Commanding Lakshmana to guard Sita Rama set out with bow in hand and sword at waist. The grazing deer pricked up its ears, saw Rama and felt a cold wave of fear. Maricha trapped in that magnificent body recalled his earlier encounters with Rama and knew that death was now a certainty. He disappeared from where he stood, appearing again at another spot. Leaping through the air, hidden between boughs and branches, the magical animal lured Rama away from the hermitage. Feigning fatigue he would rest a moment and bound away the next. Like the moon dipping in and out of clouds, Maricha the deer taunted the prince of Kosala. Despite the exertion, Rama was keen to capture the deer alive. But he was soon tiring and Maricha sensed it. In a last bid effort to save himself, Maricha fled swift as the wind and fleet of foot. He scaled formidable mountains, from whose peaks he seemed to reach the skies trying to run away from an in escapable fate and from certain death. Rama gave up his chase to trap the frisky fawn; which was so elusive, so spectacular and yet so impossible to catch! He readied his final assault and shot an arrow, which struck the body of the deer and pierced the heart of Maricha. Mortally wounded he lay writhing in pain and through the haze of that pain Ravana's instructions flashed through Maricha's fast fading mind. As death approached, the body of the golden deer ceased and in its place the enormous body of a rakshasa, with fearful fangs emerged. With his dying breath Maricha cried out, "Ah Sita, Ah Lakshmana," in a voice so much like that of Rama. It was then that Rama recollected Lakshmana cautioning him against "rakshasa maya". He grew anxious about the immediate reaction of Sita and Lakshmana, when those dreadful sounds reached them.