry XD).