...well this was feeling familiar.

Thornton was having flashbacks to his first year when things exploding over his head in this room had sent him fleeing for a corner. Adjusting the wooden plaque that bore his name, Thornton Baines barely flinched this time, as little squishy pieces of debris rained on his head.

Brushing them from his hair, Thornton considered what seemed to be the collision, as others had said, of an asteroid with a planetary body. But he was more focused on the ring that now circled the sphere, trying to puzzle through Flamsteed's purpose.