The armies drew up. On the side of Very Evil stood ten million goblins, four million orcs, a million trolls, and ten thousand assorted wraiths spectres and general nuisances. Almost all of them were heftily informed by racist stereotypes in what the author would avow to his grave was a meaningless coincidence.
On the side of Incredibly Good were sixty nameless goons an (attractively yet not actually) injured protagonist and a gormless sidekick.
“Oh no oh dear oh gosh,” wailed the gormless sidekick, comically doing a little jig of dismay. “We’re doomed and I’m very frightened because I’m here to express the audience’s less-than-flattering feelings towards themselves aw shuuuuucks.”
“Fear not, small, stupid creature, whom I lower myself to call ‘friend’ and thereby express humility (one of my many virtues),” extolled the protagonist. His leg was bandaged but this functionally did not matter, and he would never suffer sepsis in a million years. “Right is on our side. We’re doomed, but only in a way that will never actually present consequences to us and only makes our cause sexier. Chin up, you’ll see your pointlessly mundane home and marry a not unreasonably attractive spouse before the book’s done. Look! Already the enemy has begun their futile assault! See how they swarm and gnash their teeth in a frenzy of despair. We’ve got them right where we want them: two chapters from the epilogue.”
“Oh nooooo,” whined the gormless sidekick. “I wish I could shit myself.”
“Bodily functions beyond bleeding are Not Allowed,” said the protagonist. “Don’t be gross. Now let’s nobly charge into battle! Forget about my leg, it’s not important anymore and doesn’t exist. FOR INEVITABLE VICTORY!”
“FOR HIS INEVITABLE VICTORY,” shouted the nameless goons, and they all sallied forth and the fury and passion of their writing was such that they each killed a hundred thousand enemies each before totally dying in an abstract and unspecified way that was undoubtedly very heroic yet completely unworthy of note, leaving only the protagonist and the gormless sidekick.
“Golly jeepers,” shrieked the gormless sidekick, tripping over a sword and accidentally murdering a troll eight hundred times their body weight, “I’m so relatably terrified and powerless! This is definitely how someone who doesn’t know how to fight would acquit themselves,” they added, waving their sword frantically and spitting four goblins at once on it.
“No fear!” shouted the protagonist heroically, somehow having the lungpower to enunciate clearly while fighting an arbitrarily large army all by himself. He coughed lightly and a hundred orcs exploded into giblets. “We’re all alone, but that just means our mandated triumph shall be all the sweeter in our mouths and our audience’s minds. Gird your loins a little; I’m about to suffer a cliffhanger. Aaaargh,” he said, as a single, cowardly, repulsive, verminous, wretched, pathetic, worthless, foul, awful, treacherous foe snuck up on him and unfairly and actually hit him, the cur.
“Oh noooooo,” screamed the gormless sidekick. “Now I’ve got no choice but to become arbitrarily competent for thirty seconds, a thing which I will foreverafter deny! Rar! Hurr! Arr!” they snorted, and with a brief onflux of temporary drama butchered foes for a good five minutes straight without rest over the heroically swooning and prone form of the protagonist, whose helpless yet spirited defensive posture gutted a hundred thousand more.
“I have excellent news,” said the protagonist, engaging in a futile duel against the wizard-emperor of all dead things with one hand and slapping away all his lieutenants, servants, and bodyguards with the other. “We’re on the brink of defeat and death!”
“Criminy!” whinged the gormless sidekick.
“Yes! Our triumph is most definitely imminent now. Watch as I seem to be in actual danger! Look, look, his sword’s almost touching me! It’s almost touching me! Look how brave and stoic I am as it appears that I am almost overcome! I bet you’d be pissing yourself if you were allowed to, wouldn’t you?”
“Yesssssssssssss,” hissed the gormless sidekick, legs frantically scissoring like fucking mantises.
A giant and horrible sound smacked the eardrums of everyone present.
“Ah, there’s our dues ex machina,” said the protagonist with satisfaction. He sheathed his sword. “Now we just have to watch! Will they dissolve into vapour or crumble into stone and dust or simply run around like chickens with their heads cut off? Who knows! Who cares! Men, execute them all. From this day forwards only people that look like me – and by me, I mean the author – are permitted to exist. Kill ‘em all and let the editors sort ‘em out!”
“Yes sir!” said the nameless goons, or maybe they didn’t. Who cared about them, and if they were alive or dead or said anything or nothing at all?
Anyway they killed every last member of the species opposing them or maybe they didn’t who the hell knows. But the important thing was that they wiped them away as a threat.
“I’m exultant, yet nobly concerned over the fate of my men,” said the protagonist, archly furrowing his brow but not in a way that didn’t make him look sexy. “This means I get to wear the crown next chapter. Gormless sidekick, I’d like you to be the token member of the crowd I pretend to defer to as a show of my good faith and kindness.”
“Aw shucks,” said the gormless sidekick. “I was really hoping to just go on back to my quaint little hovel that reminds the author of the lower classes of his childhood, when people showed you a bit of respect. I’m far too simple and stupid to ever want anything more.”
“And so it shall be,” the protagonist said, tousling their hair. “Don’t worry: nothing is allowed to change from this point onwards. There’s some mopping up and a coronation and so on, but there aren’t allowed to be any more problems ever again. The right person’s in charge now, the evil monsters that pretended to be people who didn’t look like me (and who I assume our reader to be) are totally exterminated to the last child-who-doesn’t-actually-exist-to-avoid-the-implications, and the vague spectre of a monstrous tyrant who desires to control everyone is now dispersed, allowing the happy beaming sunshine world of a noble leader who wisely guides everyone into the future where everything is as he pleases to assert itself. Now pucker up and kiss my ass.”
“Mmm! Tastes like cherries, your highness.”
“That it does, gormless sidekick. That it does.”