Meliodas watched in horror as Zeldris lifted Elizabeth's limp form over his shoulder before jumping and disappearing into a higher level of the castle. He felt his demon mark burning into his forehead, his eyes were surly black, but he needed his power now. As much as he didn't want to kill his brothers, he didn't want Elizabeth to die either. It was time he took care of them for good and get his princess back. He quickly grabbed Estarossa's ankle, unable to feel the pain in his chest. With force he threw Estarossa away from him.

"Yeah Captain!"

"We need to get Elizabeth back! We Need to get her back before..." Meliodas trailed off but it didn't matter. His comrades knew what he was thinking. They needed to get her back before she was killed.

With immense force Diane punched through one of the Commandments before promptly summoning many great earth spears. Her opponent was then hit by chastiefol, the many small daggers flying through the dark body.

Estarossa advanced on Meliodas again at a speed faster than any human would be able to maintain. Meliodas countered just as fast, tossing his brother aside before advancing on him and punching him through a nearby brick wall. The remains of the castle shuddered as if it might collapse.

"Careful, don't forget your little girlfriend is up there." Estarossa chastised. "If this castle comes down she will certainly die. Well not that it matters. But by now she is probably already dying anyways."

"Captain you need to go to her." Ban stated, taking stance next to Meliodas.

"Yeah, we can handle him." Merlin stated from behind Ban, also preparing to fight Estarossa. Apparently their enemies were gone as well. Meliodas wondered how they were able to take out members of the ten commandments. It was almost like it was too easy for them.

"No, I need to do this." The dragon sin stated, standing firm.

"No, you need to save Elizabeth." Merlin stated while creating a magic prison that held Estarossa back.

Meliodas shook his head and lunged at the trapped Estarossa. Before he could make it to the cage he was thrown to the side. He looked up to see Ban standing over him as he heard Elizabeth cry out from the top of the 'castle'. "Let us handle this, you go to the Princess." Meliodas couldn't argue his comrades any longer. At least for now Elizabeth was still alive but it wouldn't take long to kill her, she was a human, and therefore relatively fragile.

As he thought of Elizabeth he felt the demon blood receding, he knew the clan symbol burned into his forehead was now gone and his eyes were their more human brilliant green. For a moment he smiled, thinking of her effect on him, until she screamed out again. His blood boiled again as he bounded into the room the scream came from.

Immediately he lost his breath. There standing at the far side of the room was Zeldris, looking out a window towards the battle ground. Next to him in a frail heap on the ground was his Princess. She didn't have any physical injuries that he could tell, and her chest was still rising and falling so she was still breathing. She also wasn't unconscious, her eyes still somewhat open. She wasn't herself though, she didn't look at Meliodas at all. "Elizabeth!" Meliodas called out, gaining his brothers attention but still getting no response from the princess.

Zeldris turned slowly and stared at Meliodas in disbelief. Silent tears made their way down his pale cheeks. "How..."

Meliodas didn't answer, only glancing at his brother for a moment before his gaze fell on her again. "How could you kill your own brother?!" Zeldris cried out, gaining a surprised look for Meliodas. Did Ban and Merlin really defeat Estarossa? On their own?

"What do you mean?" He asked, still watching the princess through the corner of his eye as she cried out again. Nothing had touched her, he didn't see any of the usual demon tendrils around her. There was no indication of anything near her yet she still cried out.

"He's dead! It must have been you! You are the only one powerful enough." Zeldris sobbed. Though he looked like he was in emotional pain he sounded more angry than anything.

"I didn't kill Estarossa."

"So you guys figured it out then..."

"What? That you don't have your full power?" Meliodas was putting it together as he was saying it. Everything made so much more sense. Elizabeth didn't need to seal them away and sacrifice herself after all. They were weaker than in their usual forms.

"Of course we would be weaker. You try going without food for three thousand years!" Zeldris shouted, all signs of his anguish now gone, replaced entirely with anger. Meliodas didn't flinch, all he could focus on was Elizabeth. He just wanted to run to her and take her in his arms and take her back to the pub, where she was safe.

"Is that why you are killing the druids Zeldris?"

Zeldris began to laugh maniacally. "Fraudin told us about the goddesses. When was the last time they came to earth?" Zeldris laughed again. It was a rhetorical question. The last time Meliodas had seen a goddess on the earth was when they sealed away the other demons. Unless... He thought of Elizabeth, of her strength, even for a Druid.

"Anyways without the goddesses here the only being strong enough to lock us away is the Druids. So We figured we better take them out before they get a chance to lock us up!" Zeldris laughed again. Meliodas could tell this wasn't the brother he grew up with, this man was crazy.

"We need to ensure our race is never locked away again Brother! Don't you see that?! You don't know what it was like for those three thousand years! The only way to protect the demon race is to wipe away that Goddess blood. We need to destroy the Apostles to the Goddesses!"

Meliodas hadn't taken his eyes off of Elizabeth's frail form lying beside his little brother's feet. He felt the firey demon blood coursing though his veins as he examined her again. Zeldris was clearly more interested in talking and Meliodas needed to decide how fast this battle needed to end. Her face was like ash with none of her usual glow. Her eyes were just barely open, but she wasn't looking at anything. She would get this pained expression across her face every so often. "What did you do to her." Meliodas hissed through his clenched teeth. He tried breathing deeply. He knew he needed to calm down. If he lost control now, she would die. As would the rest of the sins. He wouldn't be the one to kill her.

"She will only suffer a little, while the poison eats away at her goddess blood." Meliodas' eyes widened. It was eating at her blood? He had suspected for a while that she was more goddess than druid, she was too strong, but enough to do this. His vision was beginning to blur. His wrath was becoming too much. Zeldris continued sounding bored now. "Hopefully she is more human than we suspect, otherwise she will die. Well she might still die... who knows she might-"

Meliodas couldn't hear anymore. He was losing control fast. He needed to stop Zeldris now before he lost all control. He lunged towards his brother, throwing all of his weight behind his fist. Zeldris blocked and whispered " You'll kill her yourself big brother." Before pushing Meliodas down into the rocky ground below. Meliodas couldn't see anymore when he sat up, he felt his injuries healing and he attacked on blind instinct. 'please Elizabeth, be safe.' Then everything went black.

"El-Elizabeth..." He heard a weak cough as he came back to and realized quickly that the voice he heard was his own. Glancing around he knew he was back in Merlin's workshop, laid out on the shabby couch he had spent so much time on planning their next move. He was so stupid. He had failed. Elizabeth was still injured. Or dead. He tried lifting his head but found his entire body incredibly heavy.

"Ah Captain, you are awake." Meliodas turned his head following Merlin's voice, but he didn't see her. Instead his eyes fell on the table and on it his beautiful princess. She looked like she was already dead. His eyes began to water as his world seemed to shatter. "She isn't dead..." Merlin whispered, bringing him back. "You didn't kill her." She reassured.

Meliodas forced himself to stand, through the pain he stood and took Elizabeth's hand. His found his own right hand completely wrapped in bandages. He wasn't even sure he wanted to know what had happened. By some miracle he didn't kill Elizabeth. But she wasn't unharmed. Her skin looked like it was melting. She was clammy and sweating, yet also shivering. Her hand was like an ice block in his. She was the colour of ash and her lips were dry and cracked. Her usually bright blue eyes were a dull unseeing blue, filled with un-shed tears.

"What happened?" He asked quietly, as much as he didn't want to hear it he knew he would find out eventually.

"There were no casualties on our side. The entire demon race has been wiped out. Well except for you of course." Bittersweet news, but eventually there will be no one living that knew his true nature. He could go on pretending to be human again in a couple hundred years. "Edinburgh was destroyed completely, along with the remaining ten commandments."

"How did you..."

"Survive?" She questioned, clearly tired, earning a simple nod from Meliodas. "Myself and King fused our magic to form a barrier around our group, you came dangerously close to destroying that as well. King has retired with Ban to the fairy forest, to heal himself and his connections to the tree of Life."

"And her?" Meliodas asked, breathing a sigh of relief that everyone survived.

"I don't know how she survived, but you carried her out of it." Meliodas could vaguely remember it. He thought it was a dream. His vision was surrounded in darkness as he glided towards her frail body and lifted her into his arms. He didn't feel like himself and it was like a distant memory now.

"Is she in pain?" He whispered. Merlin glanced up at him, from the book she was looking at. Her expression was grim and tired. How long had this been going on? How much magical energy had Merlin used already?

"Its a poison. It seems to be thinning her blood, almost like water. I think it was from a plant from the demon homeland. But according to my sources it is used to destroy goddess blood..." She gestured towards the book she had put on her desk. "Did you know?"

Meliodas nodded absentmindedly, he had suspected for a while that Elizabeth was a goddess. He found it hard to draw his eyes away from Elizabeth but looked at the book anyways. There on the page was a picture of a plant he recognized from whe he was much younger. It grew everywhere in the demon homeland. He furrowed his brows before looking back at Elizabeth. "I know it. I've seen it before. Its not dangerous to the demons."

Suddenly Elizabeth arched her back and cried out in pain. Her breathing became heavy for a moment then she collapsed back into a limp form on the table. Meliodas thought he heard his own name in her cries, as if she was calling out to him, so he squeezed her hand. However she did not return the gesture. Her eyes had closed as if she were sleeping, her breathing was so shallow she might have been.

"It may not be dangerous to you but it is to her. It is slowly eating away at her... Goddess blood." Merlin stated grimly. "Unless something is done she will die. Either from the loss of her blood or from the pain to her human frame."

"What can we do?" Meliodas whispered still looking at the girl below him.

Merlin was silent for a while. Meliodas stared down at the princess wondering how he had saved her. Or did she save him? He wasn't sure. She looked so peaceful and ever beautiful, even with the sweat beading on her forehead. Meliodas heard shuffling across the room and he realized that Merlin had walked away to stare out the window.

It was dusk, Meliodas could tell from the pinkish light that flowed into the room from the quiet outside. He wasn't sure where Hawk's mom had them, he would have thought closer to Leones so the knights could go home and be treated but as he looked down at his princess he hoped that wasn't the case. He wasn't ready to face the King, especially if the worst happened. The silence in the room was growing heavy, the longer Merlin was stumped the more pain Elizabeth would be in.

The dragon sin pictured her bright smile, her head slightly to the side as she beamed at him in his mind. He wasn't sure why, maybe because the universe was telling him that it was over, he would never know, but he thought of a future with the princess. He thought of the pair of them forever tending to the Boar's Hat. Diane and King visiting them after their honeymoon. Escanor finally scoring Merlin. Himself, marrying Elizabeth, with everyone in the kingdom there, so he could show them once and for all that she was all his. Children, that would probably look older than him at ten, not that he minded. A boy like him and a little girl that looked just like her mother. All the stupid sentimental shit that he had seen the humans go through again and again.

Meliodas could swear the universe was testing him or something. After years of not caring about love, watching the humans go through it again and again... After three thousand years of it he finally gets his true love, only for her to be torn away, twice. He squeezed Elizabeth's hand. 'I won't let you go anywhere. I'll do whatever it takes.'

Elizabeth arched her back again, her whole body shook as she screamed out in pain. Meliodas glanced over at Merlin, the sun had set behind her entirely, so at least half an hour had passed maybe more. Merlin looked back at the princess with a frown.

"They have been getting closer together, her bursts. I don't think she has much longer."

"Were you able to think of anything to do?" Meliodas asked grimly, suspecting the answer would be no. If she had thought of anything she would have said it. He looked up at her when she didn't respond and found her looking at him grimly now. "What is it?"

"I do have one theory..." She started slowly, moving across the room towards the pari and resting a hand on Elizabeth's clammy arm. "But I have no way of testing it or knowing for sure that it will work."

"Can it save her?"

"I don't know. Its just a theory. But possibly. I've never worked with a goddess before, even as partial as she might be." Meliodas could tell from the tone of her voice that she was hesitant, unsure of whether or not she could even suggest it. That alone concerned him, but Elizabeth wouldn't last much longer. They couldn't think about it until tomorrow or whatever, she probably wouldn't make it through the night.

"And you can't think of anything else that might work?"

"I've already tried everything I know. You've been out for a few days. I assure you captain I haven't stopped trying that entire time."

He looked up at his companion now and took in her entire appearance. She had bags under her eyes, she looked completely worn. He noticed some food on the desk behind her untouched. It looked like Ban's handiwork, so it would have been left there before he left with King. "Thank you Merlin. Whatever you think might work for Elizabeth... I... I want you to do it."

"I'll need your help..."

"I'll do it." He whispered, his gaze falling back to the Princess. He stroked her face with his hand, pushing her bangs off of it, where they were matted to her skin from the sweat.

"I will need your demon blood."