Where has God gone?
Word Count: 1973
"So you're going to assign me to a new officer," Faustite panted out, and wiped the blood from his nose with the back of his hand. The thin rivulets smeared a filmy sheen of red across his upper lip. "Wouldn't that make me someone else's problem? A convenient ball and chain to pass around so you can remind others of the weight of the Negaverse?" Like they don't carry it on their backs already.
Umber waited, poised on a higher ledge nearest a gargoyle. He looked down on Faustite with the same cool indifference that he always carried, cast like an indelible mask. "No." He planted both hands between his legs and slipped easily into a seated position. From there, he wrapped a tattooed arm around the head of the gargoyle statue where cold marble wicked away some of his heat. "You're a lieutenant. Captains train lieutenants. Generals train captains. It's the law of the Negaverse. A captain has more time for you and less duties to satisfy. A captain can give you a more reasonable spar."
"Of course." Faustite snorted as he dropped his stance. His hands met before him as sore fingers toyed with the handful of rings entrusted to him. "You've been setting me up to fail from the start. What a shame it would be if your superiors were to hear about this. Sabotaging your own ranks must come with a steep price. Do you think you have what it takes to pay it, Umber? Or are you going to default to your charming personality to claw your way up that hill?"
Umber closed his eyes slowly. He so often tired of Faustite's angling for a nerve; in each spar arranged with one another, Faustite often found time to air his grievances and talk down to his superior officer. Perhaps a captain better suited to task could hone that mouth - or take appropriate downfalls. "Your body needed to adjust to pain. It needed to learn endurance before it learned to fight. Survival comes first. Conquest is learned before survival is forgotten. If you bring that before the General-Sovereigns, then I will answer where needed." He stood then, with boots leveraged in careful balance against the parapet. "But be wary."
A threat? "Isn't this a surprise." He looked up toward the general, received answer in pain, then found the ledge empty. The flow of time often jerked and started where generals were concerned, he noted - their attacks often found him before he realized they were missing.
And this time, as the will of his general splintered through his body, Faustite grew acutely aware that Umber seized his starseed from behind. Faustite pressed his own hand to his chest where the warmth of his skin penetrated his clothing. "You told me our enemies can't pull starseeds."
"They can't."
"Then why-" Faustite gasped, a sharp hiss cutting through teeth. Umber's grip tightened, he knew, and his soul churned out pain in thick, derisive waves.
"I told you to be wary. Your enemy won't stop to give you time to speak. Remember that you discovered this yourself."
But Faustite found no patience with which to listen. "Let go of it." The pain racked, and cold sweat frosted his skin. His heart raced terribly, beating against bone with all the force of his anger, his fear. He would die or he would live - no liminal space existed between the two. Still, trepidation knew no masters in this instance; he still felt that creeping certainty that he would not see the evening set.
"Your enemy won't listen to your demands-"
"Are you my enemy?"
"You must force their hand-"
"Are you my enemy?"
"Or they'll kill you in a thought-"
"Are you my enemy." Faustite seethed.
"Were you listening?" Umber snapped back, his annoyance finally claiming some of his perpetual neutrality.
"You know what you're making of this: camaraderie bred on a bed of enmity. Is that what you're aiming for? Because that's where all these bloodied roads lead."
With a flick of his wrist, Umber held the cool, black starseed in his hand. Faustite crumpled to the ground shortly thereafter, with teenage limbs splayed out in a manner that honored their awkwardness. Briefly he considered simply keeping it; perhaps he would donate it to a youma, or return it to the new sack designated for starseed collection. He may retain it for his own uses in a particularly desperate situation. Or he could return it to the stubborn lieutenant's body and face another pointless tirade when Faustite discovers the use of his tongue once more. He compromised easily, and planted his boot against the lieutenant's neck shortly before he leaned over to return the delicate gem. It slid through fabric easily and disappeared inside the boy's body without interruption.
Faustite drew a rough breath, and with it came the ageless ache that laced his very bones. He wanted to cry out, but managed only a hoarse cough beneath the pressure against his neck. The great span of the world tilted askew and he looked out toward the ledge in groggy recollection. Soon thought caught up to him and bleary eyes searched out the general that towered over his prone form. Are man and god one in the same? The thought passed through him, unquestioned.
"The Negaverse is the law of the land. Remember that." As he eyed his lieutenant, he noted that the boy looked too delirious to form a coherent response. "It answers to no one. It will answer no one. Your questions and taunts and suppositions mean nothing to it. Like nature, it cannot be defied. It is nature, so follow it. Save your questions for how you can better serve it." Yet his foot did not leave the lieutenant's neck.
More sensation woke within Faustite's body as Umber's words coaxed a roiling anger within him. Slight fingers cut across the ground in scrapes when his nails searched for purchase. He laughed in thick rasps against the stone, though the sound remained utterly devoid of mirth. "It's a fantastic thought, isn't it? To think that every part of what we do coincides with nature. Aren't those the highest accolades?" He smirked against loosened gravel.
A loud click sounded the release of Umber's weapon. He aimed the double blade downward toward the small of Faustite's back, where a vest covered the flesh just inside his left thigh. "You have always relied on the Negaverse's recovery through starseeds to get through our training. I have always given them to you. Tonight, you will find your own or you will die." Umber exhaled through his nose as he leaned forward, and the body beneath him provided very little resistance. He waited through the thin cry, watched his lieutenant stiffen and fight to draw away from the source of pain, yet Umber allowed no escape. Slowly he curved his stroke to open flesh in a semilunar cavity, then withdrew the weapon altogether.
In a blink, the pair stood in the shaded alley behind a sicilian eatery. Umber's boot lifted from the throat of his lieutenant. "You have two minutes."
"Or what?" Faustite staggered to his feet as he pressed a sweaty palm to his latest injury's slick pain. "You'll turn me out to the youma?"
Umber shook his head and watched the boy carefully. While his form looked hunched, much of his ire still remained. His spirit was unbroken. "In two minutes, you'll pass out from blood loss. In three, you'll die." His tone remained dutifully matter-of-fact.
"And you're going to let me die." His incredulity was lost with the free-flowing blood.
Umber shook his head once more. "You won't fail."
Fear left him cold and trembling to the task at hand. Two minutes would pass woefully quickly, he knew - especially when faced with the inward, twisting debate of whether to continue living or tear down another life. The magnitude of the arguments struck him squarely and Faustite struggled past the sudden numbness that clouded his mind. He needed to act, not think. He needed to force himself out of the insidious fear that froze him into inaction. But with that came the damning knowledge that he will have killed a man under the misbegotten notion that he might survive a little longer. Of course it comes to this. Faustite smiled pessimistically.
Desperation won out with his endemic desire to survive, and with his bloodied hand clapped over the now-cold wound, Faustite limped into the well-trafficked walkways beyond the alley. Blood loss quickly stripped out all color from his face, and the welling stains beneath his feet begged the attention of onlookers. Faustite panted openly now, and slumped against a bench while the rest of the world lurched terribly.
In seconds, a girl seldom older than he dashed before him. "You need help," she declared in an instant, and started rifling through her oversized Versace knockoff with steady hands. "I'll call the hospital. You need to put pressure on that. I won't ask what happened, so don't waste your energy on talking, okay?"
Faustite spared no time in waiting for her. He reached out toward her bare sternum without invitation and imagined his bloodied palm slickened with all the hate and fury boiling within him. His hand passed through skin unhindered, through bone unbroken, through flesh unbound and found the sole source of relief to his threatened condition. Faustite allowed himself no time to consider his actions - he pulled at once, and the girl collapsed nigh on top of him with the contents of her purse spilling out and onto the concrete with unceremonious percussion. In his hand laid the gem in question - a brilliant, pristine yellow in color and shine - and he pressed the gem to his mouth.
He realized, then, that he waited too long. In equal strength to his survival instincts, revulsion closed his throat to such a gem. His mouth ran slick with bitter saliva, and he knew that if he attempted to eat someone's soul, he would surely vomit. But there existed no other way - he could pause for nothing.
So he bit into its surface, felt the delicate shell crack under his teeth, and convulsed with vehement opposition to the act. He chewed, and bile erupted from his mouth at once. His own latticed fingers acted as a makeshift sieve that caught the chunks of the starseed and he hastily forced their vile fragments back between his lips. Again he shuddered violently, but desperation pushed to finally override such instincts and he swallowed it down, hard. Twice more he felt his body heave, and nearly retched up the remains of the seed, but there was nothing to be done for his victim now - even if he were to spit up the last of her soul, or die with half her body still in his lap.
Soon, nausea smoothed away and a coolness claimed its place. While he felt his consciousness slipping, he gained the lurid burst of energy entwined with confidence that starseeds often begat. He missed it both terribly and not at all. Still, Umber spared him no time to reflect on it - as soon as he completed the deed, his general was upon him with a hand on his shoulder.
"Hold fast," he said, and at once Faustite knew that he referred not to the hand placed on the lieutenant's shoulder. Faustite wondered then, whether the general harbored any feelings toward the well-being of his subordinate. He then laughed inwardly at himself for considering such a notion in the wake of killing a woman. But, he found, there wasn't time for that, either. In the next minute, both agents and the body were gone from public purview.
