Side Story: Kaiya/Kalus

My father was the best swordsman in my town. There wasn’t a single young man in the area who doesn’t want to be one of his prestigious students and none more envied than his two sons. They didn’t have to pay his outrageous fee’s and received special treatment making them his best students. As his child it would make sense for me to receive the same privileges as them, but all I ever got from my father was scorn.

As his only daughter the only use I have is to get married to some man I’ve never even met before and give birth to more men. When I told him I wanted him to teach me swordsmanship he laughed and told me that women couldn’t fight. I wanted to prove him wrong, so I fought one of his students with a wooden training sword and won. I was so proud of myself and I though my father would be too, but instead he was furious. When he learned that I had been watching his training sessions in secret he grounded me for months and hired a private tutor to ‘teach me how to behave like a proper lady.’

The lessons were horrible. All my tutor did was tell me how to act, dress, and speak in ways I had absolutely no interest in. I skipped my classes every chance I got and ran away into the woods to practice fighting using a stick as a sword. It wasn’t very effective training with no one to train me or practice with, but it was at least more fun then learning how to be the perfect wife for my future husband.

None of the other kids wanted to be friends with my father’s rebellious daughter, so I spent a lot of time alone. I decided that if no one wanted to be my friend I would just have to make my own. I named him Kalus and I talked to him whenever I was alone. He was so much better than the rest of the people in my life that the only times when I was happy was when I was talking to him. Everything about Kalus was perfect, he was strong, and cool, and had short hair. He had a father who loved him. Everything I don’t have.

But Kalus wasn’t real and at some point I had to go back home to get yelled at by my father. My brother never got yelled at, they were always forgiven immediately when I got the harshest of punishments for even the smallest transgressions. One time one of my brothers almost killed one of the other kids when he was showing off with his sword. Father told him to be more careful and that was it.

I imagined Kalus laughing as I told him all this. He couldn’t talk but if he could, he would have said “Just run away and forget those assholes.”

I’m hitting a tree with a stick in one of my ugliest dresses. Ugly to me at least, my tutor tells me it makes me look cute. The thought of it make me hit the tree harder, venting my anger the only way I know how.

“Run away and go where? Everyone in this shithole kingdom is the same, all I would be doing is putting myself in the same situation but without the money.” I tell him.

Kalus is the only one who I can really talk to. If either of my parents heard my curse like that they would probably lock me in my room and only let me out to eat. In my minds eye I see Kalus casually swinging a sword through the air.

“Then just leave the kingdom.” My imaginary friend told me. “I mean come on Kaiya how hard can it be to steal some of your father’s money and get on a boat out of here.”

It’s not the first time I’ve thought about it, I do live on the coast after all. But my upbringing has hardly prepared me for being anything other than a housewife, despite my best efforts. How long could I survive on my own, even with a bag full of father’s gold. Kalus could do it but not me. All I can do is hit things but women can’t become soldiers so I would just be living out on the streets without a job.

I hit the tree one more time and heard a load CRACK as the branch I was using broke. Well, that was a good a sign as any for me to start heading home so I threw away the piece of wood left in my hand and started walking back. I wasn’t looking forward to explaining how my dress got so dirty but that was a problem I would have to face eventually. It wasn’t a long walk back with the forest being so close to town, if I looked hard enough, I could even see a few houses in the distance. But the closer I got the more I noticed something was off. I still saw those familiar building but now I saw other things as well. The yellow and orange of fire and the black of smoke.

I started running as soon as I realised what was happening. I reached my fathers mansion and found it safe from the fire consuming the rest of the town. Looking down from the hill my home was placed on I saw there was more than just a fire creating havoc. There were also a few dozen armed individuals fighting with the guards and stealing whatever they could find. Docked in the harbour I could just barely see an unfamiliar ship with blacks sails and a black flag. The flag is too far to see but the sails clearly show a skull with two green dragons curled around it. A pirate flag.

“Kaiya what are you doing out here? Get inside and don’t come out until the pirate’s are dealt with.”

I didn’t even notice my father arrive until he was yelling at me. He was wearing his armour and had his sword already drawn. Behind him my two brothers were similarly equipped but they looked out at the chaos below in fear. They always were cowards. More interested in learning swordsmanship to show of than to fight but now they don’t have a choice. Does father even care? Probably not, if they can’t fight then they are worth as little as me in his eyes.

“Give me a sword.” I implored. “I can help fight, and with how many pirates there are you need all the help you can get.”

The look in my father’s eyes gave me all the answer I needed but he gave me a verbal response too.

“You are not to ever touch a blade young lady. You have already dishonored me once Kaiya and I will not allow you to do so gain.” He bellowed out, with blatant anger. “Go inside and hide with the rest of the women, you have no place here.”

“But what if I encounter a pirate? If I can’t even use a sword then how will I defend myself?”

“You don’t.”

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With cold eyes he turned and marched down the hill with two scared sons instead of one brave daughter.

“FUCK!”

I punched the wall of the mansion as hard as I could. My fist hurt but not as much as the look he gave me. he would rather I die then help, well fuck him then. I stormed into the house and went to the kitchen to find the biggest knife there. once I found it, I went to leave only to find Kalus blocking the door. The same fury that burned within me was in his eyes. I knew what he wanted to say but listened anyway.

“You can’t fight in a dress.” I imagined hearing. “No matter what you do he will never accept you as long as you are his daughter. So, when you leave this house, don’t leave as his little girl. Leave as yourself.”

I made one more stop before I left. My fathers room. When I entered, I was Kaiya, but Kaiya didn’t leave. Kalus did. I cut my hair short in a style I have seen a million times in my head with the kitchen knife and had gotten rid of the ugly dress. Instead, I wore a pair of ill-fitting pants and an open jacket. Under the jacket I used some of my father’s spare bandages to wrap around my chest to keep it flat. I looked in a mirror and saw myself for the first time as Kalus. I’m strong, cool and have short hair. The only difference is I don’t have a father that loves me. I don’t have a father at all.

It didn’t take long to find him. He was one of the few warriors still fighting, the rest of the town guard were either dead or running. My two brothers were nowhere to be found but they weren’t important right know, only him. He was fighting a Drakkin pirate near some burning buildings. This was the first time I had ever seen a Drakkin. Visitors from off the island were not common and rarely nonhuman. They had green scales that shone in the light of the inferno and their tail swished back and forth excitedly. The pirate I then noticed was female. She was wearing a piecemeal set of armour and wielded a cutlass in one hand and a loaded hand crossbow in the other. But the thing I couldn’t take my eyes off of was the manic grin she had as she fought. The pure joy she had in combat was plain to see, even when splattered in blood and bleeding from fresh wounds the smile never faded.

The pirate used a fighting style I had never seen before, with wild and fast cuts with her sword but then strategic feints and threats with her crossbow. It seemed messy and unrefined but somehow, she was winning. Every couple exchanges she got a new cut on her opponent while only rarely getting hurt herself. But the fighting was cut short once I was noticed. When he saw me walking towards him looking as I did with a knife in my hand, he couldn’t help but stare in horror. But that horror was quickly replaced by anger.

“You have disobeyed me for the last time Kaiya, you will learn respect.”

For a moment I felt fear, but I wasn’t Kaiya anymore and all Kalus felt was anger. As he approached and raised his fist to strike me, I slid my knife into his side through a gap in his armour. It was an attack a swordsman of his caliber could have avoided had he seen me as a threat, but all he saw was a weak and helpless child for him to punish. My blade was stopped by the chainmail he wore under his armour, so I did little more then draw blood. But it did stop him for just long enough for the pirate behind him to shoot a crossbow bolt through the back of his head. His blood splattered onto my face and I had to move out of the way to avoid his falling body, but it was done. I looked at the pirate who was approaching me and froze. I wanted to fight pirates, but she was winning against the best fighter in the town, what could I do? Luckily, she seemed more interested in the corpse at my feet than me and proceeded to kick his face wither her armoured boot.

“This fucker couldn’t even bother to finish his fight with me first.” She spat on him; her grin now replaced with a scowl. “What an asshole.”

I didn’t know what to say. All my life I had been told that women only ever acted a certain way and that I was some sort of deviant for lashing out. But here in front of me is a person breaking all of the rules I had been told to follow. It was almost like looking in a mirror in some ways. She took my silence as an opportunity to take out a torch and hand it to me.

“Here, you look like you need this.”

I looked at her in confusion. What the hell was she talking about. Does she think I’m one of her pirate’s?

“I don’t understand, why are you giving me a torch? Shouldn’t you be trying to kill me?” I asked.

“Kill you? No way I saw you stab that guy back there. What was he, your father or something?”

“Not anymore.” I told her, voice bitter with rage.

“Well either way I saw the way you looked at him, you really hated his guts, didn’t you? And know he’s dead. Are you satisfied? Is the problem solved? Do you want more? Well, you don’t have to stop. Find everything that you hate and burn it all to the ground.”

Her words hit me like a hammer, and I came to a realisation. He wasn’t the only one who told me who I couldn’t be. This entire town, no, this entire kingdom is all the same. Every single person here thinks they can decide who I am for me. well, no more. I am not the weak Kaiya anymore, I am Kalus and I demand to be seen. I took the torch and lit it on the flames of a nearby building. There was only one structure I could see left untouched, the manor I was raised in. I walked up the hill with a fiery determination, seeing that wretched house as a monument too all I hate about this place.

The pirate followed me up, the grin once more on her face. I kicked open the door and threw the torch inside. If my mother and the maids were smart, they would flee before the fire spread too far, but if they didn’t… it’s not my problem anymore. The pirate lit her own torch and threw it inn herself to hasten the process.

“Don’t you want to rob the place?” I asked her. “We’re not nobles but my family is still the richest in the town. You’ll be missing out on a lot of gold if you just let it burn to the ground.”

“I don’t care about gold, it’s about freedom. My sister is a real bookworm you know. She’s always reading something and one day she read a book about this place. Not this town specifically but this whole island, the Isle of Noristrad. She told me about how the men were worth more than the women and how they had no say in how to live their own lives. Well I felt like burning something and I was in the area so I decided to give this place a visit.”

“But what does that have to do with freedom? aren’t you just doing something because your sister asked you to?”

“You don’t get it.” She said. “She never asked me. I chose to do it because I wanted to. I told you that you could burn down whatever the hell you wanted but it was you who chose to do it. and now I am choosing not to stop you because that is more important than the gold, I could make from robbing you. That is the life I live.”

And then it all made sense. There was only ever one thing I wanted in life. Freedom. The option to choose which had been taken away from me far too many times. I looked to her and asked the one question that was burning in my head.

“If I join your crew, will you give me a sword?”

“Give you a sword? Ha.” She laughed. “You already have one. You just left it by that corpse over there. but don’t worry, I picked it up for you.”

In her hand was his sword. The one made by a master smith that never left his side. The one that he dropped when he died in front of me. I didn’t see the pirate pick it up but there it was in its sheath, being offered to me.

“But didn’t you kill him? Shouldn’t you take it?” It was a question I was afraid to ask.

“Me? Kill him? Why I don’t know what you’re talking about. It was obviously your kill so of course you should take the loot. That’s just a pirates honour, and you’re a pirate now aren’t you?”

All I had ever wanted was a sword, and know I have one of the highest quality. I took it and held it close.

“Thank you.” I told her and meant it. “If I am going to be joining your crew though I should at least know your name.”

“Of course, what terrible manners. I am Viska, soon to be Pirate Queen of the sea.”

“Kalus.”

“Well welcome to the crew Kalus.”