Udderance- Mahabharat Crack Fic Series Part VI

Bed of Arrows

Oh, Father, the greatest of Kurus, The child you left became a shield; A shield of iron, cold and strong, Unbreakable, unbending steel. Yet here I lie, surrounded by blood and rusted fate.

I am nothing but my pride, A river’s son, a kingdom’s guard. All my life, I lived for you, Oh, tell me, Father, did you see me rise?

I rest upon this blood-soaked land, Between the earth and endless sky. A bed of arrows; his gift of war, Yet no softer place have I ever known.

I count the stars, I count their eyes- The faces of my grandsons blur. One by one, they slip like sand, And soon, I shall join them all.

I do not fear death, Amba, But I fear your gaze when I meet you beyond. Will you still burn with rage? Or will we, at last, understand?

Oh, how I have sinned, my gods… My Putravadhu, my Putri Draupadi- The day she fell, my pride was lost. The taste of water turned to ash, The sound of music- only screams.

The throne I upheld, yet never touched, The vows I kept, yet none kept me. A guardian sworn to serve, to stand- Yet shackled fast,was I ever free?

The student of the great Parashurama, My sword rose for kings, for wars, For justice that was never mine. The hands that shaped a nation's fate, Now tremble—not from time, But from the injustices I saw, yet chose to bear.

And now, the boy I used to train, With tear-stained eyes kneels at my side. His hands, once firm, now shake in grief, His heart, always soft, now torn inside.

Oh, Arjuna, my dearest son, You weep for me, but do not mourn. For even kings must meet the dust, And I am just a warrior waiting, for rest.

Oh father mine, my end is near

The sun will turn, the world will change, This age of war will fade with time. But as I go, one question remains- My life was theirs… yet was it ever mine?

Mahabharata – The Fall of the Hero – Bhishma by Giampaolo Tomassetti

How does one make their Wattpad story look so pretty?? Also any Arjun-centric stories I can read???

Help me. My stories just look dull, and I, for the love of god, can't find good photos or anything to make it more pretty.

Please give me suggestions. How do I make my work more pretty? Also should I shift to ao3? I've never used it but it intrigues me.

Also, are there any good Arjuna-centric stories or fics I can read? My mind is in a block these days and I wish I could read some stories to restart my mind?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~Swept Away ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Arjun and Chitrangada story)

Disclaimer: This is a work of PURE FICTION. None of it has happened in the real epic. Also, THIS IS A WARNING- MATURE CONTENT EXPLICT SCENES AHEAD. Although it's my first time writing such a spicy story, I've tried my best to keep it subtle and... Idk, please let me know if it doesn't make sense. I think I'll stick to the comical stuff after this.

I really wanted soft boi Arjun with the ever commanding Chitrangada. I also need more Chitrangada stories, please recommend me some if there are any good ones. The portrayal of Chitrangada was inspired by a chapter from @desigurlie's lost moment- Upturned fates. Her work has always fueled my obsession✨

Again, WARNING- ⚠️⚠️⚠️MATURE CONTENT AHEAD⚠️⚠️⚠️-

He had commanded legions.

His name echoed across Aryavarta like a hymn of war and wonder.

He had crossed untamed lands, brought kings to their knees, and claimed victories that echoed through the ages.

Yet now, the very same man lay on silk, wrists loosely bound above his head: not by force, but by choice, his own choice.

His skin glistened, flushed, marked by her full mouth and her hands. The air was thick with the scent of sweat and sandalwood, and the only sound was his breath: ragged, hungry, waiting.

 It almost seemed like he was the inexperienced one.

Chitrangada stood at the edge of the bed, watching him like a predator watches its prize- not with cruelty, but with absolute control. Every part of her radiated authority. From the tilt of her chin to the slow, deliberate way she approached him; like she owned every inch of the room.

Every inch of him.

“Tell me what you want,” she said, voice low.

Arjun, turned to look at his lioness. Her skin, sun-kissed and battle-tested, glistened with sweat and shone rich bronze. Her strong arms, Oh how strong yet small against his own hands.

Her eyes, gods her eyes: dark as storm clouds, shaped like almonds. They held the clarity of someone who had seen both battlefield and betrayal, saw straight through armor and ego alike.

Her hair, long and raven-dark, was usually tied back, but when loosened, it fell like a warrior’s banner. Her very being the embodiment of power- grace woven into every stride, commanding in stillness, and utterly unafraid.

He smiled- not cocky, but soft, reverent. “You. However you want me, my queen.”

“Mine,” she said against his skin.

“Yes,” he breathed, arching into her. “Always.”

When her nails scraped down his arms and left blooming marks of possession, he gasped her name like prayer. Then, blinking up at her with those maddeningly amber eyes, he gave a crooked grin. "Should I be worried you’re branding me now, Rajkumari?"

Chitrangada arched an eyebrow, lips curving into something dangerously amused, "You're lucky I’m not carving my name into your chest."

Arjuna chuckled breathlessly, still pinned beneath her. "At least make the script neat. I have appearances to keep."

She didn’t move gently, she moved like a storm claiming the sea, fierce and beautiful, unstoppable. And Arjuna- her husband met her every motion with soft cries, body shaking beneath the woman who refused to let him disappear behind titles or legend

She crawled over him like a flame licking up dry wood, and he shuddered when her fingers traced the lines of his chest.

“You’re not afraid to give me control?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.

Arjuna met her eyes with that infuriating, intoxicating calm. “Chitra, my dearest, I’ve held the weight of kingdoms on my shoulders. But nothing feels heavier than your gaze when you choose me. I’d give you everything.”

He wasn’t afraid of surrendering to her: he thought of it as an honor.

She leaned down and bit gently at his lower lip, just enough to make him groan. “You’ll regret that.”

He chuckled, then gasped as her hands claimed him again. “Only if you stop.”

Then, she kissed him like war, like conquest, like she was here to take everything and leave him grateful.

Arjuna gasped against her lips as she pushed him down again: one hand against his chest, the other sliding his arms up above his head with purpose. Her thighs straddled his hips, bare and strong, the weight of her both grounding and dizzying.

“Chitra…” he breathed, but the rest of her name broke into a moan as her mouth moved to his throat.

Gods.

He had faced demons, kings, god- and yet nothing had ever left him so undone as this woman untying the knot at his waist with maddening ease.

She wasn’t gentle tonight. She was hungry.

Her husband- wielder of Gandiva, breaker of sieges- offered himself up without resistance. Not because he was weak, but because she was strong. And nothing aroused him more than watching her own it.

Her dark, obsidian hair, that had unfurled like a waterfall, created a curtain to cover their kisses and the slap of skin against skin.

“Keep your hands where they are,” she whispered. His muscles flexed with the effort not to move. He could easily take control. Flip her beneath him. Take the reins. But he didn’t want to, gods he didn’t.

He wanted her to have him.

She moved like a queen claiming what was hers, every roll of her hips purposeful, every sound she dragged from his throat another trophy. And he gave them willingly. He gave her everything.

Arjuna’s breath caught as her nails scraped down his chest. His eyes fluttered open just enough to see her above him- glowing in the lamplight, body curved in power, eyes consuming him.

“Look at you,” she whispered. “So beautiful like this. My prince. Mine.”

He couldn’t speak; his throat was a tangle of devotion and desperation. He only nodded, eyes glassy with pleasure, hands still bound above him.

She rode him like she knew the rhythm of his soul. When release came, it shattered him. Not violently- but reverently.

Like the sky cracking open to reveal light.

He collapsed beneath her, body trembling, mind blank, lips parted. When she finally untied his wrists, kissing them gently, he wrapped his arms around her and held her like she was the only anchor left in the world.

"Tell me, Arjuna," she said, her voice low and teasing, her eyes gleaming with amusement, "do you always let yourself be so... swept away? Or is it just when I’m the one leading you?"

Arjuna, still catching his breath, let out a soft chuckle, his head lolling slightly as he gazed up at her with a mix of exhaustion and admiration. His skin was flushed, and the faint traces of a smile played on his lips as he tried to find the energy to respond.

"Well," he said, voice raspy, yet playful, "I must admit... you’ve certainly got a way of leading me." His amber eyes twinkled as he lifted his hand lazily, brushing a lock of her hair from her face. "Though, if I’m being honest, I don’t need much convincing. I’m easily swept away, especially when I’m in such... good company."

Chitrangada raised an eyebrow, her smirk only growing as she leaned in closer. "Easily swept away, you say? I suppose that makes my job easier then."

Arjuna rolled his eyes dramatically, his tiredness catching up with him in waves, but the charm in his words never faltered. "Well, if this is what ‘swept away’ feels like, I think I could get used to it. Though I might need a bit more rest before I can do it all over again."

Chitrangada laughed softly, her gaze softening as she admired him. "Don’t worry, my hero," she teased, her hand resting against his chest. "You’ve earned your rest."

Arjuna sighed dramatically, letting his head fall back against the pillows, his exhaustion finally catching up to him. "I think I’ve earned everything," he muttered playfully, closing his eyes for a moment. "But I suppose... I could let you lead me again when I’m feeling up to it."

Chitrangada smiled at his words, leaning down to kiss his forehead, the soft affection in her gesture contrasting with the earlier fire. "Rest now, my prince. I’ll let you get back to your charming self... for now."

तुम नमक नहीं चंदन हो कवि तुम तिलक हमारे माथे का

You are not salt but chandan, poet. You are the tilak of my forehead.

Damn bruh, if someone told me this, I would be in tears... what a beautiful line

I lost a 6k word story draft that took me a week to write...

casually binge reading your Mahabharat crack series, making me giggle and kick my feet :333

hehe thanks sweetheart

The road to penance

The forest thinned as Arjuna climbed, replaced by stone, frost, and sky. Trees gave way to rock, and then, rock gave way to snow. The air turned sharper, the wind colder, biting through his clothes and into his bones like old guilt.

He did not look back often. When he did, he saw only mist swallowing the trail behind him- thick and white and uncaring, as though the world itself had closed the door. Go on, it seemed to say. There is nothing for you behind.

By the third day, the silence was louder than any war cry. It crept into his ears, pressed against his ribs, filled his lungs until each breath became a question. He welcomed it. Silence did not ask why he hadn't spoken when the dice fell.

Silence did not ask why he had not torn the sabha down with his bare hands. Silence did not whisper: You are the archer who never missed, yet you missed the moment that mattered most.

He walked with those thoughts like ghosts at his side. And with the cold, always the cold. It was not just in the wind; it was in his blood, in the marrow of his bones, in the soft parts behind his eyes. It reminded him of the night Draupadi's laughter had gone quiet, and he'd sat outside their hut with his bow in his lap and nothing to shoot at but memory.

On the fifth night, he dreamed. No, not of war or fire or fate. Just Krishna: wild-eyed, grinning, sprinting barefoot through Satyaki's garden with a twelve-year-old Abhimanyu at his heels. That part was strange. He'd left his son when he was five. But in dreams, the boy had grown.

"Too slow, Abhi!" Krishna laughed, his beautiful curly hair flying, mango juice dripping down his chin.

"Mama! I had no shoes!" Abhimanyu shouted, brandishing a stick like a sword. "And you cheated!"

"All's fair in mangoes and mayhem, sweetheart." Arjuna laughed in his sleep. A rare, rusted sound. He actually even woke with a smile still caught in his throat. Thought it didn't last.

Because he remembered how Krishna had looked at him after the sabha. Not with anger. Not even with pity.

Just... sorrow, with a hole of disappointment. A quiet, soul-deep sorrow: as though he had failed, not Arjuna. As though he had given Arjuna the bow and watched him lay it down.

Then came the mountains. The real ones.

The ones where the wind was not the kind that whispered. It howled: an ancient, toothless cry that had clawed at these Himalayan cliffs long before kingdoms rose or dharma was spoken of in courtly verse. Arjuna bent his head against it, his breath ragged and clouding the thin air. The trail underfoot had long disappeared, buried beneath stubborn snow. Only the mountain remained: vast, unspeaking, indifferent.

He hadn't eaten in days. Not since he had crossed the last outpost of men and fire. Hunger had long since left behind the dull ache of need; now it gnawed at his spine, made his vision stutter. Yet he pressed on. Not as a warrior, just as a man trying to find stillness somewhere inside a body that would not stop trembling.

He did not speak. For there was no one to speak too, but also because words felt too loud in this place, too mortal. The silence was not absence- it was a presence, thick and echoing, forcing him to listen.

And so, it found him.

Shrutakarma, four years old, chasing him across a courtyard with a wooden bow and painted arrows, cheeks flushed with laughter, mimicking his father's stance with fearless delight. His brothers watching, chuckling at the youngest's theatrics.

Krishna's voice by firelight, warm with mischief: "You fight better when you're angry, Partha. But you lead better when you're calm."

Kunti's hand on his cheek before the exile, soft and worn. "You're still here," she had said. "You must let yourself be."

The memories struck without rhythm. Like stray arrows from nowhere.

And then the one that never missed. The sabha. The dice. Draupadi's cry. Bhima's fury. Yudhishthira's silence. And he-Arjuna. Partha. The archer whose aim was legend; had stood still.

Helpless... no, not helpless. Worse. He had been useless. All that strength, all that skill- and when it mattered, he had been a silent, watching coward clothed in gold and guilt.

No mountain wind could strip that memory away.

He stumbled. His knees struck the snow hard, sinking deep into the frozen crust. This time, he did not rise quickly; as the cold no longer bit, it seeped. Quietly. Thoroughly. A numbness that dulled not just skin, but thought. His fingers, that could easily lift the mighty Gandiva, had gone pale and unfeeling, curled stiffly at his sides.

He was not dressed for such heights. His garments, worn and travel-stained, were suited to forest shadows and monsoon rains- not to scale gods' shoulders. Frost clung to his long lashes like silver dust. The world tilted, weightless and white. Snow swallowed the sky and the earth alike. The only sound was his pulse; fluttering, fading, like the echo of a battle drum too far to reach.

He knelt there, a figure carved in stillness....

                                       ... and somewhere between sleep and death, he thought he saw fire.

A flicker of orange through the white; a distant warmth nestled between trees that shouldn't have been there. A grove where none had stood moments ago. Was it a memory? A trick of exhaustion? Or something older, something watching?

But he didn't crawl toward it. Not yet. Instead, something inside him stirred. A single thought: Get up.

Not for glory. Not for war. Not even for redemption. Just, get up.

This body may be broken by cold, but it was the same body trained to endure. To obey. To fight through pain until pain itself became silence.

He had trained in forests that tore at his skin, stood unmoving under waterfalls until the weight of it drove men to collapse. He had aimed arrows through lightning storms, focused past hunger, heat, and humiliation. When others had faltered, he had refined. Sharpened. Endured. So he walked.

Not because he was strongest. Not even because he was destined. But because he wanted to be better.

It was because he was Arjuna, and Arjuna would never stop walking.

So he breathed. Once. Twice. Ragged, shallow gasps. Then deeper. He forced the air into his chest like drawing a bow. Forced his limbs to move- shaking, clumsy, but moving.

The cold no longer defeated him; it forged him. The mind would adjust, the skin thickened, and his muscles would remember how to work even when they screamed.

He rose, not with grandeur but with grit: teeth clenched, eyes narrowed. He bent his will to the mountain.

One step. Then another.

He kept thinking: Somewhere- his fire awaited, somewhere- the gods watched.

Inside him, a flame sparked- a little smaller than a torch, a little stronger than death.

He crawled. Climbed. Walked.

At first, every movement was agony. The wind mocked him, tore at his garments, hissed in his ears like it meant to wear him down to nothing. His knees scraped over stone, fingers raw from catching himself against jagged ice.

Then eventually, His walk grew steadier. His spine straightened. His steps, no longer stumbles, became rhythm. The burn in his muscles dulled to a hum. Hunger faded into stillness. Cold into clarity. Until walking felt like breathing rather than a chore.

And only then, only when the mountain no longer seemed like a punishment but a presence, did he see it. The beauty.

Not in the grandeur alone- though the peaks stretched like ivory spires, and the clouds moved like silk across their crest- but in the silence between it all. In the hush after every step. In the way the stars unveiled themselves like old friends once the sun dipped behind the ridges. In how the earth, unmoved by empires or epics, simply was.

There was no battle here. No sabha. No war drums. Only a sky so vast it made his grief feel small. There was snow, soft enough to forgive. He walked in that silence for days, alone but no longer lost.

Then, at the twilight of the 23rd day, he found the boy.

Opinions regarding a tiny bit spicy story 👀

Yashoda's Ode

They let me stand at the edge of the crowd, behind gold-cloaked queens and guards of flame. He didn’t see me- or maybe he did- and smiled the same. They say he is a prince now, son of kings and ancient light, cradled not by calloused hands, but by the silks of royal right. They say he wears a peacock crown, he holds a bow, commands the skies- but I remember muddy feet, and milk-white teeth in mango lies. They speak of battles, of demons slain, of chariots and warlike men- but I recall my Lala, the butter thief, who’d smile and steal my heart again. He left with eyes too old for boys, too knowing for his tender years. Yet when he touched my feet to go, he left his smile, and took my tears. No labor bore him from my womb, no birthmark bound us, blood nor bone- but when he called me Maiya once, I knew no love more fierce, more known. I nursed no prince, no god, just raised a child- the sweetest boy the world has known. With scraped-up knees and endless, laughing songs, Years slipped by like your whispers, soft and wild. If Devaki birthed the god, then I raised that boy to be one. No cradle held him like my arms. No storm outshone his laughing hour. I taught him how to tie his sash, to whistle low, and climb trees. I taught a god to eat with both hands- Oh, I taught a god to eat with both hands. Devaki stood with the pride of dawn, her hands soft-folded, eyes gone wet. And I? I smiled too,  because I know she grieves the years I can’t forget. So let them say he saves the world, let them crown and call him wise- I only hope he eats enough, and still looks up at the stars. Some nights, I wake with silence in my arms- no flute, no laugh upon the breeze- but every morning, I still stir his curds and Makhan with memories. So go, my moon, my flame, my very breath- be what the world must call divine. But if your feet should wander home… your Maiya waits, her old arms still wide.

Art by @saranagati.art from Instagram

As Arjuna plummeted toward his fate, his mind was a storm of regrets and unanswered questions- yet woven through the sorrow was the undeniable truth of all he had lived for.

Arjuna had died long before his body ever fell.

He had died the day he placed his grandsire on a bed of arrows. He had died the moment he first saw his son's lifeless body.

And truly, he had stopped living the day his Madhav left him.

What was left for him in a world where Krishna did not walk?

Somewhere along the years, through war and bloodshed, he had always known-he would not die on the battlefield. Despite his name being synonymous with it, despite his life being defined by it, war had never been his final fate. His end was meant to be something quieter, something lonelier.

As he fell, the jagged rocks tearing through flesh and bone, his life did not flash before his eyes in a blur of bloodstained memories. No, instead, he saw the moments that had made life worth living.

The first time he held a bow, the wood smooth beneath his hands, his heart hammering with certainty-this was his calling. Pitamah's hand rested on his shoulder, firm yet gentle. "Steady, Arjuna. A warrior's hands must never tremble." And in that moment, with Bhishma's unwavering faith in him, he had never felt stronger.

"You remind me why I became a teacher, Arjuna," Guru Drona had said, resting a hand on his head, after the first time he struck the eye of a moving target. Just those words, simple and rare, had meant more to him than any title or prize.

The way Subhadra had laughed when she took the reins, wind whipping through her hair as they rode into the night.

The way Draupadi had looked at him that day in Kampilya-steady, knowing, fierce-as if she had chosen him long before she ever placed the garland around his neck.

He had been so tired for so long.

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Arjuna: Through the Lenses of Dwarka - Echo's of a Life Lived

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