Disclaimer: I don't own 'Stargate: SG-1' or any of the related characters; you should know the drill by now. Also, thanks are due to MaureenT, whose exceptional 'Stargate' fanfics are what first got me interested in the Sam/Daniel pairing originally, to say nothing of the invaluable information and suggestions she has provided for the upcoming chapters
Feedback: I'd appreciate it, believe me
Child of the Ancients
The following morning, having checked in with the SGC to report on their current rate of progress, a newly-drawn copy of the map in Daniel's hands- he and Osric had spent some time going over the original map to create a near-exact duplicate of the original, although they'd naturally avoiding going into as much detail in areas of the map looking at forests or other such landscape-related details- and packs containing supplies for the next few days on their backs- grateful that Atlantis always kept the puddle jumpers well-stocked in the event of a longer mission than usual-, the team began to follow the route that would apparently lead them to the Sangraal.
The majority of the walk was fairly straightforward for a time, with the group simply exchanging short stories about some of their past adventures and experiences on other worlds that they'd previously only briefly heard about in missions- Daniel was naturally particularly interested in John's time inside the valley that had been protected by a time dilation field-, as well as a few private reflections about the implications of some of the information Osric had been able to provide them with- the reference to the 'guardian's name' was one issue that none of them could guess at, although the primary consensus was that it referred to a password that could be used to shut down the guardian when it attacked-, but so far they had encountered no serious opposition to their search.
"What the Hell...?" John muttered at last after a long walk through a field filled with high grass brought them to the outskirts of a forest, staring uncertainly at the sight before them, drawing Daniel and Elizabeth out of their current conversation about some of the finer details of the Ancient language- Elizabeth had picked up a few skills in that area in her time in Atlantis, but Daniel was still the best at it- to study the scene before them.
Spread out in front of them, all facing the direction that the team were currently travelling in, were a scattered group of people dressed in clothing similar to the villagers- one woman with her hand over her mouth was almost certainly the missing mother Osric had mentioned-, all of them facing the direction that the map indicated would lead the group to the Sangraal. At first glance all of the people before them simply appeared to be standing completely still, but the sight of a bird frozen in position in the air above the field made it clear that they weren't dealing with a group who'd decided to play a game for some reason.
"What's the matter with them?" Liam asked, moving over to stand slightly closer to Daniel, his arm going around his father's leg as though seeking comfort even as his gaze shifted to look questioningly at his mother.
"I don't know..." Sam muttered, studying her hand-held scanner as she walked parallel to the group of frozen people. "I'm picking up varying anomalous readings; stronger here... weaker here... than rising again..."
She paused in her walk as she looked back at the rest of the group. "This is weird; they're temporal fluctuations."
"Which means... what?" John asked. "Morgan Le Fay set up a time distortion field around this place?"
"From what I'm seeing, I'd say that's almost a certainty," Sam confirmed. "Judging by the moving leaves in the trees, it's probably capable of generating an illusion to supplant the standing weather pattern, but otherwise time within the field is drastically slower than what's taking place outside it."
"So... everyone in the field isn't standing still, they're just moving so slowly that we can't see it?" Elizabeth asked, her and John exchanging brief glances at the uncomfortable reminder of the six months/six hours he'd spent trapped in the temporal displacement field in Pegasus before he'd managed to escape.
"Pretty much," Sam confirmed, studying the scanner before her with an uncertain gaze. "Several years may pass for us in the few seconds it takes them to take a single step; many of them may not even be aware anything's happened to them yet."
"Uh... can we just go around it?" Liam asked uncertainly.
"If this is anything like the field I encountered back in Pegasus, it's probably big enough to cover the air above this area as well; odds that we can just walk around it are pretty much slim to none," John said, shaking his head grimly. "Only question now is, do we go back, or-"
"Wait a minute..." Sam interjected, her gaze still thoughtfully fixed on the scanner in her hands. "John may be right about it extending outwards- the readings I'm getting of the field seem to indicate that it stretches in both directions as far as I can detect, and it even has a slight curve to it-, but these varied readings... it's almost as if..."
She paused for a moment, taking the time to run through the possible implications of her theory, before she turned to look at her new family and friends with a brief smile. "I think I've found a way in; there's a circuitous path of real-time winding through the temporal fold."
"Like a... maze?" Liam asked uncertainly.
"Exactly," Sam confirmed, smiling in approval at her son's deduction. "With the readings on my scanner, I can use them to guide us through, but you'll all need to follow my lead; if you stray off the path, you could end up trapped in the distortion field."
"From Statues to 'Follow the Leader', huh?" John said, allowing himself a brief smile as the group of five formed a line of single file behind Sam as she began to walk through the field of frozen bodies, her gaze constantly fixed on the scanner in her hands. For the first few steps it was relatively straightforward- a few metres in prompting a turn to the left as the only even minor 'course correction' needed at first-, but after another turn to the right, Sam's eyes widened as she studied the scanner.
"Uh oh," she said simply.
"'Uh oh'?" Liam repeated, looking anxiously at his mother. "What's 'Uh oh'? I don't like 'uh oh'; what's with the 'uh oh'?"
"The temporal distortions are affecting these readings," Sam explained, looking uncomfortably back at the rest of the group as far as she dared without risking contact with the field around her; she had no real idea how wide the safe path was and wasn't inclined to test it. "We're effectively blind."
"OK, maybe we should try something else..." John said, turning his own head to look at where Liam stood between him and Daniel. "Hey, Liam; sorry if this is a bit presumptuous, but would your Ancient abilities have included some kind of 'time sense'-?"
"I don't really... feel any different, if that's what you're asking," Liam replied, shaking his head uncomfortably as he looked back at the people frozen in time around him. "I mean, I'm aware that there's something... strange... about this place, but I'm just not getting any clear idea about where to go to keep us safe..."
"And going back isn't exactly an option either," Elizabeth added, looking grimly back at the parts of the temporal displacement field they'd already crossed. "There's no way to be certain we'd measure out our steps exactly right; if we go too far we'll just end up trapped like everyone else..."
"Look, we need to be practical about this," Daniel put in, holding up the map for brief emphasis before he continued talking. "Morgan Le Fay left clues about how to get to the Sangraal, which means that there is a way to get there; this kind of thing is just a trap to stop anyone who isn't worthy from getting there first. All we have to do is be resourceful and carefully think this through."
"Well..." John said after a moment's silent contemplation, "if this was originally set up in the Middle Ages, there wouldn't have been many planets with this kind of technology; she'd probably have set up some way to get through this whole thing that's so simple people would never think of it..."
For a few moments, the group of five simply silently contemplated their options, until Sam bent down to pick up a rock from the ground, tossing the rock ahead of her and watching as it came to a halt mid-air.
"Follow me," she said, walking towards the now-frozen rock and picking up another, tossing it to the left and watching as it repeated the other rock's mid-air halt, before a toss to the right resulted in it falling to the ground normally several yards away from them.
"That is simple..." Liam commented, smiling warmly up at his mother.
"First rule of Stargate exploration, Liam," Daniel put in, smiling at his son as they continued walking. "Sometimes the simplest explanation is the correct one."
"Like the time you realised that the constellations changed position without knowing a thing about stellar drift?" Sam asked, smiling back at Daniel as she tossed the same rock to the left, revealing a still-clear path. Following the rock to the point where it fell, Sam threw it once again, the rock briefly impacting against a force field before it continued to fall to the ground, clearly indicating that it had left the temporal displacement field.
"Phew..." Elizabeth said, exchanging relieved glances with her teammates as they walked out of the field at last. "Now that is one experience I am not interested in repeating any time soon..."
"Join the club," John said, nodding briefly at her before he glanced back at Sam, Daniel and Liam. "So, we keep on going?"
"Well, we've already passed one test; there's not much point in stopping now," Liam replied with a casual grin as he indicated the wood before them. "Besides, this looks like fun."
"Fun, huh?" John said, smiling slightly at Liam as he glanced at the wood before them. "In that case... race?"
No sooner was the word out of his mouth than John was running into the wood, Liam laughing as he hurried after him, the half-Ascended's eight-year-old legs managing to keep a surprisingly good pace with the lieutenant-colonel. For a moment, Sam, Daniel and Elizabeth exchanged glances, and then the three of them hurried after the other two, their search momentarily forgotten in the simple fun of the race as they followed the path, all thoughts of a second time displacement field swiftly pushed aside by the comforting certainty that nobody would use the same trap twice, fear of what might be coming ignored for the sake of this brief period of joy...
After the desire to run had petered out and the group returned to a more traditional walking speed- although Liam was still prone to occasionally dashing on ahead for the sake of it-, Elizabeth finally stopped walking as she looked at something off to the side.
"What in the world...?" she said, staring in surprise at the sight that was now visible off to the side of their current path. Sitting in the middle of a small clearing in the woods was a simple wooden chest made of a deep brownish-red wood, positioned on a small pile of rocks in the middle.
"What's that?" Liam asked, looking curiously between his parents.
"No idea..." Daniel said, shaking his head briefly as they walked towards the chest, the same thought clearly on all their minds; the chest very likely contained something that would be relevant in their quest. They had just passed through the last of the trees immediately around the chest when a sudden burst of yellow light prompted them to spin around and watch as the dome-like structure of a force field burst from the ground to move upwards around them.
"Oh," John said, tapping against the force field with his P-90 and watching as the field flashed at the point of impact. "Well, that's not good..."
"So much for finding something useful in this thing," Elizabeth added, indicating the now-opened chest, which contained nothing and revealed only a simple wooden interior. "Why would Morgan have included something like this on the quest?"
"Maybe..." Daniel said, staring reflectively at the chest.
"What?" Sam asked, looking curiously at him.
"Well," Daniel said, as he looked thoughtfully around at his friends, "the Parchment of Virtues told us that we've have to rely on five things in order to reach the Sangraal; prudence, wisdom, charity, kindness, and faith."
"You're saying we should interpret that literally?" Elizabeth asked.
"Why not?" Daniel replied with a brief shrug. "We were able to make our way through the time dilation field by patiently and carefully negotiating the maze. In other words, we demonstrated prudence as opposed to recklessness, which would have stranded us. So ask yourselves, what does this trap exploit?"
"Curiosity?" Liam offered uncertainly.
"Greed," Daniel corrected. "A person approaches the chest expecting to find treasure inside, but instead finds nothing and gets trapped for their trouble."
"Great..." John muttered, shaking his head in frustration before turning back to study the object before them. "So... what do we do now; say we're sorry?"
"Essentially, yes," Daniel confirmed. "The opposite of greed is charity, one of the virtues mentioned in the parchment."
"You mean... we put something in the box and it lets us go?" Liam asked.
Nodding in confirmation, Daniel pulled a pen out of his pocket, dropped it into the box, and closed it, only for John's second experimental tap against the force field to be met with the same results as before.
"Well," Elizabeth said at last, sighing slightly as she reached into her pocket and pulled out what looked like a personal organiser, "we're all trapped, so we should probably all contribute something."
As she passed the organiser to Daniel, Sam handed her scanner to the archaeologist while Liam removed his new watch, looking at it with a briefly dejected expression before adding it to the chest's contents, followed by John- out of a lack of anything else that could be considered remotely expendable- depositing a spare clip of ammunition for his sidearm.
"OK," he said as the force field lowered around them, turning to look inquiringly at Daniel, "with that out of the way, does that map say anything about what the Sangraal is located so we don't have to deal with a repeat of this?"
"Well..." Daniel said, briefly studying the map before he looked up at the others, "according to this, the Sangraal itself is located in a cave beneath a lone mountain; if we focus on the mountain as our destination, we should be able to avoid any further traps..."
"Here's hoping, anyway," John said, indicating the path before them with a brief shrug. "Lead on; time's a-wastin'."