prologue
Dear Diary,
I didn’t see this happening. Did anyone know it would happen like this? Is it weird that I do not know my life before age 12? I can only see pictures, and they were, from those pictures, nightmares that I saw from my teenage years; through them, I learned how to live.
Let me start from the beginning. My name is Kaliya, Kaliya Amber. I don’t recognize my last name. The name’s a chain to my land in the Middle East, or at least I believed so. I had images of sand, lots of sand, in the city of Memphis, Egypt. I was running along and eating...things. The city of Memphis is 20 km (12 mi) south of Cairo, on the west bank of the Nile. The ancient cities of Dahshur, Abusir, Abu Gorab, and Zawyet el’Aryan all lie within the administrative borders of historical Memphis. The city also marked the boundary between Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt (the 22nd nome of Upper Egypt and the 1st nome of Lower Egypt).
Then I faintly remember a red-haired girl coming up to me, and I was walking and talking after; my voice seemed to be a different pitch. It’s still a beautiful sound. So, I practiced talking, and it turned out I was surprisingly intelligent for being born yesterday. I say I was born yesterday because when my eyes opened, there was a large gap in my mind and my world. I had no recollection since then, but let me go back to the beginning; let me tell you my story from what I can remember of time immemorial back in the time of King Menes, when I was roped and gagged and blindfolded, only in blackness, and taken into the pitfalls and fights and used as the private practice dummy as a military opponent for a tyrant king’s royal army and death squads, otherwise known as the medjays, the private police of the king.
Since only 18-year-olds and older militants could be pushed into the training, it only sounds like a loophole for the king to pick up orphans and buy slaves and feed them to the private army of the royals from the streets and use them as target practice. It didn’t take long for me to know what martial arts were. If you could call them that, I didn’t think they were art, just a brutal way to harm one another, and what about Martial? The meaning of war is so fitting. But I wasn’t a soldier. I’m a slave, prey purposely bred to be a live practice dummy for the warriors of Egypt and the dogs of war, and entertainment for the betters and the king himself, who used orphans in fighting rings.
So I use my abilities to fight for a king as a slave? I saw my abilities grow. I swore as I looked at him that he would feel my vengeance. By throwing me into a pit of fighter girls and boys, I found I had my original body’s abilities of a black kitsune yokai in the body of a 12-year-old girl. We fennec vixens are daring creatures, and we are damn hard to kill; many have found out that fact. I found myself in that pit day in and day out, in tournaments for the king, and I fought multiple times in multiple places, some I never intended to. I found myself dropping multiple opponents, my speed increasingly hard to match, my stamina making it hard to catch me off guard, and my intelligence making it hard to play me. Shoulders, knees, elbows, and feet-not just feet but heels. If you spin hook kick someone in the jaw, they aren’t getting up. If you hit someone in the throat with your knee, they aren’t getting up. It took very little time to learn how to play this game till the king stepped up to me.
I was excited. Very soon I would be within the timing of him to feel my fangs...but it was not to be... “You are a female, a little girl, an orphaned child; what powers can you gain, such strength from nowhere? You’ve bested the prowess of my finest warriors. To bring a female into war is bad luck, especially someone who can match your strength and speed. Take her away.”
I was shocked. What had I done to deserve this misfortune? I was a slave, that’s what. I was born a slave and an orphan, even one who can fight as well as any guard. I was outraged at having my revenge ripped from me for being forced into being a whipping girl and gaining and owning nothing for it in these walls but a room and food. I cursed him, but not loud, only sharp, and I paid for my slander with a hard strike to the back of my head, and my world went blank; I only barely heard words, and suddenly I was dropped from a far-off cliff. I felt the zero-gravity floating until I crashed into the sea and floated down the river. That’s what I see in my dreams and in my visions, like another time, another place..another day...
