Ulysses charged through the doorway and into the Queen’s chamber and was instantly cowed by the scene he saw. The Queen, who he’d never seen in person before, sat at a magnificent round table. She was partially concealed by a silky white veil, and a knowing smile sat on her lips. She seemed remarkably…calm? In the face of eminent doom, he would have expected her to show some more emotion, but perhaps that was just royalty for you. The Templar and Guard stood at her sides, still as statues and equally devoid of expression.

Another man followed him up the stairs, but Ulysses paid him little attention. He was probably just another guard of some sort. There were far more pressing things for him to pay attention to.

On a balcony leading out from the room stood the Prophet, who paced back and forth and watched the sky. His ramblings were no more logical than before, but Ulysses caught a couple phrases.

“The gods have fallen asleep on the job yet again!” the Prophet cried. “Soon, soon we shall—” The Queen hushed him and he fell silent.

Ulysses obeyed the Queen’s summons to sit at her table. He paused for a moment, trying to decipher the meaning behind the words engraved on each chair, but could not. In the end he sat in the chair marked Novellas and turned to face his Queen.

His entire life in Scara Brae, Ulysses had been a firm supporter of the monarchy. He’d ignored the occasional bad policy and wrote off the flare-ups of discontent and democratic feeling as foolishness, but right now he felt sympathy with the Friends he’d met earlier in the day. The Queen looked so serene in the face of this disaster…in that moment he realized something that gripped his naïve heart with existential terror.

She knew! he thought. She knew this was going to happen! Whether she caused it or not, she knew

“How could you do this?” he asked the Queen. “How…you must have known! If that madman knew, surely the royal family knew that the comet was coming. You could have evacuated…something.” He sighed, frustrated. It wasn’t as though the Queen would care what he had to say after all—how he’d ended up here, he had no idea. He still couldn’t get over the impression that he really ought to be by the ocean, in a little cottage with his wife…instead he was arguing with the Queen herself. There was really only one question he cared to know the answer to, though.

“What’s happening?”