Given the sheer carnage that Ammit had been able to deal out by herself I was not looking forward to a fight with dozens of massive, crocodilian monsters while trapped in the sunless depths of some misbegotten scrap of planet in the ass end of the universe. I needed my full concentration and total control of my faculties, so I felt wholly justified in shouting a litany of swear words as my knees bent and hands let go my staff. My body bent back, exposing the softest parts of me to the sky – totally helpless to defend against the was coming storm.
"Harry! What the hell?" Shouted Bob in alarm, his eye lights twitching in terror. I could feel his mass shifting in the bag tied around my waist as he used his jaw to turn around to get a good look at me. "Are you having a seizure?"
"It's not me Bob!" I struggled against my numb limbs in panic. I was aware of them, could feel the silken fabric lining the armor cool against my skin but nothing responded to me. The ability to move them was just at the edge of my mind, just out of reach. "I can't move."
"Nor will you." Spoke a haughty voice into my ear. Lasciel's shadow shimmered into view, her buxom form draped in a shimmering garment of white silk. She'd put some real effort into the illusion this time, I could just taste the whiff of her on the air – an odor of violets and sky following a summer rain. She bent down and kissed me on the forehead. "No, dear host. You will sit there and wait."
"How –" I began before even my mouth ceased to obey my commands. I fought my numb body, thinking "Lash, why?" in horror as the mob of monsters advanced. Their glowing, slitted eyes shimmered in the bioluminescent hues of the surrounding flora and fauna. They were clearly primitive, they'd clothed themselves in rough cut clothes made from the skins from god alone knew what animals and made necklaces and bracelets out of bone.
They were different from the other Unas I'd met – Mo, Larry, and Curly had been precise in their movements. They were lumbering and inhuman in their gait, to be sure, but precise. This crowd moved with a near systematic chaos to it, Unas advancing and shifting back before charging forwards. Some even leapt in front of each other only to drop to the ground and allow their compatriots to advance over them. It was near impossible to get a count of how many there really were in the darkness with all that movement.
I'd have been hard pressed to fight off that many even if I'd been able to try.
I was furious, furious at Nicodemus for tossing me the coin, furious at Lash for paralyzing me, and furious at myself for allowing the angel's shadow enough leeway that she'd been able to control me this much. I'd always suspected that Lash's abilities to influence my behavior extended far beyond the meager illusions and whispers she'd used to distract and guide me before, but I'd never been give any proof to back it up. I'd certainly never relaxed enough around her to allow her free reign in my mind.
Or I had before Heka's presence. I'd allowed Lash greater freedom of movement in my mind, welcomed it even. I should have known that would come at a cost. Now, here I was at my most vulnerable, and I was soon to be savaged to death by Dino's cannibalistic cousins. It wasn't exactly the wizardly blaze of glory I'd always envisioned but I suppose one climactic, sacrificial death is probably enough for one week – even for me.
"Host," Lash tutted, disappointedly. "You're supposed to be a detective. A master of deductive reasoning, are you not? I am not betraying you. I am saving us both."
"I'm not feeling especially saved right now!" My eyes flitted from Unas to Unas, keenly aware of how I'd seen Ammit bite though things thicker than the armor I was wearing.
"Harry! Whatever it is you're planning… now would be a good time." Bob whispered as the crowd of Unas surrounded me. They hissed and growled, keeping at least an arm's length away from me on all sides – but made no moves to advance beyond that gap.
"Look again, mine host." Lash kneeled next to me in a purely symbolic gesture of supplication, staring from Unas to Unas. "And think – were the Unas you met on Delmak unthinking brutes simply by virtue of their inhumanity? Have you not met dozens of creatures not bound by the flesh of mortal men who held their own honor and rites of passage? Think wizard – if you found a tribe of mortal men terrified and enslaved, would your first response be to toss fire and frost into their midst?"
"No," I conceded. "It would not have been." Mo, Larry and Curly hadn't even been bad guys by the usual henchmen standards I dealt with. Actually, other than their apparent penchant for torture, the Unas I'd met on Delmak had been practically civil by comparison to the raving blood crazed lunatics in Sokar's standard employ.
Lash stood up and walked to the largest of the Unas, running her phantom finger across the scars on the man's face. He had a pock-marked scar along the left side of his head where a talon had clearly gouged out the eye, leaving a light shade of pink across the dark green of his face. "Do you not see it in their faces, Wizard Dresden? Can you not taste it? They're afraid, terrified even."
"They aren't exactly broadcasting 'I'm afraid of the man in front of me' here Lash." I thought, realizing that had I been able to control my body, I might have flinched when the Unas with one eye got up in my face and bellowed, flecks of spittle spraying across my mask.
"Wizard, it has not even been a full day since you thrust yourself into the maw of creatures you felt were beyond your ability to beat purely to protect you and yours." Lash replied, pointing to a diminutive Unas peeking out from another Unas' legs. I'd never seen an Unas child before, never really even considered that Unas had children, but the more I stared away from the bull Unas in my face around at the crowd the more I became aware that there were entire families of the lizard people around me. They'd brought the entire tribe – including children.
I wasn't going to endanger children.
"Let me go Lash – I know what I have to do." I thought, infuriated that I couldn't disagree with her course of action. That did not mean, however, that I was ok with Lash's hitherto unknown ability to paralyze me at will. That would be addressed.
"Later, host. We may speak when this all ends. I promise." Lash sighed. "It will make sense but you need to trust me. Trust that I only mean you well."
I shouldn't trust her. She was an angel's shadow. She was a deceiver by trade, one who seduced men by finding their deepest desires and offering them a route to reach them. It would be insane to trust her. But I did - God help me, I did.
I did because she loved me – or at least wanted to be in love with me. That at much had been truth. You can't have someone living in your own head and loving you without feeling it when they felt it. I didn't always know her mind, understand her feelings, but that moment when we'd been flying up to the ship. That moment had been honest. No amount of Fallen Angelic seduction could fake love, actual love.
I was willing to trust her love even if I couldn't return it.
"Harry. I know that this is hard to understand – I know you are angry with me. I know you have every reason to be angry with me." She put her palm in the center of my chest and I felt feeling return to my limbs. Tears that I think had very little to do with the illusion she was casting burned in her eyes. "But I'm doing this to protect the man you want to be. The man you are. The Harry Dresden wouldn't kill innocents just because it was expeditious. Don't let Dresu'den kill Harry."
"I won't." I replied, "I won't."
As Lash's illusion faded away to nothing, the warmth returned completely to my arms, legs, and lips. My fingers twitched as the sensation of pins and needles ran through my extremities, dull pain a comforting sensation in the wake of the nothingness I'd felt only seconds prior.
The Unas, seemingly mollified by my lack of aggressive response, tilited his head and sniffed the air around my head, muttering. "Shesh onac. Shesh, ta onac."
"Onac a benar," Hissed another Unas behind the first. It was smaller than the first, with a small ridge of spines running across its nose.
"Ka." Growled the one missing his eye. "Onac ka benar. Onac keka."
"I'm going to guess that you have no idea how to understand a word that I'm saying." I replied, realizing that Lash had apparently chosen to stop translating into Goa'uld as I felt my lips making familiar movements as I spoke. "So I'm just going to start talking in a calm tone and hope that you get the gist."
"Ka Onac. Shesh." One Eye approached me slowly, getting close enough to poke my chest before retreating in evident fear. He seemed genuinely surprised that his talon had been able to make contact with my armor, almost frightened by the fact that I was allowing him to do so. He backed away as though expecting lighting to strike him dead for having done so.
It was a valid fear, I supposed. Had I actually been a Goa'uld, it very well might have. The Zat gun had been just as effective when I'd used it on Larry, Mo, and Cury as when I'd seen it used on the forces of Chronos. Sokar's minions on this planet had likely been ruling this tribe's territory for millennia, meaning that any visitation from their forces had likely meant nothing but pain and death for the tribe.
"Onac benar! Ko!" Spine Nose chided one eye, slapping One Eye's shoulder.
One Eye growled, getting up in Spine Nose's personal space to put jaws at Spine Nose's throat in an attempt to cow the second Unas. Spine Nose was unimpressed, head butting One Eye for doing so. Glowing green blood spurted from where spines met One Eye's forehead.
The Unas crowd crooned with a sound that I judged to be laughter. One eye bellowed, silencing it before sending an irritated look to Spine Nose. Spine Nose, just stared back at the Alpha. "Ko! Onac benar."
"Ma." Begrudgingly replied to Spine Nose. "Onac benar."
One Eye squatted in front of me, pulling a braid of tightly woven fibers interlaced with what appeared to Unas talons and tossing it to the ground in front of me. He waved to it. "Ko."
"You, you want me to take it." I replied, deciding what would be best to do next. The Unas didn't seem to be supernatural, at least not purely supernatural, so I was certain that this gift wouldn't be considered a contract or a pact requiring equal pay in return. For that matter, I doubted the Unas had any mystical properties at all. After all, hadn't the Goa'uld abandoned their use specifically so that they could use magic? But when in doubt it was best to return a courtesy when offered.
I pulled at my belt, locating the knife I knew to be on my left hip. It was a cruel curved thing with irregular jagged points to it, not especially useful for actually fighting but appropriately 'wizardly' looking to have made a statement when used on one of Heka's subjects. It held no actual magical significance as far as I could tell, it just looked like it ought to belong in a ritual.
I tossed it in front of One Eye and said, "Ko" for lack of a better word to say. It seemed to be the right thing to say. I was sort of at a loss as to what to do after my gift was accepted though. We just kind of sat there, staring at each other as he knelt and I stood. For lack of a better option I shifted my head, activating the motors on armor to retract my helmet. I was in no danger of being recognized by the Jaffa and I preferred to talk face to face with someone when possible.
One Eye flinched when the mask receded but did not move from his position, jutting out his chin and speaking in a less pronounced snarl. "Onac nok kan kel?"
"I don't suppose you can shed some light on what he's asking?" I queried aloud, simultaneously directing my inquiry to Bob and the Angel's shadow.
"He wants to know why you're here Sahib." Bob spoke from my waist. "And what you want."
"Keka!" One Eye hissed, taking a step back and spreading his arms aggressively as he looked at Bob. "Onac Keka! Benar tac!"
"No Keka!" I shook my head emphatically, pointing to the skull. "Bob."
"Baaaabb" One Eye replied, his alien vocal chords struggling with the vowel sound.
"Yes. Bob." I replied, tapping my finger on the skull a Bob replied with an irritated protest of "Hey! Quit it."
"Bob onac ka ney." One Eye replied in confusion, still ready to strike if necessary.
"Ma onac ka ney." Replied Bob, "We're all friends here big guy. No danger, no tricks."
"Benar." In an instant I went from being surrounded by a crowd of animalistic predators to being a mildly interesting oddity at the center of an Unas tribe. No longer protecting themselves from an imminent threat to the tribe most Unas broke off to go forage in the iridescent foliage. I quickly found myself with only a handful of Unas around me, most of them apparently curious adolescents.
One Eye and Spine Nose remained, Spine Nose seemingly there just to stand behind One Eye and make the occasional hiss or growl. One Eye made a gurgling sound and one of the adolescent Unas placed long strips of gray moss and dried mushrooms in front of us. Spine Nose, bidden by some unspoken queue knelt next to the kindling and pulled two stones from a pouch. One Eye took them, holding them cupped between his hands as he groaned in a rhythmic vibrating hum that could only be interpreted as some sort of a prayer. The adolescents hummed in reply before he took the stones and cracked them together, bright sparks falling from them as he did so. The kindling was uncooperative, whichever adolescent Unas had been tasked with carrying it seemed to have accidentally dropped it in the lake between where their camp had been and where the camp was now. Or rather I guessed that was how it had gotten wet, the adolescent Unas had made himself scarce after passing it over in a way that reeked of a teenager eager not to end up getting scolded for his mistake. I guess some bad habits crossed even the boundaries between species.
I briefly amused myself at the idea of my friend Michael giving one of the all too familiar lectures on responsibility he was wont to do when encountering a wayward teenager in need of guidance. As ridiculous as the image was, I was equally convinced that somehow – even though the language barrier – Michael would manage to convince the adolescent Unas to see the error of his ways and take his chores more seriously. Don't ask me how he did it, my own father hadn't been in my life long enough to get a good sense for how to "role model" and McCoy didn't mentor so much as he whooped you into shape regardless of if you'd wanted to be fixed or not. I think it was a benefit of the whole Knight of the Cross thing, it gave him clarity into bad people could become good and how good people could become better.
I got the distinct sense that One Eye's counciling with the youth would have been less talking and more "beating you for having been bad at your job." One Eye continued click the rocks together, muttering words I didn't understand to Spine Nose with meanings that were all too clear to me. "Why isn't this working" I imagined he was saying. "We're embarrassing ourselves in front of our guest" before Spine Nose gave a snarky reply of "Do you need me to do it for you?" They were strangely domestic in their interactions. I presumed Spine Nose to be either the second in command or possibly his mate, assuming of course that Unas even had mates. Heck, I was assuming that Unas even had gender. Ammit used female pronouns but I hadn't got a clue if the Goa'uld even had gender of their own, or if they just applied the gender of their host as needed.
After a minute or so, I took pity on him. I reached down to the pile of combustibles, placed my finger in the kindling and willed my power at it as I spoke the words, "Flicum Bicus." I didn't strictly need to point in order to cast the spell, but I wanted to leave no doubt that I'd been the one to do it.
One Eye's mouth gaped in shock as flames erupted through the wet kindling, "Shesh."
"Ko." I spoke the word again, knowing that it had been an agreeable term for my previous gift.
"Ko." Replied One Eye in a pleased voice looking up and into my face – staring me dead in the eyes… well eye, I suppose. And then something remarkable happened.
We entered into a soul gaze.
It's not something that I'd even thought to protect myself from. Generally speaking it isn't a danger when dealing with non-human creatures that weren't once at least partly human. Even some of the partly human creatures like Black Court Vampires were too far gone from what they had once been to need to worry about getting sucked into a soul gaze. The Unas were just too alien for me to have even considered the possibility that they had souls, at least souls with which I would be capable of interacting.
A soul gaze is always different, you get to see a representation of what makes that person who they are – a combination of all the best and worst parts of them that will encompass their being in its entirety. No two soul gazes will ever be the same. And once you've seen a person's soul, you will never forget what you've seen – no matter how much you may wish you were able.
One Eye's soul was different even by the standards of a soul gaze. It was, for lack of a better word, alien. He didn't think the way I did, didn't comprehend sensory data in a way that I could easily process. His eyes saw too many colors and too many of the wrong colors for what he was looking at. His sense of smell was overwhelming, in just instants I was exposed to a range of odors and flavors that seemed ready to engulf me. I could feel the ache in One Eye's muscles, the dull knotted pain in his thigh where he'd been bitten by a predator as an adolescent, the confusion he felt when I appeared along the coast without ever having gone through the only entrance to this cave, the fear he felt that I would kill them all for their forefathers having fled the central mines a generation ago – hiding in the depths where the Jaffa dared not go.
He didn't have a really distinct concept of self. He was himself, he'd just never really considered the matter to realize that the fact that he was an individual mean that the other members of his tribe were also individuals. One Eye didn't have a name and hadn't ever considered the necessity of naming each member of his tribe individually. He knew them on sight and knew them by smell, what else would be required? He was not proud or arrogant, pride and arrogance would have required that he considered his accomplishments in depth. He was the most accomplished of his tribe, to be sure, but that was not a matter of pride – it was a matter of fact. When a younger Unas came along with greater deeds or was capable of beating him in ritual combat, that Unas would become the most accomplished. It was the way of things.
I saw glimpses of One Eye's life. I saw the moment when he'd broken through his egg and touched the joy he'd felt as he fed on one of the smaller, more deformed hatchlings. I experienced the pride he'd felt when his tribe had allowed him to go on his first hunt. I felt the fear of hiding from Jaffa patrols and the joy of executing a successful raid against them. I knew the taste of their flesh in his mouth and the pleasure that came when he'd spit-roasting Jaffa as they still lived. I knew that by consuming them he believed that he gained their strength, their power. I knew that the young of their tribe too incautious to be caught by a Jaffa patrol were often taken by the Jaffa and put to work in the mines. I knew that he feared the mines. He feared the mines more than he feared death.
When the Unas became too old or weak to continue to work in the mines they would invariably enter the great pyramid – anyone who entered the pyramid was worse than dead, or so the ancestors had told him. He saw no reason to question their wisdom on the matter. I saw his memories of the cave paintings left by his father's father. I listened to the stories told by his people – and I understood what it was to be Unas.
I was left gasping for air as the soulgaze broke, overwhelmed by the totality of what I'd seen. One Eye, by contrast, maintained that same serpentine grace – seemingly unperturbed by having been exposed to all that I was. It was likely a byproduct of his incapacity for introspection. I envied him. I was going to have some long nights coming to grip with the fact that I now knew far more about the taste of Jaffa flesh than any man ought to.
"Ska nat, War'den." One Eye spoke, his vocal chords struggling with the English language. He pointed to the skull, "Ska nat, Baab," he pointed to my heart, "Ska nat Harry," and finally to my head, "Ska nat Lash."
"You saw Lash?" I replied, wondering how much the Angel's shadow had been part of the soul gaze. I'd never asked about what someone saw in my head before – I'd always been kind of afraid to know. It wasn't the sort of thing you asked.
"Saw. Spoke. Taught," Replied One Eye. He held his hands apart. "Before Tak," he united them, "Now Tar – Naya, together. Dresden. Unas. Friend."
Keenly aware that disagreeing was a good way to end up on a spit, I agreed. "Sure One Eye. We're pals. Now, how about you point me towards that big temple you hate and I'll make it go away?"
One Eye shook his head. "Shesh. Many word. Few understand."
"Boss, their language doesn't actually have most of the concepts you're trying to express. Keep it simple." Bob sighed in exasperation. "Just talk cave man. You should be good at it."
"Cave man?" I replied to the skull.
"Me Tarzan, you Jane." Bob replied. "They have only had a couple generations out of captivity to discover fire. 'Temple' is going to be too much of a leap even if the guest in your head shared your language with him."
"Ah," I replied looking back at One Eye. He was fascinated by the spirit, amused by the dancing lights in the Skull's eyes. I cleared my throat to get his attention before continuing. "I good person. You help me. I go to bad place. I fight. No more bad place."
"Ka." One Eye disagreed.
"Why?" I blinked in surprise. I would have thought he would jump at the chance to have someone fight the Goa'uld on his planet.
"Naya tok." One Eye grinned with feral glee. "Together. Onac. Unas. Go to bad place. Naya tok. We fight."
I was going to write this one off as a "semi-diplomatic" solution.
