The elders were decided. They would give Kara the test. If she passed, then she would be initiated into the Amazon ranks, but none of them were very optimistic about her chances. An elder would be on hand, just in case she did fail.
The test was simple enough. A small demon, some sort of imp or carver, would be captured, then released into Kara's room while she slept. It would not be a test of her combat abilities, those had already been proven. It would be a test of her attunement with her surroundings, of her intuition, of her senses.
The elder stole secretly to Kara's treetop room, using techniques of stealth that Kara hadn't even dreamt of. Kara had been brooding the whole day about her training, whether she was good enough for the test she kept hearing about, and was in a sound sleep. The elder moved with the utmost silence, and left the cage containing the imp on the floor.
The elder watched from the shadows as the imp, confused, looked around. It assumed that it had been placed in a room with a sleeping guard, and slowly worked free the bars of his poorly built cage. He gave an evil leer to the sleeping Kara, but decided that escape would be better than revenge this night, and silently stole towards the window. The elder shook her head silently. The imp had been quiet, but a true warrior must learn to sense all around her. Without making a sound, she nocked arrow to bow to finish the job. But, before she could fire, the imp suddenly staggered, as if its knee had given out.
Puzzled, the elder hesitated, and in that instant, she saw Kara leap from her bed, her sheet wrapped around her arm as a quick shield, grab her knife from the imp's leg, and hold it to its throat, while immobilizing its arms behind its back.
"How did you get past the guard?", Kara snarled
The imp merely gave her a look of pure hatred and struggled under her iron grip.
"Well, then, if you won't talk to me, then I'm sure the elders would like a word with you." As she was looking for something to tie it up with, the elder stepped out of the shadows.
"Nicely done, Kara."
Kara almost let her captive go from shock, but she managed to hold her composure.
"You have passed the test. Well done. Dispatch of it, and then we can talk."
Kara looked shocked. "Not in this room, I don't!"
She promptly wrenched both its arms, then took it to the window. She dropped the imp from thirty feet, and threw her knife on the way down, hitting its throat. She looked back into the room with a smile.
The elder shook her head. "A bit too flashy, but nicely done."
"Can we talk on the way down? I want to get my knife."
The elder nodded. She was concerned about Kara's flippant, naïve attitude, but impressed with how she had handled herself.
Lost in thought about Kara's attitude, she realized that her student was talking about setting a net of trip wire down before she slept, just like she had been taught, and that she didn't really need it, but it helped, and…
'Too overconfident', The Elder thought to herself. 'But, skilled, if nothing else.'
Once she had been told that her test was completed, and had been dismissed, Kara slumped against the wall and went over the test once again in her mind. She had been in a sound sleep, but something in the back of her mind, some instinct, had been trying to wake her up…
She vowed to pay more attention to that part of her mind. In any case, it had almost awakened her, when she had felt a small tug on one of her trip lines. Rather than getting up, she had reached out with her senses, and felt the foul presence of an imp, mere feet away from her. She had opened her eyes a crack, and pinpointed its location.
Going for the window. It could not be allowed to escape.
She had practiced for this: Throwing off the sheet would not only give a split second alert to the enemy, but it wasted too much energy. She merely lifted the sheet imperceptibly, gripped the well-worn knife under her pillow, and sliced the imp's tendon from twelve feet. Then, she had time to attack. Rather than throwing off the sheets, she grabbed them as a tangling shield, in case the imp tried to hit back. But, she had no trouble at all grabbing her knife from the imp's leg, and using her well practiced hand to hand to disable it.
Then, the elder had stepped in. Breaking its arms and cutting its throat on the way down had been partly to show off, and partly because she was so nervous and tense after her first real combat. With an evil grin, she imagined doing that again, only to things much worse than mere imps.
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The elders had decided. They would give Rashaban the test. He was improving quickly, and now was the time. They teleported a small, captured imp into the doorway of his room while he slept, and kept watch with a scrying spell, ready to strike the imp dead if things went wrong.
This imp had no thoughts of escape, only of murdering one of its captors. As it silently advanced towards the bed, it felt something grab its foot. Looking down, it saw a skeletal hand clutching its ankle. Snarling, he went to strike it away, but found that another hand had reached up from the ground to ensnare his arm! He wildly turned towards his would be victim, who was now rising lazily from the bed. He looked mildly surprised.
"Ah. So Diablo has sent an assassin, hmm? It would have to be small fry, to get past the magic wards." He looked around the room suspiciously, muttering to himself about distractions and backstabbing.
"Just you and me, then? Well, I'm sure you won't mind me returning your favor…" A knife flashed in his hand, from beneath his pillow.
The imp knew he was done for, and could only hurl insults: "Coward! Your kind speaks of balance, but all you care about is death!"
Slowly, Rashaban advanced towards it, as more skeletal arms sprang from the ground. "Death is but a part of life. Everybody already has the living part down pat. So, we study the lesser understood aspect, that of death." He spoke the well worn words as if a mantra, but he clearly was not reciting from a book.
The imp smiled viciously. "Then why not die yourself?"
Rashaban began circling the imp, the skeletal arms shifting so that the imp always faced him.
"Oh, I most certainly shall. All in good time, though. First, I have some demons to slay. Now, tell me how you get past the magical wards, and I'll…"
"You'll what? Let me go? End it quick?"
"I was going to say I won't make your body into my undead slave and lock your soul away forever inside this jar here, but those are also options."
"You don't have the power."
Rashaban gave a wicked smile, and one of the skeletal arms twisted the imp's arm back almost to the breaking point. "I don't?"
"My body you will have, but you aren't powerful enough to snatch my soul."
"I'm not, but I know some who are. In fact, let me go find them right now. I'm sure they'd love to have a conversation with you." He turned to leave.
"Never turn your back on an enemy!", hollered the helpless imp.
Rashaban whirled around, his knife flashed, and it embedded itself in the imp's twisted shoulder, breaking it completely off.
"I tire of your insolence, demon. Allow me, if you will," he spat, "to find some others who are more persuasive than I." As he turned to leave again, the imp's reply was choked back by its own severed arm around its throat. The elders looked at each other, shocked.
Rashaban had always been self assured, but he had never exhibited such cruelty. It was a demon, but still… in any case, despite his attitude, he was skilled, as a necromancer and an interrogator.
As Rashaban sprinted through the necropolis to the elder's quarters, he kept a cool composure on the outside, but his insides were trembling. He couldn't believe he had done that! He was sure he would have panicked! 'Go over it again…'. he thought.
He had sensed something out of place in his room and awoken from a sound sleep. The spirit warding he had set up had awoken him as well as his own innate sense of a negative life force. He pinpointed the intruder using only his senses, as he had been trained to do, and summoned a skeletal arm with all his will from the remains in his dirt floor. To his own amazement, he did it again. He knew he had to keep his cool and gain the upper hand, so he slowly got up from his bed, trying to look as bored as possible. He saw an imp, and immediately thought it was a set up, a distraction. He kept his senses open, and all the time he had interrogated the imp, his brain was working to the maximum.
He kept his senses on the lookout for another intruder, he had summoned an irregular skeleton, and he responded to the imp's blather, all at the same time. There was no room for thought, he had just acted. The broken arm was a nice touch, he didn't know where it had come from, but he was glad it had sprung to mind. He was also glad he had practiced throwing knives so much; he would have looked a damn fool if he had missed! He could still feel the imp struggling in his skeleton's grasp, and he was still trying to sense any other demons. He did not relax until he made it to the elder's cambers, found them waiting for him, and everything was explained.
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It wasn't long after Kara finished her test that she set out on her journey. After Solmo had defeated Andariel, the Amazons had not felt the need to send any new champions after Diablo, after they had sent so many before, and so many had died. When news of his untimely disappearance reached them, it wasn't long before a message from the Rogue Sisters of the Sightless Eye reached them, as well. At first, they were stuck. They had always looked upon that lesser Order as a sort of gang with bows, with no idea of what they were doing. If they ever mentioned the Rogues, it was always at the butt of a joke. In truth, it was mostly bluster, for the Amazons knew that however inferior the Rogues were, the Monastery they operated was a huge buffer between them and most threats from the East. And, their opinion of the Rogues aside, Andariel was a real threat.
As much as they hated to associate their name with the Sisters, they felt obliged to do something. However, their own champions were all tied up on other missions. Stuck between sending an insulting reply or an empty promise of a champion they didn't have, in the end they decided to send Kara. She was a promising recruit, they told themselves, and since the Monastery had only been overrun by weaker demons, it would be a good training ground for her. They conveniently ignored the fact that almost every recruit they had sent out at Kara's level of skill had not returned They sent her on her way with the traditional knife and javelins, and turned their eyes towards more pressing matters, glad to forget about the Rogues and their problems. Soon, their eyes would be turned back to the recruit they had thrown away so easily.
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After the elders had finished explaining the test to Rashaban, and killed the imp, he sat in thought for a moment. "So, I have passed? I have mastered the basic skills of our Order?"
They nodded. One spoke up, "We were wondering, though-why did you act the way you did? We've never seen you act that way before."
Rashaban shrugged, and replied, "Can't let the enemy see your fear. If you're fighting, you fight harder, with more focus, more concentration, more strength. Push yourself to your limits, and the fear won't have any room. If you aren't fighting, you need some other way. I chose to gain control of the situation. Or," he finished with a slight smile, "at least act like it."
The elders laughed at that. "Very good, lad. Now that you've passed, you can-"
Rashaban cut him off, with a bow, "Thank you, I am honored. I will prepare immediately."
The elder looked slightly confused, and asked, "Wait-what do you mean?"
Rashaban replied, in a very casual tone, "Why, going after Diablo, of course. I didn't know Solmo very well while he was here, but I did see him at work. No offense meant towards him, I assure you, but I can outdo him. I know it." After a slight pause, he finished, "I'm going to pick up where he was dragged off."
With that, he bowed, and left the room. The elders were shocked, partly by the audacity of his refusing their next orders, but partly also by his drive. Not a one of them had suspected that Rashaban would do something like this.