Private The Mother of Teeth

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Dathomir

Equipment:
Field Gear | Lightsaber | Tic | Cybernetic Arm

Ace could feel her, feel that crawling pull in the Force, that sick urge she had to reshape him, remake him, claim him. He tried to wrench free, and then gold light split the world.

Lorn's blade carved through the tendril at Ace's wrist in a crack of heat and light. A second slash severed the coil at his ribs. A third ruptured the grip at his ankle. Ace dropped hard, coughing, the ground jarring through his spine... but he was free.

For a moment, all he could do was stare. Lorn hadn't hesitated. Hadn't flinched. He'd thrown himself straight into the jaws of something ancient and hungry and torn Ace out of it like the alternative was unthinkable.

Ace pushed to one knee, breath ragged. Something fierce and wordless pulsed through him. Respect. Relief. Anger at how close that had been. Gratitude he'd never say aloud.

He forced himself upright, stepping in beside Lorn just as the Mother reeled back. Her scream shook the clearing, ichor-flames bursting across her form as her limbs snapped outward like a blooming nightmare. Ace's lightsaber snapped back into his hand, blue light washing across his bruised shoulder.

"Reckless." He muttered to Lorn, breath tight. "But… good timing."

Tic skittered behind them, chirping frantic warnings, lens flickering between both of them. The Mother of Teeth towered, shadows twisting around her like living chains.

She hissed at Lorn, and he continued to defy her. Ace slid into formation beside him, shoulder brushing Lorn's, blade raised.

Ace didn't need to look at him to match him. The rhythm was already there: two fighters battered, bruised, and pissed off enough to stop thinking and start moving.

The Mother lashed out first. A net of tendrils ripped toward them, all speed and venom. Ace surged in low, blue blade sweeping up in a tight parry that severed the first limb and bought a sliver of space. He felt Lorn's presence immediately fill the gap behind him not guiding, moving with him. They pushed in together.

He pivoted, shoulder slamming into her midsection, cracking against writhing shadow-flesh. The Mother convulsed around the blow, teeth splitting wider in rage.

"Unruly child!" She hissed, every violet eye tightening. "I'll carve obedience into your bones."

"Together!" He barked.

Ace drove forward in a sharp, cutting arc toward her core, perfectly timed for Lorn to strike in tandem, their combined angle forcing a decisive moment.

[Rolled a goddamn 5!]
For a split second, Ace felt the satisfying give of contact… then everything went wrong. Her entire form collapsed inward again, her favorite apparently. Their blades cut through nothing but smoke and rot-thick air.

Then the soil burst upward. Not with tendrils this time. With jaws. A ring of gnashing shadow-mouths erupted from the ground beneath them, each one lined with teeth of hardened ichor, snapping shut where their legs had been half a second earlier.

Ace twisted back on instinct, one boot nearly caught between grinding rows of teeth. The ring of jaws melted into a surge of grasping hands, dozens of them, clawing for ankles and shins.

She was trying to pull them down. Into the hive.

Where discipline was easier. And escape was not.

Lorn Reingard​

 

[Lorn Reingard]

Tags: Acier Moonbound​

They moved as one for a mere three heartbeats, Lorn and Ace. Their blades danced in perfect sync, crossing the same air with a rhythm born of practice and instinct. For that fleeting moment, it felt like they were a single entity, a line of pure motion aimed directly at the Mother's core. The strike should have landed. It felt like it had landed.

Then, the world dissolved into illusion. Their blades sliced through nothing but smoke. The Mother's form collapsed inwards, a sickening, impossible folding of mass. She vanished, only to reappear, mocking them, repositioning, always one step ahead. Before they could even register the shift, the ground beneath them split open.

Jaws, countless rows of them, erupted from the soil like a nest of buried horrors, snapping and gnashing, trying to swallow them whole. Lorn reacted on pure instinct, yanking Ace backward, dragging him clear as jagged teeth ground rock and dirt into pulp where their legs had just been.

"Move!" Lorn roared, shoving Ace forward as he slashed downwards. Golden light carved through, but for every hit, two more burst from the ground. A thick smoke billowed around them, choking the air. They stumbled back across the uneven terrain, dodging the grasping swarm, Lorn's lungs burning, his ribs screaming with every parry and thrust. His saber arm trembled, and he had to clench his jaw to keep it steady.

She was changing her strategy. She wasn't aiming to kill them outright anymore. She was trying to bury them alive. They managed to clear the immediate onslaught, regrouping against a jagged outcrop of stone. Lorn planted his saber point low, his breath coming in sharp gasps, his eyes fixed on the Mother's re-forming mass as she rose once more from the collapsing pit. Ace stood beside him, surprisingly steady despite the bruises and the faint tremor in his stance.

Lorn exhaled slowly through his teeth. "Alright," he said, his voice flat and low. "I'll admit it." He glanced at Ace, his golden blade humming softly between them. "I'm running out of ideas. Tell me you've got something better than 'keep hitting her until morale improves.'" A tendril hissed across the ground in front of them, seeking their footing. Lorn raised his blade again, his expression grim. "Because if not," he continued, anticipation sharpening his tone, "we improvise. Fast."

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Dathomir

Equipment:
Field Gear | Lightsaber | Tic | Cybernetic Arm

Ace spat dirt from his mouth and straightened, rolling his shoulder until the joint popped back into place. His ribs ached, his thigh burned, and his prosthetic whined faintly with every flex of the fingers but he was still standing. They both were. Barely, maybe. But standing.

Lorn's dry, breath-wrecked admission dragged a tired huff out of him. Not a laugh. Just the ghost of one, shaped mostly from disbelief at the situation they were in.

"Yeah." Ace muttered, blue blade flickering back to life with a sharp snap-hiss. "I've got something."

He kept his eyes fixed on the Mother as she rose from the churning pit, shadow mass knitting back into a towering silhouette - teeth rearranging, eyes reopening like ghastly lanterns in the dark. Her attention locked on him again. It always did.

Ace took one step forward, stance grounding, breath steadying.

"No more chasing her." He said under his breath, just low enough for Lorn to hear. "We pull her to us."

"Child… stop resisting. You were shaped for more than this struggle. Let me guide you into what you are meant to be." There was no threat in her words. Just certainty.

[Rolled a 16 for the success of Ace using the Force.]
The idea was reckless. Stupid. Barely formed. He lifted his hands and the air vibrated. The Force web around Dathomir: ancient, wounded, snarled with old magic, and it responded instantly. Threads he couldn't see before suddenly glowed like molten lines running through the world. And at the center of every one of them… him.

Final Weave.

Bred in secret. Born for power no one ever explained to him. Raised by mistake into something that was never meant to be small. The Mother froze. Every violet eye widened in something between disbelief and fury as the invisible grip locked around her. It wasn't a choke, or a push, it was command.

Her limbs bucked violently, ichor-flames thrashing as she tried to pull herself apart, slip into smoke, twist free. She couldn't.

Ace's voice was steady, almost quiet. "Lorn..."

His fingers curled and the Mother's body was wrenched downward, pinned in place as if dragged by the gravity of a dying star.

"Finish it."

Lorn Reingard ​

 

[Lorn Reingard]

Tags: Acier Moonbound​

Lorn didn't breathe for a heartbeat.

Ace wasn't just holding her; he was commanding her. The air itself bowed around him, and the ground trembled beneath his boots. That tangled, wounded power of Dathomir lit up around Ace like he'd stepped into a storm and claimed it as his own. Every violet eye the Mother possessed snapped toward him, wide with something Lorn had never seen directed at her before: fear.

Lorn's grip tightened on his saber. The gold blade hummed steady despite the tremor in his arm. Ace's voice was almost calm. "Finish it."

Lorn's eyebrows pulled together, a breathless, half-incredulous sound slipping out of him before he could stop it. "...You couldn't have done this earlier?" It was automatic... dry, frayed humor clinging to the edge of awe. He didn't wait for an answer. He stepped forward.

The Mother thrashed, pinned to the ground by Ace's invisible hold, her limbs spasming against the Force crushing her down. Ichor-black fire sputtered and warped, trying to reshape itself, trying to escape. She couldn't. Lorn stopped at her side. For all the monstrous mass she wore and the horror she'd dragged them through, her core was exposed: a trembling, pulsing knot of darkness trapped beneath Ace's unseen weight.

Lorn raised his saber. He thought of all the times he'd failed to strike fast enough. All the losses that had carved lines into him and the things he'd sworn he'd never hesitate about again. He didn't hesitate now. He drove the blade straight down.

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Dathomir

Equipment:
Field Gear | Lightsaber | Tic | Cybernetic Arm

Ace didn't move when Lorn struck. He felt it. The blade sinking into the Mother's core, the ichor-flames buckling against his hold, the shadow-mass convulsing like a dying star trying not to collapse. Every violet eye snapped wide, then narrow, then wide again, torn between fear and devotion.

She didn't scream. That somehow made it worse. The Force rolled up Ace's spine, a violent backlash like a snapped cord deep beneath Dathomir's skin. For a heartbeat, it felt like he wasn't holding her at all, he was holding the full weight of what she wanted him to become. And then it slipped away, draining into the ash.

Her grotesque head twisted toward Ace, not toward the blade killing her. Even dying, she looked at him like he was still the center of a prophecy she refused to let die.

Her voice cracked apart, unraveling into whisper and static:

"Arcana..."

A final tendril lifted toward him... not to strike, just to reach, almost tender. Ace stepped back and the thread snapped, her mass collapsed, and the ichor-flames guttered out like drowned embers.

Only when the Mother's mass finally collapsed into steaming black ichor did Ace let go. His breath hitched as the invisible pressure shattered, and gravity slammed back so abruptly his vision went white at the edges. His legs buckled, and he caught himself on one knee, fingers clawing at the dirt just to stay upright.

His whole body shook. Not fear... depletion. Like something enormous had been pulled out of him and the space it left hadn't figured out how to close.

Tic scrambled up his back with frantic, rapid-fire chirps, nearly sliding off his shoulder before Ace steadied the droid with his prosthetic hand.

When he finally lifted his head, his breathing was ragged. Lorn was still standing over the fading remains. The clearing reeked of ichor and burned earth.

Ace pushed himself upright, slowly, every bruise and strain announcing itself at once. His ribs ached where the tendrils had caught him. His shoulder throbbed. His thigh burned. His prosthetic whined softly, internal servos recalibrating.

He looked at Lorn, eyes darker, steadier, older in a way that hadn't been there an hour ago.

"Make sure she's gone..." He said, voice low and scraped thin. "I'm not doing that twice."

Then his gaze softened by a fraction.

"…and… thanks."

A thank you from someone who knew damn well he wouldn't have walked out of this pit alone, or in one piece, if the man beside him hadn't stayed, fought, and refused to break.

His posture stayed upright, but it was a near thing. You could see the tremor in his stance, the leftover quake of power still echoing through him. This was victory, but the kind that leaves marks.

"I didn't know I could do that..." He added, answering Lorn's earlier question. "Well, I did... but, I never knew how to tap in."

In the silence that followed, the Mother's final words: 'Arcana', they lingered in his thoughts.

Lorn Reingard ​

 

[Lorn Reingard]

Tags: Acier Moonbound​

Lorn held his stance until the ichor stopped boiling. Only when the black settled into a dead, tar-like sheen did he pull his saber free. The gold blade retracted with a satisfied snap-hiss, leaving him standing over the ruin of something ancient and terrible. He waited, his senses stretched for any sign she might re-form. He counted his breaths and listened to the ground beneath him. There was nothing, just the settling crackle of cooling earth. Satisfied, Lorn exhaled slowly and stepped back.

Ace was still on one knee, Tic clinging to his shoulder like a panicked bird. The kid looked wrung out, like someone had taken him apart and only loosely put him back together. Lorn crossed the distance in a handful of carefully measured steps and extended a hand. "Easy," he murmured.

"She's gone," Lorn said, his voice carrying the steady assurance of someone who had put down more monsters than he wanted to remember. There were no dramatics or flourish. "If there was anything left of her to pull back together, she'd have done it." Ace nodded, but Lorn could see how much of him was still in that moment, still feeling the power ripping through him. That name was echoing in his skull. Arcana. Lorn didn't say the word aloud. He didn't need to.

"Don't thank me," he said quietly. "You held her. I just swung." He gave Ace's shoulder, the real one, a firm, grounding squeeze. "You did what needed doing. That's what matters."

Ace's breath hitched, a mix of exhaustion and disbelief. "I didn't know I could do that," he said. Lorn let out a huff that was somewhere between a sigh and the ghost of a laugh. "I'm starting to get the feeling you don't know half of what you're capable of." He scanned the treeline, listening for movement. The forest was holding its breath, watching and waiting.

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Dathomir

Equipment:
Field Gear | Lightsaber | Tic | Cybernetic Arm

Ace's eyes lifted to see Lorn's extended hand. After a small beat, he took the Jedi's hand and pushed up to his feet carefully, every muscle reminding him what he'd just put it through.

When Lorn's words settled, Ace huffed a breath that wasn't quite a laugh.

"Yeah..." He murmured, rubbing his thumb absently over the edge of his prosthetic. "Starting to realize that."

Ace stood over the ruined clearing and the ghosts of a choice he'd been running from for months. The Mother was gone. The darkness she had fed on... his darkness. It was finally quiet.

For the first time since that night, the soil didn't feel like it was waiting to swallow him whole. He wasn't the boy who'd lost control here. He wasn't the weapon the clan tried to carve out of him. He'd come back, faced what rose out of his sins, and he hadn't become that thing again. The ground hadn't claimed him. It had let him go.

"That wasn't… something I can just do." He said, quieter, like admitting it out loud might make it too true. "It felt like I opened a door that wasn't supposed to be opened."

Tic beeped sharply, as if in agreement. Ace straightened fully, even though he swayed once before the earth steadied underneath him.

"But it worked..." He added, voice low. "She's gone."

His gaze lifted to Lorn, steadier now, but changed, marked by the kind of understanding you only earn in the middle of a fight like this.

"And you were right." Ace said, meeting his eyes. "We move together."

He exhaled once, the closest thing he had to a grounding ritual, then nodded toward the ruins.

"Let's get out of this place. Before the forest decides it wants round two."

Lorn Reingard​

 

[Lorn Reingard]

Tags: Acier Moonbound​

Lorn let out a low breath, the kind that bled tension without admitting he'd been holding any. When Ace steadied, when the kid's voice found something resembling certainty again, some tight corner of Lorn finally loosened.

At the mention of opened doors, Lorn's gaze flicked to the scorched ruins behind them. The air still felt eerie, but the threat was gone. Whatever had lain beneath that Mother's skin had burned out completely. "You're not meant to open a lot of things," Lorn said quietly. "Doesn't mean you weren't the one who had to." He didn't push it further. Not here. The ground was still warm and Ace was still shaking.

When Ace mentioned moving together, Lorn gave a small, approving nod. It wasn't sentiment; it was acknowledgement. Agreement. A battlefield promise sealed by survival. "Good," he murmured. "Makes my life easier." Tic beeped at him, sounding suspiciously judgmental. Lorn ignored it.

He looked to the ruins again, squinting slightly as if daring whatever cosmic nonsense lingered there to make one more bad decision. "Let's just hope," he said dryly, "that there isn't a second one of her waiting under a rock. Or a cousin."

He gestured with his chin toward the treeline, guiding Ace away from the scorched earth and toward the clearer path back to their ships. His stride stayed steady, but he kept close enough that if Ace's knees decided to be dramatic, he'd catch him before he face-planted into the dirt.

"You did what you came here to do," Lorn said, voice lower and more certain. "You're not leaving this place the way you arrived." He glanced sidelong at Ace. "And that's the point."

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Dathomir

Equipment:
Field Gear | Lightsaber | Tic | Cybernetic Arm

Ace followed Lorn toward the treeline. The pain was still there, in his ribs, in his shoulder, in the low, hollow ache that came from pulling too hard on something ancient and vast... but it no longer drowned out his thoughts.​

​

He slowed once, not to linger, just to look. The ruins of Clan Vethrisa lay behind them, blackened and broken, exactly as when he'd left it. The difference wasn't the place. It was him. The Force there no longer surged or snarled at his presence. It didn't welcome him. It didn't reject him. It simply was.​

​

Ace drew in a breath, steady this time.​

​

"There's no version of this where it gets undone." He said quietly to himself, more statement than confession.​

​

He glanced at the scorched earth, then away.​

​

"I just needed to stand here again… and not lose myself."​

​

Tic beeped softly, leaning against his neck. Ace let it happen, reaching to scritch the tope of his head casing. When he caught up to Lorn, his stride evened out, still tired, still marked, but no longer pulled backward by the weight of the ground behind him.​

​

This place didn't follow him anymore. It didn't feel triumphant, it was just certain. He didn't look back again, but this time, when Ace left Dathomir, it wasn't because he was running. It was because he'd returned... and proven he could leave on his own terms.​

​

"Thanks for coming." He said again, not repeating the earlier gratitude, but reinforcing it. "For not letting me do this the wrong way."​

​

He cast one last glance back toward where the Mother had fallen.​

​

"My mother's clan's ghosts can keep the dirt." Ace murmured. "I'm done carrying them."​

​

Then he turned fully toward the path ahead, into the Weavewood, into whatever waited next.​

​

Lorn Reingard​