Free Diablo 3: The Reaper of Souls by Elias Vandoren Page B

accessible to their curious younger counterparts.
     
    Still, rumors of general rules emerged.
     
    Along with a single weapon of their choice—in Mikulov's case, the choice was hardly an issue; it must be the punch dagger—the initiates were granted one mantra, inscribed on a scroll by the masters, to carry with them. It could be of whatever nature they chose. Try as he might, Mikulov could not decide which one to select. Each night he tossed and turned and taxed his mind as he sought the ever-elusive answer.
     
    What will be essential to my survival?
     
    In the end, the choice was determined not by thinking but by fear.
     
    When he stood before the assembled masters of the Floating Sky Monastery, he was offered a vast array of scrolls. Because the sun had not yet risen, the scrolls glowed in torchlight. Some were voluminous; others were barely larger than his little finger; a few were ornately bound and sealed with intricate insignia.
     
    "The purpose of your ordeal," Vedenin said (and naturally it was Vedenin who challenged him), "is to prove your ability to submit your mind, your weapon, and your spirit to the will of the gods. To turn away from your own altar and bow down at theirs." The smirk on his outwardly benign face bespoke how little faith the man held in the novitiate.
     
    When Mikulov hesitated, he felt the masters' judgment from within the walls, and from without, lurking uncertainties and physical dangers. His vacillation gave way to what became in that moment an obvious pick: the healing mantra.
     
    With the rolled parchment, he was handed a folded sheet of paper, sealed with an impression of the monastery's sigil in wax. His directive was clear: open the paper seven days hence, after a week of prayer and meditation, during which he was to prepare himself. Only at sunrise on the eighth day was he to break the wax seal and receive further instructions.
     
    At dawn, Mikulov emerged from the sanctuary. Instinctively, he strode east, deeper into the mountains surrounding Ivgorod. He carried only the scroll and the folded paper, and at his hip, the punch dagger in its sheath. He had no food, for it was to be a week of fasting, and no water, for anyone who could not find the means to slake his thirst could never hope to achieve the wisdom required of monks of the Floating Sky Monastery.
     
    Should he prove unable to locate water in the first week of his trial, so it would be. He would have failed—and died—before so much as hearing the voices of the gods, let alone striving to do as they willed.
     
    The week began in calm and tranquility. Mikulov made water his first priority, and so he traveled toward a ridge of steep hills he had seen for years from his dormitory window, a range that ultimately met the Kohl Mountains to the south. He felt confident of finding a stream at the base, though he had no reason to be sure other than that water would always find its way downhill.
     
    He could hear the masters telling him that the gods often spoke thus, through the mix of knowledge, instinct, and intuition that was the adept's method of thought. His confidence was rewarded: at the base of the range lay a tarn, its water dark but clear, fed by a trickle descending through massive rocks. Showing obeisance in the direction of the gift, Mikulov drank deep to refresh after a long day's walking and to replenish for the week ahead. He was happy to have made the discovery so quickly, for he knew it was likely the most important of his trial; in the punishing summer heat, water was his essential need.
     
    He chose to look for shelter near the water, for staying close to the source of the gods' munificence seemed in keeping with a grateful heart.
     
    In the mountains, he knew darkness fell swiftly, and he soon found a stretch of ground less hard than others, beneath an overhanging rock. These, too, he recognized as gifts, and he gave thanks before he lay down.
     
    Waking, he established the routine he would observe