You blink twice and look at her. "What did you say I was?"

She smiles and chuckles softly putting her fist in front of her slim lips. "Ophelia, I never said it was bad to be a chosen one, it was just a little unfortunate. It'll be hard, but, I can tell you'll be fine." She doesn't give you a very good answer, it seems more like a riddle than the sarcastic answer you were expecting, not a confusing muddle of words.

"I still don’t understand what you mean," You try at shy, but your facial expression is more confused and excited as you wished it to be.

"Guess," She says, with a seductive smile. You are not sure what that was for.

Now you're annoyed. First she says a weird thing to you, answers your question with a riddle and when you reply, she's playful? You don't feel very convinced of the Queen being a very good Queen at all.

"I'm your successor?" You ask, not knowing how right you were at that moment. Not comprehending the vast hell you will face.

"You are quite right, Ophelia. So meek and naive," She mutters to herself.

"I, a half breed, am going to be a Queen?" You say slowly trusting your mouth not to screw up your sentence.

She smiles a very scary smile, her white lips stretching over her dead face.

"If I could choose differently, well, I wouldn't choose at all, I have gotten used to this God-gifting torment. Not very well adjusted, but still I'm--what's another word for happy, but not quite happy?-- Content! That's it, I'm content with it." Her eyes lit up insanely, then settled again to the normal rage, as she continued. "To make that more understandable to your half-human self," she looks discussed at the word 'human' gets over it, and pushes forward. "yes, you're going to be the next tortured, spit upon and worshipped idiot called 'Queen'." She rolls her eyes and then rests them on you, waiting for your expression to become less dazed.

Those words you were hearing, those words meant you were going to control the world of Torians. You were being given a power beyond what any human could comprehend. Only slightly conceivable to you. But, you know that this summoning of your presence wasn't for nothing, it was for learning.

"My Queen….This is almost unthinkable as you have said, and here I will learn." you say, not exactly knowing what it will mean, and what peril it will cause.

"I think you are finally starting to get it." she bears her teeth in what you think is a grin, but looks more like a growl without sound. The image of her teeth makes you think of tearing flesh, knowing that she has eaten up human's faster than she could run.

"What exactly is it that you wish to do," you pause, wanting to get the words right, never wanting to sound like a fool. "about me becoming the next Queen?" Whatever she is scheming you know you're not going to like it.

"Training!" she stands excitedly, her hair bounces, her eyes are wild and fierce with adrenalin. "I'm going to train you to fight in all different ways, show you how to use some of your powers and help you to start on your journey to rule." she laughs, a trilling evil cackle. And you think if she had said that any faster, she would have spat acid on you like a dragon breaths flame.












What you didn’t know was that she seemed so evil, and hard, but somewhere in her black cursed heart, she had some spark of love. Pathetic and weak it may be to you, it was there.


You walked out of the black room into the next, she was in front of you, receiving the honor she exists for.

The floor boards creek eerily, and the palace is more like a simulated Hell than it is a house, where things should be cozy and warm, not cold and dark.

The rooms are simple and bare, and at the entrance the guards stand so still they look dead with fear, all they do is stare.

When the Queen walks out onto the porch she slides her body like a snake as she walks up to one of her guards and pushes her dead body into the guards stone still one and clutching his face she kisses his cheek. As if she were blessing him, when her black lips touch his white skin, a small hardly visible wave of eerie light ripples beneath his skin while her lips are still resting there.












She froze him.

Your eyes are wide. Why is she so powerful? Will I be that way when I ascend the thrown?

The Queen pushes herself away from him her neck cranes in your direction and her back arches so her breasts are prominent under her low black top. The guard never moved while she gave her deathly cold kiss to his face.

You wonder if she is obsessed with torturing her guards in the ways of her twisted mind. You recover, and stand up on the step you were sitting on.

The Queen walks over to you still slightly serpentine. And slithers a white arm around your shoulders, making you shiver with her cold forearm against your bare neck.

You feel if she touches you too much with her tattooed skin they'll rub off on you. They don't.

The older Torians have a few tattoos like hers, but they are less intense, when you realize there are from less horrific things than the Queens.

Being half Torian you have some issues when it came to other Torians. They didn't age, there weren't other Torian children, they were all above 11 if there were any at all. Torians with long sentences would stay awhile in the ruined city, others with a short 10-100 years gone in a flash.

She leads you down the creaking steps of her tattered palace she has inhabited for over a millennia. You find it hard to believe it had survived the Queens harsh abuse to everything she touches.

You glance back at it. Its black, faded, and sunken. The 5 story hotel, its widows broken, the doors hanging ajar, and the carpets torn to bits. The furniture that remained was chewed by the teeth of the insane. The Torians that lose it get locked up in there, sometimes you hear them scream when they are aggravated with something.

The health bonus of being half-Torian has saved your sanity completely.

"So, Princess, what would you like to know?" she interrupts your thoughts.

"Um…." You think about all the powers she has. "What exactly is the strength benefits of being Queen?" you ask politely.

She laughs. A shrieking sound, regretting your closeness to her immediately that her black dead mouth is so painfully close to your tentative ears.

"Well, little one, when I became Queen, there was only around 10-30 Torians existing in the entire world at ounce. My power seemed strong to many people, was actually very weak compared to the strength I have now. The reason? There are more Torians for me to rule over, therefore I am given more power to drive them with. Make sense Princess?" she mocked you with that name. You were already starting to hate it.

The information looped into your thoughts, connecting the dots and sewing up pieces of the web of knowledge you were making of this day. This very, very, odd day.

"There is so much work to be done!" the Queen exclaimed, a sarcastic and malicious smile on her lips. "Princess? You, need to be trained,"

What a prissy name for a soon to be tyrant. You think bringing your mood down. Making your very straight shoulders slouch just a hair, and your eye brows come together a little, and your face darken with annoyed rage.

"Trained in what? I hope you didn't out do yourself and written a manual?" you ask, pushing the limits of your privilege to talk back to the Queen.

She chuckles, a rumbling sort of giggle that could break the bones of a new born baby human. "I would never go so far for another in all my reign, but if you want to write a manual, don’t hesitate, although it would be the last thing you ever wrote," she sneers.

She was starting to remind you of a very annoying yet very powerful child. At least she didn't call you to kill you today. That’s all you can thank God for at the moment.

"You remind me of your mother a little too much, Princess. And if you weren't a Princess you would be dead, because you are an abomination. Human and Purgatorian. Disgusting," she wiped her mouth of the filth that she had just spoken. Using the back of her hand she flicked the invisible dirt away, then put her white hand into a fist that could pull out your heart.

"My mother? Merriam never speaks of her," Merriam was your father, you believed that back in the time that he was a human, that name was very feminine. It didn’t seem so now. "Can you tell me about her?" you open up a little, but your starting to regret saying something that childish.

"Not today," the Queen says, shaking her head sadly.

Did she miss her? You think about it, you conclude it would be dumb for a human to stay alive this long. But in your heart, even if it was stained black from your father's Purgatory, you hurt to know who she was, and how she died.


The Queen lead you through the wretched streets, she strut with a strange aura that cast a shadow in your mind but lit the street with faces of the damned, they peered out to see their Queen with the halfling.

You had to slow your pace to hers, so not to pass in front of her even though it seemed she was walking as fast as her skinny legs would take her. It confused you that she weighed so much even though she had the body of those anorexic models in the old magazines from the days when Livins were dominant.

It was eerie to walk the streets with her, you had the feeling she was taking you to your home. You thought of what Merriam would do if he was there. He probably was there.

She stops in front of the towering building where you live. Merriam claimed it a very long time ago, right after you were born.

Merriam came out of the building, smiling at the Queen. You think you hear him whisper a name, but you don’t understand. The Queen smiles back and walks to him more swiftly than she walked with you, and Merriam and her embraced. They stayed that way longer than you expected them too. He even kissed her on the cheek, and she returned the gesture.

"Has the day come already, Mother?" Merriam asks, looking at her, his lips smiling, and his eyes sad.

"It has my son, and the larger approaching," she answers.

You put it together quickly, that Merriam was the son of the Queen, and you were his daughter. But why were you the successor? Shouldn't he be the King? You would find this out.