Chapter Eighteen

At the SGCUK

Time is running out. The spring equinox is tomorrow and the away team have failed in their efforts to capture the Naxen and the Dragon King, ending up being caught in a cleverly sprung trap, distracting them and keeping them away from the Stargate. At least the Naxen lizard man was confirmed dead by the team. Professor Peter Cromwell paces distractedly up and down the atrium waiting for their return wondering what next could happen. The media and internet are full of equinox stories of flooding, supernatural occurrences and strange disappearances across the South West of the country and the area is crawling with amateur sleuths, UFO spotters and the press. The whole equinox event couldn't be any less low-key if it stuck a neon sign on its head saying 'FREAKY STUFF HAPPENING'. Even Stonehenge was drawing a large crowd ahead of tomorrow... His thoughts are interrupted by the return of the team. He stares at them critically as they assemble in front of him and is about to start the debrief of the last disastrous twenty-four hours when an urgent message from the guards at the Stargate is patched in over the PA system.

'What the? What is that! No...…argghhh!' The screaming is drowned out by the sound of rapid gunfire.

Professor Cromwell yells for a visual image on screen of the live feeds from the guards' uniform cams but the only images being sent back are of a swirling mist with unidentifiable shapes moving in it and sudden, erratic bursts of gunfire.

'The Dragon's breath!' exclaims Aelix as the team watch the footage.

'They are being drawn into firing at each other in the mist.' Jack notes shaking his head in frustration. 'We should be there to stop them!'

'Well, what are you waiting for then?' asks Professor Cromwell. The team do not wait to be told twice.

The route to the Stargate through the trees is quiet and the team approach cautiously, noticing the mist up ahead, each of them determined not to fall foul of it again. 'Best we keep in two groups, Teal'c, Kyna, Tara with me. Daniel, you, Agnes, Ninian and Aelix follow behind. Everyone keep their eyes peeled and keep your infrared scanners on and do not fire unless you have visual confirmation of the enemy. We have no idea what is in there.' Jack nods at the mist slowly creeping out to meet them. Daniel thinks back over the last few days and replies. 'Actually, I think we do...'

The mist closes in around them, deadening sound and distorting the trees into twisted shadows. Soon, they are all relying on their scanners to find the way. Here and there they find the slumped forms of injured perimeter guards and then they reach the Stargate pool clearing to find the remaining guards huddled together, back to back, terrified and out of ammunition.

'Jack and Teal'c question them but get very little out of them. They are making no sense at all, talking about giants and fierce beasts. As Daniel radios for a medical team to transport them back to Stargate Command the mist closes back down and the next onslaught begins.

From out of the mist looms the huge shapes of mythical beasts, once chained to the landscape and now under the spell of Nixor. Tor trolls and bog hobgoblins, hill giants, moor beasts and wood werwulf, ferocious in fighting tooth and claw as the team try to hold the Stargate. Wave after wave of snarling wolves, club-wielding giants, hobgoblins and stone-throwing trolls attack them.

Kyna bravely fights alongside Tara, the blade of Raizor, her Xiphos, flashing dimly through the mist, slicing the flesh of the enemy but leaving no mark as the mythical creatures simply melt away only to reappear again in larger numbers. In grim desperation, as they are pushed back towards the Stargate and the thought of an imminent death fills her mind, her thoughts turn to her home world and her twin brother looking after the herd and sadness engulfs her.

'We are going to be trapped against the gate!' Daniel yells at Jack across the melee.

'I know but I've run out of ways to try and kill these creatures, they just keep reappearing!' Jack fires at a troll only to find the blast bounces off into the mist as though hitting a rock. He ducks out of the way as the troll lands a hammer blow with his club on the spot where he had just been standing.

'This is no good, they will pick us off one by one at this rate!' Teal'c blasts the troll with staff but the troll simply turns to rubble and then slowly rebuilds itself again in front of their eyes. 'This is magic we are fighting and this mist is not helping!'

' Aelix! Aelix! Can you remember how to make a water-catcher? Look, a willow tree!' Ninian, transformed into a merlin, calls from the air above the fight, as he fiercely attacks the eyes of a hill giant. Aelix nods grimly and deftly leaps past a wolf and heads for the willow tree Ninian had spotted. He searches for a particular branch, split into a shape of a Y and strips the leaves from it, then races back to where Agnes and Daniel are fighting side by side. 'Cover me!' he yells and Agnes stares in surprise at the branch he is holding. 'Is that for water divining, because I'm guessing it's going to find the big pond behind us.' Aelix ignores her and turns the branch so that the two prongs of the Y shape point out into the mist. From the sky, Ninian replies to Agnes. 'One way to repel water, one way to catch it!'

Aelix holds the wand out in front of him, chanting under his breath a talisman only he knows while Agnes and Daniel work to keep the marauding hobgoblins at bay. Slowly the wand works, drawing the mist to it and, as Aelix chants, the water is caught, first by the branch and then by all the trees nearby, condensing and seeping into the ground to be trapped by their roots. As the mist dissipates, so does the army, vanishing back into the woods or turning to stone where they stand. The team fall to the ground in exhaustion by the Stargate pool as the fighting finally ends. 'What now?' asks Kyna, every sinew aching from the battle. 'Where have they gone.'

Ninian lands nearby and changes back to his human form. 'The mist is the breath of Nixor, he conjured life into them with it, now it is gone, they have returned to the dust and distant memories they are. The water catcher will hold for now but Nixor will be back. The Equinox is his key to unlocking the gate. This is a diversion to weaken us and keep us too busy to prepare for the real battle tomorrow.'

'Real battle? As battles go, that felt pretty real to me.' Jack ruefully rubs the bruise appearing on his arm where he was hit by a troll rock.

'We should call for back up and supplies.' Teal'c glances at the evening sky overhead. 'It will soon be dark and I fear this is going to be a long night.'