=== Sebastian ===
Sebastian's storm shield slammed into the first acolyte's crimson blade with enough force to nearly tear the weapon from the man's hands.
Rather than simply blocking the strike, the Black Templar twisted his entire body behind the impact, turning the shield into a battering ram. The unfortunate acolyte was launched backward through the air, crashing into a support pillar hard enough to crater the metal before collapsing in a heap.
Before the warrior could even hit the floor, a second red lightsaber lashed low toward Sebastian's ankle, seeking to hamstring the towering Astartes. The Black Templar saw the attack coming long before it arrived and simply lifted one armored boot from the ground. The blade hissed harmlessly beneath his foot, missing by mere centimeters, while Sebastian's laughter boomed throughout the hangar.
The Darksaber came alive in his grasp.
Its black blade swept outward in a vicious horizontal slash that forced the other two acolytes to throw themselves backward. One was not fast enough. The tip of the blade caught him across the chestplate, hurling him from his feet and sending him tumbling across the ground.
At the same moment Sebastian drove his armored elbow backward without even looking. The strike connected squarely with another acolyte's face. Bone exploded inward with a sickening crunch. Teeth, blood, and fragments of skull sprayed through the air as the man's head deformed beneath the sheer force of the blow. Somehow the acolyte remained alive, staggering blindly while clutching what remained of his ruined face.
"Pathetic!" Sebastian roared.
One of the surviving attackers lunged at him from the side. Sebastian simply reached out and caught the man by the front of his robes. The acolyte barely had time to register what had happened before the Black Templar spun on his heel and whipped him through the air like a rag doll.
The body slammed into the deck with such violence that the impact shattered the man's skull instantly. Brain matter burst outward across the floor while the corpse bounced once and then lay still.
The remaining acolytes finally began to understand the horrifying truth of their situation.
They were not fighting a man.
They were fighting something closer to a living war machine.
Still they came.
The first acolyte screamed and charged forward, his lightsaber flashing downward toward Sebastian's neck while another circled around behind him. The Black Templar met the first attack head on. The Darksaber carved downward, severing the attacker's leg just above the knee. The limb spun away across the deck while the acolyte collapsed screaming. Sebastian's laughter only grew louder as the wounded man writhed on the floor.
The remaining two attackers exchanged a glance before extending their hands. Blue lightning erupted from their fingertips.
Electricity danced across his storm shield. Arcs of power crackled across the ancient relic as it absorbed the attack. The air filled with the smell of ozone and burning metal. Lesser warriors would have been reduced to charred skeletons beneath such an assault.
Sebastian merely kept walking.
The lightning bent around him as he advanced step by step.
"That tickles."
The acolytes' confidence shattered.
Nearby, Darth Sidious watched the battle unfold with narrowed eyes. The old Sith Lord had spent the entire engagement circling the outskirts of the fight like a predator seeking the perfect moment to strike.
Then he found his opening.
A blazing sphere of emerald and crimson warpfire materialized in his hand.
The hangar darkened around the unnatural flame.
With a flick of his wrist, Sidious hurled the burning orb toward the Black Templar.
Without hesitation, Sebastian reached down, grabbed the screaming acolyte whose leg he had severed moments earlier, and kicked the wounded man directly into the incoming attack.
The fireball struck the acolyte squarely.
The unfortunate warrior vanished in an explosion of screaming green flame.
Before the shockwave had even faded, Sebastian surged forward.
His gauntleted hand wrapped around the throat of one of the remaining acolytes. The man desperately clawed at the massive fingers crushing his neck as Sebastian lifted him effortlessly into the air.
"You should have stayed hidden on Exegol." He rumbled.
The man's eyes went wide before the Black Templar drove him downward.
The acolyte's head exploded against the deck while his spine snapped instantly. Blood sprayed across Sebastian's armor as the corpse crumpled into an unnatural shape.
Only one remained.
The final acolyte screamed in desperation and charged.
His lightsaber struck with surprising speed, aiming directly for the gap beneath Sebastian's arm.
The Black Templar almost seemed bored as the Darksaber shifted lazily.
The incoming blade was deflected aside, then Sebastian delivered a single return strike.
The black blade passed through the acolyte's body so cleanly that the man continued running for two full steps. Confusion flashed across his face. He looked down.
Then his body separated at the waist.
The two halves collapsed onto the deck with a wet thud.
Silence settled over the battlefield.
The only sounds were the distant thunder of war beyond the hangar and the crackling remains of fading energy.
Sebastian stood among the corpses.
His armor was stained red.
Around him lay the broken remains of every warrior Sidious had sent against him.
Slowly, the Black Templar turned his attention toward the final opponent still standing.
The old Sith Lord remained where he was, yellow eyes studying the carnage.
"Well?" Sebastian asked, spreading his arms slightly as he gestured toward the bodies littering the floor. "Is that really all you had to offer me?"
His red eye lenses locked onto the Sith Lord.
"I'll admit, old man, I expected more. I've fought Ork Gretchins that were harder to kill than those wretches."
The Black Templar pointed the Darksaber directly at him.
"Come now. Surely the master is more entertaining than the servants."
Without warning, Sidious exploded forward in a cataclysmic burst of Warp-infused energy, a vortex of crackling malice that shattered the ground beneath him and sent ripples of unnatural lightning dancing across the walls.
The Warp Lord materialized behind Sebastian in an eyeblink, his blazing red lightsaber slicing through the air, aimed squarely at the Space Marine's exposed neck.
Yet Sebastian anticipated the strike and pivoted, the crimson blade scorching harmlessly past his pauldron, close enough that the heat singed the purity seals upon his battleplate.
No sooner had the first blade missed than a second ignited in Sidious's off-hand, twin scarlet edges now weaving a deadly pattern of annihilation as the corrupted Emperor of old transformed into a whirlwind of death, spinning and leaping through the air fueled by the chaotic tides of the Warp.
Sidious leaped high, twisting mid-air to deliver a descending double-blade overhead chop that carried the full fury of his Warp-tainted agility, the twin edges screaming toward Sebastian's helm. The Black Templar met it head-on, raising his Darksaber in a powerful upward parry that collided with both lightsabers in a deafening explosion of clashing energies, black void-light warring against blood-red plasma, sending cascades of sparks and Warp-static showering across the chamber floor.
The impact reverberated through Sebastian's armor, but his genetically augmented strength drove the block forward, shoving Sidious backward through the air and forcing the Sith to flip acrobatically to regain his footing.
Sidious recovered instantly, darting low with a spinning leg sweep infused with sorcerous speed and strength, his blades whirling in a horizontal storm that targeted Sebastian's knees and midsection.
The Champion stomped down with a powered boot to disrupt the sweep, then countered with a brutal horizontal slash of the Darksaber that forced Sidious to leap over it, the black blade carving a deep, glowing trench through the metal where the Sith had stood moments before.
They pressed each other relentlessly, Sidious becoming a blur of leaps and pirouettes, his dual blades weaving intricate patterns of death, thrusting low toward Sebastian's gorget, then spinning into a rising cross-cut aimed at the Marine's exposed sword arm. Sebastian parried the thrust with a ringing deflection of his Darksaber before smashing his storm shield forward in a brutal bash that caught one of Sidious's blades and nearly wrenched it from his grip.
The Sith retaliated with a surge of Warp sorcery, channeling crackling tendrils of dark lightning that lashed across Sebastian's shield, superheating the metal.
Pressed by the attack, Sebastian swung his Darksaber in a wide, overhead arc that Sidious barely evaded by twisting aside, the blade slicing so close it severed a portion of the Sith's tattered robes and drew a shallow line of corrupted burnt flesh across his shoulder.
Sidious answered with a leaping spin-kick, his boot empowered by Warp energy slamming into Sebastian's chestplate with enough force to stagger the giant back a step, followed immediately by a flurry of rapid lightsaber strikes that Sebastian met, each collision shaking the chamber.
The duel intensified into a brutal, grinding stalemate. Sebastian's raw physical might allowed him to batter aside strikes with bone-jarring power while Sidious exploited his superior sorceries to probe and undermine, summoning illusory duplicates that flickered around the Marine and unleashed probing blasts of psychic lightning.
One such blast slipped through during a spinning exchange, catching the edge of Sebastian's storm shield at just the right angle, hurling the Black Templar off his feet in a tumbling crash that sent him skidding across the fractured floor amid sparks and grinding metal.
His storm shield tore free from his left arm, spinning away into the shadows with its surface warped and glowing from the unholy contact, leaving Sebastian momentarily exposed as he rolled to absorb the momentum.
Rising with a growl, Sebastian surged back to his feet just as Sidious unleashed a massive wave of Warp lightning, a roaring torrent of purple-green energy that surged toward him like a living storm. The Champion brought his Darksaber up, the unique blade absorbing and dispersing the worst of the assault in a howling clash of opposing powers, though arcs of residual lightning still danced across his armor.
Ignoring the burning torment, Sebastian's jump pack exploded him forward, barreling straight through a follow-up blast of Warp lightning that struck him directly in the chest.
The energy ripped into his breastplate, melting sacred runes and charring the gene-enhanced muscle underneath in white-hot agony, yet his indomitable will carried him onward. With a final, earth-shaking leap, he slammed his armored bulk into Sidious like a dreadnought ramming a fortress wall, crushing the Sith against a massive pillar that exploded into rubble on impact and driving the air from the ancient being's lungs in a ragged, agonized scream.
Sebastian's massive gauntlets clamped down on both of Sidious's arms as he hoisted the writhing Sith clear off the ground. Sidious thrashed wildly, unleashing desperate torrents of dark sorcery at point-blank range, bolts of crackling energy that scorched Sebastian's helm and tore fresh rents across his pauldrons, but the Black Templar's faith burned brighter than the pain.
With a slow, deliberate application of his superhuman strength, Sebastian began to pull the arms outward, the sickening sounds of straining sinew and popping joints filling the chamber.
The left arm gave way first in a grotesque, wet rip of tearing flesh, Warp-mutated muscle, and bone, spraying unnatural ichor across the floor as the limb came free entirely.
Sidious howled in torment as Sebastian contemptuously discarded the severed arm. The right followed moments later with even greater resistance, tendons shredding and armor-like bones splintering under the relentless pull until it too tore away in a fountain of corrupted blood. With both arms gone and Sidious reduced to a mutilated, screaming ruin, Sebastian simply released his grip, letting the broken form drop to the blood-slicked stone below, where it crumpled in a twitching heap as the Black Templar stood victorious, chest heaving and Darksaber still ignited via a chain attaching it to Sebastian's forearm, the Emperor's wrath made manifest.
In that fleeting moment of victory his gaze lifted involuntarily toward the shattered vault of the sky visible through the cracked dome above, where the heavens of Mandalore burned with the fury of an apocalyptic war.
The SunEater pulsed with malevolent energy as it loomed over the planet. The distraction proved costly, for even as Sebastian's scarred lips curled in awe at the cosmic carnage, Sidious seized the opening with a guttural howl of defiance, a massive blast of raw Warp sorcery erupted from the Sith's broken body, a coiling vortex of purple-black energy and screaming ethereal faces that smashed into the Black Templar's exposed side with cataclysmic force, hurling the towering Space Marine from his feet and sending him crashing across the fractured deck in a grinding tumult of ceramite and sparks.
Sebastian's helmet tore free from his head and tumbled away into the debris, revealing the full horror of his heavily scarred face.
Sebastian pushed himself up with a pained grunt that built into a roar of renewed fury, his one organic eye narrowing as he witnessed the abomination before him beginning to reform, writhing tentacles of pure Warp essence burst from the stumps of Sidious's severed limbs, slick with ichor and pulsating with unholy life as they snaked across the ground to retrieve the discarded arms, dragging them back and reattaching them with sickening wet crunches and bursts of dark energy that knitted the man's corrupted flesh and bone anew.
The Sith Lord's true form was finally revealed in all its nightmarish glory as he began to change. A tall, sinuous skeletal being stripped of its humanity, its elongated frame twisted by millenia in the Warp into something far beyond mortal frailty, one arm now grotesquely transformed into a massive, coiling tentacle lined with barbs and sucking maws, while dozens of small yellow eyes blinked and swiveled across a hideous, distended face that had melted into a mass of shifting features, fanged maw stretching wide in silent screams of perpetual agony and ecstasy.
"Fool." The Sith gurgled as he began drawing deeply upon the roiling tides of the Warp, siphoning chaotic energies into a singular, cataclysmic attack that made the air thicken with the stench of brimstone and madness, shadowy phantasms howling as they coalesced around his outstretched tentacle and remaining clawed hand.
Sebastian, refusing to yield, forced one massive knee upward and planted it firmly against the rubble-strewn floor, driving himself into a kneeling position of unbowed defiance while he thrust the Darksaber before him, both gauntleted hands gripping the hilt with reverent strength as he bowed his head in solemn prayer, the words rising from deep within his transhuman soul.
"Oh Lord, great Emperor of Mankind," he intoned humbly, his voice a low rumble that carried the weight of countless battlefields and unyielding faith, even as Sidious unleashed his final attack, a howling maelstrom of Warp sorcery that surged forward like a tidal wave of screaming souls and annihilating lightning intent on erasing the Black Templar from existence.
In that desperate instant, the iron halo atop Sebastian's jump pack erupted in holy flames, golden fire blazing forth with the Emperor's own sanction to form a radiant burning dome of protective energy that enveloped the kneeling Champion, deflecting the Warp onslaught in explosive bursts of clashing powers that shook the chamber to its foundations and sent cracks spiderwebbing through the remaining walls.
Undaunted within his sanctuary of faith, Sebastian continued his prayer.
"Grant me sanction and the divine strength to slay the heretic before me, to purify the vile taint of the Warp in Your holy name and cast this abomination back into the abyss from whence it came."
His words resonated with pure conviction, channeling a surge of celestial power that made the air shimmer, and suddenly the Darksaber's blade, always eternally black as the void, flared into a blazing gold for a transcendent split second, the weapon transforming into an instrument of the Emperor's wrath as Sebastian surged upward from his knee with explosive speed.
He leaped forward in a thunderous leap, closing the distance in a blur of armored might, and swept the now-golden blade in a devastating horizontal arc that sheared straight through Sidious's midsection with effortless, sanctified precision, cleaving the sinuous skeletal form cleanly in two amid a spray of Warp essence and agonized shrieks that echoed like the death throes of a dying god.
The bisected Sith crumpled to the floor in disbelief, his multiple yellow eyes widening in shock as the upper torso fell backward with a wet thud, tentacles spasming uselessly while the lower half twitched in futile rebellion against the inevitable.
Sebastian rose to his full height, chest heaving beneath his battered armor as he stood victorious at last, the golden glow fading from his blade back to its customary void-black as the holy flames around him subsided.
The old Sith twitched weakly against the deck plating, his remaining hand clawing at the ground as though trying to hold onto life through sheer spite.
Then he laughed.
It was a horrible sound.
Blood spilled from the corner of his mouth as the laughter continued, growing stronger despite the mortal wounds that should have silenced him forever.
Sebastian slowly tilted his head.
"You laugh?" the Black Templar asked. "Look at yourself."
Sidious coughed violently, spraying blood across the floor before looking up at the towering Astartes. Despite his condition, despite the agony that must have been consuming him, a twisted smile stretched across what remained of his face.
"You believe..." he rasped between ragged breaths, "that you have won." The Sith's smile widened.
"No. I have won."
For the first time since the battle began, Sebastian frowned.
Then the world changed.
A brilliant blue light suddenly washed across the battlefield.
At first it was faint, little more than a glow illuminating the clouds overhead, but within seconds it grew brighter. The fires around the battlefield were overwhelmed by it. The smoke became bathed in azure radiance. Every ruined building and shattered vehicle cast long blue shadows across the wastes of Mandalore.
Sebastian slowly turned.
The grin vanished from Sidious' face.
It was replaced by pure satisfaction.
Above them, beyond the clouds and beyond the atmosphere itself, a star had been born.
The SunEater's colossal weapon hanging in orbit above Mandalore unleashed its power in a torrent of impossible energy, and even from the surface the beam seemed large enough to split the heavens themselves. A pillar of blue annihilation descended from the sky, wider than cities and brighter than suns, its light consuming everything it touched as it raced toward the world below.
Thousands of soldiers stopped fighting.
Astartes, clones, stormtroopers, Mandalorians, all found themselves staring upward.
The Black Templar looked toward the horizon where the descending beam tore through the clouds like the wrath of a god. Mountains vanished beneath its light. Entire formations disappeared before the weapon had even fully reached the surface.
Then something unexpected happened.
Sebastian began to laugh.
It started as a low chuckle, then it grew louder. And louder.
Soon his booming laughter rolled across the battlefield with enough force to be heard above the distant screams and explosions. Even Sidious seemed surprised as the Black Templar threw his head back and laughed directly at the approaching apocalypse.
The Champion of the Emperor spread his arms wide as though welcoming an old friend.
"Is that it?" he roared.
His voice echoed across the battlefield.
"Is that truly what it took?"
The descending beam illuminated his black armor in brilliant blue light.
Sebastian's laughter only grew louder.
"You would destroy an entire planet, JUST TO KILL ME?"
His laughter became thunder.
"What an honor!"
The words boomed across the ruined battlefield.
"Praise the Emperor!" he roared at the top of his lungs. "For no servant of mankind could ask for a grander death than this!"
He spread his arms even wider and raised his face toward the descending beam as though embracing it as he continued to laugh, blue light consuming everything in a blinding radiance that marked the fiery conclusion of his final crusade.
===
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