Title: Harbinger

Author: Jedi Buttercup

Disclaimer: The words are mine; the worlds are not. I claim nothing but the plot.

Rating: PG

Summary: A:tS, SG-1. Illyria is not pleased to find the ownership of this world challenged. 400 words.

Spoilers: A:tS post-"Not Fade Away". Stargate SG-1 "Origin" (9.3)

A not-quite-sound sent shivering the veils between the worlds, vaguely reminiscent of the crackle of fire or the roar of a distant battle. Illyria, her powers stabilized and strengthened since the great battle against the Wolf, Ram, and Hart, heard it and stilled in the stalking of her prey to listen.

Millenia ago, when the Powers That Do Naught had been members of a corporeal race called the Alterrans, there had been another faction-- or so her kind's legends of origin claimed. Discontent with the Alterrans' practice of allowing each soul to develop as it would, they had rent open dimensional Wells upon the Alterrans' new homeworld and departed, smug in the assumption that they had inflicted a fatal blow.

History, such as existed after the distortion of passing eons, recorded only a great plague. In the book of her Guide, the one within whose pages all texts could be revealed, Illyria had read of glowing spirits and a city lifted from the Earth's surface by unfathomable magic; by the time of her rule, all signs of their presence or that of their opponents had long since gone to dust.

All save one. To those with the sensitivity to feel it, the ambient energy field wrapped around this miserable planet had a flavor, a hum, a subtle coloration that gained in strength near the weaknesses the humans referred to as Hellmouths. A signature left behind by those who had pierced the veils, one that had existed unchanged throughout all living memory, including her own. Something had induced its creators to take notice of this place once more; the resonance was unmistakable.

Illyria frowned. This was not the world of her reign, but it was yet the world in which she lived, and the world upon which her Guide had lived; she was not ready to surrender it to the ownership of Others, even those whose actions had led to her own birth.

She looked up, and found that same knowledge in the fierce blue eyes of her pet half-breed, standing silent at her side. He had changed much since the battle that had taken the lives of their remaining companions; the Seer's visions had become his, the cursed one's Championship his own. It did not surprise her that he should also be aware of what had occurred.

This day's prey no longer mattered. There was larger game to be sought.

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© 2005 Jedi Buttercup.