Harlan heard the news and just sat on top of his home for a few hours.

Darrath had flown up and tried to wake him, but when nothing worked, he just curled up against him, shivering slightly in the winter wind.

Just after midnight Xol arrived. He pulled a blanket from his sleeve and swaddled Darrath, who was already sleeping.

Then he poked Harlan with his staff.

“Get up.”

“I don’t want to talk.”

“Come with me, let’s do something together.”

“What would we do?”

“The colosseum in Lith, it’s open at all hours. Or I can hand you my staff and we can cause destruction.”

“I don’t-”

Xol poked up again, and as if he wasn’t wearing any armor, the crystal staff made from a rose punctured through him and broke a rib.

“You have nobody here but Darrath for family, so you need to do something to get your mind off of your uncle’s death and back to work. Let’s do something. Maybe you can visit a brothel, or-”

“I’m not going to a brothel.”

“Then to the colosseum.”

“I don’t want to fight anything.”

“Fine, let’s go on a mountain and paint. I know you used to carve things.”

“Carving, right, she mentioned that.”

Harlan drew a sigil, the moment Xol realized what it was he drew a counter sigil and the magic faded away.

Harlan then started to draw another, and Xol countered signed that as well.

“Many would kill for a moment of my time, and you waste it trying to learn something new.”

“I have nobody here for family but Darrath, I need to protect them, I need to protect them.”

Harlan closed his eyes.

“I’m… I’m not there for them, everyone back there, I’m not there for them.”

Xol sighed, he didn’t want to do this.

He picked up Darrath and put him in his bed before moving Harlan to a mountain top.

“Fine, now we talk.”

“I don’t want to-”

“I grew up in a small town, relatively small at least. We had cities whose populations reached hundreds of millions. I believe I mentioned that I was a writer before, but then came the revolution.

People believe that if their goal is good, they can do any evil along the way. The way that they spoke, like they were doing us a favor, ripping us from our homes, killing ‘dissidents’, forcing us to labor camps.

I was in my 20s when I last saw my parents and my sister, then I worked in a mine until the collapse, and I ended up here. My first life was terrible, once I was old enough to talk I tried to explain things, things from back home. I got called a demon and they crushed my head with a rock as a sacrifice to a god who’s long forgotten. Then I went and hid who I was, until I was 15, I saw something I couldn’t let go, because of the morals I was raised with back home, and I got myself killed. I-”

“What are you trying to do?”

“I’m getting you to empathize with me by revealing my backstory, which will let you work through your own issues by proxy. Now-”

“You are trying to force me to empathize, it’s cold.”

Xol went silent.

He returned to his flesh form.

“I’ve been alive for a long time, I’ve lived lives long and short, good and bad, I’ve been evil, and a champion of justice, I’ve been rich and poor, ugly and beautiful. It’s taken me a long time to be as sociable as I am now after everything that I’ve seen and done. I don’t know what to tell you, Marigold wanted to come, but I asked her to let me try to help you while she went to see the other you.”

“I don’t want a speech. If you give a shit, just tell me.”

“Fine, I do give a shit. The only person I’ve been in regular contact with in centuries has been my wife, and I knew her for 300 years before either of us decided to do anything more than work together when the gods asked. I dislike change, you are an avatar of it, but there was a time when I loved change, I loved seeing what life had to offer.”

“Then you saw what life had to offer, pain and suffering and mounds of bullshit that prevent people from living a good life, because the ones who have power are the people who should never have it.”

Patches of skin became covered in black scales that seemed to suck the light from the room.

“I stopped caring about injustice a long time ago, once you start, it's never enough. Back home I was part of that revolution, I saw how I could make things better, and they used me, they used all of us. Here, I tried to start many more, I had faith that the system could be changed for the better. But nine times out of ten, I got pushed out, used, again and again.

Even Mari went through that, the world spit her out again and again until she stopped trying.

Now she tries to help others help themselves, because people need to change themselves before they change the world. You do the same, and I like that about you.”

“I actually do feel a little better. Let’s go to the colosseum.”

“Good.”

Harlan didn’t know what to expect from the capital city of Boulder, but he didn’t expect it to be made from a mountain and tiered, built around a tower in the center and streching as high above as below.

With what little he knew, he expected a wide city, like back home, but bigger, like the Goliaths were.

“It’s strange to be in a mountain and also see the moon out.”

“The new capital took decades to make, it was made to be a work of art.”

“New capital?”

“The Goliaths went through a reformation some time ago, they cast away their brutal and savage ways, turning into respectable people. Those that desire some of that old way are called old path.”

“Where is the colosseum?”

“The 9th above ground level, we need to walk up one more set of steps. I wish they invented elevators.”

“I could make them, a little bit of soul smithing, gravity magic, pulleys run by beasts.”

“Oh, I sometimes forget that you people did figure out how to make those.”

They got to the bottom of the stairs and looked up.

Xol pulled him into an alleyway and snapped his finger, sending them to a similar alley on the 9th level.

“They don’t like open use of magic. Do you want to enter as a man or a monster?”

“Man.”

“And if you get torn apart, I’ll replace the body, so don’t worry about it.”

“Ha, how’d I end up doing this.”

“Because I’m trying to take your mind off of your uncle’s death.”

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

He saw Harlan’s eyes drop and his hands start to shake.

“apologies.”

“I understand why you don’t like talking to people.”

It was the first time Harlan had seen a female Goliath up close for more than just in passing.

He looked the woman up and down, and while their features were less extreme than on a male, he couldn’t call them beautiful.

He almost expected them to look different, but they were very much like the males.

Broad shouldered, noses too wide for their faces, and with brows that jutted out.

“You understand you can’t whine when your man dies, right?”

“I’m not worried about him. You aren’t going to be upset if he accidentally kills his opponent.”

“So long as he follows the rules.”

Harlan and Xol were pointed to a section of rules carved onto a wall.

He looked over them, shockingly there were few, but of them, Harlan was bothered by one.

“The crowd determines if someone is allowed to be spared?”

“Is that what the rule says?”

“It is.”

“Then yes.”

“When’s the next match?”

“In-”

A thunderous cheer came from the portcullis.

“Right now then. Get to pit 11. I hope you get picked, you look like a screamer.”

The woman flashed a smile at him.

Harlan was third to be picked.

Unbeknownst to him, some local merchant was putting his man in the arena to inflate his win count and therefore his value as a hired bodyguard.

And Unbeknownst to them, Harlan was not an easy mark.

Harlan stood across from a Goliath man 16 feet tall, a normal height for them.

“IN ARENA 11, WE HAVE A FIGHT BETWEEN A CROWD FAVORITE, GRUNT, SPONSORED BY SIR CRAG, AND A NO NAME NEWCOMER.”

The announcer looked down at the registration sheet.

“HARLAN.”

Everyone cheered, but not for any real reason, it was just what one did at the colosseum.

Grunt yelled at Harlan.

“MIGHT AS WELL GIVE UP NOW, SAVE YOUR OWN SKIN.”

He laughed and the crowd along with him.

Harlan took his first step forward and so did the man.

He moved forward with leisure, assuming Harlan an easy target.

But as soon as they met in the middle and he tried to backhand Harlan, he jumped forward, tearing the man’s jaw clean off. For a Goliath, such a thing was a setback, but it wasn’t like he was going to die, yet the crowd loved to see the blood and gore.

People from nations away just to watch Goliaths fight, or other races try to fight the Goliaths.

Every hit Harlan landed tore off skin and revealed the muscle underneath.

But Harlan felt no enjoyment in the fight.

A cross counter snapped his head back and sent him tumbling across the ground.

But he felt nothing, not the sting of pain, not the cold sand that slipped between his fingers.

“You hit like a child.”

The man was infuriated that Harlan stood up, and that he sounded bored.

He struck Harlan in the chest, only then did he notice how wrong it felt.

Anyone else should’ve folded into themselves, he should’ve felt his opponent crack.

Harlan flew into the wall, deep lines formed in the stone, but he pushed himself out and stepped back into the sand.

The cheers only annoyed him.

Grunt threw himself at Harlan, but he just dodged again and again, frustrating the man.

“I expected better.”

Harlan deactivated hover and met his opponent's punch with his own..

The small surface of Harlan’s fist and his explosive power meant that he broke right through the skin and bone, the man’s middle finger was barely hanging on.

He held it in place, the flesh fused together and grew back what was missing.

Harlan’s eyes were half closed, this isn’t what he wanted, none of this made him feel any better, it just made his mind wander into what Redmond would want him to do.

The Goliath grabbed his head and slammed him into the ground until he finally got a crunch like he wanted.

Harlan finally felt something, his skull was fractured, his mind slowed down as the severe concussion settled in.

Grunt began panting, he had been fighting for hours, but Harlan was the first fight that seriously hurt him.

He dropped Harlan’s limp body on the ground and let out a battlecry.

The crowd called for blood, and he intended to give it to them.

He raised his foot above Harlan’s head, but when he stomped down his leg suddenly twisted, exposing bone.

Harlan was barely conscious, the armor was in control.

It did not let go of the leg, instead he kept twisting as the man screamed, and then tore the leg off entirely.

The fight might as well have been over, it became clear that everything had been Harlan just toying with the man for reasons none of them could understand.

The crowd again called for blood.

“Pl-please, don’t kill me.”

The man cowered with his hand between them, worrying about having to guard, yet no attack came.

Harlan woke back up, standing over the man who cowered on the ground, missing a leg and lacking the healing factor remaining to do anything but stop him from bleeding out.

Their cries for death only infuriated him.

“IF YOU WANT HIS BLOOD, THEN COME DOWN HERE AND TAKE IT, I’M NOT A DOG TO BE ORDERED AROUND BY YOU FECKLESS COWARDS, TOO SCARED OF DEATH TO GET INTO THE RING YOURSELVES.”

Harlan walked around in a circle, pounding his chest, which let out a dull sound from his dense flesh.

Eventually the guards arrived.

“Per colosseum rules, you must finish the fight.”

Harlan opened a gate and the guards swung, but telekinesis was internally based, and the anti-magic aura of the Goliath’s could not resist it.

Yet the gate went nowhere, it was simply a black sheet.

Harlan wasn’t sure if it would kill him, so he didn’t want to go through.

“Now that is odd.”

There was a limit to what Harlan could block, so when a third guard arrived, the limit was passed.

He tried to kill Harlan with a downward strike, but Harlan clapped his hands together and grabbed the blade.

The Goliath was so shocked that he froze for just a moment, not understanding how he had been blocked.

And in that frozen moment, Harlan moved forward and imbibed with fire, his kick was enough to sever the hands of the man and then grab the blade.

Had they actual orcish regeneration, he’d take their heads off, but he didn’t really know what the limits were, all he knew was that they were less than orcs.

Instead he used the blade which was as tall as him and proportionally thicker than most he knew to cut the limbs from them.

It took some getting used to, but without hover he was heavier than the Goliaths and wouldn’t be tossed around by the weight of the blade.

He didn’t really know what to do, so he just stayed in the arena and cut down the guards who came at him.

He didn’t kill them, so there were a few dozen men now sitting on the ground and groaning with stumps where their healing stopped working, forcing him to sear the wounds shut.

After 30 minutes the guards really didn’t know what to do either, so they just surrounded him as he played with the gate that went nowhere. He touched it and felt nothing happen when his hand went inside, but when he put one of the swords through and then pulled it back, it was gone.

Then he cut off one of his fingers and pushed it through, the finger was gone.

He thought about sticking his head through to see what was on the other side, if there was anything, but decided against it.

Xol said if he was torn apart he’d fix him, but he didn’t know if this would count, and losing this body and his armor because of Xol following the letter of their verbal contract would make the day worse than it was already.

Harlan felt a presence suddenly appear behind him, and swung the blade with as much strength as he could.

Yet the man, 22 feet tall and wearing a drake skin pelt, a crown, and nothing else pinched it between his fingers.

“You have defiled the sanctity of my colosseum.”

“I will not be told when to kill, and when to show mercy.”

Harlan didn’t see the man move, but suddenly the sword was through his chest, pinning him to the far wall.

“Is it bravery or stupidity that compels you to defy me?”

Harlan coughed up blood and tried to push against the wall, but his spine was severed.

He had to puppet himself using his armor to cast the beam sigil and cut the blade then force himself off, using his blood to lubricate it before he could push himself off.

Harlan hit the ground with a loud thud, kicking up a cloud of dust.

“Is that all? I didn’t expect my men to be so weak that I needed to be called for someone who dies so quickly.”

Harlan healed his body and stood up.

“Both.”

“What?”

“Bravery or stupidity. Both, and my morals, which fall under one or the other depending on who hears it.”

Harlan used wind imbibing to boost his speed, and he still barely saw the king move towards him.

“Get that fucking thing out of my face.”

The king adjusted his pelt and the hooks that kept it in place.

“I could use a man like you in my army.”

“It wouldn’t do to have one king serve another in that way. But an alliance would be fine, provided you can make some concessions.”

“I do not let others tell me how to run my kingdom.”

“Then we are at an impas-”

With a swat of his hand, Harlan’s upper body was gone.

Xol finished what he came here for and picked up the pieces of Harlan’s body and armor.