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EVEN THE POURING RAIN COULD NOT WASH LOVISA OF HER SINS. She hadn't spoken since a boy was killed at her hand and barely showed any signs of life besides the reluctant rise and fall of her chest. Lovisa remained stoic with the other remaining Sardaukar candidates — now inductees — as she knelt on the rough pebbled ground, donned in full Sardaukar armor, facing the central monument that represented the imperial rule. On top of it, the General stood, looking over the army in lieu of its true leader, the Emperor.
Behind the inductees, the failed trainees bled out into a communal basin where women in all black robes submerged bowls to fill. The rejected trainees were hung upside down, their feet and individual wrists tied down in a position mirroring that of an inverted crucifix.
That of a symbol of martyrdom.
It was the least the Sardaukar could do to honor those whose lives were sacrificed for the Emperor, even if not in battle. Their blood would be used to ring in the new generation of warriors, and they would not be forgotten (in theory).
Lovisa thought otherwise. It was necessary that the initiation ceremony occurred during one of the planet's many rain storms, quite hypocritical in Lovisa's opinion since the Sardaukar was theoretically cleansed of their sins only to commit twice as many as they did before. As quickly as the rain poured down would the sacrifices be forgotten. After this short-lived ceremony, their bodies would simply be added to the never-ending graveyard on Salusa Secundus.
With other high-ranking army leaders emitting a low throaty rhythm, the General shouted from his spot, "We are the Sardaukar!" Lovisa eyed the women walking through the rows with their bowls full of spilt blood, tracing a line from the inductees' foreheads down to their glabella.
"The Emperor's Blades!" As the women came closer to Lovisa, she wondered what was in store for her post-induction. Would her identity be exchanged for a soldier? Forced to live out a fate that rendered her as disposable as the person kneeling beside her?
"Those who stand against us fall!" Would Lovisa ever see anyone from Ginaz again? Tauno? Duncan?
Lovisa's thoughts were interrupted as one of the women reached Lovisa's row, beginning at the opposite end. Lovisa watched from the corner of her eye as the woman drew the lines of blood on each of Lovisa's fellow soldiers' foreheads, ultimately reaching the lone female inductee. As instructed, Lovisa stared forward as the woman visibly hesitated at the sight of a girl, before also fulfilling her own assigned duty. The woman dipped her thumb in her bowl before extending her arm towards Lovisa's face, pressing her thumb onto the middle of Lovisa's forehead before slowly dragging it towards the space between her eyebrows.
When the woman retracted her arm, Lovisa knew that this was it. There was no going back to the girl she was before.
