I bit back a scream as I exited the wormhole, the shearing sensation of having been so rapidly compressed then restored almost more than I could handle. My ear drums rang with the thunderous beating of my own heart, as I staggered out from the gate an unintentional corona of magical energies coruscating out from the wormholes surface and around my body. Bolts of electrical discharge spat our around my feet as they touched the ground, searing through the thick moss growing around the stone plinth upon which the gate stood at the center of a ruined temple, leaving the surface scourged clean beneath them. The warden's cloak whipped around me, born by sorcerous wind like the wings of some monstrous bat, catching up eddies of the etheric lightning.

I did not breathe easily till the gate's magic's stopped, the swirling portal of blue light closing behind me and abruptly cutting off the searing waves of lightning that accompanied my arrival. It was a couple seconds before I entirely had my bearings and stopped leaning against my staff.

My companions were several steps ahead of me, having previously traveled with me and experienced the side effects that came with transporting me through the gate. Minus the high priestess, of course, the arcane warding about her person allowed her to stand at the center of any number of hazardous magical energies without fear - which only seemed to go further to confirm my divine purpose in her mind.

Enlil poked his head out from behind a stone pillar, his eyes narrowed. "That is getting worse with time."

"Obviously." Ammit snorted, her crocodilian bulk comically posed behind another pillar in a way that couldn't help but remind me of one of the hippos from fantasia. "But I'd imagine it can't be helped at this point. Given that he allowed it to be seen by the masses already, I'd imagine that it was actually integrated within the mantle at this point. The stories of the warden appearing are too widespread to even begin to curtail them."

My eye twitched as I gritted my teeth, calming the irrational stab of anger that ran through me at her casual reference to the mythos of the Lord Warden. I had discovered far too late that the mythology built up around me had actual physical consequences upon how I interacted with the world within which I lived. The worshippers of "The Warden" believed that the warden was supposed to show up in an overtly showy display of magical power, and the excess magic generated by my "godhood" forced that to be true.

It was the most obvious change to my person as a result of the mythology that had become attached to the burgeoning mantle of the "Warden of Nekheb" but far from the only one I'd caught. It was mostly little things that I couldn't prove but they were enough to scare me more than a little bit.

Though not as much, I'll grant you, as my near abject terror at the newly minted mantle to which I now seemed to have access. I could feel it within me, a new well of power distinct from the magic I'd used all my life, the power of belief. It was like a constant pressure at the edge of my mind, a swelling tide rising against the damn I'd done my best to erect against it. It was strength beyond what I'd ever had at my fingers, but to use it would not be without consequence. Just the ambient spillover scared me, the influence it could have on me without me ever realizing it.

I'd met my id before, my darker self - the image of every desire in my heart. He was dangerous. And I feared that tapping into that well of belief would make me into the man he'd always wanted me to become. Power comes at a price, and I didn't want to know how the power of my follower's belief would reshape me. Their image of me was skewed at best, and their sensibilities were positively primeval.

Sleep came to me rarely. I didn't feel the need often and when I did my mind was clouded with a choir of voices demanding my attention. It was as if the entire city of Chicago had simultaneously decided start shouting at me with megaphones every time I closed my eyes. Meditation had helped mitigate the noise somewhat, but my Wizard's education hadn't sufficiently prepared me for the sudden influx of prayer directed towards me.

The knowledge in Heka's library hadn't helped much. Unsurprisingly, he had not committed a great deal of effort into documenting the day to day minutiae of godhood. Sharing wasn't a skill he was overly adept at exercising and preparing the next generation of Goa'uld for success was tantamount to engineering his own downfall. Enlil and Ammit likely knew something of what I needed to do in order to make the experience more manageable, but that would require admitting that they knew something I did not already know. I didn't dare appear weak to them – especially now.

I ignored Enlil and Ammit's discussion over the best way to manage my image as I cast light through my silver pentacle amulet, shimmering silver light casting away shadows from the seemingly endless ruins. It was beautiful, crumbling white stone covered in thick green moss. It was old, as old as anything I'd ever seen. What might once have been carvings were so worn by wind and water that they held only the vague impression civilization. Tiny pockets of wall less exposed to the elements held glimpses of what the structure had once been, square letters jutting out from the porous stone. The space thrummed with an energy that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do history, a long dead history of people far gone in time.

I whistled a low note, impressed at the sheer magnitude of it. The building seemed to stretch out for a mile in any direction, it's ceiling so high that I couldn't even see it with the dull light of my amulet. "This place is huge. Who built it?"

"Not us and not the Asgard. I think. yes, yes it would have to be them." Enlil chewed his lip kneeling down to brush the moss away from one of the less damaged sections of wall. He stroked his beard, tapping the interwoven beads with his many jeweled rings. "This is a world of the gate builders!"

"The builders?" Ammit blinked, eyeing the stone structure speculatively. "We haven't found a structure this complete since Dakara. Where is this system?"

"In the middle of Lord Yu's domain, unless I misread that gate address." Enlil replied in confusion. "But he would not leave a structure this magnificent without at least a compliment of Jaffa Warriors. It's invaluable just for the cultural victory of being able to hold another great temple of divinity, never mind that he's one of the few of us who can actually use the damn thing."

"But that makes no sense. How could he not know about this place?" Ammit growled, her voice nervous. "Certainly he would want to exploit a wonder of this degree."

"I might have a though on that subject, honored Eater of the Sin." Muminah spoke aloud.

Ammit arched an eyebrow, the priestess was not in the habit of interrupting the Goa'uld unless it was of grave importance. "Speak priestess. I would hear your thought."

"I believe that Lord Yu did not wish to be trapped on a world without a functioning method of returning home." Muminah replied. "For while this structure is impressive, it appears to be without a pedestal by which one might control the eye of the gods."

Oh, hells bells. She was right. The waist-high circular device capped with a glowing red crystal that normally allowed for its user to operate the gate was conspicuously absent. Without it, we would be stuck on the planet until someone sent a rescue party. Ul'tak would eventually do so, regardless of his orders, but not for the week I'd told him to expect us to be gone.

A trap perhaps? Strand me on another planet to make me easy prey for the forces of Summer? No, that was too straightforward for Mab. Strand both us and the humans of Earth? Possibly, but that would require that they'd already wronged her to a sufficient degree that such activity was justified in her mind - and I couldn't see the benefit to her in doing so.

I turned to Enlil, expecting the easily agitated god to be in a fit of frustration, only to discover the man entirely unaffected by the revelation. There was no anger, no swearing in Babylonian, Sumerian, Akkadian or Assyrian, no pulling at his braided beard, nothing that I would have expected out of him at the prospect of being stranded on some alien world.

If anything, the explanation just seemed to have mollified his concerns. He actually smiled as he said "Ah yes, that does explain it. No matter - it shouldn't prove much of an impediment."

Ammit nodded in agreement, "Manually dial the address and have the warden toss a bolt of lightning at it?"

"If you don't mind doing the actual dialing, I've never been particularly good at manipulating one of those by hand." Enlil brushed the front of his fringed skirts, dusting off the petal shaped fabrics as he eyed the symbols around the ring of the gate speculatively. "But I'm going to need a look at the sky to determine which of those symbols is the point of origin. There are four I don't recognize on that ring."

"I recognize all but two great Lord of the Storm." Mumiah bowed deeply. "Do you wish that I identify them so that we might compare our knowledge?"

Faster than I could blink Enlil moved, the back of his hand rocketing towards the priestess' face. The full weight of his superhuman strength seemed to be directed for the priestess' cheek, a bone crushing backhanded blow. The priestess screamed, her eyes wide in horror as the god's first came to an abrupt stop inches from the girl's cheek. Ammit held Enlils arm at the wrist, gripping hard.

Something terrible flashed in the god's eyes, a spiteful edge that lasted even after his eyes ceased to glow. He strained against the Egyptian demon's unyielding grip, hatred that seemed entirely disproportionate to the situation smoldering in his voice as he addressed the goddess.

"She dared to speak to her betters as an equal." Enlil snarled. "A high priestess should know better."

"You were about to strike an unarmed woman in front of the Warden hard enough that you might have killed her." Ammit replied dryly. "The simplest intellect in the Warden's kingdom already does know better."

I cut across Enlil's reply, putting a comforting hand on Muminah's shoulder. "You will thank Ammit, Enlil."

"For what?" The bearded god growled.

"For saving your life." I replied, not bothering to suppress the glowing pits of anger I knew were visible even through my mask's slatted eyes. "It would have proved awkward were I forced to kill you before my meeting with the Tau'ri. Especially given how competent of an administrator you've proven to be, it would be embarrassing to lose you to something as foolish as overstepping your boundaries in so painfully transparent a display of weakness."

It was the sort of thing I would have expected Lara Raith to say, but I found myself modeling my interactions of the White Court's defacto leader often as of late. More often than not the implication of having acted with insufficient guile was enough to silence the Goa'uld nobleman's increasingly regular bouts of rage. He wasn't about to believe that I actually cared about my chattel, but he seemed generally accepting of my unwillingness to allow him free reign over my property.

Enlil ground his teeth, biting back the response I knew he was dying to say. He was quick to anger, but he wasn't outright stupid. You don't get to live as long as Enlil if you were stupid. And Enlil was old enough for Ammit to consider him a contemporary. I didn't know much Babylonian mythology, but Bob had filled me in on some of the highlights. Enlil had once been head of the Babylonian pantheon till his queen consort had teamed up with his rival, ousting him from his pantheon and effectively banishing him from any semblance of power for the next 3200 years. He breathed heavily, lowering his arm before muttering a half-hearted apology to my High Priestess. "I should not have tried to strike you High Priestess. It is not my place to discipline you for speaking out of turn."

"I .. " She swallowed nervously and I squeezed her shoulder gently, affirming that I would be there to protect her. The high priestess' smile took on a genuine look of joy at my physical contact. She turned to me, beaming her pearly whites at me before replying to Enlil. "I have no need for your apology, Lord of the Storm. I should not have spoken before you addressed me."

Not quite the exchange I had been going for, but it was asking for too much if I was going to try to get a genuine apology from Enlil. He considered mortals to be ephemeral nuisances, potential sources of power as a group but individually of minor importance in comparison to his own place in the universe. It was a common enough attitude from the non-humans I'd met. Hell, there were even some on the White Council wizards with a bad habit of seeming mortals as being too ephemeral to be worthy of notice.

Stars and Stones, I should be counting my blessings. By the standards of the Goa'uld Enlil had been treating Muminah with kid gloves, entire cities had been burned to the ground by the ancient pantheons for lesser offenses. The old gods favored old testament style solutions to social problems. Given the choice between negotiating with a disobedient mortal and using their time elsewhere, they favored just frying the mortal with a bolt of lightning and going on with their day.

It made me a bit queasy to think that I was empathizing with the idea of just killing a mortal to save time. But the sheer scale of death I'd been dealing with on a day to day basis was hardening me to it. How could it not? The Jaffa of Chronos weren't evil men, not any more than any other Jaffa in the universe, but they would slaughter the people in my care without a second thought. This was war, the second war I'd started in my lifetime – though I suppose chronologically I had effectively started both within less than a week of each other.

Time travel is a bitch like that.

The casualties had been better than what might have been otherwise expected, given my Fae allies and the fleets I'd stolen from Sokar's fleet after the destruction of Netu, but I wasn't winning the war outright even before I'd started a fight with Moloch's finest. I'd buried more good men in the past year than I'd met before in my life. I'd tried to remember their names at first, but it just hadn't been manageable. There were too many. Just far too many. Bob kept a list for me now, so that could memorialize them when this was all over, but I had been forced to just compress individual lives to statistics out of sheer necessity.

I was losing what made me human. I was losing what made me Harry. Hell's bells, I didn't even have my own name any more – just a mangled sobriquet. I turned to the gate, musing aloud. "Why do you think the Tau'ri chose this place for a meeting? I can't imagine them electing to meet us somewhere that they need to manually dial the gate."

"That is odd…" Ammit agreed, chewing her lip. "Perhaps it was the Demon if Winter's doing? A way of ensuring that neither side was easily able to depart without either coming to an agreement or slaughtering each other?"

"Possibly, but I can't see O'Neill choosing to be trapped with me anywhere. American's aren't known for negotiating from a point of potential weakness." I shook my head. "And I can't see them launching a potential suicide mission against me given that I haven't done anything against them specifically."

I might have stopped being a detective but I had not, however, lost the powers of observation that made me a competent detective. Easily ninety percent of being a decent private eye had to do with picking your clients, determining which of them were honestly looking for help and which of them were just full of it. I'd made mistakes before, picked clients who'd not had my best interests at heart, but as a rule I was pretty good at figuring out how people operated.

If O'Neill or someone from the SCG wanted to meet here, it meant there was something I wasn't seeing. There was a way for their people to escape without requiring actual magic to make that happen, possibly a ring transporter or a passage to the surface, but there would be a route to safety. I observed the room, looking around it for anything out of the ordinary that could hint to what I was missing. I caught it after only a moment. A tiny fleck of smoldering red in the thick green moss hinted at the Tau'ri's presence.

I strode past Enlil, walking directly through him to force him to move out of my way, as I caught a glimpse of glowing red embers out of the corner of my eye. It was a pitiful thing, I might not have noticed it at all if not for the near absolute darkness within the ruins outside the light of my pendant.

I kneeled down and picked up the source of the light, the armored joints at my knees creaking loudly and echoing off the ruins as I did so. I lifted a still smoking small tube of translucent paper wrapped around a tightly packed tobacco leaves, an unfiltered cigarette. My nose crinkled as the pungent aroma of it, rolling the thin tube in my fingers to see the blue "Export Belomorkanal" logo stamped along its side. My blood ran cold as I ran through my conversation with Mab in my mind.

At no point in our conversation had Mab explicitly identified the people we were meeting with as members of American run Stargate Command, only as warriors of the first world. And there were plenty of nations on Earth who would be none too pleased to discover that an Alien species had begun supplying the American government with advanced alien weaponry. I stood up and turned on my heel, realizing just how poorly defended we were in the open center of the gate room. "They're already here!"

And, as if on cue, several dozen heavily armed Russian soldiers emerged from where they'd been hiding, flanked by a number of men in grey cloaks wielding swords. Wardens? No, I swore angrily – they'd brought the brute squad out of Archangel, a specialized group of monster hunters operating under the guidance of Simon Petrovich – the White Council's go to guy when it came to killing vampires. Think the Wardens but not quite so cute and cuddly.

A small army of monster killing wizards and Russian special forces would have distracted most people in that situation. My attention, however, was focused on a massive man and a little girl in a pretty blue dress. Her tiny features were scrunched up into a look of utter hatred and there were flecks of arcane power sparking from the tips of her buckled leather shoes.

"Ivy," I whispered in horror, realizing why she was here. Ivy was the keeper of all human knowledge. She remembered things that everyone else could not. She would know the specifics of what Heka had done to make Traitor's Bane. She would know exactly what I'd done to become what I am. And, as I'd never actually written anything down myself, she'd know exactly what my clergy and my enemies had recorded on my behalf.

She'd only see the monster Heka and the power he'd gained.

Ivy, the little girl who held all the knowledge of mankind and child who I called my friend, was here to kill me a year before we'd ever met on earth. And short of ending a child's life, I wasn't sure if I'd be able to stop her.