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Chapter Text

“What happened here?”

Nobody answered. Frankly, the scene almost spoke for itself.

There were at least half a dozen Jaffa corpses scattered around the village gates, their armour scorched and cratered with staff blasts, their helmets reduced to scrap metal death masks. In the streets beyond, dozens more were strewn from one end of the town to the next, slumped against walls, collapsed over tables, tumbled down staircases, lying in the doorways of houses that they’d tried to use as cover, half-buried under piles of still-smouldering rubble, or simply heaped in hillocks from the last desperate melees between combatants.

Worst of all were the civilians, for most of them were simply lying face-down in the middle of the street with gaping wounds torn in their backs, all of them clearly shot while trying to retreat. The few who weren’t had clearly been used as human shields by the Jaffa, not that it had done them much good.

The village itself was in ruins. Barely a quarter of the rough stone houses were still standing, and most of them were scarred and pockmarked by staff blasts; the rest had been bombarded into featureless rubble by what looked to be an aerial assault by death gliders. In the background, flames hungrily gnawed at market stalls, carts, baskets of produce, and any other kindling ignited in the crossfire.

SG-1 reviewed the scene as they crept through the ruined streets, anxiously checking every remaining and around every corner for any sign of life, without success. This settlement was already dead; it was only a matter of time before the fire or Jaffa reinforcements swept the whole thing off the map.

O’Neill eyed one of the civilian corpses sprawled across the paving stones nearby. As far as he could remember, he’d been one of the village elders who’d welcomed them to the town when they’d arrived, less than five hours ago; now he was dead along with the rest of his people, all of them massacred while SG-1 had been wasting time investigate some ruin a few miles away when they could have been helping.

About the only consolation was that it looked like the Jaffa who’d slaughtered them hadn’t fared much better.

“What the hell happened here?” O’Neill demanded.

Teal’c eyed the Jaffa corpses. “These are not all Serpent Guards, O’Neill,” he observed. “These bodies here are Horus Guards. These are the Bast Guards. And these over here are the Royal Guards of Lord Yu. All Jaffa belonging to different System Lords.”

“And from the looks of things, they all killed each other. You think this is the start of some of Goa’uld civil war?”

“Believe me, we’re not that lucky,” sighed Daniel.

Was it O’Neill’s imagination, or was he more downbeat than usual?

“Sad but true, sir,” said Carter. “If there really was a full-scale war between the Goa’uld, then it wouldn’t be limited to one-off battles in isolated settlements like this. There’d be space battles, full-scale planetary bombardments, crashed ships… We’d be seeing the results all over Goa’uld territory-”

“And hearing of it from Master Bra’tac,” added Teal’c. “I agree. These troops would have no reason to use this village as a battleground.”

“So why are they all here, killing each other?”

“The usual reason, I’d bet,” said Daniel. “Look at these ones over here: they’re carrying recording equipment, crates. Same with those ones over here. They were after something in this village.”

“And they weren’t interested in sharing with rival Jaffa,” concluded O’Neill. “Fair enough. Question is, if this thing they were after was valuable enough to kill each other over, where’s the reinforcements?”

There was a nerve-wracking silence, broken only by the muffled crunch of their footsteps as they continued through the streets.

“Maybe it’s best if we don’t stick around here too long.”

“Agreed.”

“Likewise.”

“Indeed.”

Ahead lay the village hall, a squat one-story building where SG-1 had briefly met with the elders scant hours ago to discuss a visit to the ruins. Of all the buildings in town, it was one of the few that hadn’t been damaged at all, not even in the bombardment, and as they crept closer, O’Neill realized why: several Jaffa had been making their way towards the hall before they’d been killed, and all of them were carrying recording equipment.

A Serpent Guard lay dead in the doorway, a massive hole punched through his armour and into his belly.

Teal’c eyed the body strangely. “His symbiote is missing,” he murmured.

“What, you think it escaped?”

“No. Judging by the blood around his pouch, it was removed from this Jaffa by force, likely fatally.”

Carter reached out to move the Serpent Guard’s body closer so she could get a better look at the wound… and as the corpse shifted, something slid from the corpse’s right arm and clunked to the ground.

It was a large stone tablet, carved with unfamiliar symbols and soaked in the Jaffa’s blood.

O’Neill had seen this thing before: it had been sitting on the altar behind the elders during their first visit to the town hall, but all three of the old fogies had said it was just a relic of their ancestors held in respect of their sacrifices. “Nothing dangerous,” they’d assured them. “Just a harmless block of stone from the ruins. You’ll find more interesting things out there.”

And yet, judging by the corpses leading to the hall and all the bloody bootprints making their way across the square towards the tablet, there were an awful lot of Jaffa who were very interested in this harmless block of stone.

“Is this what they were after?” he asked.

Carter checked her various instruments. “Not picking up anything that’d justify all this, so it’s this tablet or nothing, sir.”

She reached down and gently prised the dead Jaffa’s hands away from the tablet, then went about mopping up some of the larger bloodstains, enough to reveal the tablet’s contents. Carved into its rough-cut grey surface was a long string of arcane-looking words, followed by a series of familiar-looking symbols.

“Is that a Gate address?”

Carter, who was already hastily jotting down the symbols in her notepad, nodded. “I’d say yes. If it’s this part of the tablet these Jaffa were after, I’m guessing this address has to be somewhere critically valuable to the System Lords, maybe a resource-rich world or a source of salvageable technology.”

O’Neill grimaced. “What are the chances that one of these Jaffa managed to send the address back to their commanders?”

Now it was Carter’s turn to grimace. “Very high, sir. All it’d take would be one transmission, or maybe just one Jaffa getting out of here alive… and we don’t know how many of them survived the battle.”

“Told you we weren’t that lucky.”

“Lighten up, Daniel. Now, other than this Gate address, is there anything worthwhile on this damn thing?”

Daniel adjusted his glasses, allowing O’Neill a closer look at the dark rings around his eyes, and peered down at the tablet. “To those who stand against Ra, hide these words from the light of the sun and use them only if you have no other choice,” he translated. “For this is the way to Pharos, the lost beacon to the future.”

Teal’c, who’d been keeping a close watch for any returning Jaffa up until then, snapped to attention.

“Pharos?” he echoed, his face suddenly dismayed.

“You’ve heard of it?”

“As have many First Primes over the years. Does the inscription say anything else?”

“Uh… just below the gate address, it says, ‘The secret of the Augur’s Foresight lies within the three-tined black mountain of the waves, at…’ and the rest is just gibberish. Either whoever was carving this into the stone didn’t have time to finish, or they had a change of heart and decided to destroy the exact whereabouts of whatever this ‘Augur’s Foresight’ is.”

Teal’c looked even grimmer than usual at this. “There was a time when Apophis was obsessed with learning the location of Pharos and the fortress he believed was hidden there. He devoted hundreds of his loyal servants including myself to the search for any mention of it, but he always searched in vain. Now it seems that the System Lords have finally found it… and if they were willing to fight so openly over the Gate address, Pharos itself may be enough to provoke all-out war.”

“But why?” asked Carter. “What’s so important about Pharos and why couldn’t anyone find it up until now?”

Teal’c was opening his mouth to reply, but then the sound of an explosion split the air, followed by the distant sounds of angry shouts and heavy footsteps making their way through the streets towards them.

“Guess we don’t need to wonder about anyone sending reinforcements anymore,” said Daniel.

“And that’s our cue to leave!” said O’Neill briskly. “We can talk about this later; let’s get back to the Gate! You got the address, Carter?”

“Down to the last symbol, sir.”

“Good. Now, let’s get moving…”

Chapter Text

“Alright,” sighed O’Neill. “We’ve kept ourselves in suspense for long enough: what is Pharos and why is it so important to the Goa’uld?”

He could barely stop himself from rejoicing. After the hour-long creep back to the Stargate, they were here: the briefing room, the big table, the reassuring swivel chairs, General Hammond’s reassuringly sceptical squint, and everyone waiting for the relevant details to emerge. After all the time he’d spent working with SG-1, O’Neill had learned to live for the briefings: apart from bowling and fishing, they were the best means of clearing suspense that he knew of.

“I must admit, I am curious to know more,” said General Hammond. “The Goa’uld have gone to great lengths to acquire all kinds of resources in the past, but internal conflict on this scale is something I’ve never heard of before today.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen violence between System Lords, sir,” Carter pointed out.

“That’s true, but normally, we’ve only witnessed violence between two Goa’uld and their Jaffa at a time; a potential civil war between all the System Lords just for the sake of a single world is unprecedented, to say the least. So, Teal’c… you have the floor.”

Teal’c nodded and began in earnest. “Pharos is not an official designation for any of the worlds under Goa’uld occupation,” he explained. “It was merely the title given to an obscure planet by the lone Goa’uld who chose to live there, Underlord Proteus, self-styled as the Augur of the Endless Ocean.”

Daniel looked up with interest, life finally gleaming in his weary eyes. “Proteus?” he echoed.

O’Neill hastily hid a smile behind his hand. Of course Daniel had the goods on the latest obscure alien data and ancient cultural doohickeys of the week; there was no way of telling which it was just yet, but whatever the case, it was one of the most soothing things in the world to listen to: come rain, hail, shine, or gloom of night, Daniel Jackson would find the time for a good old-fashioned historical tangent. Best of all, it looked as if the chance for a lecture might put a bit of spring back in his step, a welcome chance from the blues that seemed to have hit him in the last couple of days.

“Anyone from the yearbook?” he asked cheerily.

“No, not from any of the System Lords we’ve encountered or heard of before, but I’ve definitely heard of Proteus. He’s a figure in Greco-Roman mythology, believed to be the firstborn son of Poseidon depending on what you read, and often referred to as the Old Man of the Sea.”

“Quirky names aside, why are the Goa’uld all after one of his old hangouts? What makes this Proteus so interesting?”

“Well, there’s been a lot of weird and contradictory stories about him, but the one thing all them agree on is that he’s a shapeshifter and an oracle, hence the title of ‘Augur.’ He spent his days roaming the Nile Delta as all kinds of sea life, shepherding seals, then resting on a small island in the evening. His claim to fame was that, if he could be caught, fought, and restrained until he exhausted himself, he'd be forced to reveal the future to whoever had defeated him.”

“So what?" grumbled O'Neill. "That’s just the mythology, right? We’ve heard of all kinds of crazy stuff about the Goa’uld that made it into the legends, and they usually don’t say anything about pyramid-shaped spaceships or glowing eyes, either. The myths about Ra and Apophis and Horus were all bullcrap, so what makes the myths about Proteus any different?”

“Because the Goa’uld believe in them,” said Teal’c, solemnly.

There was a surprised pause, as the four of his audience considered this.

Meanwhile, Teal’c plunged relentlessly onwards: “Most System Lords are sceptical of the mythology surrounding their rivals, though they only share this derision with their most trusted servants. However, from everything Apophis told me, the myths surrounding Proteus were to be considered very real indeed: he is a shapeshifter, and more importantly, possesses the ability to predict the future.”

All four listeners exchanged glances.

“That was how Proteus gained prominence among the Goa’uld in the first place. As Daniel Jackson states, he was a son of Poseidon, and Poseidon himself was a general in the service of his brother, the Underlord Zeus… and Zeus was subordinate to Cronus.”

Here, Teal’c’s mouth briefly twisted into a scowl of hatred.

“The subordinate of a subordinate of a subordinate. Proteus was so low in the hierarchy of the Goa’uld that Apophis once joked that Cronus needed to be reminded that his grandson even existed. The fact that he had achieved nothing despite having lived for so long only left Proteus subject to even greater mockery.”

“Well, that’s a tragedy for him, I’m sure,” O’Neill remarked, dryly. “So, what changed?”

“From what Apophis told me, Proteus went in search of an isolated world he could use as a laboratory, one that he called Pharos. Then, after many years of research, he emerged from his grandfather’s shadow one day with claims of being able to foresee the future. However he accomplished it, the accuracy of his predictions quickly brought him great prestige among the System Lords: some hoped to seduce him away from Cronus with offers of territory and slaves, others hoped to capture him to learn his secrets – though none succeeded thanks to his precognition. His ability to transform was revealed soon after and brought him even greater acclaim: Apophis told me that Proteus could disguise himself as anyone and travel in any shape he pleased, allowing him incredible advantages in stealth and speed.”

“Well, if he really was that powerful, then how could the Goa’uld have ever lost a single battle? I mean, if this ability to see the future’s infallible and Proteus really could shapeshift, then why did we even stand a chance against Ra? Hell, how would we have survived the last few battles we had with Apophis?”

“Because Proteus eventually fell out of favour with Ra and the System Lords.”

“Why, though?” asked Carter. “Did he fail to predict something? Did they think he was a threat to their power? Did he rebel? Or did they just want to kill him for his secrets?”

“Yes,” said Teal’c.

Carter smiled bemusedly. “Could’ve seen that coming…”

“All the System Lords tell a different story, all of them plausible. Regardless of Proteus’ reasons for doing so, he fled, likely sometime after Earth rebelled against Ra. As a shapeshifter, he could not be found no matter how thoroughly Ra’s forces searched for him. To date, he has been missing for more than four thousand years, and most records of his existence have been erased except those owned by the highest-ranking Goa’uld: the System Lords prefer not to mention that he ever existed, except to their First Primes. Only to these trusted followers are they prepared to admit that Proteus accomplished something unique.”

An uncomfortable silence followed, as the four of them digested this information.

“Is there any form of Goa’uld technology that could accomplish this, Captain Carter?” asked Hammond.

“For the shapeshifting, I’d say holograms: we already know that the Goa’uld and the Asgard have used them to pose as gods before, so if this Proteus had the technical skill and the imagination to come up with new techniques for available tech, pretending to become someone or something else would be easy, but he’d have to be nothing short of brilliant to pull the wool over the eyes of the System Lords for so long. As for precognition…” Carter made a face. “I’m not so sure.”

“You don’t think it’s possible?”

“Well, if you’d asked me if travelling through a Stargate was possible three years ago, I’d have probably said no, so I like to think I’m capable of keeping an open mind when it comes to alien technology these days. Predicting the future is a lot more difficult to work with, even with some knowledge of quantum mechanics on your side: if you look at it from a Newtonian perspective-”

Hammond politely cleared his throat.

“Aright, layman’s terms: the more you can know about all possible futures, the harder it is to pin down what will actually happen, so perfect knowledge of the future is… well, unlikely at best. Maybe this Proteus is just really good at predicting probabilities and that’s about it.”

Teal’c shook his head. “From what Apophis shared with me, Proteus was able to successfully predict no less than fifteen slave rebellions and endear himself to Ra by preventing three consecutive assassination attempts on his life.”

“In that case,” said Carter, “I’d say that he’s using a completely different method. Calculating probabilities can do a lot of things but having that kind of success rate might be pushing believability.”

“It was evidently enough to make Apophis believe, Samantha Carter: he was willing to admit that Proteus’ gift was stronger than the omniscience that the System Lords claim to possess.”

“Did anyone have any idea of the source of this power?” asked Daniel. “Was it just supposed to be an ability he happened to have or was there some piece of technology he had close to hand whenever he predicted something?”

“Apophis and many of the other System Lords believed that the power was contained on the world of Pharos,” explained Teal’c. “By all accounts, Proteus would regularly return to the planet, often taking erratic routes across the Stargate network designed to baffle any potential pursuers. Since no other source of this ability revealed itself, Pharos was the only possibility his rivals could accept.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because the alternative was to believe that the power was unique to Proteus, and that was something the System Lords could not tolerate.”

“No surprises there,” deadpanned O’Neill. “They don’t handle jealousy well, do they?”

“Indeed. So it was that they set their sights on Pharos. However, because of Proteus’ circuitous routes and his ability to disguise himself, none of the search parties ever sent to look for Pharos ever found it. To my knowledge, my attempt to find the planet was the most recent, perhaps five months prior to our first meeting on Chulak.”

“How far did you get?”

“Not far. I and a few other trusted Jaffa were sent to a number of ruined laboratories once owned by Proteus several millennia prior to his rise to prominence, hoping that we might find some clue as to the whereabouts of Pharos there, but in all the sites we surveyed, no coordinates could ever be discovered: apparently, Proteus had been careful to destroy any records he might have left in his wake. After some weeks without success, Apophis abandoned the search and refocussed his efforts on pillaging, eventually leading to his first attack on this very base-”

“-and us meeting for the first time, so it’s not all bad, I guess. Question is, how did Proteus miss this tablet?”

“I think I can answer that one,” said Daniel, brightly. “Look at the wording on the tablet: ‘to those against Ra.’ This wasn’t left by Proteus; this was left by an anti-Goa’uld resistance movement.”

“The Tok’ra,” Carter gasped.

O’Neill sighed like a deflating balloon. “Those guys again? I was hoping we’d heard enough of them after Jolinar bought the farm.”

“Sir, they could be allies to us-”

“Carter, even if they really are as nice as you think they are, we don’t know if they can help us, and more to the point, we don’t even know if they’re still out there. For all we know, they’re all dead by now. Plus, if they’d gotten the address to Pharos and left the message…”

O’Neill took a deep breath. “Well, it’s the same problem with Proteus: if the Tok’ra had found the planet and there really was some kind of magic fortune-telling doodad there, then the Goa’uld would have died out a long time ago.”

“But that’s not the point,” said Daniel. “The point is, someone learned the location and left these coordinates at a dead drop in the ruins, but nobody ever came to collect it. The only reason why the tablet ended up on that altar in the village hall was because the locals took it from the ruins, which was probably why none of the searches ever found it up until now: all the System Lords were looking in ruined fortresses and laboratories, but they didn’t think to look in the nearby villages.”

Hammond cleared his throat again. “There is a more pressing issue at hand,” he announced. “Assuming that Apophis and the other System Lords were correct and that the source of this Proteus’ ability to see the future really was somewhere on Pharos, it’s entirely possible that they might be able to take it for themselves. I don’t need to tell you just how dangerous this ability would be in the hands of our enemies. Frankly, the last thing the Goa’uld need are more advantages over us. So, as soon as we’re able to determine that this address is valid and you’ve had time to rest, I’m authorizing SG-1 for a mission to Pharos.”

Yeah, I saw that one coming from a mile away, O’Neill mused.

Out loud, he asked, “What’s the mission priority, sir? Is this going to be take and hold, capture and retrieve, or just search and destroy?”

“That depends on what this source of power really is, Colonel. If it’s something you can bring back to Stargate Command, then top priority is to retrieve it at all costs, or at the very least enough of it for our scientists to reverse-engineer it; if all else fails, documentation should be sufficient. But if it isn’t portable or too dangerous to retrieve, then you’re authorized to destroy it by any means necessary to prevent the Goa’uld from securing it.”

Hammond paused, and added, “I’ve been hearing certain… recommendations from above, all of them saying the same thing: they’re once again calling for us to acquire experimental alien technology for ourselves, and they’d no doubt say that retrieving this precognition should take priority, caution be damned. But as the highest-ranking officer in the field, you have the final say, Colonel O’Neill. So, as always, I’ll leave the decision in your hands.”

O’Neill grinned. “Always grateful for the opportunity, sir.”

“There’s just one problem,” said Daniel. “How do we know if the Goa’uld haven’t already secured this power source? By the time we get there, they could have already raided the site and left, assuming they aren’t occupying it.”

Hammond nodded sagely. “True, but if this minor civil war between the System Lords is still ongoing, it might buy us some time: as long they’re still fighting over Pharos, they’ll hopefully be too busy to make progress. However, we still need to confirm that an expedition is even viable first… and in the meantime, you need a little R&R.”

“Is now really the best time?”

“Now might be the only time,” said Hammond. “Until we can confirm the gate address and send a MALP to inspect the area, all four of you are stood down, and that’s an order. You need to get as much rest as you can while we survey Pharos: if this intel is accurate, then this could be one of the most important missions you’ve faced since the invasion attempt, and we can’t afford to throw you into the middle of a potential war zone while you’re hungry and fatigued. We need you in fighting shape. Is that understood?

”Yes, sir,” said O’Neill, snapping a salute. Carter followed suit.

Remember when we were worried that he’d be a pain in our ass?

“Good. Dismissed.”

Chapter Text

Scant hours later, SG-1 was summoned to the operations room, decently rested thanks to what little R&R they’d managed to get.

O’Neill felt suitably recharged, Carter looked bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and Teal’c… looked as stolidly resilient as ever: he could have been on the verge of collapsing and none of them would have ever known.

The only one of them that worried O’Neill was Daniel, who not only looked as if he’d gotten zero sleep whatsoever but actually looked even gloomier than he had before he’d gone on R&R: the rings around his eyes were darker, his movements were dull and listless, and his expression looked not merely miserable, but dead.

Of course, he was careful to hide that lifeless look whenever he thought someone might be looking, but O’Neill knew him well enough to recognize when something was bugging him even when his expression was masked. Daniel was feeling down about something, and whatever it was, he wasn’t having any luck shaking it off. O’Neill would have been more than happy to ask about it, but with the operations room a hive of activity, he quickly realized he’d have to delay any questions until after they were briefed.

As expected, General Hammond was peering over the shoulders of the technicians on duty, pensively reviewing the monitors. On the upside, no-one was panicking, no alarm bells were ringing, and none of the chatter from around the room happened to mention the words “Goa’uld presence,” so O’Neill had to assume they were okay for the time being.

“It seems we’re in luck,” said Hammond, briskly. “The address is valid; we’ve already sent the MALP through the Gate and it’s sent back enough information to confirm that the area’s safe and there’s no Goa’uld within reach. Of course, there’s no guarantee that’ll remain the case for long, so I’d recommend moving quickly.”

“What’s the weather like on Pharos, sir?”

“Sunny,” said Hammond, almost smiling. “By all appearances, it’s an ocean world. Most of the land consists of small islands. From what the MALP could see, there’s a human population with a few villages and fishing fleets in reach of the Stargate, but that’s about it.”

“Any sign of whatever power source we’re looking for?”

“Nothing we could recognize from the MALP: no unusual energy signatures, no radiation, none of the other anomalous activity we’ve picked up over the years. However, we did find this approximately ten miles east of the Gate…”

He pointed at one of the monitors, which was now displaying an image taken by the MALP: it was an aerial shot of the ocean, clearly taken from considerable range to avoid being shot down, but even the distance couldn’t disguise the fact that they were looking at the half-sunken wreckage of two small gunboats, both Goa’uld design, both surrounded by floating Jaffa corpses in the armour of the Serpent and Horus Guards.

“Scouts from rival factions,” said Hammond. “With any luck, they killed each other before they could report what they’d found; if another Goa’uld faction killed them both, this situation could be more complicated.”

“But what did they find?”

“Well, the tablet you found said to look for a black mountain within reach of the Gate, but it didn’t say what direction we were supposed to look, so it’s just lucky that these two hunting parties happened to tackle this one for us…”

 Hammond pointed at another aerial shot, this one of an island less than five hundred yards from the two wrecked ships, but truth be told, the word ‘island’ wouldn’t have done it justice.

It was a mountain protruding from the waves, easily several hundred feet tall and more than twice as wide, a behemoth of jagged black rock crowned with three slender peaks, each one like the blade of a stiletto held skyward. As impressive as it was, aerial shots confirmed that it wasn’t alone in the ocean; a few other such mountainous islands could be seen on the horizon, great stone pinnacles and dramatic-looking rock formations dotting the open ocean beyond the island. But quite apart from being bigger than all of them, this monolith had two things that the other nearby landmasses didn’t: a shoreline that someone could land a boat on, and a long flight of steps carved into the foothills, leading up towards what could only be a cave entrance.

“Yeah, that doesn’t look ominous at all,” mused O’Neill. “Did the MALP pick up anything weird from it?”

“Nothing yet. But readings suggest that the island supports an extensive cave network. Any one of those underground passages could be hiding the source of the power we’re looking for.”

“If it actually exists.”

“You’ll still need to determine that. The island’s within boating distance, so your equipment will naturally include a Zodiac CRRC. We haven’t seen any wildlife that could pose a serious threat, but I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that Proteus won’t have left his island undefended, so all four of you will be carrying C4 demolition charges in case you need to punch through a door.”

“Or destroy the power source.”

“Exactly. Are you prepared for an amphibious mission, Colonel?”

“Any time, sir. Hopefully, this’ll go better than the last time we had to take the team out to the beach.”

Daniel grimaced, visibly paling. “Well, I could’ve gone my entire life without ever thinking about what happened on P3X-866 ever again, but here we are. Thanks, Jack.”

“Lighten up, Daniel. It’s not like we’re gonna meet another fish guy or sea monster or whatever; if our buddy Pro is still around, he’s probably just some standard issue Goa’uld poser with a hologram, and that’s as bad as it’ll get. Now, cowboy up, we’ve got work to do…”

Minutes later, they had gathered their equipment and packs from the armoury and were already on their way to the Gate Room, listening to the reassuring thud of chevrons locking and the blood-stirring kawhoosh of the Gate activating at long last.

Hammond tagged along as they added the C4 to their backpacks, quietly reviewing the latest bit of computer readout from the MALP. Apparently, it was still on Pharos, circling the Gate like a vulture, and so far, no Goa’uld forces had returned to the area, so they were safe for now.

“Remember,” said Hammond, “you’re going to be up against potentially thousands of Jaffa. Stay hidden, fight quickly if you have to at all, and if you see any Jaffa on the ground or Goa’uld craft landing on the planet, do not engage. Let the enemy do the fighting for you wherever possible.”

“Understood, sir.”

Meanwhile, Daniel appeared to be having trouble getting his backpack on. “Is it just me,” he grunted, “or does this thing seem heavier than usual?”

O’Neill looked blank. “Not for me, it doesn’t.”

“Me neither,” said Carter.

“Indeed.”

“According to the quartermaster,” said Hammond, “you weren’t given anything more than the standard equipment at the standard weight.”

Daniel groaned. “Just back problems, then. Oh well, not a lot I can do about that.”

“Relax,” said O’Neill cheerily. “Once the mission’s over, you can book yourself in with a chiropractor, get a really nice massage.”

“Well, we’ve got to actually get there first… and get back alive. Come on, let’s get moving: listening to me complaining isn’t getting us anywhere.”

But instead of taking the lead as they began the march to the Gate Room, O’Neill let Carter fall in line next to General Hammond and begin querying him about additional mission criteria, while Teal’c gravitated towards the middle, leaving O’Neill and Daniel with enough breathing room to exchange a few words without being overheard.

“Okay,” said O’Neill, “what’s going on, Daniel?”

“What do you mean?”

“I know you and I know you’re not exactly bouncing off the ceiling at the best of times, but even then, you’re usually not being this blue. I mean, for the last couple of days, you’ve been down in the dumps about everything: our average luck, past missions, what might happen today… you’re starting to sound like a Douglas Adams character.”

A wan smile brightened Daniel’s face. “So, you finally read that book I leant you,” he remarked.

“First of all, yes, and yes, I did laugh, you were right. Secondly, don’t change the damn subject: I’m not your shrink, I’m not your priest, and I’m not a professor, so you shouldn’t have to be getting all secretive around me. We’re friends, right?”

“After all the time we’ve been working together, I’d be pretty shocked if we weren’t. But yeah, we’re friends.”

“Then you shouldn’t have any trouble telling me what’s wrong. So, what’s bothering you?”

Daniel sighed deeply. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s just all the little things I’d have hoped I’d be able to deal with slowly piling up, or maybe it’s the tragedies starting to press down on me. It’s hard to say what it is. It’s just… it’s been almost two years since Sha’re was taken, and we’re still no closer to bringing her back, and after what happened to Skaara, the likelihood of ever getting them back alive seems to be getting more remote with every week.”

The sheer defeat in Daniel’s voice stopped O’Neill in his tracks.

“We’ll get her back, Daniel,” he said, trying not to sound too alarmed. “We’ll get all of them back, no matter how long it takes: Sha’re, Skaara, everyone the Goa’uld took, they’ll be free and it’ll all be thanks to you helping us out. You don’t have to doubt yourself-”

“It’s not doubt, Jack,” groaned Daniel. “Doubt implies that I’m having second thoughts or that I don’t know if we can do it, but that ship’s already sailed: back at the start of this whole mess, I said ‘something of the host must survive,’ and I’ve been saying that ever since then just to keep myself from giving up hope… but what if I’m wrong? What if Skaara fighting against Klorel was just an anomaly, and the longer a host stays with their Goa’uld, they dwindle away, little by little? What if the hosts that we’ve seen being used by Ra, Apophis, Heru’ur and all the other high-ranking Goa’uld are just… empty inside? What if their minds have been completely eroded away by years of being enslaved? And what if that’s merciful compared to spending thousands of years fully conscious with no control of your own body? What if Sha’re is already too far gone to be saved by now? What if I’ve been wasting my time hoping for the best when I should have been trying to focus on the rest of the Goa’uld’s victims?”

“Daniel, that is complete bullcrap: you haven’t been focussing on your wife at anyone’s expense, least of all the other victims. You’re not selfish for wanting to bring her back, not by a long shot. As for whether the hosts can be saved… you shouldn’t be thinking about whether it’s too late or not, because you’ll never know for sure until you can get Sha’re back. I mean, who are you going to ask? The Goa’uld?”

Or the Tok’ra, O’Neill quietly reflected. He’d be lying if he hadn’t wondered to himself if the Tok’ra might be able to give the team an advantage, serve as Earth’s ace in the whole, or even make Daniel’s hopes of bringing back the captured hosts a reality. And he’d be lying if he hadn’t felt a little guilty about not encouraging Carter’s interest in finding them, but even so, he still had to take reality into account.

Meanwhile, Daniel was still looking quietly despondent. “I know,” he said, wearily. “I know. But I’m not like this all the time now. I’m worse when I’m at home and I've got nothing to do; I need these missions to keep my mind occupied, so don’t say anything to Hammond about this. I know I have to just keep trying to save our friends or I’ll never know for sure if they can be brought back, but… well, ever since Sha’re was taken, I’ve been having these… oh god, how do I describe it? These… grey days. And when I’m in the worst of them, all I can think about is how close we got.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, think about our first trip through the gate. We killed Ra, we saved Abydos, freed its people, and we both got a whole new lease on life. Think about what we were doing two years ago: everything was going perfectly. You were at home, peering into your telescope and thinking about how bright the future was, and I was happily married on Abydos, surrounded by friends, ready to start a family, live out the rest of my days as a craftsman and a storyteller, grow old, and die. We were free and clear. Then Apophis started looking for new hosts, and everything went to hell. And I look at us now, and even with every victory we’ve had since then, I can’t help but think we’re just delaying the inevitable with every success we’ve had, and I wonder… how much further can we get from all that promise and optimism we had? How long before everything we do seems completely hopeless?”

There was a horrified silence.

“Are you two okay back there?”

“We’re fine!” shouted Daniel, forcing a smile onto his face. “Just trying to fix this stupid backpack!”

And with that, he hauled his backpack onto his shoulders and took off at a brisk march, leaving O’Neill staring after him.

If this had been literally any other mission, O’Neill probably would have had Daniel benched right then and there: this was not the right frame of mind to be heading into battle with, and even if Daniel had been honest when he’d claimed to not be depressed all the time, then he still shouldn’t be risking his life in this kind of mood. O’Neill wasn’t exactly an expert when it came to mental health, but he’d been in a pretty dark place when the Stargate program had first hired him to lead the team, and he’d been willing to blast himself to atoms; he would have done it too and taken everyone in Abydos along with him if Ra hadn’t beaten him to the punch. He knew from personal experience how bad these dark moments could go if they were allowed to continue all the way to the bitter end.

Then again, that mission had ended with O’Neill finding a route to recovery with help from Daniel and Skaara, so maybe he wasn’t the best example.

Right now, unfortunately, they had no choice but to carry on with the mission and hope that Daniel would be open to a discreet visit to an in-the-know therapist once they were free and clear.

And if they were really lucky, history could repeat itself on this latest trip through the Stargate: perhaps they’d meet someone or find something that could put everything in perspective, bring back the old Jacksonian zest for life, put the spring back in his step.

Perhaps, if all went well, this mission would be the win Daniel needed to claw his way back to the light.

O’Neill sighed. There was only one way to find out…

Some distance away, Carter watched O'Neill and Daniel hurrying over, neither of them realizing that she’d heard almost every single word that Daniel had said.

She allowed the two of them to pass her by as if nothing had happened, though: after all, pestering them with concerns over Daniel’s mental health wouldn’t do anyone any good right now, least of all with a mission due to begin.

Instead, she found herself falling into step next to Teal’c and whispering, “Did you hear that as well?”

“Unfortunately, yes. When he is at his most aggrieved, Daniel Jackson is rarely as quiet as he thinks he is.”

“None of us are, really. Do you think we should worry about what he’ll do on Pharos? I mean, Daniel’s never done anything really stupid, no matter how desperate he was to save Sha’re, but he’s never been this upset before, either.”

Teal’c considered this for a moment. “I may not be the one to answer this question, Samantha Carter. Jaffa are rarely given the time to consider matters of grief and doubt, neither by their gods or by the circumstances they find themselves in. We are… encouraged to be relentless. To allow any warrior a moment of respite, even over a lost love, would be considered an unforgiveable sign of weakness by Goa’uld standards.”

“But you’ve had time to look at different perspectives, Teal’c. Plus, I know when you’re trying to avoid difficult questions. So, based on everything you’ve learned from your people and everything you’ve learned from us, what would be the best outcome?”

There was silence in the corridor, broken only by the faint sound of their footsteps as they made their way along the corridor.

“As a friend to Daniel Jackson,” said Teal’c at last, “I should recommend that he remain behind and have no opportunity to risk his life should his grief overcome him… but as a warrior trained in the ways of Jaffa and Tau’ri, I also know that Daniel Jackson is vitally needed for this mission: strength and tactics alone will not be enough to succeed today; we will need his knowledge of language and archaeology to help uncover the source. Without him, we will be lost, just as we would be without your knowledge of the sciences. The best we can do is to watch and guard him, both to protect him from the enemy and from himself, and hope that he can find the time to allow his spirit to heal once our mission is complete.”

“I suppose we never really did have a choice, did we?”

“Under the circumstances, no. But then, warriors rarely have the luxury of choice, only the illusion of it. The secret, as Master Bra’tac once told me, is learning to recognize the moments where we do have a choice.”

“And you’re not burdened by any thoughts of lost loved ones?” asked Carter. “No fears or concerns or regrets to hold you back?”

“No warrior is truly free of those things. However, I saved my wife and son once; for now, I must have faith that they will be spared any further torment. I must trust that those close to them will protect them as best as they can, and that Rya’c and Drey’auc will have the strength to survive until the three of us are reunited. In the end, all I can do is hope… and sometimes, that is enough.”

There was a thoughtful pause, though in truth, all Carter could think of was just how far the hallway to the Gate Room seemed to be stretching.

“And what of you, Samantha Carter? Do you have any doubts or lingering regrets?”

Carter silently took stock of everything she had on her mind: her encounter with Jolinar, the fear and the trauma and the desperate fascination that still lingered, the slowly dawning hope of meeting the Tok’ra, the regret and shame over frightening Cassie while still a host to Jolinar, and the distant, ever-distant thoughts of the secrets she was still keeping from her family just by being a part of the Stargate program… and of course, her father, the regret and the pain of having spent so much time apart from him. Next to Teal’c’s hidden fears and Daniel’s grief, her own anxieties sounded positively domestic, not to mention ludicrously overcomplicated.

“None,” she said at last.

Teal’c nodded. Was that a knowing look in his eyes? Did he suspect her of lying, or was he just accepting her answer as it was given? He had a funny way of conveying an awful lot with the subtlest of expressions.

“Very well then,” he said at last. “Then let us continue on this mission with no thoughts of what we leave behind. And if there are,” he added, perhaps a tad meaningfully, “one warrior can always be trusted to protect his comrades when they are overcome with doubt, just as they can be trusted to protect him.”

In spite of herself, Carter smiled. “Agreed. Now, let’s get on with the mission: they’ll be wondering what’s keeping us in a minute.”

“Indeed.”

It was always cold in the master’s chambers, always flooded with shadows.

Lord Heka kept his bedchamber a few degrees cooler than was comfortable even by Jaffa standards and the lights burning at their lowest intensity level. Even though he ruled over many a desert planet, he demanded that his own dominion be kept in contrast to it all, the better to remind him of the world where he had learned the truth of power.

Pur’eyll, First Prime of Heka, had no idea what this world was or where it lay, and though he could easily guess that it was somewhere cold and distant from its system’s sun… he knew better than to question any of it. It was not his place to know such things, least of all the wisdom of a god; his place was to do as commanded, to slaughter Heka’s enemies, and most importantly of all, to bring their gods to him.

As the door slid shut behind him, he knelt in obeisance before his god, knowing that somewhere ahead of him, Lord Heka had already noticed his arrival.

In the feeble light from overhead, he could just about discern the shapes of the furniture: the mammoth bulk of the sarcophagus, the cavernous private wardrobe and armoury, the throne on which Heka received guests… and of course, the bloodstained slab, with its gleaming collection of blades and instruments of torture dangling from chains overhead, and the large jar sitting atop it.

But even with the light, there was one part of the room that Pur’eyll could not yet see unless Lord Heka would allow him to: the larder, where the bodies were ferried once they were beyond even the powers of the sarcophagus. Here, in halls even colder than the rest of the room, the meat would be preserved until Lord Heka was prepared to feast upon mortal flesh - all that would satisfy him until a worthier meal presented itself.

It was here that Lord Heka was standing, awaiting his report, invisible… but not unheard. Pur’eyll could hear him chewing, languidly devouring a lump of uncooked meat from the larder.

“My lord,” Pur’eyll announced. “Our scout has arrived on Pharos via the chappa’ai. We will be able to begin landing troops within minutes at your command.”

Somewhere in the freezing darkness ahead of him, Lord Heka’s eyes lit up, blazing with divine light in the shadows.

The chewing stopped, replaced by the sound of him swallowing what was left of the flesh gobbet, followed by a long, languid sigh.

Then, Lord Heka stepped into view, barely illuminated by the dimmed lights but terrifying visible all the same. He was naked, as he often was while eating, and bloodstains aside, his skin was so pale it almost seemed to glow in the nearly lightless chamber.

“Are there any other Jaffa already on the planet?” he asked.

“Our scout has witnessed at least two Jaffa hunting boats, my lord.”

“Good. Tell your scout to retreat through the chappa’ai immediately. You will lead the first unit of my Jaffa to the planet’s surface; once there, remain hidden and keep watch over the chappa’ai until our quarry arrives. The hunt will then commence.”

Pur’eyll hesitated. It was only for a moment, but it was enough for Heka to notice.

The god chuckled darkly. “I know what you are thinking, Pur’eyll, just as I can know everything if I will it to be so. You wonder why I did not destroy the tablet as soon as we had found it, just as you wonder why I permit so many lesser Jaffa to pollute our hunting grounds with their presence.”

“My lord-”

“It is no insult to wonder, my First Prime. It is your place to ask, just as it is the place of all mortals to beg answers from their gods; it is my place, above all gods, to answer."

Lord Heka's face was visible by now. Even with his face befouled with gore, he was still undeniably handsome, his unblemished skin, square jaw, and patrician profile openly proclaiming his divine nobility.

"You see, I allowed these lesser gods to find the tablet so that they would come to Pharos in pursuit of their ambitions, just as I allow them to infest the planet so that they can ultimately decimate one another. Besides, we must rely on our quarry finding the tablet so that they might lead us to Proteus’ lost palace, and they will soon no doubt join the fray with the Jaffa. Once all our foes have exhausted themselves in the fight over the prize, I shall descend and annihilate all of them. Then the prize will be mine.”

He smiled, thin lips peeling back to reveal a mouthful of teeth filed to needle-sharp points.

“And there will be many glorious meals to be found among the fallen,” he added.

 His hand strayed to the jar left on the slab.

“But it is my fondest hope that if we can find the source of the Augur’s Foresight, we can find Proteus himself, so that I can truly claim his power as my own - not just the Augur’s Foresight, a gift greater even than the omniscience of a god, but the strength of his will and intellect. I shall honour them, just as he shall honour my victory… with a feast.”

As Lord Heka unscrewed the jar, Pur’eyll realized with a jolt of shock that there was a symbiote inside, writhing and twitching as it struggled to escape Heka’s grip. At last, he realized that he’d seen this before: scant hours ago, Lord Heka had gleefully torn the symbiote free of a dying Serpent Guard and forced it into that very jar, before leaving the dead Jaffa still holding the tablet that he’d died for.

There was no question of what was going to happen next, for Pur’eyll had witnessed it happening at least fifty times since he’d entered Lord Heka’s service: forty-eight times on Jaffa symbiotes torn from the pouch, two of them on mature Goa’uld with hosts and dominions of their own.

Still, he could never quite watch what happened next, for no other god had dared do such a thing, not in front of his servants.

He had heard rumours of things done at the gatherings of the gods, but those stories had always claimed that the System Lords had only consumed their unworthy young; Heka had not only devoured the unworthy young of the gods, but also the adult gods that he had conquered, all so he could consume their power and make it his own.

“You may begin the invasion, my good servant,” purred Heka. “And remember: do not show your hand, not until the Tau’ri have joined the hunt. Now go forth and do my bidding…”

Pur’eyll hastily got to his feet, turned, and left…

…but not before Heka had ripped the symbiote’s head off with his filed teeth and begun eating the rest of it.

Chapter Text

Minutes later, the four of them embarked with little in the way of ceremony, Daniel still struggling with his inexplicably heavy backpack every step of the way up the ramp and into the Stargate.

After the usual brief roller-coaster ride across the galaxy, they emerged from the wormhole to find themselves stepping out onto a barren stone cliff, at least two hundred feet above the sea of Pharos.

Leading downhill from them was a winding flight of stairs leading into a small cave tunnelling through the mountain. To O’Neill’s eyes, it looked uncannily like a bottleneck, as if the gate had been placed up here so that anyone trying to get at it on foot would have to be funnelled through a cave jam-packed with defenders.

However, the cave entrance was littered with broken mudbricks and shattered boulders, suggesting that the tunnel had been blocked until now. Presumably, the locals hadn’t had the tools to bury the Stargate like they had on Earth or even to tip it into the ocean, so they’d had to settle for blocking the only access point to it, hoping that nobody would be able to descend the sheer cliffs to the ocean, trusting that nothing from the Stargate would be able to break through brick and rock.

Judging by the scorch marks on the cliff, the first Jaffa to have arrived here had proved the locals wrong by blasting the living bejesus out of the bricked-up entrance, enough to punch their way through to the tunnel.

The cave came to an end about a hundred and sixty feet below them, eventually opening out onto a vast sandy beach ringing the cliffs like a halo.

And beyond that…

They’d all seen the images the MALP had sent back, but it was one thing to look at those little tactical snapshots, and another thing altogether to stand at the edge of the cliff and see the vastness of the sea beyond the island, an endless sapphire-blue plain stretching as far as the eye could see. In fact, if you were looking in the wrong direction, you might think it went on forever, but a quick glance to the east or the south would reveal the distant shapes of islands on the horizon, some of them little more than rocks rising from the sea, while others were large enough to support forests and grasslands. 

A quick look through O’Neill’s binoculars revealed that a few of these islands even sheltered docks and shoreline huts. In the far, far distance, he could just about recognize the occasional plume of smoke rising from the larger forest islands, perhaps from a village hidden within the trees.

But none of the islands were large enough to qualify as a continent, as far as they’d seen from the MALP: there was no gigantic mainland that the natives could retreat to in the event of a storm or floods, no way of moving inland in search of food in lean times, just handfuls of land in the midst of one vast unending ocean.

Must be interesting being a fisherman around here, O’Neill mused.

“So,” he said loudly. “This is Pharos. Any Goa’uld activity since the MALP went over?”

“None that I can see, sir,” said Carter.

“This doesn’t make sense: aerial photography showed Jaffa boats in the water not far from the island base. Unless they were able to send ships to Pharos, then how could they have left no trace? I mean, we would know it if any of the System Lords had ships in orbit.”

“Maybe they’re not up to sending entire warships. Maybe they’re not in the mood to slug it out in space, so they’re just sending a few troop transports long-distance, landing on some out-of-the-way island, and searching the island.”

Teal’c scanned the area, eyes narrowing. “There may be another explanation, Samantha Carter,” he said at last. “Any Jaffa sent through the gate would have been instructed to remove any indication of their presence before continuing their journey, if only to ensure that any rival Jaffa would not realize they were not the first to arrive.”

O’Neill closed his eyes behind his shades. “In other words, there’s a very good chance that we’re sharing this planet with a lot of hostiles, and we won’t know it until we take a wrong turn and start getting shot at.”

“Indeed. It appears we have the advantage of having at least some idea where to look, however: the only enemy troops that know the location of the laboratory island are already dead, so any other Jaffa will be forced to search the entire ocean, regardless of whether they arrive by the gate or by ship.”

“Assuming the island we found is actually the right one,” Carter noted.

“Assuming the Jaffa don’t try to torture the answers out of the locals first,” said Daniel, grimly.

“Speaking of which,” said O’Neill, “it looks like they’ve noticed us…”

He pointed to the shoreline, where a hardy-looking wooden boat was slowly circling the island. Judging by the nets hung from its flanks, it was a fishing vessel, and while it wasn’t the kind that O’Neill had daydreamed of retiring to in the worst months of his own depression, it was still an impressive sight for a sailing ship with only one crewman. As they watched, the owner ducked out from behind the rigging, looked up at the distant shape of the Stargate, and seemed to notice the four figures still standing in front of it.

Then, without a backward glance, he made for the helm and began steering the boat in the opposite direction. As soon as he was safely out of range, he drew what looked like a horn from his tattered tunic and let out a single blast loud enough to be heard even over the crash of the waves. In the distance, a few boats who’d been trawling the waters in between the larger islands immediately turned tail and fled, joining the little fishing vessel as it sped off into the distance.

“Call me crazy, but I don’t think we’re welcome here,” muse O’Neill.

Daniel nodded. “Not so surprising: even if the Goa’uld haven’t been paying regular visits, the Jaffa who got here ahead of us probably weren’t too friendly.”

“Not much we can do about that now,” said Carter. “As long as they’re hiding, we can’t help them. We’ll just have to head for the island and hope that they don’t get us mixed up with he Goa’uld if or when they try to fight back.”

“Indeed.”

As one, they began the descent towards the shore, marching downhill through the cavern. Fortunately, it wasn’t terribly dark inside, thanks to the dazzling sunshine pouring in from the cave entrance, so they only needed to break out their flashlights once or twice on the winding path to the exit.

However, perhaps halfway through the journey, Daniel happened to glance to his left and let out a strangled gasp of what sounded almost like joy.

“Guys, look at this!” he whispered.

As one, they turned to look and realized that Daniel was now pointing at a mural carved into the wall of the cave beside him, quite a large one from what little they could see of it by flashlight… and alongside the elaborately carved scenes, long strings of indecipherable writing had been chiselled into the rock.

O’Neill could only close his eyes in bemusement.

On the upside, Daniel had found something that could put the bit back in his mouth, and all was well for the time being. Once again, it was reassuring to see in action: after seeing Carter make more of a fuss over the tablet than Daniel, he’d been privately worrying about the resident archaeologist’s will to live…

…but on the downside, he was once again getting fixated on archaeology at the wrong time. In O’Neill’s experience, this could either end up being accidentally useful to them, or it could mean nothing in the long run, or it might just mean serious trouble.

“Anything useful?” he asked.

“Could be. Take a look at this…”

 Daniel pointed at one of the more distinctive scenes on the mural: here, a huge mountain rose high above the ocean, and though the millennia had worn the paint off the reliefs, there was just enough left to indicate that the mountain was made of pitch-black stone, and more importantly, that it had a distinctive three-tined peak.

“That’s our island alright,” said O’Neill. “What about all these little notes on the side?”

“Uh, a little difficult to translate. It’s a weird dialect: Goa’uld, classic Egyptian, and maybe a little bit of Phoenician. Not so surprising, since the Phoenicians were well-known as a seafaring people, so maybe there’s a little bit of their ancestry among the locals… but it’s going to make making sense of this mess a little tricky.”

“Just give us the gist of what you’ve got. I’m pretty sure we can figure out the rest from the pictures.”

Daniel smiled in spite of himself. “Well, according to the text, since the birth of the Great Ocean and its tribes, the Door of the Waters has stood alone upon the sacred island, never to be trespassed by any man, for fear of…” His eyes narrowed. “For fear of the Shark-Men, each in scales of gleaming steel and a single eye of burnished gold.”

“Jaffa,” surmised Teal’c.

“Definitely.”

Daniel pointed to a gaggle of ugly-looking figures depicted in the act of emerging from the Stargate, staff weapons at the ready.

“Apparently, every now and again, they’d pay a visit to Pharos and carry off a few people, but they never stayed long.”

Carter nodded thoughtfully. “Based on what we’ve seen so far, that sounds accurate: even if the Goa’uld knew there was Naquadah here, an underwater mine would be way too costly; there’d be easier options on other worlds.”

“Then one day,” Daniel continued, “a man with ‘eyes that glowed like fire’ arrived upon the Great Ocean through the Door of Water.”

In the next scene, a robed figure stood with his back to the Stargate, clearly male and quite elderly, judging by the long white beard and the bald head. His eyes had been painted a dazzling gold, and his hands were surrounded with sunbeam-like rays, presumably the artist’s attempt to depict the Goa’uld hand device. All around him, tiny figures bowed before him… though O’Neill couldn’t help noticing that while all bowed, none of them knelt in worship.

“To all the tribes of the Great Ocean, he proclaimed himself Proteus, sorcerer and master of the ancient mysteries.”

“A sorcerer?” echoed Teal’c. “Not a god?”

“That’s what it says. ‘Proteus did prove his magic by casting fire as children cast stones, shattering trees with but a wave of his hands, curing the sick with healing light,’ and it goes on like this for a while. Long story short, he was looking for a place where he wouldn’t be disturbed and found it on the black mountain island, at ‘the Gateway To The Monstrous Realm.’”

O’Neill grimaced. “Well, here I was hoping the place would sound a lot nicer than it looked, but there you go.”

“Well, it’s not that bad, Jack. According to the notes, it’s the last island just before the open ocean. Basically, sea monster territory. The actual name of the island was ‘Final Warning’.”

“Yeah, that’s an improvement.”

“Now who needs to lighten up? Look, it’s just because it was the last stopping point for boats that didn’t want to go hunting for sea monsters, okay? There’s nothing sinister about it.”

“Alright, alright. So, what happened next? What did Proteus do there?”

“By the sounds of things, he did most of the building himself with machines brought with him through the Stargate. Once he had a palace of his own built into the island, he made a deal with the chieftain of the ruling tribe: he’d give them steel blades, fresh produce, sea-wine, and healing magic whenever they were at war with another tribe, and in return, the chieftain would give him servants. The chieftain agreed, and more than a hundred people were sold to Proteus to work for him in his new palace and were only ever seen again by the tribesmen who picked up his tribute every month.”

The next panel of the mural showed Proteus at the gates of the island, ushering a massive crowd of people into the depths of the mountain, all of them with their heads bowed, their eyes to the ground in reverence, fear, or both.

“Uh… ‘in the silence of his hall, Proteus did ruminate upon marvels and mysteries, and his servants did witness visions of that which had not yet come to pass. Through their foresight, the great war of the tribes came to an end, and Proteus exalted in his great works’.”

He pointed to the next panel, in which a frenzied-looking Proteus sat at work amidst scrolls and wax tablets, surrounded by dozens of tiny servants, all of them with blank white eyes and humongous dialogue balloons emerging from their mouths like characters in a comic strip. In the panel next to that, a defeated army threw down its swords and spears in surrender, while the victors cheered and bowed before Proteus.

O’Neill smiled. “And there’s our power source. Did any of them say what started it all?”

“No mention of it here. Just that people in his palace would have visions and he profited off it. The real big focus is on what happened after: according to this, Proteus would leave his palace for days at a time after that and come back in ‘robes of woven gold’ with ‘gemstones like stars upon his fingers’.’

“Proteus was gaining prestige among the System Lords,” surmised Teal’c. “Obviously, he must have been able to harness whatever he found on the island.”

“It certainly sounds like it. Anyway, this went on for something like thirty years, until one day, Proteus came back with a ‘great stone box containing a power known only to the gods.’ He brought it to his palace and hid it away in his private sanctum, never allowing any of his servants to see what was inside.”

Daniel pointed to the next image in line: a gaggle of servants hauling the massive crate through the Stargate like a sedan chair, great rays and halos surrounding the box. It reminded O’Neill of the way saints had been depicted in Medieval artworks… but was it supposed to mean that the crate itself was holy, or that the contents were holy?

As for what it actually was…

“Call me crazy,” remarked O’Neill, “but does that look like a sarcophagus to you?”

“Indeed,” said Teal’c grimly.

“Question is, why didn’t he have a sarcophagus already?”

“Perhaps because he was so lowly among Goa’uld: Proteus had so little status prior to discovering the secret of precognition, he was not considered worthy of the same benefits that other Goa’uld enjoyed.”

“Fair enough. Might explain why he hid it away if it took him that long to get to it. Okay, so what happened next?”

Daniel peered down at the text. “According to this, nothing.”

“What?”

“Ten years after he brought the box into his palace, he dismissed his servants and sent them home to their families. None of them were harmed, but ‘none could say of what had been said or done in the depths of the mountain bar the faintest of memories.’ And in the months that followed, the was ‘a mighty plague of nightmares in the minds of his former slaves’, along with lingering visions of ‘horrors beyond the wildest dreams of men.’”

He pointed to the next image on the mural, displaying a vast horde of blank-eyed slaves marching to freedom, as Proteus pushed the door shut behind him. Over the island, a vast shadowy figure loomed, a long, sinuous shape like a python half-wrapped around the mountain, colossal jaws gaping open and spewing ghostly dream-devils out across the surrounding islands, where thousands of huddled figures writhed and screamed in their sleep.

“After that, something sealed the palace shut from the inside. The chieftain that Proteus had been in business with tried to break in to collect on his investment, but he found that the only entrance that hadn’t been sealed was the ‘throat of the mountain, which was too narrow for any man to trespass.’ I’m pretty sure that’s the palace ventilation shafts they’re talking about," Daniel added helpfully.

"I got that, thanks."

"Anyway, some of the chief’s advisors were worried that someone from ‘The Midnight Ocean beyond the Door of Waters’ might come looking for him, but though the Stargate opened once in the next few days, nobody ever came through it. The palace remained sealed, so after a lot of failed attempts to break in and a few more plagues of nightmares, Final Warning was renamed ‘The Grave Of Dreams’ and declared ‘an unholy place where horror rules unchallenged’. Whatever happened to Proteus, he was never seen again.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. As far as I can tell, this mural was made as a cautionary tale, not as a guide; children are brought to this island upon their coming-of-age ceremonies to be taught not to venture too close to the mountain. Probably why it’s so close to the Stargate: the locals wanted to make sure that everyone knew why the tunnel was sealed off at the end.”

The four of them exchanged glances.

“Any idea how they could have lost their memories?”

“Could be something to do with the power source,” Carter suggested. “Maybe it’s a side-effect of using precognition for too long, and that’s why Proteus was never able to engineer it for use by other Goa’uld. Or maybe it’s got nothing to do with the power source at all, and it could just be a form of Goa’uld tech we’ve never seen before.”

“My money’s on option number one,” said Daniel. “I’m more interested in what happened to Proteus. If he sealed the palace from the inside and no alternate exits were ever found, there’s still the chance he could have just teleported himself to this island with the ring transporters.”

“Hence the opening of the Stargate,” rumbled Teal’c.

“Exactly. But what if he didn’t? What if he never left the palace at all?”

There was a pause, as all four of them considered this.

“We know for a fact that some Goa’uld have used the sarcophagus as a form of stasis,” said Carter. “Hathor, for example.”

O’Neill winced. “Don’t remind me,” he muttered. “The less I have to think about that mess, the better. But I can see where you’re going with this: if Pro had a sarcophagus inside the palace-”

“He might still be there,” finished Teal’c. “It would be an ideal solution to avoid being hunted down… but it would also mean that we now have to contend not only with the forces of every single System Lord hunting for the secret of his power, but with Proteus himself.”

“And there’s another problem,” said Daniel, grimly. “If all the Jaffa searching the planet for Proteus have been through this tunnel, then assuming they bothered paying attention to this mural, they know what island they need to look for. I mean, they don’t know where it is, but they’ll know the look of it well enough to recognize it on sight.”

O’Neill sighed. As pessimistic as Daniel was being right now, he had to admit that he was exactly right.

“Not a lot we can do about it right now,” he admitted. “We don’t have enough explosives to spare, and we don’t have climbing gear to bypass the tunnel even we could blow the whole thing up. Looks like all we can do is hope for the best.”

“Oh god, it’s that bad, is it?”

“Well, it wouldn’t be us if it looked like it’d be an easy mission, would it? Come on, we’ve done enough sightseeing. Let’s get down to the beach and set up the Zodiac: we’ve got work to do.”

The four of them began marching downhill through the tunnel with O’Neill in the lead, Carter and Teal’c in the middle, and Daniel bringing up the rear, all of them hoping against hope that they wouldn’t hear the telltale kawhoosh of the Gate opening behind them. Eventually, daylight bloomed ahead of them, and the four of them found themselves staggering off the steps and out onto the gleaming sand of the beach.

Beside the exit, a huge stone had been pushed away from the door, presumably the locals’ way of keeping the place locked up until someone needed a history lesson.

O’Neill surveyed the horizon for a minute or so, eyes peeled for any sign of Jaffa boats within reach of the shore. Meanwhile, Carter unpacked the Zodiac and Teal’c began the tedious business of inflating it with the foot pump.

So far, there didn’t seem to be any traffic around now the locals had all run for it, so they had to hope that the various factions out hunting for Proteus were already on the planet and weren’t around to notice them, or that they hadn’t arrived yet. After all, the Zodiac was meant for stealth and speed, not for sustained combat: a bullet in its side would sink them, and a staff blast would probably flip the damn thing over, to say nothing of what a zat blast could do while they were in the water.

Then again, O’Neill had  a good feeling that the odds were on their side, at least for now: the entire world was an ocean, so even if the Jaffa had stopped to pay attention to the mural and knew what the island looked like, they still had millions of miles of ocean to search, and the chances of them heading in the right direction purely chance were-

“Whoooooooah!”

O’Neill spun around just in time to see Daniel, who’d been lumbering clumsily downhill at the tail-end of the squad a few minutes ago, suddenly racing downhill like a runaway train. He shot past O’Neill, narrowly missed Carter, clumsily side-stepped Teal’c, and pitched faceforward into the sand.

O’Neill and Carter hurried over and hauled him out of the dunes, hastily dusting him off as they hauled him upright. “You okay, Daniel?” O’Neill asked.

“Ow. Fine, actually: I think I just tripped getting over that last hill. Good news is, I finally managed to fix whatever was wrong with this backpack: now it doesn’t feel like I’m carrying half a house on my shoulders.”

“Well, that’s good, I guess. Now you don’t have to worry about sinking the Zodiac.”

“Oh har, har har…”

Some distance away, Pur’eyll lowered his binoculars.

The Tau’ri had arrived later than expected: by now, the great enemy of Apophis was better known for appearing before any other forces had descended upon an objective, and usually for seizing what other System Lords would have claimed as their own. By now, there was already a second hunting party of Serpent Guards loose on the planet, along with a party of Horus Guards, and more would no doubt be arriving shortly.

No matter. His master had foreseen that other Jaffa would quest in the wrong direction, each of them blundering in pursuit of the secret home of Proteus, but that the Tau’ri scum and their Shol’va pet would uncover the trail. And so, in his infinite wisdom, mighty Heka had entrusted Pur’eyll with the duty of following them to the site once they had arrived and summoning him when the work was done.

Even now, the Great God of Magic and Healing was waiting in orbit, ready to triumph over all pretenders with the spoils of the Oracle-God’s dominion, to gain the wisdom that once belonged to Proteus alone, and to claim victory where Hathor, Heru’ur, and even Apophis himself had failed.

And if Proteus somehow still lived…

…well, once his First Prime had cleared the way of all mortal diversions, Heka would make short work of the Oracle-God.

After all, Lord Heka was not known as the Cannibal Pharaoh for nothing.

Grinning, Pur’eyll watched as the Tau’ri boat began drifting away from the shore, towards a point that only they knew of. Unseen by them, he drew his own vessel out from behind the shadowed cove and began slowly drifting after them, careful to remain just out of sight, careful to keep the sound of his engines just beyond earshot.

If he and his men could remain hidden until the time came, the traitor and his unworthy masters would lead Pu’reyll straight to the Lost Oracle’s dominion.

And then the Cannibal Pharaoh would have his feast.

Chapter Text

For the first hour or so, the Zodiac sped along in total silence save for the whistle of the winds and the rumble of the engines, SG-1 following the compass eastwards.

Around them, the oceans of Pharos sped by, a glorious panorama of sapphire-blue oceans, lush rainforest islands, and skies so bright that even the clouds seemed to vanish the moment they dared show their faces. Every so often, a local ship would glide out from behind a nearby island chain, notice the Zodiac jetting along, and promptly U-turn back into the safety of the archipelago it had been hidden behind, vanishing seconds later.

As for settlements, they were mostly hidden in the depths of rainforests, visible only thanks to the occasional shape of a watchtower peeking up through the canopy of trees. Every so often, there’d be a glimpse of a weatherbeaten dock built on one of the quieter beaches or maybe even a boat deliberately beached halfway up the dunes, but almost never any people.

Obviously, with the Jaffa around, the natives were taking no chances, and frankly, O’Neill couldn’t blame them.

The only point when any of them ever got a good look at the locals was on the rare occasions where they happened to pass by a sandbank or a causeway. Here, the locals gathered to fish, to forage, or simply to travel between islands, and there were among the few places where they didn’t have the time or the speed to hide themselves: as they sped past, O’Neill could see men and women in pale cloth garments dragging nets through the shallow waters of the sandbank, old men showing young boys and girls how to fish for the first time, finely-dressed priests waving talismans and staves upon the oceans in mysterious rituals, and every so often, travellers marching between islands in pursuit of god only knew what.

In a way, it was reassuring: no matter how the galaxy changed, no matter how long the Goa’uld reigned for, there’d still be people that couldn’t be touched by any of it. Whole communities of ordinary people would go on living their lives without worrying about alien parasites warring for control of the galaxy.

Come to think of it, it almost reminded O’Neill of that weird recurring dream of being a small-town barber.

Thankfully, there were no signs of Goa’uld activity in the area, not even battlefields or ruined towns. Either the Jaffa were all looking in the wrong direction, or they were trying to cover their tracks just so none of the other hunting parties would notice them… or, if luck really was on SG-1’s side, the bulk of them hadn’t even arrived yet.

But eventually the Zodiac left the reassuring shallows of the archipelago behind and drifted out into deeper waters, and here the lush green islands slowly bled away, replaced by a seemingly unending expanse of sea interrupted only by rough little islets and skerries. From what Carter could shout over the roar of the engines, they weren’t quite in the open ocean just yet, as there was still a seabed visible beneath them, so perhaps the island they were looking for represented the last of the habitable land to the east before the continental shelf dropped away into the lightless depths below.

The easternmost islands were barren, lifeless places, some little more than barren dunes half-heartedly lurking out of the water, or colossal rock formations that soared high above the waves. The further they travelled, the islands grew ever taller and more ominous looking, with jagged edges and deep red rock being a popular feature, and less and less of them offered any proper shoreline for travellers to park on.

By the time they’d reached the ninth mile of their journey, the islands had become vast pinnacles more than a hundred feet high, often with thousands of yards of gloomy-looking waters between them. Any locals desperate enough to look for shelter out here would have been forced to scale the cliff-faces in search of a cave to sleep in.

Eventually, even those habitable cliffs bled away.

Then they found upon the one landmark they had: the half-sunken wreckage of the Goa’uld hunting boats still bobbing in the murky water. There was a moment of relief, all four of them knowing for sure that they were on the right track; then they’d noticed the corpses of the rival Jaffa already being gnawed upon by ravenous serpentine fish. After that, they hastily sped onwards, hoping that none of the anaconda-sized sea-snakes had a taste for live prey.

And then at last, from behind a high wall of weatherbeaten sea stacks, they finally saw it.

A colossal mountain of jagged black rock jutting out of ocean, tipped with three bladelike peaks, and bordered by a lifeless beach of black sand just large enough to land a boat on without risking a collision with the daggerlike rocks on the island’s outskirts. Its surface was so dark that light itself seemed to sink into in, dimming the day and bringing on an early sunset as they slowly crept into its shadow. It wasn’t a welcoming sight, but the sea beyond looked even worse: past the bulk of the mountain lay nothing but infinite ocean and churning black waves.

And somehow, this thousand-foot-tall nightmare had once been the last little point of safety before entering the Realm of Monsters, as the mural had called it.

The Black Mountain.

The Final Warning.

The Grave of Dreams.

Another mysterious alien base jam-packed with Christ only knew what, just ready to unleash something terrible on an unsuspecting galaxy or at the very least make their lives a living hell. During the last couple of years in the Stargate Program, they’d been to Aphophis’ palace on Chulak, they’d been trapped in the labyrinth on Cimmeria, they’d almost ended up permanently trapped with Ernest, they’d accidentally stranded themselves in another Gate site in Antarctica, they’d blundered into Harlan’s rusty old bolthole and walked out as robots and again as themselves, Daniel had touched the wrong artefact in the wrong outpost and ended up in another dimension, they’d ended up on Apophis’ flagship, they’d gotten nabbed and stashed in a virtual reality simulator, they’d gotten Daniel intimately familiar with Sarcophagus addiction… and then there was that charming time they’d ended up in prison with a psychopathic little old lady.

It seemed like every time they had to visit a secure location or a hidden bunker or an isolated ruin or whatever the hell, it was almost always a million times worse than a straightforward warzone.

And now, here they were again, ready to contend with the latest hellhole: the Palace of Proteus.

Or, as O’Neill was already privately renaming it, BOHICA.

They brought the Zodiac to a stop on the murky black-sand beach and hastily dragged it ashore, stashing it as carefully as they could in the shadowy hollows and crannies at the foot of the mountain.

Hopefully, any Goa’uld hunting parties that actually reached the island would be too busy trying to break into the palace to notice the boat. After all, their first move would probably be to scupper it on the spot; given that this place was supposedly on a no-fly-zone for the locals, SG-1 wouldn’t stand much of a chance of being rescued anytime soon, and O’Neill didn’t much feel like swimming all the way back to the Stargate.

As soon as they’d caught their breath, they set off the beach towards the rough-hewn stairs lining the foothills of the mountain, slowly clambering up the slippery black rock steps in single file towards the palace entrance.

However, about halfway up the stairs, Teal’c stopped very suddenly and let out a hissed warning, pointing to something in the water far below them. It took a while to work out what he was looking at, for it was surprisingly well-camouflaged against the black rock of the mountain, but eventually, O’Neill recognized the shape of another Goa’uld hunting boat tucked against the island’s weatherbeaten stone flank.

“It seems we are not the first to reach the island,” Teal’c mused, grimly.

“How the hell did they find it, though?” asked O’Neill.

Teal’c pointed again, and peering closer through binoculars, O’Neill saw a shape lying at the bottom of the hunting boat, half-draped in a black cloth. Part of it was a shiny gold orb, dented but still in one piece; the other part was clearly a Jaffa corpse, half-clad in the remains of a Serpent Guard’s armour.

“A survivor of the previous hunting party,” said Teal’c. “Evidently, he was badly wounded in the fight with the Horus Guards but lived long enough to swim to the island and signal for help with that long-range communications device before he succumbed to his wounds. Through his efforts, he led a second party of Serpent Guards here.”

“Gotta give ‘em credit, they don’t give up easily, do they?”

“Indeed. It is a shame this man’s friends will not have the chance to bring his body home for an honourable burial.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I was thinking it was a bigger shame we’d have to deal with a bunch of angry Serpent Guards between us and the mission objective.”

“And I thought I was supposed to be the party pooper for this mission,” said Daniel, airily.

“Oh hush. Come on, we’re not gonna make this any easier on us by standing around here talking about it: we’ve got a palace to search and a bunch of Jaffa to outfight. Let’s get moving.”

For the next minute or so, they focussed entirely on the long, clumsy journey uphill, trying not to slip on the rough steps and wishing that Proteus had bothered to include a handrail when he’d designed the place. At last, they made it to a landing several hundred feet above the beach, almost at the very summit of the mountain. Though just as rough-hewn as the rest of the place, it was still large enough to shelter the rusted hulks of what could only be hauling equipment: cranes, winches, carts, everything needed to transport the chieftain’s tithe onto a waiting ship.

And beyond the derelict loading dock was an enormous doorway wide enough to comfortably accommodate a couple of army jeeps. The door itself had been built to last, built half of imported metal and stone, the better to resist erosion, enemy invaders, and maybe even staff weapons… but unfortunately, not heavy-duty explosives.

The door had been blasted out of its housing, leaving a massive scorch mark across the exterior wall. Any secondary barriers behind it had been mowed down by what could only have been a massive barrage of staff weapon fire. Obviously, the Serpent Guards had made it inside, but they hadn’t found the source of the precognition just yet, and they hadn’t left a sentry at the door; there was still time on the clock.

Ahead lay a wide stone passage, every corridor a perfectly even square: it didn’t look like a cavern at all in here, but a bunker just like Stargate Command, though of course the walls were black rock rather than cement. Despite the sea air and the ambient moisture outside, these hallways were so dry they were almost arid; it was almost like exploring the complex back on Abydos, except the temperature down here was merely warm at best.

And on every wall, crystal sconces sat humming at a little above shoulder height, casting a haunting pale glow bright enough to cut through the shadows and shed some light on the windowless passageways.

“Look,” Carter whispered, pointing at one of the sconces. “The Jaffa must have gotten a generator working.”

“Or maybe the power switches on automatically around here,” suggested Daniel. “After all, if Proteus is still down here, he’d want the lights on the moment he woke up.”

“Either way,” said O’Neill, “it can’t mean anything good for us.”

The hall carried on for about thirty to fifty feet before suddenly forking off into two paths: the right led to the now-useless bulk of what had presumably once been an elevator, judging by the ruined motor and pulleys set up around it. For good measure, the shaft itself was blocked by a barred grille, the car several hundred feet below them at the bottom, though given how dark it was down there, it could be even deeper than that. One way or the other, the elevator was out of commission.

The left, though, led to a long flight of stairs burrowing downwards into the guts of the mountain, thick with shadows and barely illuminated by the sconces.

“Stay sharp,” whispered O’Neill. “They’ve been here longer than us, so hopefully, they’re a lot further in, but keep the chatter to a minimum. And keep an ear out for anyone following us: there’s no telling when another bunch of Jaffa might find their way in here.”

As one, they began creeping down the stairs, guns at the ready, anxiously scanning the passage for any sign of Jaffa, either in the corridor ahead of them or following them down the stairs.

Before long, they reached a landing. Here, through the wreckage of a heavy gate, they found themselves greeted by a large room lined with rack after rack of hopelessly rusted weapons: swords, spears, axes, hammers, and even a few staff weapons and zat guns. Either way, they weren’t much use to them after centuries of salt air and neglect.

The adjoining room was filled with carved bunk beds set into the walls, the floor layered with practice mats and training dummies… and through a curtained-off room, there was even a bathhouse and latrines. Another room leading off from the sleeping quarters was occupied by a gigantic trestle table, and through an adjoining room, a kitchen with a wood-burning oven so large it looked as if it could double as a cremation furnace. There was even a dumbwaiter set into the wall so ingredients could be ferried up from deeper into the palace.

However, they didn’t find the next staircase until they doubled back to another room branching off the sleeping quarters.

“Guard barracks,” murmured Teal’c. “Positioned at the entrance so that invaders will not be able to progress to the lower levels without meeting Proteus’ forces. Stationed as they are, troops will be ready to defend the palace immediately, with an armoury near the door so guards can collect weapons along the way.”

“And there’s a mess hall, kitchen, and latrines so the guards don’t have to mix with the slaves,” O’Neill remarked. “Great method of making sure they don’t get too friendly with the people they’re supposed to be ordering around.”

With nothing especially useful here, they made their way down another level. From here, the stairwell was more straightforward, tunnelling deeper and deeper with landings leading off into separate levels without forcing visitors to tour the entire floor without finding the next staircase.

On the second floor, the landing opened onto what could only be a workshop: anvils, forges, smelters, foundries, all of them cold and lifeless, dozens of workstations for dozens of metalworkers left abandoned and cobweb-strewn for countless centuries. Once again, there was a dumbwaiter set into the wall, presumably for carrying material from other levels for the blacksmiths to work with.

“And this is where all the steel blades were coming from,” said Daniel. “Question is, where’s all the metal coming from?”

“Best guess?” Carter whispered. “Even deeper in the mountain. I doubt it comes from the Stargate: if Proteus wanted to keep his hideout a secret, then it would have been pretty tricky to keep the constant steel shipments hidden even with all the roundabout trips. Whatever way you look at it, though, this place must have one hell of a ventilation system, or the workers would have been choking to death from all the industry going on down here.”

The next level was much like the first: a huge set of sleeping quarters, a kitchen, a dining hall, a bathhouse, latrines. However, unlike the guard barracks, there were no weapons at hand and the kitchen facilities seemed a little humbler… and, to O’Neill’s surprise, there were even cots and cradles near some of the bunks.

“These are the slave quarters,” said Teal’c softly.

O’Neill eyed the surrounding room. “No chains or locks around, though. No place for some big guy with a whip. Not even a gate that can shut.”

“There would be no need for any. The slaves here were sold to Proteus by their own people, not for the sake of survival, but in exchange for weapons and luxuries: the slaves would have remained here because they knew that their leaders would only betray them to Proteus again if they fled.”

Teal’c sighed, head bowed in sorrow. “They remained in this place not out of reverence or even fear, but out of despair.”

“Have… have you seen something like this before?”

Teal’c took a deep breath. “We should move on,” he said softly. “There are no mysteries to unearth here.”

The fourth level was practically overrun by a massive growth of vines and creepers spreading out across the ground. About the only reason why they were able to get through it was because the Jaffa had clearly carved a path through it; beyond the overgrowth, they saw that the source of all this greenery was a massive indoor farm fuelled by solar lamps, most of them still running despite four millennia of neglect: strange tomato-like plants, dense thickets of succulent-looking fungi, compact fields of crops that could have been barley, small orchards for sweet fruit, and even a vineyard of sorts. In the back room, there was a winery complete with a massive wooden bucket for grape-crushing.

“Guess we don’t need to wonder where the wine and produce was coming from,” mused Daniel. “This could have kept the entire palace self-sufficient even with the chief’s tithe.”

The fifth floor was just a warehouse, a gargantuan storeroom for everything that wasn’t to be consumed by the palace’s inhabitants or sent out as a tithe. Frankly, it looked like it could’ve been mistaken for the ending scene from Raiders Of The Lost Ark, a small mountain range of crates and boxes filled with nothing but dried fruit, preserved vegetables, wine in barrelled or bottled form, flour, raw iron, and a whole host of other products that O’Neill couldn’t recognize. Most of it was useless by now, of course, and as interesting as the wine looked, he didn’t want to imagine if it’d even be drinkable after four thousand years in storage.

“Is it just me,” said O’Neill, “But is it just a little too quiet down here?”

“Please don’t jinx it.”

“Oh, lighten up, Daniel. Seriously, this place has been invaded by a Goa’uld strike team that have been searching the place top to bottom for god only knows how long, and we haven’t met any of them yet?”

“In all likelihood, they did not bother searching this building from the top,” rumbled Teal’c. “Slave quarters and forges would have held little interest for Jaffa: they would have gone straight to the lower levels.”

“Why’s that?”

“Most likely place to hide the source of the precognition,” said Carter. “After all, Proteus wouldn’t have left it hanging around the slave quarters for someone to steal or sabotage. He’d have kept it in the deepest chambers for the best possible defences.”

“Indeed.”

“Good point. Keep your eyes peeled for locked doors. Or any doors at all, really,” added O’Neill.

They took the stairs down another level, and it was here the O’Neill couldn’t help noticing that the lights were starting to look just a tad on the dim side; the shadows were thicker down here, the spaces between sconces just a little further with every passing step, and before long, O’Neill was forced to resort to flashlights.

Level six was a long corridor leading deep off into the gloom, lined with three doors on each wall; most of them had been left open, allowing SG-1 to peer inside as they crept down the hallway.

Almost all of them were bedrooms, and though the contents were almost completely decomposed by now, there was no mistaking the higher standard of living on display: each room had a feather mattress, a comfortable chair, a writing desk, a dining table, a private wardrobe, and even its own bathtub and latrine. A few even had filing cabinets loaded with wax tablets, papyrus, pens, ink, and all manner of other stationery. The one exception to the room pattern was yet another kitchen, one much more refined than the galleys on the upper floors.

“What do you think?” O’Neill whispered. “Guest rooms?”

Daniel shook his head. “No, too many of them occupied to be just for the guests. More likely private bedchambers for high-ranking servants. What do you think, Sam?”

“From the looks of the personal belongings, I’m guessing a guard commander, a scribe, some kind of artist or artisan, a scientist, and a cook.”

“We are close,” murmured Teal’c. “Where else would Proteus keep his most trusted lieutenants but by his side?”

As one, their eyes slowly turned towards the door at the end of the hallway. Even in the fading light of the sconces, it was clearly unlike the other doors, a towering metal construct decorated with gold filigree and studded with gemstones. If Proteus had a private bedroom anywhere in the palace, it would have to be behind this door.

More importantly, the lock was now a smouldering crater, and the door itself was still slightly ajar.

And from somewhere beyond, there was the sound of rustling papers, as if someone was frantically leafing through books in search of something.

“And there’s what we were worried about,” whispered O’Neill. “Watch the corners on the way in; this could get messy…”

Pur’eyll smiled.

His master’s faith in Tau’ri tenacity was well-founded, for they had led him all the way here, to the famed black mountain of Proteus himself.

He had already found their boat, and their footprints in the sand were still fresh; no doubt they had followed the trail of the Serpent Guards into the depths of the palace and were likely already matching wits with those Jaffa lowly enough to stand with Apophis the Failure. Perhaps they might open the path all the way to the Augur’s Foresight, maybe even share in the briefest atom of its glory before Heka took it from them.

But Pur’eyll dared not follow them yet, however.

Already, another boat was creeping towards the entrance, and he could tell at once from the ridiculous beaked helmets that the pompous Horus Guards had arrived to seize the gift of Proteus in the name of their ridiculous master, Heru’ur the Braggart.

Pur’eyll had been ordered to avoid unnecessary risk until they were in a position to seize victory over all the rival Jaffa on the planet, and while the Serpent Guards were embarrassments and weaklings, the same could not be said for the Horus Guards: they were undeniably stupid and second only to the Setesh Guards in ridiculousness, but they were anything but weak.

And Pur’eyll was nothing if not a loyal servant.

He tapped the long-range communicator on the ship’s helm.

“My Lord Heka,” he whispered reverently. “We have located the palace. SG-1 are already inside, but they are being followed by the Horus Guard.”

There was a pause from the opposite end of the communicator, and then the voice of his God and Master echoed across the ship, a whisper as cold as the depths of space itself.

“No matter. You have your orders: remain in position, remain out of sight, and wait for my arrival. I shall bring the full force of my army with me for this battle. No other ships have arrived in orbit; all other Jaffa will expect the forces they can deliver through the chappa’ai to be sufficient, and we will overwhelm them easily. Hold fast, and I will be with you shortly, my good servant…”

Chapter Text

Less than ten feet ahead of SG-1, something in the darkness stirred.

It had been lurking in the wreckage of the old bedchamber for some time, reaching out with limbs beyond the imagination of Earthly biologists and peering into the gloom with things that were only just recognizable as eyes, slowly but surely familiarizing itself with its surroundings.

But then it heard the footsteps approaching.

To any other creature, the footsteps of the approaching team would have been almost inaudible, but the thing in the darkness had senses that beggared those of any humanoid form of life: to the thing in the darkness, the muffled steps of SG-1 were as loud as earthquakes.

For a moment, it paused, as if wondering if it should attack or flee, a cluster of spine-tipped pseudopods sliding out of its rippling hide as it prepared itself for battle.

But then it sniffed the air, glanced around, and seemed to reconsider.

A moment, it withdrew its weapons back into its body with a shuddering of arcane muscles, then launched itself towards the ceiling, scuttling out of sight on limbs that were halfway between octopus tentacles and spider legs.

Then, once it was out of sight, it gathered itself into an unlikely shape, and settled in to wait…

O’Neill took point.

Behind him, Carter and Teal’c kept their weapons trained on the corners, with Daniel keeping a eye on the corridor behind them in case of an ambush.

For ten heart-stopping seconds, all they could do was stare into the stygian gloom, shining their lights into the darkness and trying to figure out what that frenzied, papery shuffling sound was. They could just about recognize the distinctive shapes of light sconces, luxury furniture, bookshelves, machinery, and a lot of curious-looking coffers and cabinets, but no Jaffa. Even in the darkest corners of the room, hidden behind the furniture, there were no hints of enemy activity anywhere, not even the slightest hint of movement.

And then the beam of O’Neill’s weaponlight happened to sweep across the far end of the room, and in that moment, he finally found the source of the noise.

There, a huge heap of ancient documents had been hauled out of an emptied cabinet and haphazardly flung into the corner as if in a rage, tearing and shredding a great many of them in the process… and by sheer dumb luck, they were now positioned directly under an air vent. Every few seconds, a faint gust of warm, dry air would billow into the room from above and into the pile of papers, knocking a few loose sheets of paper off the pile and rustling the pinned-down sheets hither and thither.

There was a pause, as the four of them sheepishly lowered their guns.

“Goddammit,” muttered O’Neill. “What’s next, getting scared by a cat?”

“I’m guessing the Jaffa were already here, sir,” said Carter. “They couldn’t find what they were looking for, so they threw all these papers in the corner and… well, I’m guessing they went for the lower levels.”

“Any sign they might have missed anything?”

Daniel crept closer and shone his flashlight into the heap of papers.

“Not from what I can see here,” he grumbled. “It’s just sketches: illustrations of the islands, anatomical drawings, star charts, unfinished schematics… even a few portraits, by the looks of things. Nothing that could explain what we’re looking for.”

“There’s always a chance they missed something,” Carter suggested. “I mean, if they couldn’t get the lights on, there’s every possibility they overlooked an important piece of evidence. Maybe if we had some more light in here, we could-”

Without saying a word, Teal’c strode over to the nearest light sconce, reached out, and thumped the crystalline surface with the side of his fist. There was a muffled buzz, and then every single sconce in the chamber lit up, casting a harsh white glow upon the room; in a matter of seconds, everything save for a few dark corners in the high-vaulted ceiling was completely illuminated.

“I didn’t know you’d gotten around to watching Happy Days yet,” O’Neill remarked bemusedly.

“My studies into human television are still slow, but diversifying.”

“Good for you. Okay, let’s take stock of this place…”

Immediately, it was clear that this was Proteus’ bedchamber, for of all the rooms surveyed so far, it was the most luxurious, even in its decay. The far end of the room was dominated by a bed roughly the size of a cliff face, shrouded in a chrysalis of tattered sea-green drapes hanging from the ceiling. Every wall that wasn’t taken up by beautifully carved (and empty) bookshelves was dominated by ancient tapestries and wall hangings, most of them seemingly depicting the sea. There was, of course, a beautifully carved dining table in one corner of the room, a small huddle of decomposing couches in another, and here and there, long-defunct technological artefacts either used to show off the resident’s “magical powers” or simply for entertainment.

What surprised O’Neill was the fact that the place didn’t have a massive throne for Proteus to cram his ass into and pose at godhood.

Instead, the biggest and the nearest piece of furniture was a desk that looked as if it could comfortably seat at least six people at once without any of them rubbing elbows. A polished monstrosity of finely carved black rock, even after centuries of neglect, it was still cluttered with ancient documents printed on withered papyrus, esoteric recording devices, and even a dried-up inkwell, as if Proteus had been right in the middle of writing before he’d left for his sarcophagus.

In all his days spent fighting the wormy bastards, O’Neill had never met a Goa’uld that would bother with sitting behind a desk and sorting through paperwork.

Proteus was already a weird one for posing as a sorcerer rather than a god, but now they had to imagine him scribbling away at some desk like he’d decided to play at being a CEO as well was just plain baffling. And that wasn’t the only thing that didn’t make much sense about this particular Underlord’s bedchamber.

Just behind the bed was a huge doorway to an adjoining room, almost hidden behind the drapes, the door itself blasted out of its frame and still smouldering.

Inside, the chamber was dominated by a huge cage, its bars so close together that getting anything wider than a finger through them would have been just about impossible. For good measure, the bars had been wired to a small power generator on the floor. About the only comforting thing about the entire cage was the fact that the door had been left open.

“I’m guessing this is his games room,” said O’Neill, mirthlessly.

“Or a research lab,” suggested Carter. “Look at the tools left on the floor, here: syringes, scalpels, test tubes… Proteus was conducting experiments on someone.”

Teal’c scowled in disgust. “Most likely his own slaves. It is not unknown for the Goa’uld to conduct such experiments: Nirrti is infamous for it. Perhaps this was where Proteus learned the secret of precognition.”

“No restraints in the cage, though. Whoever was in here didn’t need to be chained up for the procedure: they’d have had to open the door to inject the subject, so why aren’t there any cuffs or manacles?”

“But that’s not all that’s missing,” said Daniel. “Where’s his sarcophagus? The most likely spot for any Goa’uld warlord’s sarcophagus would be his private bedroom, or better yet, a secret back room like this. I mean, we know he brought a sarcophagus to the palace, so where is it?”

Carter thought for a moment. “Maybe Proteus was worried about the facility’s power network breaking down. If that’s the case, then he’d have left it closer to the power generators on the lower levels, where there’d be less of a risk of a breakdown.”

“And chances are, the Jaffa are already down there,” O’Neill sighed. “Well, not a helluva lot we can do about that right now, so we’ll just have to find what little info we can around here before getting any deeper into this hellhole.”

He cleared his throat. “Daniel, is there anything in this entire room that can give us the gory details about what’s been going on here? The precognition, the hiding place for the sarcophagus, a big red self-destruct button, anything?”

His only reply was a clatter from behind them.

Tucked away in a niche just to the left of the door was a table clustered with lab equipment: beakers, centrifuges, alembics, evaporating dishes, crucibles, and even something that looked a little like a Bunsen burner.

“Whatever he was extracting from the captive or from wherever else, he was testing it here,” said Daniel. “Judging by all the smudges, I’d say this thing saw the most use out of the entire kit.”

He held up a small machine that looked, to O’Neill’s eyes, like a miniature pie iron.

“The hell is that?”

“It’s a pill press,” said Carter, helpfully.

“Well, that’s great, but is there anything that can tell us what our buddy Pro was using it for? I mean, great, that’s a pill press, but what does it mean? Are we dealing with Goa’uld stoners now?”

Daniel rolled his eyes with the air of a long-suffering professor and put the pill press back on the table.

“It means that the source of Proteus’ ability to see the future was probably the pills he was making here," he explained. "Shiny black oblong-shaped pills, judging by all the residue caked on the inside of the press.”

There was a pause, as O’Neill digested this.

“Precognition pills? Precog Pills?”

“That’s the most likely possibility, based on everything we know so far.”

“You’re going to have to explain that one for me.”

“Well, apart from all the use this pill press has seen, think about how Proteus always had to return to this planet, how the mural mentioned that people around him were beginning to experience visions of the future, and even that Proteus eventually sent all his servants away. These pills could only be made right here on this planet, maybe something from the local plantlife…”

“That does raise some other questions, Daniel,” remarked Carter. “If the plants could give anyone precognition, then why haven’t the locals taken advantage? How could they have been enslaved by Proteus if they could predict the future? Why would the mural have treated it like something new and shocking?”

O’Neill cleared his throat loudly.

“And I’m sure all that’s very important, but I think we need to be paying attention to more important things, like where Proteus might be growing the plants that he made the pills from, or if there’s a stash of pills left anywhere in the palace. Daniel, I’m not seeing any notes on that table. You wanna check out that desk back th-”

But Daniel was already in motion.

No sooner had O’Neill had time to feel a brief surge of relief at seeing Daniel getting the spring back in his step, he was up to his elbows in desk drawers, leafing through ancient sheets of papyrus, pouring over long-neglected wax tablets, opening every single drawer in the desk in search anything remotely interesting.

“Crap, crap, crap, burned, destroyed, crap, junk…”

“Nothing worthwhile?” asked O’Neill.

“From the looks of things, this was where the documentation of Proteus’ experiments was stored, but most of his research notes have been burned. Whatever he found down here, he wanted to make absolutely sure that nobody had a chance to replicate it.”

“In other words, it’s useless.”

“Not entirely: he obviously started the fire in a hurry, so he didn’t have a chance to see how much of it was incinerated. Plus, the dry air down here’s kept the surviving documents from decaying, so once the fires were extinguished, they were almost perfectly preserved. I mean, just look at this…”

He then reached into one of the open drawers, sending a small plume of ashes billowing upwards into Daniel’s face. After a few barely suppressed sneezes, he brought out a handful of intact papyrus scraps and began reading:

“…it has proved open to alteration by certain energies, as simple as the wavelengths from a memory recall device or even the rays projected by my kara kesh.”

“His what?”

“The formal name for the Goa’uld ribbon device,” said Teal’c, helpfully.

“Exposure to the kara kesh at greatly reduced levels has imbued certain crops with psychologically advantageous properties, and though it cannot be used to kill or even adapted for the use of biological warfare, I believe that it might be useful in order to keep my operations hidden from Ra and the other System Lords. Initial tests have proved extremely promising. However, as useful as this has been, it still pales in comparison to the results of unintending dumping in the lowest levels. Here, my wildest hopes have been realized: it can only be a result of the curiosity I recovered from the forgotten archive and discarded on the lower levels. The effects grow stronger with every usage, each one showing me more of what I need to see, more of the steps I need to take. The curiosity must be irradiating the crop, perhaps even impregnating it with…”

There was a pause.

“Well, don’t stop there! Don’t leave us in suspense: what was he doing? What was Proteus impregnating what crop with what?”

“Uh, that’s the end of the page.”

“Very helpful, Daniel, but is there anything that could explain what the hell he was actually writing about?”

“Um… maybe. Let me see, I think this was from a later page in Proteus’ journals: ‘I finally know the secret that can cement my place among the System Lords: none will dare challenge me once this power is secured, and none will doubt that I belong among their ranks. I even know of a planet where this power is said to reside, and I have the perfect means of securing it! How else could anyone obtain such a marvel except through my method?’”

“I’m guessing System Lords are too important to be specific about anything,” deadpanned O’Neill.

“Look, I’m just translating the parts of the paper that haven’t been burned, okay?”

“Alright, alright, no need to get tetchy. We’re not hearing gunfire and screams, so you can take as much time as you like. Now, what’s on the next paragraph?”

“Ahem. ‘The secret is Myraina, she who also bore the name Delphyne, the legendary Drakaina responsible for the creation of countless horrors of nature glimpsed across the galaxy, a trickster and bringer of unimaginable atrocities throughout our dominion yet somehow never caught despite the worst excesses of Nirrti’s frenzied hunts. From what I have learned from the secret accounts, even Myraina in all her terrible glory was not the greatest of her kind to haunt us: the worst of the Drakaina were so cunning and terrible that it was not content with preying on our chattel or terrorizing our enemies and eventually grew bold enough to challenge our empire.

“Zeus, my own father’s honoured sibling, was crippled at the monster’s hands and left dependent on his sarcophagus for nearly a century, and the perpetrator itself was not stopped until Cronus himself ordered an orbital bombardment that levelled its mountain lair and buried it under molten rock. This incident was struck from all official records by order of Ra, and I only know of it because I happened to find a copy hidden among the archives of Setesh. As for why he would have kept such a thing, I can only presume it was part of an attempt to undermine Ra’s rule… though from the way Setesh writes of the perpetrator, I would suspect that he found it personally fascinating, especially its name: Typhaon.

“But no matter. The real prize is still out there: Myraina or at least one of her kind. From what little I could learn from the hidden archives, Circe spent years tracking her down, even stole one of Hera’s most precious weapons to do so, only to disappear into obscurity after a few rumoured triumphs, leaving behind nothing but an abandoned world. But it will be different in my search, for I have no need of arcane ships and the labours of my predecessors. Through my method, I will triumph: the Drakaina cannot escape my reach. The monster’s power will be mine!’”

There was a pause, as the echoes died away.

“Okay,” sighed O’Neill, “I’ll bite: what the hell is the Draco Dolphin thing?”

“Drakaina Delphyne,” corrected Daniel. “Roughly translated as 'Serpent's Womb.' A snake-bodied monster from Greek mythology, often associated with another, more famous mythological villain with a similar description and role in the legends - to the point some scholars suggest they were actually the same figure: Myraina Tartesia, the eel of Tartarus, or Ekhidna, poisonous viper."

O'Neill smiled bemusedly. He wasn't even annoyed at the lecture that was no doubt on the way: frankly, he was just glad that the guy was almost smiling again.

"Long story short," Daniel continued, "Myrainia Tartesia was supposed to have given birth to some of the greatest monsters in the mythological canon: Cerberus, the Sphinx, the Hydra, the Chimera, the Nemean Lion, Scylla, and a few well-known dragons, depending on what you read. Typhaon, or Typhon, was supposed to be Myraina’s husband... or Delphyne's son. Er, the myths are a little knotty. But as the notes say, Typhaon was such a threat to Olympus that he crippled Zeus imself before being defeated. Of course, there’s no explanation as to what Myraina really was in reality or what Proteus was hoping to get out of her.”

There was a pause, as Daniel's audience digested this.

“Was Myraina supposed to be able to see the future?” asked Carter.

“Not in any of the myths I know of. According to the stories, she was eventually killed by Argus, a hundred-eyed giant sent by Hera, so she obviously wasn’t that good at prophecy.”

 “Is there anything else?”

“Just this…”

Daniel held up a sheet of parchment decorated with an unusual looking symbol sketched on it: it showed what looked like an octopus, its bulbous head glaring out at the world with two hollow-looking eyes, its long tentacles outstretched and ready to grab.

Teal’c eyed it with undisguised amusement - which amounted to a very subtle upturning of his lips. “I believe that is a design for a Jaffa mark. Clearly, Proteus believed that he would one day be important enough to command Jaffa, enough for them to wear a design of his choosing.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Daniel, wearily. “He isn’t exactly subtle about his ambitions. My question is, what went wrong? If Proteus really did find whatever he was looking for to make his precognition work, then why didn’t he just take control of the System Lords? Speaking of which, Carter, do you think there’s anything here that could explain how he could have harnessed precognition or… Carter?”

Carter was staring in bewilderment at the paper in his hand.

“Carter? Are you okay?”

She blinked rapidly. “Fine,” she muttered. “I just… goose walked over my grave for a second there. I could’ve sworn I’d seen something like that before. Probably just reminding me of too many old James Bond movies.”

“James Bond?” echoed Daniel. “What did octopi have to do with James Bond?”

“You need to rewatch Thunderball,” said O’Neill cheerily. “Just try to imagine Pro stroking a white cat and this whole mission will make perfect sense.”

“Oh. Not what I usually associate with the Old Man of the Sea, but fair enough.”

“Now, is there anything else on this desk that might be remotely useful, or should we just move on and pretend that you didn’t get ashes up your nose for nothing?”

Daniel eyed one of the open desk drawers from a moment, silently tracing an outline.

“The fire didn’t properly reach this drawer; maybe whatever was used to burn the contents finally burned itself out, or maybe something in the air strangled the fire before it could get very far, but whatever happened, it didn’t touch whatever was in here. It survived intact… and I think the Jaffa arrived ahead of us and stole whatever was in this drawer.”

O’Neill peered over his shoulder: sure enough, in the carpet of ash and dust coating the bottom of the drawer, there was a massive absence that looked as if it might have once been occupied by bottles or jars. As far as he could tell from the shapes left in the dust, they’d been almost exactly like the kind used to store drugs back on Earth.

And on the very edge of the of the dust gathering on the edges of the drawer was a shiny black pill no bigger than a fingernail.

“Guess that confirms the theory,” he mused aloud. “This was where Proteus was keeping his Precog Pill stash… and the Jaffa ran off with the whole damn thing.” He sighed deeply. “Something tells me this is going to be a very bad day.”

“We do have one advantage, O’Neill,” said Teal’c.

“I’d be very glad to hear it, then.”

“The simple fact that none of the Jaffa would dare use this foresight for themselves.”

“What makes you figure that?”

“Because regardless of whether it takes the form of an energy or a drug, that power would be meant solely for their masters.”

“He’s right, sir,” Carter pointed out. “The System Lords are taking this power very seriously: they wouldn’t want the Jaffa touching it for any reason, even to give them the upper hand in a fight, so they’d have told them not to use the source of Proteus’ foresight for any reason.”

“They’d consider it blasphemy to even try,” added Daniel.

O’Neill silently reflected that it was one thing for, say, Heru’ur’s Jaffa to agree not to use the stuff when they weren’t in any immediate danger and another when they were in the middle of a battle royale with an army of rival Jaffa, but decided not to push the matter. Right now, they needed to find those pills before the Serpent Guards escaped the palace.

He held up the lost pill. “Anyone want me to see if this stuff works or not?”

“I really wouldn’t recommend it, sir,” said Carter. “That thing’s been sitting at the bottom of the drawer for four thousand years: I’m not familiar with the shelf life of Precog Pills, but I’d be willing to guess it wouldn’t be healthy.”

Teal’c nodded sagely. “Samantha Carter is correct, O’Neill: the jars in this drawer were most likely apothecary reservoirs, designed to keep the few rare Goa’uld drugs from ever losing their potency, even after millennia of storage. Anything outside the reservoirs would be less than useless, if not deadly poison.”

“Fair enough…”

He absently crushed the pill between his fingers and flicked the fragments away. However, just as O’Neill was about to leave, he noticed something sitting at the bottom of the drawer, half-buried under a snowdrift of dust.

It was a half-crushed piece of paper, completely covered in frenzied writing, the same few words repeated over and over again, dozens if not hundreds of times.

“Daniel,” said O’Neill. “What do you suppose that says?”

The resident translator eyed the paper strangely.

“I saw myself lying dead at my feet,” he recited. “I saw myself lying dead at my feet. I saw myself lying dead at my feet. I saw myself lying dead at my feet. I saw m-”

“Okay, I get it! What does it mean?”

“Well, I’d need to find out what happened to Proteus to be sure, but it sounds to me like the Precog Pills went wrong for him: he might have just predicted his death.”

“Might explain why he ran for his sarcophagus, then.”

“Assuming he made it in time,” said Carter. “We don’t actually know if Proteus really did survive all these centuries: for all we know, Proteus might have accidentally triggered a cave-in on the lower levels and died before he got anywhere near his sarcophagus.”

“Well, we’ll just have to-”

The rest of Daniel’s reply was lost in a colossal BOOM from somewhere just below their feet, violent enough to send a tremor through the room and shake dust from the ceiling.

“Speaking of cave-ins, that’s our cue to get moving,” hissed O’Neill. “Everyone out, now! I don’t care if that was the Jaffa finding the ingredients to the pills or the palace starting to cave in: we need to get down there and see what’s going on!”

“But-”

“Now!”

O’Neill, Carter, and Teal’c immediately began jogging for the door, but Daniel lingered for a moment, eyes straying at the tiny gleaming shape lying at the foot of the desk.

From the looks of things, it was a very thick piece of glass, long, jagged, and opaque, perhaps even mirrored. It must have fallen there many centuries ago, but, judging by the heap of ancient parchment still clinging to it, Proteus had been using it as a paperweight.

And for some reason, Daniel couldn’t help feeling the strangest sense of déjà vu looking at it.

He couldn’t say why: it looked like any other chunk of extra-thick glass he might have found during his archaeological studies across the galaxy, and there was nothing that suggested that Proteus had done anything unusual to it… and yet, he found himself transfixed by it, just as Sam had briefly been transfixed by the sight of Proteus’ mark a few minutes ago.

What could it mean?

Why was an ordinary chunk of glass putting shivers down his spine now of all times? Could it be-

“Daniel!”

Sighing, Daniel readied his weapon and went charging after the trio as quickly as possible, hoping against hope that he hadn’t missed something important.

Unseen by all, the thing in the darkness unfolded itself from the ceiling and rippled to the floor.

For the briefest of moments, it scrutinized Daniel's retreating back, its face subtly reorganizing itself into new configurations as new sensory organs scanned the area for potential threats.

Then, it shivered to life again.

Pausing just long enough to gather its mass into something between a serpent and a centipede, it began weaving its away across the floor, slowly but surely following SG-1 downstairs…