Dust rises in puffs, the fine film covering dirty bare feet as they shuffle along...
Faint grunts of effort, carried on the still air...
The acrid scent of sweat and blood, fear and despair...
Dark eyes devoid of feeling... of hope... of life stare vacantly ahead...
Bracketed by gold armoured soldiers with the magnificent stylized heads of mythic beasts... and those bare of skull, save the metallic glint of the skull cap to bald head...
Fierce eyes, alit with fire and fervor shining beneath the dark scar of the elegant tattoo lying on the forehead between...

A white-hot surge of heat washed over her, causing her to gasp, gurgling on congealing blood, yet not fully waken. She felt herself trembling, but she couldn't stop. She couldn't tell if she was cold or hot or afraid or...
Faint rain of gravel... Wet, hacking cough... taste of blood...
Body wracked in incredible pain...
A shining tunnel spiraling inward... a distant door... A figure in swirling white, welcoming arms outstretched... Whispers... Safe... Calm... Sleep...
She sighed, relaxing despite herself as she let the darkness close in around her. Consume her in its completeness. It was easier that way...
And the lights, flickering from far away drawing closer.. and closer... were so very pretty...

*Small hands, scraped and bleeding grip the boulder high above the camp. Pain eaking up scratched arms. She could hear them below... discussing the fate that would soon come.
Echidnae was coming. There would be a 'celebration' to herald her arrival.
She winced, scrubbing away a tear. The Storyteller had spoken often of the darkness of Echidnae, the great Spider Queen and her hunger for blood. Some stories even claimed she drank it... bathed in it...
She felt a lump rising in her throat, a tremulous urge in her belly to heave. She shook her head once forcefully, squeezing her eyes shut.
She had to focus.

Eyes opening slowly, a shift in vision from the devastation below to fall upon the book splayed open before her. The crude sketches of the cave's depth, the notes from her Teachings, the memoirs of her dreams... Drawings of many-legged beasts, eyes of light, winged creatures, sacrifice and birth- yet not as a woman gives birth... but an abberration.
-Abomination-
She heard her father's scream, his furious eyes glaring at her...
He could not see... they could not see...
But the Ancients had known.
She had tried to warn them... The Seer had cried out- and was mocked and sent away, silencing him.
He had failed.
Now she... she had failed.

Stones gripped in her fist, aching to throw them.. to pummel from above the desecration below. But that would be foolish...
They believed her dead... gone... a feast for the Xy'mith and Koreni within the jungle...
A sacrifice...
'You must run! Hide! Fear not the Truth, for it comes for you! Embrace the Truth, young Seeker- for if you do not, it will be silenced forever... and Justice shall ever be unmet...'
Wild eyes, rolling in his skeletal face. Wild hair, waving arms covered in the sacred tattoos of his Training.
Much like the one she was given the day she was Chosen.
And now... the acolyte must be the Seeker, the Source... She Who Remembers... the Healer of All Things.
'In you, rest our hopes, A'alen!'

She swallowed, pushing back several locks of sweaty hair from her face, her eyes drifting to the remains of her village below.
Nae, It was better to believe her dead.. to forget about her...
Only as the Forgotten, the Lost... might she petition the gods.. the Ancient Ones... to show her the way to free them all..

She closed her eyes, taking strength in the Histories. The Stories had been full of great missions of salvation and glory... of redemption and reclamation of what was lost and forgotten. She would be the one to bring them to life.
She... would be the one to save them...
... for no other could.

She could hear faint rumbling, feel the minute after tremors under her skin, but she had no strength to move. Weak and battered, she felt frozen in place, helpless against what was to come. She took in a deep breath, only to cough and retch violently as the blood and dirt choked her.
More gravel and dust trickled onto her face, but she no longer cared. There was no thought to brushing it off her face... her hand lifting just enough to perform the action before resting once more in a pool of tacky blood. Her knees scraped the stone floor briefly in reflex, her body tensing before sinking once more into unconsciousness.
All that was real.. was the dream...
That was all that was ever real...

* "Jaffa! Kree!"
She jerked, flattening herself atop the cliff lip, clenching her eyes shut and waiting for the alert. Somehow they'd seen her... Somehow...
Moments passed... Nothing...
She peered over the edge, her dry mouth convulsing into a semblance of a swallow. Her mouth was full of ashes and dust, dry and painful.
Hundreds of the Hated now swarmed... like beetles on a carcass...
Seething before, behind and around their Queen.
She flinched as their staffs powered up in a brilliant white... followed by the screams of the doomed- cut obscenely short...
She nearly gagged on the warm rush of burnt flesh...
The richly dressed woman with the glowing eyes scanned the remainder of her people... her black-clawed fingers reaching out...
Choosing...
Damning...
Her voice resonating across the land as she ordered them to be split...
Those of Worth...
Those of Waste.
Families severed, lives broken-
The blood and the burning, the cries of agony, and the screams of children continued...*

Another spasm, gagging cough.. sour taste of bile, but her stomach was empty. Her head was throbbing brilliant flashes of light through her eyes, along with the throbbing pain...
She tried to pull herself up.. to slide away from the blood and bilious vomit.. but only managed to fall back into it.. her tears mixing with the mess...
She saw their faces, their eyes again and again as they fell... Saw the Daemon's look of boredom. Her people's passing hadn't even merited emotion... Uncaring as the promises of the future were cut short.
Once more, the echoes of Prophesy from the Seer returned to her: Blood will bathe the streets, the Usae and Y'iae will darken in mourning, but Salvation will be absent... All will fall to ash before the sun has kissed the Northern seas.

*Ancient pictographs marching along the stone wall... Order in the formation, yet no language known to her. Similar.. yet foreign...
If only she could make sense from the images...
Awareness hovering on the edge of insight...
The screams had ceased a couple of fingers of time ago- but the intermittent crashes of foliage and ghostly commands in echoing timbre far below had not.
They were still searching for survivors... Which meant the horrible torture of her people was mostly over now and the escaped daemons from the greater pits of Nekkros would soon pass through the Sacred Ring of Kaelos once more...
Or what -had- been the Sacred Ring.. before it was so defiled when the two moons had kissed and the Prophesy of the Failing had been fulfilled.
They had not been faithful, Aleon the Caller had warned.
Kaelos would withdraw his protection and the Dark Ones would come, Haraek the Seer had said.
But none had listened...
Just as no one had listened to the ancient Prophetess and Teacher, Rhiani generations ago.
Not even when she had shown them the ancient texts... Spoke the ancient words.
Not even when the Dark Ones had come the Century before and claimed half the village for their own. Those remaining blaming Rhiani, despite her warnings... for her abandonment at their time of greatest need. Exiling her to die alone in the X'thuari Forests.
And now Aleon, the Caller of Kaelos was dead...
Now Haraek, the Seer of Light was dead.
And she- She was Forgotten.
Nameless.
Alone.
If they had gone... then she was truly alone and she feared nothing... Nothing she could do... would change anything.
All was lost.
She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath and let it out softly and slowly.
Yet, she must continue... For the memories and honor of those fallen below.
They could not be forgotten.
And those claimed by Echidnae... should not suffer in vain.

Tears fell as she set her mind once more to the indecipherable caricatures marching the wall. Her bloodied fingers tracing the glyphs and figures with a small frown. She had seen them before... in histories referencing the Western Caves of Eron...
The Forbidden Tunnels...
A tremor passed over her, and she swallowed convulsively.
Haraek's words... returning to her. Orders in terror, desperation... Dire words of the Storyteller echoing from the past... Pronouncements by Aleon, cursing the future...
Hesitation mixed with duty and... knowledge... Chilling her soul...
He had told her to go there... yet in her fear, she had run to the familiar...
The safe...*

She gasped, her eyes flying open to stare into the blackness. She could feel it slowly consuming her like a thick, living thing. Choking her breath, crushing her body...
Fear slipped in, prickling her skin, twisting her stomach...
Calm yourself...
Flashbacks of before... Visions of histories long forgotten- Present, past... future? Flickering through her mind like fireflies at dusk.
The sense of something wrong.. something forbidden...
Eyes glowing in the dark...
Dark hand reaching out... stealing her breath...

She winced, rolling over, pulling her wadded cloak around her against the chill on cold cave floor. Her body jerked again, retching up more blood. She grimaced, attempting to lean up- to move away- but her arms and body would not cooperate further. Weakness, nausea, pain... overwhelmed her. She consoled her self in weakly scuttling a few inches away and curling onto her other side. She drew her legs up to her chin and tried to fight the returning darkness.
So hard to focus... and pain, so much pain... and confusion.
Her memories were like the flash of fish in the stream- here, gone, unable to be grasped for slipping away...
And still... beneath the confusion and fear... an awareness, pulling her back into oblivion... An assurance that all would be well...
All would be well...

From far above, the crack of shifting stone, the low shudder of earth not yet settled. A soft rain of dust and gravel rained down on her once more. She shivered, teetering on the edge of blessed oblivion as she curled tighter against the final crash that was to come.
And still the images came- disconnected for the most part. Fragments, glimmers like reflections in a flowing stream...
Every so often, a connection. A small tug, a recollection. A line to follow... a thread of pure thought and memory...
A surfacing.. then a plummet. The connection swirling faster and faster, pulling her back down...
Light and Dark chasing itself.. In endless circles...
Then deeper.. deeper...
Far deeper than before...

*The scent of old earth, murky wetness, and death greeted her. Soon, the grinning skulls of those who had been left, chained here for the beasts and the reclamation of Spirits. She recalled the Histories of the Elder sacrifices to the gods, the attempts to regain Balance and Direction...
Forgotten.
The cave moaned, a gust of frigid wind whipped around her, then gone.
She shivered as she took a step further inward, the clamminess gripping her as she passed the aged remnants of souls committed. Another cold breeze from the depths found its way past her thin, tattered tunic and pants, like the fingers of the dead seeking the warmth of young life.
She paused, afraid to go on, yet knowing there was little other choice, save surrender and slavery, death... or worse.
The Dark Ones would scour the planet seeking all that remained...
Claiming what they would not devour...
She moved further inward.

In ancient times, the daemons of Nekkros were said to gain entry into Ikhaara from these caves. Cursed were they that were left here as proxy to their voracious appetites... Thieves, criminals, murderers...
Those damned to not ascend above and rejoin the stars, but doomed to the pits below, bound by blood and deed to the service of the Nekk'ra'i.
Yet cursed and crazy she was... for she moved steadily deeper into the bowels of the cave, past the last remnant of death, into the Inner caves where none dared venture. She swallowed, her book held tight to her chest, her shaking legs determinedly proceeding onward.
She was told to come... she was Chosen. She was Worthy to enter the Inner Passages...
He had told her... sent her away...
She had to obey.

A litany of wards and prayers whispered from her tight lips, her eyes wide with fear, yet her hesitant, slow steps pressed on.
From the flicker of her torch-light, she caught sight of the first of the story-pictures- and her breath caught. She stood transfixed before the elegant glyphs, unusually bright and clear...
She ran a finger over them, tracing the smooth lines, murmuring softly as she recognized one... then others... Moving slowly down the tunnel... deeper and deeper within.
The Histories coming alive... before her...
She smiled softly, her fear, her uncertainty gone in the awe and excitement of the discovery and revelation of being at the cusp of understanding...

A shudder passed over her as a great, aching moan released from the curving tunnels ahead. She stilled in her progress, her body frozen in place, her eyes slowly moving to gaze around her. The moment was broken and everything prior came rushing back: where she was, what she'd seen and heard... what she knew.
Pinpricks of fear chased down her spine again... Were the dark spirits of the Nekk'ra'i now coming to claim her too? Now? So close to unlocking the key?
She frowned, wondering at that thought, then gasped, flattening herself against the cold wall as another gust rushed past, followed by another aching moan.
Was Haraek wrong in is belief that she was yet ready? Had desperation colored his Vision?
She could almost swear the moan had formed words...
Did it matter...? For she was doomed without already... The only hope lay deeper within...

Before she knew what she was doing, she had leaned up from the stone and began entering deeper still. Before she was aware, she had spoken. Softly... yet her voice carried... Echoing....
"Who is there?"
Her fingers rested lightly on an image of a hand and the wing of a bird in flight, the stone rough, yet oddly warm beneath her skin. She frowned, jerking her hand back as the warmth was joined by a tremor...
... then the grating sound of shifting stone...
A large puff of dust suddenly blossomed from the deeper tunnels, followed by louder, more gutteral moaning and near shriek- as if stone slid against stone...
The ground began to shake...
She stumbled back, grappling at suddenly unstable stones, her feet seeking purchase on the unnaturally tilting ground. Another grinding, a crash- and a scream, breaking free from her lips as the ground collapsed from beneath her feet-
And she was free-falling...

It was all wrong.
She had sensed it the moment of contact, but by then, it was far, far to late.
But she had known the way... the words... The Echoes validated, the timeliness of it perfect...
She grimaced, shaking her head once. The memory of the terror and confusion stark in the forefront of her mind.
No.. she had not been prepared.
A moment of sheer desperation, fear, and need had gripped her.... Gripped her, and perhaps forever damned her.
A lifetime of service and struggle, of honor and loyalty to the Queen, gone moment of selfishness, instinct,...

She swallowed, staggering past the runes and histories writ on the stone walls. She had seen it, known it, written it all. Guidance for the Seekers... Wisdom for the Ages... Warnings,...
She closed her eyes briefly. It was all for naught now.
Only one thing left to do... return.

As she stepped to the mouth of the Cave, the brilliance of the suns blinded her. She instinctively threw her arm up over her eyes, letting out a small cry at the sharp pain. It had been too long...
Far too long...
The fresh air filled her lungs, fragrant breezes lifting a few strands of hair and buffeting her tattered clothing. She swallowed, slowly lowering her arm, though she still squinted in the light. Far below her, the vibrant valley... the great mountains rising up in the distance... the thick trees with their branches waving and dancing in the transient winds below. Craggy rock beneath her feet, swirled in browns, yellows and greens... ancient carvings of spirals and figures...
... so much forgotten... so much changed...
She swallowed, her eyes rising to the glorious Northern sunrise rising above the far mountains, painting the sky in a tapestry of vibrant pastels. Despite herself, she found herself gasping at the sheer beauty of it all... the freshness of the air, the indescribably green scent of the trees as they whispered... and the cleanness and sound of the rushing waters and...
She stilled, the discomfort in her gut twisting further.

It had been at least a century since she had last laid eyes on the outside... and the breathtaking clarity of it suddenly only impressed upon her the wrongness of her act. Still it was not simply her guilty conscious that discomforted her: her trepidation, her hatred and anger for what she'd been reduced to and what... may be inferred...
But more...
Deeper.
Inaccessible in words, but not in feeling.
.... The child was crying.
There was blood and death on the air.

A cold chill ran down her spine, a whispered memory leaking into her consciousness. A surge of protection... of anger...
Again...
A flash of recall- quickly abated, leaving only a discomforting dis ease and fury...
A need for revenge... of need...
Too long abated.

By the time she looked up again, the midday suns had risen, and the smell was beginning to draw the larger scavengers. The flying insects where swarming around her, biting her arms and causing rivulets of blood to make spiderwebs along her exposed skin. She scratched absently, shivering as she rose, momentarily amazed at how easily she did so, and with so little pain.
Strange sensations long forgotten.

A distant yowl and yipping closer caused her to hurriedly back away, even more quickly when she saw the glowing eyes peering at her from the forest depths. A shuddered breath as she backed further away, keeping the eyes within sight... Slowly, slowly...
She did not see the lake until she stepped fully into the water at knee depth- the shock of it causing her to fall backwards and fully drench herself in the icy water.
She yelped.
She couldn't help it... and succeeded in inhaling a good bit of the lake. Coughing and sputtering, she launched herself up, frantically splashing to the shore, and huffing like a great beast.

Collapsing on the edge, she regained her composure and her breath, wincing as a cool breeze washed over her, freezing her to the bone. She sighed, gazing at the small hands that rested in her lap... the thin blood-stained tunic over knobby knees, the muddy feet. She swallowed slightly, steeling herself, then leaned over to gaze into her reflection-
- and nearly let out another cry of anguish and horror.
The face staring back at her truly was that of a child. Pre-pubescent, still with the slight chubbiness of cheek of an infant, yet with the promise of maturity... Dried blood matted her wet hair, rivulets of watery red trickling down her forehead and cheek... Across the elegant arch of the Mark.
An absent touch traced it slowly, then hurriedly scraped her palms across her cheeks and face. A flicker into hazel-flecked green eyes, then away. Another surge of nausea as she buried her face in her arms. She could not study the eyes- for the eyes lied. The eyes gave the appearance of agedness...
Because the eyes... were hers.
HERS. Not the child's.

She sat back, her entire body trembling. The urge to protect and shelter the child grew hundredfold. Her responsibility... her curse.
But what is done, is done.
She knew she had to leave this place quickly... for though the Goa'uld forces had left, the planet was not a safe one for either of them.
If she should be found... all would be lost.
The centuries of study... the lives, the culture, the memories... the remnants of beauty and life and a people that should never be forgotten...

A flaming stick and furious yelling drove off the larger scavengers long enough for her to put the broken and obscenely exposed bodies to fire. The child had entirely disappeared now, locked within... cocooned in her pain, fear and confusion. She had no idea if the burning of bodies was now profane to the ways of the Salina, for it had been far too long and traditions changed. But her memories held that it was the way of freeing the spirit to be reborn into the stars... And the act of allowing it to decay with the body would be the ultimate insult and cruelty.
The cold fact that she could not physically hope to bury the entire village,, was, of course, also was a consideration.

She sighed as she watched the flame catch on the tattered clothing, then moved on, a solitary small figure in shredded clothing moving like a wraith among the flames. Inward... ever inward... her torch touching building and body, remaining just long enough to assure it would burn.
At the last house, she paused, then entered.
An odd familiarity struck her, her eyes darkening slightly as she scanned the room. Thoughts of an older man, and younger woman... Both tattooed and wide of eye...
Ai'so... and Masai..
The memory hit her hard, of herself a hundred year or more ago, as she instructed in the Teachings and Prophesies, the Signs and Portents to watch for...
A surge of agony twisted her heart at the result.
They had not heard.. had not listened... had not remembered...
And now, she had once more failed.

She picked up a long, golden-brown robe, running the fine fabric between her fingers, then gripped it hard before turning away, setting the table aflame. Her face was hard and eyes pained as she moved around the room, lighting all on fire, halting only briefly to retrieve a single, thick book from the hidden alcove beneath the fireplace.

Moments later, she was walking out of the conflagration, dressed in the golden robe, one fist holding the wad of trailing fabric from above her bare feet, the other supporting the pouch holding her books and items, her eyes set steadfastly on the Chappa'ai.
She did not... could not... look back.
What once was, was no longer... and never shall be again.