Reaching the steps to the throne I knelt down in respect and said, "My Princess, I have urgent news the King must hear!"
"The King, my father, is indisposed and has been so for quite some time. I rule in his stead. Pray, tell your traitorous remarks to me instead."
The hall had gone deathly silent at her words. Reigning in the urge to mount the stairs to give the royal brat the spanking of her life I managed to say instead, "The time of the end of the world, that was foretold in the Holy Scrolls left to us by the prophets of old, is upon us. Princess, this kingdom, indeed all of the kingdoms, are about to be overrun by darkness. Those who would place their trust in El Elyon must evacuate at once before it is too late!"
"Evacuate the kingdom! Are you insane? Tell me Benaiah, once friend of my father, where would you have us go? Where, in all this world, is a land with the beauty or majestic quality of our own?"
Patiently, as if dealing with a child, I said, "To the East, just as the Holy Scrolls have told us since time memorable as to where our redemption would come from. In specific, I speak of no land to be found on Ayenathurim, but rather of Shamayim."
The Princess snorted indignantly and tossed a hand upwards in a disregarding fashion, "You speak in riddles. I don't know what I once saw in you and here you are now as one gone mad, decrying the peace and prosperity that we have managed to acquire for ourselves. Such men as you are dangerous and your foolish ideas even more so! The last time you left you took with you almost half of my father's knights and now you come back to ask for the entire kingdom! Does your arrogance know no bounds? Apparently not, but I for one have had enough of your impudence! Throw him in the dungeons and see that his stay is a most uncomfortable one!"
I made no move to protest against the guards who, somewhat hesitantly at first, moved forward to disarm me. They pushed me from the room that had gone wild in the wake of the Princess's actions.
The Princess's cold stare followed me from the room and I could not help but notice the resemblance to a viper that she now possessed about herself.
The guards were not all rough in their treatment of me as they hustled me onward. Reaching the dungeons, I was shown to a dank and quite filthy cell as per the Princess's instructions.