She is at the bottom of a vast cavern. As her eyes begin to adjust, there is just enough light to make out the steep rock walls rising up and up and up to either side, and the broad span of the stone bridge that crosses them high above. Some of the light comes from sources on the level of the bridge, out of sight from her low vantage.

Some of the light comes from one end of this underground ravine, a swaying, flickering glow accompanied by the sound of many, many feet on stone.

The Force has nothing good to say about what's going on in that direction.

But it does have very bad things to say about what's going on in that direction. It makes her skin crawl.

Whatever it is, she hasn't seen anything like it before. It's like a Sith lord's tomb, except instead of the cloying omnipresent force it's - like many itchy pinpricks of madness and anger that are being conducted by a dark song, called to march towards... something. An army drawn towards and led by something that feels almost Sith-like, but the flavor's different. The texture is different. It's closer to the feeling of a Force ghost than a Sith lord, really. There is only one Sith that Callida knows of that associates with Force ghosts.

And if someone has figured out Darth Occlus's technique... Callida needs to verify it.

Time to investigate. Carefully. Masking her presence as best as she can.

There is a huge army of unfamiliar beings marching in her direction, wearing ridiculously low-tech armour and carrying axes and swords and bows and hammers. The light comes from the flaming torches carried by scattered members of the mob.

At a glance, the creatures separate into two distinct types: one rarer kind that's between twelve and fifteen feet tall and has huge horns on its head, and another more numerous group that's about humanoid size. A closer look reveals that the smaller subtype has multiple variants, but they're somewhat harder to tell apart than 'enormous' versus 'not enormous'.

And then the dragon wings into view. The source of the dark song. Its presence burns with a black malevolence, ancient and powerful. As it passes over the heads of its army, they raise their torches and roar.

Callida looks up at the dragon and debates over whether or not that belongs to the Emperor.

... No, probably not. She can't see the Emperor having such a pathetically low-tech army. Plausible case for I was being a patriot, no really, only my Emperor can have armies of darkness? Yeah, okay. She can kill it. It's allowed. And she rather thinks she'd like to give it a shot, because really, she doesn't like malevolent evil armies on principle.

Is there an obvious way to ground the dragon so she can try to murder it a little?

Well, if she has some way to attack its wings from here, that would probably do the trick. It does seem to rely on them for flight.

Well that's very convenient, she'll have to use that when she goes to attack it.

But not yet, she thinks. She's currently disguised by darkness, but that'll end when the army finishes marching towards her location. And 'on the ground with an army between her and the dragon' sounds like - well, like it is quite a bad position to be conducting a fight from.

She reaches out with the Force towards the ravine's cliff faces, sensing what's present. Are there parts that look like they could be climbed?

The cliffs are steep, and more smooth than otherwise. It doesn't look good. She might be able to make it some distance up one of those rough patches, despite the suboptimal climbing conditions. There's even one fold in the nearer cliff that looks slightly climbable and would shield her from the light cast by the army's torches rather than bringing her more clearly into view if she scaled it.

Hm, to try it or to not. On one hand, falling from heights isn't as dangerous for her as it is for other people, but on the other hand, she would be rather stuck up there if she got up. And if she didn't, she would have wasted valuable time she could have been using to get somewhere else.

On the other hand, there really isn't a better place to go, besides further down the ravine. Which could contain any number of things. She weighs her options, then decides, yes she would like the high ground.

Up she goes, relying on the Force to find her stable handholds in the dark.

The army marches on. The dragon flies ahead, swooping past Callida as she climbs.

She stops moving, precarious though her position might be, as it flies near her. Something that's moving is easier to detect than something that's not.

Does it notice her?

If it does, it gives no sign.

Good.

So she has a choice, one time only. Let it fly past and keep herself hidden until the army passes...

Or, the far more stupid option: leap onto the dragon, slice its head off, and then flee while its army is far behind.

She goes with option two.

Option two proceeds well initially. She lands successfully on the dragon's back, and her lightsaber interrupts its shriek of alarm.

But then the dragon dies, in midair, with Callida on top of it.

Its death blasts her senses like a direct hit from a plasma grenade. An explosive shockwave of pain and rage and ancient evil radiates through the Force, as though someone took the distilled essence of a hundred Sith tombs and packed it into this dragon under incredible pressure and then Callida came along and broke the seal.

Callida feels like quite an idiot, now, for breaking the seal like that. She could have just stayed on the cliff, could have avoided this shit, but noooo, she had to go and stab the fucking dragon. Because she decided she'd like to be heroic, and really, who's heard of a heroic Sith? Absolutely no one! The reason for that is because it gets her into situations like these, where her senses are overwhelmed with dragon evil and she's desperately trying to separate herself from the wave of pain and rage because when drowning in an empathic ocean, one really needs to keep in mind the self. She'd recover even if she didn't, but the better she does here the faster she'll recover later. The less likely that something will kill her while she's stunned. Not that she's thinking that, she's thinking fuck fuck fuck fuck I'm an idiot I'm an idiot Occlus if you could just show up and blast everything that would be great augh fuck I'm an idiot.

All in all: not a good day.

(She has just enough presence of mind to switch off her lightsaber as she's tumbling out of the air, but not the presence of mind to attempt to land gracefully.)

Luckily for Callida, she lands on top of the dead dragon rather than the other way around.

Less luckily for Callida, as her senses begin to clear it becomes obvious that the malevolent presence is still there.

The dark song now flows from a formerly anonymous member of the army, a stick-limbed lanky scrap of a thing with bulging eyes and a massive fanged jaw. It throws back its head and howls, and its body bulges grotesquely. A wing erupts from its back, and a tail from its spine. In fitful spurts, it begins to take on the form of a dragon.

Callida sort of notices this, but also she's busy putting her head back together and also being a crumpled heap on the ground.

But she notices this well enough to note that the dragon is not dead, and that its presence has gone into one of its minions. Which is now making a new dragon.

Which means she needs to stop being a crumpled heap on the ground and get up because there's going to be an angry fucking dragon out to kill her. Augh.

She struggles to her feet. She could likely be knocked over by a stiff breeze, but she's standing now.

The dragon is having a little trouble of its own. Growing pains are not being kind to it. But it gets three limbs under itself, and waits a few seconds for the fourth to catch up, and opens and closes its jaw a few times and shakes its head and finally roars.

Its army, which has been milling around in shock since she beheaded their leader, snaps together into an organized state at last. Creatures shout unintelligible creature utterances, orders or war cries or both, and the front ranks of the army charge toward Callida.

Auuuuugh. Why did she get herself into this awful situation...

Right, okay. Logically. Let's do this logically. The dragon's - soul, she supposes, goes into a minion when it dies. If she were to kill it again, it would just re-dragon after knocking her with some more evil. So it stands to reason that if it ran out of minions she could just. Kill it. But that's risky, even with such a meagerly outfitted army. She could get overwhelmed. The dragon could have more powers she isn't aware of, that could knock her off balance.

But the minions don't seem very smart, and if she keeps from being surrounded she can always run later, and also she would really like to kill that fucking dragon.

She reaches out with the Force to rip the dragon's wings so it can't fly around and cause trouble, and then it's time to slaughter an army. By herself.

When she shreds the dragon's wings, it roars again and vents a blast of something like flame in her direction, which passes over her head by at least ten feet - perhaps because the dragon didn't want to incinerate its own minions - but still makes everything in its vicinity really uncomfortably warm.

The first wave of creatures arrive, swinging their primitive weapons and yelling.

Thank you, dragon, for displaying that oh so charming ability so quickly, she'll have to keep it in mind as she slaughters this army. Maybe keep bits of the army between her and the dragon.

It doesn't really matter if they are yelling while swinging their weapons. Callida is, quite frankly, better at this than they are. And her lightsaber can cut through their weapons and armor like they're not even there. This is going to be extremely one sided.

On the one hand, yes, Callida versus any one or even any five or ten of the ordinary creatures in this army is not much of a contest.

On the other hand, some members of this army are twelve feet tall. And while she is occupied killing all of its friends, one of the giants reaches her position and picks her up in a crushing grip and throws her at the dragon, which in turn attempts to blast her out of the air with its fiery breath.

Well.

This is not the way she wanted to do this, but if she's being cornered into a direct power confrontation, she can damn well toss her Force power around. She holds up a hand and the fiery breath is stopped.

Unfortunately she's still sailing through the air towards a dragon, but that really can't be helped. Maybe she can stab it a little when she gets there. Or impale it into the ground in some way so it'll have trouble getting out. Or - blind it, blinding it sounds like the best option.

The dragon catches her in its mouth, bites down hard, and whips its head back and forth.

That's great, and wonderful, and augh. Isn't she glad her armor's very good. This is disorienting and mildly uncomfortable, but not life threatening.

It's hard to get the aim right, but she's very motivated. She slices at its eyes with her lightsaber, attempting to blind it.

Her lightsaber cuts into the side of its head very near one eye. The smell of burned dragon flesh is even more eye-wateringly horrible than the already unpleasant smell of the intact dragon, and after a moment the wound begins to bleed. The dragon's increasingly frantic head-shaking sends a gout of foul black blood directly into Callida's face.

Then it decides it would rather not have her anywhere near its eyes any longer, and flings her forward again, toward the edge of its army. A giant attempts to cut her in half with an axe whose blades are each as long as her arm.