"Your life must be pretty interesting."

"I can't say the past few years have been boring," Thomas says mysteriously, "But we can discuss my tragic backstory after we are back at the base."

"Sure."

So down the stone steps and along the stone bridge flanked by ancient waterworks, towards the stone gates.

"...someone's been here recently," he says, frowning and pointing at spots where the moss does indeed look to have been recently tread-on, all the way to the gate... which is slightly open. "Hm."

Thomas is watching his surroundings and also trying to capture it into memory for his future fortress plan. He observes the spots of moss. "An ape or something else?" he says, taking closer look at the spots. At the slightly open gate. "Well, it sure would be anti-climactic if someone got here before we did."

"Who knows. Let's go, I guess." He pushes the gate open—it yields much more easily than one would expect, creaking open fairly quickly—and in he goes.

Thomas follows, hammer in hand, closing the door behind them.

On the other side of the door is a platform raised above more waterworks and a long stairwellup to...

...well. There's lit braziers, and fire up there, it seems. Whoever last entered this place may still be here.

"...Is there a new moon or eclipse or something today and there will be a ritual?" Thomas whispers. "Or are they just expecting visitors?"

He shrugs and shakes his head, then leads the way up, grabbing his axe and climbing up the stairs slowly and quietly.

No one ambushes them and nothing interesting happens until they get to the top.

A spacious, well-lit chamber, surprisingly not looted clear of its decorations, is what awaits them at the end. The floor is fine marble, the pillars are adorned in gold, and the tall statues are a smooth white stone, but the centerpiece of the room is the raised throne across it from them, upon which sits a woman.

"Has someone come after all these years?" The woman's voice seems to vibrate through them, a warped sound as if there were two people speaking at the same time. "Approach, approach!" she says, leaning forward on her throne. "Your queen demands it."

Thomas gives Taharqi a disbelieving look. And he raises his hammer in case something needs breaking sooner than later. He whispers... "Vampire? Oddly-opaque ghost? Or random that sat on the throne?"

"Speak up, your queen would hear you."

Taharqi shrugs and takes some more careful steps towards the woman. "Who... are you?"

She slams a hand against the arm of her throne. "You would be expected to know the face of your queen!" she booms in her oddly echoing voice.

Thomas follows. He props his hammer over his shoulder to come off as relaxed, but this is starting to feel like a cutscene that leads to a boss fight.

"Forgive us, your highness. But we are very new to these lands, and your visage was unknown to us."

All things considered, he is managing quite a nice balance between sarcasm and politeness.

She is about to say something but then her gaze is drawn to Taharqi's bracelet. "That bracelet... you are one of the bonded." Her face grows irate. "How?! How did you enter these hallowed grounds? Your masters know this is forbidden! That bracelet marks you as my enemy!"

(She is, herself, if they pay attention to that, sporting a bracelet of her own.)

And as she says that, one of the fifteen-foot-tall statues starts glowing green.

Yep, boss fight indeed.

"What? There is a law against accessorizing like the queen?"

Boss fight time. He will be proactive and take a swing against the statue's leg.

She hisses in another language, but her own bracelet makes it clear she's saying, "Dagon take you and rot you alive."

The second statue starts glowing green, too.

What follows is indeed very reminiscent of a boss fight. The two statues are tough and resilient and hit hard, but they can be damaged, and can be destroyed. While they attack, the various pillars start glowing, too, and shoot laser-like magical beams at them after a second's delay.

Taharqi's mobility strategy seems to be the winning one, here; standing still and taking a hit is possible but Thomas's crystalline, magical defences definitely take a beating from everything. This is some heavy duty magic.

Yeah, he is unwilling to experiment with how much damage he can take until dodging is not an option. And it's definitely not something to play with.

Well, maybe he will try goading the statues into the path of the magic lasers or into each other. But his primary focus is incapacitating them: hitting them on their legs, arms, forcing them to run into each other and using his crystal magic to affect the ground beneath their feet.

And like every good boss fight, after enough damage the statues are no longer functional. Although unlike boss fights, the statues don't function on a hit point basis, and keep trying to hit them until they are actually physically taken down to pieces.

"You kill my servants!" the queen shrieks. "You will now see what true power is!" Her crown starts glowing gold, and from it extends a mask that covers the upper half of her face. She leaps from her throne and lands in the middle of the chamber, hard enough to leave an actual crater there, and when she swivels in place to face them, she is holding two swords made of light. "You will pay."

Pocket Ground Sand Powdered Granite! Throw at the Queen's face, as a distraction. He runs towards the Queen, ready to duck for cover because his elemental manipulation range is not that great.

Ducking for cover will definitely be necessary; she has two swords.

Obviously magical swords on top of that. Well, he is going to use Henry's anti-magic crystals. Only sensible when fighting a Witch-Queen in bikini-armor.

Speaking of which, Thomas aims to hit the Queen's exposed flesh with his hammer by faking a hit that she can easily block... except he magically detaches the hammer's head to hit through momentum.

Now his hammer is a short staff.

Anti-magic... works. The swords wink out of existence, and she hisses before dodging away from his blows. "Giant-king trickery!" she screeches.