How Baahubali:The Conclusion should have ended

Chapter 6

As Bhallaladeva proceeded towards the gates of Mahishmathi, he noticed the unusual silence of the entry guards who would otherwise blow sirens notifying the entry of the king into the kingdom. His hand unknowingly clutched onto his mace and he became more vigilant as his chariot entered the kingdom. He noticed the fearless stares of the people accompanied by their eerie silence, who would otherwise salute bowing down or look away when he passed through the streets. He sensed some danger and suspected the defeat of Kattappa in the hands of the enemy. The soldiers who were following Bhallaladeva too sensed something unusual and looked at each other. Bhallaladeva signaled them to speed up, as he rushed towards the kingdom’s center. As his chariot approached the center, he began to notice the horse symboled armors and weapons with the soldiers. He noticed someone sitting on the throne and fixed his gaze on the person, trying to get a clear vision. As he approached towards the throne, he was able to identify that the person sitting on the throne was Devasena, whose cold glance made a chill pass down his spine. He noticed a faint smile on her face, while her foot was tapping onto something placed beneath it, which indicated him of her eagerness to satisfy her long unfulfilled desire to prey upon him. As Bhallaladeva neared the steps of the coronation throne, Devasena stopped tapping her foot and kicked the footrest she had been tapping onto. As it rolled over the stairs, Bhalla began to notice Jayavarma standing one of the stairs and Kattappa standing just beneath him. He couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw the horse symbolled armor on Kattappa. Kattappa? The royal servant who had been serving the kingdom for generations, the servant who carried out his command of killing Baahubali for his royal commitment, the servant on whom he could rely upon at any situation, conspired against him? Bhallaladeva at once felt the shock of loneliness hitting him, while he failed to notice his following soldiers being silently tackled by Kattappa’s unit. Kattappa grabbed the rolling footrest and threw it onto Bhalla’s chariot. He caught hold of his son’s head and was able to identify it, but was numb from the shock to react to it, as he stood perplexed in his chariot. It was the final jolt for him to come to realize the fact that all that he thought he was under his control, has turned against him. He slowly began to sense anger and pain and his body began to tremble and eyes turned red, as his ego aroused from within to prove to Mahishmathi what it means to turn against him. His hand reached for a sphere and before he could aim it at Kattappa, he received a blow from his right side, which toppled his chariot making it land on him. His warrior instincts tried to make him stand up and reach for a weapon, despite the fact that his vision was still blurry from the blow. As he tried to step out of the toppled chariot trying to seek the support of the ground, he felt being lifted off into the air. As his vision began to get clearer, he noticed an elephant’s face with its trunk wound around his waist. As the elephant began to lift him further up, his eyes began to enlarge to see the person standing on it. Unexplained fears arose within him subsiding his ego, as his subconscious mind began to identify the royalty in the standing posture and the body structure of the person standing on the elephant. Time froze for Bhalla the moment he witnessed Shivudu’s face on the elephant. He whose trace he thought had removed from Mahishmathi, he whose body he thought had mutilated, he whose stare he hoped to never see, was right before his face. He felt too paralyzed to hold the sphere, blink or even breathe at the moment.

The move by his elephant was unexpected to even Shivudu who planned to tackle Bhalla on the ground after smashing his chariot. Shivudu swirled a chain with weights attached to it and threw it at Bhalla the moment he was risen to his level by the elephant. The weights instantly tied up the chain around Bhalla, with his arms pressed up against his body. The elephant threw Bhalla onto the ground, and before he could stand up on his feet Bhalla was arrested by several such chains thrown by Kattappa’s soldiers. He came back to his senses after he heard the soldiers cheering  ‘Mahendra Baahubali’.