CHAPTER 4

Chapter 4: Flashbacks of Vexis

Durga stood at the edge of the battlefield, her chest rising and falling in slow, measured breaths. Around her, the dust was settling—both literal and figurative. The air still crackled with the remnants of Munda’s chaos, but the worst of it had passed, for now. A heavy silence hung in the atmosphere, though Durga knew it was the kind that only came before a storm.

Behind her, her team was regrouping, though their exhaustion was evident. Kali, of course, looked like she’d just come back from a holiday—bloodthirsty grin still in place, twirling her Sword of Dark Energy lazily as she leaned against a chunk of crumbled reality that had once been solid ground.

“Well,” she said, her voice casual despite the destruction around them, “that was fun. We should do it again sometime.”

Durga shot her a look. “Preferably not.”

Lakshmi, her face pale and drawn from the intensity of the probability manipulations she had orchestrated, gave a weak chuckle. “Kali’s idea of ‘fun’ involves playing with the fabric of the universe. What could go wrong?”

“I can think of a few things,” Saraswati added dryly as she surveyed the battlefield, her Blade of Knowledge still in hand. “But it’s nothing a week of deep meditation and a helping of S.O.M.A won’t cure.”

Chandika was quiet as usual, her focus shifting to the ground beneath her feet. She was carefully using her powers to reset the gravitational balance of the area, ensuring that no more collapses or fissures would open up unexpectedly. Her expression was, as always, intense and unwavering. “The ground is stabilizing, but not for long. Whatever he did here… it’s going to take time to fully repair the rift.”

Durga nodded, but her attention wasn’t fully on the conversation. She could feel Raktabeeja watching them, like a predator observing its prey. He hadn’t made his move yet, but it was coming. And unlike Chanda and Munda, Raktabeeja didn’t play games. He believed in overwhelming his enemies with sheer force.

A voice broke her thoughts. Varun, his image flickering through the holo-comm, his tone grave and controlled. “Durga, we’ve detected major shifts in the sector. We’re reading thousands of temporal anomalies converging on your position.”

She didn’t need him to tell her that. She could already sense it, the air thick with the threat of what was coming. Still, she maintained her calm, as always. “We know. Raktabeeja hasn’t made his move yet, but it’s only a matter of time. What’s our status on reinforcements?”

There was a brief pause on the other end of the comm. “Minimal,” Varun admitted, his voice tight. “Devlok-Prime is stretched thin. We can’t risk sending more forces into the Kalash Sector while the timelines are still collapsing.”

Typical. Durga closed her eyes for a brief second. She understood the logic, but it didn’t make their position any less dire. “Understood. We’ll handle it.”

The moment she closed the connection, the weight of leadership pressed down on her. It always did. No one else could carry it—no one else could afford to carry it. The Trishula hummed softly in her hand, as though aware of her thoughts, its ancient power pulsing through her veins like a steady heartbeat. It was a reminder of who she was, what she had been created for.

And what she could never escape.

Flashback

Long before the endless battles, the timelines, the chaos… there had been peace. Or at least, the kind of peace that existed in a universe perpetually at the brink of collapse.

Durga remembered those early days, though the memories felt more like echoes now. She had been born of the Quantum Forge, summoned into existence by the Unified Systems Alliance when the threat of M.A.H.I.S first emerged. She hadn’t asked for the responsibility, but it had been thrust upon her all the same.

In those days, she had been uncertain, like any newly created being would be. Her powers were vast, her purpose clear, but the burden of existence weighed heavily on her. The Council of Devlok-Prime had been her guiding force, helping her to understand her role. Maya, in particular, had been instrumental in shaping her early days. A brilliant quantum physicist and philosopher, Maya had not only taught Durga about the multiverse but also the moral weight of her decisions.

She had stood in front of the Quantum Forge, the cosmic glyphs shifting along its spiraling rings, and spoken with Maya about the nature of time and space.

“You were created to protect the balance,” Maya had told her, her voice both gentle and firm. “But understand this—balance does not always mean victory. Sometimes, it means sacrifice. Sometimes, it means loss. And you, more than anyone, must learn to live with that.”

Durga had stared at the glowing Trishula in her hand, the ancient weapon that had been bound to her from the moment of her creation. Its power was limitless, but so was the responsibility that came with it.

“I didn’t choose this,” she had said, her voice soft, though not resentful. Just tired.

Maya had smiled, her eyes full of understanding. “No, you didn’t. But the universe doesn’t always give us choices. Sometimes, it only gives us purpose.”

Present

Durga blinked, the memories fading back into the recesses of her mind. There was no time for reflection now. The battle still loomed, and Raktabeeja was watching, waiting for his moment to strike.

“Durga?”

The voice pulled her back to the present. It was Lakshmi, who had stepped closer, her eyes still glowing faintly from the probability calculations she was running. “You alright?”

Durga nodded, though she wasn’t sure if it was a lie or not. “I’m fine. Just… preparing.”

Lakshmi gave her a look that suggested she didn’t fully buy that, but she didn’t push. Instead, she offered a small smile, her calm demeanor a steady presence amid the chaos. “You’re not alone, you know. We’ve got this.”

Durga managed a small smile in return, though the weight of responsibility didn’t lessen. “I know.”

Before the conversation could go any further, a low, rumbling laugh echoed across the battlefield, cutting through the air like a blade.

“Ah, Durga. Always so calm. So composed. But I wonder…” Raktabeeja stepped forward, his towering figure casting a long, twisted shadow over the ruined ground. His molten-red skin gleamed in the dim light, his eyes glowing with malevolent amusement. “How long can even a goddess hold her composure when faced with inevitable defeat?”

Durga didn’t rise to the bait. She stood her ground, her eyes locking onto his. “You’ve already lost.”

Raktabeeja laughed again, the sound low and mocking. “Lost? You haven’t even begun to see the extent of my power. My blood is infinite. My army is infinite. You can burn me, cut me, destroy me in every conceivable way, but I will always return. And with each drop of my blood, my army grows.”

“Great,” Saraswati muttered under her breath, eyeing the seemingly endless number of Raktabeeja clones that still littered the battlefield. “Because this wasn’t frustrating enough already.”

Durga kept her focus on Raktabeeja. She wasn’t going to let him get into her head. “We’ve already taken down your generals. You’re next.”

Raktabeeja grinned, baring sharp, bloodstained teeth. “Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong. You see, I don’t need generals. I don’t need armies. I am more than just flesh and blood. I am a force. A concept. You think you’ve beaten me?”

He raised one massive hand, and with a single swipe of his clawed fingers, the blood on the ground—his own blood, spilled from the clones that had fallen—began to shimmer and shift. The clones themselves stirred, their forms flickering back to life as they reformed, each one stronger, more twisted than before.

“You’ll never defeat me, Durga,” Raktabeeja said, his voice low and filled with dark promise. “Because I will never stop. I will never die.”

Durga’s grip on the Trishula tightened. “We’ll see about that.”

CHAPTER 3

Chapter 3: The Fall of Munda

The battlefield had gone from bad to worse in record time.

Durga stood at the center of the chaos, her Trishula still glowing from the energy it had unleashed on Chanda. But as the dust settled from that victory, the air thickened with a menacing new wave of power. Munda, the remaining half of the Chaos Twins, was not just angry. He was enraged.

“Ahh. Rage.”, Kali’s voice was uncharacteristically soft. “And rage, in his hands, is more than an emotion. It is a weapon.” She cocked her head and her thick tresses swung heavy caked with blood. “I can respect that.”, she admitted grudgingly.

“Right,” said Saraswati, her sharp eyes scanning the shifting battlefield. “Now we just have to deal with the one who literally breaks reality with his temper tantrums.”

Durga could feel the tension mounting, and even she wasn’t sure how they were going to handle Munda’s uncontrolled chaos. The battlefield, already unstable from the warping effects of Chanda’s probability manipulations, was now teetering on the brink of total collapse under Munda’s onslaught. Every swing of his massive chaos hammer sent ripples through the fabric of time, and the ground beneath their feet flickered between solid matter and swirling void.

“He looks upset,” Kali commented, cracking her knuckles as she stepped up beside Durga, her dark energy practically jumping off her skin. Her usual manic grin was still in place, but there was a hard edge to it now. “You know, the kind of upset that’s usually followed by a lot of screaming and explosions.”

“I think we’ve had enough of both for one day,” Chandika muttered, her hands glowing as she stabilized another gravity well. She was fighting to keep the battlefield from tearing itself apart under Munda’s assault, but even her considerable powers were being pushed to their limits.

Durga adjusted her grip on the Trishula. The situation was spiraling out of control. They couldn’t keep up with the clones, the collapsing timelines, and now Munda’s raw, reality-breaking chaos. And behind it all was still the looming threat of Raktabeeja, who was nowhere to be seen. He seemed content to let his twisted generals do the heavy lifting.

“Alright,” Durga said, her voice steady despite the chaos around them. “We need to focus on Munda. If we can bring him down, we’ll have a chance to regroup. Kali, you’re on him. Everyone else, focus on keeping the battlefield stable.”

“Oh, you know I will,” Kali said, her grin widening as she charged forward, her Sword of Dark Energy flashing in her hands. “He’s been asking for this all day.”

Munda saw her coming and let out a roar that shook the very air. His chaos hammer slammed into the ground with enough force to send a shockwave through the battlefield. Time itself seemed to fracture under the impact, and for a brief moment, everything slowed—like a clock winding down. But only for a moment.

Then, the universe snapped back into place, and Kali was upon him.

She was a blur of motion, her blade crackling with dark energy as she struck. Munda swung his hammer in response, but Kali was too fast. She darted around him, slicing through the air with wild precision, her strikes aimed at the weak points in his armor. But Munda’s form was massive, and his rage made him unpredictable. Each missed swing of his hammer created new rifts in the battlefield, pulling the very ground beneath them into dangerous new configurations.

“This is getting a bit much,” Lakshmi said, her voice strained as she struggled to manage the rapidly shifting probabilities. The field around them was unstable—one misstep, one wrong calculation, and they could all be pulled into a temporal vortex or crushed by the collapsing ground.

“I don’t suppose anyone has an easy solution for ‘unraveling reality at the seams’?” Saraswati asked, her Blade of Knowledge slicing through another wave of Raktabeeja clones. “Because that seems like a problem worth solving quickly.”

“Funny you mention it,” Lakshmi said, her voice tight. “There’s a 4.2% chance we can use Munda’s own chaos against him. But it involves getting him really, really, really angry.”

Durga raised an eyebrow. “And how is that any different from what he’s doing right now?”

Lakshmi winced. “We need him to push beyond this… to lose control entirely. His chaos energy is already destabilizing the battlefield. If we push him further, we might be able to use his power to collapse his own timelines.”

Durga’s expression tightened. It was a gamble—a dangerous one. If they pushed Munda too far, he could destroy the entire sector, not just himself. But if they didn’t do something soon, the multiverse might unravel anyway.

“We’re going to have to take the risk,” Durga said, turning her gaze to Kali. “Kali! Get him angrier!”

“Now you’re speaking my language,” Kali called back, a wicked gleam in her eyes. She dodged another of Munda’s attacks and laughed, the sound cutting through the chaos. “Hello, pet! Is that all you’ve got? Who’s a good boy now? I’ve seen toddlers with better temper tantrums!”

Munda’s roar shook the very foundations of the sector, and his chaos hammer crashed into the ground again, sending out shockwaves that twisted the landscape into a nightmarish maze of broken timelines and shattered reality.

Kali dodged the blow, barely keeping her footing as the ground beneath her shifted. “Come on, Munda-Wunda! You’re supposed to be the Big Bad Chaos General, and this is what you’re giving me? What a baby!”

Munda’s eyes blazed with fury, his form growing larger, more unstable as Kali taunted him further. The ground beneath him cracked, and the air around him began to shimmer with raw, uncontained energy.

“Lakshmi, how’s it looking?” Durga asked, her gaze never leaving the raging form of Munda.

“Not great,” Lakshmi admitted, her voice strained as she calculated the probabilities. “But if we push him just a bit further, we might have enough chaos energy to collapse his timeline.”

Durga nodded. “Kali, keep going. Push him harder.”

Kali grinned and charged again, her Khadga, The Sword of Dark Energy flashing as she struck. “Is this all the mighty Munda can do? Maybe your brother was the brains of the operation, after all.”

That did it.

With a roar of absolute fury, Munda swung his hammer with reckless abandon, the chaos energy pouring off him in waves. Time warped and buckled around him, and the very ground beneath him began to crack and splinter, falling away into the void.

“Now!” Lakshmi shouted, her eyes glowing as she manipulated the probabilities. With a flick of her hand, she shifted the odds just enough, and the chaos energy surrounding Munda reached critical mass.

The ground beneath Munda collapsed, and with a final, earth-shattering roar, his form twisted and dissolved, pulled into the chaotic void he had created.

For a moment, the battlefield was eerily silent. The only sound was the soft hum of the energy still crackling in the air.

Durga exhaled, lowering her Trishula as she surveyed the scene. Munda was gone, and the battlefield had stabilized, but the cost had been high. Her forces were scattered, battered, and exhausted, and there was still the looming presence of Raktabeeja, watching from the shadows, waiting for his next move.

“Is it over?” Saraswati asked, her voice a mix of disbelief and exhaustion as she wiped blood from her cheek.

“No,” Durga said quietly, her gaze fixed on the distant figure of Raktabeeja. “It’s not over. Not yet.”

Raktabeeja stepped forward, his molten eyes gleaming with dark amusement. “You think this changes anything, Durga? You may have defeated Chanda and Munda, but you will never defeat me. I am infinite. I am eternal.”

“Maybe,” Durga said, her voice steady. “But so am I.”

CHAPTER 2

Chapter 2: Chaos Unleashed

The air was thick with the stench of burning blood. Raktabeeja, his smirk now twisted with fury, staggered back, clutching his chest where Durga’s Trishula had pierced him. He snarled at the battlefield, his molten eyes flickering with disbelief. But before he could speak again, the battlefield itself began to twist and bend in ways that defied reason.

“Oh, here we go,” Kali muttered, rolling her eyes as the air around them crackled with unnatural energy. “And just when I was starting to enjoy myself.”

Chanda and Munda, the Chaos Twins, had arrived. Born from the fragments of the Big Bang, the chaotic explosion that created the multiverse, they represented the fundamental forces of chaos and disorder, existing to disrupt the balance of the universe.

Chanda is tall and slender, with pale, sickly skin that seems to shift in color depending on the light. His eyes are black voids, constantly shifting as if they’re portals to other dimensions. His body seems almost weightless, and he moves with an unsettling grace, his limbs stretching and contorting in ways that defy logic. Munda, by contrast, is shorter and stockier, with dark, volcanic skin that cracks and smolders with inner fire. His eyes glow red, and his form is more solid, though his movements are wild and erratic.

Both twins wear chaos-infused armor, constantly shifting in shape and appearance, reflecting the disorder they represent. Chanda’s armor is light and fluid, like liquid metal, while Munda’s armor is jagged and cracked, constantly releasing bursts of chaotic energy.

Chanda wields probability disruptors, small, jagged crystals that release waves of chaotic energy, disrupting the natural flow of events around him. Munda carries a massive chaos hammer, which he swings wildly, creating temporal distortions that send shockwaves across the battlefield.

The twins were deputized to Raktabeeja and were recruited by M.A.H.I.S.H, the AI born from quantum research that had gained sentience and had gone rogue. They were drawn to M.A.H.I.S.H because of his ability to manipulate time, space and reality across parallel universes. They saw his rise to power as an opportunity to unleash chaos on a cosmic scale, disrupting the very foundations of reality. Chanda and Munda served as his agents of chaos, sowing disorder wherever they go.

The ground buckled under their presence, and the light around the battlefield dimmed, as though reality itself was retreating in their wake. Chanda glided, his every step bending the air around him and skin shimmered with unnatural light. His form constantly shifting, as if he existed in multiple realities at once.

Munda swung his massive chaos hammer, the air warping and distorting in its wake. Where Chanda was cold, controlled, and unnervingly calm, Munda was pure, unrestrained chaos. His grin was wild, and his eyes glowed with a red-hot intensity that promised only destruction.

“You know, I really thought I’d seen it all,” Saraswati said, her voice laced with biting sarcasm as she watched the two approach. “But these two? They take the prize for most theatrical entrance.”

“Kali's still winning in that department, in my opinion,” Chandika responded, focusing her gravitational powers to keep the battlefield steady as the ground beneath them twisted and buckled. “But this is a close second.”

The twins didn’t speak at first. Instead, they simply stood there, letting the tension build. Chanda raised a hand, and with a flick of his wrist, the laws of probability bent to his will. Around the battlefield, Durga’s soldiers began to stumble, their movements becoming erratic and sluggish as their armor malfunctioned, weapons suddenly breaking in their hands.

“They’re messing with probability,” Lakshmi said, her tone sharper than usual as she rapidly calculated the shifting odds. “He’s skewing the numbers, making everything that can go wrong… go wrong.”

“Wonderful,” Kali growled, drawing her Sword of Dark Energy again. “I was getting bored with things going right for a change.”

Munda, meanwhile, took a more direct approach. He swung his chaos hammer through the air, and with each swing, the very fabric of reality rippled. Time sped up, then slowed down, then reversed in short bursts, causing confusion and disorientation across the battlefield. Soldiers who had been moving forward suddenly found themselves moving backward, weapons frozen mid-swing, or finding themselves several steps behind where they had been a moment before.

“Oh, I hate these guys,” Saraswati mumbled under her breath, slashing through a clone of Raktabeeja that had somehow appeared right next to her despite being ten feet away a second earlier. “I really, really, really hate these guys.”

Durga’s eyes narrowed as she surveyed the battlefield. Chanda was the key. He was the one manipulating the probabilities, skewing the fight in their favor. Munda’s brute strength was dangerous, but Chanda was the one tilting the scales. And as long as those scales were tilted, they didn’t stand a chance.

Durga turned to her team. “We need to take down Chanda. He’s the one warping the probabilities. If we can stop him, the battle will level out.”

“Oh, is that all?” Kali said with a grin, clearly enjoying the chaos around her. “Sure, I’ll just go over there, past the infinite clones, the reality-warping hammer, and whatever else those freaks have up their sleeves, and have a nice little chat with him about it.”

“Glad to see you’re on board,” Chandika said, her voice dry as she twisted her hand, manipulating the gravity well beneath a group of Raktabeeja’s clones and pulling them into a tight cluster before collapsing the field, crushing them. “We’ll hold them off as best we can.”

Lakshmi had already begun her work, her eyes glowing faintly as she adjusted the probabilities around them. Her Sudarshan Chakra spun lazily at her side, slicing through the fabric of reality, seeking out the skewed probabilities and subtly correcting them.

“Careful,” she muttered, her brow furrowed in concentration. “The more I push, the more they’ll push back. Chanda’s manipulating on a massive scale.”

Durga nodded, her Trishula glowing with a faint golden light as she prepared to move in. “Kali, take Munda. Keep him off us while I deal with Chanda.”

Kali’s grin widened, her dark eyes gleaming with wild energy. “With pleasure.”

And then she was off, a blur of motion as she charged toward Munda, her Sword of Dark Energy raised high. Munda, seeing her approach, let out a booming laugh and swung his hammer with reckless abandon, creating ripples of temporal distortion with each strike. But Kali thrived in chaos. She dodged his blows effortlessly, her movements fluid and unpredictable, like a storm that couldn’t be controlled.

While Kali distracted Munda, Durga advanced toward Chanda, her Trishula blazing with power. Chanda’s black eyes watched her approach with cold detachment, as though he was merely observing an experiment. He raised a hand, and the ground beneath her feet crumbled as the probabilities shifted, but Durga moved with purpose, her eyes locked on him.

“You think you can beat me?” Chanda’s voice was smooth, almost bored. “The odds aren’t in your favor, Durga.”

“Odds can change,” Durga said, her voice steady. “And so can you.”

She lunged at him, the Trishula aimed straight for his chest. But just as her weapon was about to make contact, Chanda raised his hand and the world around her twisted. Suddenly, Durga found herself standing ten feet away, her strike having missed entirely.

“You see?” Chanda said, his lips curling into a smile. “I control everything here. Every move you make, every thought you have, it’s all meaningless against the laws of probability.”

But Durga wasn’t deterred. She spun on her heel, adjusting her stance, and moved in again. “You’re not the only one who can manipulate probabilities.”

Lakshmi was already working in the background, her calculations adjusting the variables, subtly shifting the odds back in their favor. Durga could feel the change, feel the balance tipping ever so slightly as Lakshmi’s influence grew stronger.

Chanda’s eyes flickered as he noticed the shift, and for the first time, his calm demeanor faltered.

“You can’t stop this,” he hissed, his voice losing some of its smoothness. “This is chaos. This is—”

Durga didn’t let him finish. With a flash of golden light, she drove the Trishula forward, piercing through the warped reality and striking true. Chanda’s eyes widened in shock as the weapon sank into his chest, the light from the Trishula burning through the probability fields he had woven around himself.

“No...” Chanda gasped, his form flickering and distorting as the power of the Trishula unraveled his control over reality. “This... this isn’t possible...”

“Anything is possible,” Durga said softly, her eyes glowing with determination. “You just need the right odds.”

With one final push, the Trishula blazed with light, and Chanda’s form shattered, his control over the battlefield dissolving along with him.

The ground beneath them stabilized, the air clearing as the warped probabilities faded away. But the battle was far from over. Munda let out a furious roar as he saw his brother fall, his chaos hammer slamming into the ground with such force that the very fabric of time rippled outward in waves.

“Here we go again,” Kali muttered, grinning as she prepared for round two.

Durga exhaled, steadying herself. They’d won this round, but Munda was still standing, and the battle for the Kalash Sector was far from over.

CHAPTER 1

Chapter 1: The Blood of Raktabeeja

The thrumming fury of the battle reverberated through the void, shattering the silence of space. The Kalash Sector was a swirling, shattered graveyard of planets, moons, and debris, where timelines fractured and collided like a poorly constructed puzzle thrown into the void. Entire civilizations, once proud and defiant, now floated in fragments. They have become memorials to the multiverse’s chaotic dance. Here, time didn’t just run forward. It sometimes ran backward, sideways, or stopped altogether. It was as if all known laws of physics had given up on trying to make sense of the place.

Durga stood at the forefront of the surging army, staring at the battlefield before her with a calm that belied the storm swirling in her mind. She was tall and radiant, her armor shimmering like liquid gold, marked with the shifting glyphs of forgotten languages….अग्निज्वाला, परमेश्वरी, भद्रकाली, विष्णुमाया, जलोदरी. Flitting and reflecting pulses off each other, they delivered a constant hum of power to her armor.

Her Trishula, a trident crafted from the same quantum forge where she was born, glowed faintly in her hand, each prong revebrating with power as if eager to taste blood once more. It’s three gleaming prongs cut through more than space. They can sever the threads of potential futures for these battlefields were not built of matter but of time and probability.

Ahead, simultaneous battles were raging. Raktabeeja, the Blood-Seed Demon, stood at the center of the chaos in The Kalash Sector, his molten-red skin and hulking figure dominating the scene. Every time one of her Devis landed a blow, his glowing blood would splatter across the ground, each drop birthing a new clone of him.

Thousands of identical, monstrous versions of Raktabeeja surged forward, overwhelming her forces. The sound of clashing weapons, dying screams, and the rumble of planetary fragments crashing into one another filled the air. It was the cacophony of endless war, and Durga had long since learned to filter it out, focusing instead on the task at hand.

Her voice was calm, authoritative, as she addressed her team. “This isn’t working. We can’t keep up. His army grows faster than we can cut them down.”

Kali, standing nearby, flashed a grin that was more feral than friendly. The Mistress of Destruction was always ready for a fight. Her dark, leather-like armor clung to her muscular frame, and her eyes burned with wild energy. The hem of her flapping skirt of flayed skins was stained with fresh blood. A long, curved blade अन्ध-शक्ति खड्ग Andha-Śakti Khadga, her Sword of Dark Energy hung lazily at her side, but even without drawing it, her presence radiated lethal power.

“Well, you know what they say,” Kali said with a shrug, her voice carrying that perpetual edge of madness. “Two’s company, a thousand is a bloody massacre.”

“Kali, we’re drowning in these bastards,” Chandika snapped, her tone clipped as she summoned a gravity well to push back a wave of Raktabeeja’s clones. Chandika was all sharp edges and precision, her focus unwavering as her gravitational powers twisted the battlefield in their favor. Her armor, a sleek black suit that absorbed the light around her, flickered as she manipulated the space between them and the enemy. She was the stabilizing force in their group, and even now, her voice held an edge of frustration. “We need to think strategically.”

Durga glanced over at Lakshmi, who was frowning as she calculated probabilities in real-time. Born from the Quantum Sea of Possibilities, a place where all potential futures exist simultaneously, she was created to maintain balance in the universe by subtly guiding events and ensuring that the multiverse remained in harmony. She was the Mistress of Probabilities and Possibilities.

Lakshmi’s eyes glowed faintly with the energy of quantum manipulation, her elegant light pink robes stained with the grime of battle. She was usually so composed, so utterly in control, but now her brow was furrowed, her fingers twitching as she ran through endless permutations in her mind.

“There’s only a 3.7% chance we’ll win if we keep fighting like this,” Lakshmi muttered, more to herself than anyone else. “And that’s assuming no temporal anomalies disrupt our timeline in the next twelve minutes.”

“Lovely,” Saraswati chimed in, her voice smooth and biting, as she parried an incoming blow with her Jñāna-Khadga ज्ञान-खड्ग, her Blade of Knowledge, the weapon slicing through a clone like it was made of smoke. “So, essentially, we’re in the middle of a suicide mission with less probability of success than a coin flip. Good to know.”

Durga couldn’t suppress a small smile. Leave it to Saraswati, the Mistress of Knowledge, to make even impending doom sound like a mildly inconvenient fact of life. Her calm intellect and sarcasm were a strange comfort in the midst of chaos.

Raktabeeja, the original version of the demon, stood towering over the battlefield, his molten-red eyes gleaming with malevolence. He looked amused. Durga hated that look. He was nearly eight feet tall, his skin the color of blood, pulsing and shifting as though it barely contained the volcanic energy beneath. His armor was forged from bio-metal, a living substance that grew and changed with him, always regenerating. The twin axes he always carried could tear through both matter and energy, rested easily in his hands.

“Durga!” he roared, his voice echoing across the sector like a thunderclap. “You can’t defeat me! For every drop of blood spilled, I am reborn! You’ll drown in my army!”

“Oh, shut up,” Kali muttered, her bloodshot eyes glinting dangerously. “We’ve heard the speech before.”

Raktabeeja smirked, then swung his axe in a wide arc, cutting down several of their soldiers in one effortless move. “Then why do you continue this futile effort? Surely even a goddess must know when to surrender.”

“Surrender?” Durga leaned forward, her Trishula blazing as she pointed it at him. “You misunderstand. This isn’t surrender. This is strategy.”

Before Raktabeeja could respond, Kali leaped into action, her Sword of Dark Energy drawn and crackling with malevolent force. She moved like a storm—wild, unpredictable, her blade cutting through clones with a fury that left afterimages in the air. But every clone she cut down, two more took its place. Raktabeeja’s laugh echoed through the battlefield as his forces surged forward.

“Enough of this,” Durga said under her breath, eyes narrowing. “We need to stop his blood from touching the ground.”

Lakshmi’s eyes widened slightly as she realized what Durga was thinking. “You can’t be serious.”

Durga gave her a look. “Do you have a better idea?”

Lakshmi sighed, calculating probabilities in her head again. “Only a 12.6% chance it’ll work.”

“I like those odds,” Kali grinned.

Durga raised her Trishula and nodded to the team. “Everyone, focus your energy on preventing his blood from hitting the ground. You cut him down, and you burn it out of existence before it regenerates.”

The Devis followed the her direction. Right at the forefront was Chandika. Born from the gravitational collapse of a massive star and thereby embodying the force of gravity itself, she can manipulate gravitational fields, increasing or decreasing the weight of objects, crushing enemies under immense force, or creating gravitational wells that trap and immobilize them.

Chandika concentrated to unleash her powers, pulling the battlefield into a localized gravity well, slowing the clones and disorienting them. Lakshmi focused, manipulating the quantum probabilities to prevent the clones from overwhelming them, while Saraswati wielded her Blade of Knowledge to outmaneuver the enemy, her strikes deliberate and calculating.

Durga got Raktabeeja in her crosshair, her Trishula flashing as it collided with his axes. He snarled, swinging his weapons with brutal strength, but Durga was faster. She maneuvered with ease to launch the Trishula that went straight into his chest. His blood splattered, but before it could hit the ground, Kali unleashed a wave of dark energy, incinerating the blood in midair.

For a moment, there was silence. Raktabeeja staggered back, his eyes wide with disbelief.

“No... this isn’t possible,” he muttered, watching as his blood evaporated into nothing.

Durga’s gaze was steady. “I told you. Strategy.”

But even as the words left her mouth, the battlefield trembled. Time itself seemed to stutter, and the fragments of the broken planets around them shifted unnaturally. Chanda and Munda, the twins of chaos, were arriving. Their laughter, shrill and unsettling, echoed across the sector as the air grew heavy with the weight of probability shifting wildly out of control.

Durga exhaled sharply. This battle was far from over.