The Steel Wurms charged at him like battering rams, fully intending to bring him down before he could gain any altitude.

They broke out of the valley floor in two spots at the same time, their iron-colored plates forcing up dirt and rock. Each supported a saddle-house made of riveted steel, and on top of them, two dark dwarves shouted obscenities as they controlled their primitive minds.

Eugene's wings flared out as he faced the first rockfall with a wall of fire that turned shards into steam and dust, swooping beneath the second monster's open maw. "Shields up! Break their left flank!" he shouted, and the front ranks moved left at his command.

His men straightened their shoulders and planted their feet, their pikes hitting the ground with a thud. Behind them, the Royal Knights directed their horses back for another charge.

The dwarves didn't let their failure to break their minds stall them, and soon, more rocks tumbled down from every side of the valley, trying to trap the knights. Eugene's fire swept across the landslide, turning it into slag.

One Wurm dove as he worked, trying to drive him away, while the other reared back, opening its maw to reveal a furnace-like throat; hot air blasted out with a stench, a putrid stench that told him they hadn't just fed it minerals, but the poison couldn't harm him.

"Don't waste your munitions on the wurms!" Eugene snapped, directing another wave of fire into a tunnel to prevent one of the massive monsters from smashing into the pikes from below.

"Aye!" Sir Leon didn't look back, dividing his men into two groups: one charged diagonally toward the left flank, while the other veered right to trap the Wurms.

The dwarven infantry hurried to confront them, grimly determined to make them pay for every inch of ground. Bolts of magic flashed from every ridge, and the helmets lined with ghostgrass proved their worth once more. Men staggered, cursed, spat, but they kept swinging.

Eugene trusted them to do their work and continued to climb higher.

He faced the first Wurm with a white-hot plasma blade in his hands, driving it into its side the moment it tried to eat him. Its plates glowed, releasing heat through vents as the fires ate at it, but it didn't fall.

Unfazed by his initial failure, he condensed the flame into a more solid shape, tracing along the seams between plates. Smoke curled upward; a gap sizzled open, and the smell shifted from metal to meat.

The Wurm quickly dove back down to escape certain death.

A ballista crewed by dwarves swung his way and fired. Eugene folded his wings, rolled away, and let the bolt pass over him. It exploded against the wall, shredding rocks with its steel thorns.

The Knights reached the second ballista, and any sense of coherence from the dwarven back line was lost. The machine exploded as a massive warhorse charged into it, with the glow of a [Charge] skill ensuring it had the momentum to break through solid steel.

The second Wurm lunged at Leon's wedge, who responded as if he had anticipated the attack, standing atop his horse. His sword swung, releasing a wave of golden light that made the monster flinch, allowing his men to make a pass below it and fall upon the retreating dwarves.

"Keep it there!" Eugene shouted. "Give me some time!"

Leon didn't answer. He didn't need to. He stepped, cut, baited, and dragged the Wurm across a stone building, which cracked and folded, only to stand again as dwarf mages reshaped the ground.

Eugene erased the group with a sweep of his wing.

The first Wurm surfaced after a moment of silence, cautious of new traps. It suddenly snapped up, jaws opening wide as it tried to bite his legs off, but Eugene kicked its snout away, releasing a burst of fire that made it screech and retreat back into the earth.

"Reinforcements!" a captain called, and Eugene quickly reassessed the situation. The line held, but a Wurm had torn into the left flank, threatening to split the charge, as Dwarves poured into the breach.

He charged in and bellowed, unleashing the draconic power his new class granted him.

Men tensed up. Dwarves flinched, instinctively freezing.

Unleashing a wave of flames from his extended sword, he sealed the exit with bubbling silt that transformed into volcanic glass, forcing the dwarves inside to fight where they stood instead of retreating along the line.

Leon read his intention and re-engaged the first Wurm with his company. He stabbed his sword into the dirt and dragged it sideways.

Light burst from the cut, forming a clean groove that extended several feet until it reached the Wurm's plate. Something underneath it cracked, causing the Wurm to buck and writhe in pain, while the dwarves on top shouted obscenities, hunkering behind their shields as the rest of the company attempted to kill them.

Eugene didn't hesitate to seize that opportunity, trusting his men to manage the trapped dwarves in the glass trench, and erupted into a column of fire as he dove into the Wurm.

The scream changed as he tore into it, his blade cutting through feet and feet of biological rock, until it reached through the other side, decapitating it.

Knights swarmed the dwarves as they fell, unleashing their full martial skill against the psychic shield, which only lasted a few seconds before shattering.

The second Wurm tried to burrow around to take the line from behind, but the rangers knew better than to fall into such a trap and managed to enclose it in a [Knightly Duel] before it could submerge again, forcing it to fight.

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Eugene fired at the stone monster from fifty yards. Lava bubbled and melted gradually, until even a creature accustomed to magma flows like it could no longer withstand the heat.

The fight was over by then. Some dwarves threw down their blades and ran for the tunnels. Others fought to buy the runners more time. Most died, but some managed to escape into the darkness amid the chaos.

"Vanguard," Eugene called after dismissing the System message, sheathing his blade, wings dissipating with a hiss. "Run them down."

Leon had already formed the long wedge for close-quarters pursuit. "On me!" He shouted.

Eugene breathed out, letting the adrenaline seep out of him, and walked across the field, trying to gather himself.

He passed a shattered ballista, a stone structure that had fallen in on itself from the heat, and a banner stuck beneath a puddle of blood. A knight knelt beside a boy who hadn't secured his helmet well enough, and whose mind had been nearly broken by a lucky [Scramble].

The quartermaster met him with the count when he arrived. "Twenty-three casualties. Seven crushed by rock, two by darts, four in the trench. The rest are cuts and concussions. One lost an ear."

"The Ghostgrass worked, then?" Eugene asked.

"Better than anything I've ever seen, but only because they didn't know about it," the man replied, to which Eugene nodded grimly. It wasn't a particularly complicated solution, and it wouldn't be useful if the dwarves knew to aim anywhere else but the head, but as long as it stayed a secret, they'd have a great advantage. That's why he'd sent Leon after the runners.

The vanguard returned two hours later. "We tracked a dozen down," Leon reported. "Cleared two groups of them, but one slipped away while we fought the rest off through old tunnels, sir."

"What's their direction?"

"Deeper."

"The underworld, then," Eugene murmured. The men nearby grew silent for a heartbeat; everyone knew the stories about caves beneath the kingdom, of molekin towns, ice-cold rivers, things better left uncovered that skittered in the dark.

"They seemed confident," one of the scouts—Lysa—added. "The dwarves have to know a way back if they took it. Even they wouldn't be crazy enough to dive into the underworld and hope for the best."

"If they make it back with news of our helmets," Eugene said, "we'll pay for it next time. We need to go after them."

The first stretch of the underworld was an old miner's shaft, wide enough for only two men to walk side by side. Then the space expanded, the air grew cooler, and the oppressive feeling intensified tenfold.

Lysa and Harmin led the way. Lysa possessed [Trail Reader], which allowed her to orient herself in just about every environment, while Harmin had [Dust Whisperer], a modest name for a useful Trait that let him know who had traveled through a specific path and how long it had been since they did.

"They were here," Harmin murmured at one point, pointing to a faint scrape. "Three Dwarves. Less than two hours ago."

They quickened their pace. Rope uncoiled from their belts in loops, with knots every few yards so a man could be pulled up without dragging everyone over the edge if the path suddenly ended, as it was known to do this deep within the earth's depths.

Openings yawned and closed. In one, mushrooms taller than men pulsed with slow light; insects made a sound like rain. In another, a black river slid by, carrying water so cold it should have frozen. They kept well away from it.

"Another sign," Harmin said after a tight squeeze a few hours later. "They were scared, running for their lives from something."

That was both good and bad. Scared people made mistakes, but it meant there was something strong enough they couldn't fight.

Soon after, the tunnel spat them into a chamber the size of a church. Stalactites crowded the ceiling. The faint glow of fungus made the stones to shift oddly in their perception.

The tracks stopped abruptly.

Lysa bent and examined the last footsteps carefully. "Here," she said, tapping dust with a finger. "Then there." She straightened. "Nothing forward. Nothing back. They are just gone."

Eugene's skin tingled. He raised a hand, causing the men to halt. As the noise subsided, he extinguished the small flame between his fingers and tuned into his draconic instincts.

The darkness was unnatural. Not magical, but something worse.

"Prepare for a fight," he said. "Now."

Something detached from the ceiling and landed on them.

It struck with enough force to bend two shields and didn't break through only because Eugene's wall of fire arrived just in time before its fangs reached their faces.

The creature shrieked and unleashed a wave of darkness that spread like oil. Torches flickered out suddenly, and a mage's [Light] disappeared midair.

"Back!" Eugene barked. "Stay behind my flames!"

His fire ignored whatever effect it was using. It consumed the oppressive darkness, using it as fuel. The monster hissed against the wall, turning the sound into a thick, wet noise.

It was a spider only if one didn't look too long. Large enough to crush a carriage, with way too many eyes and legs. Its carapace was matte enough to absorb light, while its eyes, scattered across most of its face in strange places, rolled wildly in their sockets.

Despite its awkward shape, it was fast and powerful. Strands of web shot out so fast that Eugene only managed to intercept two. One hit a shield, and the man behind it went silent mid-curse, skin bubbling into horrible boils.

"Cut it!" Leon's blade flashed with power, sweeping sideways and parting the strand in two. The man coughed and hacked in pain, but eventually nodded, shaky.

Arrows thunked and had no effect. A spear slid by, deflected by the darkness. The spider pressed the line, seeking to sink its fangs into flesh.

Eugene threw fire in whips and waves, testing what the dark allowed. Where his flames touched, the darkness thinned, and the spider pulled back from the heat, refilling the space more slowly each time.

Leon slipped in from the left. He feinted with a shoulder, baited with a pounce, circled underneath, and left a smoking trail on a joint with a quick jab. The spider flinched but didn't retreat.

"It feels tainted," Leon said through his teeth, sweat pouring from his brow. A Prestige creature like this was not going to be easy to take down, especially because its strength wasn't entirely natural.

Demon-touched, Eugene thought, but kept it to himself. The men wouldn't appreciate it, and morale was everything in such a desperate fight.

"Buy me a minute," he said instead.

Leon didn't hesitate to take his place, taking a slash on the flat of his blade and returning a stab that released a beam of light. The shield wall held against another clawed attack, but groans followed as their mana was drained at a too-fast rate.

Eugene pulled the heat tighter inside himself. He'd been cautious all day, knowing that his true power could just as easily hurt his men as the enemy.

Here and now, with no other choice, he removed the leash. Flame wrapped around him, first like a cloak, then like plates. It clung instead of flowing. It climbed his shoulders, settled across his chest, and trailed down his legs until he felt the weight, making him look like a small dragon.

The spider tried to smother him in its darkness, correctly understanding he was the most dangerous of the group.

Eugene moved so fast that it couldn't retreat, grabbing hold of its fangs and roaring. Heat turned the mouthparts to paste, but he pushed on, filling the head with fire, then twisted his wrists. Bone cracked sharply, and the spider's front half split apart.

It didn't die cleanly, shuddering as unnatural darkness peeled away from its body. Eugene didn't allow the mist to take shape, pouring fire into it until only pure air remained.

Then, he did it once more, just to be sure.

Silence filled the chamber as the men realized it was over.

"Give me a headcount," Eugene whispered.

"We are all here," Lysa said, voice high, then steady. "But Erik and a knight need medical attention."

Eugene nodded. That was as good as they were going to get against a demonic creature. He hoped they would remain that lucky, as the campaign had just become a lot harder.