Nods all around. "I'm sorry to ask it of you," Jojo says. "We can at least investigate the dragon, see if we can guess its age and level of danger - my sense for evil is not a fine-tuned instrument, and it is still possible that we could defeat it handily."

"Maybe if I go first it'll guess I'm friendly since I'm purple."

"Deekin was going to suggest making Silent Image of door, then opening door and looking through illusion door," Deekin says. "Lower chance of Belmarniss getting eaten."

"Good idea. If the door opens out."

Conveniently, it does!

Deekin casts the spell and opens the door. The room beyond is largely empty, except for a treasure chest and, in front of the treasure chest, a statue of a massive black dragon. Clutched in the dragon's claw is a yellow rod.

"I was really hoping for the wyrmlings. This is much less cute."

"It wouldn't fit through the door, but probably it's grabbing too hard for a mage hand to get it. ...Mage Hand plus Grease? I didn't prep Grease but I can cast it anyway, if I want to blow that for the day."

“I think it’s probably worth a shot. If it doesn’t work, though, I’m going on the record as not wanting to fight that thing.”

“That dragon bigger than Old Boss was,” Deekin agrees. “And Deekin not even particularly wanting to fight Old Boss.”

Belmarniss nods.

"Grease. Mage Hand."

The rod slips out of the stone claw -

and there’s a surge of transmutation magic, and the statue is abruptly a large and furious dragon.

Belmarniss flinches but keeps pulling the rod toward the door.

The dragon opens its jaws and prepares to spit acid, but the rod makes it out first, and Deekin slams the door. There's the sound of a pressurized jet of liquid hitting the door and surrounding wall, and the hissing of wood being eaten away. The dragon roars, enraged.

"We run now?" Deekin asks.

"Yup."

Away they scramble.

The dragon's roars echo through the halls of Undermountain, but eventually they outpace the sound.

When they stop running, there's a sound like tinkling bells somewhere nearby, and a girlish giggle.

"...Fey," surmises Belmarniss.

The giggling stops. "On, my undead minions!" pipes a squeaky voice. "For the Queen!"

Several humanoid zombies and one zombie troll round the corner.

Deekin breathes a cone of cold, snap-freezing the humanoid zombies and frosting over a significant portion of the troll.

Jojo punches the troll zombie a few times, staying miraculously clean as any undead gore that flecks onto him burns away in his aura of golden light. His foe collapses in short order.

Belmarniss zaps a lesser zombie with an arcane bolt rather than busting out any big spells; this seems like Jojo's job.

Indeed it is. The zombies are taken care of in short order.

The pixie necromancer, still invisible, gasps. "My minions! You'll pay for this!"

She casts Crushing Despair.

It bounces off Belmarniss's spell resistance. "Steal Breath."

An almost imperceptibly tiny puff of air enters Belmarniss's mouth. The sound of bells intensifies as the pixie struggles.

"Glitterdust," Deekin casts, and the pixie is now both outlined in glittering sand and blinded by the same.

Jojo snatches the pixie out of the air, pinning her arms in his clenched fist. She tries to bite him, but her teeth don't penetrate his fur.

"Stop that," he says sternly. "You're only embarrassing yourself."

"Well, this isn't the Queen, the Queen's supposed to be bigger."

"Yes, I imagine this is one of her minions. Could you let up your spell so we can ask her some questions and potentially come to an agreement?"