The black rose chapter 6

"Holy God-Emperor of mankind." Johana said, her hands clasped together under her lips, her eyes closed and the smoke burning incense drifting around her. The grey fog crawled across the air, slowly growing into a blurred, frail branch.

"Hear my prayer." She asked, the beads of her necklace between her thumb and index finger. "Give me strength. Grant me the resolve I need to enact your will. If you grant me this, I will bring wrath on the traitors to your Imperium and purge them with the holy flames of your sons. I will destroy the heretics that corrupt our faith, I will take my sisters on a crusade of faith and fire."

Johana leaned forward and kissed one of the beads. "I beg of you, grant me this wish." She kissed the bead again and inhaled a thick stream of the smoke.

She looked at the Aquila before her. A thin wax candle was burning beneath the left wing of the golden double headed eagle. She picked up another wax candle, as thin as the other one. She held the tip of the candle over the already burning candle. The wax melted and dripped away before the string underneath could be licked by the flames. Once the candle was burning, Johana placed it beneath the right wing, pressing it down on a sharp point.

Johana closed her eyes again and started rolling the beads in between her fingers.

"I thank you ever day for Emma." She paused, thinking of the next word to say. "Do not condemn her for straying from your path. You are our father and guardian but you also require protection." She paused and for a moment, Johana opened her eyes but quickly closed them.

"Is it possible, holy Emperor, that Emma was your will enacted through her? Did you send her to save me?" Her heart started fluttering, pounding even as she remembered the battle. She remembered the sound bullets ricocheting of metall. The speech of the Canoness. The feeling of her glowing blade cutting through heretic's flesh and armor.

Then Johana flinched.

She didn´t hear or see what happened. She only saw the mud coming towards her, the thick mixture of water and dirt picking her up and pinning her to the wall. Then everything went black. She couldn´t see anything. It was all silent apart from her panicked breaths. She tried escaping, but the thick mud held her firmly in place. Only her hand above the mud could be move.

The memory was enough to make her wince. The necklace of beads slipped from her fingers and Johana put a hand over her eyes.

Then she remembered Emma. She remembered Emma digging away the mud with furious zeal. Despite the constant threat of gunfire, Emma clawed at the mud with an almost animalistic frenzy. After that, Johana remembered Emma´s smile as she thanked Emma for her rescue, after they had slayed the ogryn. That silky, soft smile.

Johana put her hands together. She didn´t open her eyes. "One day, you will rise again, holy Emperor. One day, we will feel your power course throughout the imperium and feel your light warming our souls with your light and love. The traitors, the heretics, and the corrupt will plead and beg for mercy and forgiveness. For which there shall be none! your sons will return to your side, and with your light, they will be cleansed of the lies and corruption of the ruinous powers. On that day, that one Glorious day, I will stand with you."

It was a prayer she´d uttered many in the past. A passage she had been told at an early age, before joining the ranks of the Sororita.

Johana opened her eyes. The candles were slowly shrinking and melting to white, running wax. Running down the length of the candles and gathering around the base of candle sticks. The older candle already had wax gathering up into a thick white puddle. The fresh droops rolled of the edge and dripped to the floor.

She leaned forward and blew out the fading flame at the top. She looked at the second one candle. It was hardly even halfway burned and the flame was still pulsing with life.

Johana stared into the flame. She hoped to see something in the flames, hiding behind the veil of thick white light. But she only saw a little drop shaped flames slowly eating away at the candle wax.

She rubbed her arm and sighed. Why is he always so silent?

The question eat at her mind but she dismissed them. She leaned forward, put her hand around the candle and gave a little blow.

The light in her tent faded and before Johana could blink, darkness had consumed everything. At first Johana was wrapped around this shadow. But after a few moments things started to get back shape. Though it was blurred and flickered like flames when she moved her head she could make out the golden Aquila in front of her and the remains of the burned candles underneath its wings.

She turned and looked at her bed behind her. A blanket and a cotton pillow placed at the end. Johana sat on the edge of it and looked at the Aquila one final time before laying down and pulling the blanket over herself. At first, she felt a shill rushing from her feet as the naked skin brushed against the cold madras. She pulled her feet inwards, putting her knees over her chest. Her eyelids where already heavy and she quickly drifted off to sleep.

Johana woke with a hard yank. Her skin was drenched in sweat and her breath gasped beyond her own control. She sat up in the bead and leaned forward.

What kind of nightmare did I have? Johana wondered. It was rare for her to forget her dreams the moment she woke up but now she wanted to know.

She put a hand on her arm and felt some dried sweat. She shifted and felt a warm, wet felling between her legs. She pressed her thighs together and felt them sticking together for a moment before peeling apart.

Johana thought it was her cycle. While she usually didn´t bleed this much at once it was not unexpected. It had been more then a few weeks sense her last cycle. She reached under the sheet, pulled back her robe and put a hand on her thigh. The fingers where meet with a warm fluid that grew warmer as they got further up her leg.

She pulled her hand back and did not find the fingers to be red. Instead they were clear, as if she had just dipped her fingers in water.

"W… What?"

Johana rubbed the substance between her fingers and suddenly an icy stream ran through her veins. Her fingers seemed to move instinctively, they moved between the sheets and quickly moved up her thighs. She stopped them just between her legs. The cold feeling gathered up in her heart. It grew and started pressing against her throat. She took a hard swallow and felt her fingers crawling inside her. She gasped and pulled them out so hard she almost tore the sheets apart.

She jumped out of the bed and tried putting a new candle on the Aquila. Her hands where shaking so much the candle almost broke as she pressed it down on the pike.

"Oh, holy Emperor." Johana said when she lit the candle. "Why was my dream one of heresy? Why did it tempt me?" She felt herself on the verge of crying. "Please protect me from such thoughts."