Hector

We are now in the second week of the A to Z challenge and this Monday will be starting off with the letter H. In today's blog I will be talking about the character Joniah Hector.
Joniah Hector is a mysterious fellow who keeps to himself most of the time. Most people make an effort to avoid him because he has an intimidating personality, and thus very few know what it is he does. Hector is known to disappear from the town for weeks at a time, but no one knows where he goes. This is especially strange due to the fact that most people do not dare venture outside of the town's protection as there are Rebirtha roaming the lands.
Later on in the story, Hector reveals something about his past that might explain his coldness towards people. He tells a story about his long ago love for a girl he had adored as a child. It all started when his father, who was a military general, was put in charge of a refugee camp that was meant to provide safety for the nearby locals who were under a harsh dictatorship. Joniah was only a boy there with the rest of his family and came to have a crush on one of the refugee girls, but things soon went downhill as the camp came under attack by the dictator's soldiers and his entire family was killed, except for his father who was away at the time.
Joniah was one of the only survivors while the refugees were taken prisoner along with the girl he had a crush on. In his desperation he decided to go rescue this girl and managed to track the soldiers down and find her. However, to his dismay, he learns that the girl is in fact the daughter of the dictator who had sent her in as a spy to bring down the refugee camp. Hector then learns that he had been used by her to ensure the destruction of the camp.
As a reward for what she did, her father gave here a section of land to rule and thus became one of the youngest and harshest dictators ever known in the land. She then threw Joniah into prison where he was beaten on a daily basis and humiliated for the amusement of her people.
One day, Joniah Hector contracted a rare disease due to the beatings, which rapidly spread throughout the land killing nearly every living thing, including the girl he once loved. Hector was ironically the only survivor from the epidemic and lived on to be reunited with his father.
This is one of the few stories Joniah ever tells about his past. Mathew, one of the main characters in the story, however wonders if what Hector told them was true, or if he had just made it up to shut everyone else up.