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 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​

 

[Lysander von Ascania]

Remowa Acier Moonbound​

Static shrieked behind his eyes, a white noise hungry to drag his fraying consciousness down into the abyss; meanwhile, crimson bloomed around his ankle to stain the dust. Every pulse of it drained more strength, leaving the leg half numb. Each inhalation carving his lungs was as if he were swallowing glass. Muscles continued to twitch in spasmodic defiance.. ghost limbs of the electricity that only moments ago incinerated his entire nervous system; it left the world to feel like a fractured painting viewed through a veil of shock.

That was, until a hilt spiraled through the haze, slamming into Lysander’s reach. Fingers locked around the casing; the weight of the weapon eclipsed the familiarity of Nightstar, tugging at his very soul until the teen's shoulder joint began protesting. A direct duel was surely a fantasy now; for he knew with creeping dread that to contend against the telekinetic titan would only invite erasure of himself.

Each passing second was a struggle to remain sentient, for the Sith's legs refused to grant the kinetic drive necessary for any sense of sprint or leap. Debris descended from the sky like an artillery barrage. One heavy strike to the shoulder buckled his spine. The earth rushed up to claim him immediately. There, amidst the grit and the gore, he fought the encroaching dark with a grunt of defiance, before standing once more. His indomitable spirit would stand as a stubborn spark refusing to die.

The body lunged forward through spiteful malice, shedding the final vestiges of elegance. Lysander surrendered to the festering impulse to tear, to maim, and to simply endure. A second hand clamped onto the hilt as it carved a wide, jagged arc through the silt. The studs were dragging against the earth like the shackle of a damned soul. It certainly wasn't art, swung with blind hope that even something clumsy might shatter their foe’s focus. One final, wretched gamble cast into the dark.. for an opening to a glorious execution.

 

[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 continued her relentless attack, disregarding the heavy toll each movement took on her failing body. Blood continued to flow from the cracks in her broken armor, pooling in the red sand beneath her feet. She sensed the connection weakening, the dark side slowly fading as inch by inch, her telekinetic hold on the canyon wall diminished.

The floating boulders began to sway in the air as her expression remained the same despite everything that was happening around her. Her smile widened then faded with the thought of never getting to kill that noblewoman back on Corellia, the thought of never going back to the ruins of Csilla or serving the true Galactic Emperor should he emerge from hiding.

The internal conflict happening within her head seemed to lessen the more Acier Moonbound stumbled forward to engage her despite having lost a functioning cybernetic limb. She could see Lysander von Ascania dragging her discarded whip through the sand, knowing that they were pushing themselves to the brink of death just to take her down.

She would deny them even that as the last remnants of the force gathered around her to pull one final boulder from the cliffside. Placing it directly between herself and the approaching enemy, and holding it there for a brief moment, allowing them to believe she was using the stone as a desperate shield to buy herself time.

Remowa closed her eyes as the Dark Side Burst erupted from her at the last beat of her heart, and In a blinding flash, the shockwave completely disintegrated her body, leaving nothing behind as the ravine itself expanded outward to carve an ashen line through the plains of Harkul to mark her final resting place.

As the dust cleared, there was no body for the two Knights to defile, no prize to bring back, and no tangible evidence of their success. Standing bruised, scarred, and breathless in the unnatural silence, the reality of their empty victory would weight heavily on them. They had survived but had gained nothing from her even in death, a hollow victory...and so...

This was Remowa's Last Remnant​

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Kuar - Plains of Harkul

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

Through the haze clouding his vision, Ace caught sight of Lysander still advancing. The Knight's movements had shed every trace of refinement, reduced now to stubborn determination and raw survival, yet somehow he still found the strength to lunge forward with Remowa's discarded lightwhip clutched in both hands.

Ace's eyes returned to Remowa. The blood soaking through her broken armor, the failing telekinetic hold over the canyon, the exhaustion carved across her posture... he knew what he was looking at. She had reached the end. Whether it came by his hand or another's, she wasn't leaving Harkul alive.

The final boulder rose between them but Ace never slowed. Every instinct told him what was coming. If she hurled it, neither he nor Lysander had enough left to simply weather the impact. His body protested as he reached once more toward the Force, drawing upon the final scraps of strength still answering his call. It wasn't enough to stop the boulder outright, but perhaps... enough to turn it.

Except... nothing came. The Force around Remowa changed and the world flashed. Dark side energy erupted from behind the stone with enough violence to shake the ravine, the expanding shockwave washing over the canyon before the silence that followed seemed almost unnatural.

Ace dragged himself around the boulder, each step heavier than the last. Nothing. No broken body, no final trophy, just a long, ashen scar carved across the earth where Remowa had stood.

His eyes closed for a brief moment as he reached out through the Force. Her cold, familiar presence was simply... gone. She was dead. Even at the end, she'd stolen one last thing from them. There would be no final blow. No body to carry home. No proof beyond the certainty the Force itself offered.

It didn't matter. Sibylla had been avenged. Ace's gaze finally dropped to what remained of his left arm. The blackened prosthetic hung lifelessly at his side, weak sparks still crawling beneath cracked beskar plating. Pain radiated through every nerve still connected to it, while the muscles across his back and shoulders burned from the Tempest that had nearly claimed him.

Slowly, he looked toward Lysander. Only then did he truly see him. The blood, the unsteady stance, and the way his presence in the Force flickered beneath the weight of everything he'd endured.

Ace still didn't know about the poison. He only knew his brother was fading.

With visible effort, Ace lifted his remaining arm toward the communicator embedded within his sleeve.

"...Need..." His voice was little more than a rasp. "...medical aid... now..."

A shallow breath followed.

"...Sending... coordinates..."

The transmission went through and only then did the last of his strength abandon him. Ace's knees buckled beneath him and he hit the canyon floor, unconscious before he finished falling, thin wisps of smoke still rising from the burns across his back as the silence of Harkul finally settled over the battlefield.

Remowa | Lysander von Ascania​

 

[Lysander von Ascania]

Acier Moonbound Remowa​

There was a roar that left Lysander’s ears ringing with the echoes of a storm. One that vanished into thin air. It felt like his body was held by a ghostly hand, for he was expecting another lash of lightning, or any counterattack which would never arrive. The nervous system became traitorous, firing signals of impact.. unable to concede that the theater of this duel was finished..

Every muscle fiber in his battered frame flickered with a dying spasm. Then, the world turned to bright static, a blinding white that engulfed the canyon whole. Lysander’s eyelids slammed shut, but the light bled through, bruising even his vision. His fingers were akin to claws curved around the handle of the whip. He wanted to destroy it, but his grip stayed stubborn.. by an instinct he couldn't quite name. It hit him then: this was Acier’s hunt. He'd just been a shadow cast by his brother's ambition, or perhaps even vengeance. Whatever the blood debt may be, he never fully interrogated the matter.

Someday, the thought drifted through his muddled mind, I will ask him why. If there is a day.

The edges of his world began to fray. Black constellations bloomed in his peripheral vision. Fingers took on the weight of wooden blocks. Speech became an abstract concept. A reply was attempted, but the tongue was sluggish, his jaw full of lead. Adrenaline, once a scalding river, evaporated. Behind it, the wreckage surfaced.. the lightning burns, a damaged shoulder, the shredding of lungs, and erratic tremors. That was, until limbs became unresponsive; numbness cannibalized the injuries.

Whether the Reaper stood at the threshold mattered little. Stranger still, fear didn't come.. only a more deceptive state of tranquil. Possibly an honorable exit from this life. The Galactic Kaggath had once been the summit of his naive acolyte dreams, where meaning lived only in spectacle. This fight demanded more, pushed further, and carved much deeper. Today revealed a new step in the ladder of ascent chosen years ago; and a higher threshold of suffering that came with that cost.

A voice drifted through the gloom, sounding as if spoken from the bottom of an ocean. Attempting yet another reply, only a choked vibration emerged. Regardless, the whip was not relinquished; it stayed clutched in his hand, no different than a trooper fused to his rifle in the mud. Equilibrium failed. A leg gave way, then the other. Gravity finally claimed its due as darkness swallowed him.