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.”