Chapter Twenty-Two: The Serpent's Lair
Tuesday, 4th January 2000.
Neville smiled at the diminutive girl as she hugged his other friends, one of the last of them to return from their Christmas holidays. With the exception of Padma, who was still in India, and the Grangers, who had spent Christmas at Aether, but who had since ducked out to do a few things now that the holiday was over. Luna stepped back from Harry and turned to look at them all with a knowing smirk on her face and Neville's eyebrows furrowed. "What?"
"We found something," Luna replied simply.
"Something?" Hermione queried before Luna turned on her spot in the Atrium and led them through to the council chamber. "Why are you bringing us in here?"
"You'll see," Luna replied again, not revealing anything about her mysterious discovery. "Take a seat, the others will be with us in a moment."
As she finished the sentence, several images shimmered into existence about the table. The Granger parents were in their usual seats side-by-side, though Richard seemed to be on a slightly off angle compared to the chair he was appearing to sit in, indicating that in reality, he was likely sitting side-by-side with Natalie wherever they happened to be. Merlin sat in a place that had been reserved for his image at the new table, but it was the final group that surprised Neville the most.
Xenophilius Lovegood was standing to the left of Merlin, a trio of elves he didn't recognize standing beside him. Luna gestured them forwards and took her own seat at the table, eventually indicating that Neville and the others should sit as well. "You're going to want to sit for this bit. I promise that it is good."
Neville could feel her excitement from his place opposite, and his eyes kept flicking back to their guests as Padma flickered into place at the table as well, and with a pop, Dobby completed the council for the first time since before the holiday.
"Hello, everyone." Padma offered, still visiting with her extended family back in India.
Neville couldn't help but be reminded of the new paradigm that was his life that allowed instant communication to the other side of the world through near-lifelike holographic images. It was a far better system than sending owls hither and thither, or kneeling in a fireplace to send a message.
"How're things?" Harry asked Padma and she turned to face him.
"Good… well, as good as things can be when you go home to visit a high-achieving family while technically unemployed and unmarried."
Padma's smirk took any concern out of the statement, but Neville had an idea of the kinds of questions she was facing. He dearly loved his grandmother, but she did expect great things from him. Despite having visited Aether in person, she still seemed to think this was some minor hobby he was doing in his spare time and that he would soon have himself a respectable job and begin searching for a wife to continue the family line.
"Purebloods, am I right?" Neville whispered to the holographic girl beside him and she smiled in response.
"Indeed. So, I take it that this meeting is somewhat important, given it couldn't wait for us all to be back next week."
"It is," Luna replied, gesturing her father over behind her now that the full council was in attendance. "As you all know, I went to visit my father during the holiday, but we didn't stay home. He'd recently shifted to a new dig site in northern Africa."
"How are the digs going, Mr Lovegood?" Hermione asked, drawing the attention of the slightly overwhelmed man.
"They are proceeding well. Luna has been very helpful, and Dobby's friends are equally eager to assist."
"That's house-elves for you," Padma stated.
"Are the wages we've been providing adequate?" Hermione asked, directing the question to Dobby.
He nodded excitedly. "Very much so. Some of the elves are reluctant to take it, but most have been using the fund to buy the supplies they need."
"That's good to know. Money is no problem these days, so let us know if you ever need more. It's as much yours as it is mine, well ours." Harry explained to the once more nodding elf.
"Anyway, this new site finally answered a question daddy has been chasing since he found that first site last year." Luna redirected the conversation, but she did not finish her statement.
"Well?" Richard asked.
Luna turned to her father and he seemed slightly flustered. It appeared the man was still having difficulty accepting their forgiveness for his actions during the war, and this odd new form of communication was probably not helping settle his discomfort. "Well, you see… What it is… We had to find a few new sites before we understood properly." Xenophilius sighed. "I've not had to give a presentation on my findings before, I normally just publish them in the Quibbler."
"You know that we can make you a new printing press?" Harry asked and Xeno looked at the boy for a moment before he went red with shame and looked away. "Come on, I don't blame you for that. Luna doesn't. You have to get past it, sir."
"I can't." The elder man replied and he ducked to the right, disappearing from view as the hologram faded away.
Neville looked to Luna and she seemed disheartened, but it only lasted a moment before she brightened back to her usual self and turned instead to Dobby, around whom the three other elves had gathered. "Dobby?"
The elf looked surprised to be put on the spot all of a sudden but he gave a slight nod and stood on his chair. It made him look slightly comical as his chair was already higher than theirs to accommodate for him to be able to sit equally at the table with the rest of them.
"As Miss Luna said, we found small things at each site. And each one eventually led us to a new site. We've found six so far, but the newest one…" Dobby looked over his shoulder at the other elves and they nodded for him to continue. "The new one had the oldest writings we've found, but they were in another language."
"A new language?" Hermione asked, immediately sitting forward at the promise of new information.
"Dobby didn't say a new language." The elf smiled in return.
"We've seen it before," Luna added, tapping a command on her remote and a pair of holograms shimmered above the table. Two excerpts of text were now visible, one that Neville knew sat in a vault under Gringotts, while a copy had been made that was held in the vault now under Aether. And the one beside it, that he had not seen before.
"As you can see, the two forms match. And thanks to Myrddin, we can read what it says."
Indeed, Neville could understand the foreign script with its dots and curving lines, beautiful in its structured yet artistic presentation, even though he'd never seen it first-hand before. Every member of the council had the complete knowledge of all five languages downloaded into their minds by the Mirror which still hung inside the cave in which Harry had begun their journey.
"Five ships survived the journey," Neville read aloud. "All vessels lost power as they descended through the atmosphere, finally succumbing to the Diminishing. Two so damaged they burst apart in the air, a thousand more of our brethren gone. Another lost power mid-flight and careened into one of the many oceans covering this world. The last beside ourselves made landfall on a small island far above our own impact site.
"Repair is out of the question, as this ravaging has severed our connection to our technology. A simple contagion doing what the Goa'uld could not. I stand here now, in this small cave within the vast grasslands that will surely become my final resting place, to put down what may well be the last moments of our collective history. Beaten by this disease that cut us off from the technology we had become so utterly dependent upon, now lost on the homeworld of one of our allies, also lost to time.
"Should anyone find this, know we were mighty once, and that we journeyed the stars with our fellows in the Alliance. That we did great things, and made incredible works. But our hubris led us to unearth something even the Lanteans feared, and we have paid for that mistake with the lives of our entire species. Mourn us if you must, but learn from our mistakes. Do not follow the Furlings into the ether."
Heavy silence gripped the room at the weight of what they had just read, only Luna, Dobby and Merlin seemed immune, two of them being aware of the discovery coming into the meeting. They had accidentally uncovered the fate of the final race of the Alliance of old. No one seemed able to break through the burden of what they had just uncovered and the eerie silence continued for several long minutes.
Neville glanced at the nearby hologram and noted that it seemed to be processing calculations rather than absorbing the information like the rest of them. It caught him slightly off-guard that he was able to discern a difference in the image since Myrddin had meddled with its code.
"Confirmation received from Videeum."
"Received from where?" Harry asked, also now looking at the image.
"The scans we completed with Dobby and his friends. I dialled Videeum and cross-referenced the readings with that database. There is a significant variance but, now that I can calculate that being due to several thousand years of evolution on a totally different world, it is within expected margins for the records of the Furlings. I can state with eighty-seven point three-five percent accuracy that the house-elves of Earth are a divergent evolution of the Furlings."
"Wait, you just dialled another world and cross-referenced the readings with stored data?" Natalie asked, dumbfounded.
"Of course. Videeum was always meant to be accessed as a data hub. There is even a Repository present for foreign minds to interface with. It was why they named it Videeum. The place of their legacy. Its creation was one of the Lantean's final acts in Avalon before they collectively ascended."
"Could we not have used that for the Sangraal?" Padma asked, looking rather put out that there might have been a repository full of the information they needed accessible directly through the astria porta.
"Negative. It was created long before that. Both after Moros and before Myrddin. The Repository was finalized somewhere around 5000 years ago. It's not even on a planet but is floating about in the uncharted space between systems near the galactic core as a precaution against discovery by the Goa'uld. Its address cannot be used to pinpoint its physical location either."
"How does that work? If the address is meant to be a locational pin-pointing system?" Natalie asked.
"The conmeatas used to actually use the constellations as true reference points for Portas, but that system soon failed due to porta density and drift. Now the address is more like a code specific to a particular location rather than tracking a point in space using six points to settle its exact position through exterior vectors."
"So the code-based address of Aether isn't really a new feature of the system at all," Harry stated and Neville considered the point.
"Correct. My apologies for the changing understanding. As I've previously indicated, my initial programming was very specific. There was no need for me to have a deep understanding of the math and science of porta travel. It appears Myrddin made several erroneous assumptions during my creation and never had time to correct them before leaving Earth. It appears he adjusted more than just my emotional programming before he ascended once again."
"There is a database of extensive Alteran and Lantean knowledge and we know exactly where to find it." Hermione summarised. "That is great and all, but can we please get back to the most important matter here." Most around the table were momentarily stunned that Hermione Granger had just pushed aside the idea that there was a huge collection of new information she had access to. "If this find is accurate, it means that Thor wasn't the first alien most of us met."
Neville glanced to the corner where Dobby and the elven holograms were watching them all. He smiled at the idea that not only was Dobby a non-human member of their council, but he was also a descendant of a completely alien race, much like Myrddin himself. "So cool."
"What do you think about all of this, Dobby? All of you really." Harry asked the collection of elves.
Dobby turned to look at the others who gestured him forward, showing how far the group had come in their understanding that Dobby was no longer a pariah amongst his own people. "Dobby is fascinated to learn more about his people. For so long elf history has been unknown. We work because we like it, but if we don't work near wizards and their homes, we get unwell after long periods. It was uncommon to ask why, it was just the way of things."
"By the sounds of things, the Furlings found the very plague we have downstairs," Richard stated. "Something even the Lanteans feared. But it didn't outright kill them as it did with the Alterans. It seems the Furlings had a similar method of controlling their technology through some sort of genetic lock or control system, and the plague diminished their ability to do so."
Natalie nodded and continued the thought. "If their entire civilization were based on such a method of interaction, the loss of that ability would be equal to sending modern humans instantly back to the stone age. No electricity, no cars, no communications, no magic. All that would be left would be our physical bodies and our languages."
"Perhaps the ability to interface with their technology was something akin to magic." Luna theorised. "It could explain why the Furlings who crash landed here were then drawn to magical humans and the current way of things formed. Proximity to magical humans might have allowed the Furlings to draw on our innate magic instead. In return, they developed the ability to wield that magic for and by themselves."
"So the reason elves serve humans is a survival mechanism thousands of years old to prevent extinction. That could be why the Asgard believe them extinct. Only planets where they could find magical beings to gravitate towards would have allowed this form of continuation." Neville said.
"But why the loss of their language and the name of their kind?" Padma enquired.
"Physical regression," Merlin replied, drawing the group's attention. The hologram above the table shifted and was replaced with an image of Dobby. Beside it a second figure appeared, far taller. "This is what the Videeum records show a Furling to be."
Neville inspected the taller figure. While it still had a similar colouring to Dobby, the lithe form was as different from modern elves as the elves were from humans. The only traits that seemed to have been maintained were the larger than usual eyes with their wide brightly coloured irises and the pointed ears, though they used to be far tighter in towards the head and not nearly so long. He did note that the Furling appeared not to have a single ounce of fur anywhere on its body either.
"The homeworld of the Furlings was far smaller than Earth. And they tended to settle on other similar worlds and moons. As such, they were used to a far lower gravity than Earth. Constant exposure to Earth's gravity would have shrunk their form at the very least just as humans would if they were able to live on Jupiter for example.
"After a few generations here, the Furlings would look almost entirely different to their original state. It was why I was able to recognize something familiar about Dobby the first time we met, but it took detailed scans and access to Videeum to confirm the relation. Even then, without this written record to trigger the cross-reference, it is possible I may have never made the deductive leap required.
"And while they were allies, I have yet to find a record of any Furlings actually visiting the Earth before the Lanteans ascended. It's possible that once here, exposure to other elements of Earth biology and virology further affected their minds and bodies. With each generation losing a little more of their former selves, it wouldn't take long for such a disconnect to occur. Not to mention interaction with humans would be easier accomplished in the human languages. Furlings certainly would have picked up your languages faster than you could have theirs."
"This is incredible." Harry mused to himself. "If we can find more information about the Furlings, maybe even a few of their former settlements… maybe we can kick start the rebirth of two long-dead civilizations."
"Let's not jump to conclusions yet. They lost the ability to control their technology, Harry." Hermione corrected.
"Does that mean we shouldn't even try?" Luna asked.
"Dobby would be willing. And many of my friends would be excited to try." The elves behind Dobby nodded energetically.
"Well, I guess that's settled. Another thing on the collective to-do list. Does Videeum list any former colonies we can begin sending vulta to?" Harry asked Merlin directly.
"I will need to do a far deeper search, but it would be likely. Would the council like me to automate this process for the time being?"
Neville nodded and he noted the others doing so as well. While they didn't have a single solid focus anymore, the surveying of the Lal Ring had proven just how long and tedious such a task could be. If Merlin were willing to do the leg work, it would allow them to continue focusing on the areas they already were.
But Neville couldn't help but share the excitement evident on Harry, Luna and Dobby's faces at the idea of resurrecting the Furlings. And at the very least, bringing a wealth of history back to the house-elves who had been mistreated for so long.
ϟ
Thursday, 13th January 2000.
Luna rolled uncomfortably in her sleep. The patch of ground they had chosen to camp on had seemed far softer than it now felt and her shoulder was stiff and cramping. This was the second planet that Merlin had tagged as a former Furling colony, but in the day and a half she and Harry had been exploring, they had yet to uncover any signs of the former occupants barring the astria porta itself and a porta mundas a few hundred yards from it.
She had initially hoped to use the now completed modifications Hermione had made to the Navis so that they could sleep in there, but the density of the woods around the porta on this moon prevented access via ship. So they had instead come on foot and camped under the stars as she and her mother used to do in the backyard on clear starry nights. Though the view of the nearby gas giant the moon orbited distantly made for a much more dazzling sight than Earth's had.
Yet when she opened her eyes, it was not a clear sky framed by towering pines that she found but a solid ceiling made of a strange golden material covered in symbols she had seen somewhere before.
Her groggy mind began to swim as she tried to force herself to recall where she knew the imagery from but a groan to her left drew her attention away from the ceiling, down the similarly decorated walls to a bench opposite her where Harry now lay, stirring from his own sleep. As she blinked the gunk from her eyes, she noted that Harry's holster on his right hip was empty and a quick check confirmed her own sidearm was missing as well.
"Harry?" She croaked, her voice hoarse from hours of disuse.
Harry's eyes flicked to her before he quickly took in the room around her. As he shifted to get a better look, he slid off the bench and onto the floor, a dull thud echoing in the small space as there were no obvious windows or doors leading out. Just six inwardly sloping walls that came together at a flat ceiling.
"This isn't good. This definitely isn't where we went to sleep last night." Harry replied, standing and stretching. The rebelling muscles were audible clear across the small room indicating Harry's rest was as poor as her own.
"These symbols feel familiar," Luna said, mirroring Harry's actions and stretching out as she sat up. "And these benches are awful as beds. I'll have to leave a very poor review."
Harry gave a light laugh at her comment as he began to circle the room knocking on the walls as he went, each giving the same solid sound as the floor until he came to the one between the two benches they had been laying on. "That's more promising."
Before either of them could act, the wall in front of Harry rushed upwards into the ceiling, vanishing entirely. Harry turned to smirk at her, but Luna was no longer focused on her friend, but rather at the long dark metal staff now pointed at his head being held by a humanoid figure covered entirely in red-tinged armour.
"Nemet kree!" The figure demanded, the voice echoing electronically from the swept-back helmet that Luna now realized looked remarkably similar to a cobra with its neck flap spread wide. Red gem eyes gleamed brightly from either side of the wide head.
Harry turned to face the figure and took several steps back from what they had both quickly come to realize was some form of weapon, raising his hands defensively as he moved.
"Tar hashak." The warrior spat before they too stepped back and the doorway once again closed. Behind it, Luna could hear heavy metallic thudding footsteps leading away before silence filled the room once again.
"Ok, so. I guess we know why we woke up in a different place to where we went to sleep." Harry quipped as Luna stood and joined him. "Any ideas?"
"Goa'uld. That's the language. I haven't spent long enough studying it to know what he said, but I get the feeling we're being held prisoner."
"The vulta didn't show any sign of goa'uld presence. What are they doing here? Where is here?" Harry added, and Luna realized that it was entirely possible that the goa'uld who had captured them had taken them to another world, or even a ship in orbit.
"We could be on board one of their ships. Guess that means we can't risk just apparating out."
"No. I'm not feeling up to a walk in space right now. Play along for the moment and look for an opportunity?" Harry asked.
Luna nodded as they heard the dull metallic footsteps returning, and much louder than before.
"Still got your wand?" Harry whispered as he stepped back from the door, his fingers checking the space in his own sleeve where he kept his wand.
Luna nodded again. "And my bag. I suggest we don't speak in English while we're here. Don't want them executing us outright for being part of the SGC, given the kinds of encounters they've had with Goa'uld in the past." She finished in Alteran.
"Here's hoping they don't understand this either." He replied softly as the door opened once more and six red guards now stood before them.
Three of the guards had the serpent-styled helmets while the rest had smooth caps over their hair. One of the guards also had large upswept shoulders on his armour that Luna assumed placed him of higher rank than the others as he glared at them with contempt. The three without the helmets also had a black marking on their foreheads that Luna had not seen before, but a quick glance at Harry showed he recognized the oval shape with a swirl inside of it somehow.
"Chula!" The shoulder guard demanded, and while she didn't understand the language yet, Luna certainly understood the sentiment. Especially given the accompanying movement of the five staff weapons being held in their direction.
She glanced at Harry who gave her a very forced grimace as he stepped forward, the pair quickly falling into step between the guards as they marched them down a corridor that had similar sloped golden walls covered in writings. Luna deeply regretted not studying the admittedly sparse language portion of the files the Asgard had provided and wondered just how the upcoming interrogation would proceed given the language barrier they would most likely face.
It was hard to focus on anything for long though between the repeated shoving from behind if she slowed even a little and the cacophony of the six sets of armoured footsteps echoing off the angled walls. Yet it did not take them long to reach their destination, a larger room that seemed more like an expanded version of their former cell with much higher ceilings.
At the far end, a window looked out over the verdant expanse of the planet they had been exploring, the gas giant peeking over the horizon, which filled Luna with relief. Escaping into the trees would be a lot easier than trying to escape from a ship in space. But she was still confused as to where this structure had come from. Harry was correct that neither they, nor the vulta, had detected any sign of goa'uld activity or construction during their few days here.
She and Harry were marched to the centre of the room and turned forcibly away from the window. Towards the back of the space, there was a dais with a large ornate throne seated upon it. Sitting on the throne staring at the pair intently was an older-than-average man with thinning hair watching them both intently. The man's eyes glowed for a moment before a blow struck Luna and Harry behind the knees and they collapsed to the floor roughly.
Harry glared at the guard directly behind himself before he turned back to face the figure, now flanked by two of the guards.
"Onak sha kree! Shal goa'uld?" The distorted voice of their captor was measured and smooth as the figure glared down upon them with obvious disdain, but also a shade of curiosity.
"I do not understand," Harry said from beside her and Luna carefully watched the figure for any sign of recognition but they just continued to stare before signalling to one of the guards, who headed into a side corridor noisily.
"Tal shal mak!" The figure repeated softly, a hint of menace now in the voice as well.
Luna glanced at Harry who met her eye for a moment before he spoke again. "We do not speak your language." He stated once more in Alteran, still not drawing any obvious sign of recognition from the figure.
The figure stood and stepped towards them, his robes flowing about his body as he stepped forwards, a shining band of gold wrapped around one hand. "Kel shak!" It demanded forcefully.
Harry simply shrugged at the man as the sound of boots returned and the guard who had disappeared returned to the room. The figure smiled and nodded and before anyone else could speak, Luna felt a pain that was horribly reminiscent surge through her body. She could hear Harry's voice shouting distantly but could not make out what he was saying, her mind somehow finding the strength to bring the other more painful memories to the forefront of her mind during the agonizing moment.
As suddenly as it began, the pain stopped barring a throbbing in her right shoulder and Luna collapsed forward onto her front, arms tucked about her stomach as she panted harshly. Her body tingled all over, and not in a good way, but the punishment had given her an excuse to tuck her arms out of the view of their captors.
"Shel na kree! Kree noc!" The figure shouted, now only a few metres from her and Harry.
Luna could feel Harry's magic swirling angrily about his form and she pulled a little of it into herself to help overcome the throbbing pain as she unsheathed her wand. They had learned all that they would from this encounter and all that was left now was pain. A situation she was unwilling to allow herself to endure a second time.
"FUCK YOU!" Harry growled at the figure, but before it could speak again in return he added a single other word. "Bombarda."
The throne exploded, showering them all with debris, though thankfully her prone position helped shield Luna from most of it, knocking the two guards next to it down instantly. All eyes in the room flew to the explosion. And Luna took that opportunity to strike.
"Expelliarmus." She incanted, time after time, knocking the weapons from the still-armed guards. Harry grabbed her hand and apparated them towards the window in the room, allowing them a clear line of fire and separating them from their captors.
The figure was clearly livid now, and shouted orders at the guards, several of whom were still picking themselves up after the powerful explosion of the throne. "Kree Jaffa. Lo tak Klorel. Kek, kree!"
Harry fired off another blasting curse directly at the figure, but they slammed their hand against the back of the gold wrapped around their hand and a golden shield appeared around their form. They smirked as the anger-fuelled spell impacted the shield for all of a moment before the magnitude of the explosion took hold and the figure was flung backwards violently into the rubble of their former throne.
The guards had regained their feet and begun firing in their direction, so Luna erected her own shield in front of the pair, Harry following suit soon after. The pair knew they could maintain a rather powerful shield together for several moments while they continued casting. They quickly took down the two nearest guards, who happened to be the ones who had been standing over them during the interrogation.
Luna noted an unusual-looking short staff on the ground beside where she had been kneeling and quickly summoned the device into her hand. She was unsure what exactly it was, but as she had never seen it before, she assumed it was what had caused the pain she felt, and she wanted to figure out how it worked and how to avoid ever feeling its grip again and slipped it quickly into her shoulder bag for later investigation.
Harry swirled his wand in a circle and the rubble of the throne gathered up into the air, swirling about in a similar fashion before he swept his wand to the right and the gathered debris slammed heavily into the two guards on the right side of the room, knocking them once more to the ground.
Luna fired off several more varied spells at the two guards slowly approaching on the left as she felt the shield beginning to fail under the sustained fire from the longer staff weapons. Harry's fire stopped and she assumed he was attempting to fuel the shield to allow her to focus on the advancing guards and subdue them quickly.
She focused herself before she acted, casting a series of quick spells one after another. The first blasting curse hit the floor in front of the guard and knocked him off his feet into the one beside him, catching both out. As they stumbled, the second spell caught the front guard in the face and he dropped instantly before the third hit the guard behind, causing him to shoot into the air ankle first, hanging from the invisible spell now dangling them by their foot.
With only one guard now up and firing, Luna swung to face the window and estimated their height above the treeline. They could certainly apparate that far, but what was concealed beneath was anyone's guess. "Broom?" She asked Harry as he fired another volley of spells at the advancing guard.
"Always." He replied, tapping his left shoulder.
Luna rushed over and opened his concealed shoulder bag and reached inside, pulling the long thin broom from within and mounting it before shuffling it under Harry as well. She kicked off into the air, lifting the pair together before she wrapped her arms tightly around Harry and focused both their magic on transporting them to the air outside the structure.
A moment later, they were looking through the window at the now frustrated guard glaring out at them ineffectually. He looked both angry and surprised at their escape, but he did not remain in place for long. Luna took the moment to examine the structure they had been held inside and realized why they had not detected it before.
What had been a small mountain in the middle distance when they had gone to sleep was now hidden underneath a giant golden pyramid. The giant spaceship must have arrived during the night and the guards had somehow caught them unawares while they slept and dragged them inside.
Harry quickly took control of the broom now he was not required to provide covering fire, turning them away from the pyramid and the pair soared out over the trees.
"Harry, that's a ship," Luna advised as he swept them above the treeline.
"I know."
"A spaceship. An armed spaceship." She replied and Harry immediately understood, sacrificing speed for cover and swept them below the trees in case the ship decided they were nuisance enough to fire upon.
"Shame, I was really starting to like it," Harry mumbled as he absently tapped a command into the remote still clipped around his wrist of the hand gripping the handle tightly.
"Liked what?"
"That gun. Going to have to make a new one now." Harry sighed, finishing his command.
Luna was confused by his comment, but focused on locating the direction of the astria porta. With an entire ship on the planet, it would definitely not be safe for them to remain here. "A bit further to the right. It's only three miles away." She said as Harry corrected their course.
As the pair approached the area where the porta sat, she heard an almighty explosion coming from the direction of the mountain behind them and turned to see a second flash going off before a loud crack rent the air and a third much bigger explosion filled the sky above the trees.
She turned to ask Harry what had happened but instantly drew her wand and fired at the two alert guards who were also watching the distant explosion. The pair fell as Harry activated the porta and with a quick glance back at the now shattered golden pyramid sliding sideways off the mountain, the pair shot back home through the wormhole at speed.
Goa'uld Translations (its a tricky language, so sorry to any big fans if I've gotten this wrong):
Nemet kree! _ You dare touch these walls?!
Tar hashak. _ Human weakling.
Chula! _ Move!
Onak sha kree! Shal goa'uld? _ Which god do you serve? Tell me now.
Tal shal mak! _ Identify yourself!
Kel shak! _ What are you saying!
Shel na kree! Kree noc! _ Tell me who you are or I will kill her!
Kree Jaffa. Lo tak Klorel. Kek, kree! _ Jaffa, Attack. Defend your god Klorel. Kill them.
