Competition: #CharacterQuestion 7

Finished
#CharacterQuestion 7

Prompt: No matter who they are, every character has a time to die. A time to move on and become one with the Force. Death comes to all, but the question remains, how does your character think they will die?

Rules: Write a 500 word fiction centred around one of your main characters and how they eventually die. Is it old age? In a blaze of glory? Overdose on spice? The possibilities are endless!

Submissions: Submissions should be done via the site in .pdf or .word formats, or via the submit text box below.

Grading: Grading will be done via tbe Fiction Rubric 3.0

As always, everyone. Have fun. 👍

Competition Information
Parent Competition
#CharacterQuestion
Organized by
Combat Master "Aequitas" Anderson
Running time
2023-02-03 until 2023-03-03 (29 days)
Target Unit
Entire DJB
Competition Type
Fiction
Awards
Second Level Crescents and Clusters of Ice as per VOICE guidelines
Participants
7 subscribers, of which 2 have participated.
Results
Member
Qyreia Arronen
Submission
Qyreia Arronen opted out of publishing her submission.
Placement
1st place
Member
High Councillor Masahiro Haku
Textual submission

Kowak. It had all begun here, Alexandyr's inscrutable search for a meaning in life. His obsession and anger, borne from trauma, over the absurdities of life and the existence of slavery. Now in his waning years, he sought to correct the stain he had let fester far too long. The market in Sclavos was already in full bustle, slavers hawked those they captured like cattle. It was enough to make anyone sick. No, it was enough to make anyone with morals sick, but morality had long since abandoned this place. Alex knew that far too well, years ago he had been sold in this very block. The cages changed over the years, but the clientele never did.

The man drew his cloak closer around him and pulled his saber close. What he planned to do here was not in his routine operations, but he knew he wasn't long for the world anymore. Each day his breaths grew harder. His cough grew worse. Normally Alex would stalk his targets, or prepare lengthy operations to minimize risks of casualty, this was personal. The drone of the barker, the chatter of the buyers, all of it seemed distant to the man as he made his way into the pens.

Fifteen years as a slave. Sold into slavery alongside his mother at the age of five, he found no identity in those years. His first owners sold him two years later, separating him from his mother, to a couple who raised slave children to fill their empty nest. Three years later he was sold again, and then every two years on, until a rebellion in 21 ABY. The memories flooded back through him as his eyes acclimated to the darkness of the pens.

His contact in the city, a Zabrak, Haruk, nodded as reached out to palm a key to Alex, who in turn shook his head and produced his Saber. Today would be different, today would be like the rebellion that freed him.

The flicker of a lightsaber is an unmistakable sound to many across the known galaxy. To those who recall it, a sense of hope or terror are often accompanied with it. Alexandyr first ignited his with hope. The hope he would return home and repay what the lone Knight did for him. And in his dying moments he intended to live up to his dreams.

His cloak fell from his shoulders and revealed the form of the ageing Disciple, long in the fang and grey in his age. But as the first guards realized what had ignited, it was too late. The amber saber sliced into the locking bar on the cages holding the children. As he cored the cages of the others he barraged the guards with telekinetic bursts to keep them at bay.

"Life is fleeting, and we owe it to ourselves to pay the debts we incur." He called to those he freed, throwing his saber to a sensitive among them as he waded to his death.

Placement
2nd place