Prince Among the Broken

In the queen's wasteland, favored offspring can gain favor and rise in rank among the broken. Three of the males have achieved a rank that has made them untouchable by all but the queen.

The oldest is quiet, intelligent and beautiful. He has a kind heart and is all together too gentle for the queen, but favored nonetheless. His time away from the pain is spent learning and exploring all the wonders beyond the wasteland. There was a time when he wished to venture out and create more beauty in the lands beyond, now he is content to just observe. He has always been good to me. Never a harsh word or a violent action. My observations of him have taught me the importance of patience, though I do not seem capable of utilizing this knowledge. I have learned through him that true intelligence is simply a desire to continue to learn. The rates at which we process the information may vary, but so long as we are willing to continue progressing we can all become intellectuals. He has long since settled into his rank and accepted the queen's rule.

The second oldest is charming, stubborn, and insightful. He is dearest to me. He seeks to cleanse the wasteland and in it's place create a thriving paradise. His determination to succeed is outweighed only by his dismay at his failure. Things do not grow in the wasteland, they never will until the queen is removed. He raged against the queen's rule for many years. In his desperation to receive genuine affection from her, he tried to defeat the evil that lives inside her. Then he tried to call attention to her evil, so that others might help him. But the wasteland cannot be seen by those in the lands beyond. Their eyes reject the truth and see only what they wish to see, or they simply do not see it at all. He has joined the lands beyond and adopted their ability to no longer see. He has forgotten his time at the wasteland. He visits me there from time to time, but he no longer tries to create. He only tries to teach me how not to see.

The youngest is a little older than me. He has been shattered and rebuilt in the queen's image. He is the Prince among the broken. The queen was able to consume him at a very young age. The prince is twisted, angry, and manipulative. He has the queen's ability to camouflage his evil and evoke sympathy instead of horror. He aided the queen many times in her attempts to consume me. The queen has trained him thoroughly, though his intelligence is not something he pursues and he often allows his evil to be visible to the lands beyond. The pain he inflicts is not lasting, as the queens' is, but its initial impact is far more brutal. Images of him burn into my mind. Images that will never leave me. Memories of pain inflicted do not hurt now, but nearly destroyed me then. When the queen is removed from her throne at last, the prince will destroy himself.