Work Text:
The klaxons were still wailing for the unscheduled gate activation when Colonel O’Neill flung open the door to Dr Daniel Jackson’s office. He glared at the dark Egyptian seated in Daniel’s office, deep in conversation with Daniel Jackson about some obscure bit of ancient Egyptian history.
“But how, exactly, did your identity and that of Neferka-Re get conflated and --” Daniel broke off at seeing O’Neill in his doorway. “Hello, Jack. I was just--”
“Am I the only one,” Colonel O’Neill asked, “who is the least bit concerned that we had an unscheduled gate activation from That Address, and that the owner of That Address is sitting in your office without anyone opening the iris, seeing him arrive, or clearing him to wander around the base unsupervised?”
Daniel winced. “Ah, Jack? It wasn’t exactly an unscheduled gate activation. I sent a message to you-know-where.”
O’Neill glared at Dr. Jackson. “We’ll talk about that later.” He turned to glare at the dark-skinned Egyptian man sitting casually on Jackson’s couch.
Nyarlathotep smiled at O’Neill in that serene and enigmatic way of his, clearly amused. Today he was wearing a thoroughly modern, very expensive-looking tailored suit of black wool over a black silk shirt. His black tie was secured with a gold tie-clip in the form of an upside-down ankh. “It’s not my problem if you humans are a dull, unobservant lot.”
O’Neill folded his arms, leaning against the door frame. “I’m observing you just fine. Why are you here?”
Nyarlathotep stretched languidly, like a great cat. “You are more observant than most humans, and sometimes do not allow yourself to be lulled by what you expect to see. As for why I am here… because Dr. Jackson summoned me, and I felt like responding.”
Behind his desk, Daniel Jackson silently mouthed, “I did what?”
Ignoring him, Nyarlathotep continued, “Dr Jackson is so full of enthusiastic questions; there is no fear of knowledge in him, yet he knows to ask for no more than he can afford. It is a rare balance in humans, and I respect him for it.”
“And if I raised the alarm for a foothold situation right now…” Colonel O’Neill frowned sternly.
Daniel looked alarmed. “Jack, that would be a bad idea--”
Nyarlathotep raised a hand to forestall further protests. “Dr. Jackson, Colonel O’Neill is simply doing his job. Your enthusiasm is charming, but it allowed me to cloud your perceptions and skew your judgement. You should be more careful about what you summon. Colonel, do you wish me to leave and never return?”
Daniel Jackson managed to look simultaneously horrified and disappointed, as if O’Neill had taken away his promised pony, but the pony had turned out to be a Lovecraftian unicorn1.
“What I would like,” Colonel O’Neill said through gritted teeth, “is for you to follow the rules we have in place to protect Earth from alien visitors. We do have protocols for ‘friendly’ visitors.”
Nyarlathotep grinned (a disturbing sight to both humans). “I came to Earth while the crust was still cooling2, Colonel O’Neill. You are more of a ‘visitor’ than I.”
O’Neill sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose like he was feeling an incipient headache. “Still claiming to be a god, huh? I don’t care when you descended from the outer void; I do care about your unscheduled, unannounced visits to this supposedly ultra-secure, Top Secret base!” Behind his desk, Daniel Jackson winced again.
Nyarlathotep’s expression settled back into his usual enigmatic smile. “I’m not one of your gods, human. I have been worshiped by humans in the past, but it never turned out well.”
“For you or for them?” O’Neill asked.
“For them. Mostly.”
Daniel looked like he was about to raise his hand to ask a professor a question. Instead, he interjected “We’ve identified many of the goa’uld behind our myths of the gods, and--”
Nyarlathotep raised a hand to stop Dr. Jackson again. “No. You have identified goa’uld who hijacked the legitimate worship of certain gods for their own vulgar, egotistical reasons.”
Daniel blinked. “Wait, what? So you’re saying there are real gods, not just goa’uld pretenders?”
“Of course. Did you really think the goa’uld created all those legends themselves? Can you imagine that pathetic cult guru Seth participating in any version of events that might become the ‘Contendings of Horus and Set’?”
Daniel shook his head. “Thanks, I didn’t want to imagine anything like that.”
This time, O’Neill blinked. “Wait, what? Isn’t that just the legend of Horus, Osiris, Isis and Seth having a fight over who gets to be Supreme System Lord?”
Daniel gave O’Neill a weak smile. “No. I sanitized that legend quite a bit for the briefing, Jack. The original version, um, well, there’s frequent male-on-male rape and attempted rape going on.”
“You left out the necrophilia and the golden strap-on, too? Pity. That must have been a very dull briefing,” Nyarlathotep said. Jackson glared at the Dark Pharoah, who smirked back.
“Necrophilia and a golden what ? Ewgh. I didn’t need that mental image of Seth either,” O’Neill replied. His glance shifted toward the Dark Pharoah in civilian clothes. “So you’re saying there used to be a real god Set out there? What happened to him?”
“My secrets come at a price, Colonel O’Neill.”
Colonel O’Neill looked at Nyarlathotep thoughtfully. “What kind of price?”
Nyarlathotep locked gazes with O’Neill, his eyes flashing with sudden fire. O’Neill blanched, and turned away. “NO! I would never--”
The Dark Pharoah looked moderately surprised. “No,” he said slowly, “I don’t believe you would.”
“Who would?” O’Neill asked, hoarse, disbelieving.
“You’d be surprised at what people might do to save themselves, or their loved ones, or their world. Or what people who have lost everything might do to avenge themselves. Pray you never need to know one of my secrets that badly.” The Dark Pharoah inclined his head.
Daniel asked, “What if--”
“Daniel.” O’Neill interrupted. “Just drop it.” He was still pale.
“Okay.” Daniel Jackson pursed his lips. “What about System Lord Ra? If Ra originated as a personification of the sun, the belief already existed for the goa’uld to hijack, without there being an actual, living diety Ra.”
That enigmatic smile was back. “What happened, Colonel, when Apophis proclaimed himself a god, put on a flashy light show, and demanded you bow down and worship him?”
“We call it ‘violent uprising and revolution’,” Colonel O’Neill replied.
“And yet, Dr Jackson, Earth already had legends of the serpent Apophis. If your theory was correct, the colonel should have believed him to be a god and worhipped him,” Nyarlathotep said. “It’s not that easy to convince humans that a false god is real. There’s always an O’Neill out there,” Nyarlathotep said, gesturing at the colonel.
Daniel Jackson looked thoughtful. “But Jack didn’t believe in Apophis the Destroyer before he met the goa’uld. Ancient Egyptian gods aren’t generally worshipped anymore.”
Nyarlathotep steepled his hands and smiled at Dr. Jackson like a proud teacher at a student who has just asked a very important and educational question. “Indeed. To steal the power of an existing religion, requires that the would-be false god fit into the existing religion. Isis the goa’uld could never have hijacked the religion of Isis the goddess for long—the goa’uld temperament and the aspects of Isis are too different.”
“Of course, there’s also would-be false gods who think the easy route to power and dominion is to declare themselves a new, more powerful god than those ‘pathetic old gods who cannot protect their worshippers’, without seeing the trap therein,” the Dark Pharoah said. “Case in point: the Ori.”
“The who?” Dr. Jackson asked.
“Oh, you’ll find out about them soon enough. They’re an irritating lot who fell into the classic error of false gods: to keep followers blind to the lie, a new would-be god must provide real miracles, greater than those of the old gods they are displacing. That takes real power—and the easiest sort of power is taken from the followers themselves. Of course, if said followers discover not only the lie, but that they are being robbed, well… that’s one way false gods fall.” The Dark Pharoah shrugged.
O’Neill cleared his throat. “So how did you fall into the trap of being worshipped as a god? Or is that one of your expensive secrets?”
Nyarlathotep arched one eyebrow slightly. “An interesting assumption—and you still believe me to be a ‘false god’. I should be insulted. Are you sure you don’t want me to leave? But no, that is not one of my expensive secrets.”
“I don’t know what you are.” O’Neill replied easily. "How did you get the loyalty of the Jaffa’s ancestors?”
Behind his desk, Daniel’s eyes widened in understanding, and he mouthed ‘No’ at O’Neill. Unfortunately, O’Neill wasn’t looking at him… but Nyarlathotep was, and Daniel Jackson suddenly found himself unable to speak.
The enigmatic smile was back. “Are you sure you want the answers to your questions? You have a great many of them.”
“Actually, yes,” Colonel O’Neill said, nodding his head. “I like it when my questions are answered and I don’t get given the runaround.”
Daniel Jackson winced one last time and buried his face in his hands.
“They were soldiers of my vassal kingdoms, and they worshipped me as their god-king.” Nyarlathotep regally waved his left hand, which was missing its third finger. “You asked how I came to be worshipped? I put in a great deal of work over generations of human lives, Colonel. In the beginning, I presented myself as prophet and priest-king of their most dread god. I could not call myself by that god’s name, because their ancestors knew of me as that god’s right hand—his Herald, and the one who proclaimed his dread Will.
“That god fell, as evil gods usually do, and was cast into the void, to howl and rage and mindlessly wish annihilation on all existence. You look skeptical, Colonel O’Neill. Consider it an elaborate metaphor for the black hole at the center of the galaxy, entropy, and the heat death of the universe if it makes you feel more comfortable, and the god’s ‘fall’ a metaphor for the religion’s collapse in the face of outside oppression. The Outer Gods are abstractions, after all—that’s why they are mindless. Calling them ‘metaphors’ is incorrect, but analogous.”
“For generations, I was their immortal priest-king and prophet. When they had forgotten their old god, I ‘revealed’ myself as a god as well as their high king. For yet more generations, they worshipped me and made bloody sacrifices to me and served me as my most fanatical soldiers.”
“So,” O’Neill pounced on the first problem he saw with the Dark Pharoah’s biography. “If being worshipped as a false god is a trap, why did you fall into it?”
Nyarlathotep raised one eyebrow. “I’m not a false god. My powers were real, and formidable.”
“Yeah. Just like a goa’uld,” O’Neill said. “Tell me again why I should treat you as a ‘friendly’ visitor?”
“Tales of my dominion may have been a bad influence on System Lord Ra.” Nyarlathotep shrugged. “Those were younger days; I was less human and more malicious. That empire is long since dust, forgotten even by the Ancients.”
O’Neill’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, ‘less human’?”
That enigmatic smile was back. “My form affects my mentality. In human form, I think somewhat more like a human, and understand your species better than I do in other forms. You do not want to meet me in any of those other forms. They would not almost regard you as ‘people’.”
Daniel Jackson found his voice again. “Where do the Ancients fit into your history?”
“Why, that’s who I raised an army of fanatic worshippers to fight against! That people thwarted my designs more than once, and I hold grudges.” Fire flickered in the Dark Pharoah’s eyes as he locked gazes with Colonel O’Neill. “Secrets, O’Neill. Secrets.”
“Alas,” he continued, “I have revealed great secrets to you. There is a price to be paid, but one I believe you will find relatively painless. There are alien gods of the false kind on their way to Earth, Colonel, and they will demand worship. I know what you will do, and I will aid you, because I am the Herald and Mind of the Outer Gods.”
“Whoa, wait, we didn’t make any kind of deal here!” Colonel O’Neill said.
“I told you there was a price for my secrets, Colonel O’Neill. You and young Dr. Jackson continued asking questions.” That enigmatic smile was back, and sardonic laughter danced in the Dark Pharoah’s eyes. “Thus, you elected to pay my price.”
“Damn it, Jack!” Daniel Jackson clenched his teeth and his fists, and relaxed. “My mistake, I tried to warn you—but he cheated and didn’t let me talk.”
"Cheated? Is Colonel O'Neill not capable of making his own decisions without your instructions, Dr. Jackson?" Nyarlathotep raised one eyebrow.
Colonel O’Neill glared at the Dark Pharoah and gave him the barest nod. He’d been played, but played fairly. “What is your price, Nyarlathotep?”
“When your title becomes General O’Neill, Atlantis returns from whence it came, and the Ori come in power at the head of a crusade demanding that all bow down and worship them, you will provide me with twelve crates of 100 kilograms each of naquadah fuel-grade ingots, to be delivered to my stargate address. I will provide you with a box, a mighty gift with which to appear to appease the Ori priors.”
Colonel O’Neill sighed. “What’s the catch?”
Nyarlathotep tented his hands. “You’re learning. Don’t open the box. If you open the box, don’t look into the facets of the Shining Trapezohedron set therein. If you look into the Shining Trapezohedron, don’t be so enthralled by the sight of all time and space that you start searching the future and the deep past. And whatever else you do, do not leave the box open in the darkness, after you contacted a mind in the deep past, for in darkness it will come to you bearing gifts of knowledge and power that will set you above all other men—if you agree to its price.”
* * *
Years later…
Nyarlathotep handed O’Neill the oddly-shaped box made of what might have been a marine bronze. “This is the price you must deliver to that annoying Ori Prior. With certain caveats.”
General O’Neill glanced at the golden-brass box, then at the Totally Not a Goa’uld Dark Pharoah, and smiled grimly. “So I should be sure and warn them not to ever open the box and look at the glorious Shining Trapezohedron, and that they should not let themselves get enthralled by sight of all time and space? And whatever they do, they must not ever close the box in the dark because that summons something that wants to teach them all the secrets of the universe for a low, low price?”
"Whyever would you want to do that?" The Dark Pharoah smiled in that peculiar way of his. “‘Deep time’, General O’Neill, is such a delightful phrase. It conveys the idea, without being too specific. The Shining Trapezohedron is a Deep Time Beacon. It calls to the darkness of the infant universe and those who pre-date the stars may answer.”
“All right, then.” He jerked his head toward the Stargate, and the sealed crates of naquadah fuel waiting beside it. “It’s all yours, as promised.”
“I see you are a man of your word, General O’Neill.” Nyarlathotep nodded his head very slightly, in what might be the bow of a god to a worthy hero. The last chevron latched into place, and the shimmering event horizon of Earth’s stargate surged and settled into place as the stargate opened. Twenty-four Jaffa (formerly attached to the goa’uld Osiris) marched out of the gate and picked up the crates of fuel.
“I deal with people as they deal with me,” O’Neill replied. “Daniel says you’re a god of your word.” He watched the Jaffa carry the treasure in naquadah away. “Still not convinced you’re not, uh, related to the Goa’uld civilization in some way.”
“I was never one of their gods, either,” the Dark Pharoah replied. “Though they took the Jaffa from my servants in the beginning. I have taken them back, and their pyramids as well.”
“That’s one thing that’s been bugging me all these years—what did you do with the ha’tak? I thought you were going to replace the Bent Pyramid with it!”
Nyarlathotep gave Jack O’Neill one of his enigmatic smiles. “I did. Since Dr. Jackson could not convince the Minister of Antiquities to leave it alone, I took matters into my own hands, and now you, and everyone else, sees what I wish them to see, and forgets that it was ever otherwise—except here, of course.”
He turned for a moment at the yawning threshold of the active Stargate. "Tell Dr. Jackson that Lovecraft had his best insights in dreams." He vanished into the event horizon without a ripple.
* * *
Daniel Jackson watched as the wormhole collapsed, and the iris closed behind their ever-enigmatic visitor. He watched the oddly-angled box held by General O’Neill.
O’Neill noticed. “Tempted to open it up and have a look?”
“No, not all,” Dr. Jackson replied. “Normally I’d be eager to study such an artifact, but... no. That box has a… reputation. Don’t let Sam talk you into studying it, either.”
“Wasn’t planning to,” General O’Neill replied. Two airmen carried in a padded crate and lifted the lid; it was empty, and all ready for the box. O’Neill set it carefully in the case, being sure not to jostle it in any way that might allow the lid to open.
Colonel Carter joined them. “So we’re just going to turn this mysterious artifact over to the Priors without studying it?”
“Back when I was doing field ops with Special Forces, I never had the urge to poke at my own booby traps,” General O’Neill said drily. “This thing is a trap, we all know it’s a trap, Daniel’s creepy Outer God friend all but telegraphed in sixteen-foot high flaming letters that it’s a trap, so I’m going to treat it as if it’s a trap, armed and ready to explode in my face.”
“We could do passive scans on it…” Sam’s voice trailed off at the stony, closed looks on Jack and Daniel’s faces.
“Look, you’re the physics nerd in the room,” General O’Neill said. “What kind of beings could possibly exist before the stars did?”
Colonel Carter frowned thoughfully. “Before or after the Big Bang? I’ll assume long enough afterwards that some form of matter could exist… After the afterglow of the Big Bang cooled off below the visible light spectrum, it was dark—really dark. There were no stars for about 500 million years, but there was solid matter, and times and places where liquid water could have existed, so yes, there could have been some form of life—for a brief period. Cosmically speaking, that is.”
“So something from that era really wouldn’t like light, would it?” Daniel Jackson asked. Something had occurred to him.
Sam turned her head slightly; O’Neill was listening carefully. “It would have no natural resistance or immunity to damage from light radiation, so no, it really wouldn’t like light, if it was intelligent enough to have likes and dislikes.”
“What is it, Daniel?” Jack asked, recognizing that look on Daniel’s face.
“Do you remember the time I accidentally summoned Nyarlathotep through the iris? He told you that he’d been here ‘since the lava cooled’. He’s at least as old as the Earth, but… My occultism sources on That Box say that what it summons is one of Nyarlathotep’s avatars—one of the other ‘thousand forms’, a ‘demon’ called the Haunter of the Dark. What if he’s much, much older than the Earth? As old as the universe? If the Shining Trapezohedron summons him from Deep Time before the stars were, it won’t get a human form. Human forms didn’t exist yet. It will get something very alien, and much, much younger. Less evolved, less wise, less … patient.”
“Something that probably gets really pissed off by bright lights,” General O’Neill concluded.
“The very first time we met him,” Daniel said thoughtfully, “he told us to ‘pray we never met him in any of his thousand other forms’. The time I accidentally summoned him via the iris, he admitted that his form shapes his thinking, and that his other forms wouldn’t see us as ‘people’.”
Jack stared at his old friend. “Daniel. If even ten percent of what he has told us is true, your creepy Outer God acquaintance is a few billion years old, and has a mind that makes the Ascended Ancients look like toddlers playing with blocks. He doesn’t see us as ‘people’; at best, we’re momentarily amusing mayflies.”
Daniel shivered. “But you trust him to keep his word?”
“I figured out years ago that he has an agenda that is not currently hostile to us.” Jack shook his head. “He’s not exactly on our side, but he’s on the side of something that would rather have humans around. Or he's playing a really long con and means to wipe us out in the long run.”
"Jack, I need to figure out what was meant by the last thing he said. I think he was giving us a clue to his intentions." Daniel rested one finger on his chin. "Can you meet me in my office after you stow that box?"
"Of course."
* * *
O'Neill prodded skeptically at the stack of horror novels on Daniel’s desk. "Not your usual taste in reading."
Daniel looked slightly embarrassed. "H. P. Lovecraft is the pulp horror writer I told you about years ago, who apparently read the same old occultism books I did and wrote stories based on them. Most of them are very, uh, wordy, and very racist and misogynist, but he had some interesting ideas about elder gods and pre-human races."
O'Neill thumbed open one of the books, a hardback copy of 'Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos', published by Arkham House in 1989. "These stories were originally published in the 1930s. I'd be shocked if they weren't racist."
Daniel grimaced. "Lovecraft was extremely racist even by 1920s standards. There are letters where his friends asked him to tone his rants down. However, there's one area he wasn't racist in--his Dreamlands stories. Supposedly they were based on his dreams, and took place in land of dreams. Our old acquaintance Nyarlathotep pops up in them, occaisonally."
"I sense that you have a point you're getting to, Daniel," Jack said with exaggerated patience.
"Yea. Nyarlathotep is a trickster in the Dreamlands, and--get this--'manages' Earth's gods. Er, the gods of humans, as opposed to the Outer Gods." Daniel explained. "Anyway, when our eldritch acquaintance mentioned Lovecraft's dream insights, I remembered another story. Hand me 'Dagon and Other Macabre Tales', please."
Jack found the requested book in the pile and handed it to Daniel. "Well?"
Daniel opened the book and ran his fingers down the table of contents. "'From Beyond'? No, not that one. Ah, here it is--'The Other Gods'." Flipping quickly through the pages, he found the passage he was looking for. "In this story, Barzai the Wise goes to challenge the gods of Earth at their mountain-top dances, and finds out the hard way that the relatively weak gods of Earth are protected by the Outer Gods." He glances at O'Neill. "Nyarlathotep is the 'Herald and Mind of the Outer Gods'; you heard him say that the Outer Gods are mindless abstractions. That means he is the entity that actually protects the 'gods of Earth', if Lovecraft is correct. We've also heard him denigrate the goa'uld as NOT Earth's native gods."
O'Neill folded his arms and frowned again. "That's a hell of a lot of conclusion to base on the dreams of an old pulp writer. If Nyarlathotep is this ancient god-like being who 'protects' Earth's gods--why would he care enough to fight the Ori or the goa'uld? What danger are false gods to the real gods?"
"Do you remember Nyarlathotep's rant about false gods and their traps?"
O'Neill frowned. "Daniel, that was years ago, and we've been through a lot since then. The point, Daniel?"
Daniel looked slightly smug. "I took notes. When an elder god sits in your office and lectures you, you take notes, Jack! I figured it out later: real gods hate false gods because they destroy faith in the real gods. When people discover that the being they gave their devotion and belief to, whom they may have given up everything that mattered for, are liars who are using them--or that they don't exist--they're not going to trust anyone claiming to be a god, and they certainly aren't going to think "Well, that Osiris was an imposter, but I trust the real Osirius, whom I've never seen or met, to have my back."
"Huh." O'Neill nodded. "Dots connected. Fine, I'll trust our 'eldritch acquaintance' to have the Ori's worst interests at heart."
* * *
They were still going through security recordings and debriefings to figure out how the Trust managed to infiltrate SGC and steal the Box containing the Shining Trapezohedron. By the time SG-3 invaded the faciilty that the Box had been taken to for research, the Trust's researchers were all dead but one, and the Box was found open in a darkened, sound-proof room. The sole survivor sat craddling the Box, covered with blood and holding an equally bloody hunting knife and babbling incoherently. Most of the dead had been burned to death as if by corrosive acid. The rest had been stabbed to death and dismembered.
General O'Neills only comment upon receiving the retrieval team's report was "Told you it was a trap. Now let's quit fiddling with the damn thing and deliver it to the Ori!"
* * *
Soon, across the galaxy, Priors fell as the sources of their power, the Ori, just... winked out. Origin as a religion would continue for a time as the lesser priests and authorities used the organization to keep in control, to keep power. As an overwhelming crusade, Origin failed in the face of stubborn resistance from those no longer brainwashed by the power of the Ori or their Priors.
The Ascended Ancients remained in hiding, reminded of one of the other reasons they practiced strict non-interference: interfering like the Ori had attracted attention. For out of the Dark Eons, the Haunter of the Dark hungered.
-- THE END --