Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When SG-1 stepped out of the Stargate, they expected the darkness.

When they had sent an exploratory robot to poke around the area, the camera had been in night mode the entire time. They expected their exploration-bot to be waiting at the corner of the gate, where it had been directed to power down after sending video streams and sensor readings of “parameters safe to support human life,” and “no detectable signs of sapient activity.” 

Boots hit the ground. They spread out, flashlights barely cutting through the thick curtain of darkness that enveloped them. Pale motes of dust rose from every careful footstep, almost snowlike in the wormhole’s silvery blue glow. 

They expected the soft dust underfoot and a sky shrouded in clouds.

Sam finished her sweep of the perimeter and turned to the DHD. The shapes were almost right, but- 

Their crew back home was always so careful to check that the dial home device was present at each Stargate they sent a human through. Robots could be replaced. It was worth sending one, to double check. 

But even cameras could be tricked. 

Where a DHD was supposed to stand, was instead a stalagmite with a similarly angled break off the top. Just stone, without a single constellation or red button in sight.  

When Teal’c turned to examine the Stargate itself, he did not find any platform, support columns, or other frame suggesting it was used or respected or remembered.

The ring stood at an angle, wedged between a rock and a craggy stone wall. 

Beside it, Jack’s flashlight followed a track in the dirt from where the gate had apparently rolled into its current place. 

As the wormhole dissolved and its pale wash of light vanished, the four of them found themselves visible only by their flashlights. 

When they stepped out of the Stargate, they expected to be able to dial back and send a check in message back home. 

They didn’t expect to be cut off in complete darkness, silence broken only by the shrill screams of alien creatures, echoing endlessly.

Chapter Text

“Alright, whose bright idea was it to not double-check our way back?”

Jack was the first to turn his flashlight off, and the other three followed his lead in an attempt to adjust their eyes to the gloom. They tucked into a loose formation, backs to each other and guns facing outward - or, in Daniel’s case, up the side of a cliff. 

“We can pass the blame around when we get back.” Sam murmured, squinting out at the expanse of black. “No use bickering now.” 

“I see campfires, in the distance.” Teal’c agreed. “Though perhaps we should wait until morning to approach.” 

“Morning sounds like a good idea. I sure wouldn’t appreciate being ambushed in the middle of the night.” Daniel lowered his gun, flicking his flashlight back on, “I, for one, think we should make camp nearby.” 

Jack nodded, glancing up the cliff Daniel was shining his light up. “Not right here. Beware of falling rocks, and all that.” 

They found a nook sheltered by a singular boulder, and a strange, knobbed tree growing just beside it. Soon, bedrolls had been laid out, for sitting comfortably on, even if no one wanted to actually sleep the night away. 

They took turns trying to doze or keep watch, guns never far from reach. Proper exploration could wait until morning. Conserving flashlight batteries, they tried to get comfortable in the darkness. 

Hours passed. 

Sometimes visibility changed, a haze like fog sweeping around or above them. Sometimes dust motes shifted left or right, without a breeze to indicate true air movement. 

Once, a small swarm of glowing insects moved close to their camp - buzzing dragonfly wings pulling centipede-like bodies through the air like tiny dragons. Sam and Daniel both tried to take sketches of them in the gloom, careful not to disturb them into aggression or fear. There was no telling what kind of defenses an alien insect could have.

Hours passed, without a shift in the suffocating darkness. 

SG1 tried to stave off boredom by making observations about what little they could see around them. The features of the bugs. The features of the tree, and the strangeness of such a dusty earth below it. No leaves, no moisture, no succulent plants. The dust was powdery dry, and the tree's bark came off in sloughing chunks when tugged. 

Something rattled the ground for a while, in great thumps that slowly faded. 

Morning never came. 

No pale brightening of dawn. No cloudcover swirling open to reveal the stars. 

Just stagnant air, the echoes of faraway animal cries, and the quiet sounds of their own breaths. 

“There’s no guessing how fast this planet spins,” Sam pointed out. “Relative to Earth, the night/day cycle could theoretically last years.”  

An uneasy truth.

“The Stargate left marks, like it rolled there,” Sam redirected after her team’s tense silence. “So if we follow the marks, we’ll find where it rolled from. If it’s not too far, maybe we can dial home and sprint back?” 

“Or engineer a device to move the Stargate back into place.” Telc suggested. The team shared an uneasy pause. It took dozens of people, and heavy machinery to move the Stargate back on earth. If they didn’t roll it perfectly, and it tipped over, they’d never get it upright again, with just the four of them and no tools. It weighed tons. 

“Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that!.” Jack clapped his hands, standing up with a small groan from stiffening joints. 

They set up a small radio transmitter, to track their way back to the Stargate if they got turned around. The drain on its batteries was mild, and ought to last at least two weeks before needing new ones. It just released a tiny pulse of radio waves every few minutes. As long as they kept their receiver, and nothing moved it, they'd be able to get back to this location.

--

The Stargate's tracks were easy enough to follow, even by the light of the one flashlight they agreed to keep lit. No use draining all their batteries, when they had no idea when dawn would come. (If it would at all) 

The trail was wobbly through the dust and gravel, zig-zagging where the Stargate had lost some of its momentum, then straightening out as they followed it back in time. It passed more of the gnarly trees, some dotted with mushroom-shaped growths about the base. After one exploded into a puff of spores when tapped by a tossed rock, they elected to not disturb any of the others. 

“Hold it!” Jack stopped abruptly, shining his flashlight down at something ahead of them. Guns bristled, at the ready. He shone the light across a strange ooze flowing over the ground. 

It seemed to slowly roil around on itself, forming a matte black skin that tore and cracked to reveal a semisolid underneath that glowed just barely inside the spectrum eyes could detect. Like metal reddened from the forge, or almost-cooled lava. Not lava though, as Jack could sidle up next to it without even a breath of heat. 

Instead, it seemed to fizzle against his senses. Spitting invisible little sparks of something, and giving off a deep, barely-perceivable rumble. 

“I don’t want to touch that.” Jack finally announced, after kicking a rock into it and watching the pebble stick to the surface - then get absorbed like a magnet into ferrofluid. (or lips slurping something into a mouth)

The rest of his team agreed, and they followed the red-black river upstream, then downstream. Finally, they found a narrower spot, that they agreed everyone ought to be able to jump without a problem. 

Teal’c went first, easily crossing it. Then Sam, nimble-footed as ever. Daniel stumbled a bit on his landing, but landed safely into the steadying arms of his teammates. 

Just as Jack began the little running start to his jump, a flurry of flapping wings had him ducking and twisting. He hopped up, trying to make the jump still, but he came up short. 

His heel landed in the ooze. 

Ice and Lightning. 

Dread and Terror. 

Hopelessness. 

The thing latched onto him like grasping hands, reaching up with quickly-moving tendrils. Some strange whisper echoed in his ears, promising peace, promising eternity. His own momentum carried him several steps out of the ooze, but the chill and pressure didn’t fade. 

Teal’c and Sam shot down the creatures that had swarmed him, tiny shrieks cutting off once their bodies hit and were subsumed by the dark river. 

Under the glow of his flashlight, the strange fluid settled into his clothes faster than he could unlace his boots, already absorbed into his skin by the time he ripped up the hem of his pants. 

“Not good.” Jack shuddered, flashlight brightness washing out his skin in the gloom. Thankfully, the river didn’t decide to change course and chase after him - something he no longer thought impossible, thanks to those eerie hands that had reached out of it.

“Fast-acting, whatever it is.” Jack informed them, when they pressed about how he felt. “Like liquid depression. Saps energy, Hurts like a bitch. I’m tired and cranky and I know it affects emotions somehow, because I wasn’t feeling lost until it touched me.” He exhaled a deep breath, sorting through his own thoughts. 

“Someone else should take point,” He decided. “Until we’re more certain I’m not compromised.” 

“It seemed sentient.” Danny murmured, still examining the heel of his boot. Not a trace of the liquid remained, having all crawled up to get to Jack’s ankle. “Parasitic. Is the mass a single fluid-shaped creature, or a swarm of individual, tiny ones? I can’t see well enough to figure it out.”

Giant bats and parasitic rivers. This planet was just full of nasty surprises. 

“You can pick at the creepy crawlies you pull out of me.” Jack commented, deciding not to mention the pull he felt, to just… walk back into the river. Let it consume him. 

That wasn’t his thoughts. That wasn’t his mind. 

They paused to search through their backpacks, double-checking what medical supplies they’d packed between them. Sam had some antibiotics, and Daniel carried extra anti-parasitic pills. (“Listen, you can pick up some nasty gut microbes from U.S. rivers, I’m not taking chances with an alien version of giardia.”)

Jack took both, and the team took a quick break to eat ration bars and try to relax before pushing deeper into the strange world. 

They found the tracks again, and followed it right up to the edge of another enormous cliff-face. There, they found a series of cracked divots in the rock, like the stargate had fallen from a great height and bounced. 

Almost as one, the team looked up the cliff. 

“I don’t suppose anyone brought rock-climbing gear?” Jack sighed, plopping himself onto a nearby stone to take a seat. With every step, it seemed like the ice in his ankle grew just a little bit more - the static chill slowly crawling up over his shin. When he pulled up the hem of his pants, his flashlight revealed dark veins writhing just under his skin.  Delightful. 

Still no sign of dawn. 

Chapter Text

Instead of climbing up a sheer rock face and flirting with the possibility of slip-falling to their death due to low visibility and an injured teammate, Sam decided they’d pick a direction and follow the cliff face. Eventually, she figured, it would either meet with the ground or they’d get close enough to one of the many scattered campfires to attempt approaching the locals. 

It was the latter that eventually occurred, though first contact wasn’t exactly intentional. 

The cliffside sloped toward a campfire, and the figures who stood and danced around it. Binoculars were passed between hands, and the team realized the figures weren’t… quite human. Biradial, to be sure, with two arms and two legs; but the general shape of their bodies varied quite a bit.  

“I can’t tell if they’re just highly dimorphic,” Daniel admitted, “or if there’s multiple unique species working together. They all seem to wear similar clothes, when they’re wearing it. Tool use and building a raised platform out of the local trees seems to suggests some level of cooperation - and they weave.” Daniel paused, considering. “Or one of the societies here does, to make clothes and rope.”

He passed the binoculars to Teal’c. 

“They fear the darkness.” Teal’c stated. “And one holds a spear that shines like metal.” 

“Yeah, I see it.” Jack murmured, squinting through his sights at the being on the far side of the fire. It seemed different from the others. 

While the small and tall ones each had mammalian ears waggling around on their heads and tusks in their mouth, the spear-wielding one seemed far more reptilian. Like a chameleon who’d decided to stand on its hind legs. A curved horn protruded from the tip of its nose. 

Unlike the others, with red hides that roughly matched the iron-rich stone around them, the lizard-like one glittered with blue scales and dark stripes.  It moved with slithering bursts of speed, head darting to and fro as it circled the edge of firelight and watched for anything approaching their camp in the darkness. 

“Guess they can get infected, too.” Jack muttered, squinting at the streaks of red-black ooze clinging to necks and arms. 

Sam pulled out a microphone from her bag, carefully assembling and angling the parabolic dish toward the camp. Enough times spying on Goa'uld gatherings and getting caught necessitated carrying some rather specific safety gear. 

Earbuds plugged into its transceiver, she slowly increased her mic’s target reach until it narrowed in on the crackling of the fire and the speech of these aliens. 

She promptly took out the earbuds and handed them to Daniel. 

“I’m not sure that counts as a language, Danny.” She commented, watching as his brows furrowed. 

Sure enough, in his ears the communication that passed among the group seemed to be a mixture of growls, chirps, squeals, and grunting huffs. Definitely not one of the core languages of the Goa'uld-conquered planets. His gut wanted to call it animalistic, but these people had guard rotations and built ladders. Surely, they could speak to each other. It just wasn’t a language he could begin to parse on such short notice. 

He wasn’t even sure he could make some of those sounds with his throat! 

“Still want to say hi to the locals?” Jack asked, lighthearted tone of voice not quite matching the hardness in his eyes. 

“Pass.” Sam commented, watching the firelight distort their long shadows, binoculars dangling from one hand. “It’ll take longer, but we should probably give them a wide berth. The fact that they’re all armed, all alert, means approaching them is already courting an aggressive response - even if we don’t fuck anything up from culture clashes.” 

Daniel agreed, half-distracted while he wrote observations in a little notepad to think about later. 

Teal’c finalized their mutual agreement with a nod, and SG1 started a long loop around that particular camp, trying to be careful where they stepped. 

They’d made it about two-thirds of the way around the imagined circumference of this particular camp when Teal’c stopped dead and whispered urgently for the team to look up. 

Far above them, a light had begun to pierce the clouds. 

The presence about them seemed to reach out and hold them by the throats - frozen in place by something purely instinctual. The nose easing out from a fog that cloaked the sky. The glowing horn, cascading sparks and streaks of lightning like the heart of a thunderstorm. Bright eyes, and clawed hands that grasped the air as a great body surged down toward the ground before sweeping back up.  

Wind, for the first time, began to push the stagnant air around them. Surrounded by the smell of ozone and rain, Sam watched a bright something fall from its brow. She absently counted the seconds between breaking off and landing somewhere nearby. Assuming gravity was close enough to Earth’s based on feel alone, and assuming the air density didn’t have too much of a difference in wind resistance, the distance had to be hundreds - nearly a thousand meters up. 

“That’s a dragon.” Daniel whispered, breathlessly. The painted mythos of a hundred cultures, breathing and blinking and flying through the sky. 

“Yep.” Jack’s voice seemed a bit strained, and Sam tried to work out the numbers for how big it was.
Another set of legs had emerged, serpentine body winding overhead in a slow curve. How did something like that stay afloat? What did something like that EAT?

Sam took a step back, then another, trying to pivot to see the whole thing at once. It felt too enormous to be real . 

She stepped on a rock. 

The rock chirped and wiggled, and punched her in the boot. 

She stumbled off, more startled than hurt, and angled her flashlight at the… rock? 

It shuddered, then stood up on two legs with a grinding kind of chitter. It hobbled toward her, stonelike limbs waving on each side to counterbalance its wide… body? Head? She couldn’t see any eyes. 

Apparently alerted by the first one’s awakening, two more of the little stone creatures shivered and rose up from their nests on the ground to chase after her backpedaling feet.

Though the dragon ( Dragon!! Sam’s mind screamed, half-delighted and half-terrified ) still flew slowly overhead, her team elected to flee from the stone critters rather than attack back. They seemed slow enough, and a quick walk seemed enough to outpace them. 

Teal’c recognized a whistle in the air and snagged the back of Sam’s flak jacket, pulling her to a stop just as an arrow thudded into the ground in front of her.

First contact and the planet natives elected to attack first.  

“Damn.” She muttered, turning just as one of the beings up on a roughly-constructed lookout tower lifted a horn to its lips and blew a loud alarm. Instantly, the rest of the camp was on alert, scrambling for weapons. 

“We come in peace!” Daniel tried to call out, tucking his gun behind his back and lifting his hands to show he was unarmed. “We mean you no harm!” 

He repeated the message in as many languages as he knew, but the knot of armed aliens continued to barrel toward them without hesitation. Not that he really expected that to work, but he’d at least hoped for some recognition of his gesture.

Loathe to take a life at first contact, regardless of circumstances, Sam was the first to fire - her gun cracking loud in the air and spitting shards of rock up in front of their charging line. That, at least, made the shorter ones leap back and hesitate - one lifting a wood-and-bone shield in defense. 

Another arrow whistled, Teal’c called to get behind cover, just as Sam drew the same conclusion. They hustled to duck behind a rock, Teal’c taking flank and mimicking Sam’s defensive measure - spitting a few bullets into the rock to dissuade pursuers. 

This time, the tall ones didn’t pause - just raised their shields and readied enormous clubs. Their height seemed even more imposing up close. The closer they got - the more Sam could feel the hairs on her neck stand on end. 

In the light of their flashlights, the aliens’ eyes reflected back a shining blue. Their arms weren’t pale-colored, as she first thought, but wrapped in dirty bandages as a sort of arm-guard. The face seemed almost cowlike in shape, with curved yellow tusks jutting from their lower jaw. It clashed horribly with the emaciated humanoid ribcage and hips, broad shoulders and thighs ending in clawed hands.
Thick, pulsing ropes of red-black slime clung to their bodies. The infection dropped from nostrils and mouths, and Sam wondered how much of the senseless aggression was normal for them, and how much was caused by their diseased state. 

Wondered how long it had taken for the infection to progress to this state.

One surged ahead of the other two, raising a club that seemed nearly as tall as she was. It towered over her, mouth open wide in an expression she couldn’t interpret. Sam raised her gun toward center-mass, and-

Fired. 

The parasitic ooze spattered where her bullet drove into it. 

The alien reeled back with a horrible squeal, dropping its weapon to clutch at its chest and shoulder. Its ears pinned back in distress, stumbling steps fleeing back to examine the wound. The other two paused in their attack, eyeing their injured peer. 

Instead of retreating, they took a few steps back, communicated something in soft growls, and one began circling around the rock. The other stomped its feet, shook the ground with a terrifying club-strike, and opened its mouth to roar at them. Tactics, Sam realized with dread. They were trying to create an opening to attack from the rear. 

Absolutely intelligent. 

She really didn’t want to kill sentient beings like this.

She also didn’t want to spread the infection on accident, by aerosolizing whatever it was.

Rabies, after all, could be spread from a bullet turning an infected animal’s brain into mist. A fine enough spatter, just the wrong breeze, and you could inhale what you were trying to kill at range.  Whatever it was doing in Jack's leg - whatever it had done to these creatures - she didn't even want to think about what it would do to a human's lungs.

A little one hollered its own war cry and started charging past the larger one’s legs - club and shield both raised. The pig-nose seemed more evident on them, with matching ears and cloven hoof-like toes. 

Were the little ones children, instead of different species? Sam willed her trigger finger to tighten, but the muscle seemed to seize. 

Behind her, someone fired another volley - another pained roar from one of the taller beings. 

The little one glanced in that direction, and then threw its club at her!  

She ducked to the side, most of her body already behind their defensive rock. The little club soared past where she’d been standing, and clattered to the rocks behind them. Good aim. 

She raised her gun and shot again at its feet, willing herself not to wince at its alarmed yelps and wide eyes. It pointed at her and shouted something - clearly words, clearly a language, but she couldn’t understand. 

The group seemed wary of them. 

Her team kept a tight huddle, her and Jack keeping aimed at the largest group, while Teal’c and Daniel ensured they couldn’t be ambushed from behind. 

Something rumbled a series of alien clicks, and Sam realized they’d forgotten to look up . 

Several things happened then, in very rapid sequence. 

Jack began to swing his gun up to face the reptilian face peering down from atop the rock that had been protecting them. 

The reptile-alien opened its mouth and shot its tongue out faster than her eyes could follow. Before Jack could complete his movement, she could hear his breath whuff out as the tongue struck him hard enough in the chest to lift him into the air.  

Its darting eye stayed pinned on her, and Sam had a millisecond to wonder if its opposite eye was still watching Jack hit the ground. Another millisecond to catalog that she could hear something flapping, like bat wings or a flag snapping in a high wind. 

It lunged with its spear toward her, and she lurched her body out of the way. A hot line of pain opened up across the back of her forearm.  Before she could begin to steady her own footwork and properly aim, the alien had already pulled its spear back and was lining up another shot.
She was, in a word, outclassed. 

An arrow whistled on the wind.

A white-fletched shaft appeared, very suddenly, out of the reptile’s eye socket. Or,  no - someone had shot an arrow perfectly.

The reptillian being slumped to the ground like a ragdoll, long tongue lolling out. The spear clattered to the ground. 

Out of fucking nowhere, another figure dropped onto the shoulders of the alien she’d already shot - a long, shining sword plunging down through it’s neck, ripped out sideways. The aliens turned to the newcomer, shrieking and lunging to attack - ignoring SG1 like they weren’t even a danger. 

The being mowed through them, sword sweeping and twisting as the user danced around club-swings and attempted tackles.

They were a whirlwind of dark clothes, wooden beads clattering around their neck with every precise swing. The remaining tall alien lunged with a club while their back was turned, but they just glanced back, pivoting and sidestepping, pushing their sword up so the momentum of the club strike allowed the blade to slide neatly up through the long lower jaw. 

Only a small one - the bowman who had blew the alarm - still remained. 

The cloaked being turned and the little one yelped, looking this way and that before trying to scramble off its raised platform. 

They pulled a tall, ornately decorated bow from their back, strung it with casual ease, and notched an arrow from the quiver still hanging at their hip. Lined up a shot, and fired - all in the space of a few seconds. 

The arrow arced through the air, and just as the little alien’s feet touched the ground at the bottom of the ladder, it was knocked off its feet with an arrow through the head. 

“Holy shit.” 

Sam didn’t even realize the words had been from her own mouth until the new figure turned quickly, another arrow notched and aimed in her direction in the space of a breath. 

She slowly released her hold on her gun, letting it hang by the strap as she put her hands up. 

The arrow’s aim twitched, jerking to the side and then back to her. 

Really hoping she was interpreting correctly, Sam exhaled a slow breath and stepped fully out from behind the rock, hands still in the air. “Sam, No!” Jack whispered urgently, but she really didn’t want to aggravate someone who had single handedly slaughtered their way through a group of six…seven armed combatants. 

The being approached her with slow steps, arms steady despite holding the draw of what was clearly a heavy bow.  They adjusted their aim to focus on Jack, who had stepped out with his own hands up, when he realized his second-in-command was in hot water. 

“C’mon out, boys.” Jack murmured in a low voice, watching this new threat with a cold steadiness. “Let’s not upset our rescuer.” 

Sam wished she could see their face properly - the cone-like hat sat low over where she assumed their face would be, firelight casting most of their details into deep shadow. 

As the other two emerged, Teal’c’s forehead thankfully covered by a black beanie before it could cause trouble, the figure seemed to relax. The bow’s draw was slowly released, arrow falling to point to the side. The figure’s head tilted, and one hand lifted up to gesture something before settling lightly back on the nocked arrow.

Sam glanced toward Daniel, wondering if he could intuit the meaning somehow. 

He was already squinting at the gesture, brows furrowed. 

“Um, Hello?” Daniel called out, voice a little shaky. “We come in peace?” 

The person’s shoulders slumped. They unstrung(!) their bow in an easy motion and tucked it back over their shoulder. Both hands free, they signed something at them - fingers and hands obviously twisting in deliberate communication.  They stopped, and made a motion like they were handing something to SG1. 

Their turn. 

“Oh shoot.” Daniel fumbled a sign with his hands, before just waving hello and gesturing a couple things that she could only guess at.  Flustered, he said aloud; “There’s dozens of sign languages, but most of them are really modern. I study ancient languages, guys, this isn’t my specialty! ” 

Sam nodded, taking careful note of the way some faint sixth sense hummed in the back of her skull. That person seemed brighter on her senses, familiar in a strange way. The sensation was barely a sigh of a feeling, there and gone before she could place it.

Sam wiggled her fingers to draw the person’s gaze to her, and then slowly (carefully) mimed notching an arrow, drawing it, and releasing the imaginary shot. Then pointed at herself. Mimed with a finger, something sticking into her neck and jerking like she'd been killed by it. Looked back to them.

The tall hat tilted slightly, like a dog cocking its head. 

It shook a clear negative. Or, at least to them it was negative - maybe that was how their people said ‘Yes, definitely going to shoot you.’ There was no way to tell! 

The team exchanged quick glances, each trying to guess what the other was thinking. They did have protocols for meeting a friendly alien after a hostile encounter, but they generally relied on the other person understanding their language.

After its initial calibration on Abydos, subsequent trips through the Stargate usually dumped local language information into the traveler's brain. Since most cultures didn't stray far from the Stargate on their planet, it was somehow able to collect and distribute whatever it collected.

Daniel, of all people, was especially frustrated by that realization.  No, all the planets didn't just happen to speak the Abdyssian dialect of Ancient Egyptian, or English - the Stargate somehow inserted a Rosetta Stone in their head. He'd complained long and hard about how hard it was to identify word roots and parse grammar parts when your brain already treated a language like it was your native one. When your mouth just moved to vocalize your thoughts, in the right order. Part of understanding a new language was seeing how morphemes worked together! 

But what did they do when the alien they met didn't have a vocalized language?

The alien sighed, signed something else they couldn’t understand, and reached up to their head. With a few twists of cloth and a knot carefully tugged free, the tall hat and its many draping scarves were pulled loose to dangle like a hood. 

Backlit by firelight, long blonde hair glinted gold where flickering light passed through it.  Sam wasn’t sure if she was more surprised by the obvious youth in the alien’s pale face and blue eyes - or the way their long ears drew to a narrow point. 

Like an elf.

Chapter Text

A mutual non-aggression pact wasn’t quite the term he’d use for the situation, but it was close enough to service. After some fumbling, Daniel was satisfied that they’d shared an understanding about ‘you don’t attack us, we won’t attack you.’

Teal’c sat with Sam, the two of them as close to the fire as they could get so he could help  her pull her sleeve up and go through the routine of cleaning, disinfecting, and applying antibiotics to the wound on her forearm. Alien viruses and bacteria were a real risk, after all - their immune system might have no defense against the smallest bugs. Like the strange river-parasite, there might be any number of organisms able to infect with a touch. 

Their base had dealt with an alien infection before, and it hadn’t been enjoyable. 

Teal’c kept his breathing and hands steady as the stranger’s footsteps approached from behind. Sam glanced up, but didn’t pull her arm away as Teal’c readied the small field medic kit for doing some stitches. Not the most sanitary of places to give them, but bandages alone were unlikely to keep such a rough cut properly closed. Likely to be sodden with blood, sagging long before the wound closed on its own. Stitches were necessary, even if he only had firelight and a flashlight’s beam to do them by. 

Sam applied the local numbing spray to her skin, and indicated to him once it had set in.  

The stranger hovered over them, watching his careful stitches. 

Once they’d finished, but before he could begin applying bandages, the stranger pulled a small bottle and offered it to them. Teal’c paused to regard it, eyebrow lifting in question. 

The stranger mimed cupping their other hand, tilting the stoppered bottle like they were pouring some out, and then rubbed it over their own forearm. They offered the bottle again. 

“I’m not sure I want to experiment with cross-biology herbalism at the moment.” Sam murmured, but the warrior was still watching them intently. 

“My symbiote is able to protect me from most poisons.” Teal’c pointed out. “And we would not fare well, if we caused deep offense in our refusal.” 

Sam’s lips thinned in dissatisfaction, but didn’t stop Teal’c as he carefully uncorked the bottle and dripped some of the substance on his palm. It tingled faintly, the texture thicker than water. He touched it to an abrasion on his knuckle, unsurprised when the small wound went numb. 

However, it was a lot more surprising when he examined his knuckle to find the wound had entirely disappeared. 

The warrior exhaled a breath - something like a sigh, or a huff of satisfaction, and left them be. 

“It appears his medicine is highly effective.” Teal’c murmured, flexing his now-uninjured finger. “My symbiote does not feel agitated.” 

Sam tilted her arm slightly, wincing as even that small movement throbbed. Her ability to defend herself with this kind of damage would be debilitating, if sudden ambushes were common on this world. They had emergency morphine in their med kits, but if they were here for the long haul, she wanted to save that for a real emergency. 

She took a slow breath, running the risk calculations as fast as she could. The warrior didn’t seem to want to hurt them, so it was unlikely that this was a type of deliberate poison. There was the chance it caused liver or kidney damage - even if it was medicinal, the dosage made the poison. If it really did heal instantly… that was a lot of time spent out of commission that she’d be able to avoid. 

“As little as we can.” Sam relented, and Teal’c used only what he’d already poured into his palm - dabbing it carefully around his tight stitches. 

The hairs on her arms lifted, a little shiver going up her spine at the strange cold-electric-heat feeling, and the sight of inflammation and damage just shrinking and sealing away. 

“Incredible.” She breathed, almost reaching to touch the stitches now sealed in her skin, before pulling her hands back away. Teal’c nodded, having been thinking the same thing. 

“Bandages for now, just in case.” 

Sam nodded. 

Behind them, the warrior’s quiet prowling seemed to settle into something that made rather… fleshy noises. Wet. Teal’c did his best to focus on his teammate’s arm. 

O’Neill and Daniel, however, had no such thing to focus on, once they’d finished their whispered argument. Their colonel limped up beside them, plopping down on a rock to watch the stranger over Teal’c shoulder. 

“Alright kiddos, definitely no getting on this guy’s bad side.” 

By the time Teal’c had finished her bandage and was able to turn, the warrior was still working on gutting their fallen foes. 

Arrows, Spears, and other tools lie in a rough pile to one side, already pulled from the bodies. With efficient movements, like one would use to field dress an animal, the warrior sliced open the being’s upper abdomen, reaching in to pull out several different colorful organs. On some of them, he also carefully notched and then snapped off horns or tusks. The organs were each carefully wrapped in paper, and packed into a bag with an efficiency that could only come with experience. 

“Does it count as cannibalism, if it’s another sentient species? Or only if it’s YOUR species?” O’Neill sounded tense, fingers tapping against the edge of his boot. Daniel murmured a negative -and pointed out that they could be war trophies, or intended for a ritual purpose, not consumption. There was no guarantee that this organ-harvesting ritual was specific to these peoples, or if any hostile they encountered would happily do the same to their own corpses. 

Teal’c noted that the arrows had all been taken - what remained behind were all broken, or bows that looked primitive compared to the elaborately decorated one already slung over the warrior’s shoulder. 

“So, we lost badly.” Jack spoke in low tones behind him.  “And we’re well outside the 35-minute sprinting zone of dialing the DHD. We should consider a Plan B.”

“Trust the first guy that doesn’t actively try to kill us?” Sam offered, hardly amused. 

“I was going to say ‘Go back to the Gate and wait for someone to dial in and check on us. We can radio back our situation. Maybe get supply drops.” 

“Not sure you have that much time to spare.” Danny muttered, meeting O'Neill's flash of a glare with a determined expression. “If the parasite is native to this area, then the natives may know how to treat it.” 

“Or he might decide to cut off my leg.” O’Neill argued back, fingers twitching to massage at his knee. Had it spread that far?

“Sam and I have already used this serum, to great effect.” Teal’c finally spoke up, offering the bottle of red, oozy liquid. O’Neill held it up to the firelight, squinting at its opaqueness. 

“You sure this isn’t blood?” He asked. 

“It healed my arm fast.” Sam diverted, also wondering about the appearance and consistency. “It might help your leg.” 

O’Niel pulled up his pant leg, ignoring the sharp looks at the mottled red-and-black spread that now covered most of his calf, tendrils reaching up nearly to his knee. Corruption was the only word that Teal’c could think of to describe it. 

Evil . 

Unfortunately, the application of the red serum did very little to the black parasite. It writhed a bit more under his skin, and O’Neill described that tingling feeling, but the appearance of rot didn’t recede. 

“If I live, I’m going to have nightmares about this.” O’Neill murmured, mostly to himself. 

Sam made a small noise of agreement. “It’d be a good idea to track down where the DHD actually is, before we lose the trail. I don’t know what kind of weather conditions this planet can have. The stargate left tracks through dust and dirt. Any strong rain could erase them.”

“Haven’t seen much greenery around.”

“Sure, but there’s still life. Breathing and eating. They’ll need water, so it must come from somewhere.” 

“It may be several more days before Stargate Command decides to reach out. This was meant to be an exploratory mission.” Teal’c pointed out. Daniel jumped on his point, clearly having been using this same argument with O’Neill earlier. 

“And we need to prioritize getting back in one piece, sir. With your leg-”
“I’m aware of my damn leg.” O’Neill hissed, then closed his eyes and bowed his head. “Sorry. No, you’re right.” He took a long breath, then looked back up at them. “Sam?” 

Sam nodded, carefully nudging the side of her boot against his. A small reassurance. He had handed over command, and wouldn’t be taking it back just yet.

“Let’s see what they can do about your leg.” 

Apparently finished with the… harvesting, the warrior returned to their group with a small wave of greeting. They accepted back the rest of the healing salve, tucking it into one of the many folds of clothing. O’Neill waved to get their attention, and pulled his pant leg up to show the infection. 

The warrior’s brows furrowed, breath escaping in a soft hiss. They knelt, leaning back and forth to eyeball it from several angles. Once, they reached forward, but something about that made the parasites in O'Neill's leg start to writhe ferociously, and the colonel clamped down on his own thigh with both hands, gritting his teeth and still failing to bite back a low groan of pain. The warrior pulled their hand back quickly, glancing down at it and making a small gesture. Perhaps an apology? 

They stepped back and pulled their pack off their back, ruffling through it with a frown. Finally they paused, scowl deepening. The pack was hoisted back over their shoulders, eyes scanning up and around, through the darkness. Something caught their eye, enough to pause and squint at the darkness. 

The warrior pointed at that spot in the distance, gestured to all of them and then made a beckoning motion. 

Teal’c offered his hand as he rose, taking no offense to the frustrated scowl O’Neill wore. It wasn’t aimed at him, after all. Finding the  DHD would have to wait for now. 

Venturing out into the darkness wasn’t particularly reassuring, no matter how confidently their guide stepped out into it. 

Especially when they were told to turn off their flashlights, and let the gloom envelop them utterly.

Chapter Text

Danny wasn’t sure how long they pressed on in utter darkness, shuffling across the landscape by what few faint shadows were cast by the glow of faraway torches and the ugly red haze of infectious goo.

They tried to keep a map as best they could, marking stones and trees with their knives to make some kind of guidance back to the Stargate. 

Their guide seemed to have no issue with the rivers of parasite - where they tread, the tendrils hissed and flinched away. However, their guide was still careful to lead them around the patches - aware that they didn’t have the same protection. 

The landscape was utterly alien. Sweeping pillars of rock bubbled up from the ground like stalagmites, but then twisted and branched like living roots. Daniel wondered briefly if they weren’t a sort of petrified wood, since he’d never heard of any rock formation that could even resemble it. That might also explain the fine dust that covered everything - if this had once been the bottom of the ocean, ancient plants might have petrified in place, and then the silt eroded out from around it. 

It was halfway up climbing a steep rock-root that Jack’s knee gave out. He stumbled, and Teal’c strength didn’t stop their feet from sliding sideways and down - toward the empty air. 

Danny barely had time to reach forward, taking a sharp step to try to grab his teammates before their guide snapped an arm out and hauled them both back up with shocking strength and speed. 

Teal’c held Jack up until the Colonel could get his legs back under him, thanking their guide in a low voice. The alien gestured something small, giving them a moment before continuing to guide them upward. 

They made it to the top of the cliff, eventually. Jack’s pace continued to slow with each new stumble. Daniel wasn’t oblivious to the way his breathing grew labored - sometimes hissing through clenched teeth, or deliberately through his nose to manage his own expressions of pain. 

The Colonel was normally unflappable - cracking jokes and making snarky remarks about all sorts of tough spots and bloody wounds.

Since the anti-parasite and antibiotics he’d taken had done nothing, Daniel tried to remain optimistic that their guide really did know what he was doing - that they were trying to help and not just ignore the problem until Jack dropped dead. 

His hope sparked anew when their guide took out a small pod, tossing it ahead of them. It landed on the ground, splitting open with a shower of green fernfronds and a bright white glow . 

Light spread across the flat plateau, and Daniel squinted for a moment as his eyes adjusted. Something loosened in his chest. Some instinct that craved sunlight was satisfied by this, too.

Just to their left was the wiggly line left by the rolling stargate. 

Sam started to exclaim her excitement, but the sound broke off into a protesting yelp when their guide slapped a hand over her mouth, hissing a soft breath between teeth. They jabbed a finger over her shoulder, but when Daniel turned he could only see a dark mass of rocks towering over them. 

Until the rocks moved. 

And exhaled. 

As large as a fucking house, some sort of beast slumbered against a nearby cliff. The pod’s glow just barely cast enough light to see a bulbous yellow horn and salamander paws large enough to scoop any of them up like King Kong. 

Daniel imagined being grabbed by such a large hand - being stepped on - and shivered. 

Yeah, staying quiet was a good idea. Compared to the serpentine dragon and this thing - the megafauna of earth looked like children’s toys. That thing could probably swallow a moose whole.  

Sam tucked herself under Jack’s other arm, helping Teal’c mostly-carry their Colonel past the salamander-beast. None of them knew what amount of sound would be enough to wake it. 

Just past the bright glow, the alien stopped in front of what Daniel could only call an overconfident DIY’er’s nightmare project. 

It seemed to be a thin cloth suspended into a balloon shape by wire, tied onto a roughly crafted grate and even more haphazardly hitched to a platform that DANGLED below it all. In the back of his mind, Daniel found himself noting that if this was handmade by their guide, then the culture might have other forms of air travel as well. Was it all balloon-driven, like zeppelins? They definitely had metalworking and fine textiles.

The other half of his mind had correctly deduced that their guide intended for them to ride on this flying death-trap, and was currently melting into a gibbering mess mostly-centered around his very reasonable fear of heights.

Oh fuck he hated heights so much. There were no guard rails on the platform, it was just a slab of planks lashed together. This sucked so bad.

Their guide knelt down and gathered the pile of sticks that had been left nearby, knapping a piece of flint against the balloon-thing’s metal grate to create sparks. 

Just as Daniel wildly wondered how the hell all of them would fit on such a small platform without it collapsing, his skin prickled. 

The ground quivered. 

Earthquake? 

No. 

Not an Earthquake. 

The slow, enormous sound of breathing had changed. 

Their guide drew in a sharp breath and shoved the flint and a small file into Daniel’s hands. They gestured quickly, pointed at the wood, then ran into the darkness.

Danny heard the telltale slide of a metal weapon being drawn. 

Oh shit. 

Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit. 

His fingers fumbled with the flint and file for a moment, hands a little too big for its handle. Heart leaping into a horrified gallop, his muscles finally remembered how to do this and he struck sparks over and over into the wood piled on the grate. 

His team clambered onto the platform below the balloon, squeezing as tight as they could to the central point, each grabbing some part of the balloon’s bracing ropes so that if the platform did collapse, hopefully they wouldn’t all fall at once. 

If they even made it off the ground. 

Finally, with Sam helpfully blowing on the sparks and pressing the smallest bits of bark fibers to the glowing little pinpricks, the wood caught fire. After ignition, it spread quickly - helped along by what looked like a few pine cones nestled among the sticks.

Daniel felt the structure tremble, metal and wood groaning as heat filled the balloon and weight redistributed. Another teeth-shaking rattle of the earth, and the salamander-beast gave a gutteral roar behind him. He tried to focus on the task at hand, trying very hard to ignore the wild-eyed look on Sam’s face as she watched whatever was going on behind him. 

Slowly, achingly, the platform lifted off the ground. 

He wedged himself firmly into the group of his teammates, fingers wrapping white-knuckled around the straps of Teal’c and Jack’s packs. He wasn’t going to fall off. Daniel tucked his chin down and closed his eyes. It was fine. It’d be fine. This was a totally sane and safe thing to do.

He wished he was a better liar.

The platform rocked suddenly, and he couldn’t really help the distressed sound that clawed its way out of his throat. 

“The creature’s attracted to light, more than it wanted to hunt.” Sam murmured, somewhere to his right. “They strapped a light-flower to an arrow, and shot it off into the distance. It ate the one we used earlier, and then hopped off to grab the other.” 

Daniel nodded, still keeping his eyes firmly shut. He could hear the soft rattle of wooden beads from their guide, so that rocking must have been them jumping aboard while it was still leaving the ground. 

He felt a wave of heat come from the grate overhead, and the crackle of fire burst louder for a few minutes.

Jack whistled softly, and exchanged a few quiet words with Teal’c and Sam. Someone grabbed his shoulder, squeezing and tucking him a bit closer into their huddle. It was somewhat reassuring. Also alarming. Something (rope?) looped over his lap and tightened. 

An elbow nudged him, and Jack’s voice said in his ear; “Hey Danny, things are about to get rocky. We’re strapped in, but keep your eyes closed for now.” He nodded, joints aching from how hard he was already hanging on.

Sure enough, the platform rocked roughly. His gut lurched along with it, terror and nausea battling it out over his frozen limbs. From how the smell and temperature of the air, their altitude was definitely changing. He was certain they were really fucking high up. 

“Looks like we’re clear.” Sam commented, as if that meant anything to him. Clear of what?

Several more long minutes passed - he’d lost count at the first jolt - and then the heat began to steadily increase. 

That- 

That didn’t make any sense, did it? Upper atmosphere was supposed to be colder.

His curiosity remained firmly clamped down, until he realized the amount of light coming in through his eyelids was increasing . 

Suddenly far more scared of "hot air balloon might be on fire" than falling, Daniel whipped his head up and opened his eyes. 

The fire was safely contained, still. 

They were ascending through what appeared to be a narrow tunnel, absolutely coated in that viscous ooze. It seemed to reach out toward their platform, never quite near enough to touch. 

More importantly, there was a sky above them! 

A real sky, with clouds and streaks of orange and pink and purple. 

Their balloon cleared the edge of the tunnel’s mouth and dry air wafted them sideways. 

Hot, sandy wind felt deeply familiar against his cheeks, and less enjoyably familiar when their guide suddenly removed the grate, flinging the wood to the sand below. Their platform abruptly started to sink, touching down onto a dune and tipping over a moment later. 

Daniel flopped himself clear of the collapsing vehicle, muscles trembling at the relief of being safe on the ground again. He stared up at the sky, soaking in the colorful sunrise. 

Sunset? 

As their guide scraped the last of his balloon’s firewood into a proper pile and built it back up to a blaze, he concluded it must be a sunset. The temperature was abruptly falling, cool wind feeling glorious with the sunbaked sand against his back. 

“Anyone want to tell me what I missed?” He wondered to the clouds. 

“We were in a big-ass cave.” Jack called back, shuffling himself to sprawl beside the building fire. They all knew how cold deserts could get at night. 

“It was incredible how deep it was” Sam added. “There were cloud formations, near the ceiling. Once we got high enough, I could see that there were some better-lit areas in the distance. The Stargate just ended up in a chasm, where the light couldn't reach.”

“So. We’ve got access to the sun. The tracks show the Stargate fell down the hole we just came out of. Great news!” Daniel was relieved to hear the sarcasm in Jack’s voice. Healthy enough to joke, at least. “Bad news is; Wherever the Stargate rolled from, we’ve got no way of tracking it now.” 

Oh. right. The sands. 

Daniel sat himself up, looking around. 

Sure enough, horizon to horizon was full of sand dunes and dust-opaqued wind. Opposite to the sunset, he thought he could see white-capped mountain ridges in the distance. Hopefully that meant the desert was localized, not planet-wide.

Their guide, contented with the size of the fire, was squinting up at the sky, hand raised to shade their eyes from the sun. Daniel tried to catalogue as much as he could from their outfit, now that he had some proper light to work with. 

The cloth was just as dusty as they all were, but seemed in good repair. Sturdy, and well-kept despite the dangers below and the rough environment of a desert. The weave was tight, and it draped like it was heavy. Whatever fiber it was, it had been created for both protection and aesthetics. Their culture wasn't in such dire straights that it couldn't afford to take time and resources to decorate their garments.

A darker undershirt and pants, with an overcoat woven with umber-colored motifs. The images resembled scorpions, or some other insect with wide pincer jaws and segmented legs. 

The wooden beads around their neck were all delicately carved and painted with hair-thin symbols - stylistically matching the symbols painted onto the cloth wraps that covered from toe to thigh, and over their mouth and nose.

Covered from head to toe, it was almost like a primitive version of PPE, designed to ward off whatever those parasites were. Maybe it had been soaked in some chemical that the parasites found repulsive, and that’s why their wrapped hand had made the ones in Jack’s leg try to burrow deeper. 

Stylistically though, it greatly resembled a written script that many earth cultures believed could influence spiritual matters. Wards, or barriers against evil. He saw it most often engraved on walls, or onto wooden or metal amulets: Weaving a script could be difficult, and and such long wraps would be time-consuming indeed. They might also be dyed-in, or painted on, Daniel hadn't gotten a close look at them yet.

One of their arms was likewise covered in the script-covered wraps, while the other hand…

Their guide seemed to notice his staring and tilted their body away, hiding what appeared to be severe burns across their other arm. Blackened and warped skin.

Did something happen when his eyes were closed? Surely no one could have burns like that and not be in agony! 

No, wait-

Daniel made his own way to the campfire, finally too chilly to stay laying out in the cooling sand. He tried to be more covert with his observations. A source of shame, maybe? Their guide tended to keep it tucked under the long sleeve, but Daniel still caught flashes of dark, wrinkled skin and black fingernails. 

Something they were ashamed of, since they tried to hide it. If it was their normal hand, surely being visible wouldn’t be a problem? It could be a birth defect, though he'd never seen one with such a dark color before.

Was that what flesh could look like, after curing an infection like Jack’s? 

He wished they could communicate properly to ask. 

–

The stars came out slowly, and the team swapped rations and canteens around. Their guide offered a few apple-like fruit to share, which Daniel thought tasted somewhere between a pear and a potato. After roasting the other half near the fire, the flesh of it did actually sweeten, softening into something he could easily see served in a dessert. 

His own teammates agreed to sleeping in shifts, figuring that if the cave was full of alien creatures, then the surface world could be as well. 

Their guide tended the fire, blue eyes keeping a close eye on the horizon. 

– 

When the first sign of dawn came, Daniel felt his hands driven by old habits and carefully went through all his belongings for any hidden scorpions, spiders, snakes, or other desert crawlies who might think a warm body on a cold night was a great place to kip up. 

Thankfully free of pests, he turned to check on Jack - and then quickly turned away again. 

“Why aren’t you wearing pants?” The question came out more like a strangled plea than a demand. 

“The squirmy bastards don’t like the sky!” Jack declared, and out of his peripherals, Daniel could see him raise one pale leg up into the air. The skin bore a few dark streaks, but now lacked the pulsing mass of red and black that had moved under their flashlight’s beam. 

“Aren’t they just burrowing deeper?” 

“I think she thinks the sun will hurt them, once it rises.” Jack wiggled his hands like he was mimicking the sign language, then flopped them back into the sand. 

“Anyway, I feel better than I did before, so I’ll take it.” 

She?

Daniel glanced at Major Carter questioningly. She shook her head, flicking her thumb in the other direction. 

Ah- 

She!

Their guide had changed clothes entirely - shedding layers of protective dark fabric and exchanging them for lightweight, brightly dyed cloth in a style that rang a very familiar bell in his memory.

In the Arabian peninsula before Islam became the dominant religion, face veiling was common among women of various religious backgrounds. Some form of veiling was ubiquitous regardless of gender, when traveling in a desert. Keeping sand off your face was a great way to not breathe in sand.

Metal decorated cloth around the hips, chest, even the shoes were gold-edged and delicately beaded. A term for the outfit tickled his brain, right on the tip of his tongue- a black-and-white film he watched when he was younger...

“Ghawāzī?” 

Their guide startled at the word he’d spoken mostly to himself, blue eyes snapping to him in a bewildered expression. She slowly pointed at herself, eyebrows raising even higher. 

Oh shit, that translated. Or, it meant something in her language. From the pinched and confused expression, he suspected he’d actually called her something horribly rude. 

He waved his hands a bit frantically, apologizing in Abdyssian and several older Egyptian dialects before their guide gave him a strange look and turned back to packing her heavier clothes into a bag. 

Ghawāzī was a modern word in the first place - he was just trying to place the style of dress to something he recognized!

The colorful, sheer fabrics and metallic decorations reminded him of modern belly-dancers, who in turn adopted those costumes from European filmmakers, who had created the outfits to exoticize Egyptian dance troupes for their audience.  The Ghawāzī - the all-female dance troupes who performed traditional folk dances now adopted by foreigners as ‘belly dancing’ had been outlawed by the Egyptian government in the 19th century, primarily for immodesty. That story of illegal dancing was exactly the kind of “Exotic Oriental Mystery” that Europeans of the time loved to share stories of. Or... he supposed that fit women shaking their chest in a revealing, glittery outfit had its own appeal to filmmakers. 

Music and dance was highly valued in Ancient Egypt, done at funerals, births, and most celebrations. Women and men alike would adorn themselves with elaborate and beautiful jewelry. Many danced bare-chested. Throughout the millennia, royal households had talented musicians, singers, and dancers in their employ to perform at parties and festivals. 

Temples and tombs to this day, bore countless scenes of dancing and making music across every age of Egypt.

Anyway, "ghawāzī" with that dance context wasn’t a word that anyone from ancient Egypt was likely to know.  Her reaction to it… He must have said something that did have some other meaning. 

Sheer fabrics and ornate filligree aside, she was a still a warrior who had been outnumbered by intelligent opponents, and slaughtered her way through them regardless. She was still carrying those organs, somewhere on her person. No amount of pastels could make him forget that.

In the twilight hours after the sun had begun to warm up the frosty cold of desert sands, but before its blazing heat became dangerous - it was the perfect time to travel.  

Daniel still wondered about the clothing style, though. 

He knew from experience that the sun’s heat could burn skin just as badly as touching a coal from a fire, and heavier-woven clothes kept you safer. Already, he and his team had pulled out scarves and started wrapping as they walked - working to cover their head and neck (and any exposed skin, really) from a blazing sun. 

Someone who lived in the desert ought to know that, unless there was something else at play.  

Once the first sliver of the sun peeked over the horizon, their guide pulled out a bottle full of some pale blue fluid. She rubbed it over her skin, taking extra time to cover the backs of those long ears, the tops of her feet and forehead, and the backs of her knees.

Sunscreen. 

“Do you think she’ll be able to guide us back to the Stargate?” Sam wondered aloud, pulling her own scarf a little further down her forehead as they continued onward across the dunes. 

“We can hope.” Jack muttered. 

When he pulled his pant leg up experimentally, Daniel caught a glimpse of black under the surface of his skin before the color abruptly vanished. They were going deeper into his skin. 

“It still aches.” Colonel O’Neil allowed. “I can feel them moving. But they retreat back down to my ankle, if I blast ‘em with sunlight. Knee doesn't hurt anymore.”

“Do you think it’s the UV radiation?”

Jack shrugged at Sam’s question. 

“Maybe they’re just shy.” 

The sun rose, bringing with it a scorching heat. 

They slogged across the sands, wind only a relief in that each drying drop of sweat was a tiny prick of cold, and another drop of water lost. 

Their canteens were emptying a lot faster than felt safe, with so many dunes and so little cover. 

Their guide accidentally left them behind, once. She’d bounced down the side of a steep dune and up the next like it was the most natural thing in the world, while the rest of them staggered and tried not to faceplant in the loose sand. Even Daniel’s strides - more confident from the years he spent in the desert of Abydos - couldn’t quite get a sturdy purchase against the first dune’s clear desire to landslide downward. 

When she came back for them, she carried several round fruits in her arms - dumping them onto the sand in front of them. She picked one back up, stabbed and twisted with a small knife, and drank deeply from what Daniel guessed was a fluid-filled melon, or cactus-fruit.

He hoped it wasn’t psychoactive.

Way too many cacti had human-unfriendly compounds in them. 

When he drank from the fruit, it tasted akin to cantaloupe, if cantaloupe ever cross-bred with spearmint. His exhale felt cold, despite the sun-baked warmth of the liquid he’d swallowed.

For a while after that drink, the sun didn’t seem quite so piercing. Still hot, but something that could be endured. 

They kept an eye out for the fruits after that - finding them amongst piles of thin branches and thorns that Daniel had originally thought were a form of tumbleweed or desert briar. 

The bright red fruits their guide cut off a cactus - Daniel did turn that one down, while Teal’c accepted. 

“It tingles.” Teal’c commented later, when asked why he was munching on the cactus fruit so slowly and thoughtfully.

“I’m pretty sure a staticky feeling means you’re having an allergic reaction.” Daniel warned. He had plenty of experience with alien allergies. Epi-pens didn’t actually fix the problem of anaphylaxis. They should be careful about that. 

Teal’c hummed his agreement and passed the fruit back to their guide, who crunched through the rest in a few quick bites. Wasting such a water-heavy food would be foolish, after all - and sharing food with strangers was a time-honored human tradition.

By the time the sun started heading toward the opposite horizon, they could see something through the heat-shimmer rising off the sand. 

Something stretched up out of the desert, shining.

They passed through the shadows of stone pillars, long fallen to ruin. While Daniel deeply wanted time to stop and investigate their history, their guide and their drive to find a safe haven pushed them onward. 

As twilight reached them once more, pink and purple stretching into the sky, they finally laid eyes on their destination. 

Sandstone walls, and huge stone towers topped with palm trees. From the largest towers, three waterfalls cascaded down to the walled town below. 

Sunlight caught in the water’s mist, casting flickering rainbows through the streams. Someone was playing music, carried faintly on the wind.

Unfortunately, that was right about the moment that the wind began to pick up speed.

Chapter Text

When the desert winds stilled, one could see for miles over shining hills - but even a small breeze could whip up dust and sand into an obscuring haze. 

As the wind began to pick up, Daniel Jackson felt understanding ooze out of his bones, borne from long years of experience. A Sandstorm was coming. They should have been sprinting for cover if there was anything that could have protected them.

Heavy winds began to pull sandpaper-grit down into the creases of their clothes, had them squinting against the force of it. As the lovely city began to fade into the fog of dust, their guide called out, waving to draw attention from some of the guards that stood small and distant against the walls. 

SG1 ducked their heads and trudged onward. The dunes would end - there was a light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. Soon there came a sound of slicing sand, and the grunts of an animal getting closer. 

Fingers to her mouth, their guide gave a piercing whistle. Voices called back, in an unfamiliar language. 

Daniel pulled his fingers over his eyes, allowing only slivers of light to form a picture, protected from the flying sand. 

Armored figures emerged from the dust, and for a moment his stomach was full of dread. 

Enormously tall warriors stepped into view, with thickly muscled arms, bronze and gold armor gleaming, spears held in decorated hands. 

But where Jaffa wore golden animal helms, these people wore blood-red hair and brightly colored paint on their face. nstead of the traditional shendyt, linen wrap somewhere between a kilt and a loincloth, these warriors wore wide pants that wrapped close around the knee, and shin-guards or boots made of hide. 

Instead of gold-on-gold, as these people drew closer, he could see painted designs on their armor, intricate patterns worked into the beads on their belts and straps, and organic patterns woven into their pants. 

Of course, cultures with the same material access would end up with some similar ideas on how a garment ought to be made. 

The long hair, too, was eye-catching. That shade of red must be from dye - he’d never seen crimson occurring naturally in mammals. 

Their guide communicated quickly in gestures that were answered with words that he almost understood. The wind kept sweeping syllables away. An agreement was made, and the new people beckoned them to join them atop narrow sleds with small wooden crates and barrels already strapped in. A warrior hopped into the front, to hold the reins to… something. In the thick dust, it was hard to make out what exactly the dark lump ahead of them really was. 

SG1 spoke amongst themselves, quickly agreeing that they had a better chance of survival by following along and joining the group. Their guide, at least, had worked hard to provide warmth, and guidance so far. It was possible that stumbling into a group of idiots lost in the desert, or lost in the caves, was a common occurrence. 

It wouldn’t surprise Daniel in the least, considering how vast both places seemed to be. 

So, they allowed themselves to be divided between the two sleds.

A cry, and each sled lurched forward. 

Daniel clung to the box he knelt next to, only able to make out strange twisting forms of something leaping in and out of the sand in front of them. To either side, though, their new entourage crouched and leaned to skim the sand’s surface like they were snowboarding. It was a strange sight, and whatever beast was pulling them still moved too fast to get a clear look.  

From the huge frog-thing and the dragon down in that cave, to the people out here – he was getting the sense that earth’s standards for animals were wildly out of touch on this planet.

For a while, Daniel lost track of their little blonde guide.  All he could hear was the rhythmic exhales, the slash of sand, and the whistling of the dark wind. All he could see was the freight-sled that was carrying them, and Teal’c’s grim face as the other man hunkered down to protect his eyes.

Shapes moved in the dark storm around them – flashes of light, gleams of scales, and one hair-raising crack that threw showering sparks for them to surge past as the surfing warriors peeled away from their little caravan to fight whatever was out there.

After what felt like hours, but was likely far less than that, the sled slowed to a stop.

The little blonde one slid up a moment later, releasing the creature they were holding and hopping so that their sled popped up to be grabbed and slung over one shoulder. The beast leapt away into the gloom before Daniel could get a good look at it, and so had to focus solely on listening to where they were directed, and preventing sand-to-eyeball damage. The winds seemed to scream all the more fiercely, now that towering palm trees and the dark shapes of tents hunkered against the roaring sky were so close.

Once the team had been dropped off, their entourage peeled away into the darkness. 

Sam helped Jack limp up to the tent entrance that their guide herded them to, ducking in first. Daniel followed in after them, and Teal’c brought up the rear.

The difference in chaos and noise between inside and outside a sandstorm would always be remarkable. Well-anchored fabrics strained and occasionally flapped with a sideways gust, but held firm against its battering paws.

It was so quiet that Daniel actually flinched when an ear-splitting whistle suddenly erupted behind them.

“What the hell, kid!” Jack let Sam dump him gently onto the edge of the thick rugs, where an open tent flap had allowed sand to spill in. 

Daniel pointed out how rude it was to track dirt into someone else’s house - and how they had an obvious shoe-rack set to the side for guests to use. Their guide’s quick pointing between their feet and the shoe rack was another clue. 

Teal’c went through the motions of shaking his clothes out toward the door before he’d even finished talking, and Danny followed along more slowly, so Sam and Jack could follow. 

From behind a wall made of hanging tapestries, an old woman toddered out into the entrance space, back hunched down under the weight of a bucket of water. She cast dark eyes over the lot of them, lingering on their guide with a slowly lifting eyebrow. 

The girl huffed something like a laugh, squeezing past SG-1 to drop a few clinking something’s into the woman’s outstretched hand. The older woman nodded her approval at whatever payment had been delivered, then glanced back over them with a few unfamiliar words. Ah - it wasn’t just some random person’s house. This was an inn. They expected travelers. 

Daniel watched for any hint of manners, or recognizable patterns of greeting in the byplay between them, but the two women seemed to be familiar enough not to bother. The language, too, didn’t have any recognizable sounds. There was an interesting staccato to it, a lot of alternating consonant-vowels, but with only one person speaking it wasn’t a lot to go on. 

Daniel was still fascinated at the use of a clearly-developed sign-language; one that was prolific enough that everyone they’d met so far understood it, and treated it just like a spoken response. 

While the study of Sign Language history was still focused on 18th and 19th century alphabet-placeholders and simple gestures used by European monks, and a few deaf individuals who had invented gestural shorthand to communicate with one or two family members, European explorers had actually stumbled into fully-developed languages in the Americas. 

Plains Indian sign language had been prolific by the time settlers had expanded westward into North America - allowing nations who spoke different languages to communicate in a common lingua franca for trade and passing messages across the country. So, too, were the sign-languages of Northern Mexico fully established and widely used by cultures who had never even heard of Europe by the time Spanish explorers ran into them. 

It was still a point of consternation in his opinion, that there was so much study and authority given to the European scattered attempts, and so little focus on the Native American success creating several unique and geographically isolated sign-languages in the same timeframe.  Europeans did so love to claim that they invented and discovered things and places that other indigenous groups had been using for centuries. 

Especially when other cultures had standards for architecture, agriculture, or language so wildly different from the European default, but just as complex. 

It was clearer now that he had the chance to look at it, that this was at least a semi-permanent structure. There was a raised floor, and the structural poles were thick and deeply sunk into the earth. One shouldn’t underestimate the insulative power of cloth walls, after all. With a thick enough weave and good wool, even a single layer could keep you warm in the icy night, and cool throughout a scorching day.  Cot-like structures encircled the room, with several wood-and-cloth folding screens creating loose divisions. 

Beyond the sturdy outer layer, more tapestries hung from the walls and ceiling, with intricate patterns that he wished he could sit and study. From a quick glance, the dye seemed rich and even, and while the forms depicted were unfamiliar, it was clearly trying to tell a story. There must be a trade route connecting this culture to another, because some of these tassels were clearly made of silk, and silkworms did quite poorly in a true desert biome. They needed humidity, and lush plants to eat. 

He could only see a sliver of it, but there was also something fenced off by screens in the back, which looked like a large pile of tropical bird pelts. Those brilliant sapphire feathers weren’t something he ever expected to fit in among sand and scrub.

They were shooed toward some of the beds, but the old woman didn’t bother trying to pull Sam away from the team.  Most human-base civilizations they’d encountered so far did hold some kind of gendered privacy culture, and they’d encountered trouble before by well-meaning hosts trying to put her in separate quarters, but she’d been pointed toward a bed right smack in the middle of their group. It wasn’t like any of them would be stripping nude in unfamiliar territory, but it was an interesting data point. 

He'd have to wait to take stock of more cultural details tomorrow morning. Their guide had already picked out a bed and flopped into the blankets without further attempts to communicate. The blackened arm had been completely covered by a blanket, but the rest of her body was sprawled openly - one foot hanging out over the side. Clearly, members of SG1 weren’t the only ones exhausted by the long day.

Jack’s leg, when he hitched up his pants, had those dark lines edging toward the surface again. It was less prolific, and less active than it had been down in the caves. Sam pointed out that UV exposure was an effective way to kill bacteria, mold, and virus alike - if it was a cave-dwelling microorganism, direct sunlight might shock and damage it. 

More hopeful was the fact that their guide’s original dark-cloth outfit had made the infection react. Whether it was a chemical or radiation deterrent, this culture clearly knew about the slime-river, and knew how to deal with it. They’d just have to find some way to communicate, so they could make a trade for medicine or treatment. 

There wasn’t much more they could do about their present situation, with their guide asleep and the innkeeper dozing in the chair by the door. The sandstorm still whirled around them.

They agreed to sleep in shifts, with Sam taking the first watch, and Jack excluded from them so he could try to recover some energy. No one had missed how lethargic he’d become over their long hike. 

The cot was quite comfortable, with hair-stuffed pillows that smelled like some kind of animal behind the spicy perfume oils, and heavy blankets that easily warded off the nighttime chill. 

When Teal’c woke him up for the final shift, he was quick to warn Daniel not to react. Apparently what he’d believed to be a display of pelts was actually a living bird. Satisfied when Daniel didn’t react more than disbelieving eyes and a long stare, Teal’c climbed into his own bed and settled in to get some rest. 

‘Enormous’ wasn’t a good enough descriptor. 

He’d seen Ostriches and Emus in person, and they were large, but it was mostly leg and neck. The bird now sitting near the entrance of the inn was solid. Like a Blue and Gold Macaw had been enlarged to the size of a pro-wrestler - mostly wingspan and chest, with thick claws and a stout, black-barred tail. 

Beautiful, to be sure - those feathers would probably shine under sunlight, but something in his hindbrain shivered at the thought of being seen as prey to something like that. 

 He wasn’t sure if it was a pet, a protector, or a new type of domestic food animal. Probably not that last one, since it had some kind of leather armor strapped around its back and chest. 

The innkeeper was talking in soft tones to the bird, piercing round, golden fruit onto wood skewers. The bird made small noises back, and when she offered a skewer, it held it near the bend of its wing, almost like a hand. Watching the huge beak move so dexterously to pluck the fruit off and manipulate it to separate pit from flesh was fascinating. Very much like a parrot, with both beak halves mobile where they connected to the skull. 

Even a regular-sized parrot could take off a finger, and that beak could probably fit around his arm. 

Caught up in watching the slow stripping of fruit, he almost missed the way the bird was watching him back, dark golden eyes half-lidded. 

“Good Morning!” 

Daniel startled, eyes snapping back to the innkeeper. She squinted a smile, piercing another fruit onto a skewer. “It’s rude to stare, you know.” 

Yes, he had heard that correctly. He hoped he hadn’t. 

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to- Is it yours?” He tilted his head toward the bird, aware that it hadn’t stopped watching him. The woman blinked slowly. 

“The fruit? Yes, it’s mine. I have some for the rest of your friends, when they wake up.” 

He was terribly aware of the slow bristling of feathers along the bird’s crest, and the slow exhale from enormous lungs. The parrot-beak crunched through the fruit pit, splitting it into shards to be swallowed. 

He definitely didn’t twitch at the sound. 

“Thank you very much for the hospitality.” Daniel forced a smile, giving a small bow. “I meant to ask about your bird. Does it have a name?” It must be expensive, to source so much fresh fruit into the desert. Their trade routes must be very well-established, or perhaps the greenery he’d seen in the walled city meant there was enough fruiting trees to make supplying such a pet more reasonable than he supposed. 

The woman glanced toward her bird with a deeply skeptical expression. 

The bird shook its head and exhaled the ruffled feathers back into a smooth cape. It turned toward Daniel and opened its beak. 

“I belong to myself, Guest-of-Michoo. My name is Kass.” 

While the voice was warped and crackly, it was perfectly articulate. Suddenly, the half-lidded gold eyes looked less like animal wariness and more like annoyance. 

Daniel bit back the curse sitting on the back of his tongue, brain working on an appropriate apology under the weight of shock rendering him silent. 

“Never met a Rito before?” The old woman asked, lips curling in an amused smirk. “Been living under a rock?” 

Grateful for the offered mercy, he nodded. 

“Never in my life, I’ve only- I didn’t mean to-….I mean- Nice to meet you. My name is Daniel Jackson. We were lost in the caves below the desert, and then the sandstorm.. I apologize, I should have been more aware of my manners.” 

Kass chuckled, dipping his head in a little bow. 

“Nice to meet you, Daniel-Jackson. That sounds like quite the story. I’d love to hear it.” 

Of course, Daniel was excited to know they had a language in common already. 

He would be a lot more excited about this linguistic development if he wasn’t deeply unsettled by speaking a dialect of Goa’uld so casually. 

Chapter Text

History was written by those who remembered. Without memory, history was doomed to repeat itself. 

Kass had etched these words into his heart as a child, moved by his mother’s storytelling and song. He dedicated his life to researching and preserving ancient stories and nearly-lost songs, memorizing and reciting them to any who would listen. 

When Hyrule had fallen, so much knowledge had been lost. Libraries been left to rot and scholars had fled their homes or been slain by technology far beyond their ken.

For three years, Hylians had struggled to piece their scraps of history and knowledge back together before another surge of Malice had them scrambling back away from the castle and capitol city. 

But even before that, another culture had lost nearly everything. 

Whether it had been by Malice or by thoughtlessness, or unfortunate coincidence, the Gerudo had lost their cultural knowledge like water falling through cupped hands. Each vanishing drop of fading knowledge was a profound loss, with no convenient library to recover it from. 

Chief Makeela Riju was doing her best, of course, but the loss had started long before Chief Urbosa’s reign. At this point, the young queen’s efforts to inscribe tablets, write down songs and stories, and have careful studies attend the working fingers of elderly craftsman was like an effort to push back the entire desert. A scramble to preserve that intangible cultural heritage was an exercise in futility. 

The ruins of their culture was all around them, mysterious even to their grandmothers.

Statues of heroines, huge atriums and amphitheaters sunken into sand carried toolmarks and techniques that the present-day population had no idea how to replicate. 

It was seeing their loss, Kass mused, that had made Princess Zelda so furiously intent on establishing Hyrule’s Archeology Corps, and the Exploration Corps - mapping out and recording what they had, and studying the past to re-learn what was lost. 

This loss of history - loss of culture - was what drove Kass to the skies and into a solemn outreach to Chief Riju. 

The Eternal Sandstorm had faded, thanks to the death of the Gibdo Queen, and the quiet slumber of Vah Naboris. The Desert was open to travelers, for the first time in countless generations. 

He volunteered to scout ahead into the desert, to find Gerudo tribes that had been lost to them and return with maps to their location, so the Gerudo could reach their hand out in friendship. 

Chief Riju accepted. 

So it was with this purpose that Kass flew out over the vast desert, water and food packed securely against his feathers. 

The Champion Revali must have been a true genius, able to harness the wind and fly with such ease and agility.
Kass had left his accordion behind, to save it from the heat, but still felt the strain of endurance as he flew across the wide barren stretch of sand where the sandstorm curse once ravaged. It twisted like a white snake through golden dunes, sand grains ground into glittering powder from centuries of being worn together. 

On the other side, dunes quickly gave way to scrubland, then to an arid sort of plains that Kass carefully set up camp upon, dozing for brief snatches. He tried to keep a careful map of his travels, noting down where seasonal rains had left cracked gulleys behind, and clusters of hardy plants where springs or seasonal water might pool. 

To the northwest, even more desert awaited. 

But to the North, he caught a flash of light, and the light smoke of cooking fires. The shine of water on the horizon. 

To the North, his heart soared at the sight of sturdy stacks of stone and clay-sculpted buildings that echoed the ancient Gerudo structures, and the oldest foundations of Gerudo Town. Ships traversed a river delta, and spindly structures stretched out like reaching hands onto an ocean’s coastline. Red sails matched the red hair of mariners piloting out to fish and explore the sea. 

Kass eagerly sketched the area on his map, and circled around to approach on a well-established road, though walking on foot was rarely the preferred method of travel for any Rito. It was worth the effort, to make friendly contact. Few earthbound folk appreciated a large bird swooping in from overhead, after all. 

Even still, he was greeted with suspicion and a not-small amount of weapons pointed his way. They did not speak Hylian, which was expected, but also seemed baffled at his spoken Gerudo language. They spoke to each other in a tongue he didn’t recognize, and had him ruffling his feathers in alarm when they escorted him into the seaport city at spearpoint. His bones really weren’t made for unarmed hand-to-wing combat. 

The palace at the center of their city had all the grandeur he had dreamed of, from the shapes of time-worn Gerudo ruins. Beautiful archways, towering spires, and elaborately carved and painted murals depicted scenes of shipbuilding, of hunting, and statuary of two Gerudo leading their people out of the desert. 

His eyes lingered on that scene, tracing over a familiar pyramidal shape that he’d seen in passing. Link had also spoken of that place - and the insectiod corpse-queen who had lived below it, buzzing dust up into the air.

The palace itself dripped in precious jewels shaped with expert craftsmanship, to the point where he wondered if Goron had any part in it. No! This was Gerudo skill, through and through. 

It was more obvious, the further he walked, that the Gerudo people had truly lost a terrible amount of knowledge, if this was what their sister city was able to build.

In the Grand Hall of the palace, two people sat atop magnificent thrones, themselves elevated on a dias at the end of a row of Gerudo dressed in gleaming armor and heavy-looking animal helmets. 

The leaders - for they must be, wearing such fine clothes and elaborate crowns like Lady Riju did - turned and spoke to each other, instead of to him. 

“The Vai comes to visit our home.”

“The Vai comes to speak our language.” 

Kass felt his feathers bristle when he realized the low, droning tone of speech came from a human throat, rather than a Rito’s beak. Still, they turned to him expectantly, like he ought to respond to such an indirect inquiry. 

“This humble one comes as an ambassador, my Ladies.” He bowed, sweeping his wings out to show he was unarmed at the waist and wrist - though, they may not understand the gesture. “Lady Riju of the Gerudo have calmed the Eternal Sandstorm, and now reach out a hand in curiosity and welcome, to their sisters far across the desert.” 

There was a long silence, as his words were regarded. The two again turned to speak with each other. 

“The Voe claims the Sandstorm sleeps.”

“The Voe claims our sister lives.”

They turned to him. He noticed that ones’ jewelry glittered with blue gems, while the other featured red. That was one way to tell them apart, Kass supposed. Twins weren't rare among Rito, but they tended to perform more obvious ways of differentiating themselves, like dyeing feathers or marking their beak.

“Yes. Vah Naboris, who created the storm, now sleeps among the dunes. Chief Makeela Riju remembered her sisters of the desert, and now reaches a hand out in welcome.”

The silence after his statement did not abate, so he added; “She wished for me to communicate her sincerity, and gratitude for the opportunity to learn from those who escaped the first ruin of the town.”

Riju had said no such thing. This was meant only to be a scouting trip, for Gerudo to follow in his wingbeats at a later time. 

Kass, however, had been able to piece together rumors of some sort of Calamity, which had befallen Gerudo Town in the far past. Whether it had been Calamity Ganon, or some other force of destruction, there was a single point in history where all records of the Gerudo simply… cease to exist. 

Someone wanted them annihilated, badly. 

Someone had almost succeeded. 

This city, as it survived today, was proof that some of the Gerudo people had survived with both their lives and their cultural knowledge. 

The twin leaders gestured, and spoke in the language that he didn’t understand. The animal-headed guards escorted him back outside without further comment, housing him in a large room with billowing, draping white curtains framing the walls and windows. A lovely bed was already prepared, intricately embroidered sheets featuring several motifs he recognized. The jars of milk and wine, too, had shapes so achingly familiar to what he saw at the Oasis Bazaar. 

Kass was fed and watered well, and prompted to sleep in the room with a series of miming gestures and unintelligible words. 

He listened as best he could to the evening sounds outside the window, trying to memorize refrains of instruments and voices singing in the distance. Even if he couldn’t understand their words, surely some things transcended language. He’d play songs of their people back to Riju and the other Gerudo people as soon as he could.  He wanted to see them remember. He wanted them to reconnect with a past that had been lost - or stolen from them.

His notebook filled quickly with snatches of melodies, and syllables transcribed as best as he could understand them. 

When he woke up the next morning, he was given a lovely breakfast of fruit, meat, and nuts, all utterly unfamiliar to him. He was escorted back to the palace, though the twin leaders were not present to greet him. 

Instead, an animal-headed guard regarded him closely, then presented a beautifully carved gift, to deliver back to Lady Riju. 

The serpent-headed helmet’s eyes lit up when they spoke, frills angling with subtle whirring of mechanisms. He’d only seen such advanced technology up-close when working with the Sheikah on their ancient technology, or of the Zonai ruins. 

Was Gerudo once among the great technological masters? Or, were they still to this day, except for the separation of distance making them seem like strangers? 

Kass was sent back flying to Hyrule, a heavy gift tied securely to his chest. 

He soared along the coastline for a while, before cutting back inland to cross the vast river of white dust, and back into the blazing Gerudo desert. His precious cargo made the trip seem all the more urgent, and he flew through the night despite winds whispering of an oncoming sandstorm. 

When the storm finally raged, and dust blocked out the sky, Kass swooped into the familiar circle of palm trees and gleaming water, ducking into the inn there. He shook the sand from his feathers, paid for his stay, and settled in the far back - gift tucked carefully under his wings, so that nothing could befall it.

He had not seen how the Twin Sisters had watched him go, eyes shining golden in the morning light.

He did not feel the tiny heartbeat of a creature slowly slithering into knots, suspended inside the golden canopic jar.

Catching up with old friends would have to wait. He had a delivery to make.

Chapter Text

Sam wondered, at first, if she was still dreaming. 

An enormous parrot speaking with the raspy, resonant tones of a Goa’uld was already surreal. Hearing the words of that tongue twisted into polite forms of address was simply bizarre. The self-proclaimed gods were never polite, and even the dialect that the Tok’ra used tended toward self-aggrandizing pronouns.

A flicker of blue light caught her eye, but when she sat up to look their blonde guide had already put whatever-it-was away. She was tying her veil back on, then fussing with pulling some golden locks of hair out to frame her face. 

She met Sam’s eyes for a moment, made an absent gesture in her direction, then hopped up to go greet the… giant bird, with a flurry of gestures.  

“Ah! Good morning, Link! Did you sleep well?” 

Their guide (Link?) nodded, replying with a flurry of sign language. Beside them, Daniel was trying hard to not seem obviously riveted. The bird nodded, and gestured to one of the bags slung over its chest. 

“The expedition across the desert was more successful than even I had hoped for. A Gerudo sister-town sent me back with a gift, and showed interest in learning more about Chief Riju.” The bird puffed up its feathers in what she hoped was excitement. “Link, their city was wonderous. Like looking at what the ruins must have been a thousand years ago.” 

A pause, while Link replied. 

Sam took the time to shake out her clothes (could never be too careful about snakes and scorpions in deserts) and check on Colonal O’Neill. 

He was awake, complained of aching and fatigue - strange dreams kept waking him up, and a deeply unsettling writhing feeling when in total darkness  - but feeling somewhat better now that the sun had risen. 

The bird replied;

“Ah, no, I didn’t see any. They’d likely appreciate the Champion’s assistance in guarding the first caravan, if you want an excuse to go look.” 

Their guide hummed, rocking on her heels. She gestured to Daniel, who tilted his head. 

“Sorry, but I don’t understand the signed-language.”

“That must have been difficult, in the Depths.” 

Even Sam could hear the capitalization in that title. 

It straightened suddenly. 

“Oh! You didn’t understand the introduction, then- My apologies!” 

The bird suddenly stood up, sweeping out its giant wings in something akin to a bow. 

“My name is Kass, of the Rito. I am a historian of sorts - a gatherer of ancient songs and stories. I’d sing for you to introduce my craft, but I recently returned from traveling, and my instrument is packed away at home for safekeeping, with my wife and children.” He tilted his head, lifting a wing to brush over his beak in thought. “I suppose I could recite something that doesn’t need accompaniment…” he mused. 

“If you still wanted to meet with Lady Riju before morning court, you’ll want to hustle,” the innkeeper spoke up from her spot at a little cooking pot, stirring something with her backed turned.

“Ah, yes, thank you for the reminder, and your hospitality, Lady Michoo. I’ll take my leave.” 

Kass swept out of the pavilion, looking even more like he belonged in the tropics in full sunlight, before spreading his great wings and flapping into the sky.

Michoo handed out bowls of breakfast to her remaining guests - a rice-like grain made into a porridge, and a handful of spices, nuts, and a sweet orange fruit syrup drizzled atop. 

Link removed the veil to eat with a gusto, and Sam wondered how old she was.

“The Champion claims you cannot understand him.” Michoo sighed, while handing Teal’c the final bowl. She puttered back to serve herself one as well.

“But he knows the cure for a Gloom infection. He says you should stay at the Oasis until he returns with the ingredients to make it. Hang around here if you want, might take a day or two.” 

“Thank you very much. We appreciate the thought and effort on our behalf.” Daniel replied for the group, bowing his head in a rough imitation of what Kass did. 

Michoo just barked a laugh. 

“Just stay out of trouble. 20 rupee a person if you need another night.” 

Link said a quick goodbye and scampered off. 

“…rupee, Lady Michoo?” Daniel asked delicately.

She huffed. 

“It’s not too expensive, so don’t start about that.” 

She caught their hesitating silence.

“Ach, don’t tell me you lost your money in the Depths! It was the Yiga, wasn’t it? Too devoted for their own good. There’s honor and there’s foolishness and the Yiga clan havent the sense of a chuchoo.

Michoo continued to grumble under her breath as she started gathering their empty bowls. 

“Actually,” Daniel offered, trying to project an innocent sort of sheepishness, “We’re just from very far away. Is ‘rupee’ the local currency?”

Michoo paused, glancing at Sam with a deeply skeptical expression. Then she sagged, head hanging.

“Of course it’s something like that.” 

“We can help out, to pay our way with labor, if we need to.” Sam offered, “I’ll take over O’Neill’s portion until he’s recovered. We can do chores, or move something heavy.” 

“Hey! ” Her commanding officer protested. It was for his own good. 

But Michoo shook her head. 

“You’re Voe, so the city won’t allow your entry, even if I wanted to send you on errands. The roads have been cleared, but further out is still rife with monsters. No, you can wait for your cure to arrive. Gloom poisoning is serious business, and I won’t have rumors appear about being an ungracious host.” 

She harumphed, turning her back to start scrubbing out the cookpot with a finality to that conversation. 

Daniel tried asking more questions about the language, and what it meant to be a Voe, but Michoo shooed them out of the pavilion, citing she had work to do, and didn’t want nosy archaeologists getting underfoot. 

Well, what she said was more like a compound verb ‘Recording-The People’s-History’ with a profession-title tacked onto the end, but it made Danny visibly twitch in excitement that they had the concept nailed down enough that she could call him out on his behavior. 

“Go look for a Hylian Archaeologist coming up the road.” She grumped at his pleading expression, using a proper title that time. “They’re always coming in and out of Gerudo town these days. They wear outfits like yours, all brown and glass and metal. If it weren’t for the ears and the height, I’d mistake you for one of them. 

So, they went outside. 

Jack seemed to relax a little when the sunlight forced what few black veins had appeared over his knee overnight to writhe and retreat under the skin.

Daniel was scribbling furiously in his notebook, and Sam joined Teal’c in surveying the surrounding desert. 

It almost felt like Abydos again, except far rockier. Great bluffs and mesas rising up out of the dunes. Far away, a shining oasis reflected the open sky. 

Behind Michoo’s pavilion was the walled town they’d glimpsed from a distance. 

Gerudo Town, she’d called it. 

Up close, it was just a long wall, surrounded by sand, with an archway cut through the wall with guards on either side. Michoo warned them against trying to enter without an escort. The prison inside Gerudo town didn’t care if you were foreigners, if you broke the law. 

There was another tent, with rough poles holding in what looked like…. Wooly walruses. Sam eyed them for a while, watching them wiggle themselves under the sand. Once, someone approached the tent, then came outside with a rope and a sled. They hitched the rope to some kind of harness around the walrus, and then opened the gate. 

They raced off across the sands, walrus somehow leaping through it like water. It didn’t make sense. The sand was solid enough that it should just land on the surface, not… do that. 

Once, a pair of elf-like people came down the road, and split at the gate. One went inside, and the other headed in their direction. 

“Ho there, fellow travelers. Is it already full for the night?” The voice was far more masculine than Link’s. “Gartan’s my name, if we’ve never met. I think I would have remembered Gerudo with Hylian coloring!” He laughed, stepping into the shadow of the wall. 

Up close, he was also quite short. The top of his head would barely come to her collar bone, if she stood up straight. 

“Nice to meet you, Gartan.” Sam greeted, since the boys were occupied with other things, and she was the one being addressed anyway. “No, the inn should have space still, and I also don’t think we’ve met before. Do you come this way often?” 

He nodded and smiled, shrugging his pack off his shoulders. “Been coming here more lately, now that my dear Naia was moved to a post in the city proper, instead of out by the Zonai ruins.” He sighed, sounding forlorn. “Voe might not be allowed, but she takes my heart with her each time we part.” 

Sam glanced back at the archway, still not sure what ‘voe’ meant in this context. 

“Was that Naia, who went inside without you?” 

Gartan blinked and looked back too. 

“Who- Oh! No, no, that was a traveler I was escorting. Naia is Gerudo. Speaking of work- do you need anything?” 

Sam blinked at him, confused at the non-sequiter. 

“Need anything….?”

Gartan hesitated, suddenly looking unsure. 

“They’re foreigners.” Michoo suddenly appeared at Sam’s elbow, carrying a rolled-up rug on her hunched shoulder. “Didn’t know what a rupee was, so they’re flat broke.” The old woman squinted at him, the copper and red in her hair glinting in the harsh desert sun. “You treat them nicely, young man.” 

Gartan’s tension eased and he patted his fist to his chest. “Of course, of course, Lady Michoo. Could I trouble you for a bed tonight?” 

She squinted at him. 

“You can stay the day, but I don’t want to hear you and that vai fussing at night.” 

He gasped, and Sam could easily see that the scandalized expression was exaggerated.

“How could you say such a thing about my beloved Naia! She doesn’t do something so uncouth as fuss!” 

Michoo rolled her eyes and flung the rug over a line strung between two poles. 

“Not defending yourself?” 

Gartan flicked a hand through straw-colored hair, jutting his chin up. 

“As if you could stop me.” 

Michoo swatted at his head, an apparently familiar gesture that he only tilted his face away from, so her fingertips could bounce off his hair. 

“Stop with your impertinence, you brat. Go do your work.” 

Michoo grumbled away, and Gartan glanced back at Sam. 

“Foreigners, huh? Far enough that your money isn’t the same.” He tilted his head. “Then, do you have anything to trade?” 

Sam and Jack spread out some of their gear on a blanket that Gartan helpfully rolled out. They were careful not to expose too much advanced tech, trying to roughly gauge what Gartan might find valuable, without making them a target.

“So what’s a rupee worth, anyway?” Jack asked, after the elf-like man had started turning over objects to examine them. 

“Well, it depends on where we are.” He reached into his own pack and pulled out a small red and yellow fruit. “Apples like this grow plentifully back home in Hylia, and you can find them in nearly every forest, so they’re usually very inexpensive. Maybe one or two rupee. Here in the desert, where it’s impossible to grow them, I can charge 5 rupee for a nice-looking apple and folks aren’t mad about it. But it was easy to obtain for me, it just took time to bring them here.” He tucked the fruit away again. “For something that’s dangerous, like monster parts to make weapons out of, that’s more valuable.”

“So then, for something that’s very unusual to the region, and impossible to obtain, since trade routes don’t exist…” Sam held up her utility knife, unsheathing the blade a few inches to show its edge, then snapping it shut again and offering it to the merchant. 

Gartan perked up and began turning the knife over in his hands. 

“A stainless steel blade, ergonomic handle, and a compass built into the back!” Jack commented cheerfully, gesturing to his own knife like he was in an old TV commercial. 

Gartan gasped, holding it up to watch the needle move. 

“That’s old Sheikah tech!” He paused, expression slowly softening from delight to resignation. He offered the knife back mournfully. “I’m sorry, I can’t afford to buy this from you at an honest price. Magnesis spellwork isn’t something I was prepared for.” 

Sam tilted her head and asked; 

“You have swords…Do you have ironworking, here?” 

He nodded.

“Then, I could sell you the secret to making magnets, if you help us find something important.” 

Gartan froze, eyes going wide.

“You… know how to teach Magnesis?” 

Sam shook her head.  “I don’t know what you mean by Magnesis. I know how to use a magnet to turn other small items into magnets. Is that knowledge interesting to you?” 

Gartan frowned, hands flexing on his knees where he sat cross-legged. 

“Tell me what you’re looking for, and I’ll tell you if I can help you find it.” 

Sam pulled a pencil and paper from her bag, sketching out the Stargate and the DHD that was supposed to accompany it. 

“We’re looking for this - the Chappa'ai. In other languages, it’s called a star-gate. An ancient people used it to travel, and we need to find it to get back home.” 

Gartan squinted at the drawing, tilting his head. Sam braced herself for confusion and denial - the few races they encountered with the level of diversity and spread-out settlements often had a Stargate they’d buried millennia ago. 

With a sinking heart, she wondered if tossing the ‘gate into the depths of a massive cave system was their way of getting rid of it. 

Still, it was worth a shot! 

“Oh, yeah, those show up at Zonai ruins all the time.” 

“What?” Jack squawked. 

Sam echoed that sentiment in her heart. 

Gartan glanced up at them and nodded certainly. 

“I fell in love with Naia when she was guarding the Zonai ruins in Gerudo. Some of the other Archaeologists kept drawings of the other ruins they’d found around Hyrule. 

“Do they have the symbols around the outer ring, like-” Sam started to sketch them in, but Gartan was already nodding.

“Yeah, some of the symbols are repeating, some of them are unique - it depends on the ring. Bigger ones have more symbols.” 

O’Neill leaned forward. “How big we talkin’?” 

Sam closed her eyes. Of course Jack would find a way to make Goa’uld sound crass. 

“Big enough for a house to fit through.” 

She and Colonel O’Neill exchanged a glance. 

Big enough for a ship. 

If they really had multiple Stargates, and weren’t overrun by Goa’uld already… 

“Are any of them in use?” 

Gartan hesitated at her question. He held up his hand and wobbled it back and forth. 

“The folks over at Tarrey Town are working on figuring out the old Zonai tech, with mixed luck. If you can track him down, The Champion ought to know if one is up and working - he’s always sticking his nose into the problems around Hyrule.”

Sam and O’Neill exchanged glances. 

“...is his name Link?” She asked, wondering if there was more than one person called ‘Champion.’ 

Gartan rolled his eyes. 

“Of course you’ve already met. I swear, he’s got a nose like a bloodhound for weird stuff.” He clapped his hands to his knees. “Anyway! There’s ruins all over. I can put a word in with the Gerudo to keep an ear out for rumors about working gates. Rito can spread the word faster, what with their flying, but they tend not to go into stormy or monster-filled areas.”

He sighed. “Not sure that info is worth magnetism, but it’s what I’ve got.” 

Sam shook her head. 

“That’s plenty to get started on. Really, we were worried that we were completely stranded, so your confidence about seeing Stargates is a huge load off our shoulders, thank you.” 

She spent the afternoon building a fire with him, heating up bits of metal and aligning their fields with a magnet she pried out of one of her carrying cases. 

He ended up with a small handful of weak magnets. 

“Electricity actually creates magnets on its own.” Sam mentioned offhand as she watched him stick the magnet to his own knife over and over with such delight. His pointed ear actually perked up toward her. 

O’Neill shot her a look, and she shut her mouth, despite being ready for a small lecture. He was right. They needed to keep some of their cards close, to negotiate for access to those Stargates - if they really were what Gartan thought they were. 

It’s possible he was mistaken. 

In the end, Gartan decided that the knowledge was worth more than just some rupees, and demanded that they ask all the questions they could think of. 

By the gleam in Danny’s eye, he’d built quite a stockpile. 

However, their interrogation was paused before it could begin by the sound of flapping fabric on the wind, growing closer. 

Link appeared, still in that pastel outfit that Sam could only see as feminine, on a small hang-glider that boggled her mind as to how it was staying aloft. It didn’t seem like it could hold that much weight! 

Link landed, dropped the glider, and swept inside Michoo’s pavilion without even saying ‘hello.’ Or, well- waving ‘hello’, or something. 

Then again, judging from how many people seemed to know him by name, it was possible he was a more powerful political figure than they first assumed. 

“Hey, Champion.” 

Link tilted his ear toward Gartan’s call, still stuffing firewood under Michoo’s cookpot, much to her harrumphing and grumbling. 

“These folks want to know if there’s an active Star-Gate, uh.. Chappa'ai?” Gartan looked to Sam for confirmation that he said it right, and she nodded. When she looked back at Link, he was staring at them with an odd expression. 

Sam took out the sketch she’d made, sidling into the pavilion to offer it to him. Link took the paper carefully, seeming to examine the texture of it with raised eyebrows before actually absorbing the drawn content. His eyebrows dipped down for a second, head tilting before shooting back up. 

He offered the paper back, turning to strike a piece of flint against a sword she didn’t see him carry earlier. Sparks flashed, and the wood bloomed into fire. 

He signed something slowly - more careful than the casual chatter that he gave Kass this morning. 

“He knows of one.” Gartan translated for her, “In the Gerudo desert. Within the Lightning Temple, one was active. However, it was extremely dangerous, even with the help of Chief Riju and the Royal Guards to clear the way.” 

Link met her eyes, blue eyes hard as he flicked the last gesture toward the city gates outside.

“It is deep within Gerudo territory, and lethally dangerous. I will not take travelers there, without royal approval and, ideally, their protection.” 

Gartan finished his translation with a tone of finality that matched Link’s expression. 

Link cooked some sort of stir-fry with stiff shoulders, adding in the crushed stem and petals of a flower that almost resembled a daylily, if daylilies came with streaks of shining gold on them. 

He served it to Jack with a brusqueness that she’d call awkward if Daniel had been the one to do it. Then, his shoulders slumped. 

He signed something, Gartan hummed, and Sam had to clear her throat and stare at him before the elf remembered they couldn’t understand. 

“Oh! He said that he can bring you to petition Chief Riju this evening, but it’s unlikely she’ll agree.”

Sam nodded. 

“Is there anything my team should do, to show our sincerity?” 

Gartan shook his head. 

“Not ‘you’, ‘You.’” 

The two words were differentiated only by a stressed ending. One to mean ‘You, the audience who can hear me, Plural’ and the other meaning ‘You, the one I’m addressing. Singular. 

“Voe aren’t allowed inside Gerudo town.” Gartan reminded them. 

“But you’re a Vai.”