Kaia took them to another room, the one where they would be staying until
the following day. It was quite different than the one they´d been stuck in
before. This one was large, and had two floors. It also wasn´t as damp as
the rest of the caves, something which was made clear when they noticed
that there was actually another corridor, which led outside. The air in
there was cool and fresh and everything was well lit by some sort of
glowing stones which Kaia called the Jewels of Dragons but didn´t explain
what they were. At this point, Sam lost all track of what was being said,
she stared at the stones, touched them, examined them. She was completely
lost in the science behind what she was looking at.
The rest of the team got what O´Neill believed was no less than the "grand tour". They were shone several beds, all of them with a great cloth on top of them, depicting different colored dragons, a horse and something which looked like a dog and a cat. This was the place where Kaia´s vrigda slept. There were also several shelves, on which there was food, drink and clothes. On the second level, there were six other beds, all of them unoccupied. Daniel asked Kaia about the place and what everything meant, and she patiently explained how this metal dragon represented Bolshoi and how that stone dragon was the protector of all Padeos and that they prayed to it every morning and every night whenever they were there. O´Neill lost track of it all, he went to stand by Sam, watching her. She was completely focused on the glowing "rock-thingy", he rolled his eyes but did nothing else. All of the feelings and arguments that had rolled around his head while he´d been inches appart from her for two days still refused to be silent. He didn´t trust his mouth to speak, he was afraid of what would come out of it. Finally, both of them were taken out of their own personal ramblings as Teal´c called them over.
Kaia handed them completely new clothes, this time they bore the blue-green dragon Kaia bore. She also handed them another pair of pants, black pants which seemed a little too tight, a pair of black boots which reached up to their knees and several weapons: a long sword, a short sword, two daggers, some of the string she carried (which she briefly explained did great damage to the Sailen if they came into contact with it, because it was made from the hair of the Loshati and the powdered scales of a Dragon) and two brightly colored bracelets which were knitted. One of then had three colors, red, blue and green; this one was so they would be identified as Padeos. The other one had crosses knotted into the pattern, blue crosses, on top of yellow, green, orange and red; this one made them part of Kaia´s vrigda and one rank higher than the common foot soldier. She finally handed them each a small metal pendant, it had a dragon coiled around what looked like a tooth. It was for luck and courage in battle, but also to show that the house they belonged to was a great house, and that would make them worthy of respect. It wasn´t until this moment that SG-1 noticed that Kaia did in fact wear all these things, and more. She, at the very least, wore two more bracelets, a black one (to show her master had died, honorably, and that she was now the head of Bolshoi´s household) and a grey and dark blue one, which proved her to be a Leader of the Stewards (which meant she had the spirit of a dragon within her, quite literally, half of Bolshoi´s soul had blended with her own in the moment of his death, giving her even more power as a Padeos).
They weren´t given a lot of time to absorb or think about what they were doing. Kaia led them through another corridor, one that was hidden under the stairs. At the end of it there was a light, it was the reflection of the sun on water. It wasn´t a very large room but it was a curious one: completely round and, at top, an opening which looked up into the sky and lit the room; there was a stone slab which seemed to be the edge of a small waterfall, if you stood in the middle of the room, the water would fall directly on top of you. Kaia climbed up to the ledge, carefully, and dropped some glowing stones into the small puddle which formed there. They began to glow red. Kaia went back down and explained what the place was. It was unbelievable, but they were actually standing in some sort of shower. The glowing stones were to heat the water, something which was confirmed by O´Neill as he put his hand into the waterfall: the water was warm. Kaia smiled at them and told them to wash. Before leaving, she handed them two bowls with some sort of oil inside of them. She quickly explained: one was like soap, the other was to soak the bracelets in. She didn´t explain why, she simply left.
It was an awkward moment and it took them several minutes to figure out how they were going to go about washing up. Finally, it was decided that Sam would go first, then Teal´c, then O´Neill and finally, Daniel. The men left and Sam was left with a lingering thought: there were no towels to dry off with.
To Kaia it seemed like the strangers were taking forever to wash up. She was lying in bed, fidgeting with her dragon pendant. She was thinking about what she was about to do. It wasn´t right, but it was the only way. She wasn´t actually worried about the strangers, she knew they would be able to handle it, she was worried about what this meant for her people. Once it was discovered that she had turned humans into Padeos out of a whim, the council would be outraged and the humans.....they would probably demand that they be made Padeos as well. Up to that moment, they had relied on the fact that the children who would one day be Padeos were different in some way and in fact, they were, but that did not mean that any human could not share the power of the Padeos. Kaia thought about this. According to the legends, the Dragons and the Loshati blessed ten humans and from them all Padeos come; the Gyffins and Sabaki took human form and went to live with humans, so that they are all born as humans but are in fact Creatures of the Light. She sighed. She knew she could turn these humans into Padeos, she knew it but it went against everything that the legend spoke off. As if she were not alone, she suddenly heard a voice, clear, deep and comforting, "You cannot trust truth to legend and myth, child.". She smiled. Bloshoi had said that to her many, many times. He was right. The legend may tell one thing but in the end, it is a legend, and not the complete truth. She was still thinking when the strangers finally came out.
Kaia looked at them carefully. They looked just like four more Padeos, with the exception of the Jaffa, he looked a little out of place, but nothing extraordinary. She smiled, hoping it came off as a confident one, but she knew it did not. For the first time since she´d been forced to take Iablaka under her care, she wasn´t sure if what she was doing was right or wrong, good or evil. She was nervous. She looked at their faces again. They did not belong in her world. She could feel it. They were really desperate to go home, even Daniel didn't like the idea of being stranded there, fascinating as the planet was. It was as if something too big and too tight for them were filling them up inside. They felt they would explode, they could do nothing about it. Kaia knew they felt it, in their fingertips, in their eyes. It was as if something thick and viscous were filling them up, substituting every other feeling and sensation, making them leak out with every breath, with every heartbeat. Kaia´s resolve hardened in that moment, she didn´t care what the social consecuences of her actions were, the right thing to do was to help these strangers go home. She came up to them.
"It is time."
She turned to the shelves and brought something back for them. It was food. She insisted that they eat everything she gave them and drink the last drop of a greenish liquid that didn´t taste too good. When they were done, they all felt rather sleepy, but Kaia insisted that they go outside.
They walked for a while, SG-1 never could figure out for how long. The went past the treeline, onto the very edge of a cliff. Kaia told them to stop there. They were all practically asleep on their feet, even Teal´c seemed out of it. Kaia made the Jaffa stand appart and allowed him to sit down, at which point he stared into space without moving. The other three didn´t have the luxory of sitting down, they all felt as if they would faint from being so tired.
"Stand together.", Kaia said. They did so, but Kaia wasn´t pleased, "Closer. You must.", they moved again. O´Neill bumped into Sam unceremoniously and tried to apologize, but he was just so out of it.....they were standing now, shoulder to shoulder, Sam in the middle and O´Neill to her right, Daniel to her left. She was glad for it, she felt she could lean a little on each man and that would help hold herself up. Her vision was getting blurry.
Kaia wasted no time anymore. She stood in front of them, "Now, you will feel no pain. When it is over you will collapse and will remain unconscious for, at least, the remainder of the afternoon and most of the night. Listen to me!", she slapped Daniel awake, "The pain you will feel when you wake will be because you will be able to feel everything and everyone close to you. You must focus on something, something which can occupy your mind entirely, once the pain begins to receed, look inside yourselves. All the knowledge and power to control your mind is there, you only need to look for it. When all is well again, you will feel very hungry. I will bring you food, after that, we will set out to the encampment were, if Life and Time allow, you will be able to have a few hours of training before the battle.", she took a step back and sat down, cross-legged. She closed her eyes, when she opened them, they were glowing.
The dragon once again took form. It stood before the three members of SG-1, regarding them, searching their minds. It seemed like an eternity before it moved. Teal´c was still staring into space, and Daniel, Sam and O´Neill were to busy trying to stay on their feet to be awed at what stood before them. Bolshoi´s spirit looked almost as if it were real, there was something in the texture of the skin which was slightly off. His breath, amazingly enough, was just as foul as it had been in life, and if O´Neill had had the strength, he would of even noticed that when he spoke, he spat. Bolshoi said something no one understood, it sounded more like mumbling than anything else. Suddenly, it happened.
Bloshoi rose on his two hind legs. He streched his wings. He screamed, it was a deafening sound. He laid both his hands on the shoulders of the men, but that did not stop Sam from feeling as if she were being weighed down as well. They tried to stay up. Eventually, they were all down on their knees. Something happened around them. Some sort of mist seemed to surround them, it was so thick they could no longer see the person next to them. They stopped feeling tired, their minds were becoming clear. O´Neill was aware of a little bug climbing up a tree about three hundred yards away; Sam knew there was a fish stuck in a hole in the river at the bottom of the cliff; Daniel knew it was raining in the Loshati encampment. The weight of the dragon´s arms began to seem less and they were finally able so simply shake them off. At this moment, Bolshoi bowed to them. They fell to the ground.
Kaia opened her eyes suddenly. She was out of breath and sweating. Her vision was blurry. She only had enough time to call out to the Jaffa before she too, lost consciousness.
Teal´c had been thinking about something. Or at least he assumed so. It wasn´t very often that he had so difficult a time focusing on any one thing. He was vaguely aware of a prescence nearby, he thought there was a sound no louder than a whisper when Bolshoi screamed. When Kaia called out his name, he was able to shake himself back to the real world. His friends were lying in a heap on top of each other, Kaia lay in front of them. Upon closer examination, he noticed that they simply seemed to be sleeping. He looked around, no one else was there. He knew what he had to do. He carried each of the sleeping forms back to Kaia´s room. It took him a long time to manage, but he eventually did. The ones who saw him stepped out of his way, though he didn´t know if it was out of fear or respect. He brought Kaia in last. When he got back to the cave, Vozem and Stari were already there. They took one look at Kaia and breathed a sigh of relief. Apparently, clarified Stari, whatever it was the girl had just done could of killed her. She had been lucky.
The rest of the team got what O´Neill believed was no less than the "grand tour". They were shone several beds, all of them with a great cloth on top of them, depicting different colored dragons, a horse and something which looked like a dog and a cat. This was the place where Kaia´s vrigda slept. There were also several shelves, on which there was food, drink and clothes. On the second level, there were six other beds, all of them unoccupied. Daniel asked Kaia about the place and what everything meant, and she patiently explained how this metal dragon represented Bolshoi and how that stone dragon was the protector of all Padeos and that they prayed to it every morning and every night whenever they were there. O´Neill lost track of it all, he went to stand by Sam, watching her. She was completely focused on the glowing "rock-thingy", he rolled his eyes but did nothing else. All of the feelings and arguments that had rolled around his head while he´d been inches appart from her for two days still refused to be silent. He didn´t trust his mouth to speak, he was afraid of what would come out of it. Finally, both of them were taken out of their own personal ramblings as Teal´c called them over.
Kaia handed them completely new clothes, this time they bore the blue-green dragon Kaia bore. She also handed them another pair of pants, black pants which seemed a little too tight, a pair of black boots which reached up to their knees and several weapons: a long sword, a short sword, two daggers, some of the string she carried (which she briefly explained did great damage to the Sailen if they came into contact with it, because it was made from the hair of the Loshati and the powdered scales of a Dragon) and two brightly colored bracelets which were knitted. One of then had three colors, red, blue and green; this one was so they would be identified as Padeos. The other one had crosses knotted into the pattern, blue crosses, on top of yellow, green, orange and red; this one made them part of Kaia´s vrigda and one rank higher than the common foot soldier. She finally handed them each a small metal pendant, it had a dragon coiled around what looked like a tooth. It was for luck and courage in battle, but also to show that the house they belonged to was a great house, and that would make them worthy of respect. It wasn´t until this moment that SG-1 noticed that Kaia did in fact wear all these things, and more. She, at the very least, wore two more bracelets, a black one (to show her master had died, honorably, and that she was now the head of Bolshoi´s household) and a grey and dark blue one, which proved her to be a Leader of the Stewards (which meant she had the spirit of a dragon within her, quite literally, half of Bolshoi´s soul had blended with her own in the moment of his death, giving her even more power as a Padeos).
They weren´t given a lot of time to absorb or think about what they were doing. Kaia led them through another corridor, one that was hidden under the stairs. At the end of it there was a light, it was the reflection of the sun on water. It wasn´t a very large room but it was a curious one: completely round and, at top, an opening which looked up into the sky and lit the room; there was a stone slab which seemed to be the edge of a small waterfall, if you stood in the middle of the room, the water would fall directly on top of you. Kaia climbed up to the ledge, carefully, and dropped some glowing stones into the small puddle which formed there. They began to glow red. Kaia went back down and explained what the place was. It was unbelievable, but they were actually standing in some sort of shower. The glowing stones were to heat the water, something which was confirmed by O´Neill as he put his hand into the waterfall: the water was warm. Kaia smiled at them and told them to wash. Before leaving, she handed them two bowls with some sort of oil inside of them. She quickly explained: one was like soap, the other was to soak the bracelets in. She didn´t explain why, she simply left.
It was an awkward moment and it took them several minutes to figure out how they were going to go about washing up. Finally, it was decided that Sam would go first, then Teal´c, then O´Neill and finally, Daniel. The men left and Sam was left with a lingering thought: there were no towels to dry off with.
To Kaia it seemed like the strangers were taking forever to wash up. She was lying in bed, fidgeting with her dragon pendant. She was thinking about what she was about to do. It wasn´t right, but it was the only way. She wasn´t actually worried about the strangers, she knew they would be able to handle it, she was worried about what this meant for her people. Once it was discovered that she had turned humans into Padeos out of a whim, the council would be outraged and the humans.....they would probably demand that they be made Padeos as well. Up to that moment, they had relied on the fact that the children who would one day be Padeos were different in some way and in fact, they were, but that did not mean that any human could not share the power of the Padeos. Kaia thought about this. According to the legends, the Dragons and the Loshati blessed ten humans and from them all Padeos come; the Gyffins and Sabaki took human form and went to live with humans, so that they are all born as humans but are in fact Creatures of the Light. She sighed. She knew she could turn these humans into Padeos, she knew it but it went against everything that the legend spoke off. As if she were not alone, she suddenly heard a voice, clear, deep and comforting, "You cannot trust truth to legend and myth, child.". She smiled. Bloshoi had said that to her many, many times. He was right. The legend may tell one thing but in the end, it is a legend, and not the complete truth. She was still thinking when the strangers finally came out.
Kaia looked at them carefully. They looked just like four more Padeos, with the exception of the Jaffa, he looked a little out of place, but nothing extraordinary. She smiled, hoping it came off as a confident one, but she knew it did not. For the first time since she´d been forced to take Iablaka under her care, she wasn´t sure if what she was doing was right or wrong, good or evil. She was nervous. She looked at their faces again. They did not belong in her world. She could feel it. They were really desperate to go home, even Daniel didn't like the idea of being stranded there, fascinating as the planet was. It was as if something too big and too tight for them were filling them up inside. They felt they would explode, they could do nothing about it. Kaia knew they felt it, in their fingertips, in their eyes. It was as if something thick and viscous were filling them up, substituting every other feeling and sensation, making them leak out with every breath, with every heartbeat. Kaia´s resolve hardened in that moment, she didn´t care what the social consecuences of her actions were, the right thing to do was to help these strangers go home. She came up to them.
"It is time."
She turned to the shelves and brought something back for them. It was food. She insisted that they eat everything she gave them and drink the last drop of a greenish liquid that didn´t taste too good. When they were done, they all felt rather sleepy, but Kaia insisted that they go outside.
They walked for a while, SG-1 never could figure out for how long. The went past the treeline, onto the very edge of a cliff. Kaia told them to stop there. They were all practically asleep on their feet, even Teal´c seemed out of it. Kaia made the Jaffa stand appart and allowed him to sit down, at which point he stared into space without moving. The other three didn´t have the luxory of sitting down, they all felt as if they would faint from being so tired.
"Stand together.", Kaia said. They did so, but Kaia wasn´t pleased, "Closer. You must.", they moved again. O´Neill bumped into Sam unceremoniously and tried to apologize, but he was just so out of it.....they were standing now, shoulder to shoulder, Sam in the middle and O´Neill to her right, Daniel to her left. She was glad for it, she felt she could lean a little on each man and that would help hold herself up. Her vision was getting blurry.
Kaia wasted no time anymore. She stood in front of them, "Now, you will feel no pain. When it is over you will collapse and will remain unconscious for, at least, the remainder of the afternoon and most of the night. Listen to me!", she slapped Daniel awake, "The pain you will feel when you wake will be because you will be able to feel everything and everyone close to you. You must focus on something, something which can occupy your mind entirely, once the pain begins to receed, look inside yourselves. All the knowledge and power to control your mind is there, you only need to look for it. When all is well again, you will feel very hungry. I will bring you food, after that, we will set out to the encampment were, if Life and Time allow, you will be able to have a few hours of training before the battle.", she took a step back and sat down, cross-legged. She closed her eyes, when she opened them, they were glowing.
The dragon once again took form. It stood before the three members of SG-1, regarding them, searching their minds. It seemed like an eternity before it moved. Teal´c was still staring into space, and Daniel, Sam and O´Neill were to busy trying to stay on their feet to be awed at what stood before them. Bolshoi´s spirit looked almost as if it were real, there was something in the texture of the skin which was slightly off. His breath, amazingly enough, was just as foul as it had been in life, and if O´Neill had had the strength, he would of even noticed that when he spoke, he spat. Bolshoi said something no one understood, it sounded more like mumbling than anything else. Suddenly, it happened.
Bloshoi rose on his two hind legs. He streched his wings. He screamed, it was a deafening sound. He laid both his hands on the shoulders of the men, but that did not stop Sam from feeling as if she were being weighed down as well. They tried to stay up. Eventually, they were all down on their knees. Something happened around them. Some sort of mist seemed to surround them, it was so thick they could no longer see the person next to them. They stopped feeling tired, their minds were becoming clear. O´Neill was aware of a little bug climbing up a tree about three hundred yards away; Sam knew there was a fish stuck in a hole in the river at the bottom of the cliff; Daniel knew it was raining in the Loshati encampment. The weight of the dragon´s arms began to seem less and they were finally able so simply shake them off. At this moment, Bolshoi bowed to them. They fell to the ground.
Kaia opened her eyes suddenly. She was out of breath and sweating. Her vision was blurry. She only had enough time to call out to the Jaffa before she too, lost consciousness.
Teal´c had been thinking about something. Or at least he assumed so. It wasn´t very often that he had so difficult a time focusing on any one thing. He was vaguely aware of a prescence nearby, he thought there was a sound no louder than a whisper when Bolshoi screamed. When Kaia called out his name, he was able to shake himself back to the real world. His friends were lying in a heap on top of each other, Kaia lay in front of them. Upon closer examination, he noticed that they simply seemed to be sleeping. He looked around, no one else was there. He knew what he had to do. He carried each of the sleeping forms back to Kaia´s room. It took him a long time to manage, but he eventually did. The ones who saw him stepped out of his way, though he didn´t know if it was out of fear or respect. He brought Kaia in last. When he got back to the cave, Vozem and Stari were already there. They took one look at Kaia and breathed a sigh of relief. Apparently, clarified Stari, whatever it was the girl had just done could of killed her. She had been lucky.
