The Fires of Fury
There was an ominous silence as she wrapped her garment fully around herself and sat down, thoughts centered on Shiva. Closing her eyes, she balanced two of her vital breaths and drove the third one up through her heart to her throat and then let it come to rest between her eyebrows. Her breaths had been purified, filtered by her three vital centers and stood at flashpoint, ready to ignite. With a final thrust of utter concentration she lit the yogic fire within herself that reduced her in seconds to a heap of ashes.

It was a stunning demonstration of her powers and a dramatic announcement of the destruction to follow. After all, she was the destroyer's primal energy; and if ever a situation called for cataclysmic handling, it was this. Shiva would reveal himself in immediate and terrifying manifestation. She had prepared the stage for his arrival.

Chaos broke out. Twenty thousand attendants of Shiva destroyed themselves in instant response to the tragedy. The celestials and sages moved about like puppets, bumping into each other, falling, rolling, unable to rise, screaming, lamenting.

The Calm Before the Storm
In Kailasa, Shiva sat amongst the sages, under his favourite tree, discussing matters of spiritual import, his third eye looking inwards into cycles of time held deep within him, waiting to whirl into view at a signal from Mahakala, conqueror of Time. Narada arrived, bringing news of Sati.

In a frenzy of grief, he tore out a clump of his hair and flung it against the mountainside. It split in two and from one part arose Mahakali, a fierce female manifestation of Shakti, and from the other, the most terrifying of his manifestations-Virabhadra, thousand-armed, standing taller than the known cosmos and covering it, body draped with coiling hissing snakes. Shiva's hot breath came out in the form of a hundred fevers, red and raging and stood around their leader, Virabhadra. Tell me what oceans you want dried up, what mountains powered, what gods or sages turned to ashes, what living beings tortured. Even a blade of grass sent by you what living beings tortured. Even a blade of grass sent by you is enough to destroy whole worlds. It is my good fortune that you have summoned me. I await you command in a mood of high exhilaration.

Shiva blazed back. Destroy the sacrifice, the sacrificer and all the sages and celestials present thee. Burn and burn more, burn again and yet again, for my enemies are many. Return victorious. The destroyer had unfolded from within the mystic bud of yoga. Destruction, full-blown stood throbbing, giving out the stench of horrid death, sounding its dread rattle for all to hear.

And then he grieved, withdrawing into himself. He sorrowed for what had not been, for what had already died between them and he mourned the bliss of more than ten thousand years of uninterrupted conjugal bliss. Her flaming exit added poignancy to the morning he had already begun when she left. She had only set fire to the sorry remains of an ideal marriage. The Father and Mother of the universe would try again and succeed.

Another legend has Shiva wandering the earth with her body, refusing to let go of it. Vishnu had to cut it, bit by bit, and the sports where portions of Sati's body fell, became shaktipithas, sites of Shakti. There are fifty or fifty-two such sites.