The waters of the creek murmured and rippled against the banks making soft gurgling noises like a baby cooing against her mother's bosom. They gathered volume and cascaded down the precipice like a gentle giant rising up. Narasimha watched the entire scene in fascination and awe. With a humble bow to Lord Shiva from where he stood, he was about to turn back and return.

His presence would be missed at the capital. His parents would have started worrying about him by now. He had been away for longer than he intended. Eiravati had always despaired at his excessive curiosity and his spirit of exploration about the world beyond the four walls of the palace. He had always wondered why she was so worried about what he would encounter or discover about the outside world.

Even if he had tried getting down from where he stood to have a closer look at the idol, it appeared literally impossible. There seemed no path to get down this huge mountain of water and return back safely. If only there was, he could have.....He brushed off the reckless thoughts with a shrug as he began to walk back to the place where he had left his horses and chariot. Again the mysterious feeling of being watched and stalked engulfed him. He was at a loss to comprehend who it was because there seemed to be nobody else in the vicinity except himself. The old lady had departed long ago.

It was the same sensation that came upon him during the wrestling joust when he felt as though his friend Bhavani was there among the masses of Mahishmati. These last few days his thoughts often turned unconsciously towards her. He often wondered what she would be doing at that time in the Gurukul. He missed her. A soft smile danced on his lips as he thought about her. What an important part of his life she had become!

Just then, a charred stump of a banyan tree precariously clinging to the edge of the precipice rudely interrupted his line of vision. Lightening seemed to have stuck it down. The branches and leaves had withered. But the roots and stump still held on to the soil rather tenaciously. The sight of the once mighty tree now reduced to a mere charred stump of wood made Narasimha ponder over the evanescent and fleeting nature of life and time.

As his fingers gently brushed over the blackened and charred ruins, he felt sorry over what had once been that was wiped out by time and cruel destiny. He would have given anything to reverse the needle of time and repair the ravages wrought on this magnificent tree. Interestingly, adjacent to the charred stump, two tiny saplings sprung to life reinforcing the fact that life somehow finds a way of reasserting itself. The old tree might have been destroyed, but the cycle of life would continue through the saplings.

As he observed closely, the charred stump had been pierced by an arrow that was now blackened. Shreds of banyan vines clung to the edge of the arrow. A wave of realization washed over Narasimha. Somebody must have used this arrow and banyan vines to ascend this mountain of water from below. He could only marvel at the courage, strength and skill of the man who had attempted this deed.

Narasimha fiddled and fidgeted with the arrow trying to pull it out of the stump in order to have a closer look at it. He huffed and puffed. The arrow had stuck to the clump of wood and refused to get dislodged. Not one to be deterred by a failure, he tugged even harder this time applying all his latent strength and power. The arrow came unstuck but the force with which he tried to pull it out was so great that even the charred stump of wood got uprooted.

Narasimha lost his balance, toppling headlong into the deep abyss of water with the fingers of one hand wrapped tightly around the arrow he had pulled out and the other arm flailing about, clutching and clawing for something to hold on to and break his fall. His fall was momentarily broken by a pair of vines that tightened themselves around his waist like a pair of hands as he hung upside down at a hundred feet from the ground level. Time was running out. He had to act fast.

Disjointed images ran through him of a man climbing up the waterfall just the same way in which he was falling down. As though on cue, he swung on the vines that had broken his fall and reached a very steep and narrow ledge on the wall of the waterfall that otherwise seemed to have no other foothold. He still could not guess how he had instinctively known about this tiny ledge on the wall of the waterfall.

As Narasimha regained his panting breath and looked down, he was spellbound at the sight that met his eyes. From that altitude, everything appeared small and tiny like ants. He gasped, "So this is what true power and strength feels like!" Water could not sweep him away with its turbulence. Fire could not burn him. Air could not blow him off. The sky was the limit of his aspirations. The sweet smell of the wet earth beckoned to him.

Narasimha closed his eyes and leaped down from the ledge where he was standing. He was no longer afraid of anything. He wasn't afraid of heights. He wasn't afraid of depths. He wasn't afraid of the known. He wasn't afraid of the unknown. He wasn't afraid life. He wasn't afraid of death. He knew that with hard work and effort, he would be able to face and conquer anything. This was what true mastery over the five elements of earth, water, fire, air, and sky actually meant. It was this one moment of epiphany that would be the sum total of everything he would ever learn in life.

He was dragged away by the fast and swirling currents of the waterfall. He knew he was reckless. But he knew he was in the lap of nature. He knew he was going to be safe somehow. The currents had slowed down. He had been washed ashore on an adjacent bank. His free hand stuck the muddy shore while the other hand still clutched over the arrow he had pulled out.

A mask lying on the shore accidentally came into his other hand. He lifted it up and found an imprint of a face formed on the mud. He gently touched that face and said, "Amma" (Mother!) before he lost his consciousness. Why he said that, he would never be able to explain even to himself. There was a beatific smile of contentment on his face as he lay there beside that facial imprint.

End of Book Eight: The Seeds of Destruction

Author's Note:
The next chapter is up. I know the chapter was small and there wasn't much action happening either. It was all an internal journey and rediscovery for my protagonist. Clubbing it with anything else seemed inappropriate. With this we come to the end of this story book. Please do let me know how you found this chapter.

I also have another question for my readers. As I have already mentioned, this story will have forty more chapters and four more story books. Would you like to have one chapter at a time the way I have always been posting them? Or, would you like me to post one full story book at a time? If you want the latter, you might have to wait at least three to four months for a story update. Which one would you like me to do?