"Do it!"
Those were the last two words that Darth Tyranus, Count Dooku of Serenno, heard before the searing plasma blades at his throat burned their way through his neck. His head tumbled away and his body collapsed limply to the floor.
But the Dark Lord's story did not end there.
A blurred image worked its way into Dooku's field of vision. It was his master, Darth Sidious. But something was wrong. He and that fool Skywalker were standing perpendicular to the floor, somehow adhered to the wall.
No, the Sith Lord thought. I'm on my side. He tried to right himself but found that he was incapable of movement. The miserable brat paralyzed me! he fumed. My master allowed him to…to what? He wasn't certain exactly what Skywalker had done to him. The events that led to his current state were somewhat fuzzy. He remembered leaping down to face Skywalker and Kenobi, giving them the opportunity to surrender. Not that they ever would, of course. Not to a Sith, at any rate. Such ignorance.
But what had happened afterward? The memory was fading, drifting further and further away, like a dream. He dueled with Skywalker, that much he was certain. And Kenobi had been there as well. Yes, Kenobi attempted to attack him from the rear but the Dark Lord was too powerful. He hurled the Jedi over the railing and brought a catwalk crashing down upon him. Surely Kenobi was dead. But Skywalker had lived. Such anger.
Dooku recalled hatred, great seething, roiling hatred. Skywalker had attacked with a ferocity he had not depended on. He had fought the Jedi across the room to his master and then—Skywalker had disarmed him! Dooku instinctively tried to hold up his hands, remembering as the Jedi's blade had burned through both wrists. I have been maimed! the Dark Lord lamented. The whelp has mutilated me, corrupted my body, and cruelly stolen away my ability to defend myself! What was the greatest swordsman in the galaxy without hands? What was a Sith Lord without his lightsaber?
But what had happened next? He had fallen to his knees, helpless before the Jedi dog. He remembered looking to his master for assistance, waiting for him to call the Jedi off. But after that…nothing. There was an odd numbness and a sensation of falling, some dizziness. Had Skywalker broken the Dark Lord's neck? Was this to be the end of Darth Tyranus, left to die a disfigured, pathetic quadriplegic?
No, Dooku thought firmly. I may no longer have use of my body, but my mind is all I need. With the Force, all else is irrelevant. He attempted to touch the Force, to use it to lift his body from the floor. Nothing happened. He could hear the Force, but its usual call was but the barest of whispers. He felt empty, almost entirely cut off from the power that had connected him to the universe since he could remember.
The boy hasn't the knowledge to sever my connection to the Force, Dooku decided. This was Lord Sidious. I was ever only a means to ensnare Skywalker. Disposable. He did this to me. And now he will parade me before the Republic, a humiliated shell of my former self, an example of what happens to those who act counter to the Republic's rule.
A terrible shudder rocked the ship and Dooku was able to make out the figures of Skywalker and Lord Sidious running away. Suddenly Dooku found himself moving, though not under his own power. He seemed to be tumbling across the room as the ship shifted violently a full ninety degrees downward. Something was wrong with the way he moved. The whole world spun much too fast as he fell. He was horrorstruck as a body tumbled past his range of vision. A headless body wearing top of the line rancor leather boots and the cape of a nobleman from Serenno.
It cannot be! Dooku wanted to scream. But it was. Skywalker hadn't merely paralyzed him, he had beheaded him. The cauterizing blades must have trapped enough blood in his head for him to remain conscious. But that would mean…
The far wall rushed up to greet him and Dooku knew only darkness the as the Dark Lord passed out of life and into the screaming black void of Chaos where the disciples of the Dark Side spend an eternity of torment and suffering as payment for the might and power that the Dark Side afforded them in life. The Count was dead.