Author's Note: This story involves Sumerian/Mesopotamian mythology and tries to 'demythify' it with Stargate elements. Most of the events here follow those stories in some way. Highly recommend having a look at the original mythology it's based on, maybe even before you read this. Don't say I didn't warn you. :P

I'm hoping to bring in more familiar characters soon, but one thing at a time - this tale is rather extensive, so it's important to buff out the specifics of the setting (and especially the history) first. The chapters consist of aspects of the following continuities: Chapter 1 (Sumerian mythology; Stargate SG-1; Star Trek; Assassin's Creed), Chapter 2 (Stargate SG-1; Assassin's Creed; Star Trek), Chapter 3 (Stargate SG-1; Assassin's Creed; Myst), Chapter 4 (Myst; Assassin's Creed), Chapter 5 (Assassin's Creed; Stargate SG-1), Chapter 6 (Stargate SG-1), Chapter 7 (Assassin's Creed; Stargate SG-1), Chapter 8 (Stargate SG-1; Assassin's Creed; Andromeda; War of the Worlds; Prometheus; Command & Conquer), Chapter 9 (quick recap + Command & Conquer; Andromeda; Assassin's Creed; War of the Worlds).

This story fleshes out my own version of the backstory for the Isu in Assassin's Creed with heavy reliance on Stargate and a few other sci-fi elements.

Rewrite is finished! Chapters 1 - 3 have been updated. Hope you all enjoy! :D

-= 81,000 years ago =- (journal entry written an indeterminate amount of time later)

When I ask whether one would wish to be eternal, I've always received the same answer: No. Life has a beginning and an end. That's what waits for us. To cheat death of a prize it won by mere birthright is considered treason toward the universe. Some would abuse it. Others might grow idle. But immortality itself is not a crime. It's only a stasis; a preservation of the soul. If one lives to adapt, this isn't a hindrance. It's an opportunity.

Eternity isn't the end of one's growth. It's a new beginning.

( Tales of the Anunnaki )

Names never held much importance to my people at the time of birth. I was just another symbiote like all the others, squirming and wiggling my way through the marsh. Like maggots, we'd live on fresh corpses and rotten fruit. My caretaker even said he found me trapped between the scales of some dead fish. To the tribe, that meant I'd grow to take on the role of a caretaker myself. Why? Because most of my kin preferred the hollowed-out, mummified corpse of the Unas: land-based creatures who served as living hosts once we'd come of age.

Personally, I always felt best in the water. Its soft malleability and resistance to force protected me. The harder one struck the surface, the harder it would strike back. Yet with a gentle touch, the water meekly parts like a curtain being drawn. It's much as a caretaker, or a parent, should be.

At a certain point, our tribe stepped out on land, long before I could take a host. When they did, and I grew to become the same violent, feral serpent like my siblings, they'd moved us to a pool of water deep within the confines of a cave. From there, I grew under the watchful gaze of a creature that stood on land. And when it was my time to leave the nest, it was that same creature that plucked me out of my happy, tranquil existence.

I suppose I never forgave him for that.

For the first time, I saw and felt what it was like to be above water. I had a body with two legs, two arms and better vision than I'd ever had before. My mind merged with my host's, and suddenly, a world of possibilities I'd never even considered had opened up to me.

You can't explain that sort of wonder to a human. They don't remember what it was like to open their eyes as an infant and see for the first time. Most can't appreciate how consciousness forms in an instant. By the time they become self-aware, they've lived with it for years. It became the norm. Something they take for granted.

Hence why they call us Goa'uld, after we took Unas hosts and formed civilizations far greater than anything the Unas could accomplish on their own. Before we twisted that word in our arrogance, it simply meant... 'not Unas'. 'Beyond understanding'. I hate that word. Eventually, our land-walking neighbors called us Onac, 'oppressors'.

Imagine what it's like to be surrounded by thousands of people, yet you're all alone. Some would pity you - pretend to listen or sympathize. Others ignore and pass right through you. Once or twice, you'll find a beast you could mistake for one of us, who lash out and strike. Some do it out of fear. Others out of malice. Some, even, think they're doing you a favor.

How does one cope? We've been ostracized and treated as outsiders for much of our lives.

They call us comical. Villains who are nothing but pure evil. But we're all products of evolution. My kind lived as food to a ruthless species not far unlike humans. It's only when we bit back that we became their 'oppressors'. Centuries might pass us by, our lives and experiences trivialized by all but fellow Goa'uld, and we'd have to live with that label.

An eternity of segregation can only lead to one thing. Hate. We hated humans. We hated Unas. We hated anything unlike us, because we knew they would never accept us. So we became bitter and cruel, and ultimately... vain. Because in all this galaxy, we were alone.

As with all civilizations, we eventually broke down into competing tribes. We fought and died first over limited resources. Then we waged war over more trivial things. Perceived slights, injuries to our ego and family squabbles tore our people apart. Soon, we stopped caring about the primitive Unas and found ourselves looking to outsmart each other.

My birth into a host began during this period, before we'd become a vast interstellar empire. Before we'd become the oppressors of the Unas. Before we'd become the Goa'uld.

Our story began when my elder brother, Anu, found a strange device in the wild. It was some sort of ship that traversed the vast distances between the stars. We had no word for it, and we were only marginally familiar with naval ships, most of which were small and built for use on lakes and rivers. Our world never had many oceans to speak of.

Anu and I went back and told our father, the chieftain, Apsu. So our story began...

-= 79,490 years ago =-

"Forgive me." Her voice held the burden of a great many sorrows. "I must do this."

She tried to hide it. She tried to keep the truth from him. Perhaps it was because she knew he would try to stop her. She knew he would turn against the others. All these thoughts raced through the head of her father, an Unas with a Goa'uld symbiote wrapped around its brain stem. The stargate, or kadingir, lay open behind her, ushering a path to their homeworld. Her brother stood nearby, just as concerned as their father had been when he heard the news.

Enki tried to be a good father to his daughter, Geshtinanna. Her mother, Ninhursag, died after curing Enki of a poison released by his symbiote when an unblended Unas tried to remove it, no doubt to use as food. Although he appreciated his beloved's sacrifice, part of him blamed her for abandoning him to raise their many children alone. Most Goa'uld families were fairly large, but at least they often had two or more parents to mind the infants as they grew in the steaming vats of water beneath the surface. It was the only way to protect them from the frequent hunts the unblended performed, partly in ritual and partly out of hunger.

Distraught from her death, and with so many symbiotes to protect, Enki sought out others to form an everlasting bond with. But most of his tribe rejected him, laying the blame for Ninhursag's death on his shoulders. That's why he made a difficult, and perhaps rash, decision to capture an unblended female Unas and implant her with a symbiote - that of his and Ninhursag's eldest charge, Ninsar. So began a series of terrible decisions made in the wake of his sorrow and fear. He would mate with her new host and create an unblended Unas with the memories of Ninhursag and their entire tribe - the first Harcesis.

Both Ninhursag and Enki were clones, as it were, of an only child: the infant Goa'uld of both Apsu and Tiamat. As with all Goa'uld, Tiamat could then only give birth to the same child asexually for the rest of her life. Reproduction between two symbiotes of the same parents would produce no offspring whatsoever, though it was forbidden, as doing so challenged the supremacy of the alphas - the parents. But what Enki did was far more abominable in his peoples' eyes. He had his host reproduce with another, unrelated as they both were.

'His' children through Ninhursag were genetically no more theirs than Apsu and Tiamat's. They were among the privileged few to watch over and protect a large group of larvae. Both were joined in a ceremony meant to remind Apsu and Tiamat of their initial coupling, though not in such a way as to challenge their primacy. In reality, Enki knew that Apsu and his wife didn't care whether they lived or died. When any of their children perished, Tiamat would simply produce more. While their true parents toyed with war against other tribes over petty reasons, both Enki and Ninhursag cared for Tiamat's children as if they were their own.

They were disgusted. Apsu and Tiamat's blatant disregard of their children manifested itself in the worst way imaginable: to use them as cannon fodder against their enemies. Many of their agender children (as the Goa'uld lacked a gender aside from that of their hosts) were brainwashed from an early age to fight and die for their parents, with no other purpose to their existence. For Enki and Ninhursag, such a fate went against their very duty: to protect the infants from a life of suffering and death. Ironic that they should've been given such a goal from the same two Goa'uld who ignored it as a matter of course.

So the two fell in love, each dedicated to the other. They planned to rebel against Apsu and his heartless wife. They would form their own tribe. But how? Before that question could be answered, an unblended Unas found their cave and attacked in the hopes of gaining access to a plethora of fresh, young symbiotes: a veritable meal that could feed its whole family. That's when Enki was injured, and Ninhursag killed the Unas. That's when Ninhursag gave her own life to protect Enki's... and with her dying breath, left him alone with their mission.

Usually, a new tribe would be formed by the union of two unrelated Goa'uld symbiotes in the wild. They could then decide to take Unas hosts and continue their lineage on land instead of the lakes and riverbeds they naturally spawned in. Those who did found themselves better capable of defending their offspring from other Unas. But how would one go about leaving a tribe and forming their own? Arguably, Enki could've left his host and found a mate in the nearest river, but who would watch over the larvae under his care in the meantime?

Her name was Ninkurra; the offspring of both his and Ninsar's hosts. As she grew, she took on the memories and mind of not only Enki and Ninsar, but also Ninhursag herself. At one point, he even forgot she wasn't Ninhursag, and so did she. The memories of the Harcesis' parents and grandparents were too strong, such that they overwhelmed and overwrote many of her own as the years passed. Disgusted with himself afterward, Enki tried to deny Ninkurra as his daughter, reasoning it was the host's. And while the reptilian Unas had little in common with the humans Enki would come to know one day, knowing she had his first wife's mind buried within her disturbed him to no end. Then the nightmare became real.

Ninkurra gave birth to a daughter named Uttu. Afraid Uttu's existence would reveal his and Ninhursag's plan for rebellion, Enki sought to kill her after learning how Ninkurra helped her flee to the river. There, he learned of her eight children born of another wild Goa'uld and devoured each of them. A harsh decision for a harsh world, but the only way Enki could see to prevent his exile and loss of the children he'd dedicated his entire life to protecting. Instead, he merely caused the situation to become worse, leading Uttu to seek the protection of Ninkurra. Angry at him for both ostracizing her and killing her daughter's children, Ninkurra planned to repeat the past and cause Enki's death by poisoning.

At the penultimate moment, after luring Enki to her side under the guise of Ninhursag, Ninkurra nearly ripped open his host's throat with her claws. She would have finished the job had the incident not stirred up memories of Ninhursag's own death; and suddenly, she found herself unable to kill him. Instead, she did exactly as her grandmother had. She let herself die to save Enki's life. It was a tragedy Uttu never forgave him for as she took her own life.

From that day on, Enki cursed himself and vowed not to make the same mistake. He raised the remaining offspring of Apsu and Tiamat he'd been charged with, and subjected himself to their rulings. Quite frequently, he'd be punished severely by Apsu, his host tortured for his symbiote's mistakes. This made him more aware of how much his host hated him, as he could guess the same about the others. So much about him changed from that day on.

But none of it could erase the mistakes he made. None of it could bring back his beloved.

Then Anu found a strange object that fell from the sky in a blaze of fire. Over a thousand years had passed since that fateful day, when Anu told Apsu of the discovery. Due perhaps to Enki's original stigmatization, Apsu reassigned the aging caretaker to study parts of the object's database with Anu. They had determined it was a spacecraft of some sort, seemingly powered by something akin to 'powdered gold'. To their then-primitive minds, that certainly explained why some of the technology aboard had a golden glow about it.

While Anu focused on the technology, Enki paid closer attention to the extensive medical database. Thousands, if not millions, of records were full of genetic data on countless different species they had never seen before. Using some of the technology aboard, and with Anu's help, Enki could recreate small genetic samples to study. Thus began his career as a geneticist and expert on the biological workings of nature. He'd no doubt been spurred on by his time as a surrogate father to the larvae, finding ways to help them grow and survive.

Geshtinanna took over in his stead as the primary caregiver of a single batch of Apsu and Tiamat's children. She'd been paired with Ningisida and Azimua, the latter also a former larva both Enki and Ninhursag cared for. Despite no longer being in charge of making sure the infants grew, Enki continued to check in on his replacements. Unlike Azimua, Geshtinanna had been kidnapped after her first blending with an Unas host by another tribe who wanted revenge against Enki for the rescue of Inanna, Geshtinanna's sister-in-law and a Goa'uld from another tribe. Needless to say, it was another long and arduous tale, with Geshtinanna as a former ward of Enki and Ninhursag; Inanna, however, had married another of 'his' children: Tammuz. That story only ended with the rescue of Geshtinanna and the agreement between the tribes to share Tammuz, thus forming the first marriage alliance Enki had ever witnessed.

Now, they were on Earth, a planet Anu discovered in the strange ship's database. It had more gold on its surface than any other world mentioned, and - most importantly - they had a way to reach it even with the ship's inability to carry itself and a crew across the stars. The ship's former owners knew of portals, created within large, stone-like rings, capable of connecting with each other over great distances. After uncovering such a gate and its strange altar, Apsu had his tribe travel to the new world, where they could start a civilization away from their peers. Enki even created the lush, artificial environments where they could breed additional, unblended Unas for hosts into the foreseeable future.

But Apsu didn't want others following them through. Aside from their newfound allies, who were manipulated through Tammuz into turning against one another, none could be allowed to discover the stargate and pass through to Earth. Somebody had to stay behind and bury it, taking their own life soon after to make sure the secret of its location would die with them.

"Why you?!" Enki practically wailed in his host's guttural language. "Why not another?!"

"You know the answer to that," Geshtinanna hinted as she took one step back and looked toward Tammuz, who stood beside Enki with a look of regret. "Take care of them."

Before Enki could even utter another word, his 'daughter' disappeared through the stargate with one final, accusatory glare at Enki. Then the portal disappeared.

He was alone again.

-= 77,900 years ago =-

Lines of gold weaved along the floor, winding their way up the pillars and walls. A subtle, golden light followed each line and cut through the darkness. In the midst of it all stood what could only be described as a throne, its shape and size built for a tall, thin humanoid. Instead of its former inhabitants, who disappeared long ago, only two of its new occupants stood across from the chair, their eyes narrowed vertically in horror as a bloodcurdling screech echoed across the chamber. Blood spilled over the chair's armrest and trickled into a puddle at its base, following the lines and turning the bright, warm glow into a much darker crimson.

In that chair sat the great Unas alpha himself, brutally tearing into a Goa'uld symbiote that had been struggling in vain. Apsu ripped each tendon of the snake-like creature from its bones until it could no longer move or scream. With it dead and devoured, the primordial god of the tribe threw the remains into a container at his side holding the bodies of more than a dozen more symbiotes unfortunate enough to warrant his suspicions. Nothing either of the two, Enki or Anu, said could stop their paranoid leader from killing anyone he wished. Once Apsu believed you were guilty of something, even if you were an infant larva without a host, he would take you by the throat and slaughter you for his next meal.

"Let that be a warning," Apsu growled while licking his teeth. After letting the fear sink in a moment, he finally spoke of other matters. "You've learned something. Tell me."

Neither of them felt comfortable enough to speak. Enki tried to hold back his anger, while Anu simply looked disgusted. It was personal for one, but a mere nuisance to the other.

Apsu noticed and grew impatient. "Speak!"

Quickly, Enki took the lead. "As you wish, my lord." Following a brief, but strained, bow, Enki explained, "This temple belonged to creatures who fought a war with another. They used it to study the native species, perhaps in the hope of creating one to carry their legacy should they fail." Apsu looked disinterested, but Enki persisted. "They were called I'konia."

Sensing Apsu's indifference, Anu stepped in, to Enki's dismay. "More importantly, we've learned they built more." That caught their father's attention. Anu thought it important to keep him interested if either he or Enki were to get out of this encounter alive. "They used the technology of those creatures who built the vessel we found. It is probable they built facilities capable of locating and collecting gold."

The Unas lord's eyes glowed with anticipation, even as they fell upon a small, metallic bowl filled with a golden dust. He reached in and scooped up a fairly large mound, lifting the bowl up to his face as he did so. Both his sons could hear the heavy breathing and the brief snort that followed before Apsu laid the bowl back down on the arm of the chair. A speck of the powder caught on the scales beneath his nose, though he soon wiped it away.

"Find them," he hissed. One clawed hand gripped the edge of the armrest as he leaned forward and regarded his two sons with a wild grin. "I need more."

"It is poisonous," Enki warned. He'd like nothing more than to watch Apsu suffer, but if he didn't say it, Anu would. They both knew it. After working with the gold to power the strange alien ship's systems, they'd come to know what it could do. "We may need it to survive-" At least ever since they began using the alien technology to extend their own lives. "But it slowly kills the host's mind. Father, you can't stay in the same host forever."

"Lies!" Apsu snarled as he stood, but Anu again stepped forward and intervened.

"We will collect as much as you desire." Anu glanced back at Enki and would have told him what they were both thinking. At the very least, using it to power the alien technology could help immensely in their research. It didn't matter whether Apsu huffed some and slowly killed himself. They would unlock the knowledge of the unnamed ones without him.

"Then go," Apsu demanded. He lowered himself back into 'his' seat and regarded the scientists with doubt. "Do not withhold any from me, or you will be my next meal."

As per custom, the two bowed on their knees before leaving. Far from the inner chamber, in the cavern they called home above, they both felt a measure of relief. Anu wordlessly approached the small, round table surrounding what appeared to be a metal pole with a blue, pulsating orb encased in glass marked with several thick, black lines. While his brother worked, Enki looked back over his shoulder to make sure they weren't being watched. Unfortunately, two Unas stood guard, one by the entrance to the mine leading down into the temple, and the other patrolling the perimeter of the cave.

A bolt of electricity shot out of the orb and hit a diamond-shaped, crystalline 'window' in the corner, followed shortly thereafter by similar beams from two others nearby. They each coalesced into a single phenomenon: a tall, rectangular doorway, displaying a familiar control center. Although they agreed to call the I'konian gateway what it was, neither Enki nor Anu agreed on a single term for the strange tower on the other side. To Anu, they were stepping into hell - a military command post built in the arctic south by a people whose technology couldn't resist the command of the aliens who crashed on their world. But to Enki, the tower held the promise of a new source of knowledge, built atop another I'konian temple as it was - or, perhaps more accurately, an I'konian temple dug beneath.

"How many of our own must die before he's satisfied?" Anu asked rhetorically after they stepped through into the Ancient control center, where several of their own worked tirelessly to maintain the environmental systems keeping them alive... even as Apsu's own guards prowled and lumbered about, hoping to catch just one who would mess up. Enki considered those words, but remained silent. "We must kill him before he kills us."

Anu would receive no argument from his brother. He wanted to see Apsu forgotten as much as Anu, and he'd be willing to do anything to see that through. So, together, they plotted and schemed in the twilight chill, only their closest friends and associates drawn into their gambit. Enki would have to take the first step by calling Anu out to the Antarctic, a difficult task in and of itself. Their father would have to be taken alive in case Tiamat, their mother, refused to proclaim Anu and Enki the new leaders of their tribe. Only with one of their blessings could complete anarchy be avoided, or so they thought.

"What can we do?" Enki looked to his elder brother for answers, but though Anu could be seen churning that question over in his head, Enki didn't need to be told to guess. "The disc." The alien vessel that had crashed on their world had been disc-shaped. "You think there's an answer in the disc."

"It led us here, didn't it?" Anu wasted no time heading for the part of the base where they'd placed the dismantled pieces of the craft.

"We cannot rely on it forever." Despite acknowledging the great advances it brought their tribe compared to the others on their world who still bashed rocks together, Enki didn't trust what he himself didn't help design. "If we make a mistake, it could be a disaster."

"Gods don't make mistakes," Anu confidently answered. Their people naturally considered their alphas to be gods, so his statement only made sense if they were to overthrow Apsu. However, his pride felt misplaced, or so Enki feared.

Eventually, they arrived in an open chamber that resembled the one Apsu now ruled from. It was deep underground, far beneath the tower above. Here, both of Apsu's lead scientists studied the pieces of technology they'd salvaged off the ship to carry through the stargate. Arguably the most important part, however, happened to be the standing 'computer' at the opposite end of the room, where numerous pieces of the ship hovered behind it. Instead of using plain surfaces, the I'konians on this world used anti-gravity to hold objects of study. What those objects had been would remain a mystery until Apsu could be dealt with.

Truth, however, could be stranger than fiction. With the mystery of the I'konians still unresolved, the scientists found a much stranger truth within the alien database. Over a month of study passed, during which both were forced to continue seeking more I'konian temples by unlocking the secrets of their gateway. In the meantime, they left the search of the alien data to others, including a member of the tribe who had allied with Apsu long ago: Ninazu, son of Ereshkigal. When time came to review their discoveries in the evening, it was the day Ninazu had been assigned that their most important discovery was made.

"Adar?" The word for the particle that defied all efforts at a reasonable description couldn't be translated properly into what would later be ancient Goa'uld. Future peoples would call it by many names, but 'omega' would be the most familiar to those on Earth. For Apsu's tribe, the term referred to a planet they'd discovered in the database as belonging to this solar system: Saturn. Why it had been named as such eluded them, though Enki would later speculate. Anu, however, didn't seem interested in speculation as he continued to read.

"It appears to intersect Kia and Zi." 'Earth' and 'Spirit'. Fanciful terms for the physical and spiritual dimensions. According to what even Enki could read, the 'adar' connected physical lifeforms to something in a separate dimension. Whatever it was, it appeared to be the source of consciousness, unless he'd been reading it wrong. Either way, Anu skipped much of it to get to the parts most relevant to his plan. "Instability may cause ruptures between the two realms that, when controlled by means of..." They couldn't read the next few words, but a cursory search with the same symbolic structure would later turn up the plans of what they called the gisnu, or 'light bringer', as it powered the alien vessel by producing a great light.

"This is it. This is how we can stop him." Enki didn't see how, but Anu persisted, his eyes alit as they wandered over the scrolling text on the holographic display before them. "We ensnare his soul and leave him an empty shell."

Something about that plan disturbed Enki more than the deaths of those symbiotes Apsu devoured. But he said nothing, knowing full well they'd never get Apsu to leave the security of that place he now called his temple. This could be the only way to end the wanton slaughter of their people by a maniacal and psychotic tyrant.

Without his brother's voice of concern, Anu built the first of a series of devices that Enki knew would haunt him from that day forward:

The Eye.

Anu flexed his terribly sharpened claws in front of Tiamat, the mother of them all. She'd been tied to a tree, her clothes torn from her shoulders before the soldiers and followers of Anu. Some seemed to take a perverse glee in seeing her brought down like this. Others looked as uncomfortable about the matter as Enki felt, though the latter had to bear witness up close. He thought they might spare her the same torment she put so many of them through, but Anu thought it better to appeal to the lowest denominator: the vengeful.

Rather than give some plodding speech, Anu instead had his general, Enlil, hold her head and wrench her mouth open. Then he reached in and pulled out her tongue... literally. His claws had cut through the flimsy tissue and left their former 'mother' screaming in agony, even as much of the sound was muffled by the blood accumulating in her throat. Those happy to see the tyrant in pain cheered and hollered in the Unas way. Enki merely watched, his brow creased and mouth slightly agape. He never thought he'd see this.

Normally, the Goa'uld-infested Unas would give each other some sort of honorable death in battle. This clearly wasn't one of those times. Even those disturbed by the sight felt some measure of satisfaction. They each had loved ones among the dead left back on Una. Even Enki couldn't help but remember the death of his beloved Ninhursag.

Once it seemed she could no longer breathe, Anu and Enlil both stood by either side and reached down. With one swift, rough motion, they bore their claws through Tiamat's legs, causing even greater distress in their captive. Finally, Enlil cut the ropes binding her to the tree, and she instantly fell in to a pitiful heap. Her entire body shook - either in fear or from the blood loss, Enki couldn't tell. But Anu stood over her with a smug sneer as Enlil retrieved something from behind the tree. By the time he handed it over to Anu, Enki knew what it meant.

"Now, mother," Anu said as he hoisted the heavy stone club and held it over her broken form. "Proclaim me as leader. Or I will make sure you're alive to see your precious Kingu torn apart, piece... by... piece."

Tiamat could only weakly nod her head and gurgle something that sounded like affirmation. That's all Anu needed to hear. His grin widening, he looked up at the others who'd gathered there. Not many of them were left. More than half the tribe had died in the civil war led by Anu and Tiamat. There were few prisoners among them, but Enki knew of one. Kingu.

What a horrible sight it must've been for Kingu, the Goa'uld who had a secret affair with Tiamat after her husband's loss of sanity. It was made even worse as Anu lifted his club and brought it down on Tiamat's head, shattering bone and organ with one well-placed blow. As if to add to the kind of torment this memory would be for Enki's closest pupil, Anu fell on one knee and tore into Tiamat's flesh like the beast he possessed. If only Kingu had listened to his tutor and focused on his work, he'd not be so affected. Yet Enki couldn't blame him. He'd been a young Unas once too. The host's feelings couldn't always be pushed aside.

"I am your alpha now!" Anu exclaimed as he stood, a mad look in his eye only magnified by the blood that covered him from head to toe. Those who truly supported him were in an uproar. Those who only wanted Apsu and Tiamat out of the way were less enthusiastic, though if they didn't make Anu believe they were, they'd be as dead as Tiamat's followers. "You're no longer bound to Apsu or Tiamat! From now on, you will answer to me!"

If you don't turn out like the ones we fought, Enki thought to himself. He'd remind Anu of this later, when none of the others would overhear. Otherwise, such a statement would be seen as a challenge, and the tribe would expect Enki and Anu to fight to the death. Knowing full well Anu was the stronger between them, Enki wisely kept his mouth shut. However, there was one issue he could point out that might avoid a new tyrant from being born.

"We are not your children, Anu," Enki pointed out. Goa'uld formed tribes around the two progenitors of their kind. But with few 'unrelated' Goa'uld left among them apart from the tribe of Irkalla, there'd be no way to produce new symbiotes - and thus, no way to form a new tribe. "How do you expect to create a civilization when we can't even give birth?"

Despite feeling personally challenged by Enki's tone, Anu withheld himself from striking. It was a legitimate concern, and the others would expect an answer. So, he considered his words carefully and spoke with force. "We are no longer on Una. Their rules will not apply to us." Before Enki could persist, Anu continued to address the others. "From now on, you are all Anunnaki. You are children of Anu!" Speaking in third person, Anu exuded the same arrogance as their parents. "Follow me... and I'll be sure we raise a thousand strong!"

Another cheer from the warriors. Their voices crowded out the silent concerns of the others. But, as Enki noted during his life, the 'strong', such as Anu and his warriors, survive... while the 'weak', like Enki and those who wished to avoid such brutality, perish.

Unless, he wondered, the weak become the strong.