Morning found him stiff and achy. He'd recovered far more than a normal man could with a single night. His bruises were no longer raised welts of the deepest purple. Now they were a jaundiced yellow with notes of sickly green where deeper damage yet lingered. It was like a week of recovery passed while he slumbered. It was still too soon for him to be fighting again, but there wasn't anything to be done for that.

When he saw Sam limping around the barracks, Hector realized how much worse it could be. His focus on body enhancement had done him a real service. They filed to breakfast quietly, everyone caught up in their own strategizing.

"Today you are going to fill out a card with the names of three people you have not fought yet but would like to. If a name on your card matches the name on another card, you may be matched together by the coordinators for the morning fight. Be cunning in your choices."

Hector looked around the room and sighed. It felt like a violation of his newfound dedication to ethics, but his future victims had to fight someone. He would at least be gentle about it, he reasoned. He wrote down the names of Sam, Carob, and the weakest of the three women. Everyone turned in their cards and pencils.

They waited longer in the dugout than the previous day while the lords debated the fight schedule in their luxurious viewing box. Finally, Master Percival returned to announce the first match. Two unremarkable wallflowers. They fought a desperate battle until one fell due to bad luck, his foot slipping on a patch of clay holding more moisture than its surroundings.

Next up two women fought each other. Then Jasmine took out Sam – quickly, decisively, but somewhat gently. Master Percival then called up Hector and Carob. The loud-talking boy started the fight cautiously, dancing around Hector slightly out of reach and darting in to pepper him with attacks. He probably expected to wear Hector down.

Instead, Hector waited until his own back was exposed and mule kicked back to nail Carob in the testicles. As the man cradled himself, Hector seized his long hair with both hands and pulled down hard as his knee rose to kiss him on the mouth. Carob collapsed unconscious.

Evan fought Walt in a riveting show. The two of them seemed evenly matched and their battle raged all over the arena. They even went out of bounds a couple of times, with one or the other falling from the raised clay floor so that Master Percival had to pause the action and restart the fight.

It ended in a distasteful fashion. Either Walt poked Evan in the eye or Evan faked the incident altogether. Either way, when Evan held up a hand begging for a moment to recover, the honorable Walt obliged. Except Evan, less injured than claimed, jumped forward to land a flurry of blows unopposed. Walt couldn't recover in time and was pummeled unconscious.

Then in the final match of the morning, Darius fought Micah. Hector flinched and winced in sympathy with each blow Darius took. Beside him, a morose Sam grew annoyed. "Of course he's going easy on the eunuch."

"His name is Darius."

"Sorry, Hector. I forgot you were on good terms with him. It's frustrating, though. The two of us got the rough treatment because he was jealous."

Hector frowned. "Jealous?"

"Yeah. He's obviously punishing the other lovers of Jasmine."

He didn't ask any further questions. A lot of the guys assumed Hector had been hooking up with Jasmine because they were sparring partners for a couple of weeks. That didn't surprise him. What he didn't expect was confirmation that Sam had been involved with Jasmine as well. It reinforced his instinct that she would be bad news for him.

Fortunately, Darius wasn't too badly injured by his fight.

After lunch, numbers were chosen from the hat once more. The chart was consulted. Then the lucky individual was allowed to pick any opponent they hadn't faced yet. By fortune or chance, Darius was drawn first. The man didn't seem too held back by his injuries. He drew himself up and announced he would fight 'the betrayer Hector'.

Curious glances flickered to Hector at the 'betrayer' label. He went up to the clay and faced off across from Darius. Briefly he considered throwing the fight, then dismissed the thought as childish sentiment. He wasn't trying to prove anything. He needed to get Darius out of here. And that couldn't happen until Hector had serious energy reserves. Elixir rewards would be a big help.

When the fight began, the two of them began circling from a distance, moving cautiously. Whatever harsh words had passed between them, Darius respected Hector's strength too much to casually dismiss him. When they were closer, Darius began flicking out probing strikes.

Hector avoided engaging those. If he let Darius start trapping limbs, things would get hairy fast. "Do you know what happened to my mother?"

The question came out of nowhere, making Hector flinch. Khana. The love of another life. In that instant of distraction, Darius led with an open hand smack that he used to get a grip on the arm Hector used to block. The eunuch almost got started on a dangerous sequence before Hector pivoted and backed out.

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"She's dead," Darius continued.

Hector flinched more for that than he had the previous attack.

"Hung by her belt in the barn." Darius snapped a kick at Hector that he barely managed to block. Every sentence from Darius further muddied the waters of Hector's mind. The dreams had been one of the most meaningful things of his entire life. They'd ended in such tragedy, driven by the deep flaws in Volithur's heart. He knew the end of Volithur all too well. But what of his loved ones? Darius stood here, mutilated and bitter. Khana… dead? By her own hand?

So many questions. So many deep emotions. All of them better pondered later.

If only it were so simple to choose not think of those things.

"Do you want to know what her final note said?" Darius lunged forward, throwing a punch that turned into an elbow. When both were successfully defended, Darius faked a retreat only to turn it into a bob and weave that changed the angle.

As strikes came in, Hector found himself losing ground. Something finally snapped in him. This shithead was going to weaponize the memory of Khana against him? He didn't bear the sins of Volithur, no matter if he carried those memories. He'd woken every morning wanting to smack his counterpart for his foolishness. He was in no way complicit.

Hector kicked Darius hard in the gut. The eunuch's breath wheezed and he fell back to rub the injury. Both of them bore damage from a face-off with Micah, one more recent and the other more significant. They were also fighting in ways none of the other competitors could with each other, bringing a deeply personal element to their battle. "You're just like your father," Hector fired off.

When Darius flinched, Hector drove his fist forward. The man blocked by reflex. "I'm nothing like Harridan."

"You're identical to Volithur."

Darius kicked at Hector's shin, the hit landing solid enough to stagger him. "That man was a treacherous beast. A betrayer of his master and his family."

Hector stomped on exposed toes. "He was obsessed with revenge on a certain lord. Sound familiar, Darius? As they say on my world, 'the apple doesn't fall far from the tree'."

They traded punches, Hector careful to not let Darius get started on any of his combinations. Hector's bruised forearms burned at the mistreatment.

"Let me tell you about that letter. She asked me to avenge her."

Hector shook his head as if to deny the words. Khana as he remembered her was not the kind of person to end her life and command a child to take up a suicidal cause. He refused to believe that was what she had become. "I don't think so."

"You don't know what our life was like!" Darius charged into Hector without regard to his safety and they went to the ground in a tangle of limbs. Hector scrambled to come up on top. He jabbed Darius directly on the chin.

"Want to hear about my inheritance, Hector? She left me the most valuable cultivation resource on my world. Instructed me to not waste one bit of it!" Darius launched a head-butt up from his back. "You think she was a soft and cheerful character? That's how she described her younger self. I never knew such a woman!"

Hector, eyes watering from the head-butt, returned the gesture. His skull was far harder. He mounted the dazed Darius and punched down repeatedly until Master Percival dragged him off. The match ended, Hector walked in a daze back towards the dugout.

Sharp fingers dug into his upper arm, spinning him back around. The tightly pinched face of Darius quivered with emotion and tears glistened at the corners of his eyes. "I ate her body and core, Hector. Consumed her like a resource. So that I could enact the revenge she lacked the skill to claim herself. That's what Harridan did to me."

Master Percival separated them with an admonishment that their match had ended.

Hector barely saw the other matches. His heart bled. Dear, precious Khana. Not just dead. That would have been terrible enough. She'd been unmade, turned into something completely unlike who she once was. He didn't want to believe such a thing could be true. That last exchange with Darius cut through his denials. There had been no lies in his pain, only hard truth.

For that one moment, Hector hadn't been himself. Not to Darius. He'd been standing in for the treacherous father at the root of all the pain the eunuch felt.

Hector held himself together throughout the end of the matches. Everyone went up to receive and drink their elixirs in front of the audience. Hector consumed both of his rewards in numb silence. He suffered through dinner, his control eroding all the while. Back at the barracks, he claimed a stall in the washroom and collapsed.

Khana…. Who had she become? How could the woman who fawned so over her baby boy ever send him out on a suicide mission? Hector wept openly. He'd lived the end of Volithur, felt the utter nihilism of wanting to never have been. It almost broke Hector. Now he learned Khana had been slain by the same beast.

Soon it would claim Darius as well. The entire family would be claimed by the poison of hate. The seed had been planted by the Lord General's self-serving war games. It took root in the fertile soil provided by the loss of beloved parents. The hate grew within Volithur, nurtured by the petty slights of nobles. Then it bloomed in a glorious act of betrayal. The repercussions spread the sickness to Khana. Darius never had a chance.

This was why Hector had to cultivate virtue. He'd seen what power did to people. It let the flaws in their nature grow to epic proportions as the checks and balances provided by other people were nullified. Hector would not let himself become a creature like the Lord General, spreading the seeds of evil everywhere he went. Nor would he fall prey to the vindictive spirit poisoning Darius.

As he gasped his quiet sobs, he heard a nearby echo one octave higher. Hector's weeping stilled even as his pain grew deeper. What kind of despair held Darius in its grasp? Was the man actively seeking oblivion already? Or was the hate still pointed outward?

Resolve grew within Hector. He was going to save Darius. Not just from this trap dressed up as a tournament. From all of it – the insidious harm from within as well as the obvious harm from without. If he could claim Riley as his surrogate daughter, then Darius could be his son. Hector could collect a menagerie of surrogate children, each more messed up than the last. He smiled grimly at the thought. For a man who had never wanted to be a parent, life had sure taken an unusual turn.

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