With cunning illusion, the goblin king unleashed his magic upon the battlefield. His army advanced, untouched by harm, while the enemy warriors, bewildered and helpless, were transformed into goblins themselves. Angered, he summoned yet another mystical weapon—the form-changing missile. From earth and sky, beings appeared, their hair stiff and upright, shifting their shapes at will. These creatures were a terrifying spectacle: naked, with dreadful eyes, sagging hips and breasts. Some seemed aged yet bursting with unnatural youth, some were plump, others emaciated. Their hips were sometimes natural, sometimes grotesque, and their genitals exposed as they danced wildly. Human heads topped bodies with lotus-like hands, all stained blood-red. They chewed half-eaten flesh, licking blood and marrow from their palms, twisting their many limbs, raising and lowering their faces. Their bodies—arms, faces, thighs, breasts, sides, and hands—were streaked with veins. With these, they beat upon the corpses of children, dragging out entrails like ropes. Faces resembled dogs, jackals, and owls, with sunken mouths and bellies; they seized the weaker goblins as if they were helpless children. This army of goblin-like beings united, all naked, dancing with faces, limbs, and eyes turned upwards. They attacked one another, terrifying each other, tongues protruding, faces twisted in various grotesque forms. Each carried burdens of corpses, dragging away limbs of the dead, their shining bodies rising and sinking in pools of blood. With hanging bellies, arms, ears, lips, and noses, they tossed each other about in the mire of blood, flesh, and fat. It was chaos, like the churning of the milk ocean by Mandara mountain, which produced a tumult of froth; so too did this illusion create confusion anew. Recognizing the swift spread of this illusion, the goblin king recreated it once more, and with the Vetāla weapon, he caused hosts of corpses to rise. Some were headless, some with heads, all possessed by the frenzy of Vetālas. They became a mass of goblins and Vetālas, bound together. A formidable force arose, so powerful it seemed capable of swallowing the earth. In response, the opposing king conjured another illusion. He swiftly created a demon army, intent on conquering the three worlds. Massive demons, mountain-like in form, emerged everywhere. Leaving their bodies, they appeared as beings from hell, a terrifying force that struck fear in gods and demons alike. Their roars echoed like thunder from dark clouds, their headless bodies danced. Ghosts and ghouls stood firmly in their haunted abodes. Their heads were adorned with heaps of lotuses, flutes sounded amidst the clamor, intestines hung in garlands, dripping streams of blood. Vetāla drums delighted them, their ghostly radiance shone; fat, flesh, and marrow abounded, streams of blood-wine flowed. Drunken Vetālas, skulls, and wild dances crowded the scene. Skulls, wild dances, clubs, and feet stirred waves of blood, splashing surging currents. Spirits, radiant as masses of twilight clouds, built bridges across rivers of blood. Amidst this dreadful turmoil, one among the warriors, seeking to destroy the enemy armies and calm his own, took decisive action. Steadfast in memory and bearing boundless, noble patience, he recalled the illustrious, supreme weapon of Vishnu—equal to Shiva, lord of weapons. Empowered by the Vaishnava mantra, he released the arrow; from its tip, blazing missiles shot forth like firebrands. Rows of whirling discs spun, their radiance turning the quarters into a hundred suns. Maces advanced, their shafts forming a hundred bamboo thickets in the sky. Thunderbolts streamed, their shafts like arrow-tips filling the heavens; spears and swords, their blades forming groves along the banks. The second king, too, to pacify the Vaishnava weapon, offered the same Vaishnava weapon, filled with the power to quell all arms. From that, rivers of weapons emerged, their force neutralizing all others: streams of arrows, spears, maces, lances, swords, and axes. In the sky, a battle of these rivers of weapons and missiles unfolded, destroying the gaps between mountains and shattering the peaks of noble ranges. Spears were split by arrows, swords shattered by blades, lances struck by mighty javelins, and missiles cleft by spears. It was as if Mandara mountain, intoxicated with the task of churning the ocean of arrows and waters, wielded a mighty club and a thunderbolt-like mass, ready to shatter with irresistible force. A whirling circle of spears quelled showers of missiles, like the moon surrounded by stars, and the god of death himself, eager to devour with the tip of his lance. Mountains were scorched by the spinning discus and the heat of thunderbolts, their rocky surfaces shining with the flash of tridents and the piercing sound of iron goads. The region resounded with the clamor of Bhusundi slings and clubs, filled with the tumult of maces, and crossed by countless axes wielded by fierce warriors. It was a field where crests and crested helmets were shattered, beaks and fans severed, and even the river of the Ganges was broken by loud, cracking, and splitting sounds. A vast canopy of swirling dust from shattered weapons rose, the clash of arms sending forth blazing flashes of lightning from whirling flames. The sound echoed like the breaking of Brahma’s cosmic egg. Mountains of families were destroyed, streams of weapons cut down in the battle between the two warriors. By the mere act of parrying weapons, time for the mighty was passing; each, confident in his own strength, stood in the ocean of battle with ease. Viduratha released the Agneya weapon, which thundered like a bolt of lightning, setting the chariot ablaze, as if igniting dry brush along a riverbank. Meanwhile, in the vast expanse of the sky, within the hollow of the battle, he stood armored, like a rain-laden cloud wrapped in a veil.