Large drops splattered against the iron bars above their heads and dripped on them. They had no shelter of any kind, and soon they were all soaked. Puddles were forming on the floor, and from them, the water flowed into a shallow canal at the side of the cage, which probably lead to the great pool they had seen earlier.
When the rain had began, Colonel O'Neill had attempted to hold a jacket over Daniel Jackson, but it had hardly helped at all. At least the cool water might have a favorable effect on his raised body temperature.
Daniel Jackson had finished translating the stone tablet Barney had brought. His explanation of its contents had been somewhat hard to follow. Teal'c had understood that it told the origin of this Goa'uld-dinosaur culture, which had to do with a disinherited System Lord by the name of Garcath. Teal'c had never heard this name before, but the Goa'uld's name was not given in the old story he knew.
They had little more to do than to wait for Barney's return, once again. Hours passed without anything remarkable happening. There was no change in the shower falling on them, no sign of dinosaurs except for a solitary hoot of some Hadrosaurian creature in a cage far removed from theirs, and no change in Daniel Jackson's ragged breathing. The sun sank below the horizon, and the moons rose. Teal'c spent most of the time in meditation, sitting cross-legged in a corner of the room.
A little over an hour before midnight, the pale light of two full moons revealed a party of dinosaurs approaching their cage. Barney was not among them, but Teal'c recognized their leader from afar as the Goa'uld prince.
"Barney, Barney! We trusted in you," O'Neill muttered. "Should've known better than to trust a lizard--snake-head or not..."
O'Neill had been convinced that they would find another way out of this situation, one that would not require them to participate in this ritual. Apparently, they had none. The party of dinosaurs that stopped in front of their cage door was too large that they might hope to win them without weapons.
The Goa'uld-dinosaur opened the door and took a few steps into the cage. Two dinosaurs followed by his sides as bodyguards. It barked a word of command at SG-1, telling them to stand up in the presence of their superior. Teal'c translated this to the others, and Daniel Jackson confirmed it with a nod.
Trying to oppose this Goa'uld would only have made things worse, so they obeyed. Teal'c helped Colonel O'Neill stand up, and, together with Captain Carter, lifted Daniel Jackson up as well. He needed the support of them both to stay upright.
The dinosaur prince walked a circle around them, its cold, reptilian glance scrutinizing, sweeping them from head to toe. Finally, it spoke again, asking them which among them was best, strongest and most honorable.
"Choose--participant," Daniel Jackson uttered, stating the true meaning behind the question.
Teal'c ventured to try a few words on his own in the dinosaurian-Goa'uld language. Making sure that both O'Neill and Carter would support Daniel, Teal'c stepped ahead and said, "I am" in words that he hoped the dinosaurs would understand.
The prince growled approvingly. It seemed to have come to the same conclusion simply by looking at them. It told Teal'c to follow.
They had just got out of the cage, when Daniel Jackson stopped them, addressing the dinosaurs in their own language. He was telling them not to take Teal'c, that they mustn't take him, that they could not take him. Teal'c knew him to be a compassionate man, but he was still surprised that he should act in such an irrational manner.
The Goa'uld-dinosaur stopped and turned around, leaving Teal'c amidst its bodyguards. Daniel went on, offering an explanation, speaking more clearly and eloquently than Teal'c had heard him do all day. He was trying to reason with the dinosaurs based on the text of the tablet. He croaked that their ceremony would go wrong if they chose Teal'c. That he, and all of SG-1, were of the kind who were the true chosen ones of the Goa'uld, and that choosing a dinosaur had left their first ruler isolated from all others of his kind, from all other gods.
But the Goa'uld prince did not seem to accept his reasoning. It was only growing mad, hissing and clicking its claws against the wet stone floor. It growled at Daniel to fall silent, to stop his blasphemous speech. He answered, stubborn as ever, that the prince had to know what he said was true, that they had the proof written down in stone.
Teal'c could do nothing but watch in horror as the dinosaur brought its hand device upon Daniel Jackson, with a bright blue flash of light unlike anything he had ever witnessed from such a weapon. Daniel collapsed instantly.
Teal'c tried to step back into the cage, but the dinosaurs would not let him. They closed in on him. The prince stepped out of the cage and slammed the door closed, still appearing irritated. The dinosaurs began urging Teal'c on with such determination that he knew resisting would only do more harm. He did not see how badly the attack had harmed his friend.
The sight of Daniel Jackson crumpling to the floor haunted Teal'c all the way through his silent walk escorted by the dinosaurs. They lead him away from the sizable area of the roof that contained the cages, past the pool of water again, and across the large plain area where they had emerged from the transport rings.
They crossed another bridge over another similar pool, approaching a building decorated with massive pillars. It filled a large part of the roof. They entered it, leaving the pouring rain behind.
Inside the large hall, they walked down a lane in the midst of a crowd of dinosaurs, all of the same species. The walls of the hall were carved with similar images as the ones in the lower floors. It was lit by large globes of light hanging from the ceiling.
Across the hall was a throne quite similar to the one below, though less decorated. On its both sides, in the corners of the hall, were areas separated from the rest, the left-side one with a fence of iron bars, the one on the right merely with a silvery chain.
Behind the silvery chain stood a group of the small predators who were everywhere. Some of them were even smaller than usual. Teal'c guessed that they were young ones. It dawned on him that this ceremony was likely to be a rite of passage, an initiation to them.
Behind the bars were several dinosaurs of numerous species, and that was were Teal'c was taken. Among the other lesser beings. The door was closed after him, and the guards retreated to the crowd.
Ignoring the restless dinosaurs around him, Teal'c stood right in front of the bars, gazing at the hall, waiting for whatever was to come.
Teal'c observed the other beings that were in the fenced area with him. A young Saltasaurus, long-necked and tailed, walking on four feet, filled nearly half of it--an adult one would not have fit in at all. The second-largest creature after it was a Corythosaurus, a crested being with sad eyes, whose sound Teal'c thought he had heard before, when he'd been in the cage. An ostrich-like Struthiomimus, was running nervously around the two larger dinosaurs. A tiny, shy, pale green creature, just like the ones SG-1 had first met on the planet, did all it could to avoid being stepped on.
Chained to the back wall was the most dangerous-looking dinosaur of them all, one that was quite similar to the ruling predators, only somewhat larger. Possibly a Deinonychus. It was bucking against its chains, a low growling coming from its throat, though its jaws were tied together.
The mutter, the low growling and hissing of the dinosaurian crowd, was silenced when a figure adorned with gold stepped into the temple, and made its way across the lane, to the throne. It was the old Goa'uld lord who ruled the dinosaurs, but it was quite unusually dressed: it wore a mismatched suit of Goa'uld armor, and twice the amount of jewelry it had had before. Two steps behind it, on its both sides, walked two dinosaurs wearing equally ill-fitting pieces of Jaffa armor.
The ruler rose on the throne, raised its hands dramatically and spoke to the crowd in its Goa'uld voice. From its way of speaking, slowly, one word at a time, Teal'c could guess that its speech was ceremonial. The celebration, the ritual, had begun.
The blue flash engulfed Daniel, and without even realizing it, Sam cried out, startled.
Some technical corner of her mind was taking notes in a cold, detached manner. The visible effect of the Goa'uld-dinosaur's hand device looked exactly like a zat blast. Maybe it was actually the same. Perhaps this type of hand device was the first existing form of the weapon nowadays known as the zat'ni'katel. It might have been the privilege of Goa'uld lords alone before the technology became more common and available to their soldiers as well.
Right now, Sam couldn't have cared less about the technical details of the weapon. She was far more concerned about what its effects were. If they were similar to those of a zat, then one blast might not be too bad.
She saw in the corner of her eye how the group of dinosaurs left, forcing Teal'c to move on. There was nothing they could do to stop them.
Sam and O'Neill knelt by Daniel's sides. He was lying on the ground, curled into himself, his knees pulled up and his arms hugging his chest. The Colonel gently turned him to rest on his back--he just landed there limply, eyes closed--unconscious, or worse. Sam couldn't hear his breathing anymore.
The Colonel had already placed his fingers on his neck, hoping to prove their worst fears wrong. Sam saw his face tense with worry.
"Got a pulse, but it's really weak."
Sam held a hand over Daniel's face, but didn't feel a thing. As far as she could see, he wasn't breathing.
"Daniel, goddammit, if you'd just listen to what I say--Come on!--Come out of it," O'Neill tried, shaking his shoulder and slapping his cheek, but it had no effect as far as she could see.
She crouched over Daniel, covered his mouth with hers and breathed for him. All the while, the Colonel kept shouting frantically. She didn't catch the exact words, but the meaning was very clear.
She'd hated the sound of Daniel's cough earlier on, but now, coming after a seemingly endless moment of rescue breathing, it was the most wonderful thing she'd ever heard. They rolled him to his side, and instinctively, he spat out the blood and mucus blocking his airways.
As the cough abated, they helped him on his back again. O'Neill had found his flashlight, and shone the light on Daniel. Sam saw there was a slightly bluish tinge to his skin. She could just hope he hadn't been out for too long.
"Daniel, talk to me," O'Neill ordered, grasping Daniel's shoulder tightly. "Don't go to sleep."
"Ow... Jackh?" Daniel murmured without opening his eyes.
"Yeah. The one and only. I told you not to do that to me again, didn't I?"
"Uh..."
"Just take it easy. The big bad Goa'uldosaur got you with the dino-version of a hand device."
"Wha..." Daniel's eyes opened wide. Apparently, he was all awake and back in the here and now. "God... Teal'c!" he uttered, the two soft words carrying more emotion that she would've thought possible.
Daniel was still with them, for the time being. It was night already, and help could not be that far away anymore. They still had hope. But Teal'c--Oh God, Teal'c, like Daniel had said--they didn't know what would happen to him. He was on his own now.