It was strange how the initial response on getting stabbed was not one of pain but more of shock. For seasoned warriors, it was imperative for them to get acclimatised to both the shock and the pain with lightening rapidity so that they could counter the enemy at a close range. 

A single mistake could very well make the chance of getting back at your foe, slip, even if at that point, your own life might look forfeit. 

Arjun had mastered that skill, quite well. 

The Hall of Games, divided in sadistic amusement and horrified shock could only watch dumbfounded as the so called scion of the Kurus, the crown prince of Hastinapura drove his shinning blade right through his unarmed cousin with the force of a battering ram. 

Arjun choked on a cry, still stubborn enough to not let his assailant have the satisfaction of hearing him scream as the sword plunged through his abdomen and ripped out of his back, spraying blood in a macabre splatter of crimson red on the gold polished marble flooring and the terribly tall walls of the Kuru court. 

Someone gasped sharply. A lone whispered sound of muffled astonishment ringing deafening loud in the choked silence.  

Arjun crumpled on the ground like a marionette with his strings severed ruthlessly. 

There was a beat of prolonged silence before all hell veritably broke lose in a maddening cacophony of loud noises. 

His brothers howled in part rage and part anguish.

His wives screamed in aggrieved horror. 

He could faintly hear some familiar voices from the side of the Kurus. 

Bhishma, Vidura, Drona and maybe that was Kripacharya, whose mixed sounds of loud remonstrations fell into an unholy amalgamation with Dusashana's jubilant cry of cheer and Karna's frustrated admonishing. 

To him, it all seemed to come through a heavy layer of choked fog. The din slowly faded away into the background like he was underwater. The pain was so excruciating that it was almost comforting at that point. 

For at least, this physical suffering, had a visible end in sight. 

Arjun had always wondered what parts of his life would come back to him at the time of his death. What he had not envisioned was a completely blank slate, an inky expanse of nothingness before a faint light illuminated what appeared to be a lone feather.

A peacock feather. 

Soft. Glowing. Beautiful.

Arjun felt his blood streaked lips quirk in an oddly amused smile and his heart which was at the fag end of its mad scramble of replenishing the rapid blood loss from his innumerable wounds seemed to slow down from the incessantly agonising battering to almost gentle undulating waves. 

Like a bloodied bird trapped under a boulder, trying its level best to get free. 

It must have been only a few seconds but for Arjun, it may have very well been an eternity. 

"Madhav...", he whispered inaudibly, his lips barely moving even as a tear slid down his temple. There were running feet, someone struggling to escape, someone pulling hands and legs back from blurred edges of his darkening vision. 

"Madhav... take care of them..."

Arjun prayed when his strength completely failed him for the last time and he knew that he could die in peace now. 

His Janardan will take care of the rest. 

Oblivion embraced him in its gentle cradle and he could see no longer. 

So he didn't see when there was a brilliant white light which filled the Hall such glaringly that it made everyone yelp and turn their eyes away, burying them in their hands, lest they get burnt right out off their sockets. 

The blistering heat generated was potent enough to char everyone's bones. 

And from within that beam of dazzling light, emerged the tall, statuesque, majestic figure of Dwarkadheesh himself. 

Vasudev Krishna's characteristic mischief filled gaze had dissolved into one of such terrific wrath that it made everyone shake right where they stood. 

There was something inhuman in his eyes today, something carved out of ancient power which transcended space and time. 

His typically cheerful countenance had transformed into a wrath unforeseen. Not even the beheading of Shishupala in the Rajsuya yagna of Indraprastha had made the dark skinned Lord of the Yadavas, look so unbalanced with barely restrained rage. 

The lotus eyes of Madhusudhana fell open his beloved Partha's body then. 

Krishna's icy demeanour fell open like an anthill crumbling under an errant kick . 

The rumoured son of the Thunderer himself, his body gilded with the power of the mighty Vajra was looking like a tangle of long dusky limbs, mutilated and limp in a pool of rapidly spreading crimson, scattered on the polished marble flooring, of the Hall of the illustrious Kurus. 

He strode towards his fallen friend and dropped to his knees beside him in a manner atypically unceremonious, before gathering up Arjun's blood stained form in his long dusky arms. 

Krishna stroked the dry raven strands of hair away from his favourite cousin's blanched face with a tenderness which stood starkly apart from the prior display of ferocious temper. 

"Oh Parth.... You self sacrificing idiot! What will I do with you...", he whispered gently in his hair where he had buried his face for a moment before straightening up with a painful twang. 

Everyone saw bewildered as Krishna's fingers glittered with a  wonderous magic and the gory wound which had almost ripped Arjun into half, started to miraculously sew back together. The swarthy Pandava remained blissfully unconscious if not dead, in the former's lap. 

By then, everyone present had realised that they were stuck by some invisible force, rooted to their place. Not even a single finger could be moved. It was like they had frozen into ice.

"Vasudeva... please...", Chitrangada's tearful voice was meek but fell on the suffocating silence like a battle axe. 

Krishna didn't even lift his lashes from where he was staring intently on Arjun's lax face but much to their eternal gratefulness, the warrior princess and her co wife - the serpent queen felt their restrains snapping open immediately. 

The two women covered the distance between them and their comatose husband with a near inhuman speed as their respective angavastram created a hypnotising blend of gold and green, curtaining Arjun and Krishna from their bedazzled spectators for a second. 

"What sorcery is this?", Duryodhana snarled when he could finally gain his voice back from where it had initially vanished in utter fright, on Krishna's entry. 

He disregarded Shakuni's warning eyes making the King of Gandhara sigh in resignation. The son of Subala knew it very well that at present, even with the Pandavas being their slaves, they were hopelessly outmatched.

No one in their right mind would dare provoke Krishna Vasudeva of Dwarka. Not if they liked their head where it was. The cunning trickster had the notorious discuss of Vishnu Himself at his beck and call. Not to mention, a power not even he, a master strategist, could make a head or tail of. 

But unfortunately, his nephew kept behaving like senility had started creeping into him before age. 

"Not another word out of your mouth!", Krishna's voice seemed amplified to just that near edge of the frequency which human ears could not bear without bursting open. 

It made them all wince and grimace in pain. 

"Arya...is he..? Please do something Vasudeva.. I beg you..", Uloopi brought Krishna's attention to her pale tear stained face. 

"Fear not Nagarani. Hold tight to Chitrangada and touch my arm, I will transport you all to Dwarka. My doctors can heal wounds worse than this. Make sure to keep your eyes closed though."

His words seemed to fall like a cool shower on the distraught women like rain on parched earth. 

"And you all...", Krishna's multicoloured eyes which had taken in a petrifying shade of coppery red and burnished gold, ran over the Kuru court and all of its inhabitants with such a savage anger that it chilled their already frozen bones. 

"I will take care of you all, next..."

The sombre words though spoken in more of a quiet threat sounded more like a terrifying oath. One that the flute playing, Lord of Vrindavana, would keep by any means, which was not a comforting thought at all. 

And before anyone could get a word in sideways, the three along with a supine Arjun vanished into thin air.  

All they left behind was a near venomous vacuum which seemed to ring hollow in the desecrated Halls of Hastinapura. 

------------------------------------------

Dwarkapuri [A few days later]

Arjun could feel himself slowly awakening from what felt like an eternal slumber. His sharp reflexes kicked in almost immediately as various fragrances and sounds assailed his oversensitive senses like a barrage of epileptic seizures. 

The third Pandava breathed deeply and took the help of his legendary focus to segregate everything and pinpoint each sense so that his sleep mussed brain could differentiate and identify his surroundings clearly. 

His eyes felt too heavy to open just yet. 

He could smell freshly churned sandalwood and by the cool feeling he was suddenly receiving on certain numbed areas on his body he realised that it was being applied by someone on him. The intensely rank smell of medicines came to him immediately and had he been in complete control of his faculties, he would have shrunk his nose in disgust. 

The strong smelling herbs reminded him of Nakul's medical chambers back in Indraprastha. 

That made him wonder, where he was at the moment. 

He strained his ears and could hear the sounds of waves rolling and crashing into soft sands and realised that this place could neither be Indraprastha or Hastinapura. The Kuru Kingdoms were landlocked and had only rivers flowing through them. 

And there was an ocean here, nearby.

Then he heard the low rumblings of various voices resound almost too cheerily from around him. 

It sounded like a gaggle of kids were chattering very near to him. 

Then another couple of strong fragrances hit him. Blue lotuses and jasmines, turmeric and oddly enough a unique flowery smell he couldn't identify. But his soul had recognized the otherworldly smell immediately. 

How can he not?

Madhav... it was his Madhav. 

Krishna was present near him. 

All of his worries simmering in the background like painful stings suddenly numbed over like someone had plucked them right out of him with ease. 

There was an odd weight against his side, not uncomfortably heavy but almost a soothing soft lump. He tried moving his fingers one by one and the chirpy childlike voices cleared up a little. 

"....hen what happened Mamashree?"

"Then your uncle lifted off Bakasura ....nd.... thr....Your grandmother wa... cared... father..."

"....so cool! I want to be just as.....ong... like... Tatshree Bhee..."

"course... my dear. Just let...."

The voices were so heart warmingly familiar that it rankled Arjun deeply that he could not identify them properly. 

Suddenly a light touch of silken fingers on his brow, interrupted his efforts and he sensed another presence very near to him. Someone was bending over him. A brush of satiny hair near his cheek and the fragrance of frangipanis took him back several years when he was wandering the forests of the dreaded north eastern regions. 

"Arya... are you awake?", a soft tremulous tone whispered to him like a mellifluous song. 

The fragrance of blue lotuses intensified in the air and Arjun's mind conjured up a blistering summer midday, where the scent of marigolds, yagna ghee and incense had together failed to overshadow the essence of a dark skinned beauty resplendent in fiery gold. 

But all the images were blurred beyond comprehension.

"Arjun...ake up please..."

"...ya you have to wake up..."

A garden full of palash trees, the distant scent of pink lotuses and a sweet pealing chinks of silver anklets swam in his vision next, when he had felt the dewy grass under his body and the press of tangy syrup drenched lips crashing into his own repeatedly in an all consuming passion. 

"Waiting.... or so long..."

Jasmines and the sweet scent of night queen flowers, a sharp taste of drenched forests and flower filled meadows mixed with the dank smell of swampy mangroves and saccharine honey which can turn into lethal venom. 

The visions and memories, all so different from each other yet reminded him of feelings facsimile. 

It was a heavy emotion, which lightened in steps yet ached in his bones with a delightfully agonising burden. 

There were fainter scents mixed with the voices. 

Natural smells of petrichor, spicy oils and saffron milk. 

Then a voice broke through the haze with another gentle caress over his eyes which sent his heart galloping instantly. 

"Patience, my dears. Let my Parth breathe", another infintely soft touch on his burning chest, right over his thundering heart, "Open your eyes, Son of Indra. Your rest is over. Come back to us."

Arjun's eyes flew open immediately as if on cue, amidst what sounded like a dozen gasps. The colours took some time to settle properly and the swarthy skinned Kuntiputra saw his chosen Lord, grinning down upon him with that heart melting crinkled eyed smile of his. 

"Madhav..."

He whispered softly and instantly was attacked by a bout of harsh coughing as the rest of his body seemed to finally come back into the current plane of existence. Pain ripped into him with barbaric vengeance and Arjun breathed shallow through the involuntary tears which had sprung into his eyes. 

"There there...slowly Arya. Your wounds have yet to heal fully. Breathe..."

There she was, his fiery Agnisutaa. 

Draupadi's smile was so wide, Arjun thought it would split her beautiful face into two if stretched for even a millimetre more. Her narrow waited and curvy hipped figure was wrapped in a bright yellow saree, that luxurious swathe of long curly hair kept open at a side casually. 

"Panchali...?"

"Yes, my lord. Welcome back to the land of the living", the Queen of the Pandavas uttered happily. 

And then much to Arjun's alarm, promptly burst into tears. 

"Jiji, come on! This is supposed to be a joyous event."

Arjun saw his Chaitravahini take her eldest co wife in her arms, as Yagyasaini turned her beautiful yet rapidly paling face to the other side in an effort to hide her distress. 

The Queen Regent of Manipur looked resplendent in her red robes and flower jewellery which was so typically Rukmini's preferred getup that it wasn't very hard to realise who had influenced his tempestuous wife to forgo her usual gemstones. 

"And... I win. I told you it would take her one minute at most to break down."

Arjun looked at his other side to stare at his youngest wife and Krishna's darling sister - Subhadra who contrary to her humorous words looked two seconds away from crying herself as she tried keeping her gaze on Draupadi and Chitrangada. 

Her svelte amber cream form was wrapped in a peach coloured fabric and pearls adorned her wavy curls. 

"I should have known better than to bet with you. After all, who knows our Jiji better than you, dear Rochana."

Uloopi, his mystical serpent princess, perched on what looked like one of the heavy teak wooded bedstand acceded her apparent defeat with the grace atypical to her usual brashness. She complemented her milk white skin perfectly with piercing blue robes and sapphire ornaments. 

"Is.. is there something I missed? How are all four of you in one room without murdering each other or worse... someone else?", Arjun managed to speak after a few seconds of blankly blinking at his quartet of ladies who are infamous for their incompatibly spirited personalities. Who for some unearthly reason were inexplicably behaving like they had become soul sisters all of a sudden.

He knew he should have held his impulsive urge to blurt out the first thing which came to his still half asleep brain when all four pair of intoxicatingly beautiful eyes glared at him with almost the same level of petrifying fervour. 

In his defence, after the disaster of trying to house all four of them in a single palace during the Rajasuya Yagya conducted last year, which had almost resulted in a catastrophe of tectonic proportions - Arjun had most miserably come to the realisation that it was better for his own survival if he kept his wives separate from each other. 

Except his Kalyani and Bhadra - those two were like a pair of Siamese twins. 

Krishna who was standing at the foot of the bed, burst out in a roar of laughter at that. 

"Oh Parth! The first thing you do after returning from one near death was to pave way for another. Truly my friend, there is none like you", Kahna uttered while chuckling delighted at his friend's predicament. 

Arjun swallowed drily as all wives seemed to take out their claws all at once, not bothered about his temporary incapacitation at all which was rather inconsiderate of them. 

"Uhh... I didn't mean to imply...", Arjun began meekly only for Chitrangada to break in feistily.

"I don't know what nonsensical drivel you are getting your ideas from Aryaputra but we have much better things to do than catfight over our husband", the olive skinned warrior spat. 

"Indeed. Also, the one who thought it prudent to let himself be staked in a stupid game of dice", Draupadi continued incredibly miffed. 

"And then stood stock still like herded cattle and let that guileless scoundrel use him like target practice even when he could have defeated them all in a jiffy", Kauravi almost bared her fangs at him. 

"What is wrong with you!", Subhadra threw her arms around in furious exasperation. 

Arjun sighed and closed his eyes in resignation. 

A lone thought niggling at the back of his mind reminded him that what was happening seemed more like a dream than reality.

For he was not supposed to survive the Game of dice at all. 

Wasn't that what the prophecy entailed?

Arjun turned his confused eyes at Krishna who only smiled at him in that incorrigibly mysterious way of his. 

What had even happened after he supposedly died?

To be continued.