Fate
Chapter 1: Forsaken Goddess
Shy'a's POV Begins right before Continuum
2008-Another Planet
12,000 year is a long time, even for a goddess. Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Shy'a, it means fate. I've spent the last 12,000 years in a canopic jar, and things have really changed among the Gou'ald in that time.
When I was a larva being implanted for the first time thing were different among the Gou'ald. I was a queen mother. While I have heard of some hiding this fact, it did not occur to me, in the first moments of being able to communicate, to tell a lie. I was foolish my first half century, but I learned wisdom.
Now, I am told, Gou'ald queens are leaders and some who are not queens choice to take on female forms. In my day no one who could have taken female form when they could have avoided it. A male Gou'ald started as a slave and if lucky and skilled ended as a king. A female Gou'ald started as property, and if lucky and skilled ended as property with the privilege of mating with a king.
I was rebellious and stubborn and frequently punished. I wasn't very subservient, I didn't bow and flatter and make myself into nothing to please. They often beat me, and used the torture stick, or zatted me. Whenever this happened I could see millions of people beat and tortured, and thanks to the memories of the Gou'ald's who came before me, I could feel the sweet pleasure the torturer had felt as they did it.
The memories inherited upon my birth were less than it would be for a Gou'ald that was born now days. Still they held power over me. 10,000 years of memories washing over you at any given moment can have that kind of an effect.
But the memories influenced me most in another way. They gave me an unending need for power. Each time someone defers to you, or bows to you, or pays you a compliment the ache eases for a moment. To be Gou'ald is at the very core of it to have an endless need for power which makes you feel dead until the moment when you receive power. Each moment of receiving power is one second of life, and then the hunger returns. Power is an addiction of every Gou'ald. Understand this, and you have gone along way too understanding our species as a whole.
By the time I meet Ra I was nearly fifty, and had learned much wisdom. I was still in my first host, a brute of a females Usas. I was a slave among the ranks of a minor Gou'ald that history has forgotten, and I was called by the name Ky'resh which some Jaffa had given me at implantation.
The second I saw Ra, I knew who he was. He reeked of power, and I knew I must take my chance. It was crazy what I did of course, but it was worth it. I thought about taking a male host. But I had been female for fifty years now, and the thought or residing in a male body, of lying about my gender repulsed me in a way that all the other lies I told did not.
I switched hosts into a beautiful, powerful, young Unas and called myself Shy'a-fate. Then I pledged myself to the service of Ra. I was still no subservient being, but this time I played one. Each bow, each flattering phrase, each "Master" falling from my lip, each time my eyes rose almost, but not all the way to his, brought me closer to the trust of Ra. It was less than a decade before I was made concert to Ra, the leader of the System Lords.
A concert was the highest a female Gou'ald could hope to obtain, and it wasn't much. You were still property, expected to bear young, and it was no position of power. But I made it one. With flattery I whispered my plans into his ear, so smoothly he mistook them for his own. Ra was my puppet ruler. I learned to ease my hunger for power with sips of hidden power which no one knew I took.
I may have been Ra's lover, and the bearer of his first young, but there was no love between us. He was a selfish lover, and it was easy to distance my feelings from him. After a time my position with Ra was well fortified, and I began to search for more power among his allies to ease the painful ache for power in my heart.
Secret meanings, fainted servitude, and plans whispered in ears like a lover made me an ally to all the System Lords. History speaks of Ra uniting the System lords, actually for the most part, that was me.
I went on like this for four or five centuries, gathering power. As I became more powerful, I acted more humble. I went on leading a double life, becoming so powerful that some days the ache barely bothered me at all. I might have gone on like this forever, but fate was not so kind. Since I am the goddess of fate, I have no one but myself to blame.
I should never have given Ba'al more than a second glance. He was young-only thirty when we first met; he was foolish-mouthing off to those with more power; he was not handsome-his unas rather gruesome, he had no power-being little more than a slave. I don't think I whispered many plans into Ba'al's ear. In fact, looking back, he probably whispered some into mine.
Ba'al alone saw me as I was. He saw my hunger for power, and how I filled that hunger. He saw my womanhood, and my personhood, and knew that both could exist in one person. He flattered me, and I flattered him, and often we looked into each other's eyes, something I had not done in six hundred years. Yes, Ba'al saw me, and with him sometimes, I dared to think it love.
It was foolish, of course, to walk about feeling emotions for the enemy of Ra. It was risky, of course, to enjoy the presence of another for more that the power it gave.
Ra saw us one day. We were lying in each other's arms on the couch of my private quarters when Ra should have been watching his Jaffa blow up a planet. Ba'al and I were discussing the effects of the new practice of Jaffa trading on long term loyalty, and suddenly Ra was in the room with us.
Ra took my betrayal hard. I am told that, all together, Ra had four queens which rebelled against him. But I was the first. The pain was new and fresh and hard. I know Ra never loved me, but it is possible he loved the person I pretended, for six hundred years, to be.
I was placed in a canopic jar and that is where I come to the 12,000 years part of my story. 12,000 years in a jar with an electric pulse to keep me alive, and fluid to sustain me and drug me into sleep.
Even more than half asleep, 12,000 years is a long time. Long enough, in fact to examine and understand all those millennium of Gou'ald abuses. Long enough to discover who I was. Long enough to accept love the person I had discovered. Long enough to plan a million ways to fill the ache for power which became so unbearable. Long enough to write sonnets, and epic poems, and novels, and plays, and opuses. It was enough time understand for philosophy, and mathematics, and love. I had existed for less than a millennium before my imprisonment, but 12 millennium to analyze one makes you wise.
Then some assistant to an archeologist drops a jar and I overtake her body-her human body. I was imprisoned years before humans were discovered. A human body was far less strong than an unas, but also far more beautiful. The one I inhabited at first was by no means the prettiest of humans, but I found my footing fast. Within a week I was in the most beautiful female of the village, and she was gaining power fast. I used the naquada in my blood to locate the Stargate, and walked through it.
It had been 12,000 years, but Ba'al still lived on the same hope planet. It looked nothing like his home had, but it was the same place. I knew Ba'al the moment I saw him. He'd left his unas' body for that of a dashing young man, but still I knew him by the way he held himself, and the royal cadence of his voice.
"Ba'al, it is Shy'a," I responded.
He looked at me in shock. He took me into his private chamber for a long talk. But everything had changed between us. He had power, and I had none. Even if Ba'al had loved me once, 12 millennium would be enough to cure the fiercest broken heart. More than likely, Ba'al had loved me no more than I loved Ra. It was beneficial for Ba'al to be near me, same as it was for me and Ra.
Ba'al was born in the days when women were nothing. Times had changed, but he had not. He had thought more of women than anyone in his time, but he thought less of them than those in this strange new time in which I now live.
We were nearly equal long ago. I was a powerful women, he was a powerless man. Now he was a powerful man, and he a powerless women, and the scales were definitely tipped.
It was a pity, for I had loved Ba'al so long I could not stop loving him now.
Ba'al gave information freely, and I gave flattery sparingly. I could not afford to become a servant to the man that I loved. Perhaps a bit of love for me remained, or a faint memory of his love for me. "Shy'a, I do owe you something," he told me seriously, "You taught me to rebel. I fought Ra. I allied myself with So'kar and fought Ra, more. Then I betrayed So'kar and fought him. You taught me to defy my god with flattery and smiles, the only way to defy a god and live."
"Who are they System Lords now?"
He winced, "The System Lords are dead, Shy'a."
"What happened to Ra?"
There was a shadow of feeling left, because he didn't like that I asked the question.
"Same thing that happened to most of the rest of them, they were killed by the Tau'ri humans," he spat the words as if they were poisoned.
"What is the Tau'ri?" I asked.
He explained about humans, and the Tau'ri, and the Tok'ra and a million more things I would never have imagined. My people had come far, in the 12 millennium I had been separated from them.
"The Tau'ri, humans that they are, are the greatest threat Gou'ald's have ever known. If we don't finish of the Tau'ri, particularly a few of the Tau'ri, our race will soon be finished."
I stayed with Ba'al for a few weeks, catching up on millions of years of history. He was hiding something from me, something big, but I pretended not to notice.
When I was quite sure that I had acquired from him all I needed to know I did a rather risky thing. I leaned forward and kissed Ba'al.
He looked at me critically, "The age of the Gou'ald is ending. I need no queen, and have not enough Jaffa to house a litter of larva."
"I don't wish to be a queen nor a servant," I replied.
"What do you want then?" he asked.
"To ensure the survival of my race."
"And to rule it?" he asked.
I nodded, there was no use in a lie which would not be believed. After all Ba'al saw me.
"Well, I will assist you with the first part and perhaps be your ally for a time. When it comes time for the second part of your plan I will fight you as any other rival, women," he spat that last word in much the same way as he had spat the word "human."
"That is all I could hope for," I said, and he showed me his secret-a time machine. Or to more accurately a machine that turned the Stargate into a time machine in a way I was not qualified to understand, though he explained it all more than once.
"I'm going back in time to destroy the Stargate on earth before the humans ever learn to use it," he replied.
"Send me back further, and I shall ensure SG-1 are destroyed," I replied.
He nodded his assent, and seemed ready to send be back right then and there.
"Wait," I said faintly. "If our plan works I may need to re-populate the universe with Gou'ald I shall require Code of Life from a human or a human host to a Gou'ald. This can be acquired long before it is needed."
He grinned at me. For the first time in my life, I had given someone a compliment quite by accident. "You want me to contribute the Code of Life?" he asked.
"Well, I'd like it from your host," I said trying to rip the compliment back.
He gave me a long deep kiss, before leading me back to his private chambers.
It took almost a full day to find the perfect trip back to destroy SG-1. I walked through the Stargate, and found myself on the planet of an enemy I didn't begin to understand. A cold icy planet. I, Shy'a, one of the last of the Gou'ald, am beginning a very important mission. I was going to destroy the workers of the Tau'ri gate, but I had no intention of killing them. 12,000 years in a canopic jar with Gou'ald memories, I had learned the most effective ways to hurt.