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The Great Epics
One unarmed envoy walks into an enemy court asking for peace. The enemy tries to arrest him instead.
He asked for five villages. He was told he would not be given land enough to cover the point of a needle.
By the time Krishna set out for Hastinapura, everything else had been tried.
Sanjaya had gone first. He carried Dhritarashtra's words to the Pandava camp and came back with nothing. The thirteen years of exile were served. The year in hiding was served. Under the terms of the dice game itself, the kingdom was owed. And Duryodhana had made it clear he would not give it back.
So the errand was the last road, and everyone in it knew the road went nowhere. Yudhishthira sent it anyway. His own conscience made him walk every path away from war right to its end. Only then would he take the other one.
Krishna went alone.
Every Pandava had offered him a guard. Bhima argued for it more than once, with growing frustration.
These were people who had rigged a dice game. Exiled them for thirteen years. And tried to strip Draupadi in open court.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.