Author's note: Here it is, the conclusion to this one shot collection. And this time for real. I should mention that, similar to the last entry, this chapter includes mentions of blood and violence, and the tone in general is rather bleak. Apologies for that. I know this is a bit of an odd note to end this collection on, but then again, this piece does take place during the Holy War, just like the first chapter. So, you could say, everything came full circle.

I hope you enjoyed the three new additions to this series! If you happen to like them, or if you want to scream at me for indulging in the suffering of the two cursed lovers, please tell me so in a comment. Nothing motivates a writer more than a review of their work.
A big thank you to everyone who made it this far.

Season Two Day Four: Broken
The horrors of the Holy War seem to know no end. Against the odds, Meliodas and Elizabeth charge into a confrontation with the orchestrators of the eternal battle: their parents.

Final Push

The dice had been rolled, fate decided, and all Meliodas had hoped for had revealed its true nature: an elusive hope. Intangible. Never real in the first place. The hope of a younger, more naïve man who had believed that two people could turn the tides of war. Could end the reign of the Demon King.

Now little more than smoke and ruins remained.

Blazing fires still smoldered in heaps across the forest. The acerbic stench of ashen plant life bit into Meliodas' nose, a taste that would haunt his nightmares in the centuries to come. The herald of the end.

The alliance had failed. Stigma, this brittle bond between Goddesses, Fairies, and Giants, was no more. Drole and Gloxinia had joined the enemy, Mael's blood stained the earth of some far away battlefield, and the Ten Commandments had sown gory vengeance for the Demons Ludociel had executed. The casualties surpassed the hundreds. More if one counted the Stigma members killed by Rou and the human traitors.

Meliodas had arrived too late. Severed limps and shredded wings, some feathered, the others transparent like dragonflies – those were the fruits of their efforts. The grandiose Stigma alliance, wiped out by a handful of humans.

The moans of the survivors had followed Meliodas into his dreams for the past restless nights. When he closed his eyes, the sickly-sweet iron taste in the air around Stigma's destroyed headquarter resurfaced until it suffocated all other thoughts under a thick blanket. The sensation overwhelmed him now as strongly as it had on that day, and he struggled to place the next step on the mossy forest ground.

Elizabeth squeezed his hand. But the encouragement she wanted to transmit never reached the blue of her eyes. The tears from yesterday and the day before had dried up, but the well of sorrow still held another wave. Once realization would hit her, truly sink its teeth into her, her walls of composure would topple. Meliodas had given up the construction of walls like these. They had little point to them with how little time was left.

Beyond the forest's borders, beyond the tapestry of light and shadow cast in deep green hues, the plains of northern Britannia stretched to the horizon. The slender grass blades danced in a wind filled with blissful ignorance of the fires yet to come. War would soon consume the peaceful scenery, its bloodstained fingers stretched towards these hills already. Towers of clouds, dark from the smoke rising into the air, filled the sky, and the sun remained hidden behind the tall walls.

Meliodas stole one final look over his shoulders. From here, the leaves of the Fairy King's Forest looked almost untouched. Only a tiny layer of ash covered the green here and there. If he had cared to listen when there had still been someone to listen to, Meliodas could have associated names to the individual trees, to the shape of their leaves or the contours of their bark. But he had paid the trees no mind. And as he did now, blankness filled his mind instead of their names.

Gloxinia had shared his passion for the tiniest plants so often. Yet it seemed Meliodas was forgetting already.

From the shadows of the last outer tree, two Fairies and a Giant followed Meliodas and Elizabeth with their eyes as they departed. The last embers of Stigma. They bared the expression of the hopeless. Their loss and their injuries had stolen the energy from their posture, and the younger Fairy stared at Meliodas as though these eyes alone could pull him back.

And for a moment, Meliodas hesitated. He imagined to turn around and hide in the forest and pretend the world was intact, pretend the hammer blow of war hadn't struck already.

But the moment of weakness passed when he remembered Elizabeth's hand in his own. They had agreed to fight their parents and win the war. Even if one of them died. Holding onto this promise was the only directive Meliodas had left to follow.

He steeled the grip around his sword and called forth his wings. The obsidian manifestations of his Demon magic swallowed what little light had been left on the clover-infested hill outside the forest. With a last look of confirmation at Elizabeth, Meliodas kicked from the ground and pivoted into the high heavens above. Hand in hand, Meliodas and Elizabeth rushed towards the cloud fortress where the last battle would take place.

Thunder growled. A bolt of lightning flashed across the sky. Heaven and hell collided and combined their forces into an unstoppable maelstrom in which the only escape routes read victory and death. The Demon King and the Supreme Deity awaited the return of their children. Awaited their surrender.

Or one last stand born from the desperation of defeat.

Meliodas had made his decision long ago. And judging from the bright light of the Goddess triskelion in her eyes, so had Elizabeth.

Even if one of them died.

They were about to find out how far this vow alone would take them.

Light and darkness rained upon the sky island. Each blow shook the stone, the cracks grew, and more and more boulders broke from the very ground Meliodas was standing on. Or, rather than standing, he was barely holding on.

With one hand clawed around the bloody hilt of his sword, Meliodas glared at the towering shape of his father through the fog of near-death. The Demon King had waved aside any and all of Meliodas' attacks like humans did with flies, unworthy of his effort. A mere turn of the massive hand sent a black tidal wave towards Elizabeth.

The white orb of her Arc looked laughably brittle by comparison.

She deflected just as a volley of divine light spears bolted towards Meliodas. One of them pierced his leg. He lost sight of Elizabeth.

Blood clogged his throat, roared in his ears, and rushed through his seven hearts; each of them struggled to keep going and defy the power of gods.

To no effect.

White feathers drifted into his shrinking field of view; Elizabeth had taken a brutal hit. She trembled, barely stood upright, and crimson discolored her hair. But the resolve in her eyes burned on.

They had sworn to fight. For the friends they had lost and those who still struggled against the flames of the Holy War. For Merlin, for Gowther, for Dahlia and Gerheade, for Jenna and Zaneri, and everyone else on the forsaken ground of Britannia below, for them they would fight and maybe even win.

Even if one of them died.

Meliodas stumbled to Elizabeth's side and they joined hands. Despite the thunderstorm around them, she sent him an encouraging smile. He would go to any lengths for this smile. And although he stood on death's door, his own mortality seemed like a matter of secondary concern, little more than the life of a butterfly on some nameless hill.

If he faced the end, at least it would be with her.

He squeezed her hand, and she returned the favor. How very selfish of them to drag the other into this hell.

"Do you regret it?" Meliodas asked between haggard breaths.

Elizabeth shook her head. "Not one bit. All this gave me the chance to meet you."

"I love you."

"And for this sin you both shall pay. For all eternity," the combined voices of the Demon King and the Supreme Deity roared, a sound like organs and bronze bells in a twisted heavenly orchestra.

Another tremor rocked the floating island and pebbles flew high into the tortured sky. To the right, a miasma of darkness swirled around the Demon King's claw. To the left, a blinding light escaped the Supreme Deity's fingertips.

After all the slaughter, heaven and hell had united for a shared goal. The irony could almost make Meliodas laugh.

The air crackled with energy, and the heat from the magic forces at display scorched the skin of Meliodas' bruised forearms. The pain was overwhelming, all-encompassing, and a weak voice in his head urged him to beg for mercy so that the fiery torture may end and he may escape alive. But he stood his ground, side by side with Elizabeth. And if his final moment was with her, could he really call himself misfortunate?

The last thing he felt before the combined forces of their parents struck them down was the softness of Elizabeth's slender hand in his.

He would later wish to have died that day.