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Out of ether's view
Permalink Mark Unread

Lord Callida is accustomed to assassination attempts, by now. She's not the most common of targets, but she has been targeted before. So when a large creature appears in her meditation chambers her reaction is not to scream and flee, it is to ignite her lightsaber, stand, and attempt to kill it. Whatever it is. Unfortunately, it's faster than she was expecting, and so a part of its mirrored face clips an elbow, and -

- then she is tumbling, falling. She immediately switches off her lightsaber for safety, and focuses on landing. Luckily for her, she has the Force, and is accustomed to sudden drops. She lands with perfect grace on cold rock floor, despite the darkness.

She stands, sighing. Where is she now?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

Permalink Mark Unread

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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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

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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?

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If it does, it gives no sign.

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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.

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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.

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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.)

Permalink Mark Unread

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.

Permalink Mark Unread

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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Callida coughs and attempts to not have foul black blood on her face, but that's rather hard to pull off. And then she's being tossed around like a ragdoll, again, and she can't worry about that anymore because something else is trying to kill her.

Ugh. She loosens the giant's grip on its axe and the axe goes flying instead of impaling her.

And then the giant can be impaled, instead. With her lightsaber.

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The giant goes down in a veritable geyser of arterial spray. Today is not a good day for the cleanliness of Callida's face.

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Blech, how disgusting. Lightsabers cauterize wounds and there's still a lot of blood, that's just annoying.

Back to murder. This time, Callida will not be thrown, damn it.

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Her efforts are successful: she is not thrown.

Gosh that sure is a lot of corpses piling up all around her, though. Most of them don't bleed much, but cauterization only goes so far, and the giants' arteries are large. She is getting increasingly gross.

Meanwhile, the dragon stalks toward her and blasts her with flame whenever doing so would not incinerate more than one or two of its own minions.

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She endeavors to not be only surrounded by one or two of its minions, but sometimes it happens. Luckily she often has convenient corpses to hide behind, how ever did those get there. The smell of burning corpses is unpleasant, but less so than being on fire. And she can just stop the fire if it gets too close for comfort. The benefits of being Sith.

The dragon's army is looking quite a lot less numerous. There's still some left, she's not going to try killing the dragon again, but it's nice to know that in a pinch she actually can take out an army on her own. Even if it gets her increasingly gross. Murder!

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A missed swing with a massive axe strikes sparks from the floor. Tiny flying chips of stone or metal sting Callida's face and hands, and the sting is much worse where she had creature blood on her. That probably doesn't bode well.

The rearguard of the dragon's army is finally coming into view. They all seem very determined to fling themselves into battle against Callida. Maybe they're all idiots, or maybe the dragon has more minions elsewhere and needn't worry about running out.

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And something falls from the edge of the ravine onto the dragon. A short, slight, armoured figure whose eyes and breath blaze with a fierce blue glow. His trajectory is targeted with exquisite precision, and the impact of his landing would probably be enough to kill most people, but he just plants two daggers in the dragon's back and then draws a sword and starts hacking at its neck.

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Okay!

She has no idea what the fuck this tiny person is doing, aside from the obvious, but if he's going to start dragon murdering, clearly she needs to finish killing the rest of the dragon's minions as quickly as possible.

So she readies her blaster and lightsaber, turns the Force speed up as far as it will go (she'll be hurting later for it, but it is something of an emergency...) and then - murder.

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There's still approximately a third of an army left by the time the stranger's blade severs the dragon's spine. Its half-attached neck flops limply to the cavern floor, its body convulses once, and its death explodes into the Force.

The dark song recoalesces moments later... into the tiny figure atop the dragon's back. But he does not appear to be turning into a dragon. He appears to be dying, fighting a losing battle against the dragon's soul, a struggle that is rapidly consuming them both.

Permalink Mark Unread

Oh, oh fuck.

Well, the little glowing blue person was an ally, however briefly, and Callida has a rule about her allies. They do not die if she has anything to say about it.

She doesn't weigh the pros and cons of her next action, she doesn't even really think through the consequences. She switches off her lightsaber and sprints to the tiny figure's side and thinks maybe I can help him in some way, weigh down in his favor with all of my power -

Except she doesn't really have a way to do that, does she. The problem is not that the figure's not powerful enough, the problem is that the dragon soul is literally too big for anything but it. Okay, well, that's fixable, she can rip it into pieces and try to shove the soul fragments into other things, let the little person have a fairer, less doomed fight. Figure out something to do with the dragon soul-bits later, when they're not in the middle of a crisis. Maybe present them to Occlus, 'Hey look I got you a neat toy.' Where are the darkspawn, she didn't get to killing all of them, she searches for their signatures and -

- in the process she notices that something about her has changed to be like them. That's - alarming, alarming is what that is. Like she's been poisoned with their darkness in some subtle way - was that when she failed to kill the dragon, or was it the ingested blood while she was being thrown around? Doesn't matter. What does matter is that, actually, she fulfills the same requirements that this figure did. If she had killed the dragon, its soul could have - done exactly the same thing to her that it's doing to this one.

And maybe that can be used to her advantage. The figure's doing pretty well against the dragon soul, almost winning, even, she thinks she'd at least manage to match him. And they could both win, if the dragon's power were halved.

"This is stupid, this is so very stupid," she mutters, "I'm insane and suicidal and incredibly stupid and I need to get my savior complex fixed because I'm insane."

Then she reaches out with the Force, grabs at the bundle of energy she recognizes as the dragon's soul, and she rips.

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The dying man groans and coughs. No longer dying, now, just very unhealthy.

All around them, the dragon's creatures howl in grief and anger.

 

And a ten-foot-tall suit of armour leaps into the chasm to land atop the more recent of the two dragon corpses, then raises an enormous iron hammer and starts flattening dragon-minions. All remaining creatures outside its reach turn and flee.

Permalink Mark Unread

Awesome, because Callida is down for the count, on account of ow now her soul feels like it is on fire ow.

She turns out to be right about being able to win against the bit of dragon soul, but holy shit wow does it hurt. Pain! Pain and anger and sadism and it's inescapable, she's got nowhere to run, she can't change her mind and put it back in the blue glowing person, she's stuck fighting it. And every time she fights it, it hurts more. But somewhat depressingly, she's used to pain. She's especially used to fighting through it. All she has to do is not stop, and she can beat it, fuck you dragon, she's winning.

Just, until she beats it into submission she'll be this crumpled slightly whimpering heap. Let's hope the armor thing is friendly, because Callida can't possibly defend herself right now against anything but dragon soul.

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The suit of armour yells something in an unfamiliar language. Someone up by the bridge yells something in response. They carry on this exchange for a while, and then there is a silence, an then an arrangement of ropes is anchored to the bridge and lowered into the chasm. The suit of armor gently picks up the blue glowing person for its friends to haul up onto the bridge, and then does the same for Callida, and then collects their weapons and steps into the contrivance itself. Once they are all safely out of the ravine, the suit of armour opens an enormous stone gate, and two of its stone friends carry Callida and the glowing man through while the other two retrieve the rope apparatus. Once they're all inside, they close the gate behind them.

The architecture is beautiful, not that Callida is in a position to appreciate it.

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She really isn't, no. She's busy dragon slaying. Or, dragon soul slaying. Same difference.

She does not, actually, have the means to erase it from existence. It's clear that getting the soul piece out of her would be an endeavor that she can't accomplish right now, not without preparation and study and probably some outside help. But she can definitely beat it into submission. This is her mind, this is her body, the bit of dragon does not get to be in charge. She's not at the dragon's mercy, it's at hers. And if it disagrees with that assertion, it can be beaten, over and over and over again, with her pain and pride forged will, until it fucking gets the message. It's vicious, it's dirty, and it's incredibly personal, because the fight is between souls. There is no taking prisoners, and there is no mercy. The dragon deserves none, and it'd take advantage of any to try to kill her, anyway.

It takes hours. Exhausting, subjectively eternal hours, where every slip in concentration gives the dragon a bit of ground with which to defend itself from her, where every stray thought could be twisted into a tiny breach in her defenses that draws out the conflict a little bit longer. Luckily for her, she doesn't slip often, and she doesn't get distracted.

And so eventually, the dragon is well and truly beaten. Something in it still remains, some traces of a dark song, lurking at the edges of her thoughts, but for the most part... her mind's her own. For now. She suspects that the scattered and broken bits of it will try to reform, later, and attempt to take over again if she doesn't keep it in check. This is a temporary solution. She's not done.

But it's a repeatable temporary solution, and all of her victories after the first will be much easier, so after a last cursory look to make sure it is definitely defeated, she feels sane enough to open an eye and try to figure out where the hell she's been moved to.

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She is in a stone room, nestled among blankets that smell a lot better than she does, not that that's saying much. Her lightsaber is close by.

The room is carved out and decorated in an elegant geometric style. A lot of work must have gone into it. The floor is bare apart from her blanket nest and the angular patterns carved into the rock; the door is ajar.

There is a distant sound as of someone quietly whimpering in pain.

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Oh, good, she has her lightsaber. She doesn't have to storm her way through this insane underground tunnel network to get it back. Good, that would have been annoying. Instead she clips it back on her belt where it belongs, and she painfully gets up. Ow. Ow ow ow. Why did she have to put half of a dragon soul in her soul. Why.

Once up, she carefully makes her way towards the whimpering.

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The source of the whimpering turns out to be the blue glowing man, who is now glowing bright silvery white instead. He has his own blanket nest in a different, larger room just down the hall, and he is curled up tightly there, making pained noises.

Something is definitely very fucked up here. He's not dying anymore, and the dragon soul is mostly gone, but his ongoing battle with its last few remnants seems to be agonizingly painful for him.

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Oh dear.

Is there an obvious way to help? ... Besides trying to take the last remnants of the soul, because fuck that, she's not doing that again.

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Nothing jumps out as obvious, unless she'd like to try inventing an applicable healing technique on the spot.

Silver glow. Agonized whimpering.

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She thinks that might do more harm than good. She's not a healer, just a - a well, she doesn't really know how to describe herself succinctly. She's just a Callida. Smart enough to save his life, not skilled enough to spare him his agony. That seems to be her modus operandi.

Which is incredibly depressing and also now she wants to go be elsewhere. Maybe finding food. She can go attempt to find food.

She'll leave him to his suffering.

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Besides the sound of the small man suffering, the only other detectable noise down here is a rhythmic clanging coming from over thataway. It doesn't sound edible, but it might indicate people, who could in turn help her locate food.

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Hmm.

One of the things besides the dragon soul fight that she vaguely recalls is a metal armored person killing darkspawn, and she's no longer in the ravine, and isn't dead, and has her lightsaber, so... Probably helpful.

She follows the clanging.

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The clanging proves to originate from a metal armoured person hammering something at a forge.

The smith doesn't look up when she enters the room, but one of the statues standing by the door turns to her and says something incomprehensible in what might be a friendly tone once you adjust for the statue part.

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Well, she is adjusting for the statue part. So, she'll consider it perfectly friendly. She inclines her head in greeting.

"Hello. Do you speak Basic?"

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The statue says something else, also incomprehensible, also friendly.

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"Then we're in an awkward position until my comm can translate for me," says Callida, and she retrieves the comm in question. She didn't bring much with her into her meditation chamber - no rations, no canteen for water, no thermal blanket - but she carries her comm almost as religiously as her lightsaber.

She holds up a hand in a gesture to wait, and then she gets to setting it up for learning rudimentary translation. It won't learn as quickly (or as well) as a protocol droid, but it would do better than she would, at least at first. In the long run... Well if she doesn't have access to a protocol droid, it'll be better for her to just learn the language herself.

"This," she says, pointing at the comm, "will let us," she motions between the two of them, and then points to her mouth, "speak." Pause. "Okay? Speak," mouth motion, again, "to this." Comm point.

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The statue's stone face looks mildly puzzled, but it shrugs and directs its next incomprehensible utterances at both Callida and her comm.

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Awesome. Her comm will need some time to start translating, but it seems to have recognized a new language well enough. She smiles and nods encouragement.

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One of the other statues becomes active and starts conversing with the first one.

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Even better!

Callida... does not actually want to stand here while her comm figures out how to translate. She offers the comm to the nearest statue to hold while it figures out the language. She can go looking for food and water.

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A third statue calls something after her that might be a farewell.

This underground complex is very well built, a little worn down, and kind of littered with bodies. The area around the forge, including the room she was nestled in and the room containing the glowing man and his suffering, is mostly clear; but once she gets past that part, gosh those sure are a lot of recent corpses. Most of them, and all the most recent ones, are the same kind of creature from the dragon's army. Some of the older bodies look more like the glowing man.

Her options for food seem to be: carrion, plausibly edible mushrooms that might be toxic, different more suspicious-looking mushrooms that might be edible, and rocks. There's plenty of rocks.

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Her food options are all depressing. She'll - she'll look for sources of water first. That seems straightforward.

She can do that with the Force! C'moooon, water. Where are you.

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Water is... thataway! When she manages to navigate the variously blocked tunnels and find it, it even looks and smells reasonably clean and appetizing!

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Hmmm! Except she is noticeably not clean. She hesitates to clean herself in this water, and she hesitates to even try to drink it for fear of contaminating it. Is there perhaps less clean and appetizing water that would work better?

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There's this, and two more sources of approximately equally clean water if she looks, and then a fourth one that may once have been just as nice but now has a dead darkspawn lying in the pool where the water collects as it trickles from a crack in the stone.

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She'll take that one! She pulls the darkspawn out and then carefully cleans her face and hands. The rest of her is - well, the rest of her will have to wait. Good thing she's in armor. She can pretend she's sort of clean.

And then she goes to one of the others, and drinks. She'd boil it first, if she had literally any water container, but she doesn't. And she's going to need to spend time meditating to keep the dragon soul in check, anyway, she can spare a little longer to tell the local equivalent of dysentery to go away.

Now. Food. Is it really just carrion, mushrooms, and rocks? Nothing else alive in these tunnels at all besides the darkspawn?

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The immediate vicinity - the forge, the larger complex, right out to the massive stone gate - is pretty devoid of non-mushroom life. All the darkspawn are dead, and she already knows about Armor Man and Suffering Dwarf and their Statue Friends, who are still patiently talking past her comm in the forge if she checks.

Whatever the hell that thing with the tentacles and the excessive number of breasts used to be, it's dead too. Maybe that's where darkspawn come from. What a pleasant thought.

Once she's closer to the gate, she can actually detect signs of animate life out there. Would she like small, medium-sized, or large?

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She will just. Ignore the tentacle thing for now, how about. She's trying to find lunch, not lose it.

Small, easier to carry. If the Armor Man, Suffering Dwarf, and Statue Friends want food, they'll have to let her know and help carry it back.

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In that case she can try these little hairless mammals.

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Two of those little hairless mammals can get a carefully aimed blaster bolt to the face. They die without issue, and then she carries them back to the forge. She can gut and cook them there, in case her allies are amazed at her ability to kill things for food and want some too.

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Her allies are still talking to the comm. They don't seem interested in the food.

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Well, then it'll just be for her. You can, actually, field dress and cook a kill with just a lightsaber, if you know how. Which Callida does. She does the actual gutting of the animal away from the Statue Friends, because it can be a bit gross.

But Callida's a Sith, and pulling the guts out of small animals is really just a Tuesday for her.

She tests a bit of the animal the way the Standard Imperial Survival Procedures Book laid out for strange fauna on a foreign planet, deems it not poisonous, and then she has delicious small mammal cooked carefully over a lightsaber. Nom.

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The small mammal is actually legitimately delicious. How surprising.

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Very! She was expecting sawdust and sulfur. Excellent. More enthusiastic noms.

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Meanwhile, the comm has finally begun to figure out this incomprehensible conversation.

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How useful of it! What's it saying?

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The Statue Friends are discussing the merits of various primitive weapons in some sort of combat-focused sport, it sounds like.

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Huh. Cool. At least they're having fun. She'll leave them with the comm a little longer to see if it'll figure out all of its glitches before she starts trying to use it to talk to them, though.

And then she's out of food, and out of obvious things to do.

How's the Suffering Dwarf doing?

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The Suffering Dwarf has ceased to whimper, but not to glow. He is curled up quietly in his nest.

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... That seems better! She hums thoughtfully, then decides that since she's not using the blankets in her blanket nest anymore, he could borrow some of them. She goes to fetch them.

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When she steps into his room again, he is just in the process of sitting up. He spots her, grins, and says something incomprehensible in cheerful tones.

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She smiles back, then says, "I don't actually speak your language, I'll need to get my comm to attempt to understand a word of that. One moment." She holds up a finger, deposits the blankets next to him, and goes to retrieve her comm.

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He stretches, gets to his feet, wobbles a little, and follows her with an increasingly steady stride.

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Oh, good. She didn't break the dwarf. That's nice.

She gently retrieves her comm from the statue people, and gets to fiddling with its settings.

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"Look how not dead I am!" announces the Suffering Dwarf to the room at large while she's doing that.

"Yes, very impressive," says one of the Statue Friends.

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Callida finishes fiddling with her comm's settings.

"You're welcome," she says, hint of wry. Her comm says the translation for her in a smooth, mechanical voice.

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"What are we thanking you for, specifically?" inquires the Suffering Dwarf.

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Oh. Well that kind of ruins that wordplay, doesn't it, if he didn't understand the context. That's disappointing. Oh well.

She doesn't think her translator could take complicated sentences, so she uses simple ones. "You were dying. I prevented it."

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"In that case, thank you!" says Suffering Dwarf. "My name is Stalas, what's yours?"

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"Callida. Hello."

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"Nice saving the world with you."

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She laughs, a little.

"Yes. Let's not have a repeat, though."

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"I'll do my best." He turns to Armor Man. "How's the suit coming along?"

"Nearly finished," says Armor Man in his vast hollow voice.

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"Suit?"

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"Suit of armour," says Stalas. "For me to wear on my way back to Orzammar."

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She peers at her translator for clarification. Ah, city. Okay.

"Okay."

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"There will be politics," Stalas adds. "But also beds! And baths! I cannot express how much I am looking forward to having a bath."

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Callida snorts, and looks down at herself. "Yes," she agrees, wholeheartedly. Pause. "Politics?"

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"Do you want the long or the short version?"

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"Short, then long?"

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"Short version: I'm a prince. My younger brother had my older brother assassinated and framed me for it. I want to clear my name and straighten out the mess he made. Also, Caridin," he indicates Armor Man, "is the best smith the world has ever seen and he's been locked away in this cave for a thousand years. I want to put him where he can start doing some good again."

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Blink. It takes her a bit to parse all of that from the comm, it mangles a few things, but she understands most of that.

"And the long?"

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"Well - which do you want more of: context and biographical facts, or information about what I plan on doing when we get back to Orzammar? Or both?"

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"Both."

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"Okay," he says cheerfully. "So, context and biographical facts. First, you should know that dwarves have a lot of trouble producing children. It's a big problem. My father had three sons and this is very unusual. So an illegitimate heir is considered better than no heir at all, so there's a custom in place that if a lower-caste woman bears the son of a higher-caste man, the child takes the father's caste and the mother and her other close family are elevated to match. It's more complicated than that in practice, but those are the relevant parts. With me so far?"

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Pause for translator, brief moment parsing all of that so it makes sense, then: nod.

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"Right, so. There's an unofficial tradition of casteless women pursuing the opportunity to bear a noble's son. It's a hard opportunity to come by, so most of the successes have money behind them; and it's impossible to get money behind you as one of the casteless unless you're a criminal or involved with criminals, so there's some infighting and it can get pretty brutal, competing interests trying to ensure that their noble hunter will be successful and they'll get to pretend to be her uncle, or whatever, on her way up. My mother was a noble hunter, and one of her sponsor's rivals had her poisoned when she got pregnant, and she tried some unlikely things in an effort to survive long enough to have me. I lived, she didn't. This is the explanation for why I was glowing blue when you first saw me."

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... Okay, her slightly shitty translator is having trouble with that. But she got most of it, so after a pause to shake down her translator for extra potential words, she's got most of it.

"What unlikely thing caused the blue glow?" she wonders.

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"Lyrium." He catches that her translator chokes on that one, and adds, "It's a magical substance. Deadly toxic, most of the time. Dwarves are resistant but it can kill even us at a high enough dose."

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"Ah," says Callida. She - doesn't ask about the wisdom of taking a deadly toxic substance while pregnant in order to live long enough. Her translator might just burst into flames on the spot.

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"It hasn't been kind to me. I'm too skinny and I bruise like an overripe fruit. Also I glow. But I'm alive, which I wouldn't be if she hadn't tried it."

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"Does the glowing... do anything?"

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"I don't need to eat, drink, or sleep as long as I can breathe lyrium fumes regularly. When I've had a breath of lyrium recently, I glow."

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"Oh. Convenient."

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"I agree."

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"I can avoid eating, drinking, and sleeping if I," the translator does not have the word for meditate, she pauses. "... sit still for a while and focus. Magic thing."

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"I shouldn't still be glowing, though, and I shouldn't be glowing white," he says. "Lyrium is blue."

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That sounds like the effect of having a dragon soul shoved into him and then having half of it ripped out, which means it's probably Callida's fault in some way. Whoops.

"Does lyrium react strangely with -" she searches her translator for the correct word. "Souls?"

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"...Not to my knowledge?"

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"... Because, you had the," word lookup, is there a word for it besides 'dragon'? Yes! Yes there is. How convenient. "The Archdemon's soul in you. It was going to kill you. I, uh." She pauses, mildly embarrassed and trying to justify slightly insane logic. Occlus perhaps isn't going to literally kill her when she gets back home, but she is going to be in some trouble. She continues on anyway, pretending the pause was a pause for translation. "To save your life I ripped it in half, leaving you with half of the Archdemon's soul, which is much more manageable and less deadly. So it could be that causing the glow."

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"Well," says one of the Statue Friends, "that explains the state you were in afterward."

"I'm impressed, that's the sort of crazy stunt I might try if I had the ability to manipulate souls," says Stalas.

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Callida has the good sense to cough and look embarrassed.

"Well you would have died otherwise."

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"And thank you very much for that," says Stalas. "I don't feel like an archdemon... I suppose maybe I wouldn't."

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"You seem to have killed it, from what I can tell," assures Callida. "And you would notice its presence if you didn't."

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"...All right, good to know," he says. "Where was I?"

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"Your mother lived long enough to have you in an unlikely way...?" she prompts.

Also: shit, she thinks he just realized what happened with the other half of the dragon soul. Well. Nothing really to be done for it now.

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"Yeah. And then it was me and my two brothers. Trian, my older brother, was an idiot. And not even a nice idiot. He was authoritarian and overly convinced of his own importance and competence. Bhelen, my younger brother, was smart but... reserved. I didn't spend much time with him as a kid. Maybe if I had, things would've turned out differently. Anyway, a little while ago I turned seventeen and there was a feast celebrating my coming of age, and that night I had a conversation with Bhelen in which I told him that I'd back him if he asked to be made Father's heir and he told me that he thought Trian might be plotting against me. When we went out the next morning for my first mission into the Deep Roads as a commander, I found Trian dead at a crossroads and Bhelen came running out of a side tunnel with Father in tow, crying about how they were too late to stop me. He'd even bribed the people under my command to claim they'd seen me kill Trian, just to make sure. Very thorough, is Bhelen."

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"... You said you'd support him and he betrayed you anyway?" she asks, after a pause to get the mangled translation from her comm.

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"Yes. That is exactly what happened."

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"Why?"

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"Honestly? He's not great at thinking on his feet and that plot has to have taken a lot of advance preparation. If I'd made the suggestion two weeks earlier, Trian might still be alive."

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"Ah. That - helps a little, I suppose."

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Stalas shrugs. "So, they had me exiled to the Deep Roads, which is effectively a death sentence. I've been doing a lot better than they meant me to, but I didn't expect to hold out against the darkspawn forever."

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Nod.

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"For lack of anything better to do, I decided to go looking for an expedition that went out in search of an ancient artifact two years ago and never returned. I found what was left of them, just short of their goal, and closed the last of the distance myself, and there I found Caridin, the smith who created the artifact. Legend said the Anvil of the Void could bring the semblance of life to stone or metal and create warriors who would never tire or feel pain. Legend left out the part where in order to make a golem you need to kill a dwarf and put their - soul, I guess - into the golem's body. At first it was all volunteers, then they got desperate, then Caridin complained and his king had him made into a golem, then he sat in a cave for a thousand years contemplating his regrets."

Caridin makes a metallic sound that might be his equivalent of an amused snort.

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"I... see," says Callida, frowning.

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"Mm?"

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"I am imagining the implications of nonconsensual soul transfer via murder, and they are unpleasant."

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"Yes," Stalas agrees. "Originally, Caridin planned to wait around guarding the Anvil forever so no one could use it, and if he ever convinced someone to destroy it for him - he couldn't, it was impossible for a golem to try to damage it directly - then he was going to kill himself. Well, I destroyed the Anvil, and then I pointed out that he can do everyone a lot more good in Orzammar than he can from the bottom of a lava pit."

"Very eloquently, too," says Caridin.

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"Can he get your exile ended?"

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"Ending my exile is definitely something that's going to happen," says Stalas. "I haven't decided exactly how."

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Nod.

"And the armor is... To guarantee getting back to Orzammar?"

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"It'll help, definitely. But also, I'm planning to disguise myself as a golem so I don't get turned away at the gate. 'The Paragon Caridin and retinue' sounds a lot nicer than an exiled kinslayer."

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"Ah. Yes, that makes sense." Pause. "And how do I fit into this narrative, besides terribly from a storytelling standpoint?"

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"My original plan also didn't account for killing an archdemon. I'm thinking I'll haul its head back to Orzammar - both of them - and incorporate that episode into the official version of what happened down here. People have a right to know an archdemon has died."

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"'An'? How many archdemons are there?"

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"One at a time, usually at least a century apart, but when one shows up it's very bad news."

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"Oh." She relaxes a little. She does not have to figure out how to desoul another archdemon. Good, good. Because she can't exactly put another soul half in herself unless she wants to go crazy. "All right."

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"Normally the darkspawn are disorganized and stupid and not much of a threat to anyone aboveground, it's just us dwarves who have to deal with them all the time. When an archdemon comes along and makes them into a real army and tries to kill everyone with them, that's called a Blight. This will have been the shortest one in history."

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Callida smiles and nods.

"How were the previous archdemons handled?"

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"With a huge war, usually."

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"... Well, that makes sense, but I meant with the." Handwave. "The archdemon soul thing."

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"Ah. Someone does exactly the thing I did, but they die."

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"Ah."

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"Yeah."

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"Is there - some mechanism by which archdemons are born?"

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"Supposedly, they're ancient gods that sleep beneath the world until the darkspawn find them and taint them and they wake up and start wreaking havoc. But I don't remember much about the gods in question. Dwarves don't go in for gods."

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"Ancient gods," says Callida, "that sleep beneath the world." Pause. "For a god that was really underwhelming."

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"I don't think you're supposed to be able to kill them as easily as we did."

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"Oops," says Callida in a deadpan, not at all looking sorry.

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He laughs.

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Callida smiles. ... Then the smile falls.

"Though, admittedly, I don't believe I could save someone else from the archdemon soul transfer again."

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"Well, it's not likely to come up for another hundred years, by which time it'll be someone else's problem, I assume."

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"Hm. True. If I'm still alive for the next archdemon, I imagine by then I will have figured out a workaround."

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"Seems plausible."

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Another smile. Slightly smug, this time.

"Yes. Though I'll have more trouble with it if I don't figure out where I am and how to get home."

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"Can't help you there. I mean, I know where you are, I just don't know where you started out or how you got here."

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"... It's hard to explain where I was, even if what I said wasn't being mangled by a sub-par translator. I was attacked by something, it clipped my elbow, I showed up here. I'm not sure how that was accomplished besides the physical contact required."

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"...Yeah, I got nothing."

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"Yep. But I will not be the only one looking into it. My mentor will no doubt be trying to figure out where I disappeared to, and she has more resources at her disposal than I."

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"Your mentor?"

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"... I have a mentor in, uh, learning -" there isn't a word for the Force in this language, "my type of magic. I'm her apprentice. Things are more complicated than that implies, it's not just about learning my-type-magic, but she has a vested interest in my well-being and if I am misplaced, such as now, she'll try to find me."

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"Well, in the meantime, I'll be happy to help you find a comfortable home in Orzammar. I'm afraid I won't be able to do you much good if you decide to go make your way on the surface, but in Orzammar I can provide for you without going far out of my way."

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Smile.

"Thank you. I'll want to go to the surface for a little while to set up a distress beacon, but I don't see a reason not to stay in Orzammar."

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"A distress beacon?"

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"A, thing to make it easier to find me. It likely won't help at all, but it might, so it's worth the time investment."

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"Reasonable."

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"I do try to be reasonable whenever possible."

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Stalas grins.

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Callida smiles back.