My name is Patrick. I recently turned 16. I like lasers, swords, dragons, spaceships, and peanut butter sandwiches. I'm also the king of a country on a world that has everything but the latter. It's mildly complicated.
I had a really, really bad childhood. I lost my parents young and, consequently, I was juggled back and forth between family members that didn't really want or care about me. I was verbally and physically abused at home, bullied at school, and didn't have much hope for a future. Life sucked. Bad. I didn't want it anymore.
Thus, I found myself high up on a water tower early one morning. Why? You know why. I was an inch away from certain doom when something hit me in the head. Curiosity overcame existential pain and I climbed down to check it out. It was a key made of silver, and it fit perfectly in any lock. It opened a portal in the doorframe that took me to a faraway world. Little was I to know that I, perpetual nobody/misfit, was suddenly King of this grand new land of beauty. I kind of sucked at it, but it was a sink or swim situation.
You see long ago in the past, like Bible days, God brought a righteous duderino named Gershom to this place. Gershom set up shop. He found some natives that were surprisingly humanoid but super primitive. He spent his whole life whipping them into a civilization, teaching them right and wrong, all that good stuff. Eventually, he was on death's door and had no heir.
"What do I do?" he asked God. "What happens to these people I spent my whole life teaching and protecting?"
God gave a non-committal shrug and mumbled something that might have resembled, "idunno."
"I mean, I guess they're just going to go back to what they were," God said. "They're just kind of here, you know."
"So all my life's work for nothing?" Gershom whined?
God stroked his beard thoughtfully.
"You're right," He said. "Tell you what, since you don't have an heir I'll make a Covenant with you."
Gershom nodded. "Sounds good, what's it entail?"
God spread his hands.
"It's like this: these savages don't have the knowledge of good and evil that your ancestors Adam and Eve did. They just don't have the capacity to understand all that. So what I'm going to do is bring someone over here once in a lifetime just like I did you. Paragons of virtue and righteousness, natural leaders, to take your place as King over this land."
Gershom thought about it.
"What's the catch?" he said.
"The catch is that you asked for this, so it's on you," God said. "I'm going to give them the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and all of their actions are on the shoulders of you and your successors."
"I'm certain they'll pick the just path in life," Gershom said with hella confidence. "What could possibly go wrong?"
What indeed, because several generations later, a duderonomy called the Necromancer literally popped out of nowhere and incited one of the tribes to wage war against the rest of them. He had a magical sword that could cut through basically anything.
Exasperated, God made some swords of similar nature and gave them to some heroes down below.
"You guys are going to have to deal with this yourselves," He said. "It's part of the Covenant with Gershom. I'll chip in when it's necessary, but this is your fight. I'm busy on Earth."
So after all that, and with great effort and sacrifice, the Necromancer dies, the rebel tribe was exiled and their name stricken from history.
History was good. Peace, prosperity, and technological innovation like you've never seen happened. True to His word, once a generation God sent a young man who was the very definition of piety and righteousness. Every King in the history of PulchraGea was a saint and paragon of mental and spiritual health.
That's where I came in. I was none of those things. I mean, I wasn't a bad guy; I didn't kick puppies or vivisect squirrels in the forest for fun. I was distant, lonely, incredibly intelligent but massively unconfident. I had trust issues, constant depression and crippling self-doubt. I didn't know what love was, or the difference between servitude and slavery. I didn't want this job with the same passion that I didn't want to be born. I didn't know how to talk to people. I was kind of an insensitive jerk, to be honest. I wasn't even a hero in my own mind.
When I came to PulchraGea, at first I was excited for my first taste of Real Freedom®. I didn't know that my arrival would spark a countdown to the death of the current King. When I found out what my lot in life was, I was angry and resentful because I didn't ask to be king. People were resentful of me because my arrival meant the eminent death of someone they loved. I wasn't fit or ready to rule, so I was given a test: to find the long lost Palace of the Kings.
This was easier said than done because the only way to reach it was by finding seven interdimensional gates and their corresponding keystones in order to poof to it. And each key was guarded by a spiritual test so that only the real Chosen One can open it. I had to learn as I went. I had to learn to let go of myself, to love others, not to be afraid of the darkness within myself but to fight it. I had to learn that I'm not strong enough alone. I had to learn that I'm strong, but that the people who love me make me stronger still, and that God's authority is strongest of all.
We discovered that lost city, and made it so that the gates can be used to travel anywhere for the whole land, and that maybe friendship and love were the real adventure all along. The end. Happily ever after. Cut. Fín.
And you're holding the sequel in your hand right now (or alternatively reading this in the future and/or alternate timeline where lasers beam it directly into your eyeballs, whatever), thus I'd bet money you know approximately how sarcastic I'm being right now.
