When Rellick returned to the temple with his success, he found the place oddly deserted. Not a living soul in sight, only creepy golden statues. He made his way all the way to the temple before realizing a few of the statues looked familiar. Rellick couldn't help but wonder what vanity would lead men of the clergy to create gold statues of themselves.
Before he could come up with the answer, one such statue attacked him, hitting him over the head as the gold cane to life, eyes glowing red as they set upon trying to subdue him. Luckily for Rellick, gold can be cut through, and he was a quick enough man to slip between their partially severed fingers and escape. At least, escape enough to be met by his stags and the queen, all three of whom seemed eager to remove him from the gold chaos.
Once they were safely away, the queen explained what had happened while he was gone. Shortly after the men started to return to normal, a woman entered, clutching her stomach and pleading with the clergymen for help. But the moment anyone touched her, they began to turn to gold. One by one, she had turned everyone to gold, and those who were gold began to obey her, capturing those who weren't for her to take. The stags had barely gotten the queen out in time, and now Rellick had escaped as well.
There wasn't much of a choice in Rellick's mind from there. He decided that he would have to defeat the witch of a woman, and devised a plan.
The queen wandered into the temple village on her own the next morning, and got herself caught. The statues held her fast as a woman appeared from the woodworks to turn her. But before she could reach the queen, Rellick was on her, covered head to toe in cloths to hide any exposed skin. He put the woman in a headlock, enduring beatings and a few attempts by the cold soldiers to stab him. He would deal with those later.
But as the woman lost consciousness, the attacks stopped. Rellick and the queen were able to move her to a secure location where they chained her down and forced her to revert the golden people back to their original forms. Once she had done so, she was bound and escorted back to the capital city to rot in the dungeon, with express orders for the guards to never touch her.
