Fiction Activity

Competition
#CharacterQuestion 7
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.