"Freedom" is a Star Wars fan fiction story written by Sakaros. The story was published on the Star Wars Fanon wiki on November 10, 2009, and is Sakaros's first fan fiction work. Set during the Rise of the Empire era, it chronicles the amnesiac Sith Apprentice Tak Sakaros's battle with a krayt dragon in an attempt to win freedom from slavery for himself and his lover, Kai'tisy'ara.
Publisher's summary[]
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Excerpt[]
| Source: "Freedom" | Attribution: Sakaros |
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His vision was blurring, and he could barely see clearly past his own hands. Pressing his left hand to his right side where the dragon had hit him, he regretted the decision immediately as a wave of pain and nausea doubled him over. Looking down, he couldn’t even tell which red was his own skin, and which was the flow of blood he felt leaking down his palm and slithering up his forearm. Smelling the blood in the air—not only Tak’s own, but that of some rowdier patrons who had taken to blows for seats—the krayt roared aloud and thrashed its tail toward its fallen prey. Something in Tak warned him, whispered that to crouch down against the pain for even a second longer would be the end of him and he leapt. His jump carried him impossibly high, two or three meters off the ground, and the krayt’s tail crashed into the wall, breaking it open. The screams of the dislodged and crushed patrons were distorted in Tak’s ears; he felt he was listening to them from underwater. He landed badly from his jump, and his knees buckled under him as he came down. Barely managing to catch himself with his left hand before his head would have gone through the floor, the young man pivoted to face the krayt, which was trying to free its tail from the wall. He made to rise, seeing a moment of weakness, but went down again, the rib now jutting out from his side setting his nerves on fire with every second of exposure to open air. It hurt so badly he saw black. It hurt so badly, he saw Tisya.
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Plot summary[]
The action opens in media res, with Tak Sakaros struggling to survive his fight with an imported adolescent krayt dragon. Though a skilled fighter with years of experience, he is clearly outmatched, and believes most of the spectators have come not to watch him fight, but to watch him get eaten alive. A brief respite in the combat as the krayt accidentally embeds its tail in a wall sees the young Sith trying to simply remain conscious against the shock threatening to overtake his system.
Almost blacking out, Tak flashes back to days earlier, when he had confessed the matter to his Chiss lover, Kai'tisy'ara (called Tisya). It is revealed that, though the Hutts who run the Borgo Prime Death Ring force Tak's owner to give him a percentage of his own winnings, he will simply continue to raise Tak's sale price proportionally, forever trapping the Sith in slavery. But for the krayt fight, Tak had been offered freedom outright as his prize, provided he took the contest without knowing what his opponent would be. Hurt and frightened that Tak agreed to such a potentially suicidal gamble, Tisya reacts with fear, but eventually concedes that it is their only real chance of escaping slavery. The two plan for Tak to buy Tisya's freedom with his savings if he survives the fight.
Back in the fight, Tak begins to draw unconsciously on his latent Force powers, using the dark side to focus his fear and anger into a source of strength. Overcoming the pain of his injuries and forcibly keeping himself conscious, he inflicts a few light blows on the dragon before leaping onto its neck and gouging out its eyes. Striking mechanically, he passes out before he learns the fight's conclusion.
A month later, Tak awakens in Borgo Prime's primitive medical facility, and is informed by his dispirited former owner, Gur Deebo, that he managed to punch all the way through the krayt's eye and into its brain. Though Tak has won his own freedom, the news of his victory is ruined when Gur Deebo reveals that, having lost everything betting against Tak, he had sold Tisya offworld to pay down some of his debts. Overcome with rage and despair, Tak Force chokes him unconsciously, strangling the Aqualish to death. Though confused, Tak recognizes that he will be charged with murder of his former master if he stays to puzzle it out and, having nothing else worth saving on Borgo Prime with Tisya gone, he escapes to the docking bay.
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Appearances[]
| Characters | Creatures | Droid models | Events | Locations |
| Organizations and titles | Sentient species | Vehicles and vessels | Weapons and technology | Miscellanea |
Characters
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Creatures
Droid models
Locations
Sentient species
Weapons and technology
Miscellanea
Behind the scenes[]
"Freedom" was originally written in September 2007 as a character sketch by user Sakaros, and to finally put a concrete story around Tak Sakaros's oft-mentioned but never described fight with a krayt dragon. It was published to SWFanon in November 2009, then submitted as an entry in the short story contest the following summer. Its only noteworthy showing was in the "Best Pre-Movie Era Short Story" category, where it came in second after Goodwood's Star Wars: Death and Life.
In the 2011 short story contest, "Freedom" was nominated for Best Pre-Movie Era Short Story and Best Drama. It won the former in a tiebreaker vote with Goodwood's "Jaq In His Box", and came in a distant third for Best Drama.