“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?"

Belmarniss dismisses the spell.

The pixie sucks in a breath and opens her eyes, useless as they are due to glitter. "How dare you! I'll have you know that I am the Marquise of Green-on-Yellow, and I will defend the Queen with every drop of blood in my body!"

"I apologize for your rough treatment, but you did attack us unprovoked. We're not here to kill your Queen," Jojo says soothingly. "We're just here to get a puzzle piece from her and we'll leave her in peace afterwards. Besides which, we've defeated the ogre mage and his henchmen, so you'll be free to take over this level unopposed. All we ask in return is the rod in her possession."

The Marquise of Green-on-Yellow blinks a couple of times. "Really?"

"Why does everybody assume we're here to kill them and take their stuff?" Garrus asks.

"You're adventurers," the Marquise says slowly. "In Undermountain."

"...okay, point taken."

"Also I'm prepping a lot of lethals because we keep running into undead."

"Will you lead us to your Queen?" Jojo asks.

The pixie looks around suspiciously. "Alright, fine. But if you try to hurt her, know that the full might of our Queendom will fall upon you!"

"We would expect nothing less," Jojo assures her, opening his fist.

She zips out and leads the party along the corridor, which begins branching and turns into a maze. She navigates it with practiced precision, waiting with ill grace for the party to catch up when she outpaces them.

Belmarniss keeps an eye out for any pitfalls she might be leading them into.

No pitfalls. She occasionally leads them past a zombie or two, but they remain docile.

Eventually, they come to the center of the maze, which is full of... plant life. Surface plant life, trees and vines, not the fungi that might naturally grow here. A woman who looks like a surface elf with green butterfly wings on her back, tending this strange garden, looks up as the Marquise's bells approach. When she notices the adventurers following her vassal she leaps to her feet and prepares to start casting, but their guide says "Wait! They claim to come in peace."

The apparent Queen stills. "Really?"