NOTE: Well, here is the start of Giya's story.

Chapter 21 – Tale

"After the Alterans separated themselves from the Ori, they became paranoid about the fact that they had lost contact with the Furlings. They had parted on good terms but they didn't want to loose that part of their heritage like they had with their falling out with the Ori."

Everyone was now in the briefing room listening to Giya's tale. As a show of good faith there were no armed personnel assigned to guard her but Cam was watching her like a hawk.

While everyone else was sitting, Giya was standing at the head of the table gripping the back of one of the chairs. "They managed to make contact with Primera. They say there was dancing in the streets of the capital – Ionara on the planet Henutal – when they got the news of their long lost kin.

"A delegation of over two hundred was sent to the Milky Way so that there would always be contact between the two civilisations. There was always a seat for a Primeran on the Alteran council.

"When the plague hit the Primerans were found to be immune due to their more effective healing abilities but many died trying to heal too many of the others. It's said that: They spread their light so thin that it no longer was the defeater of darkness, but shadow would fall over the light.

"The descendants of the Primerans that survived left with the Ancients in Atlantis. At this point contact with the Furlings was only every hundred years or so. By the time I was born my father had been to the capital, but not his father or grandfather.

"I was born in the last years of the siege. The two hundred delegated had seen a population boom but then whittled down to just three. My mother, Saria died when I was less than a month old which left myself, my father, Mansel, and my sister, Larya.

"My father held the Primeran seat on the council but he had no influence whatsoever. It was just an old tradition that needed to be appeased and for some reason they thought that it was a tradition that needed to continue." Giya shut her eyes for a moment, trying to push the emotions she had deep down so that no one would see them. "After the death of my mother it was decided that I couldn't be allowed to die. Ever.

"They made a clone of my body. There was no memory or thought in it. It was just allowed to grow at a normal rate until I reached the age of twelve. One day then, they placed me in a machine that would allow me to ascend. I had trained for it all my life and it worked.

"What happened next is a bit hard to explain. Because the clone body was in a way compatible with me, I was able to fuse a part of my consciousness to it. Like tying a piece of string to two different cups and being able to travel across it and exist in one or the other.

"Now because Furlings can heal so well we have no natural life span I would be able to live indefinitely anyway but if my physical body was killed I could still exist in my ascended form."

"That's an incredible concept." said Sam with a sense of wonder in her voice. "It's essentially a way of achieving immortality."

"It's barbaric!" Giya snapped. Her words stung like a snake strike. "In theory it works fine, but for ten thousand years I have lived with one part of myself missing so that it can hold onto my other form. I don't know a way of reversing it so I have lived with a piece of my spirit missing so that the Ancients could feel good about not alienating another group of their own kind."

Everyone was shocked by the malice and spite in her voice. She had changed from calm and impartial to enraged and spiteful so quickly that no one could respond.

"Perhaps," Landry said eventually, "you could continue your story. We are still waiting to hear how it is you found yourself in a goa'uld sarcophagus and this warning that you have gone through such great pains – for yourself and Dr Jackson – to deliver."

"Yes, you're right." Giya took a shaking breath to calm herself. "I was twelve years old. Our family lived on while the war with the wraith wore on. Saria and I insisted on joining the fight when we were old enough so that we were actually making a difference instead of sitting in Atlantis as reminders of a long gone effort.

"One of our assignments was on a planet that the wraith were advancing on where we were to collect some scientists in a research station. We had underestimated the speed of the wraith ships. Saria was killed in the attack and when I arrived home with her body my father made a decision.

"The Ancients didn't need us. His wife and daughter were dead and his remaining daughter…well…I had been changed. It was then that the two of us left. Atlantis had never been a home to us and it was in the nature of our people to live in our true home so we returned to Primera.

"It was the first time I had had any contact with my people outside my family and it really did feel like home."

"Wait," said Cam, "I remember. You said that around the time of that around the time of the siege was when the Furlings found out about some sort of enemy."

"That's right." said Giya, "They were discovered a few years before we arrived and they were thought not to be a threat but we were happy. Happier than we had ever been. They were creatures that had evolved on a higher plane and survived by feeding on energy of the physical plane.

"Originally they were insignificant but a few months after we came home a planet on the fringe of the galaxy was lost to them. Within a year every planet had been decimated except for Henutal onto which they were descending.

"My father managed to adjust us the technology of a fringe scientist from back in Atlantis to create the only weapon effective against them and the only way to stop them.

"The dilemma was that to set it off would destroy every living thing in Primera along with the shadows. They didn't even think twice about it." Giya's eyes seemed to mist over and her voice pulled tight. "They all – hundreds of thousands of them – they were all willing to lay down their lives to stop a force that would otherwise seep unhindered across the universe.

"None of them could leave. Generations of living in close proximity to the shadows meant they had been contaminated in a way. Where ever they went the shadows would have been able to follow. He had to stay behind because he was one of the only ones who knew how to work the device." Giya's face seemed to tighten even more. "So I left on my own just before they set it off. I went back to the only place that I knew, Atlantis.

"Unfortunately the evacuation had already begun. They weren't very happy to see me but let me return to Earth with them. My physical body was put into stasis and I existed in my ascended form."

"How did you get from an Ancient stasis chamber to a Goa'uld sarcophagus?" said Sam, "What would make you want to leave a life of universal knowledge?"

"Well, because I still had a physical form I don't have universal knowledge. It can hardly be described as a satisfying life.

"I don't know how much time passed, I sort of faded in and out but I watched what happened in the physical universe. I watched this galaxy fall into chaos as the goa'uld took hold, I watched as Anubis as he steadily gained power and knowledge and I watched the others do nothing about it. So I revived myself and returned to physical existence nine thousand years after leaving it."

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