"So while the rest of us were here working our butts off and freezing to death, you were playing fantasy role playing games on a planet in a distant galaxy?" Harmon Rebka asked mockingly.
"Told you it was out of this world," Sarah Mackenzie answered.
"Some people have all the luck."
"Yeah, all bad. Wait on for the rest."
*
Daniel Jackson, Teal'c, Samantha Carter and Sarah Mackenzie stood in a circle and looked up at the light. They were transfixed like moths circling a flame. O'Neill looked on in disgust.
"OK," O'Neill said irritably. "So the light at the end of the tunnel turned out to be an incandescent lamp hanging from the ceiling. What does the sign next to it say Daniel?"
"'Due to power restrictions, the light at the end of the tunnel will be switched off until further notice.'"
The light went out.
It wasn't completely dark, just very dim. The tunnel was illuminated with an eldritch glow that seemed to come from every direction at once.
"You got that torch with you still Daniel?" O'Neill asked.
"Yep."
"Let's see it then."
Mackenzie un-hostered one of her guns and hefted the weight of it in her hand. It felt solid, well made, and purposeful. She felt much better to be carrying it. If one gun was good then, two was better. She un-holstered the second gun and felt twice as good.
The glow from Jackson's torch filled the cavern with just vaguely more illumination than there was with out it. It didn't make the cavern so much more light, as it made the cavern slightly less dark.
"We came that way," O'Neill said and pointed. "We keep going that way," He said and pointed along the corridor in the opposite direction. There were no other choices.
"Seems good to me," said Mulder.
"There it is again. Where is that noise coming from?" asked Carter.
"Hey! I'm here," Mulder called out. "Why doesn't anybody hear me?"
"Yeah I can hear something to," said Mackenzie. 'It's really faint, like…"
"What does it sound like to you?" Carter asked.
"I don't know, almost like a faint little voice," Mackenzie said hesitantly. "You?"
"Yeah, I guess."
"It is a voice you stupid pair of cows," Mulder screamed at the top of his voice. 'It's me. I'm talking to you."
"Can't make it out," said Carter. Her puzzlement was plain in her voice.
"Come on people," O'Neill called to his group and he set off in the lead.
They trooped on in the dim cavern, marching single file. Teal'c continued to push the hospital gurney upon which the restrained from of Fox Mulder reclined. I realise that this is a stereotyped image, that Teal'c could pass for a slave and that it might not be politically correct to use him in that way, but cultural conditioning goes down deep and they fell into that cliché with little resistance on any part.
The only sound was the squeak, squeak of the hospital trolley gurney that Mulder was sprawled upon. It's poor overloaded and misunderstood wheels were struggling with the whole idea of being forced to actually roll, rather than protest and infuriate. The gurney had all the directional stability of a well-crafted supermarket trolley and Teal'c was starting to think he might need orthopaedic surgery on his left knee if he had to push the thing too much further.
The air got steadily warmer and the humidity increased to match.
"I have a bad feeling about the heat," Jackson muttered.
"Sign Daniel," O'Neill called. He was pointing at the wall of the cavern.
Daniel shuffled forward and frowned up at the craved runes that some one had chipped into the wall. Their hand carving was terrible, but he could make it out. "It says, 'here be dragons.'"
"Oh wonderful."
"That explains the sounds of rustling scales on stone that we can hear," Carter said cynically.
"Yep," O'Neill agreed. "It sure would."
"I don't suppose there is any way to just like, tip-toe around it, is there?" Mackenzie asked.
Jackson looked her up and down. It was not in the nature of the usual male checking out, despite the inherently eye-catching nature of the outfit that she had been dressed in. The look that Daniel Jackson gave her was more in the line of inventory taking. She was suddenly aware of the weight of the guns in her hands and realised that 'no' there was no chance they could tip-toe around it, that was why they had been given all the weapons. It was so they could fight the things that they came up against. But dragons…?
"This is your doing," she hissed at Mulder.
"No it's not," he screamed back at her.
"I'm just going to have to ignore that noise," muttered Carter. "It's just distracting. I just wish I could figure out what it was."
"Some one needs to stay here and guard Mulder," O'Neill said.
"Me!"
"Me!"
"Me!"
"Me!"
"Decisions, decisions. Sam, you aren't armed. And Teal'c, that stick just isn't up to it. You two stay here. Daniel, Mac, let's go."
As if to underline the threat they all felt, a gout of flame and noise like a top-fuel dragster on steroids belched from within the cavern, and toasted the moss and ivy hanging from the far wall.
"OK," O'Neill said. "I admit, that was not a good way to start proceedings."