Chapter 13
Back in the ballroom Karen and Michael are still dancing and Sal is still eating while everyone else clusters together in groups whispering and watching them. Suddenly guards burst into the room weapons drawn. Everyone is startled. The guards quickly split up into two groups. One group descends on Karen and Michael ripping them apart and seizing them. The other group surrounds Sal and seizes him in mid mouthful. “Hey! What’s the big idea! It’s all you can eat isn’t it?”
“The big idea is that you are all under arrest”, yells Queen Frallinaso suddenly reappearing with guards flanking her at the stage where the band has come to a grinding halt with their music. “You are hereby charged with plotting to overthrow the crown and commit attacks against the sovereignty of this kingdom.” Just then Milenas and John walk back into the ballroom blissfully unaware of what is transpiring. Frallinaso points a finger squarely at John, “Seize that man now!” Before either he or Milenas can react John is grabbed by guards.
“What…what is going on here!?! What is the meaning of this?!”, John cries out in his shock.
Milenas tries to stop the guards and get them to unhand John but she is blocked from even getting near him as they begin dragging him away. Milenas cries out, “No you can’t!” and she runs to her sister. “Why are you doing this?!”
“Stand down sister. This is why I am the queen and you just the spare. While you were filling your head with romantic notions of whimsy I doggedly pursued the truth. These charlatans have been deceiving you from the start. We recovered mysterious weapons that look like weapons of magic from where you found them.” A wave of gasps goes over the gathered spectators in the room upon the Queen’s news followed by a surge of whispers and hushed remarks. “They probably hid them when you stumbled upon them forcing them to take up this absurd farce they have been perpetrating.” More guards appear in the room carrying pieces of weapon wreckage recovered from the lake where the earthlings emerged from to corroborate what the Queen is saying.
John with his penchant for truth and justice tries in vain to explain, “Of course you found that! Like we told you we came from a war zone! That stuff came through the portal with us!”
“Enough! Get them out of my sight.”
“You can’t! Please!”, begs Milenas.
“Silence! Know your place.”
“Should we fight?”, Karen whispers to Michael.
“I don’t think it’s a fight we will walk away from”, Michael responds gravely as he bows his head and lets the guards escort him away without a fight. The others are roughly forced to follow him to the dungeon.
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