Mahabharat: Shiva's Last Variable

(A/N):

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Devara continued deeper into the forest, eventually leaving the beautiful butterfly-filled grassland behind without realizing what had been happening there after he left.

A few moments later, the silence of the field was broken by the fluttering of wings as the butterflies descended toward something lying among the grass.

It was the body of a hunted animal.

The creature had clearly been killed only recently, its body lying motionless beneath the pink grass.

The butterflies gathered around it, and what had looked so beautiful from a distance suddenly revealed a far more disturbing side of their nature.

One of the larger butterflies landed on the animal’s head, its mouth opening in a way that no ordinary butterfly’s mouth should have been capable of doing.

It began feeding on the brain.

The other butterflies soon joined it, calmly feeding from the carcass as though this was nothing more than an ordinary meal for them.

Whatever beauty the forest possessed, it clearly didn’t mean the creatures living within it were harmless.

Meanwhile, Kandarpaasura had taken another path through the forest.

He moved between the sandal-coloured trees at a steady pace, occasionally looking around for any sign of the golden horse.

Unlike Devara, he wasn’t particularly interested in the strange plants or creatures around him.

His attention was fixed entirely on completing the trial.

Then he felt something brush against his back.

Kandarpaasura immediately stopped.

He turned around, expecting to see one of the creatures hiding among the trees.

There was nothing.

He looked down.

A strange white flower was attached to the back of his clothing.

It looked almost like a small cluster of snow that had somehow grown on the fabric.

Its petals were delicate and unusually pale, giving it an innocent appearance.

Kandarpaasura reached behind himself and pulled it free.

"Hmm."

He held the flower between his fingers and examined it curiously.

There was nothing particularly threatening about it.

It didn’t have thorns, fangs or any visible poison.

In fact, it looked rather beautiful.

Kandarpaasura turned it around in his hand.

"I wonder what kind of plant this is."

He barely finished speaking when the flower suddenly made a tiny sound.

Pop.

Kandarpaasura’s eyes widened.

A cloud of fine pollen burst from the centre of the flower.

He instinctively pulled his hand away, but some of the pollen had already settled across his fingers and the back of his palm.

For a second, nothing happened.

Then a sharp burning sensation spread across his skin.

Kandarpaasura looked down.

The place where the pollen had landed was beginning to corrode.

His skin darkened and deteriorated almost immediately, the surface breaking apart as though something was eating through it.

"What the..."

Kandarpaasura threw the flower onto the ground.

The corrosion continued for another moment before he clenched his fist and released a burst of dark energy through his hand, forcing the remaining pollen away.

He stared at his palm.

A portion of the outer layer had already been damaged.

His expression became furious.

"So even the flowers here are poisonous."

He looked toward the innocent-looking plants surrounding him.

The forest remained beautiful.

The pink leaves continued swaying gently.

The white flowers continued blooming quietly beneath the trees.

Nothing about the place suggested that several of its plants could potentially eat through flesh.

Kandarpaasura slowly wiped his hand against his clothing.

Then he remembered Vishnu’s warning.

The danger is hidden inside the beauty.

His eyes narrowed.

"So that’s the game."

He looked deeper into the forest.

This time, he didn’t touch anything.

Not the flowers. Not the leaves. Not even the grass.

He simply continued forward, keeping a much closer watch on every step he took.

Somewhere in the distance, the golden horse continued running.

And both contestants were slowly learning that in this forest, almost anything beautiful could be hiding something deadly.

Kandarpaasura stood there for a moment, staring at his damaged hand while the burning sensation slowly faded.

He was still irritated by the flower that had managed to catch him off guard, but then something made him stop.

He looked around.

His expression changed.

He was no longer standing among the scattered trees.

He was standing in the middle of a wide valley.

And the entire valley was covered with the same white flowers.

They were everywhere.

The ground beneath his feet was almost completely hidden beneath them.

Thousands upon thousands of those delicate flowers stretched across the valley, growing so densely that there was barely any clear path between them.

Some grew along the rocks, others covered the slopes, and several hung from the branches of the trees surrounding the valley.

Kandarpaasura’s eyes widened.

"No..."

He slowly looked behind him.

There was no obvious path leading back.

His gaze moved toward the flower in his hand that he had thrown away earlier.

Then toward the countless identical flowers surrounding him.

Realization slowly dawned on his face.

He hadn’t simply wandered into this valley.

He had been led here.

His eyes narrowed as he remembered how he had been walking through the forest without paying much attention to his surroundings.

He remembered the pleasant fragrance in the air, the peaceful atmosphere and how his attention had gradually become less focused.

He hadn’t even realized when the forest had changed around him.

He had simply kept walking.

Straight into the valley.

Kandarpaasura clenched his fist.

"I was mesmerized..."

The flowers around him swayed gently in the breeze.

Their appearance was completely innocent.

Almost beautiful.

But now he understood what the forest had done.

It had never needed to force him into the valley.

It had simply made him stop questioning where he was going.

Kandarpaasura looked at the thousands of flowers surrounding him.

His face became darker.

"I walked straight into a trap."

A faint popping sound came from somewhere nearby.

Pop.

Kandarpaasura’s head snapped toward it.

Another flower released a tiny cloud of pollen.

Then another.

Then several more.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

His expression finally changed from irritation to alarm.

The entire valley was beginning to release pollen.

Kandarpaasura immediately covered his mouth and nose with his arm and stepped backward.

But there was nowhere safe to move.

Flowers surrounded him from every direction.

The realization hit him hard.

If he had remained unaware for even a few more moments, he might have been standing in the middle of the valley when all of them released their pollen.

He looked at the damaged portion of his hand.

One flower had already caused that much corrosion.

Thousands of them could do something far worse.

Kandarpaasura’s jaw tightened.

"So this is the danger hidden behind the beauty."

For the first time since entering the forest, he stopped treating the second stage as a simple race.

He had been warned.

And yet the forest had still managed to fool him.

Kandarpaasura looked upward, searching for a way out of the valley.

His enormous wings instinctively began to spread.

Then he remembered another rule.

No mounts. No weapons.

The rules hadn’t forbidden him from using his own body.

A slow grin returned to his face.

"Fine."

He bent his knees.

"If the forest wants to trap me on the ground..."

His wings spread completely.

"...then I’ll leave the ground."

With one powerful beat of his wings, Kandarpaasura launched himself upward, escaping the valley just as another wave of poisonous pollen began spreading beneath him.

But Kandarpaasura had made one crucial mistake.

The moment he spread his wings and launched himself into the air, the entire valley reacted.

For a brief second, nothing happened.

Then the flowers began to move.

Kandarpaasura looked down.

The white flowers that had been covering the valley were slowly lifting from the ground.

Their roots detached themselves from the soil one after another, yet instead of falling, they floated upward as though the entire valley had suddenly lost its gravity.

"What?"

Kandarpaasura stopped in mid-air and stared.

Thousands of flowers rose from below him.

Some came from the ground.

Others detached themselves from the plants growing along the rocks and trees.

Even flowers that had been several feet away began drifting upward, their delicate petals turning toward him.

Then the flowers spread.

They filled the sky.

Kandarpaasura’s expression slowly changed.

The beautiful white flowers were no longer scattered across the valley.

They were suspended everywhere around him.

Above. Below. To his left. To his right.

Behind him. Ahead.

They looked almost like countless tiny floating mines, each one quietly waiting for the slightest disturbance to trigger it.

Kandarpaasura remained completely still.

He looked downward.

Many of the flowers had fallen back onto the valley floor, while countless others remained attached to the plants from which they had blossomed.

But the ones that had detached themselves were now drifting through the air around him.

He slowly understood what had happened.

His wings.

The moment he had used them, the movement of air had disturbed the flowers.

He had triggered something.

Something that clearly wasn’t supposed to happen.

Kandarpaasura’s face tightened.

"You’ve got to be kidding me."

One of the floating flowers drifted closer.

Kandarpaasura immediately moved away from it.

The flower followed the movement of the air.

He stopped. It stopped.

He moved again.

The flower shifted with him.

Kandarpaasura stared at it.

"So that’s how it works."

He had assumed escaping into the air would take him out of danger.

Instead, he had activated the forest’s hidden mechanism and turned the entire sky into another trap.

A faint breeze passed through the valley.

Several flowers moved closer to one another.

Kandarpaasura immediately froze.

He understood that he couldn’t simply fly away anymore.

One careless movement could disturb the flowers.

One flower could release its pollen.

And if the pollen spread through this many flowers, the entire sky could become filled with the corrosive substance.

He looked down at the valley.

The forest seemed completely peaceful again.

The pink trees stood quietly.

The grass moved gently.

The remaining white flowers swayed as though nothing had happened.

But above the valley, hundreds upon hundreds of detached flowers floated silently.

Kandarpaasura had successfully triggered the mechanism that the forest had hidden from him.

And now he was trapped in the middle of it.

He clenched his teeth.

"That Vishnu..."

For once, he had no complaint about the warning.

The forest wasn’t merely designed to make its contestants lazy.

It was designed to punish impatience.

Kandarpaasura had seen danger on the ground, panicked, and immediately tried to escape through the air.

The forest had been waiting for exactly that reaction.

Now he had to figure out how to get out without touching a single flower.

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(Author note:)

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