Demon who can't believe they've been made to do something so beneath them.
The weeks passed in a blur.
Scouring for reagents, researching the methods, buying a slew of brittle swords made by clumsy apprentices, testing the enchantments on them, triple checking, quadruple checking, etching the runes into steel until Lunaeris could do it in her sleep, commissioning the final swords from a master blacksmith, commissioning scabbards from a master leatherworker-
Stealing kisses, under cover of night, when she could.
These things all took time. Time that seemed to be closing in on Lunaeris as she worked, as the unbreakable strands of fate tightened around her neck like a noose. Her hero was to save her when the demon king attacked, and as she worked to create that hero that attack grew closer, and for all of her adventuring aspirations, Lunaeris was afraid.
The roads weren't safe anymore. Monsters lurked in the wilds, cultists gathered in the shadows, imps flew through the night skies.
One of her sister's husbands had actually died, crushed by a behemoth that had taken dozens to fell, but she was positive. The prophecy was about her.
Things were getting worse because of her. The timing was too perfect to be coincidental, things had gotten too bad too fast. She dreaded what might happen when she finished the swords.
But she finished them regardless. It was too late to stop now.
"Princess?"
"Hm?"
"You've just been sitting there for a while now."
Lunaeris blinked, no longer lost in thought.
"Ah." She said. "I suppose I have."
"Is something wrong?" Kallixenia asked, kneeling beside her.
"I was just thinking-" Lunaeris said, looking at the blades she had spent so much time on. "These really won't do. What was I thinking, doing the enchantments myself? I'll have the blacksmith make new ones, and get an experienced enchanter-"
"Lunaeris..." Her knight said softly.
"It'll take a few more weeks, but-"
"Lunaeris."
She was being ridiculous, she knew she was. Enchanting was mostly a matter of materials, not experience, and she had money to throw around. The swords were perfect.
"...The kingdom doesn't have a few more weeks, does it?" She asked, dejected.
"I don't think it does, Princess."
Lunaeris sighed and flopped over into Kallixenia's lap.
"If I had known this would happen, I would never have come up with this stupid plan." She said.
"And if you hadn't, a different hero would show up and it would happen regardless. You didn't make the prophecy, Lunaeris." The paladin said, running her fingers through her hair. "It's not your fault."
Lunaeris grumbled.
"Alright, take them then. Let all hell break loose. I'm ready." She lied.
"In a moment, Princess. My betrothed requires comfort." Kallixenia said, lifting Lunaeris up to sit in her lap so she could cuddle her.
"And your betrothed is more important than your duty, my knight?" The princess asked, cracking a tiny smile.
"Oh, always, Princess."
It was impossible to stay upset in the gentle giant's arms, she was such a relaxing presence now that Lunaeris could finally stop fretting about her feelings.
They sat like that for what must have been an hour, even though it was suspicious for Kallixenia to stay in her room that long. She would keep her safe, she knew this. There was nothing for her to fear.
"Right. Let's get on with it."
Kallixenia strapped the swords to her lower back, and Lunaeris attuned the enchantments to her.
"That's it?" The knight asked.
"That's it." Lunaeris said. "Shall we take a walk, see if I get assassinated?"
"We will take a walk, and you will be fine. I swear it."
The two strolled through the gardens, and Lunaeris was filled with a mixture of dread and hope.
She wanted to hold Kallixenia's hand as they walked, she wanted to love her and not care who knew it, but she couldn't, not yet. Not until the demon king tried to kill her.
And he would fail, they all knew he would fail, but there was a wide gap between dead and unharmed. She was nervous, this was so much further beyond anything she had faced before. The waiting was agonizing.
She didn't have to wait long.
"Help! Anybody!" Came a scream from elsewhere in the gardens.
"Princess, stay behind me." Her knight ordered, and the two of them made for the disturbance. Lunaeris knew she meant that in a stay out of the fight way, after all, it wasn't as if she could stop him according to the prophecy.
But she was going to blast that fucker. Nothing in the prophecy said she couldn't get a few good hits in. They rounded a corner and-
Oh, come the fuck on.
It was one of her handmaidens, and not just any one of her handmaidens, it was the one that flirted with Kallie! Honestly, what were the fucking odds?
The girl ran into Kallixenia's arms, and Lunaeris seethed because she couldn't just throw herself at HER knight in public and now this FLOOZY was-
Well, being attacked by fiends is what she was doing.
Still, thin ice.
The paladin swept the girl behind her, where she promptly scrambled to hide behind Lunaeris, which was honestly more embarrassing than it was cowardly because she didn't make for a very effective hiding place.
"Princess! We have to run!" She squealed. "The demons are here!"
"I can see that." Lunaeris said, perhaps a little too harshly. The girl's only crime was having a one sided crush on the girlfriend that she explicitly kept secret she was dating. "I think I would rather stick with the giant knight, if it's all the same to you."
"D-Do you think that's safer?" She squeaked, looking around. "I'll stay too."
Great.
Kallixenia, for her part, was the very picture of a hero. A trio of imps dive-bombed her and she cleaved them out of the sky in one brutal blow, her radiant blade (she was using the light one, even though Lunaeris liked the fire one better) obliterating their physical forms as they were banished back to hell.
"Oh!" The handmaiden gasped, blushing as she watched in awe. "She's rather impressive, isn't she Princess?"
Lunaeris held her tongue, not only because she wasn't supposed to be in love with her knight but also because she wasn't mad, because this girl could look all she wanted and it wouldn't change that Kallie loved her, not this SHREW-
"She is..." She said, her tone carefully measured. "Quite impressive."
A devil tried to break away from the fight to go after the two of them, and was swiftly run through for his efforts as the paladin flitted around the battlefield.
"And those arms." The girl said dreamily. Lunaeris fantasized about having her fired, and arrested, and publicly executed.
"I wouldn't know." She hissed. "I don't notice such things."
Kallixenia had them on the ropes, she was currently using those magnificent arms to shield bash one of the fiends in the face so hard his horns shattered.
"She's practically perfect." The handmaiden continued, infuriatingly. "If only she wasn't so gullible."
And then Lunaeris had a sword sticking out of her chest.
It... hadn't killed her. It didn't even hurt. The wound shone brilliantly, and as her attacker withdrew her blade it simply... vanished.
"Ugh, are you fucking kidding me?" Said her... handmaiden? "I pose as your servant for months waiting to get between you and the angel, and you don't even fucking die?"
Lunaeris didn't understand what had just happened to her, but she did understand that she suddenly had an incredibly useful outlet for all that jealousy. She spun on her heel and drove her palm into the assassin's chest, a wave of flame searing the flesh from her bones.
"Ooh, not that easily Princess." The flaming husk said, dropping to it's knees as a figure formed out of the smoke billowing off it. "Neither of us wins tonight, but this is only the beginning. I'll be back with a new body before you know it!"
The smoke dissipated in the wind, and the wispy figure was gone. Lunaeris put her hand to her chest in disbelief. She was unharmed. Why was she unharmed?
"Kallie?" She called out, turning to survey the results of the battle.
And there she found her paladin, slumped over amongst the ashes of the fiends.
"Kallie!"
She rushed to her side, grabbing her hand. She didn't know what had happened, she had been beating them so effortlessly, what-
"I'm sorry, Princess." Kallixenia wheezed. "I didn't keep you safe."
"Don't say that! HELP! I NEED A HEALER!!!" Lunaeris screamed, guiding her knight onto her back as she lost consciousness. A huge bloodstain spread across her chest, blossoming from-
From her stab wound. From her stab wound.
And as Lunaeris wept and screamed for help, she understood for the first time what it meant to guard someone with one's life.
