Findings, Part 3
Warning for: view and brief pondering of human willing sacrifices
Valley of the Kings, 22nd May 2004
Barely eighteen hours isn’t enough to be with someone, especially when you know that it will be the last time you are with that person when he is technically, tangibly alive. It doesn’t help that you couldn’t spend those eighteen hours just with that person alone: doing whatever the two of you want to do, and/or going to wherever the two of you want to go, and/or saying whatever the two of you want to say.
But the eighteen hours are up, anyway.
Much of those hours I spent floating the Jaffa one by one to Bill’s bedroom, reviving each of them privately after reading the notes left by Teal’c on them, and having a small conversation with the respective Jaffa about where they are, what was going on, who would they meet and interact with, and what was going to happen then and now to us all. Black, meanwhile and just as privately, caught up with Arga, who turned up to be more than just fellow conspirators with him in inciting rebellion against the other Goa’uld lords and ladies. I didn’t know what was going on with my other friends aside from him at that time, not even Sai’yo, except for hoping that they could help me settle in the confused, disorientated and rather nonplussed Jaffa like we had hastily planned.
And now here we are: before the “pyramid” that Gringotts wanted me to crack open, which is actually an illusioned spaceship surrounded by protective wards powered by the self-sacrifice of only-Black-knows-how-many-people, which contains people and things that they and Black deemed precious enough to sacrifice their lives for, which Black intends to gift to me – wards and all.
I wish I could renege on my promise that we would be here right at this hour and I would let Black go.
I wish I could find something to stall the parting for another day, or even just one more hour.
I wish I could say or do something – anything – to make him pause for even just a minute more.
But Black is in front of me, after saying goodbye to me and Arga and the others, and already reaching to the first layer of the warding.
Well, it’s actually Sai’yo who moves and makes him pause in the end, by grabbing his arm and spinning him round by that arm to face me, before pushing me till I bump against him.
And he takes the hint first, wrapping his arms tightly round me and even lifting me up like a little child, cocooning me in flesh and magic and soul, similar but different from what I experienced with my not-human mother.
His escence bathes me as I reciprocate the heartfelt embrace, going so far as tucking my face into the crook of his neck, and I am aware that he has melted into the warding only when the said warding – the first layer of it, the illusion – peels away – no, retracts – before my eyes, to show the grounded spaceship in all its alien glory. I am largely unaware because he is still there with me, as if still corporeal, though I can’t see him with my eyes.
Black keeps his promise. He is still here.
Ha’tak at Valley of the Kings, 22nd May 2004
Arga leads the contingent up the ramp of the ship – and it’s a contingent indeed, composed of one witch-Goa’uld mix, one Muggle, three house-elves, three wizards, and five hundred and sixty-four Jaffa. And all of us are armed in one way or another, from Daniel to the Jaffa.
It feels like we are raiding a warded mansion or something like that, instead of exploring an alien contraption – a supposedly benign gift from Black, at that.
Fortunately for now, the Jaffa has obedience to their so-called “betters” well-engrained in them, and Teal’c apparently set me up as one of the said “betters,” hence it was not hard – too easy, in fact – to convince them – the bulk of our exploration group – to look and act inconspicuous during this mission.
On another note, and just as fortunately, Bill snags a hold on Arga’s shoulder before she reaches the yawning mouth of the ship, which shows the “lovely” view of a large room with golden walls, empty but for two bodies in Jaffa uniform and armour laid out neatly on the far corner.
“The wards are thick and… wary,” he explains when she whirls round and glares at him in irritation. “I don’t want to find you fried, you know.”
She huffs and dips her head, thanking him grudgingly but sincerely enough. Then, with her head once more raised up high, she throws an imperious glance at me, who has been walking beside Bill behind her, all in all looking more like a petulant princess than a regal queen.
I raise an eyebrow, somehow feeling rather tickled. Then, perhaps unwisely, I tease her, “What? Forgot you’re a witch? What did the Department teach these days?”
She raises a hand, perhaps to slap my shoulder or something as is Hermione’s wont. But, strangely, Sai’yo tenses up beside me and hustles me away from the path of her possible strike. That overprotective man…. I glare at him, disgruntled at my little bit of fun with my friend – well, and her companion – being interrupted.
But he has eyes only for the said friend and companion, glaring much fiercer and much more seriously than I am towards him.
Huh?
“Sai’yo?”
The only bit of acknowledgement he offers me is to hug me close with one arm, while he addresses Hermione-Arga in a low snarl that sends me and her into open-mouth shock: “Put that away.”
Soon enough, though, her shock turns into confusion, then to blatant hurt as she lowers her hand. The metallic sheen of her armband – one of her mismatched armbands, apparently – catches my eye, but the attention refocuses on her as Arga huffs out, “Do you think so low of me, Jaffa? – I meant to only hit him in jest.”
She whirls round, then, facing the entrance again, and thrusts out the same hand forward. And nothing happens, but for the momentum slowing considerably half-way.
She must have struck the second layer of the warding, meant to protect the outside and directly inside of the ship, as Black explained to me while we were walking here.
I prove it true by following in her wake with a resigned sigh, after slipping out of Sai’yo’s slackened side-hug. I can confront the both of them later, alongside many other matters, but now is for another experience entirely… something that I did not welcome whole-heartedly, in the first place.
Walking through this second layer of warding feels like walking through something thick and tingly but textured, like an electrified field of cotton candy.
A field of electrified cotton candy with the flavour of Black.
As strange as the electric-socket-flavoured Every-Flavour Bean I got the misfortune to eat last year, maybe, in both feeling and sensation, but I put my hand out and wave it about a little in the half-tangible field, anyway.
If this is the only way I can interact with Black from now on, then I take it as it is. “Make do with what you have” has always been my motto since early childhood, and this is just some permutation of it.
O-O-O-O
The third layer of the warding is more of an ambience in the air inside of the ship rather than a true layer. The heady feeling that it gives blessedly distracts me from the pairs of bodies that we find periodically as we cautiously explore the hallways and rooms and holds inside.
The human sacrifices. Because now I can see that there are cauterised holes on their respective chests. Surprisingly, though, they are all intact, lying within the rune circles that look to be written in blood.
And then, in the numerous on-board barracks, we find non-sacrificed bodies.
Comparatively few are Jaffa soldiers, at that. Most are women and children and elder people. Families.
“They are all in stasis,” Hermione informs me as she sidles closer, for the first time since Sai’yo confronted her.
I nod. “Well-preserved. But I don’t see runes here.”
“Runes? Those weren’t runes,” Daniel pipes up from further into the current barrack as he peers round. “Symbols, yes, but they didn’t really match any writing of any specific culture. I mostly expected hieroglyffs to be used, or at least cuneiforms….”
Hermione grins, half-heartedly, though runes are usually her passion alongside… well, everything else. I frown and shoot a look at Sai’yo, who gazes unrepentantly back at me from his station nearby, talking lowly with George.
“Magical runes are rather different from the mundane ones the people at that time used. More compact and versatile, for one,” I hear the witch lecturing to the wrapped audience of one, meanwhile, while slowly but surely making her way to him, who approaches her half the distance.
I roll my eyes at the two of them, then motion four of the many escorts that we have to the chattering pair. “Keep them safe and out of trouble, would you?” I request as the four Jaffa approach. “I’d keep an eye on them, but I’ve got an inkling I’ll be preoccupied with something else.”
And just as I am saying that, the mobile phone stashed in my left trouser pocket, opposite my collection of comm mirrors, rings.
My eyebrows twitch.
“Damn. I shouldn’t have said that.”
I am aware that I have said that last part aloud only when I hear George snickering at me.
My mood doesn’t improve any when I notice that the caller is Tony Stark.
And he immediately demands to join me wherever I am, when I answer the call.
“What if I am in Antarctica right now?” I struggle to keep my tone level and quiet as I speak and leave the barracks, not wanting to indirectly poke the wary, tense and armed Jaffa – not a good combination, that – guarding and crowding the hallway into some… hyperbolic reaction.
“Wear my extreme-climate gear,” is his ready answer. “Got a nicely set up bunker there, too, so we don’t need to camp out on the ice.”
“We,” I repeat, my eyebrows twitching again. – This is so not fair: losing the steady, humorous, even somewhat parental Black, only to gain this pushy, trample-happy, annoying chatterbox.
And, “Well, of course!” the said chatterbox dares to sound scandalised.
I scowl outright, this time, and fight not to stomp my feet on the decking. “Aren’t you working?” I search round for a good excuse. Ms. Langford said he’s a dangerous man, after all, and I believe her to a good degree, so it wouldn’t do to just brush him aside.
“Technology, man, technology,” he chirps to that, unfortunately. “Sais refused to say, but last satelite tracking found you in Egypt – somewhere in Kairo… and now you’ve moved somewhere, though the map doesn’t say it’s far. I’m on the way right now. Won’t take long till I’m there.”
Aaand, my patience ends there.
“Why in the world did you ask to join us, then, if you’re going to just do that anyway?”
My voice echoes loudly in the suddenly totally silent area… and now I’ve just realised that my wayward feet have brought me to somewhere totally new.
Oh. Not good.
I look round frantically. – Nope. No Jaffa, no Bill and George, no Sai’yo, no Hermione-Arga, no Daniel….
“Damn you, Stark.”
My feet – or something else – have brought me to a dead-end hall, the centre of which sports a large, elaborate ritual sketch… that is still glowing faintly… especially the large boulder sitting on the middle of it.
“Oh, Merlin.”