The first demon reached the chokepoint and died there.
Anaya's position had been chosen well. The narrow gap where the ridge curved inward forced anything moving through it into a line, stripping away the numbers advantage the splinter group might have used against open ground. The lead demon — a low-grade thing, more animal instinct than intelligence, its body a compact mass of grey-black hide with claws that looked more suited to digging than fighting — barely had time to register the bottleneck before Anaya's spell caught it.
A focused lance of compressed wind, narrow enough to punch through hide rather than simply battering it, the kind of spell that traded raw power for precision and rewarded exactly the kind of terrain she had selected.
The demon dropped.
The second one behind it adjusted, trying to widen its approach around the body, and found the gap too narrow to accommodate the correction. It hesitated for half a second.
Half a second was enough.
