Duel The Last Remnant | Acier Moonbound & Lysander

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Kuar - Plains of Harkul

Equipment:
Knight Attire | Lightsaber | Shoto | Cybernetic Arm | The Wayward

The moment the current surged down the length of the lightwhip, Ace understood exactly what she was doing. She was trying to burn him alive.

Every servo in the cybernetic forearm seized beneath the impossible load, electrical feedback detonating through the neural interface before lancing into his shoulder and across his chest. The prosthetic convulsed violently as lightning crawled over the blackened beskar plating. Smoke hissed between the armored seams while sparks vented from the ruined mechanisms. Another cry tore free through gritted teeth.

Through the chaos, he felt Lysander through the Force. The Knight had forced himself deeper into the tempest, paying for every step with his own body simply to fracture Remowa's rhythm for another heartbeat. She answered him immediately. Every response demanded another fragment of her attention.

Golden light burned within Ace's eyes as every bolt that crashed through flesh and circuitry. Every scream from the dying servos fed the hatred first born on Rattatak. The dark side within him feasted on all of it.

But the cost was mounting. The relentless exertion of the duel gnawed at him with every passing minute. Sustaining himself beneath the Force Tempest while reaching deeper into the dark side again left his lungs burning.

The prosthetic was useless now. So he spent it. His shoulder rolled inward, winding another turn of the Mandalorian iron-studded cord tightly around the ruined forearm. The locked limb ceased to be a hand and became an anchor, binding the lightwhip against the beskar plating and shortening the weapon's available reach.

Then Ace stopped thinking about the whip entirely as his attention shifted to the canyon itself. The Force reached for everything the battle had already broken.

The shelves Lysander had fractured. The boulders hanging precariously from shattered cliff faces. The loose slabs left teetering by collapsing stone.

The fractures Lysander had carved into the ravine answered first. One fracture became ten, then twenty. With a thunderous crack, sections of already weakened rock surrendered to gravity all at once. Jagged slabs and cascading showers of stone tore free from the ravine walls, crashing toward the battlefield from multiple angles in a deafening avalanche of dust and shattered earth. It wasn't precise or elegant, but it didn't need to be.

Ace wasn't trying to crush her beneath the mountain. He was forcing one more decision into a mind already burdened by too many.

The whip. The Force Tempest. Lysander. Him. And now... the canyon itself.

Lightning continued to devour him. Smoke still poured from the ruined prosthetic. His muscles screamed for him to stop, but he took another step toward her.

Remowa | Lysander von Ascania​

 

[Lysander von Ascania]

Remowa Acier Moonbound​

The canyon floor shuddered, convulsing beneath the weight of a thickening sky. Luminous ribbons of azure malice bled from the Chiss, slithering through the atmosphere like veins, eager to devour whatever they could touch. Searing protests erupted from Lysander’s ankle; of course, the agony would accompany every shift of his frame. Crimson warmth wept from the puncture wound, soaking into sand. Stubborn defiance kept the Knight upright, his stance absolute; perhaps, a single perverse tribute to the art of close-quarters combat.. rooting him amidst his own world unraveling into ruin.

Nightstar grew exponentially heavier with every passing heartbeat; for all the months he wielded the longsword, twas the first them it dragged a shadow across the soul; meanwhile, the periphery of vision began fraying into a blur. Nearly drained of vitality, the blonde's spirit clung to the fading embers of endurance. Unfortunately, even the Dark could possess a finite capacity for borrowed strength. Each pulse of torment was akin to an iron nail being hammered into his resolve.

Electric tendrils recoiled, spiraling into an orbit about an arm that trembled. To an observer, the stillness might have seemed deceptive; beneath that mask., a private apocalypse unfolded. Blood welled upon the lips, painting the tongue in iron, but he refused to offer the earth a bended knee.

A flick of the wrist betrayed the Chiss' intent, revealing the dagger poised to claim life. Gravity pulled at the wounded limb, dragging the body downward, a collapse that invited the blade to cut the air where a chest had been just before.

His own blade struck the ground as Nightstar surrendered at last. Twisting the torso, instinct pulled the rear heel back, to shrink into a target no wider than a shadow. But the blast caught his frame, nonetheless, threatening to toss the Sith into the gale. Fibers of muscle strained to bleed off the momentum of the push. For a moment longer, that arm remained locked skyward, a defiant pillar trying to assist Acier's advance.

But then a concussive thud pillaged the lungs of all air, and boots lost their grip against the terrain. An arc followed. Impact, when it arrived, was jarring, sending up a cloud of sand. Worst of all, were the sparks erupting at the base of his cranium, which had been a persistent problem ever since the Galactic Kaggath. Vision bruised into a blackened haze. Lysander's body surged upward as the canyon's debris defied the laws of nature, hovering in a suspended statis.. perhaps even waiting for some annihilating release.

 

[Remowa]

The Ancient Chains - Kuar, Plains of Harkul
The Chiss Woman vol. 1 |:| Issue #4: The Last Remnant w/ Acier Moonbound and Lysander von Ascania

Remowa's grin widened at the thought of finally defeating the boy. She observed the smoke billowing from Acier's damaged, twitching prosthetic, her glowing white eyes mirroring the electrical torment consuming him. Despite the canyon walls crumbling above and a huge avalanche of debris hitting her every moment, she remained unfazed.

The falling shale and dust bombarded her relentlessly, but she paid no attention, entirely focused on making sure Acier ended up as nothing but a charred corpse by the conclusion of this fight. Even her indifferent exterior had its boundaries as the huge chunks of rock that Acier had torn from the cliff fell with a roar, a stray, heavy shower of sharp stones struck her body.

The pointed pieces embedded themselves into her armor like daggers piercing her skin, breaking the obsidian outer layer and digging deep into the flesh underneath. Warm red blood flowed from the new injuries, soaking the ground beneath her in crimson stains. The pain served merely as a connection to reality, a direct link to the darkest depths of the force.

Realizing that the lightwhip had become a tether holding her in a failing stance, she slowly released her slender fingers, completely letting go of the hilt. The weapon dropped into the sand as her eyes shifted from a blinding white to a striking red. With a strong wave of her arms, Remowa ended the Force Tempest.

She directed the leftover electrical energy into a final burst of blue lightning, creating a powerful shockwave meant to push the falling rocks and her two attackers away from her area. If they wanted to bombard her with the mountain, so be it. With her bloodied hands extended, her immense telekinetic power took hold of the shattered canyon around her.

The floating boulders, broken stone shelves, and the falling slabs of rock that Lysander von Ascania and Acier Moonbound had loosely arranged all yielded to her wrath. With a sweeping motion of her arms, she grabbed the suspended debris and began to throw the massive stones down upon them repeatedly, aiming to crush both Knights.

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Kuar - Plains of Harkul

Equipment:
Knight Attire | Lightsaber | Shoto | Cybernetic Arm | The Wayward

The first stones struck home. Even through the haze of pain, Ace saw jagged fragments punch through Remowa's armor, drawing blood as the avalanche battered her from every direction. It wasn't enough to stop her, but it was enough to force the first concession she'd made all duel.

The lightwhip fell from her grasp and Ace recognized the significance immediately. The weapon that had dictated the flow of the battle from the opening exchange lay abandoned in the sand. Several exchanges of pressure, positioning, and denied space had finally forced the decision he'd been hunting from the beginning.

A heartbeat later, the torrent of lightning vanished, but its effects didn't. Every muscle still trembled uncontrollably beneath the lingering current. Smoke curled from the ruined prosthetic as dying sparks crackled beneath the plating, his lungs burning as he fought simply to stay upright. He barely managed it.

The residual lightning detonated outward in a violent shockwave. Already exhausted and still reeling from the Tempest, the blast tore him from his feet, hurling him backward across the canyon floor before finally rolling onto both knees.

Before he could recover, the canyon itself answered Remowa's will. The fractured shelves, broken cliff faces, and falling slabs he'd sent crashing toward her all ground to a halt before reversing course. Tons of shattered stone now hung suspended throughout the ravine before surging back toward him and Lysander beneath the Chiss' telekinetic control.

Breathing hard, Ace forced himself upright once again as he first wave of debris crashed toward him. Smaller fragments shattered on contact with his lightsaber while the ruined prosthetic absorbed what he couldn't evade, the lifeless limb serving one final purpose as he forced his way through the barrage.

His left arm hung completely lifeless at his side, the ruined prosthetic swaying uselessly with the movement. Without a second thought, the purple shoto disappeared back onto his belt. His right hand reached across his body instead, reclaiming the familiar weight of his primary lightsaber. The weapon felt wrong there. Foreign.

Blue light settled into a new guard, no longer the left-handed stance Remowa had spent the entire battle facing, but its mirrored counterpart. Less practiced. Less natural. Still lethal.

Then he stepped toward her once more. His eyes briefly found the abandoned lightwhip, and a sharp pull through the Force answered. The weapon tore free of the sand, skipping once across the canyon floor before hurtling past Ace entirely. He never reached for it. Instead, the hilt shot across the battlefield toward Lysander's position. Ace trusted him to decide its fate.

Wave after wave continued to crash toward him. Stone shattered against blue plasma and dead beskar alike as Ace forced his battered body forward, refusing to surrender the ground he'd taken.

Lysander von Ascania | Remowa​