Playing with Metaphorical Fire

Banded iron double doors shattered inward, scattering the pristine obsidian floor with jagged black splinters. A blast of frigid air hit the Paladin’s face, flash-cooling the sweat, gore, and general-muck caught in his beard. He stumbled into the Inner Sanctum, legs nearly buckling under the weight of plate armor that felt fifty pounds heavier than it had that morning. The metal dug into bruised shoulders—a suffocating cage he couldn't wait to pry off.

The vaulted ceiling swallowed the sound of their ragged breathing. The Assassin slipped in through the dust cloud, looking less like a shadow and more like a walking bruise, wiping a slurry of mud and something else’s blood from his eyes. The Rogue limped in a step behind, daggers drawn but knuckles white, favoring a left leg that looked ready to give out. Finally, the Priestess dragged herself over the threshold, her once-white robes a heavy, sodden gray, clutching her staff like a crutch.

The Paladin checked his left flank out of habit, but there was only empty space where the heavy tread of Jeff’s boots should have been. The silence where their friend used to be was louder than the ringing in his ears. They stood there, shivering in the unnatural chill, dripping grime onto a floor that cost more than their entire village.

The Paladin tightened his grip on his sword, the leather wrap slick with sweat. His muscles coiled, aching and screaming for rest, but he forced them ready for the fireball, the summoned demon, the wave of necrotic energy—whatever fresh hell awaited them here in the grand chambers.

Nothing came.

Through the settling dust, a figure sat motionless atop a throne of twisted obsidian shards. The Dark Lord was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, chin resting on steepled fingers, watching them bleed on his floor.

They had crawled through the mud, lost Jeff, and nearly died a dozen times just to get to this door, and it wasn’t even worth his time to stand. The sword hilt felt hot in his hand.

Clap.

The sound cracked, dry and precise.

 The Paladin shifted his weight, fighting the urge to step back, while the Priestess gripped her staff until her knuckles turned white.

Clap. Clap.

It echoed off the obsidian.

“Marvelous.” The Villain’s voice boomed—a deep baritone that vibrated in the hollow of the Paladin’s chest, dripping with a smug, untouchable superiority that made him want to scream.

The Paladin lurched forward, boots grinding the obsidian shards into dust. He didn’t cast a spell or recite a holy liturgy. He just screamed. Not a hero’s challenge but a raw, ugly noise that scraped the lining of his throat, born of three weeks of marching, killing, and bit by bit, dying.

“You burned it all!” The accusation tore out of him, ragged and wet. “My family! The village! Jeff! Your henchmen even killed my dog!” He jabbed the sword tip toward the throne, his arm shaking not from fear, but from the sheer physical effort of keeping the weapon raised. “I am ending your reign of terror here and now!”

The Dark Lord stood up. He didn’t reach for a weapon. He looked…proud. He spread his arms wide, his cape flowing outward as if caught in a perfectly directed breeze.

“Look at you now!” The Villain’s voice shifted, dropping the menace for something booming and theatrical, projecting to the back row of a theater that didn’t exist. “Forged in fire! Hardened by loss! Do you honestly think you could have breached these doors without that specific motivation? I didn’t destroy your life, boy. I curated your potential.”

“Curated potential?” The headache behind his eyes throbbed in time with his heartbeat. He took a heavy step forward, locking his elbows, his blade leveled at the Villain’s throat. He was going to separate the Dark Lord’s head from his curated shoulders.

The Villain’s eyes flicked—just for a fraction of a second—to the Assassin’s dagger, then to the Rogue’s white-knuckled grip on the crossbow.

“But!” the Villain boomed, stepping back with a flourish that put the bulk of the obsidian throne between himself and the sword tip. “I am merely the Architect! The Preamble! You have survived the crucible, yes, but are you prepared for the Hammer?”

He swept his arm grandly toward the dark corner of the dais, his cape swirling. “Behold! The Beast of the Black Pit! The true instrument of your despair: My Enforcer!”

The Paladin shifted his stance, boots scraping on the grit. The rest of the team followed, a unified swivel of lethal intent toward the shadows.

A mountain of black steel detached itself from the darkness. Seven feet of spiked plate moved with a terrifying, silent fluidity. This was The Beast of the Black Pit. The Butcher of the Northern Reach. The Enforcer.

The party had discussed many times how to bring him down. The only viable strategy they could conceive of was to push a boulder off a cliff and hope he didn’t look up. Then, at the Red Ford, they watched the Enforcer cleave a charging armored Destrier in half. They scrapped the boulder plan.

Obsidian cracked under the Enforcer’s tread. In one hand, he held a parody of a warhammer—a steel beam capped with a tombstone of iron. He spun the massive weight with a lazy, casual grace.

Whoosh. Whoosh.

The Paladin felt the wind of the rotation against his face. He braced his shield arm, knowing the bones would snap on impact, but hoping to deflect enough force to let the Rogue get a shot off. He locked his knees, ignored the burning ache in his rotator cuff, and prepared to die.

The Enforcer took a breath, the chest plate expanding like a bellows. He dropped his center of gravity, crouching twenty feet away. The massive steel greaves ground against each other as his legs coiled, loading up kinetic energy like a catapult. He was seconds away from launching himself across the room to close the distance.

Then the tension simply evaporated.

The weapon hung in the air for a second, wobbled, then sank until the head rested on the floor with a heavy thud. His massive shoulders, previously square and ready for violence, slumped forward in a posture of utter defeat.

The silence stretched until it became physical.

A hot wire of pain ran down the Paladin’s arm, but he kept the rim of his shield aligned with the Enforcer’s throat. It had to be a trick. A psychological break before the real assault. He was sure of it.

He risked a glance sideways. The Assassin and Rogue were staring at the armored giant, weapons slack in their hands. The Paladin shot them a look—Did you poison him? The Assassin gave a minute, confused shake of his head. The Rogue just shrugged. He looked past them to the Priestess; she was gripping her staff, mouth slightly open, looking even more lost than he felt.

Then the Enforcer kicked his warhammer away. It skidded across the scored obsidian with a screech that set the Paladin’s teeth on edge.

“I’m out.”

The voice wasn’t the terrible growl of a beast or the madness of a butcher, just that of…a guy. A tired guy speaking from inside a tin can.

The Paladin shifted his weight off his bad knee. “What?”

“He never told me about the dog,” the Enforcer rumbled from inside the helmet, pointing a gauntleted finger back at the Villain on the throne. “Look, I’m terrified of that guy. I do what I’m told because I like breathing. We burn villages? Fine. That’s war. We crush rebellions? Part of the job. But a dog? That’s sick. I still have nightmares about this horse that I…Look, I can’t go through that again. I’m not going to be on Team Puppy-Killer. I’m defecting.”

The Paladin blinked. He lowered his sword an inch, then raised it, then lowered it again. He decided to stop moving before he started screaming, and looked at his team for a cue.

The Rogue was spinning in a tight circle, crossbow leveled at the shadows, eyes darting frantically.

The Assassin had drifted into the dead angle behind the Enforcer’s shoulder, annoyed the Paladin was looking at him.

The Priestess lowered her staff, a genuine, sunny smile breaking through the grime on her face. “Well,” she said, her voice echoing brightly in the torture chamber. “I think that’s very nice of him.”

“Excuse me?”

The voice that came out wasn’t the booming baritone of doom. It was a tenor, sharp with genuine offense. He sounded less like a deity of destruction and more like a shopkeep accused of short-changing a customer.

“I didn’t order the dog killed!” the Villain snapped, hands on his hips. “I love dogs. I have three corgis back in the residential wing. I thought you did it!” He gestured frantically at the Enforcer, his velvet cape getting tangled in his arm. “You’re the Beast of the Black Pit! I only approved the memo because if I said ‘no’ to one of your cruel requests, you’d crush my skull like a grape!”

The Villain froze. The words hung in the air, and he seemed to realize all at once that he had just screamed in the face of a man known for tearing people in half. He went pale, took a quick half-step back, and flinched, pulling the tangled cape up to shield his face.

The Paladin lowered his sword an inch, the tip wavering. The adrenaline that had been keeping him upright was curdling into a thick, confusing sludge in his veins. He looked at the Assassin. The Assassin looked at the ceiling.

The Enforcer’s gauntleted hands went to the base of his helmet. There was a sharp clack of a rusty latch giving way, followed by the wet grind of metal sliding against leather. He lifted the heavy steel bucket off his head.

Beneath the terrifying visage of the Beast was…a guy named Dave. Or at least he looked like a Dave. Balding, red-faced, sweating profusely, with the kind of eyes you’d expect on a baker, not a butcher.

“Crush your head like a grape?” Dave blinked, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of a steel glove. “Boss, I’ve been nothing but polite for three years. You have been a complete psycho. Kill family members, burn the villages. I stayed up the whole night crying after reading your ‘Operation Clean Slate’!"

“‘Clean Slate’ was a metaphor!” the Villain shrieked, his voice cracking. He scrambled over the throne, digging through a pile of scrolls stashed under the seat cushion. “It was supposed to be a rebranding campaign! We were going to change the flag colors!”

“It said, ‘Fire everywhere’!”

“Metaphorical fire!”

The Paladin let his sword tip rest on the floor. It was too heavy to hold up for this. He looked at the Priestess. She was checking the pulse of a dead guard by the door, but she was watching the argument with wide, horrified eyes.

“What about the dog?” the Enforcer demanded, stepping closer. The Villain flinched but stood his ground. “Who signed the ‘Liquidate the Canine’ order?”

“I didn’t sign it!” The Villain threw his hands up. “It came from your downstairs office!”

“I don’t have an office! I sleep in the barracks!”

They both stopped. The silence returned, but this time it wasn’t heavy or terrifying. It was the specific, confusing silence of two people realizing they had both been replying to the wrong email chain.

Simultaneously, two heads—one balding and sweaty, one manic and pale—swiveled toward the shadows in the far corner of the room.

A throat cleared. It was a dry, papery sound, small but loud enough to cut through the echo of the shouting.

The Paladin’s eyes adjusted to the change in lighting. He saw a narrow alcove near the throne, clearly designed so people could make dramatic entrances from the shadows.

From the alcove, a man stepped into the light. He wasn’t wearing black plate. He wasn’t wearing a velvet cape. He was wearing a beige tunic that looked itchy, stained with ink at the cuffs, and trousers that were a slightly different, worse shade of beige. He held a clipboard in the crook of one arm and a dark, stained mug in the other.

He didn’t look like a demon. He looked like a Stuart.

“Actually,” Stuart said. He adjusted a pair of spectacles that were sliding down his nose using the hand holding the mug, sloshing lukewarm brown liquid onto his tunic. He didn’t look at the heroes, the weapons, or the blood. He was looking at the Villain with the exhausted patience of a man explaining a simple concept to a toddler.

“The memo regarding the canine was filed under ‘Asset Liquidation.’ Standard protocol for non-standard livestock during a siege. I marked it urgent.”

The Rogue broke the silence, his voice trembling slightly. “You ate Mr. Fluffles?”

Stuart took a sip from the mug, grimaced at the temperature, and lowered it. “We had run out of horse.”

The Paladin felt the bile rise in his throat, thick and sour. He tightened his grip on his sword, not to swing, but to keep from falling over. The epic saga of his vengeance, the blood oath sworn over smoking ruins…came down to a supply chain malfunction.

“And the villages?” the Villain asked, his voice trembling. He pointed a shaking finger at the clipboard. “Thousands died in the burning of the Western Reach.”

Stuart licked his thumb and flipped a page on his clipboard. The sound was deafening in the silence. Flip. Flip.

“Ah. Yes. The ‘Clean Slate’ initiative.” Stuart adjusted his glasses again. “There was some ambiguity in the phrasing. You wrote, ‘Illuminate the populace.’ I cross-referenced with the Imperial Handbook, Section 4, Sub-paragraph B. ‘Illumination’ in the context of Infrastructure is legally defined as incendiary purging.”

“I meant education!” the Villain cried, tearing at his hair. “Metaphorical light!”

The Rogue screamed, “For the love of—STOP USING METAPHORS!”

The Enforcer looked at the accountant with tears in his eyes. “You never thought to ask any questions?”

“I don't interpret policy; I just execute the filed requests. The wording was quite clear. You even countersigned it under Infrastructure.”

"I thought it was for streetlamps!” Dave—the Enforcer—sobbed. “The memo said ‘Lighting upgrades’! I thought we were helping!”

The Paladin stepped forward, his boots crunching on the obsidian shards. “You burned my home,” he rasped, the words feeling like gravel in his mouth. “You murdered my family. Fed soldiers my dog, and you didn’t once even ask your boss if he was sure?”

Stuart looked up, blinking, genuinely confused by the hostility. “Well, they both seemed so…occupied.” He gestured vaguely at the obsidian throne and the spiked armor. “With all the scheming and wanton destruction. I didn’t want to be a bother.”

The Paladin raised his sword again. The weight of it was tearing his shoulder apart, but he needed to swing. He needed to cleave something, anything, just to make sense of the world again.

But there was nowhere to aim.

The Villain and the Enforcer weren’t looking at him. They were looking at each other, eyes wide with the dawn of a terrible, beautiful realization.

“You…” the Villain whispered, stepping over the scattered scrolls. “You never wanted to do any of those terrible things, did you?”

“I thought you were going to eat my soul!” Dave blubbered, gesturing wildly. “You sit in the dark! You drink blood from a skull!”

“It’s cranberry juice!” the Villain cried, distraught. “It’s good for my kidneys! And the lighting is for dramatic effect! I thought you respected the pageantry!”

“I thought you were a monster! I’m a Gemini! I hate conflict!”

“Boss…”

“Dave…”

They collided in the middle of the room in a clumsy, desperate embrace. The Villain buried his face in the Enforcer’s sweaty chest plate, while Dave wrapped his massive, spiked arms around the smaller man, careful not to impale him.

“I’m so sorry,” the Villain sobbed into the cold steel. “We’ll fix this. We’ll start a suggestion box. We’ll get a foosball table for the break room.”

“I’d like that, Boss," Dave rumbled, patting the Villain’s back with a hand that could crush a boulder. “I’d really like that.”

The Paladin’s grip loosened. His shield slipped from his numb fingers and hit the obsidian floor with a deafening, dissonant clatter that nobody reacted to. He didn’t pick it up. Instead, his trembling hands went to the buckles of his breastplate.

He unlatched the gorget, then the pauldrons, letting the pieces of heavy steel drop to the stone one by one. The red mist of battle rage had turned into nausea. He wasn’t a hero stopping a monster anymore; he was interrupting a therapy session.

The click of the Rogue’s crossbow safety engaging was the loudest sound in the room. He didn’t say a word, just hooked the weapon to his belt and started rubbing his thigh where the quiver strap had been digging in for three days.

“Contract’s void,” the Assassin muttered. He wiped his dagger on a clean patch of his sleeve, inspecting the edge with a critical eye before sliding it back into the sheath at his hip. He sounded bored, the professional detachment returning instantly now that the danger was gone. “Target profile doesn’t match. We were hired to kill a Dark Lord and a Beast. These are just…”

He gestured vaguely at the hugging men, who were now discussing the benefits of casual Fridays.

“…incompetent middle management.”

“Agreed,” the Rogue sighed, cracking his neck with a wet pop. “I’m not killing a guy named Dave who cries about streetlamps. It’s bad for the brand. Let’s go.”

The Paladin exhaled the tension he’d been holding since walking from the burned husk of his home. He unbuckled his sword belt, the heavy leather hitting the floor with a slap. He was going to walk out of here, find the nearest inn, sleep for three days, and then maybe become a turnip farmer. Or cabbage. Whichever was easier to grow.

Around him, the rest of the team was shedding the weight of the war. The Assassin peeled off a blood-crusted glove with a wet shluck, sighing as the air hit his skin. The Rogue, however, was already scanning the room for loose valuables. Old habits died hard.

“The evil has ceased. The mission is, spiritually speaking, a success,” the Priestess said, almost to herself. She began wiping a smear of gore from her silver amulet with her thumb. Her voice was soft, reasonable, the voice of someone who just wants to go home and wash the muck out of her robes.

They all felt it—that giddy sense of relief.

“Though, I’ve never heard of a holy mission being accomplished with the Divine Oaths still intact,” she added, as an afterthought.

The Rogue paused, a waterskin halfway to his lips. “The whats now?”

“The Covenant of Adversarial Defeat,” she recited, checking her cuticles. “So long as the Tyrant draws breath, the Champions are bound to the White Path. Total abjuration of the flesh. Renunciation of the vine. Absolute sobriety.”

The Assassin stopped rubbing his sore wrist. He looked at the Rogue. The Rogue looked at the Priestess.

“Try that one more time, but with smaller words,” the Assassin said slowly.

She tapped her staff on the ground. “Until they die, no drinking. No gambling. No intimate contact of any kind.”

The Rogue’s jaw dropped. “Even hand stuff?”

The Assassin paused. “Are we sure it wasn’t metaphorical?”

She shook her head sadly.

The Paladin again looked to his team for cues.

The Rogue looked sick.

The Assassin was staring at his own hands with a look of profound betrayal.

The Priestess, of course, looked delighted.

Then he looked at the Villains.

They were sitting cross-legged in a circle, sharing a bag of trail mix. Dave was carefully picking out the raisins and stacking them in a little pile, because Gary found them “texturally challenging.”

The Paladin stared at Dave’s clear, hydrated skin. He noted Gary’s excellent, stress-free posture.

If given the chance, they were absolutely, 100% going to live for another forty years.

The Paladin’s hand paused in unbuckling his greaves, stopped. Slowly, mechanically, he fastened the buckle back into place. He reached down and picked up his sword belt, dusting off the obsidian grit.

He cleared his throat. It was a loud, ugly sound.

“Now that I think about it,” the Paladin said, his voice dropping an octave, trying to find that boom he had five minutes ago. “Are we…are we sure we can just walk away? I mean, morally speaking?”

He drew his sword. It felt heavy, but not as heavy as a lifetime of celibacy. He pointed the tip at the raisin-eating duo and Stuart, who seemed to be logging the event.

“Jeff would say,” he declared, “justice is not a suggestion.”

“They did do some terrible stuff,” said the Rogue, his hand drifting casually back toward his filled pouches.

“Evil things,” echoed the Assassin, who was a subject matter expert.

The Paladin tightened his grip, the leather creaking. He took a menacing step toward the trail-mix circle. “For the crimes of genocide, arson, and dog-murder, I condemn you to—”

CRACK.

The butt of the Priestess’s staff hit the obsidian floor, the sound echoing like a gunshot. She stepped between the blade and the bureaucrats, her face glowing with a beatific, annoying light.

“—to a lifetime of penance!” she finished for him, spreading her arms wide.

The Paladin stumbled, his momentum halted. “What?”

“Death is too easy, Brother,” the Priestess declared, her voice trembling with holy fervor. “Mere execution releases them from their guilt. True justice—Restorative Justice—demands they remain here. In this mortal coil. This is what Jeff, our penitent, would have wanted.”

The Assassin whispered something about Jeff being a dead traitorous bastard so quietly only the Rogue, who nodded, heard.

She turned to the terrified villains, beaming. “You shall not die. You shall live. You will trudge back to the Western Reach. You will lay every brick you burned. You will sow every field you salted. You will work until your hands are raw and your backs are broken to repair what you destroyed.”

She turned back to the Paladin, eyes shining. “It is the perfect punishment. They will spend the next twenty years in servitude to the light. And we…we shall remain pure, watching over them as guardians. Is that not beautiful?”

The Paladin held his breath, praying to every war god he knew, even the ones not in the light—a bit extra to them, really—that the Villain would spit in her face. He needed a fireball, a curse, any reason to swing.

Instead, the Villain clapped his hands together, his face crumpling with relief.

“Oh, thank the gods,” the Villain gasped, tears streaming down his face. “I was drowning in guilt! I was just about to ask Dave to throw me off the spire in hopes that would appease, even a bit, all we’ve wronged. Your way sounds much better!”

“I love lifting heavy things!” Dave the Enforcer chimed in, stepping forward eagerly, rumbling the very floor in his excitement. “I can carry, like, six logs at once. I’ve always wanted to build a gazebo. Can we build a gazebo?”

“We can build several,” Stuart added, already clicking his pen and scribbling furiously on a fresh sheet of parchment. “I’ve just run the numbers on our assets. If we liquidate the dungeon equipment and the obsidian throne—which is hell on the lower back anyway—we can fully fund the reconstruction efforts. Plus interest. The cost of fixing the average villagers’ teeth is a serious financial undertaking, but we can offer a comprehensive dental plan.”

The Villain grabbed the Priestess’s hand, shaking it with both of his. “Thank you! Bless you! We won't let you down! In memory of Jeff we'll even start today! Right now! Dave, get the shovel!”

“On it, Boss!”

The Paladin did the math. Or tried to. He wasn’t particularly good at numbers—he usually left that to the Rogue, then had the Priestess double-check the work while the Assassin watched to see if the Rogue got squirrelly.

Rebuilding a village took time. Rebuilding villages with gazebos, proper irrigation, and a comprehensive dental plan took decades.

The Villain wasn’t young, but he looked healthy. His forty-year estimate from earlier still took. But getting a good look at Dave up close? He was younger, and the boy ate his veggies. He probably ate other people’s share, just to be considerate. He could easily live even longer.

Fifty years.

The Vow echoed in his skull. As long as they draw breath.

Fifty years of cold showers. Fifty years of warm milk. Fifty years of the Priestess lecturing him about the spiritual benefits of oat-based diets.

The Paladin looked at the Villain, who was beaming with the joy of a man promised fifty years of honest labor. He looked at Dave, who was effectively immortal and doing celebratory lunges. Stuart was there, which was probably the most the man could achieve in any given moment.

Fifty years.

The Paladin slowly turned his head. He caught the Rogue’s eye. The smaller man’s face was drained of color. The Assassin was trembling, his hand drifting toward his belt.

The Paladin closed his eyes. He thought about the burden of command. Leadership wasn’t about being good. It was about making the hard choices. The terrible choices.

He opened his eyes. The Rogue and the Assassin were wavering, unsure. It is common for a good man to struggle with the weight of a Great Act—a necessary act.

Stuart stepped forward, blissfully unaware. He pulled a freshly inked scroll from his pouch—a binding contract of peace, reparation, and dental coverage.

“If you’ll just sign here,” Stuart said, his voice light and helpful. “We can notarize the cessation of hostilities immediately.”

He reached into his pocket. The Assassin flinched. The Rogue’s hand tightened on his crossbow. The Paladin’s eyes widened, scanning for the threat.

Stuart withdrew a black, metallic cylinder.

The sun caught the silver clip, flashing a momentary glint of steel.

“WEAPON!”

The Paladin rammed into Stuart, ragdolling the stick of a man across the obsidian.

“Betrayal!” the Paladin bellowed.

“P-pen!” Stuart stammered, choking on a mouthful of blood, holding the plastic tube up like a shield.

“Pretend? They were pretending!” the Rogue screamed, diving behind a stone pillar. “It’s a summon trigger!”

“Meh-dee-um... poynt! Bloo... ink!” the clerk gasped, desperately trying to clarify.

The Priestess stepped back, wary. “Wait, what is he saying?”

“The trigger word,” the Assassin said.

He ended Stuart’s life with a single, efficient motion.

“We had one of those?” the Villain asked, frozen in confusion.

“No, everyone calm down,” Dave pleaded, hands raised. “That was just common office supp—”

Thwack.

A crossbow bolt sprouted from Dave’s neck.

“SUPPRESSING FIRE!” the Rogue shrieked.

###

They stepped back over the jagged remains of the iron doors, picking their way through the twisted wreckage.

The corridor beyond was cool and quiet. They passed Jeff’s body. They were too tired to bring him back with them, but the Priestess insisted on at least administering Last Rites before they continued on. The Paladin frowned; he didn’t remember Jeff looking quite so terrified when they left him.

The Priestess walked with her head down, her staff tapping a mournful rhythm on the flagstones.

“I feel like such a fool,” she choked out, fighting a losing battle against the tremble in her voice. “I really thought they had turned over a new leaf. He sounded so passionate about building that gazebo.”

The Paladin wiped a speck of red—Dave’s blood—off his cheek. Even with a bolt in his neck, the Enforcer hadn’t gone down easy. The Paladin didn’t look at the floor. He looked at the Assassin. The Assassin looked at the Rogue.

“A terrible shame,” the Rogue said, his voice thick with a gravitas that didn’t reach his greedy little eyes. “But that's the hard truth of the world, Sister. Some folks will look you right in the eye and lie just to get what they want.”

“You back a man into a corner, threaten his future…he will do anything to make it stop,” the Assassin added. He adjusted his gloves with a sharp, satisfied snap. “Desperation makes monsters of us all.”

“We did what had to be done,” the Paladin said. “Fought for a world worth living in.”