What followed was not a battle.
It was a consolidation.
Frostina came from the south in her dragon form, the frost breath running in controlled sweeps across the demon formations in the central territory, driving them north. Flame came from the west, the fire precise and directed, not burning the territory but making the western approach untenable for anything that wanted to stay in it.
I came from the east.
The sword was out again.
I moved through the eastern approach toward the central territory at the pace that the situation required, which was consistent and unhurried. The demon units coming at me from the interior met the same result as the units in the nexus chamber, the sword working through them in the sequence that the terrain and their formation presented, no wasted motion, no engagement sustained longer than it needed to be.
The three of us moved inward from three directions.
The demon units caught between us couldn't hold ground against Frostina's frost breath from the south, Flame's fire from the west, and whatever I was doing from the east. They didn't have anywhere to consolidate that wasn't already being reduced. They tried regrouping at the capital. The capital had the nexus chamber and the portal and the structural advantage of walls.
The walls held demon units in as effectively as they would have held an army out.
We took the capital last.
Frostina landed on the northern wall and cleared the ramparts in two passes. Flame took the western gate and held it, the fire line running across the approach, nothing coming through from the interior that direction. I went through the eastern gate on foot.
The nexus chamber was the last position.
The portal was still running at the reduced output I had left it with the night before. The demon units around it were the last coherent formation in Winterly, pulled back to defend the one thing that mattered to the demon lord's territorial control.
They defended it.
It didn't change the outcome.
The sword and the magic working together the way they had always worked together, the two things I had kept separate for most of my life finally running in the same direction because there was no longer any reason to hide one from the people watching the other.
The chamber cleared.
The portal stood alone in the nexus.
Without the demon units surrounding it, feeding mana into its stability through their presence, it was exactly what it was. An opening held in place by structure rather than force. A door with nothing behind it but the dark of the demon realm.
I walked to it.
Put both hands against the mana field holding it open.
And closed it.
Not sealed. Not reinforced. Destroyed. The structure I had disrupted the night before had been weakened enough that full closure was now a matter of force rather than finesse. I pushed the mana field in on itself, found the points where the portal's architecture was load-bearing, and collapsed them.
The portal didn't close dramatically.
It simply stopped being open.
The mana that had been flowing through it had nowhere to go and dispersed into the chamber air in a wave that I absorbed without difficulty.
The nexus chamber was stone and old inscription work and silence.
I stood in the middle of it.
Outside, through the stone above me, I could feel the barrier across Winterly's borders holding. Every demon that had been inside the territory when I sealed it was still inside the territory. None of them had anywhere to return to now.
Frostina's frost breath was audible from somewhere above the capital.
Flame's fire from the western approach.
The cleanup would take the rest of the day.
I pressed both communication stones.
"Portal is closed." I said. "Finish it."
By evening, Winterly was quiet.
Not the occupied quiet of the past months. The quiet of a territory that had been running at a sustained level of violence and had stopped.
I stood at the capital's eastern gate and looked at the landscape. At Winterly's territory without the demon units in it for the first time since the portal had opened.
Aldren came to stand beside me.
He had stayed back through the assault the way I had told him to. He had watched it from the positions I had cleared and had not said anything during any of it.
He said nothing now either.
We stood at the gate together and looked at his kingdom.
"It's empty." He said finally.
"Yes." I said.
"The people." He said. "The ones who were here. Under the occupation."
"Scattered." I said. "Some into the rural territories, some into the surrounding kingdoms before the borders hardened. Some didn't make it."
He was quiet.
"Winterly needs to be rebuilt." He said. "Reclaimed. There's nothing left of the administration, the supply chains, the-"
"That's your work." I said. "Not mine."
He looked at me.
"One portal remains." He said. "Medalline."
"Yes." I said.
"And the demon lord." He said.
"Yes." I said.
He looked at Winterly's capital. At the walls. At the empty streets visible through the gate.
"Crescentine." He said.
I looked at him.
"Thank you." He said. Simply. No performance behind it.
I looked back at the territory.
"Don't call me that." I said.
I pressed Frostina's stone.
"We're done here." I said. "Come back to Eryndor."
I teleported home.