The Hero With One Hundred Arms was notified of a threat to the kingdom: people were starting to die more often than usual.
The Hero With One Hundred Arms was busy(yes, calendars fill up even when you have one hundred arms), but he reluctantly accepted the quest to save the kingdom, because people kept dying.
The Hero With One Hundred Arms donned the most noble armor, but people kept dying.
The Hero With One Hundred Arms raised 100 mighty swords, but people kept dying.
The Hero With One Hundred Arms proclaimed the most reassuring words, but people kept dying.
The Hero With One Hundred Arms declared war on the enemy, but people kept dying.
The Hero With One Hundred Arms attacked the enemy with every strategy, tool, and advantage he had(and there were many!), but people kept dying.
The Hero With One Hundred Arms was frustrated by his inability to prevent people from dying.
But people never flagged in their trust for the Hero With One Hundred Arms even though they kept dying.
The Hero With One Hundred Arms called for people to purify themselves, because his purity alone could not save them all, but people kept dying.
The Hero With One Hundred Arms pled for people to hide from the enemy in their homes, for he could not protect them all, but people kept dying.
The Hero With One Hundred Arms had one last idea. It wasn’t an idea so much as the absence of all ideas. He did nothing at all, not even the things that could be done by a non-hero. These nothing things he had been doing without thinking had been feeding the enemy. So he stopped. Meanwhile, people kept dying.
The people cried out because the Hero With One Hundred Arms had betrayed them, and they felt his act of betrayal stung more than the enemy’s deadly, but honest, actions. People kept dying.
The Hero With One Hundred Arms packed up his most noble armor, and sheathed his one hundred mighty swords, and canceled his reassuring messages of hope, and scratched out his confident strategic plans, until there was nothing left to not do. And people kept dying.
When the Hero With One Hundred Arms died, he did so no differently from anyone else, and finally nobody knew what would happen next.
NOTES / Poems / The archetype of the expert