The city closest to the Demon King's Castle is the quiet Fairfield, three days of easy travel by flight from the Twilight Gates.
FAIRFIELD
The city, with its stone-paved streets and buildings of wood and dark stone, housed ten thousand inhabitants.
It was surrounded by rye fields, shining like gold for hectares, dotted with smallholdings, farms, and cottages with lawns where cows and goats grazed.
When at the Old Drunkard's Tavern the three posted a strange advertisement about job contracts, the guard Heregyth inquired about who would pay for so many different services, after all, the list had nineteen openings for maids alone.
And Cwenburg answered:
— What was his name again? — She thought in silence, and her friends turned around, hearing the same as the guard. — Oh right, the Demon King.
PRISON
In prison, the three stuck to Cwenburg's story, but guard Heregyth only accepted such insanity as truth after two tests, one with an oracle and another with a sorceress, both experts in identifying lies.
Thus the guard drafted an extensive report and sent it to the court.
King Adramelech II of Angra dos Chifres gathered influential nobles, and the situation was explained, with spies being sent to ascertain the situation at the Demon King's Castle.
By the first month, they were certain.
The Demon King no longer had his feared army, and except for an old immortal, seen trying, and failing, to prune the garden trees, no one else inhabited the domains of eternal night.
Thus, news was sent to all twenty territories, and the greatest Alliance ever took shape.
The world dubbed this gathering the Storm Alliance.
In the second month of preparations, from the kingdom of Hornaria came two hundred thousand unicorns.
With armor of silver and gold, forming the beginnings of the glorious cavalry.
The female unicorns were powerful mages, of ice and water, and their ranks numbered ten thousand masters of the highest level.
The mermaids and mermen from the kingdom of Great Pearl came, fifty thousand in human-legged form.
Fifty thousand mounted on sea serpents, as many rivers bordered the night lands.
— Tell me more about these Demon King contracts. — Exhausted and with piled-up work, Heregyth brought strawberry ice cream for the trio one night, amid the chaos of so many arriving and camping nearby.
— What exactly do you want to know, guard? — Leofwynn was irritated.
Everyone around them feared them more than they watched them.
And who would mess with the Demon King's minions?
— I want to know the benefits? Is there a uniform? Is he asking for criminal records? — Heregyth adjusted his glasses and was promptly removed by force from the anti-magic cell.
Other guards took his place, and none of them even spoke to the trio again.
By the third month, the vulcans from the kingdom of Heart of Fire arrived, and the climate of Honranna, the capital of Angra dos Chifres, was altered to perpetual summer.
There were six thousand in total, all swordsmen.
The serpentariums from the kingdom of Scales-March, with the lamias as the females. Wielding blessing spells.
And the flying snakes as the males. The first aerial mounts.
Twelve thousand in total.
Among them were many heroes and heroines.
The renowned Mother of Enchantments and the Lady of the Blizzard.
These were witches feared for their deeds at the Battle of Crystal Lake, where they exterminated fourteen thousand undead.
Thorfyn, the barbarian baptized in blood as Devastation, had a four-meter-long mace and walked naked.
Blix, called the Dark Knight, in all-black armor with bat engravings.
There was the Clown Man.
And Dominick Decocco and Margheriti, known as the garbage eaters…
— Wait! They eat garbage? — Leofwynn inquired of the guard, who ignored her.
Even in the isolated cell, the trio received newspapers with kingdom news and followed troop numbers and positions.
The Immortals numbered one thousand.
They were a people near extinction, and the kingdom of Ruined Forest lived up to its name.
The sight of the oldest heroes of this world.
Tálacarnë, whose name means Leg-House, who lost everything gambling and dedicated his life to being a wanderer and exterminator of plagues and hurricanes.
Rungámo, of name The Hammerer, who built the camps.
In the fourth month, the walking trees, the Ents, came from Entenaria.
They were as big as houses, a walking forest of eighty thousand trunks, or bodies.
Yet, even faced with so many famous names, there was despondency among the troops, for the Demon King had never lost a single battle.
Nevertheless, they arrived.
From the empire of Celestial Wings, three hundred and twenty-six in total. Dragons.
Each over thirty-eight meters from tail to serpentine tongue, in all colors.
With wings spread, they made the camps vibrate, as if fortune had changed sides.
Their leader was the cruel Fire-Guts, also called Stone Soup.
Even the rivals of the dragons, the empire of Lunarífera, with the Vulturines, whose skins looked burnt, with bird-like heads, came.
Sages, numbering one hundred and thirty-seven.
The greatest strategists of this era.
The youngest hero among them was Wulfthryth, aged one hundred and ninety-two, inventor of coffee tea.
The ground trembled when the sight from the republic of Erma revealed its envoys, Centaurs.
Two hundred and ninety thousand.
With spears and armor of leather and bronze.
Their heroines were Acerola, Mist'Ed, Silver, and Bo'Jack.
There was only one male, Alípio, whose divine mission was to procreate, and thus he wandered the world fu…
— Stop reading that filth, Cwenburg! — The newspaper was snatched from the unicorn girl's hands, with Leofwynn incinerating the copy.
And from the ruins of the Acropolis came only two. Giants.
One of stone, a golem four hundred meters tall.
And another twice that size, the ancient turtle Sæ, devourer of over one hundred and ten thousand witches.
From the kingdom of the Swamplands, as men they walked, five hundred and six tentacled beings.
On nights of the full moon, each was seen as a single great eye, covered in tentacles.
They levitated among the camps, carrying messages and secrets of the Alliance's plans.
From the kingdom of the Three Mountain Ranges flew the winged ones.
Feminine bodies with monstrous pink skin.
Small horns on their foreheads.
With two wings and four arms.
They fought with iron poles.
The males of this lineage were the griffins.
Forty-seven thousand in total.
And the air force was now as feared as the land force.
In the fifth month, from the kingdom of the Land of Rocks marched the so-called small-folk.
One and a half million in total.
Mostly goblins, pig-like, or kobolds.
All roughly the same height.
With rustic weapons, and more interested in eating than in meetings and preparatory exercises for the attack.
The Floral Queens arrived from the kingdom of the Grove of Silverlings.
One hundred and thirty thousand in total, with skin like flora and perfumes that pervaded the fields and prairies.
With them came, from the kingdom of the White Stag's Shadow, the Fairies.
Twenty-four thousand.
Tiny, ten centimeters tall at most.
They danced and sang, and cheered the troops.
From the kingdom of Port of Memories marched the Aurifers, beings with golden skin and bodies with organs and gears visible.
They had iron swords up to three meters tall and numbered four hundred thousand.
Those born in the republic of the Boreal Tundra were the Caprus, with their heads entirely of bone, like a goat's skull, and bodies of shadow.
They numbered sixty thousand.
Even the Legendaries, of the same lineage as the Demon King and rulers of the kingdom of Angra, were not left out. There were three in total.
The Nymphs only arrived in the sixth month, from the confraternity of Between Rivers.
They married heroes of all lineages.
They recited poetry.
And their dances, along with the fairies, took over the streets and avenues in an unprecedented festival.
Finally, from the empire of the Port of Kings, from the seventh to the tenth month, the Humans presented themselves, numbering three million alone.
With all manner of bladed weapons and shields, and with gunpowder, cannons, firearms, plus caravels and steam dirigibles, and tamed beasts of hundreds of species.
On the last day of the year, after three successful joint troop exercises, they set out and marched.
And they sang.
And prayed to hundreds of Goddesses and Gods.
And the speeches made nobles and commoners cry.
And there existed the promise of the end of terror.
And the Demon King was tending the castle gardens when he saw the mass, and the shouts, and all species united.
And he tried to contact the trio, and could not, for they were locked in a cell where all magic was blocked, still in prison in Fairfield.
Then he conjured:
— Meteors. — And the three moons shattered, forming a colossal asteroid ring that encircled the planet.
Thus, fire rained, and all enemies were dead in minutes.
In turn, one of the prison maids in Fairfield, who cleaned the prison floors, upon seeing the advertisement in the tavern about job offers, sent her youngest daughter to the Demon King's Castle.
The girl, who hated working and was already in her third year of unemployment without seeking a job, told him about the situation of his three minions in Fairfield prison.
Happy, now with Cynethryth as his first maid, the Demon King personally, after using the magic "Teleport," freed the trio of lolis.
Conjuring another magic, "As An Old Memory, Yeah, Memory, Yeah," thus erasing from everyone's memory the faces and information about the three no-longer-condemned lolis.
Thus, the mission continued, and Æthelflæd, Leofwynn, and Cwenburg, flew once more on the serpentarium Godwyna:
— It was a good year, had its tough moments, but, in the end, it was a good year…
— You're one to talk! — Æthelflæd was surprised by the serpentarium Godwyna's tender voice. — Why didn't you say anything until now? Wait! More importantly, where have you been all this time?
Blushing, Godwyna retorted:
— Well, at Madame Cuth Riseley-Prichard's Bordello! — and everyone laughed, flying among the clouds, until the serpentarium got hit by a water staff strike.