The gate opened and they came through it and Eryndor received them the way Eryndor received everything that mattered.
All at once.
Celina reached Maya first and pulled her in without saying anything, both arms around her, her face doing what faces did when the thing they had been afraid of not seeing again was suddenly in front of them. Leopold was right behind her, one hand on Maya's back, one on Celina's shoulder, the three of them standing in the gate with no apparent intention of moving anywhere.
Savina took Nico before he had finished clearing the threshold. Harold and Helene were at Sia immediately. Jenna's parents were already running from the direction of the residential zone, someone having sent word ahead.
Torra was still attached to me.
I let him stay attached.
Elder Elka was standing at the Sequoia tree. Not running. She had never been a person who ran toward things. She stood where she stood and things came to her when they were ready and this had always been sufficient.
She looked at Torra on my arm.
At the captain standing at the gate behind me, still holding my sword, looking at Eryndor with the expression everyone wore on first arrival, the expression that said the gap between what had been described and what was actually here was larger than expected.
She looked at me.
"You're back." She said.
"Yes." I said.
She looked at the children being absorbed into the settlement one by one, the reunions happening in overlapping stages along the path from the gate to the residential zone.
"Are you hurt." She said.
"No." I said.
She held my gaze for a moment with the attention she used when she was checking something more carefully than the question suggested.
Then she nodded and went to find the captain someone to sit down with.
I set Torra down.
He looked up at me with the red-rimmed eyes of someone who had been frightened for a long time and had arrived at the other side of it and was still processing the transition.
"Are you okay." I said.
"Yes." He said. Then: "No." Then: "I don't know."
"That's correct." I said.
He looked at the settlement around him. At the lamp posts and the paths and the Sequoia tree and the marketplace and all of it exactly as he had left it, unchanged, running its quiet evening rhythm.
"I thought." He started.
"Don't." I said. "You're here. It's done."
He was quiet for a moment.
Then he put his arms around me again briefly, the quick fierce kind, and let go and went to find Flame who had not been part of the rescue and had clearly been in the settlement waiting with the energy of something that had been holding very still for a very long time and was relieved to have a direction for that energy.
I gathered everyone at the Sequoia tree.
They came quickly.
All of them. The original residents and the Seaphero survivors and the elves and the dwarves and the beastfolk and the clinic staff and the captain standing slightly apart from the group with the posture of someone who understood they were adjacent to this gathering rather than part of it.
I stood at the head of the table.
"The children are safe." I said. "The south portal is closed. The demon lord is alive and has retreated to the demon realm."
I looked at the table.
"Philantria still has demons in it." I said. "Singrael is still under partial occupation. Medalline has demon units operating without the demon lord's direct coordination. They'll fragment without him directing them but fragmented demons in occupied territory are still dangerous." I paused. "I'm going back. Tonight. To finish it."
The table was quiet.
Frostina spoke first.
"I'm coming." She said. Not the tone she used when she was asking. The other one.
"Yes." I said.
She looked at me.
"You're not refusing." She said.
"No." I said.
Flame was already sitting straight.
"Flame comes with me." I said. "Frostina takes Singrael. Clear it completely. Every demon unit in the territory. When it's done, come back."
"And you." Flame said. "Medalline."
"Yes." I said.
"The demon lord." He said.
"I gave him a chance to leave." I said. "He opened the portal again."
Flame looked at me.
"So we finish it." He said.
"Yes." I said.
Nobody at the table said anything for a moment.
Then Elder Elka nodded once. The nod she used when a decision had been made correctly and she was confirming it.
"Come back." She said.
Same thing she had said before I left the first time.
"Yes." I said.
We left within the hour.
Frostina went east toward Singrael in her dragon form, the frost trailing behind her in the night sky, moving at the speed she moved when she was not managing her pace for anyone else's benefit.
Flame and I went south toward Medalline.
The capital was visible from a distance.
The ruins of the imperial palace, the absence where three generations of Karvian's bloodline had stood for a century, the open sky above it where the walls and ceiling had been.
The demon units that had survived the palace collapse had spread through the capital in the disorganized way of things that had been running under central direction and had lost it, the fragmentation already showing in the inconsistent patrol patterns visible from above.
Flame and I came in from the north.
I looked at him.
"Everything in the capital." I said. "Not the humans. Only the demon units."
He nodded.
He dropped.
The fire that came from Flame at full output was not the controlled, targeted fire of his patrol passes over Amlada. It was the fire of a young dragon who had been in Eryndor holding the perimeter while five children were taken from the road and had spent the hours since with that knowledge sitting in him like something that needed somewhere to go.
It found somewhere to go.
He moved through the capital in passes, the fire precise in the way I had trained it to be precise, finding demon units and ending them and moving to the next without hesitation, the young dragon working through the capital's streets with the focused efficiency of something that had been waiting for permission to be fully what it was.
I went up.
Above the capital. Above the ruins. Above the altitude where the remaining demon units could reach and high enough that the full spread of Medalline's territory was visible in every direction.
I extended the search magic outward.
Full scope. No limitation on the radius. The mana cost of a search at this scale was significant. I paid it without managing it, the same way I had paid everything since the border, the reserves running at the level that didn't require conservation.
Every demon in Medalline registered in the search. Not just the capital. The units spread through the territory in the weeks of occupation, the ones stationed at the checkpoints and the border positions and the towns along the main roads.
I held all of them in the search simultaneously.
Then I built the magic circle.
Not beneath me. Beneath all of them. Every demon in Medalline's territory, simultaneously, the circle finding each one through the search's registry and anchoring to its position.
The equation was the same one I had used for Lord Ravendale's escort on the battlefield near Eryndor two years ago.
Scaled up by the number of targets and the territory they were distributed across.
I snapped my fingers.
The search registry emptied.
Below me, Flame was still moving through the capital. He finished a pass and banked for the next one and found the streets empty where the demon units had been.
He looked up.
I looked down at him.
He looked at the empty streets.
Then at me.
He rose to my altitude and hovered beside me.
"All of them." He said.
"Yes." I said.
"In Medalline." He said.
"Yes." I said.
He looked at the territory spread out below us.
"At once." He said.
"Yes." I said.
He was quiet for a moment with the particular quiet of someone absorbing information and finding it significant.
Then he looked toward the ruins of the palace.
"The demon lord." He said.
"Yes." I said.
We went down.