Hanuman and Nila Kill Dushana's Brothers

When Kumbhakarna crashed to the ground like a felled mountain, the rakshasa army broke. They had watched their mightiest warrior — the one who had devoured monkeys by the handful — fall lifeless before them, and they scattered in all directions, their courage gone. But not everyone ran. Dushana's younger brothers, Vajravega and Pramathi, saw the flight and would not accept it. They stopped the fleeing rakshasas, turned them around, and then — burning with rage at their brother's death — charged straight at Lakshmana. Lakshmana saw them coming. He nocked his feathered shafts and met their advance with a shower of arrows. What followed was a battle that made the body hair stand up — brief, violent, and concentrated. Vajravega and Pramathi rained their own weapons down on Lakshmana, and for a short instant the three warriors exchanged everything they had. Then Hanuman moved. The son of the wind-god tore a peak from a nearby mountain, swung it once, and brought it down on Vajravega. The rakshasa's life left him in that single crushing blow. At the same moment, the immensely strong monkey Nila rushed at Pramathi. He seized a large rock and crushed Dushana's other brother beneath it. Both of Dushana's younger brothers were dead. But the battle did not end. A general engagement erupted between Rama's forces and Ravana's — a terrible clash in which the forest-dwelling monkeys killed rakshasas by the hundreds, and the rakshasas killed monkeys in return. The dead piled up on both sides. But when the dust settled, more rakshasas had fallen than monkeys.