That night, so terrible and destructive unto human beings and elephants and steeds filled with joy all creatures that wander in the dark.  Many rakshasas and pishacas of various tribes were seen there, gorging upon human flesh and quaffing the blood that lay on the ground.  They were fierce, tawny in hue, terrible, of adamantine teeth, and dyed with blood.  With matted locks on their heads, their thighs were long and massive; endued with five feet, their stomachs were large.  Their fingers were set backwards.  Of harsh temper and ugly features, their voice was loud and terrible.  They had rows of tinkling bells tied to their bodies.  Possessed of blue throats, they looked very frightful.  Exceedingly cruel and incapable of being looked at without fear, and without abhorrence for anything, they came there with their children and wives.  Indeed, diverse were the forms seen there of the rakshasas that came.  Quaffing the blood that ran in streams, they became filled with joy and began to dance in separate bands.  “This is excellent!” “This is pure!” “This is very sweet!” these were the words they uttered.

Other carnivorous creatures, subsisting upon animal food, having gorged upon fat and marrow and bones and blood, began to eat the delicate parts of corpses.  Others, drinking the fat that flowed in streams, ran naked over the field.  Possessed of diverse kinds of faces, other carnivorous beings of great ferocity, and living upon dead flesh, came there in tens of thousands and millions.  Grim and gigantic rakshasas also, of wicked deeds, came there in bands as numerous.  Other ghostly beings, filled with joy and gorged to satiety, O king, also came there and were seen in the midst of that dreadful carnage.

When morning dawned, Ashvatthama desired to leave the camp.  He was then bathed in human blood and the hilt of his sword so firmly adhered in his grasp that his hand and sword, O king, became one!  Having walked in that path that is never trod (by good warriors), Ashvatthama, after that slaughter, looked like the blazing fire at the end of the yuga after it has consumed all creatures into ashes.  Having perpetrated that feat agreeably to his vow, and having trod in that untrodden way, Drona’s son, O lord, forgot his grief for the slaughter of his sire.  The Pandava camp, in consequence of the sleep in which all within it were buried, was perfectly still when Drona’s son had entered it in the night.

After the nocturnal slaughter, when all became once more quiet, Ashvatthama issued from it.  Having issued from the camp, the valiant Ashvatthama met his two companions and, filled with joy, told them of his feat, gladdening them, O king, by the intelligence.  Those two, in return, devoted as they were to his good, gave him the agreeable intelligence of how they also had slaughtered thousands of Pancalas and Srinjayas (at the gates).  Even thus did that night prove terribly destructive to the Somakas who had been heedless and buried in sleep.  The course of time, without doubt, is irresistible.  Those who had exterminated us were themselves exterminated now.”