He continued to hear the soft chanting of his wife in the prayer room. Those divinely serene words should have brought him peace. But there was no chance of that. He would die a frustrated and angry man.

Daksha clenched his jaw and looked out of the window. He stared at the banyan tree in the distance, tears streaming down his face.

Damn you!

The banyan shook slightly and its leaves ruffled dramatically with the strong wind. It appeared as if the giant tree was laughing at him.

Damn you!

Chapter 53: The Destroyer of Evil

Chapter 53

The Destroyer of Evil

‘The wind is too strong,’ murmured a worried Tara, looking at the windsock that had been set up close to the Pashupatiastra missile tower.

Tara and Shiva were mounted on horses, stationed far from the Pashupatiastra launch tower. It was almost the end of the second prahar and the sun was just a few moments away from being directly overhead. Shiva’s entire army and the refugees from Devagiri had been cordoned off seven kilometres from the launch tower, safely outside the Pashupatiastra’s blast radius.

Shiva glanced at Tara and then up at the sky, trying to judge the wind from the movement of dust particles. ‘Not a problem.’

Saying this, Shiva’s attention returned to stringing his bow. Parshuram had been working on making this composite bow for months. Its basic structure was made of wood, reinforced with horn on the inside and sinew on the outside. It was also curved much sharper than normal, with its edges turning away from the archer. Due to the mix of different elements and the curve at the edges, the bow had exceptional draw strength for its small size. It was ideal for an archer to shoot arrows from, while riding a horse or a chariot. Parshuram had named the bow Pinaka, after the fabled great ancient longbow of Lord Rudra.

Though Parshuram didn’t know this while designing the bow, the Pinaka would prove ideal for Shiva’s purpose, as firing the Pashupatiastra was not easy.

The Pashupatiastra was a pure nuclear fusion weapon, unlike the Brahmastra and the Vaishnavastra which were nuclear fission weapons. In a pure nuclear fusion weapon, two paramanoos, the smallest stable division of matter, are fused together to release tremendous destructive energy. In a nuclear fission weapon, anoos, atomic particles, are broken down to release paramanoos, and this is also accompanied by a demonic release of devastating energy.

Nuclear fission weapons leave behind a trail of uncontrollable destruction, with radioactive waste spreading far and wide. A nuclear fusion weapon, on the other hand, is much more controlled, destroying only the targeted area with minimal radioactive spread.

So the Pashupatiastra would be the obvious weapon of choice for those who intended to destroy a specific target with the precision of a surgeon. The problem though, was its launch.