Lanka is being lit on fire from all directions. Monkey soldiers jump from tree to tree, fire in hand, spreading it and laughing through all the destruction they cause. I have to tune out their screechings and focus my eyes on Rama. No matter the heaviness and heat of the smoke in my lungs, Lanka is my home, and I will not fall so easily with it. 

Time flies by, and my arms grow sore as our swords continue to clash. Rama’s smirk widens, so evidently confident in his ability to best me. It is truly time to begin the game.

I trip over my left leg and fall promptly to the ground, where Rama looks down at me, with his blue complexion and relieved grin. He thinks he has won. I squint my eyes through the glaring sun, awaiting his next move.

He holds out his sword with both of his hands, ready to plunge it through my stomach. It is my move now. “Please don’t! Please, Lord Rama! Let me explain myself,” I plead. His eyes glow with the thrill of my defeat. He underestimates me. Piercing his sword through my ribs, his laughter joins with the screeching army of monkeys that surrounds us, the fire raging behind them. 

The sword is sending more pain throughout my body. I squeeze my eyes tightly now, holding my breath. I try to let go of all the tension, from the tips of my fingers to my legs. Immortality comes with a painful price.

Amidst the pain, a loud voice echoes on the battlefield. It is Sita. Everything goes silent.  Her face is so clear in my mind, her pale and scared eyes, her lean and fragile body. I can no longer hold back my body. I am up, and pulling the sword out of my stomach, with my eyes pulsating red and my hair rising with the wind. I let out a roar. 

Rama quickly turns and faces me, picking up his sword. His grin is gone and now we are face to face with one another. Before I have the chance to retrieve my weapon, he slashes my throat effortlessly. My head spins out and everything turns dark. My body trembles, struggling to stay standing, and I soon feel my ten heads push themselves out of one another. All of my heads are laughing now. All of us are screaming in power. 

I hold up my sword, regaining my balance, and Rama and I continue the fight. Our swords sing in clashes to each other, each note pushing us further and further up onto a hill until we both are very close to the edge, and a 50 feet fall approaches us. 

Sita screams again. Her image reappears. I stop, and he catches me in my weakness, pushing me even closer to the edge of the hill. I’m hanging by a thread, two more steps till I’d make the fall. I keep my balance and try to swing at him once more, but Sita screams again and I drop my sword. He digs the tip of his sword into my chest. 

“Wait,” I yell at Rama. 

“Are you scared?” he asks me, that smirk reappearing.
“Scared?”

“I think you better give up now, Ravana. One little push would do us all a great help, don’t you think? End this once and for all.” He smirks, digging the sword a little deeper.

“Ravana, you’ve tried hard to imprint yourself onto the ground of Lanka, to leave footprints that she will never bury with her soil and rain. But your pot of nectar that you so eagerly prayed for, hidden underneath your heart, won’t keep you alive forever.” 

He knows. He’s known this entire time. And here I thought I was pulling the strings, allowing him to think he’d beaten me. As long as my pot of nectar is with me, I can’t be killed.

“Your body has granted you many chances, unlike the thousands I’ve slaughtered before you.  Without your pot of nectar, your death won’t be any different,” his words echo even louder, as I feel that this may be the end. He’s got my legs trembling in weakness, my arms trying to hold out, and the weight of my ten heads pushing me further off my balance. 

“No. No. No,” I say to Rama, my denial slowly seeping out. I refuse. 

“Look Ravana, look at what you have caused,” he says, pointing at the view from the hilltop. Before me lies the entirety of Lanka, fields of wheat on fire. I can hear the children and women screaming, the entire kingdom and my people crying for me.

“Pick up your sword, Ravana. Fight me with all you’ve got. Unless you’re ready to give up. Embrace me, demon, and I’ll let you burn with the rest of this place. Let fate run its course.”

I fall to my knees, my body giving up. My heads are pounding. I was never going to let it end this way. I had the image so ingrained in my mind, my people rejoicing at the defeat of the all mighty and famous Rama. 

Suddenly, Sita screams even louder than she had before, both of us turning in her direction. Rama finally hears what I’ve been distracted by this entire time.  I can’t allow myself to hear her scream in pain anymore. 

I push my hands inside my open wounds, hard enough to remove the pot from underneath my beating heart. 

“Take it,” I say. I’d rather give in than allow him to rip it out himself. “Now go. You must find her, she deserves that much. I’ll be here waiting.”

He raises his eyebrows and snatches the pot quickly. “No. You’re coming with me,” he firmly replies. 

Rama drags me down the hill, straight through the burnt fields of wheat. I am ashamed as I feel the eyes of my people in shock at how easily I am defeated.

He follows Sita’s voice to the same place I had left her, her home for the last ten months. She is on the balcony outside her room. 

Every time she screamed, I could picture her face so vividly in fear. Alone and helpless, I was certain it was a call for help. Her eyes gleaming in fright, no one to vend for her. Instead, she is alone. From the balcony, her eyes are pierced to a view much larger than I had from the hilltop. She is watching Lanka burn. She doesn’t look helpless. She doesn’t seem to care that her sari is flying off with the wind. I think she cries for the pain of my people. 

“Get up,” Rama says, “take me to her.” We walk up the spiral stairs through the darkness. The air is cool inside these walls, and I can feel my fate approaching me with each step I take. Rama is holding onto my pot of nectar. 

A beam of sunlight illuminates Sita as she runs towards us from the balcony. I wonder for a second if she will see me like this, beaten up and bruised, and want to comfort me till my last few breaths. I wonder if, in these last months, she has genuinely grown to not hate me, her captor. I wonder if she will miss Lanka, her home where she slept in silk sheets and ate hot dal and chawal with spoons of silver. I’ve respected her every wish.

I fall to my knees and am now heavily breathing, trying to keep my eyes open. I can see blurs of images, but she is in Rama’s arms, kissing his face and crying. He embraces her, facing me. As her body sculpts into him, the pot he has been holding onto so tightly begins to crush effortlessly. I see the nectar turn into ashes that will soon fly with the wind, and land in the fields of Lanka, taking me with them.