The Lottery

This is a story about the lottery where the prize is not money.

When one thinks of the lottery they think of prizes, fortune, and possibly fame. A beautiful lifestyle where the grand winner receives everything they could possibly imagine. Would you like to know the truth of how this rare occasion of overwhelming joy happens? It doesn't.
The contestants are young children, whatever the age. They are forced and they don't enter by scratching something on a ticket. They compete. 14 contestants are picked from the local village. They are chosen by the head of the village and can't back out upon entering. The children, all ages ranging from five to sixteen, are put through a series of trials. They are forced to fight against the person who can attack their weaknesses. The pairs are not put together to fight at random. Just as the children are selected, the pairs are selected just as carefully so that each person in each pair has strengths where the other is weak.
The winner of each round moves up to the next, battling until the last stage. To 'move up' or 'win', they must fight until the other person surrenders. There usually aren't deaths involved in winning, however some people are very stubborn and don't surrender until death. In the last stage, the last two people will compete until one is named victorious. This occurs in ten villages. The winners of the ten villages are paired together and fight the same way as before in their own home town. The winner is named the victor and receives a meager sum of money to leave the village with one selected person. Since there are usually families of three or four, families are broken and cut down. Once the victor and their chosen 'plus-1" leave the town, they are supposedly sent to a country villa with a comfortable lifestyle. They are allowed to communicate back to their families, but they can never see them. They can never leave the villa. Once they leave the village, no one sees what happens outside the exit door, and no one hears from them ever again.