There was a city the size of a street corner, and a man who its people gave everything to.
Citizens tumbled away their lives in shoppes, bakeries, and service centers. It was a market below and quarters above. And atop was a peasant who did nothing but to who they gave everything to. He held massive power which was not his own, power which the citizens gave and kept so little of.
They envied him, but not enough. One day, people fell sick and hungry, and the man on top held no heed, no philanthropy. So, the people were angry. Angry and powerless to a man who had everything and did nothing.
Their hard times didn’t budge the man; even a small modicum of everything is infinite and at least heaping. So he sat comfortably.
People stopped coming in, quit buying and hoarded each coin. Stores quit opening, for nobody ever came. The money crawled to stillness. His was still heaping, but without them, without their dollar, his power evaporated.
All was even, but as times changed, things began to open, hope was cradled. And his power was restored.
They saw what had happened when everything stopped. And were powerless because they were doing nothing, but he’d always done nothing. And they’d given everything, more than it was worth, to him. So slowly this spread: and idea:
Without them, the people, he on top has nothing.
As far as they were concerned, they were everything yet had nothing, and the person who had done nothing held everything.
So they saw the sorcerer for the leach he’d hidden and saw his spell to which they’d given everything. They controlled their power and so vanquished him with it. By turning what he’d owned and held power over back to they themselves, who’d made it, every day made it all possible.
Soon enough, the man and his power evaporated, to what they’d always been: a figment.