Anka and the Queen’s Heart

The Book of Monsters

Anka, a Chaos Loremaster, investigates why monstrous creatures remain near Crownsreach when the Queen's minions have dwindled elsewhere. You help her compare specimens and local materials, then contain the problem. Her findings suggest a narrow opening to the Plane of Monsters beneath the area.

In the library's Back Room, you recover the Book of Monsters and defeat the Book Wyrm Drakath placed there to discourage thieves. He insists that you killed the Queen, but you cannot remember doing so. Anka hopes a relic connected to her will reveal the truth. Drakath warns against trusting anything of the Queen's and orders you to find and close the rift instead.

Monster-derived reagents reveal the book's instructions, and you use Light and Chaos to clear the Deep Forest's mist before feeding its creatures so you can follow them to the tunnel. Anka wants to enter despite Drakath's warning, but after you defeat an Aberrant Horror, Xing and Xang reveal that he sent them to watch her. Too curious to turn back, they decide to accompany the search.

Beneath the forest, Anka recounts how the once-human Queen tore out her heart after a terrible betrayal and lay still for a hundred days as the earth absorbed her. She identifies Monstrite as the remains of the Queen's tears and connects it to the Darkblood's relics. While you study the cave's life and stone, the twins evade Drakath's order to return by pretending their magical connection has static. He points out that it does not.

Following Anka's account of the Queen's transformation, you rekindle the vanished doorway with flame and caustic oil. She describes a discarded body, calcified and worshiped by monsters. Tests show that its stone matches their offerings and the Monstrite. The largest tribute leads her to identify the relic as the Queen's petrified heart and the last piece of her soul.

Drakath arrives to intervene, but Anka touches the heart and says it has released the Queen's trapped rage and pain, asking you to fight the manifestation. Afterward, she claims to feel the Queen's past and future, and as her appearance changes, she declares that the power is hers now.

Anka blocks the way out and creates monsters to delay you as you and Drakath pursue her through Down Below. She recounts how the Queen's first mate tried to kill her, and how she returned with an army before helping Dethrix Drakath take Swordhaven. Drakath confirms his father's name and objects to your joke about Drakath Drakath, but rejects any appeal to loyalty toward his mother. You overcome Anka's creatures and defenses to reach her throne.

When Anka admits that the heart is bending her will and asks for help, you offer to break its hold while Drakath wants it destroyed. Yet she cannot let it go and accuses you of wanting her power. You defeat her and remove the heart, but cannot undo what it has done to her. She apologizes: she only wanted to know.

Through the heart, you sense the Queen outside her castle and feel yourself kill her, though the time is unclear. When Drakath declares that Malgor was telling the truth, you agree about this much. In the Back Room, you argue that the heart's connection may still help against Malgor, and Drakath agrees to keep it safe with the promise that you will destroy it after the war.