But Taharqi uses this moment to land a direct axe blow to her back.

She screeches again with the hit, but rather than being cut and bleeding, her skin cracks like she herself is made of stone, and golden light leaks from the wound.

Now that he is not holding a heavy weapon, he will get closer and personal with her.

"Who are you calling giant? You haven't even seen me without pants, lady." He punctuates this with a leg swipe.

Despite her injury, she jumps away, drops of liquid golden light splattering the floor before vanishing. Once she is far enough from Thomas, she summons her magical blades once more, and goes for Taharqi.

He parries, well enough, and pushes her towards Thomas, out of balance.

Team work! Thomas likes the idea of keeping her out of balance. And making her swords vanish again. Let's go with that.

And an uppercut with his axe shatters her left leg to pieces, followed by a blow to the head—

—and an inhuman scream, loud and shrill enough to make the earth tremble—

—and an explosion of light, knocking both of them off their feet, at the far walls of the chambers.

Ouch! "Fuck!" He mutters once he can form words again. He looks around, trying to assess the post-explosion situation.

The structure of the chamber itself is mostly intact, save for the cracks on the floor where they fought the colossi and the queen herself, but...

...where the queen stood now lies a woman, unconscious. She looks like the queen did, wearing the same face, but her garb is different—she does not wear the crown, and instead is in practical exploration gear.

Next to her body lies a golden mask, a small thin crack running from one eye to one cheek.

"Post battle cutscene," Thomas says to himself still a bit dizzy. 

Then he stands up and makes his ways towards Taharqi.

Who also makes his way towards him, so they meet in the middle where the girl's body is. Taharqi lowers to one knee and grabs the mask. "Witch-Queen's," he declares before turning his gaze to the woman. "Going to go out on a limb and say the mask possessed her."

"Oh, good old demonic possession. Better be careful with that," he eyes the mask. "also, we should try waking her up. Or do you think she might dislike how we defeated her alter ego?"

"I don't think demonic is quite right, for all her sins I'm pretty sure the Witch-Queen was a human." He lowers a hand to the woman's face to see if she's still breathing...

...and she immediately grabs his wrist and opens her eyes.

Then she frowns. "What... where... am I...?"

"Ancient palace of the witch queen that was possessing you until we came here and beat her up. Hi, I am Thomas. You're welcome."

"...hello. I am Razma of Shem," she says, releasing her grip on Taharqi's wrist and pushing herself upright.

"Taharqi. Of Kush but that's not a title or anything."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, ma'am. What brings you to these parts? The lovely architecture? The ancient artifact of evil?" He offers a hand for her to stand up.

She sighs and accepts his hand up, only wobbling in place a bit. "The latter. I had... visions... leading me here. I don't know why."

Taharqi stands up, too. "And they led you to the mask?"

"To... here. Then the mask—it called to me. It's... fuzzy. I don't remember all of it, I wasn't myself. And then I really wasn't myself."

"Yikes. Any idea of how long were you under the mask's influence?"