“May the sea and the sky, the light and the dark, and all things between the seasons witness it: I declare you, O Great King of Devils, and you, O Champion of Light, to be wed, and the cycle of strife between you thusly dissolved. Embrace and be joyful!”
Those words still echoed in Diarmuid’s head as he rode along in the magic carriage Lloyd (his long-time rival, now short-time husband) had commissioned to whisk them both away to history’s least likely honeymoon. The wedding itself had felt like it took forever to be done with, and given how it had been attended by both representatives of the Dread Multitude and a whole slew of heroes alike it was a wonder that no fights had broken out. Peaceful ceremony or no, his nerves were shot; save for a few nibbles of rosemary bread and the traditional handful of fruit from the wedding cornucopia he hadn’t had anything to eat all day, and his anxious stomach didn’t feel like it was going to change its mind any time soon. At least he was guaranteed a week of not having to talk to anyone else but Lloyd. It wasn’t perfect, but it’d do.
How had they managed to get away with everything so far? The idea was nonsense if given even half a moment’s thought: he, the enemy of the whole of the world, who a mere few months ago was busy trying to conquer and/or destroy it again, was now legally wed to Lloyd, the most recent reincarnation of the Champion of Light, themselves the one whose job was to go stick a sword in the Great King (sometimes Queen) of Devils whenever said monarch showed up again. A conflict literally as old as recorded history didn’t just go away because its star players decided to shrug their shoulders and go retire to a cabin somewhere, and yet that was exactly what everyone was willing to believe. People wanted it to be true. Diarmuid, who was tired beyond imagining of the cycle, would gladly let them believe if it meant he could do something else with himself other than causing a ruckus until he was inevitably slain.
Opposites attract! was the cloying slogan of the day. Not that Diarmuid could blame them; Lloyd made for a fine figure of a hero, given how he was more or less what you got when you stuffed a silver-haired sunbeam into a suit of armor and didn’t stop it from wearing ridiculous sunglasses everywhere. Said glorious visage was the antipode of Diarmuid’s own; he’d been permitted to keep to his preferred color scheme of black, gray, and rich purples, and no one had complained about the bracelets with the spikes on them or the big horned skull he’d crammed over his traditional matrimonial flower crown, so it probably could have been a lot worse. At least no one had expected him to wear a tux.