Chanda and Munda were dead, and army after asura army had been whittled away. At the sight of it the mind of the demon-lord Shumbha passed wholly into the keeping of rage, and he ordered every daitya force he possessed down into the field.

His command went out loud and terrible. He called out each of his clans by name, as though every asura in creation were being summoned at one stroke. Eighty-six weapon-bearing daitya-clans, eighty-four Kambu-clans, fifty koti-valiant asura-clans, a hundred Dhaumra-clans; and the Kalakas, the Daurhridas, the Mauryas, and the Kalakeyas: let all of them arm themselves and march out for war. Such was Shumbha’s swift decree.

The order given, the asura-king Shumbha, who had held his empire together by terror, marched out to battle himself, ringed by many thousands of great soldiers. Chandika watched that appalling host advance and answered with her bow: one pull of the string, and the whole space between earth and sky rang with that single sound. Her lion loosed a tremendous roar, and Ambika drove the sound higher still with the clangor of her bell. And when bowstring, lion, and bell had filled every direction with their din, Kali stretched her mouth wide and, with those terrifying cries alone, seemed to declare the victory already won.

At that din the daitya armies came seething from all four directions and began to close around the Devi, her lion, and Kali. And in that very interval, O king, a marvel unfolded. For the destruction of the gods’ haters and for the good of the lion-like immortals, shaktis of immense valor and immense strength came forth. Out of the bodies of Brahma, Isha, Guha, and Vishnu, and of Indra, their own powers stepped free, wearing those gods’ very forms, and took their stand beside Chandika. Whatever form each god bore, whatever his ornaments and his mount, in exactly that guise his shakti arrived to fight the asuras.

First came the shakti of Brahma, riding a chariot yoked with swans, the rosary and water-pot in her hands: she is called Brahmani. Then Maheshvari arrived astride her bull, gripping the finest of tridents, a great serpent coiled at her wrist for a bracelet, the crescent moon bright upon her brow. Spear in hand, mounted on a peacock, wearing the very form of Guha, Kaumari rode out against the daityas. And in the same way came the Vaishnavi shakti, throned upon Garuda, her hands filled with conch, discus, mace, the Sharnga bow, and sword.

The shakti who bears Hari’s peerless boar-form, the form that rises in the yajna, came wearing the body of Varahi. Narasimhi came in a shape the very image of Nrisimha, and a single toss of her mane flung the star-clusters loose across the sky. And Aindri arrived, thunderbolt in hand, seated on the king of elephants, a thousand eyes open at once: exactly as Shakra himself is, so was she.

Ringed by these divine shaktis, Ishana then said to Chandika, with affection, that the asuras should be slain, and quickly. At that word there came forth from the Devi’s own body a Chandika-shakti utterly fierce and terrible to see, her cry like the voices of hundreds of she-jackals raised at once. And she, the unconquered, said to Ishana of the smoke-dark matted locks: Lord, go as a messenger to the side of Shumbha and Nishumbha.

The message she sent was iron. Tell the over-proud Shumbha and Nishumbha, and every danava mustered there for battle, that the three worlds return to Indra and the gods resume their share of the yajna; if they wish to live, let them go down to Patala. But if the arrogance of their own strength leaves them hungry for war, then let them come, and let my she-jackals be sated on their flesh. And because the Devi made Shiva himself her messenger, that shakti became famous through the world as Shiva-duti.

When Shiva’s own mouth delivered the Devi’s words, fury flooded the great asuras, and they stormed the very ground where Katyayani stood. Proud and burning, those enemies of the gods opened at once with a downpour of arrows, javelins, and lances upon the Devi. And she, with the great shafts loosed from her drawn bow, cut apart every arrow, trident, javelin, and battle-axe they sent her, lightly, as if the whole exchange were play.

Kali ranged ahead of her. Here she split an enemy open with a fall of her spear, there she pounded one shapeless with the khatvanga, and so she moved across the field. And Brahmani, wherever she ran, scattered drops from her water-pot, and every enemy the water touched was left emptied of valor and strength.

Maheshvari killed with the trident, Vaishnavi with the discus, and Kaumari, blazing with anger, with her spear. Under the fall of Aindri’s thunderbolt, daityas and danavas split open by the hundred and dropped to the earth, pouring out rivers of blood. The Varahi-form wrecked some with blows of her snout, gored the chests of others on the points of her tusks, and tore still others apart with her discus. And Narasimhi prowled the battle, ripping great asuras open with her claws and swallowing them down, her roar crowding every quarter of the sky.

At Shiva-duti’s dreadful laughter the asuras seemed to break from within and drop to the earth, and the fallen she devoured where they lay. And when the enraged band of Mothers ground the great asuras down by one means after another, the soldiers of the gods’ enemies perished where they stood.

The daityas were harried by the band of Mothers and breaking into flight, and the sight of it brought the great asura Raktabija forward, swollen with rage, to fight. Inside him lay a secret that set him apart from every ordinary asura. Whenever a single drop of blood fell from his body to the earth, in that same instant another great asura of his exact build stood up out of the soil.

Mace in hand, that great asura closed with Aindri, and Aindri struck Raktabija with her thunderbolt. The bolt struck home at once, his blood poured out in streams, and from that blood rose warriors of his own form and his own prowess. As many drops as fell from his body, so many men sprang up, each carrying his valor, his strength, his might. And those blood-born men threw themselves into the fight as well, pressing the band of Mothers with savage strokes of their weapons in a battle grown utterly fearsome.

Then the thunderbolt found his head, and from the blood that streamed down, men were born in their thousands. Here the war took its most dangerous turn. Vaishnavi struck the asura-lord with her discus, Aindri battered him with her mace, and from the body the discus had opened, so much blood flowed that thousands of great asuras of his same measure filled the whole world.

Kaumari drove her spear into Raktabija, Varahi her sword, Maheshvari her trident. And the daitya, possessed by wrath, answered each Mother in turn with strokes of his mace. Wounded by weapon after weapon, spear and lance and the rest, he bled in sheets, and wherever the stream of it met the ground, asuras formed from it by the hundred. Those asuras born of asura blood overran the world entire, and the gods, watching, sank into utter dread.

Here arrives the Devi’s stratagem, the move on which the whole story turns. Every weapon had failed, for every wound bred a fresh crop of asuras, and the very blood they spilled came back at them as an enemy. The earth itself kept renewing him, so the one remedy left was to deny the blood its landing, to catch every drop before it ever came down. Seeing the gods sunk in despair, Chandika turned at once to Kali and said: Chamunda, open your mouth wider still.

And then the Devi gave the command that would cut Raktabija’s deathlessness at its very root. Whatever drops of blood my weapon-strokes draw from him, and whatever great asuras rise out of those drops, take them all, midway, into this swift mouth of yours.

Roam the field, and devour every great asura that springs from him. Starved of blood drop by drop, the daitya himself will waste to his end; and with you eating each fierce asura as it rises, no new one will find its way into birth at all. That was the whole fine-edged strategy: drink the blood before it could touch the earth.

The rishi says: with these words the Devi struck him with her spear, and in the same breath Kali caught all of Raktabija’s blood in her mouth and let none of it reach the earth. Stung, he swung his mace at Chandika, but the blow cost the Devi not one particle of pain.

Now the scene composed itself that is the very life of this chapter. Every weapon of the Devi fell upon him, and wherever blood leapt from his torn body, there Chamunda’s mouth was already stretched to meet it. The great asuras that budded from the blood-drops inside her mouth she chewed up where they formed, and all the while she drank on at Raktabija’s blood. The blood had no earth left to find; each drop, in the instant of its falling, vanished into Kali’s vast mouth. No new army rose, and Raktabija drained away from within.

When Chamunda had drunk the last of his blood, the Devi struck Raktabija with spear, discus, arrows, sword, and lance. This time not one drop reached the earth to raise an enemy from it. O lord of the earth, pierced by that mass of weapons, wholly emptied of blood, the great asura Raktabija crashed to the ground.

The instant he fell, a joy without measure swept the gods. And the band of Mothers born of those same gods, drunk on the asura’s blood, began to dance across the field of war.