The brittle hollow of his throat.
Word Count: 1545

The Rift spoke in ways that no man could, and breathed in a manner wholly opposite the forest. The wind stirred gently with the storms crackling over the horizon, and Umber remained on the jagged outcropping overlooking the remnants of the city. Blackened spires crumbled and capitulated to the long years of gravitic wear, collapsing into mottled piles in which the youma often bedded down. Those that emerged from their dormant state darted through their dilapidated playground with ease, chasing each other or chasing the wayward officers who ventured too near. The scene was a complex lattice composed of stark, scorched stone against immiscible grey, where brilliance only came in pops with the most phosphorescent of youma.

Umber himself sat crosslegged at the edge of the precipice and had remained there for a full hour yet, peering down at the scene with his own churning thoughts. The incoming thunderstorm breathed a spark across his skin, left gooseflesh raised under their red markings. In the distance, lightning struck down yet another broken tower. The Rift knew its own turbulence, and it begat a type of livelihood not found in native Earth. For this, Umber often sought its solace and found an easy grounding amidst the self-sustaining chaos. He found it easy to form a great respect for the sprawling expanse. He found it necessary to have that respect in order to escape its vicious clutches without great harm to his person.

But most officers lacked that dose of respect for their innermost sanctums, he found. Furthermore, the senshi and knights who broke into Negaspace and raided the Cathedral proved their own disrespect for the area, and their ranks were cut down just as much as the Negaverse's. Yet the indelible scar remained - a General-Queen was lost, and in her place came three transplants from far outside their own ranks. An admonishment of its own right, perhaps - a lesson that none proved themselves worthy of holding that mantle.

But Umber did not trouble himself over lofty holdings. His own displeasure over last year's catastrophe only grew with the passing months, with the successive failures in discovering, converting, and training new members. They needed their ranks repopulated with better, stronger, faster officers and, as a general himself, he knew the task fell in part to him. The others resumed their recruiting methods, he knew, and he applied himself to garnering new members as best he could. But he lacked his brother's friendliness, and his own understanding of the world often stood so far apart from those of Destiny City that culture erected a great barrier between himself and his potential recruits.

And what of those he did convert? Ochre, Chrysocolla, Haüyne. Each held promise in a manner different from the last, and while they each ultimately faced their duties and adhered to tasks, they each lacked the element of conviction for which he searched.

Ochre initially understood nothing of the Negaverse's claim under nature's dominion, and for this, he suffered grievous imprisonment. The addition of a youma solved the last of his vehement opposition, and yet in return, Umber received a subpar officer for a brother. Now Ochre suffered nosebleeds nigh daily, slept at least ten hours a day, and still required an extra two hours for a nap midday. He hardly held down four hour shifts to contribute to Porsha's household. While he drained energy and pulled starseeds to meet his minimum quota, Ochre occasionally avoided the enemy's movements due to his constant exhaustion. Useful as it was to have his brother finally respecting the Negaverse proper, Umber knew that little would come of his time as an officer. He was, in Umber's mind, a glorified grunt. A morale booster at best.

Chrysocolla was a youth poached from the enemy, one who demonstrated promise in a count of murders. Her grief began to destroy her, as was obvious in how vehemently her body protested her actions. She wanted to kill him, too. But there was promise in her willingness, and through that, he bade for a General-Sovereign to bend her into the Negaverse. Now an eternal, Chrysocolla paralleled him in rank much like his brother does now. She found no want or reason to listen to him, which changed not at all from her time as a super. Now, he knew she hunted energy and protested starseed consumption with a vehemence matched only by their enemy. But she began to slip, and with that, he needed the assistance of another youma. Two officers now functioned beneath their greatest capacity. And while he heard no word of her yet, he expected she would continue cursing his name and adhering to the minimum of her duties.

Haüyne, once Sandrine, was poached from the White Moon in much the same way as Chrysocolla. The corruption of a friend into the Negaverse proved more disastrous than the corruption of an adversary - not only did their friendship incur a permanent disconnect, but Haüyne was left stricken of memories with which they could reconcile. Still, she performed her duties as required, and unlike the previous two, needed no youmaglia to stay within the Negaverse's good graces. Instead, Umber understood Haüyne as a creature that perpetually strayed beyond the borders of sanity, forever lacking use from an officer solidarity standpoint. He heard of no one who respected this senshi greatly. Perhaps no one did. Umber was quite certain that Haüyne would never find herself commanding another new recruit, and if she did, then purification became an inevitability.

Purification. Then there was Persephone, who escaped to the White Moon and recorrupted into the Dark Mirror. Another officer lost. Another eternal senshi. He saw seldom of her since their one meeting, and since vanished into the background of the war.

His trust for Negaverse senshi crumbled around each of their own, save for Alkaid. The ascendant general herself proved the only capable senshi who remained in control of her own mental faculties. And she stood as a shattered form, waiting to vaporize into the ether. Unless more Negaverse senshi followed a similar path, Umber swore off any future attempts of corrupting them into the Negaverse.

But his attempts to train a newly-corrupted officer met similar dissatisfaction. Faustite presented the will to live that Umber sought in new recruits, and Umber trusted him with the power of the Negaverse, yet soon discovered great folly in that choice. He recognized it soon after introducing the concepts of energy gathering and starseed ripping, when the young recruit blanched so vehemently at the notion of killing someone for their life force. Faustite clung stubbornly to moralistic values over pragmatism, and Umber soon started to consider the assistance of yet another youma in righting the lieutenant's path. Already he disobeyed orders by continuing to go out as Faustite before he finished his combat training, before he understood the intricacies of draining energy or collecting the starseeds of his enemies. He wasted his intellect on finding magic in the world of all sorts, and resisted the notion of cataloguing that magic for the Negaverse's betterment.

But there were, he felt, alternatives to the youmaglia that so often siphoned off the host's energy. There needed to be. Youmaglia proved inefficient in their constant drain on their officers, in the way they left otherwise solid soldiers exhausted at times when they needed to operate at their peak. Umber expected the lithe youma were better off used on their adversaries rather than their allies, so he needed another method with which to control the disobedience of peers and subordinates. He needed more research. He needed a new hypothesis, and new data. But the Negaverse lacked starseeds now; they would not sanction another operation to reclaim new starseeds.

It wouldn't matter, Umber expected. For now, they would continue their training cycles. Faustite's constitution remained as delicate as his brother's, and Umber knew a certain ease in cracking ribs or forcing sprains. And Faustite wanted to learn - he wanted the freedom that only power promised. In that, he needed to rely on the Negaverse's darkest abilities. In that, he would learn to sideline morals for ingestion of souls to recuperate his own body. There would be no alternative.

Addiction proved too volatile, too destructive a means of control. It ranked no higher than youmaglia in its efficiency. He needed a soldier both tactically sound and bent on the destruction of their enemy. He needed a subordinate that took direction without question, that operated at peak intensity as often as possible. He needed a soldier that owed his very life to the Negaverse. They all did.

Umber stood as he looked out on a burgeoning fight between the youma. Writhing forms snapped and growled at each other - sounds that seldom carried well through the Rift's heavy air - and he turned from the scene when a victor forced the former out of its ash-stricken hole. Starseeds and their shattering incurred absolute obedience, he knew. These youma fought beyond self-preservation for the sanctity of the Negaverse. Somewhere within these shattered little souls, the answer must still lie. Ideas burgeoned and bloomed beneath that thought.

He would craft obedience out of the brittle hollow of the boy's throat. There would be no further failed projects.