trans_9 | Sobek the Immortal: Bringing a God to His Knees [Closed]

Entry tags:

Sobek the Immortal: Bringing a God to His Knees [Closed]

Who: Daniel Jackson, Vala Mal Doran, Eva, The Master, Eleventh Doctor, Jamie McCrimmon
Where: Kalimba (planet side)
Summary: A small crew goes on an archaeological expedition to a jungle planet, where System Lord was imprisoned. Taking Daniel as his host, he captures the crew and tortures them, while rebuilding his fleet.
Warnings: Violence, torture, gore

((Part One and Part Two here))

As time drew on, there was no sign of Stacy, rescue parties or of a single landing pods. The typhoon season approached closer with each day, rain and wind spattering the leaves on some days, varying between intense heat and humidity on other days. The megafauna in the jungles had grown more active too. The earth rumbled under their feet as they starting their migration amidst hooting calls and croaks. Throughout the varying weather, one thing remained constant. The hive of activity around the three step pyramids never ceased, slaves either taking shifts or in the most fanatical cases, working themselves near to death or to death. It was like this all across Kalimba. The call had gone out with the instructions for the slaves: work was to begin on restoring the Crocodile God's fleets underneath each step pyramid all across the planet. They were his Chosen, his Children, and he would ensure they were rewarded for their faith.

The complex swarmed with slaves and guards moving weapons and parts. Sobek and his personal guards were also in and out more often as the fleet began to take shape, often traveling to other sites to check on progress. Stones fell away from each ship as far as the eye could see. More and more of each ha'tak was revealed, while lines of human bodies went inside to work on the interiors. If the number of step pyramids that towered through the jungle were any indication, his fleet would be massive.

((same as Part 2: run your own posts with each other, more private threads with Sobek are available at the start. Part 3 does not have to immediately include end-plot stuff. If you want more CR amongst each other or your character being messed with by Sobek, please do!))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

To say Eva is terrified is an understatement. She's so scared she's beyond pain. She's more scared than she was when Marco went away on his final mission against the Yeerks, and isn't that a horrible thought. More afraid for her own freedom than the life of her child. Pathetic.

She doesn't struggle against the guards, knowing that if there are any chances to escape she needs to be alert to take them. She can't waste her energy on futile attempts.

The only expression on her face is the flit of her eyes back and forth, looking for an alternative. Other than that she is still and flat, walking with some mimicry of calmness towards the cistern.

The slaves had done their finest job cleaning the sarcophagus. It didn't look at all like it had sat in a husk of a ship for thousands of years, nor did it look like the elements had touched it. It glistened in the light of the braziers, light curling and sliding on the golden curves. The gold slithered down each line of hieroglyph proclaiming the System Lord's hand in the creation of the universe, then down to his achievements and victories, a growing list of the System Lords he'd killed. Any museum would have given up half their collection for this find. The sarcophagus lay open, humming, beckoning to Eva, an open grave in need of an occupant to make it whole. Her wounds would be healed, the gold promised, all of them, old and new, perfection lay within, and unlike some of the servants fussing around the room, offered to her by the Crocodile God despite her resistance. Life. Never-ending. Purity.

Eva was taken in front of the sarcophagus but not pushed into it, but to the ground on her knees. The cistern from before was brought to the front. The air felt hot with the gaze of some of the servants, their rage and envy suffocating in the small room.

One of the men lifted the lid of the cistern. He started to reach inside for the Eater of Hearts. The Jaffa who had opened the sarcophagus wouldn't have it. A flash of movement, a snake striking, and the slave found their wrist trapped, bones grinding together before he could so much as touch the liquid inside, much less Sobek's favored servant. The Jaffa said something under his breath to the man. The voice was guttural and harsh from within the helm, menace dripping off every word. With a sharp push, the Jaffa sent the man stumbling away. Eva would not have to understand Goa'uld to get the message.

Do not touch. This slave was not worthy.

The Jaffa put aside the staff weapon and offered both hands to the cistern. He waited. Ammit took her time, winding up his arm and coiling around like so much jewelry. She seemed to sense the presence of her gift immediately, for it took no time at all for the Goa'uld to turn and pin its eyes on Eva.

The Jaffa turned and approached Eva. The jaffa behind her bowed their heads in respect as Ammit was brought closer.

It's so typical, for her to feel her body reacting without any volition from her mind. She's sweating. Her breathing is ragged. Her mouth is dry. All these stupid little things she has no control over. Not that it'll matter in thirty seconds.

"Aren't you going to put me in there first?" she asks. Her voice sounds foreign, far away, hoarse and textured in strange ways. "Wouldn't do for a god to sit in a half-blind host."

It's desperate. Pathetic, even. What is she supposed to do?

Tears. More uncontrollable stupid human reactions to things that can't be changed. More unwilling actions.

Not one of them understood English. Ammit came closer, watching her with the same laser-focused intent of a wolf.

One of the slaves dared to come closer to her when Eva's voice cracked, eyes on her tears. It was one of the worshipers who had helped carry in the cistern days ago. Tentatively, eyes darting to the Jaffa around them, she reached out and touched Eva's face. Her skin was rough, calloused everywhere, but the touch itself was feather light. Her eyes kept going back to the guards.

The Jaffa allowed this one human comfort. She touched Eva's tears next, fingers brushing through the tracks. Wiped them away, and saying something in Goa'uld, cupped her cheek. Foreign words, but they sounded completely different coming from her mouth. Comforting. Deep, but strong. Encouragement, it would be okay, she was lucky, she was blessed.

Several of the slaves came closer to Eva. They crowded her. The press of bodies was not quite claustrophobic, but comfortable still, but hovered close to getting too much. Several of them touched her hair, her shoulders, soft pats here and there, which the Jaffa behind allowed as well.

The first woman had gotten very close in the press of bodies. It was at that moment that a knife, made of an animal's fang, materialized in first woman's hand. Her mouth twisted, and the blade flashed towards Eva.

Eva welcomes the blade. Death would be much preferable to infestation. Death is finite and warm and peaceful, even if you get there by violent means. Death is safe. She can't be hurt anymore in death. And Marco...Marco has already mourned her. The desperation to stay free, even dead, is so much stronger than any maternal instinct she might be nurturing.

If truth be told, Eva would have welcomed death for a while now.

Unfortunately, death does not welcome her. The knife miraculously misses her jugular and instead just wounds her. If she bleeds out from this, it'll be slow and painful, rather than the fifteen seconds it might take to go from fine to unconscious from having her throat slit.

The Jaffa behind Eva cried out, her voice something angry and full, the helmet echoing the sound and transforming it into something like an alien bellow, and grabbing for her shoulder, tried to pull Eva away to safety, Her hand slipped. Then the crowd was on them, clashing with the guards and Eva.

Everything happened at once. The Jaffa burst into action, trying to stop the slaves, while most of the slaves turned their attention on Eva, single-minded in their determination to kill her and take their place. A few of the worshipers scattered, fleeing before the Jaffa could stop them, taken by surprise by their fellow slaves.

The rest turned on the Jaffa. Some were armed such as the first woman, others using nothing but their hands, trying to kill this woman, tear this one who dared gain their God's favor over any of them to shreds, all before the guards could regain order. They didn't try to take the Jaffa down, but to push past them, coming after Eva, murder, jealousy and hatred giving them the strength to swarm and wiggle past the Jaffa. Several went down, killed instantly by blows to the heads from swung staff weapons.

Edited 2012-02-04 06:12 (UTC)

Total chaos ensues, and just like that, Eva realizes she doesn't want to die. Instead, she sees her opportunity - she lurches into the arms of her would-be killers and uses her own forward motion in combination with her tugging to pull herself away from the distracted guard. She rolls into them, thrashing her legs until she finds herself on hands and knees. She feels one man rip a hunk of her hair out and finds herself nearly blinded in her good eye by blood streaming from her scalp. Another woman stomps on her hand, leaving it numbed and paralyzed.

But she has to push forward. She won't get another chance. And she can't allow herself to dissociate herself to avoid the pain; that would let her lose focus. She can't. She shoves another woman roughly off her and grabs a knife a felled slave has dropped. It comes up and rips through a third woman's throat, and then another man's eyes. Numbers may make the difference in a brawl, but only if the numbers are concentrated against you - and while the slaves certainly want to kill Eva very much, they're partially distracted by the guards trying to subdue them.

Eva has no compunctions about using their confusion as an opportunity to go in for the kill. She slashes at faces, necks, fingers, the backs of knees, and when her stabbing arm is restrained she whips around and bites a man's ear off. There is no beauty to her style of combat - there never has been, and even if she once believed in grace on the battlefield, it would be misplaced in this awful frenzy, with red foam dripping from her mouth and blood gushing from the wound on her neck. She fights like a caged beast to get away from the center of the struggle and towards her prize.

The Jaffa holding Ammit doubles over as a slave stabbed him through the gut with a shank. Eva lunges forward and rips the Goa'uld from his hand before he gets a chance to catch his bearings. She grips Ammit in her hand and stares down at the thing like a thief holding a beloved jewel, a predatory cat with a mouse, a miser with their coins. The creature that appeared a python before is nothing but a worm in her hands.

She shrieks when she realizes someone's put a blade through her lower back, somewhere in the vicinity of her kidneys. She doesn't have time to think, only to act. And there are probably more dignified ways to go about killing your foe, but she can't think of any at the moment.

She shoves Ammit's head into her mouth and bites down as another worshipper grabs her by the ear and slams her head against the ground. In the ensuing dizziness she can only focus on one goal: swallow. She doesn't even know if she manages it before she's beaten down again, but she doesn't have time to think any more. She relinquishes herself to instinct and curls up into a fetal position as the battle about her body continues.

The chaos continued around her, time folding on on itself to pure violence. A few Jaffa lay moaning on the ground or completely still.

Until the Crocodile God returned. He'd been off inspecting the progress on the neighboring ha'tak when several of the slaves, the ones who'd escaped, who hadn't wanted to kill Eva, came running. Now the God stood tall, resplendent and terribly still in the doorway, a war demon greater than all of them surveying the petty creatures at his feet.

The room ground to a halt. The Jaffa regained control in the meantime, beating the fanatics to the ground. Only a few had survived the scuffle, some killed by Eva and the Jaffa, others by their peers in the wild bid to kill the Gods chosen.No one moved.

The God's blue eyes slid from one body to the next. He took in the dead on the ground. The blood coating the floor for once did nothing to stir his hunger, instead fueling the cold fury building within. Eva was on the floor, horrendously injured. He could smell death looming over her from across the room, the air sweetened with the scent. The fallen body of his once most faithful servant lay in the chaos of bodies, the God's eyes taking in the missing head, and then the fact that it was nowhere to be seen.

Sobek stepped into the room, silent and calm, towards Eva. The worshipers that remained alive, prostrated on the ground, peeked up as he brushed by them. The System Lord reached out as he passed and casually snapped their necks. It was nothing, a savage twist of each hand, and they were dropped like so much refuse as the God walked on.

He looked down at Eva and the corpse of Ammit.

Edited 2012-02-04 07:41 (UTC)

Brain damage. Gutted from the back. Broken hip, broken hand, a chunk of her shoulder ripped open by hands that left bloody finger-shaped dents in her skin. Scalp torn up. Bleeding out from the neck.

It would be a lie to say it doesn't hurt.

Before she lost motor control entirely Eva managed to shove Ammit's body from her hands, and the scuffle of trampling feet kicked it several feet away from her. A crime free of evidence, as long as Sobek can't smell it on her breath. If she even has breath by the time he arrives.

It's like swimming. She feels weightless, almost, weightless and yet every muscle is knotted up in agony, as if her skeleton is some star with its own field of gravity and every bit of her body is pulling itself closer to it.

She's dying. She can feel her heart slushing around inside, laborious and feeble. With her eye closed she can see in vivid detail the anatomy of her pain like lightning superimposed on a cloudy red sky. She wants to conjure up her family's face as her last image and all she can manage is this landscape of her injuries. A thunderbolt up her spine, spiderwebs of light down her legs.

She opens her eye again and the mist remains, bloody and thick. Images dip in and out of her view. She would ask God to keep her son safe if her mind could articulate the emotion.

She's conscious just until she sees Sobek's feet at the doorway and then she's off in this red fog.

They would pay. The rage for an instant went to their head. Daniel could see it playing out, wished for the carnage like it was his own. Each of the slaves who remained in this room brought suffering to themselves. The dead at his feet didn't deserve resurrection but death was no release for them. Their punishment would continue, until Sobek had systemically wiped each one of their family line out from his planet. But first...

The God bent, fingers wrapping around Eva's neck. The Jaffa closest to him stepped forward to pick her up, but seeing their Lord's face, hastily jerked backwards.

It was frighteningly easy to lift the human woman from the ground with one arm. Both Sobek and Daniel could feel the pulse weakening under her skin. Ammit would have healed her earlier injuries. She could have healed them even still, but now she was dead. There was no rush. He would see if the sarcophagus still functioned. If not, he would move on. He had other plans.

The Crocodile God dragged her dying body to the sarcophagus and unceremoniously threw her inside the vibrant white interior. The top slid closed, a twisted morning glory at sunset.

Edited 2012-02-04 08:03 (UTC)

Eva's unconscious for a while, and then wakes up screaming. It's a keening sound that feels like it's wrenching itself from the marrow of her bones. Blinding pain. Like every organ's been removed from her body and replaced with acid. She thrashes around in the sarcophagus, all cages in, fingernails twisting backwards as she drags them on the ceiling and then straightening again as the dark magic of the Goa'uld heals her.

She's coming back together. She's coming back together and it's agony. If healing is supposed to be one of the kind arts then this is graffiti, and not the poetic kind. It's worse than anything the Yeerks ever did to her.

She can feel her skin sewing itself back together. Blood schlupping back up into the frayed edges of veins that are rebraiding themselves. Her bones crashing into each other like fissures in the earth. Her organs like tectonic plates. Her brain is knitting itself back together. She can feel it inside her head like a thousand migraines seizing up in tandem.

And after hours that seem like years, it's over. She lies in the sarcophagus, spent, exhausted simply to have survived something when she could not have possibly perished. She breathes hard and closes her eyes and waits.

The guards had never seen a sarcophagus actually work. Not in their life-time, nor had their mothers and fathers before them. The screaming was taken in stride. This must be the magic of their God.

Sobek's reaction was minute, not even noticeable to the Jaffa, but it was there. His shoulders went rigid with surprise. This was not how it was supposed to function: the being that went in, went in, the process painless and pure, and then the being that lay within the sarcophagus emerged from the depths, for the better, whole. He had been inside this device countless times. So had his brothers and sisters, and those Gods before them. He searched Daniel's mind, and found that his host had been in one too once before. The experience was the same. This wasn't right. Both their thoughts. Daniel thought it sounded like she was conscious for the entire process and the thought of it was just another level of horror the Goa'uld had found.

The surprise moved on. Once he'd gotten past it, Sobek listened to the screaming without making any move towards the device, much less turning it off. The sarcophagus worked after thousands of years. That was all that mattered. He would not step inside it until it was fully restored.

He waited. The day drew on and the Jaffa finally showed their impatience, shifting their weight from one foot to another. The sarcophagus droned and with a rumble of stone, the doors at last peeled outwards. Eva was whole again. The first thing she would see was the System Lord standing over the device, some of the slave's blood splattered on him. The God staring down at her, anger still slowly burning through Daniel's eyes.

Edited 2012-02-05 07:40 (UTC)

For a moment she's so delirious with the receding pain that she thinks she's looking at Daniel, and she wants to reach forward and touch his face. Here he hovers before her, the unbroken and decent, and in her imagination he hasn't gone through any of the terrors she's subjected him to in the past week. She reaches up. It's almost the face of an angel. And then she sees the anger in his eyes, anger too sadistic and self-righteous to ever be Daniel's, and she drops her hand back to her chest.

Stupid. She should have seen the blood on him. She should have. Funny how she doesn't feel even a single drop of sympathy in her blood for the slavish devotees of the Crocodile God, even as they unwittingly saved her from a fate worse than death. They deserved it, she thinks. They deserved worse. Death is too merciful.

"Sobek." Her voice is a wheeze, healthy but tired. Strange, to see with two eyes instead of one. She was getting a little bit used to the wonky depth perception she's had for the last week.

Then she holds up a middle finger for him and smirks. "Saca pica*, boo boo."

*Neener neener.

It took Sobek a second to understand what the gesture even meant at all, if only because Daniel burst out a sick laugh in their head, outraged glee and inappropriate, at Eva's cheek, and a second longer because she'd spoken in Spanish. The message became clear. Daniel's amusement shuddered into fear again. Eva didn't know what she was doing, and it wasn't like she could push Sobek into killing her. Death had no meaning here.

Sobek smiled viciously, all teeth and no humor.

The God reached out, the same startling speed that he'd used to snap the fanatics' necks, and caught her wrist. Unconcerned if he broke freshly healed bone, dragged her easily out of the sarcophagus as if she weighed nothing and dumped her to the ground amongst the corpses. The blood was fresh and heavy on the ground, splashed and stained her purified skin. Eva found herself against those that he'd killed. He forced her face to the blood.

"Explain what happened here, slave. Where is Ammit?" Sobek spat out.

By contrast, Eva feels as if she knows exactly what she's doing. She just doesn't care. What does Sobek have on her anymore? Pain? She's lived through pain, at his hand and at others. She is pain. She's a cacophony of every old memory he dredged up through his existence, of trauma that never quiets down, a katzenjammer wail of abuse after abuse after abuse caged up inside a human's living skin. Let him torture her again. Let him kill her and raise her from the dead. And let her scream herself hoarse each time. None of it matters.

Eva has never truly mattered. Why should she start now?

The blood doesn't move her. It's the blood of slaves. It might as well be the blood of dogs, except that Eva actually has it in her to feel empathy for animals but not for these sick devotees to a false idol. Some of them are dead at Sobek's hand; some of them died at hers. She turns her head and sees the knife she used, or one similar to it - it's buried to the hilt in a corpse's stomach. It teases a smile from her lips.

How different are she and Sobek after all? This is what they made of her, a tool. Tools are nothing but weapons in calmer hands. And while she's a weapon at the hands of her rage and her sorrow, he's just a weapon at the hands of his own arrogance and pitilessness.

"She's on a dinner date." Eva laughs at her own wit and rubs her newly-broken wrist.

Sobek once again found himself turning to Daniel, tried to force the knowledge out of his vessel, but found only the definitions and memories of dinner dates, nothing that actually had any meaning here. Neither of them knew what she was talking about. Daniel couldn't figure out what she was doing. She was insane. A frigid shiver went through him. Daniel couldn't look away. Had she snapped? Finally snapped?

What happened here was clear to him. A power struggle, the slaves actually through to fight their way to his favor, against his wishes. Everything but Ammit. Had she been killed by the unfaithful in the struggle? Had Eva killed her? Ammit had served as his right hand for as long as he could remember, she could not die in this manner. But she was dead. The guards had not come up with the rest of her. There was no bringing her back.

Eva wasn't answering now. Insolence. That could change. She wasn't the first human to think she could defy him. He'd encountered enough in the other System Lord's planets, right before he absorbed those that wanted to survive into his populations.

Sobek's eyes gleamed yellow with displeasure, but it was Daniel's voice that came out, accusing and harsh. "You care nothing for yourself and you don't even deserve that much. What about the others? You don't care about them either?"

His generosity was limited. Even to the human responsible for his return.

It's like the strings of a puppet being cut. Eva's shoulders slump. Her muscles go slack. She may not matter, but the others do. And her pride and stubbornness aren't worth hurting any of them over. Well, maybe John. But not the others. Not Jamie or Vala, and certainly not the Doctor.

For a moment she stares out at the bodies in front of her and it strikes her how war takes up such a tiny percentage of her life, and yet it's consumed her, body and soul. She, the weapon, the face of an empire, the lady of war. There's a piece of a man's ear in her teeth still.

Maybe if it hadn't been Daniel's voice she could have ignored it. But it was Daniel, somewhere deep in there, a victim of her stupidity and carelessness. And Sobek's using his voice to threaten the same fate for the others. She isn't worth the air she breathes, much less suffering on the backs of others.

Then she looks back at Sobek, relenting and yet still defiant.

"Ammit's dead and gone, Sobek. Torturing the others won't change that fact. And torturing me, well, I'm all but getting off on it." She licks her lips as if emphasizing that last point, or driving home what must have become Daniel's worst suspicions. "Just be satisfied with the answer that your worshippers don't respect your decrees, your guards are incompetent, and I deeply, truly, utterly and sincerely hate every centimeter of your slimy little body."

Reasonable, Daniel thought. Too reasonable after what Eva had been like seconds ago. Too reasonable in the face of what just happened and too reasonable to tell a snake convinced it was a god. Sobek read it another way, the first choice his kind would: it was her way of telling him that she couldn't be swayed by the torture or the torture of the others, that she didn't care about herself. She didn't care.

Sobek seethed. The human didn't know. Nothing useful, only the scope of her vision of these events. Of course her view of the world was limited, she was only human caught within a pathetic, human attempt at an assassination. As physically clumsy and limited in the senses as they all were, he couldn't expect too much of her. Ammit had been lost in the struggle. Useless. Dead weight. Only good as another limb to lop off if the others resisted. Maybe fed to the jungle's beasts when he was ready to move on. Without Ammit, he had no use for this woman. In the end, she played her part. He owed her nothing more.

He got to his feet, and just like that dismissed her. The God had given her the chance for glory and she denied herself that. The guards step up and pull Eva to her feet.

"You will face the rot of time, Tau'ri. You will beg for the divinity you denied yourself and it will not be granted to you again."

Eva doesn't respond to Sobek's threat, at least not at first. She's quiet as she's led away, walking with significantly more ease even with the guards holding her arms. Funny, the things you don't miss about a broken collar bone.

"He talks quite a lot of nonsense," she says when she gets back to her cell, to no amused response from the guards. Their backs are turned - whether they just can't hear her or don't care about her commentary is irrelevant anyway.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sobek the Immortal: Bringing a God to His Knees [Closed]

Re: EVA

Re: EVA

Re: EVA

Re: EVA

Re: EVA

Re: EVA

Re: EVA

Re: EVA

Re: EVA

Re: EVA

Re: EVA

Re: EVA

Re: EVA

With permission

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

/wrap