A geographic scan finally turns up a strange complex: a castle, nearly demolished, but with its underground dungeons still intact. The Maximals land to investigate, and climb into the ruins and into the hatch that leads underground. Paladyne, Shadowraith, Skystrike, and Scythe and Hulk take up the task of exploring the prison they find below. Skystrike turns out to be bolder than many of the others, and ventures on ahead of the group. Paladyne attempts to keep her out of trouble, while Shadowraith and Scythe hang behind and explore more carefully. The latter two first find a prison-kitchen, crawling with giant rats, while the other pair explores a long row of dungeon cells. In one such cell, Skystrike encounters a statue: an eerily accurate and sad-looking human being, sitting on a bench, staring right at the entrance. Paladyne deems this worthy of greater inspection: he is sure that some kind of sorcery is afoot here.
Shadowraith and Scythe next find a storeroom, setting off but ignoring the needle trap in the door. Within the room there is a mysterious box. Scythe succeeds in rigging the box open, but is unhappy when another such needle trap strikes his hand. Fearing he's been lethally poisoned, he runs away into the kitchen room again, and removes the afflicted hand while Shadowraith just stares on.
When Scythe calms down, Paladyne asks for his and Hulk's assistance in removing the unusual statues, two in total. They get to work carrying the sculptures back up to the surface, while Skystrike and Shadowraith continue to explore. Skystrike gets ahead again, discovering a room with furniture, a room with refuse, and a bedroom, which looks recently used. Then, a hatch to a deeper level captures her attention, and she delves below. Shadowraith is a good deal more cautious, and when he finds the bedroom, he investigates more carefully. In a drawer there, he finds a key, and a bottle with a strange but somehow energon-laden liquid. Just then, there is the sound of an explosion from below, as Skystrike has encountered not just one adversary, but four prison guards, standing watch at a secret cell. She fires her weapon, but it misfires, and ends up burning out. Alerting all of the guards to her presence and injuring herself in the process, she attempts to retreat. One of the guards witnesses her transformation from robot to beast mode, and decides that it was accidental, and she must be some type of wild mage. He attacks her, cutting off a sizable portion of her tail. When Shadowraith arrives to back Skystrike up, he is attacked on the stairs by one of the humans. He defeats him, but decides to regroup before things get out of control. He radios the ship and the others, warning them that Skystrike has been injured, and is on her way back. The only female guard positions herself at the bottom of the stairs, and Shadowraith becomes concerned when he hears her order the men to "stand back."
Soon, Paladyne, Scythe, and Hulk arrive. Paladyne gives his usual offer to accept a surrender, but the guards are certain the "adventurers" will be no match for them. When he charges down the stairs, he's met with an unusual sight; the female guard is not a human, but a medusa, who is fixing her gaze on the staircase. He just barely manages to avoid her deadly sight, then closes his eyes as he begins to attack. When Paladyne warns the others not to look, Scythe uses Hulk's "drone-vision" to avoid the gaze. He moves in ahead, and chases the medusa down. One of the snakes bites him on the leg, and he panics again, diving down from the drone and removing the offending limb. However, Hulk continues to act on orders to "smash" the medusa, and with another pair of cracks with his heavy club, she is no more. The human guards, all injured by this point, surrender after the defeat of their commander.
And in a cell in this room, another statue: that of a young woman, finely dressed and looking slightly sad.