Tzvetana had never seen a demon before. It was big and hairy, with cloven hoofs and pointy teeth. Its grotesquely long hands ended in long claws only surpassed by the long horns on its head. Tzvetana now regretted having listened to the old man, who said there was something evil down in the catacombs below the old castle of the kniaz.
Tzvetana even regretted becoming a beggar knight. No, not quite. While it was a hard life, it was better than being raised to be a noblewoman, to be married off, have children and try to rule a husbands fief behind his back. No, she regretted coming back to Ledoslavl, which she had run away from when she first was told by her mother that her father had found a husband for her. She ran away and joined a group traveling in pilgrimage to the great temple of Svarog in the Sviatogor monastery far to the north. While she was impressed by it’s splendour, she was not to exchange one gilded cage for another. She convinced the pilgrims to let her travel back with them, and thus saw a big part of Triman. She saw poverty and inequality, and wanted to help. In the Sviatogor monastery she had met beggar knights, and now she sought out one, to join their order.
Since then she had defended the weak and abused, stood up against oppressing noblemen and greedy merchants. While this was important, she always felt that there was something more to the beggar knights than street justice. And here she was, facing the ultimate evil, a source of corruption of people and the bringer of misery. And she was afraid as she never had been before. Then the demon spoke: “Are you afraid, little girl? Bow down to me, forsake your false god, and I just might let you live!”
There was no need wasting energy on an answer. In stead, Tzvetana put all her force in the trust of her blade, hoping it really had some special power against demons, as she was told by the beggar knight that trained her…