After clearing a couple more rooms similar to the first one, the only difference being a few more skeletons to tackle at a time and not very much in the way of loot other than a couple of coins and rusty pieces of weaponry, they had made it to a much larger room. Hamish explained that this was the throne room and that the Skeleton Queen would spawn up at the front as soon as they entered. There were some game mechanics to pay attention to. The Skeleton Queen would attack whoever caused the most damage, so they joked about Anika being completely safe. Jokes aside, they all had to be very careful, because at regular intervals the Queen would let out a high-pitched scream. It was Lilia's job to create a magical barrier around them, so she had to get close, and everybody had to get inside the area to be protected from the scream.

Lilia showed them what it looked like when she was preparing her barrier spell. It looked beautiful, almost like a giant soap bubble spreading out from where she stood. She explained that it would take a lot of her mana to keep it up, so she would only put it up at the last minute and would need everybody to get inside quickly.

The plan was for Hamish and Anika to stand at the back, Lilia somewhere in the middle. Beth and Felix would be up at the front, keeping the attention of the Skeleton Queen focused on them. Felix would look out for the moments when the Queen was preparing to scream and would tell everyone to gather around Lilia for the protection of her spell. Other than that, there were no further instructions. Anika felt like a spare wheel. Apparently, it was pointless for her to even shoot at the Queen or any of the skeletons they had taken care of up until now. None of them could be damaged by physical damage alone. Her only saving grace was that Beth was proving to be a useful part of the group, and she could see that her companion was loving every minute.

Felix checked that everyone was ready, went into stealth, then drifted into the throne room. At his signal, Beth followed him and they all entered the room. When Beth was halfway across the floor, in the spot where Lilia was supposed to stay, the Skeleton Queen appeared. She was massive and slightly transparent. She wore a long silk cloak and a golden crown on her head. In one hand she carried an enormous sword, and in the other hand a long staff. She started the encounter by laughing. It was a dark and hollow cackle that chilled Anika's bones. Then the fighting began.

Felix shouted that Beth needed to bring the Queen back to the far end of the room where he was standing. She did so without having to be asked twice.

When the moment came that Anika had been waiting for, Felix shouted: "Get ready!"

They all huddled around Lilia as she was preparing her magical barrier. They made it in time, with a few seconds to spare, before the Skeleton Queen let out an ear deafening screech. None of them took any damage, but the barrier did little to muffle the sound. As soon she had finished her unique ability, the fighting resumed and Felix and Beth drew her to the back of the room.

Anika was keeping an eye on the Skeleton Queen's health bar, at this point they had only taken about 10% of it off.

They continued what seemed like quite a mechanical sequence, everyone was doing their job perfectly, apart from her. She could do nothing except stay out of the way and make sure she got inside Lilia's barrier at the right time. When it seemed like they were close to getting the better of the Queen, Lilia became distracted. Something was wrong.

"Shit, I need more mana potions. Hamish, I'm out of mana!"

Hamish threw two potions to her and they carried on fighting, but it didn't take long before she sounded like she was in trouble again.

"I need more. I can't keep putting these barriers up any longer, I need more potions."

"That's all I've got," Hamish said.

"Guys we're screwed, she's still got about 15% health left and I can't put up any more barriers. Get ready to take some serious damage."

Hamish stepped closer and waved his arms around in a frenzy, casting healing spells on everyone. He looked like a conductor in an orchestra.

"I can't heal everyone through this, I've tried it before." He went as close as possible to the action and looked back at Lilia and Anika with a shrug of his shoulders. "Sorry guys, I'm just going to focus on Felix and Beth now, with any luck I can get them through it.

Lilia threw up her arms in frustration.

Anika felt terrible, but there was nothing she could do. Lilia had moved towards the back of the room and stayed close to her, most likely feeling equally useless.

"Get ready! Here she goes again."

Felix had cupped one ear with his hand and was turning his face away from the Queen while stabbing at her with the blade in his other hand. Hamish was cupping both of his ears with his hands, kneeling down and turning away. When Lilia did the same, Anika followed suit. They were about to experience the full force of the Skeleton Queen's scream.

The noise from metal striking metal had stopped when the Queen prepared her scream, everybody braced themselves. They had been through this part several times, but this time there was no high-pitched noise. The only thing that could be heard was the brutal roar from Beth as she got on her back legs and slapped the skeleton Queen with both of her strong paws.

For a few moments, it was just Beth and the Skeleton Queen fighting each other. Felix was the first to turn his gaze back to the action and to wonder what was going on.

"What the fuck just happened?" He didn't wait for an answer but dove straight back into the action with his daggers and another combination of vicious attacks.

"We are still alive! Only 5% to go. Everyone throw what you've got at her, she's going down."

Hamish stepped a little further away from the action and continued making sure that Felix and Beth were getting all the attention they needed.

With only 1% to go, the Skeleton Queen got ready to produce another one of her signature moves. Everybody braced themselves again, except for Felix who was slicing and dicing at the target, doing his best to take her down before she could complete her spell.

This time Anika felt something from Beth. It was as if Beth knew what to do and had it covered. It made her relax, and she didn't even bother covering her ears. Although she couldn't hear Beth explaining it to her, she got a tremendous sense that Beth had figured out what to do about the Skeleton Queen and was telling her not to be worried. She'd figured out how to defeat her.

Beth got on her hind legs, roared when everything went quiet and smacked the Queen across the face like before. The Queen looked surprised and annoyed that she couldn't get her ability to work, and Anika noticed a show of desperation in the Queen's face.

Moments later the Skeleton Queen was dead and everybody could sigh with relief.

When the Queen died, Anika had received enough experience points to gain another level. She felt the familiar rush as her stats increased. She checked her character sheet and saw she was now level 5, on top of that, she was already a third of the way to level 6.

"Congrats on the level up," Felix said as he went to loot the Queen.

"Was that a bug? Lilia said. "I think we just got really lucky. Must have been a glitch or something, but I'm not going to complain."

Beth made her way back to Anika to get a hug and some praise for her hard work. She was over the moon with how everything had gone, she was the star of the show and Anika couldn't be more proud of her.

"Here we go. I found it. Check out the logs guys. It was Beth who silenced the Queen for us. Look at that, she was doing tons of damage and silenced the Queen with her Bash ability the last two times. She's a fucking hero."

At first, Anika wasn't sure what combat logs they were talking about. But it only took a few moments of looking through her character screen before she found it. There was an incredible amount of information about their fight available. Everything from who was hit, how much damage they took and what abilities were being used. There it was, Beth had saved the day by using an ability called Bash. There was a hyperlink in the combat log which showed that her Bash ability could silence several spells. The only restriction was a cooldown timer of 30 seconds, and a few schools of magic that couldn't be silenced. How Beth had learned an ability without Anika realising was a mystery. Perhaps she had it all along, Anika couldn't be sure.

"Right we've got a bit of gold, some schematics and a couple of items you guys might want."

Felix looked like he had finished looting the Queen and was joining them in the centre of the room. He threw a pair of boots at Anika, along with a small purse of coins. She inspected the boots and saw they were a nice upgrade compared to what she was wearing.

You receive item: Nightmare Leather Sprinters

+15 Agility

+10 Speed

She was thrilled with her loot and thanked Felix for the coins, quietly hoping they would continue their progress.