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Zeldris still remembered the first time he saw Bloodstained Ellie.
He was young, far younger than he was now, and possessed by an arrogant overconfidence that filled his mind with visions of grandeur. Contrary to popular belief, his older brother’s rapidly growing strength and success hadn’t instilled a feeling of inferiority within him. On the contrary, Zeldris had been convinced that he would be able to surpass Meliodas in time, to rise to the top of the ranks within the clan and receive that glowing, rare approval from his father that he so desperately craved. How young and foolish he had been.
Even now, with his memories dulled over time and twisted by his imprisonment, he still remembered Elizabeth with a cut-glass clarity. Despite his station as the Demon King’s son, despite his high ranking within the Demon Clan, nothing could have prepared him for just how terrifying she was. He had heard the stories, certainly; tales of brutality and merciless slaughter whispered by trembling mouths around a campfire in the dead of night, but he had dismissed them as the paranoid ramblings of unprepared, low-class demons. And really, how intimidating could a Goddess even be? They were prim and proper beings, with those deplorable, smiling, falsely innocent faces. They wrinkled their noses disapprovingly at violence and denounced confrontation in all its many forms, then turned around and schemed and plotted like the conniving snakes they really were. They didn’t get messy. They used Arks and kept their hands clean, and he had no doubt that the Supreme Deity’s perfect little daughter was as insufferable as the rest.
How wrong he was. The minute he stepped onto the field of combat, those silly ghost stories that he’d waved away without a second thought came crashing back, swirling through his brain in a screaming warning to run. Because Elizabeth didn’t do prim and proper. Elizabeth didn’t denounce and disapprove and fake haughty innocence. Elizabeth didn’t keep her hands clean from the blood of her enemies.
Elizabeth tore her way through demons without a second thought, leaving a sizzling trail of blood and miasma in the wake of her destruction. She moved with the single-minded speed of a predator, darting across the scorched earth and dodging attacks by a hair's breadth of space, each movement unnervingly precise and leaving no room for wasted energy. She wore the same flowing robes as the other Goddesses, but whereas they were a symbol of grace and status among the Goddess Clan, on Elizabeth... On Elizabeth, they were nothing more than a costume designed to lull her opponents into a false sense of safety, to portray a soft, feminine weakness before she struck like an asp, all coils and venom and burrowing fangs, paying no heed to the carnage soaking into its fine white threads.
She attacked with spheres and blades and rays of fierce, piercing light that rained down unforgivingly and reduced their legions to ash. The rapid motions of her arms left sweat gleaming alongside the blood on her skin, and she spun and slashed and soared on sooty wings until there was no one left standing around her. And then she went searching for more demons to kill.
She was light and blood and vengeance, and the most terrifying part of the entire massacre was that there wasn’t even any anger behind it. She shredded their ranks without a hint of hatred in those burning orange eyes. Just cold, merciless execution. And when those eyes turned to him, when that delicate hand lifted into the air, glowing like a newborn sun, his panicked order to retreat tore his throat and filled his mouth with the taste of iron.
It was the first time Zeldris remembered being terrified. She was a nightmare incarnate, and he couldn’t even wake up to escape her. He knew, as he stumbled off of that battlefield, bruised and bloody and among only a handful of survivors, that this would not be the last time he saw Bloodstained Ellie. He could only hope that he survived their next encounter, whenever that may be.
She didn’t seem the type to let prey escape a second time.