Author's Notes: I've had to rewrite much of this to better fit canon, since I'm a complete spoon and forgot several major things about it. I didn't want to leave Anthropos' comments to confuse anyone after this rewrite. I apologize! All your comments have still been extremely helpful and more than welcome! They remind me it's been too long since I last watched SG-1. ^^; I'll do my best not to make such major continuity errors again!

By the way, I've sent out messages to all two of you who faved and followed the first iteration of this story, just so there's no confusion. :)

"Daniel..."

Daniel Jackson opened his eyes. A great light filled the room he found himself in. Even stranger was the fact he felt weightless, despite having his feet planted firmly on some sort of unseen ground. There was nothing else around him except that light.

"Daniel," the woman's voice echoed through his mind once again. It almost sounded like...

"Oma?" His brow creased and he looked to the side, confused. He'd spoken more to himself than anyone else. Then he raised his voice. "Oma Desala?"

No answer. But before he could ask if it was her again, the light grew brighter, forcing him to cover up his eyes with his arm. The effect only lasted a moment, and when it was over, he found himself standing in mid-air above a circular platform surrounded by a series of stairs backed by thick stone pillars. Standing upon these steps was a great number of Ancients, whose forms radiated a soft, white glow. Upon the floor was a circle engraved in the center, surrounded by four lines sweeping out as if the circle had been rotating as they did so. Most notably, however, was the fact there was a strange woman on her knees in the center of the room, one of the Ancients standing tall in front of her.

Stranger still was the fact that Daniel could see himself standing on one of the sidelines with the other ascendants. Much as the days after he ascended, he wore a simple cloak and was the only one not glowing - though Daniel subconsciously ascertained that if this was a memory, he may have merely seen himself that way. He had his arms crossed and a skeptical look in his eye as he focused on the woman. Her hair was curled, tapering off into two strings which fell over her shoulders, and her skin had a pale, golden glimmer to it. The look on her face was nigh emotionless, it seemed.

Whispers filled the air as the council of Ancients reached a consensus. Their message was then relayed through the one standing in the center.

"You have broken the law, and thus introduced disorder among us."

The odd woman raised her head and balled her hands into fists, her gaze now slightly more defiant and cold than it had been moments ago.

"It is a foolish law," she exclaimed with a certain composure one might expect from those who accepted their deaths a mere day from the execution. "One which my people would not accept."

Whispers. "They agreed to abide our highest law."

It didn't take long for Daniel to realize they were talking about the Ancients' rule not to interfere in mortal affairs. Such a law was enforced among their own kind to prevent them from becoming like the Ori, another race of ascended beings who shared the same ancestry as the Ancients themselves. For the past two years, Daniel and SG-1 had fought these Ori, who were hellbent on spreading the word of their religion, Origin, by force. They were motivated to be worshiped by people as a means of increasing their strength. Perhaps it was like a drug to them. Either way, they were stopped after SG-1 created the Sangral and sent it through a supergate to their galaxy.

"Only because they were forced to." The woman being forced to defend herself in this trial spoke with a growing level of anger, though she managed to keep her poise regardless. "If it wasn't for your kind, we would still be standing where you are now."

Again, whispers. "That is not relevant to this trial."

"Is it not?" The woman didn't tear her eyes off the one towering above her, even for a moment. "I am motivated to see your younger race removed from these pedestals. You do not deserve to stand here where our kind made a pact to protect this galaxy at all costs. Furthermore, you do not have the right to enforce your will on this galaxy."

"Your kind forfeited that right when they began to interfere." The Ancient judge, a commanding female figure, stated with a strong voice. "We enforce our law to protect the galaxy from those like us who would exploit it."

"We /are/ the galaxy," responded the woman, her stoic countenance starting to break. "We are the suns, the moons, the nebulae. You are a people who ascended to this plane after. Before you, we could defend this galaxy from the Void. Now we are weakened and scattered because of you." Her voice took on an ominous tone, as if to warn them. "Many of us do not appreciate that."

This time, the whispers were more intense, and even the ascended Daniel appeared unnerved by this woman's declaration. But the one standing before her didn't move, gaze squarely locked on the one being accused.

"You are accused of conspiracy to take many of us to become hosts to a people you call allies." The Judge frowned rather deeply, but Daniel hardly focused on that. Instead, he was surprised to hear her mention a people who took hosts, considering he spent over eight years fighting such a species. Her next few words, undoubtedly translated in his mind for the sake of clarity, only confirmed his fear. "These Goa'uld present a threat to our continued existence. Do you deny this?"

"No," the accused answered defiantly. "Why not simply take action to stop them? All I have done is lure those of your kind into their traps. You have the power, do you not?"

"To answer for your crime," the Judge continued, ignoring the question Daniel heard far too often while he was ascended. Though his memories like this were gone, he at least recalled the time he appeared to Jack O'Neill in Ba'al's prison, even though Jack himself had to fill in some of the details. "You are to be banished beyond the Rim."

"Why?" The other 'woman' narrowed her eyes, but the fear behind her indomitable facade was unmistakable now. Daniel, now long since de-ascended, had no idea what this Rim was, but it sounded like a phenomenon marking the edge of Ancient-controlled space, if such a thing were possible. "Their people will make strong allies. They were but an infant race when I found them. They have /potential/. If any can put an end to the Abyss, it is the sons and daughters of Apsu."

"You are the last to find them worthy allies. So with you, no more of our kind can be enslaved in the ages past." Now the Judge raised her arms to her sides, the effect quite unnerving to those unaccustomed to their lack of humanoid form. "Your sentence is exile for breaking our highest law. There will be /no/ appeals from now into eternity."

Although she wanted to stand, the invisible chains binding the other woman's wrists and legs refused to let her move more than a centimeter. "No," she almost pleaded as two more Ancients faded into view on either side of her. But the true depth of passion she held for her beliefs overrode any sense of fear long enough for her to have the final word. "They will destroy you without me! You cannot hope to survive unless I can speak for you!"

"We have already chosen one of your kind to speak in our name." This revelation surprised the strange woman, though she hardly showed it. "It will be she who will prevent the conflict you have mentioned."

"Hypocrites," the other hissed as the two ascended beings seemed to take her by the arms. "What happened to not interfering?"

Again, the Judge ignored her. "Maura. You are pronounced guilty. This trial is adjourned."

Suddenly, the image warped out of existence, briefly leaving behind only a dark and formless void through which Daniel thought he could feel something creeping through. Before he could manage to see what it was...

His eyes opened. He was lying in bed, and if the soft moonlight against his wall was any indication, it was late. Rather hastily, he sat up and creased his brow as he tried to make sense of what he saw. The only thought he could must, however, was:

"Oh, that can't be good."

Back at SGC headquarters, eighteen levels beneath the mountain, Jackson searched through the books and checked the computer in the relative comfort of his lab. There weren't many details to go on from his dream, but he had the sneaking suspicion it might have been Oma Desala warning him of something. If not, a little research never hurt anything. That work ethic of his ran in the family.

"Jackson!" Colonel Cameron Mitchell's sudden interruption briefly startled Daniel, who could only muster a glance in Cameron's direction before focusing on the book laying open on his desk. "You're here early." As he stepped into the room with a smarmy look on his face, Cameron asked, "So I assume that means you're on to something?"

"Maybe," Jackson replied in an uncertain mumble. Rather than answer Cameron directly, however, he continued to skim through the text.

"Well?" Cameron pressured, leaning against the desk to get a better look at what Daniel was reading so intently. "Mind sharing with the class?"

"At the moment, I don't know if it's anything to be concerned about." Daniel narrowed his eyes as he continued to look carefully over each word. "I think... I may have remembered something from the time when I was ascended."

"How's that possible?" Cameron raised an eyebrow. "Your report said the Ancients wiped your memory."

"I know," Daniel acknowledged with another uncertain look, though his eyes stayed glued to the page. "But if anyone could restore my memories, it would be Oma."

"Oma Desala?" Cameron asked, clearly remembering the name from Jackson's report. "The Ancient that helped you ascend a few years ago?"

"Yeah." Now Daniel looked up, though his gaze was neither directed at Cameron nor apparently anything else in the room. It was distant, as if he was peering into his own thoughts. "She said something about a Void and the 'sons of Apsu'."

"Oma?" Cameron again inquired, but Jackson only shook his head and looked back down at the book.

"No. It was someone else... Maura." Before Cameron could ask if his friend was okay, Daniel sighed and gave him his attention. "I've never heard that name before."

"Was she a fellow Ancient?"

"Not exactly." Daniel crossed his arms and turned around, leaning back against the desk. "I think she was some kind of ascended being. But she made a statement I'm still having trouble decyphering." He let a brief silence pass between them as he considered her words, uttering them slowly shortly after. "We are the suns, the moons, the nebulae..."

Rather confused by it, Cameron gave Daniel a questioning look. "So what does it mean?"

"I don't know. Hence why I said I was having trouble decyphering it." Although slightly perturbed, Daniel wasn't really annoyed at Mitchell. He simply didn't have the answer. "The suns, the moons, the nebulae..." Another moment passed, and he looked up. "Various cultures considered stellar phenomena as 'gods'. Maybe there's some truth to those myths?"

The colonel lowered and shook his head. "Jackson..."

"Look, I know what it sounds like." Jackson stood up straight and faced Mitchell. "But we've seen some crazy things - things corroborated by myth. There's no reason to think that if ascension is possible, it would be relegated only to humans."

"There's no reason to believe it's not either."

With a sigh, Daniel had to concede the colonel's point. But he wouldn't let the matter rest entirely. "All I'm saying is we should consider the possibility."

"Alright," Cameron agreed, his stare again focused on Daniel. "So what does that have to do with us?"

Daniel blinked and looked down at his desk again. "Maura said something about a Void her people were protecting us from. An Abyss. Apparently, Oma couldn't tell me everything, or she'd be risking her place among the other Ancients. But whatever it is, we've got to learn more about it." He glanced up at Cam. "And the only people who might help us are hers."

"You sure about this?" Cameron gave Jackson a concerned look. "We just defeated Adria and stopped the last of Ba'al's clones eight months ago. Now you're telling me there's /another/ threat to this galaxy?"

"Cam, I wouldn't be telling you this if I didn't think it was important." This time, it was Daniel's turn to address Cameron in an exasperated tone. They were all relatively tired from the events that transpired in the past month. "We need to find out what this is, and the only way we're going to do that is to find one of Maura's people."

"Alright. Fine." Cameron lifted himself and clapped his hands together. "So, where do we start?"

"The Anunnaki." Jackson stood at one end of the briefing room table, pointing at a television screen depicting images of various ancient rock carvings and painted reliefs. "Otherwise known as the offspring of Anu, himself the son of a deity or force called Apsu, the 'primordeal ocean'. They were considered the pantheon of gods for an ancient confederation of city-states called Sumeria, and also went on to influence the mythologies of later Mesopotamian cultures like the Akkadians, the Assyrians, and the Babylonians.

"Now, around five years ago, somebody postulated that the Anunnaki were aliens who visited Earth long ago. They claimed the Anunnaki traveled between their realm and Earth by way of some kind of stargate. Even Sumerian myth suggests they used a temple to go between our two worlds."

"That sounds familiar," Cameron muttered.

"It could be a reference to when the Goa'uld ruled over this planet," Teal'c reasoned.

"Yes, and since mythology is subject to cultural bias, it's easy to assume they simply took the events of when the Goa'uld ruled over this planet and changed some of the locations to be more familiar." Jackson hit a button on the remote he carried in one hand, and the image on the screen switched to one of another bas relief, this time showing a photograph of the reconstructed Great Ziggurat of Ur. "They even placed the location of the stargate at a temple much like this one."

"Clearly, they were wrong," Landry interjected, annoyed that this particular briefing seemed to be going nowhere.

"Well, not exactly." Jackson switched the image to a black-and-white photograph from the early 20th century. Everyone around the table recognized it immediately.

"Is that-" Cameron started, but Carter finished his thought.

"A Dial-Home Device?" SG-1's foremost expert on the science behind the gate could hardly believe her eyes. "Wasn't it discovered by the Germans during World War II? In Egypt?"

"Yes and no." With a purse of his lips, Jackson tapped his finger absentmindedly against the projector remote. "We don't actually know if they found it in Egypt. That was an extrapolation the Russians made with the available facts. The Germans could've brought it to Egypt before hostilities broke out between the British and the Iraqis, but I don't know."

"So..." Cameron interjected. "We /are/ talking about the same DHD you used to retrieve Teal'c about six years ago, right?"

"Yes, but that's not the point." The others simply stared at him blankly, though Carter at least seemed to be wondering what this could mean. "The point is, it was discovered decades before we thought it was. More importantly, it explains why Professor Langford never found the DHD in 1928."

"Then who moved it to-" Cameron flubbed his words for a moment, but managed to finish his inquiry with the correct wording. "Mesopotamia?"

"Some locals with delusions of grandeur?" Everyone looked at Vala as though she were mad. "Never mind."

"That's the part we're not sure about. It was found beneath the ruins of a shrine to Enki in Eridu." Again, Jackson hit a button on his remote, and the image flickered away, only to be replaced by a photograph of an old man in the kind of journeyman clothing worn by archaeologists of the 1910s. "This is the archaeologist who found it. His name was Thaddeus Thatch."

"Well that's a tongue twister if ever I'd heard one," Vala joked. But, as usual, Daniel wouldn't dignify her odd sense of humor with a response.

"How did this man come across the device?" Teal'c expressed the question that was on everybody's minds, save perhaps Vala, who was mouthing the name several times to herself.

"Mr. Thatch had a theory that there were a group of people on Earth who ruled a powerful and advanced civilization. He called them the Atlantians."

"Atlantis?" Now it was Cameron's turn to ask: "So he was after the Lost City?"

"In a manner of speaking." Daniel showed them another image, this time of an ancient book and an oddly-placed crystal hanging off the top of it. "Thaddeus found the Atlantis myth traveled far to the north, where it ended up discovered by the ancient peoples of Scandinavia. According to his notes, somebody kept trying to interfere with his investigation. Apparently, whoever it was failed, because the next page in his journal describes how he learned of a book somebody wrote which he ultimately found in Iceland."

"What does any of this have to do with ancient Mesopotamia?" Landry again felt forced to ask, given his short attention span when it came to briefings hosted by Dr. Jackson, who was infamous for his long-winded explanations of things that had no immediate, practical application.

"I'm getting to that," Daniel claimed, though Landry looked unconvinced. The next image to appear in this 'slideshow' was one of a line within the book. "This book was written by a Phoenician explorer named Aziz who accidentally discovered Atlantis, and it describes the city in further detail."

"How's that possible?" Carter raised an eyebrow. She had commanded the Atlantis expedition herself for a year, so she had plenty of time to catch up on the history of the city during her time there. "Atlantis left Earth nine million years ago."

"And there aren't any written records from that time, I know," Daniel corroborated, leading at least a single eyebrow to be raised - specifically by Teal'c. "That's because he wasn't describing the city we know. He was describing another."

"A second Atlantis?" Cameron asked in disbelief.

"Sort of." Daniel blinked and looked down at the remote in his hand for a second before raising his head to address his audience again. "Apparently, this Atlantis may have been an experiment by the Ancients after they ascended."

"What were they trying to accomplish?" Carter questioned with a look of confusion.

"/That/ I'm not sure..." Daniel pursed his lips and bowed his head slightly. "The book disappeared a few years after Thaddeus passed away. His own journal remains in the Library of Congress. All we know for certain is that Thaddeus believed Aziz searched for the city because it held some secret about the device he found which Thaddeus later recovered."

"The DHD," Carter acknowledged and looked over at Cameron.

"So we need the journal to find the book?" Cameron put two and two together.

"Not only that," Daniel started with a look that said there was more to it than simple a trip to the library. "We know who checked it out last."

"And these Anunnaki... how do they fit in?" Landry brought the briefing back full circle, hoping to get some kind of closure to that part which Daniel left unexplained. But Daniel could only frown and give Landry a look that suggested he wouldn't like the answer.

"Only one way to find out."

The team had gathered in the gate control room for the most part, sans Daniel, who decided it best to beam over to a designated transport site in Washington D.C. so he could locate the book itself and take whatever notes he could. Carter sat at the controls near where Walter once sat. Unfortunately for them, Walter had already transferred to the Pentagon to work with Homeworld Command under General Jack O'Neill.

They had established a stable wormhole, and now waited to hear a reply from the other side.

Then the computer monitor flickered, and they were greeted with a live video feed of a certain leader of the recently-expanded Atlantis expedition: Richard Woolsey. In the course of several months, Atlantis had been sent back to the Pegasus galaxy with the help of both O'Neill and Carter in particular. After it had settled on a world on the outer edge of that galaxy, they underwent a relatively short conflict with a powerful Wraith hive who nearly destroyed the city. It was only with the help of several others in Pegasus, plus two of SGC's own ships, that the city survived.

But that was neither here nor there. They'd secured the expedition, and aside from further conflicts with the Wraith, the city continued to stand to this day.

"General," he acknowledged Landry first and foremost, which caused Cameron some slight annoyance. "What can we do for you?"

"We're not calling to ask for Atlantis' services today, Mr. Woolsey."

"Then why, may I ask, are you calling?"

"You once worked with Senator Kinsey, is that correct?" Landry already knew the answer, so he continued before Woolsey could get another word in. "Dr. Jackson believes Kinsey withheld important information about another threat in our galaxy."

"Surely you don't think he let /me/ in on all his little secrets?" Woolsey started to protest, but he could tell that nobody on the other line was buying it. Swallowing the growing lump in his throat, he acquiesced. "What do you need to know?"

This time, Cameron spoke up. "What do you know about a man named Thaddeus Thatch?"

"Thaddeus Thatch?" Woolsey didn't appear to recognize the name, and his confusion only made Vala smile knowingly. It /was/ a strange name after all. "I'm not sure."

"Then maybe this will jog your memory." Cameron produced a small photograph of Thaddeus and held it up in front of the camera. "Ring any bells?"

Richard squinted, but couldn't quite put the face. "No, I'm afraid I don't."

"He discovered the original DHD for Earth's stargate," Carter explained. "The same one the Russians found in Germany."

That seemed to catch Woolsey's attention. "He did?"

"Woolsey," Landry interjected. "We're kind of strapped for time here."

"When Senator Kinsey worked with the Trust, did he tell you anything?" Cameron added.

Woolsey briefly lowered his eyes, and it looked like he would simply stew in his own metaphorical guilt without saying anything for some time. However, before anyone else could question him further, he looked up and explained what he could.

"Six years ago, the NID investigated the mad ramblings of a certain conspiracy theorist who seemed convinced the U.S. government was running a stargate program out of Iraq. He was a well-known archaeologist who found a clay tablet made well over three thousand years ago. On it was a depiction of what could only be described as a stargate... and a name. Aziz.

"We did some digging and found the name referenced in a journal by an earlier archaeologist named Thaddeus Thatch. We used his research to locate where the DHD had been located prior to being moved to Egypt by somebody - possibly Thatch. We thought we could find some markings or tablets still buried since the Soviet withdrawal from the area, learn if there was any other technologies buried there."

"What did you find out?" Cameron asked, though it was only to keep Woolsey talking. Sooner or later, he figured, Kinsey's former right-hand would slip up and tell them something they could use.

"Not much. A clay tablet we found mentioned some kind of war, one with a continent supposed to be located in the Atlantic." Although disappointed, Woolsey continued. "We wanted to see if we could find out more about this lost continent, so we tried searching for the Shepherd's Journal."

Cameron raised an eyebrow and looked back over at Carter, who explained, "The book we're looking for." With that, Mitchell responded with a simple "ah" and turned back to watch Woolsey continue to bumble through his explanation.

"Unfortunately, we never found it. Then the Trust was compromised and Senator Kinsey killed. Whatever he knew about Dr. Thatch's research may have already been passed on to the new leader of the Trust."

"Ba'al." Cameron stood up straight and gave Carter and the others a look that said it all. They'd have to go meet Ba'al's host, Aziru, and hope he remembered what Ba'al had discovered about Thatch's investigation.

"I'm afraid so." Woolsey frowned and admitted, "That's all I know. If Senator Kinsey /did/ check out the journal after he was compromised-"

"We know," Landry stated as he glanced back at SG-1 sans Daniel. "We'll stay in contact, Mr. Woolsey."

The last they would see of Woolsey was him nodding his head once, a grim expression on his face. Then the stargate deactivated and his image disappeared.

"Carter, where's Ba'al's host now?" Cameron asked. He thought she would know the answer, but it was Vala who answered first.

"He's been hidden on a world not in our database." Before Cameron could ask, Vala added, "I know what you're thinking. But there's a reason he's hidden." She eyed Teal'c, who could only return her gaze in his own, stoic manner. "Tell them, Teal'c."

At first, Teal'c had to think about it, but then he realized what she meant. "The Jaffa High Council has requested Ba'al's host be turned over to them for judgment."

"Why?" Cameron looked incredulous, and his voice didn't cover his annoyance at that particular revelation either. "Ba'al's host was as much a victim as anyone."

"That may be so," Teal'c acknowledged with a slight bow of his head, as if to apologize for being the bearer of bad news. "However, many among my people cannot see past the face of the false god who turned us against one another."

"He's on the Reol colony world." Vala finally spoke up again, but only in a low voice. She wasn't sure who she could trust aside from her team and, possibly, General Landry, who stood with his arms crossed and listened to every word they had to say. "The Tok'ra and the Reol have been working together for some time to help former hosts of Goa'uld get their lives back. The only way to do that has been to make them face their demons and reject who they were when the Goa'uld inhabited their bodies."

"The Reol?" Landry asked. Although he'd read every one of SG-1's early mission reports, his memory failed him on occasion.

"They're an alien species capable of creating illusions," Carter explained. Then she gave Vala a look of confusion. "But I didn't know they could generate illusions based on memory."

"I think one of the Tok'ra mentioned they took images from the host's mind and showed them to the Reol so they could take on the forms of people familiar to the host in question." Vala managed to answer, though she didn't seem completely certain.

"Do they really need to be subjected to hallucinations to recover?" Landry sounded unconvinced.

"That is what it took to recover my own mind when I was brainwashed by Apophis," Teal'c acknowledged. "Perhaps after being trapped in one's own body for so long, with a powerful mind in control, it is difficult for the host to remember who they were. They would need a reminder of what they had lost so they could regain it again."

"Two-thousand years..." Vala had a distant look in her eye, and she focused on nobody but the computer monitor Carter sat in front of. "What's left for him to regain?