Chapter 1
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Gringotts Bank, Diagon Alley, London
July 31st 1972
As his grandfather rummaged through a file cabinet, Regulus wanded the massive vault that stored some of the treasures the House of Black had gathered over the millenia it had been an extant House of Magic.
For all of the Black scions young age, he had turned eleven just today and once grandfather was done they would be meeting up with the family to celebrate, he was careful to keep his curiosity in check. While the vault didn't hold the families truly priceless treasures, never trust a goblin with anything you can't afford to lose after all, it did hold some of the lesser curiosities too dangerous to display in the family homes - either because of their magic or, more often, because of the political fax pau of displaying them where others might see.
The boy was distracted examining a suit of black armor, a war golem created by Morgana Black to help her son in that unpleasantness over the throne of Camelot. It was apparently immune to magic with a blade that would absorb the souls of whomever it killed, and the controlling intelligence of the golem would gain integrate the skills of those killed.
The shouted exclamation of his grandfather caused young Regulus to start, stumbling backwards. His head struck an ornate black crown whose placard listed it as an unknown soul magic based curiosity picked up in China during the Boxer Rebellion.
The person who regained his feet moments later was no longer just Regulus Arcturus Black, scion of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, eleven year old wizard about to start his first year at Hogwarts and destined to die defiant before he turned nineteen. No, wizards blood from the line of Semerkhet had touched his crown and a wizards head had contacted it. Soul magic of the most esoteric defied the heavens and restored memories stripped by the cycle of rebirth. A life once lived was remembered.
Eighty years of life crashed into the consciousness of a child and the child's will was found wanting.
'I croaked huh? Not surprising, I wonder what actually did me in. At least I don't remember it, just going to sleep last night. But waking up as Regulus Black? In Harry Potter? This is one fucked up afterlife. Still, may as well take advantage.'
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Hogwarts
Friday, September 1st 1972
"SLYTHERIN" exclaimed the Sorting Hat bare seconds after it had touched my head, the families protections concealing from it everything he held to be secret (everything, he despised the idea of anyone reading my mind) and thus making the Hat's decision easy.
The next morning would find Regulus pacing on the Seventh Floor until the door to Hogwarts greatest secret appeared.
He walked in and in an awed whisper said "The Room of Requirement" as he took in the nice summer meadow with a comfy chair incongruously sitting on the ground next to a table with a book on it. He made his way to the chair and the book that he had required - one containing the details on this room of wonders, its limitations, its capabilities, and its history.
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Hogwarts Express
Saturday, June 9th 1973
It had been a productive year. He had excelled in all his classes, an adult mind and work ethic found the required studying trivial and the Room had proven an exceptional study aid, and aced his exams. Still, that was only the barest fraction of what he had studied. Occlumency had been his first subject of interest - a necessity as the family magics wouldn't protect his secrets from his brother, father, or grandfather if they should try and read his mind - and the art had proven rather easy. A few candles made from a potion that the Room had provided was enough to provide a perfectly clear mind.
That empty mind allowed one to see their own magic and command it free of emotion or distraction. Using it to call up and conceal memories was merely a matter of willing it. It would not resist the focused efforts of a master legilimens but it would be more than enough to alert one to the intrusion.
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Room of Requirement, Hogwarts
October 31st 1978
The ritual circle, the product of years of study and no few resources beyond the ken of most wizards, came to life as Regulus poured in his power. The soul fragment and memories of Tom Marvolo Riddle where ripped from a destroyed Diadem of Ravenclaw, shorn of connections and taint to the rest of the soul, and then added to Regulus's own soul. In one fell swoop he had gained the knowledge that made Voldemort the threat he was; and the ability to command snakes.
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Hogwarts
June 1978
Term ended in two days and the Marauders were all off playing a pick up Quidditch game. Polyjuice as James Potter, a Notice Me Not, and a Disillusionment got me into his chest without any of the Gryffindors in their common room noticing anything. A Cloak was stolen, replaced by a far more common one that was outwardly identical and woven with enchantments to cause Potter to think it his families cloak.
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Tonks Residence, Scotland
November 3rd 1981
"It's been too long cousin." mused Regulus as he sat beside Andromeda, watching Nymphadora play in the snow outside.
"Why are you here Regulus? The family disowned me if you recall, something about marrying a muggle instead of Lestrange." the elder witch snarked back, bitterness evident in her tone.
"Because our parents generation are a collection of fools whose very existence is an insult to the House of Black. Grandfather Arcturus has been too busy dealing with the family holdings overseas and my father...well the nicest thing you can say about him is that he is my mothers puppet. Her? A harpy without redeeming features, and one the world would be better off without.
"It was her who saw the family supporting the Dark Lord when we could have stayed neutral without issue. He put a slave brand, one bound to the very soul, onto a daughter of House Black and she still tried to push me into his service!" Regulus said, rage and disgust plain for her to hear.
"How did you avoid it?"
"A fidelius protected vacation home overseas. That story about a grand tour of the world after I graduated? Her excuse to save face. I came back when grandfather formally disinherited Sirius yesterday over his betrayal of the Potters." he explained.
"Interesting, but none of that explains why you are here bothering me." Andromeda said, redirecting the conversation to what she truly cared about.
"Because I need an heir and I refuse to have it be Draco Malfoy of all people. If you would allow it, I would formally adopt Nymphadora as my daughter and she would become Heiress Presumptive of the House of Black with all the rights that position entails." said Regulus.
That startled Andromeda into exclaiming, "A half blood daughter of a disowned daughter adopted into the main line and named heir for the House of Black?! No one would accept it!"
"Grandfather has already approved. You can't be officially returned to the family, the contract with House Lestrange would interfere with that, but legally speaking your daughter is simply another witch and magically speaking she has the blood needed to be accepted by the family magics."
He would leave the Tonks residence two hours later with their agreement and thus access to a metamorphmagus who shared his blood.
Two months later he would down a modified Everlasting Elixir Polyjuice with Nymphadora's blood mixed it and then, over the next seven months, would conduct a series of blood magic rituals to first make that acquired ability truly his own and then harness, enhance, and control it.
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Little Hangleton
June 6th 1982
It was a nice summer evening and not a soul noticed when someone hissed like a snake, walked through the deactivated protections on a falling down shack, carefully moved a cursed ring into a container, and left.
Ten minutes later, fiendfyre would consume a soul fragment and purify the Resurrection Stone of the curses that successive generations of the Gaunt line had tried to place upon it.
From the most impressive of dead wizards would Regulus continue his quest for knowledge.
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Black Manse, Black Island, Mediterranean Sea
August 17th 1991
Regulus sat on the porch off the master suite of the villa his predecessors had called home since Semerkhet had been overthrown by the heir of the Pharaoh he usurped and fled for his life in 2918 BC. With his grandfather's passing the day before, he had become Black of Black and gain full access to the secret records of a lineage shrouded in myths and legends for millenia.
Semerkhet, and later Imhotep, of Egypt. Hades of Olympus. Hel of Asgard. Morgana Le Fay and Mordred of Camelot. They were only a small handful, if standouts of historic proportions, of the witches and wizards who had called the House of Black their own over the ages. Black Magic, Black Arts, Blackmail; indeed the very association between the color Black and "evil" could be traced to the House he now ruled.
And in a few weeks he would begin another year teaching History of Magic at Hogwarts, his students (and most of his fellow teachers) blissfully unaware of just what it meant to be Black of Black.
'Meh, not my problem. A few hints in the right ears, and bribes in the right pockets, and I can discover that Sirius never had a trial. I'm Black of Black now, so he can't regain the title. Besides, it gives a good in with Dumbledores crowd and the Boy Who Lived. And lets me toss egg on the Ministry, that's always fun.'
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Hogwarts Headmasters Quarters
August 30th 1997
Regulus fingered the Wand he had claimed via aerosolized basilisk venom. The pictures and ghosts had seen young Draco throw the potions vial down the steps as Dumbledore walked bye, and seen him flee before the alarm could be raised. The boy himself had the memories of planning the act and carrying it out to win Voldemort's favor, that he had been Imperiused and most of the planning wasn't his own was no matter. He had gained the Elder Wands allegiance and with it mastery of all three of the Hallows.
That it had also freed up the position of Headmaster was just a nice bonus.
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Diagon Alley
July 31st 2172
Two hundred years to the day since he had arrived in this reality, Regulus Arcturus Black would die; assassinated by a null magic bullet containing a nanogram of conjured antimatter set to lose containment on contact with his blood and enchanted against divinations to bypass his precognition. His assassin would never be identified, even as the wizarding world mourned the loss of one of the greats. Unknown to all, that was not the end of his story.
Regulus was one of the most accomplished soul magic masters of all time and knew how to make a Horcrux before he turned fifteen. He had rejected that path towards immortality for it would bind his soul forever more to this reality and, in his judgement, that would be boring. Instead, he had chosen another path.
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Heliophos
Egypt
Year 4093 of the Second Age of Ra
A boy was born, Marius his parents would anoint him. He was born to scribes in the employ of a minor merchant house that in turn owed fealty to one of the lesser gods, Lilith, of Ra's court.
'Well it worked, that's always good. The lack of magic is an issue though, if I have to resort to blood magic to get enough energy to kickstart my rituals then this could take a long while.'
When his eyes were developed enough to see clearly three months later, he would see a Jaffa with armor and staff for the first time.
'Stargate? Now isn't that interesting.'
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Heliophos
Egypt
Year 4108 of the Second Age of Ra
Marius, just recently turned fifteen, stood over the corpse of Telath. The Jaffa had been nice enough to the boy as he patrolled the streets of Ra's capital on Earth but that did nothing to change the fact that he was scheduled for the replacement of his Primta in a little over two weeks. Speaking of which...
The boy reached down under the Jaffa's armor and into its stomach pouch, carefully grabbing the writhing Goa'uld.
Once he had the parasite in hand, three shots from Telath's zat'nik'tal had removed the evidence of the crime. Then, with a slight grimace of distaste, Marius brought the recently matured symbiote to his mouth and released it.
The Goa'uld did what its kind always did when presented to a host, it burrowed into the back of the neck, melded with the medulla oblongata, analyzed the hosts DNA, created and released a flood of tailored retroviruses and stimulants, started sending specialized neural tissue laced with Naquadah into the brain to act as a neural interface, and replaced the rest of the bodies nervous system with similar tissue. All told it took almost a minute to complete the process, and then the Goa'uld reached out to its hosts mind to make its memories the goa'ulds own and repurposes the host brain into another processor.
That is when the goa'uld that had yet to gain a name found itself outmatched. Marius no longer had access to the world's magic like he had grown used to as Regulus and the many rituals he had done over those two centuries of life and bound to his soul remained dormant without the needed magic to jump start them, but his seat of consciousness was no longer his physical, meat, body. His soul was were his mind resided and the goa'uld had willingly made itself a part of his body. His soul lashed out at the newborn goa'uld and crushed its still young soul with pitiful ease, taking advantage of the opportunity to feed its soul energy to one of his dormant rituals.
His bones changed, becoming as strong and light as they had been since he removed his bones, alchemically bonded them to dragon bones, created a Skele-Grow potion that would grow the modified bones, and then regrown his whole skeleton bone by bone. An immediately useful ritual, no doubt, but its true benefit was the bone marrow at those bones cores. Over time his blood would be replaced with the alchemical concoction created from dragons blood, his own blood, basilisk venom, and phoenix tears. That blood would, in turn, slowly rebuild his body over a period of seven years and eventually it would become magical enough to jumpstart the rest of his rituals.
That was an issue for the future though, his eyes flashed gold and he smiled as he started towards Ra's palace.
When the Jaffa guarding the gates tried to stop him, recognizing him and that he wasn't authorized to enter, the golden eyes had them bowing instead.
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Antechamber of Ra's Throne Room
Heliophos
Egypt
Year 4108 of the Second Age of Ra
Ra's host was young, perhaps 19, Marius thought as the Supreme System Lord entered the room. Marius flashed his eyes gold and bowed his head.
"Your name?" Ra demanded.
"Revan, my lord." Marius said, supplying what he had decided to make his goa'uld name.
"I've never heard of you." he said, the unstated question plain in his tone.
"I'm a spawn of Isis, my lord. My Jaffa host died barely an hour ago in the city, I took the boy who discovered him as host, used the Jaffa's zat'nik'tel to remove the body, and came to you." Marius answered.
"You should have brought the body for resurrection so that the fool could be questioned."
"My apologies, I thought it better to keep the Jaffa's death concealed from the slaves."
Ra waved a hand dismissively, "What's done is done. I will have one of the servants bring you clothes appropriate to your station and then introduce you to court." left unsaid, but plain to his newly acquired goa'uld memories, was that he would be a minor hanger on and gopher for the court at large. Whatever odd jobs any of the important goa'uld had that needed to be done by a goa'uld but didn't need to be secret from their fellows would be sent his way until he built a power base of my own or impressed someone.
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Year 4120 of the Second Age of Ra
Twelve years as a freelancer of Ra's court came to an end when Marius, Revan to the goa'uld, simply sent Marduk's jaffa through the gate first with the Naquadah that he had been sent to pickup and didn't follow them. When the gate closed, he dialed another address and stepped through. His body shifted; now 6'6" in height with black hair, amethyst eyes, and the build of an olympic gymnast. He had his freedom, but it would be a long few thousand years before he could afford to start making waves.
Another gate address punched in, another wormhole transit, and then he pumped in the symbols of his first destination.
The SGC called it P9G-844, better known as the secret home of the Sodan. Marius didn't have to wait long, or wander very far in the forest, before the seven seconds of precognition that he had gained from the life of Sybill Trelawney so long ago warned him of the plasma bolt that would be fired at his back. A casual step to the right had it missing by almost two whole inches. With an effort of will, he more actively exerted the power and tried taunt after taunt in myriad possible futures before finding one that would cause the Sodan to charge him.
"You shoot like a tau'ri child, shol'va. Have the Sodan truly fallen so far since you fled Ishkur's service that you qualify as one of their warriors?" he taunted. Two seconds later his hand lashed out, deactivating the cloaking device. His right foot snapped forward and shattered the Sodan's left leg, two punches and another kick saw the rest of the jaffa's limbs similarly disabled.
Marius followed the Jaffa to the ground, making eye contact with his victim and ripping what information he needed from his mind. In a matter of moments he was done.
The cloaking bracer went on his own arm and was activated with an exertion of his will through its included neural interface. Unlike most cloaking devices, the Ancient based ones of the Sodan moved the user ever so slightly out of phase with reality and allowed users to see one another.
A Goa'uld already has muscles more than twice as strong as a Jaffa (and approximately five times as strong as a normal human), and in Marius that was multiplied ten fold thanks to the Re'em's blood based ritual he had done more than a lifetime ago. With that strength, a nervous system operating at the speed of light, precognition, unbreakable bones, and a body that would actively and constantly shift its protean form to best serve its purpose moment by moment the slaughter was no contest at all.
In moments the other five members of the six strong patrol joined their brother in death and Marius was making his way to the obelisk that would take him to the Sodan village.
Before night fell on the world, the Sodan were exterminated and Marius had learned a great many things of value; chief among them was fluency in written Ancient and knowledge of the Ancient device that he was now standing before.
'Amazing what things can be found. An Alteran matter constructor secreted away and containing plans for these babies.'
When he put his head in the device, it asked for a password like he had seen in the Sodan chieftains memories. Instead of offering the code the Sodan knew, he instead tapped his precognition to try every possible combination. Death ended most of those timelines, it being a consequence of supplying the wrong password. Most of those timelines, not all of them.
One of those passwords gave him access to an Alteran CAD program, if one lacking in any blueprints save for the Sodan cloak. Still, he spent hours learning a great deal about the exact properties of all the myriad elements of the universe - far more than even his goa'uld memories had told him existed. When he exhausted that knowledge base, he opened up the cloaking blueprint and quietly exalted.
Whichever Ancient had given the Sodan these plans had intentionally crippled them. These weren't cloaks, they were standard issue Alteran infiltration pendants; designed for Alteran explores to safely and discreetly infiltrate places they wanted to study. They did indeed provide a cloaking effect but that was the only effect whose activation wasn't locked behind the ATA gene, and even then the ability to modify the optional features of the cloak was locked down.
Phase shifting, a personal shield, subspace sensors and communications, a far superior variant of the goa'uld healing device that would constantly keep the user in peak health, note taking programs, interfacing with both Stargates and Ring Transporters using Alteran protocols; all of it able to be controlled by neural interface and HUD.
'These have to be the ultimate basis for the kara kesh, although the goa'uld hand device is a pale shadow of this baby. Daddy likes.'
With that last he used some of the Sodan's stockpiled Naquadah as feedstock to create three of the devices. One was in the form of a fairly ornate pendant, another was a simple crystal, and the third was in the shape of a normal goa'uld hand device - done in black and green as opposed to gold and ruby - with several additional features added in thanks to his goa'uld genetic memories; the standard kara kesh features, the ability to fire intar shots, and a za'tarc finger laser. Both devices would require a randomly generated password be supplied every time a user tried to bond with them - Marius would be able to use his precognition to find the correct password while anyone without a similar gift would find themselves vaporized.
He would spend several more hours delving the goa'uld genetic memory and designing his best approximation of Tony Stark's Bleeding Edge armor. Alas it was a pale shadow of that most badass of designs, but the Trinium-Carbon-Naquadah nanites could still expand from the chest piece to cover the entire body in armor that was bulletproof (and strongly plasma resistant) and could adjust how it absorbed and reflected EM radiation.
Once in his new armor, Marius gathered up the Sodan bodies, zatted them away, and recycled their cloaking devices into raw materials before making a goa'uld gate shield with a random, variable, password and heading back towards the gate. A command through his new hand device was all it took to cause the obelisk to activate its own phase cloak, locking away the Sodan settlement and Alteran constructor behind a device that no other goa'uld had or understood the capabilities of.
His next trip through the gate brought him to P3X-888, the Goa'uld homeworld. Once there he opened up the DHD and stored the small, unremarkable looking, crystal in a free spot where it wouldn't interfere with the DHD's normal operation; backup plans and contingencies were just good sense.
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Year 4121
Shortly after the flash of light was blocked by his shield, a man hurried into sight.
"Comtrya" spoke the balding, pudgy, man with brown eyes and dressed in robes.
"Hello." Marius replied in the Alteran trade tongue that the Stargates implanted in the minds of everyone who ever traveled through a stargate.
"Welcome to Altair friend, it's been too long since I've had a guest." he said excitedly.
"It's my pleasure...?" Marius said, trailing off in question.
"Oh, I'm Harlan."
"And I'm Marius, exploring through the stargate network to meet interesting people and learn interesting things."
"Good to meet you Marius, would you care for a tour?" Harlan asked, waving a hand at the massive bunker complex sprawling out behind him.
"Gladly. Forgive me for asking, but is there anyone else here?" Marius questioned ten minutes into the tour, cutting off Harlan's excited explanation of repairing a power conduit.
Harlan got a forlorn look on his face, "Not since Wallace passed approximately five thousand standard years ago."
"Ah, my condolences. That is a very long time to be alone, and your people must have impressive life spans." Marius commiserated.
Harlan blushed slightly, "Only a few hundred years actually. That's why we developed the ability to upload our consciousness into android forms. After the disaster hit, our population slowly gave up until I became the only one left. And let me tell you, it gets frightfully hard maintaining this place on my own."
"Very impressive, and interesting. Do you mind if I make a few scans of you?", Marius asked as he gestured with his hand device.
"By all means, I could also show you the machine used to produce the android bodies and duplicate the mind." Harlan happily replied.
'Impressive for the tech base, definitely not goa'uld based. Not advanced enough for Ancient either. All the more impressive if this really is basically home grown tech. And lots of room for improvement, a liquid Naq power cell alone would match the output of the current battery and last thousands of years. Replace the carbon based superconductors with Naq alloys, use trinium in place of titanium. Integrate one of the Sodan devices. Hmm, with the space savings that better materials and technology makes possible I could probably cram in an actual Naq reactor'
"As I said, very impressive. Especially given that the tech base seems to be entirely your own without any commonalities to gatebuilder or goa'uld technology." Marius said as he gestured for Harlan to lead the way.
"Goa'uld?" Harlan questioned.
"The currently dominant species in the galaxy. A small handful of them are nice but most run around enslaving humans, demanding to be worshipped as gods, and blowing up anyone with a more than agrarian society. Very much not nice people." Marius explained.
Harlan gave a nod, "Ah, luckily Altair has never had the displeasure of meeting them.", then he stopped before a pod and gestured, "There it is."
Marius made several more scans of the device before thinking for a long while.
"Harlan, this complex seems a bit much to maintain with just you."
"Oh it is, it is! I spend my days constantly running around trying to maintain it but every day I fall further behind."
"So you would like some upgrades and some help then?"
"Yes! Yes!."
"I might know some people, but it would probably be a few decades."
"I've waited six thousand four hundred and twenty two years, a few more decades is nothing."
Marius gave a nod, "True enough. I'll make it a point to stop by from time to time to talk and help out. If nothing else, I believe that I will be able to give you an improved body once I get back home and can play around in my lab."
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Marius returned a week later with an android body outwardly identical to Harlan's own but internally far superior; if lesser than what he could have produced. When he left the excitable android, promising to provide him with some companions in time, Harlan didn't need to know that the subspace communicator integrated into his body was sending every bit of data from the complexes databases to Marius's own computer core.
Or that on the world he called Sodan, two hundred virtual reality pods had been constructed along with the needed artificial wombs. A hundred were destined for Altair, raised in a virtual environment that aped Earth of 2100 and where Marius was a known ally who would rescue them after the goa'uld leveled their world. They would be the survivors who just wanted a nice quiet life where they could continue to advance science and who were too damaged for most medical technology to save them. Shaped and molded, they would willingly embrace becoming androids and would make a wonderful think tank to develop technology for Marius.
The other hundred would grow in a very different virtual environment. They were Jaffa raised and indoctrinated for fanatical loyalty to Revan and who were taught to fight not just as Jaffa but as post-modern soldiers. When they proved their mettle and won their place, they would leave the Heavens to guard Revan's mortal avatar.
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Year 4232 of the Second Age of Ra
Revan had spent twelve years practically living under cloak as he infiltrated goa'uld controlled worlds, spirited away both choice bits of technology and Naquadah, planted subspace trackers on their vessels, and just generally learned everything that he could of their secrets, personalities, and foibles.
Ready, he returned to Earth.
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Earth
Year 4233 of the Second Age of Ra
Marius walked the streets of his birth city unnoticed by any of the people present, or the Goa'uld sensors that unobtrusively tracked the residents; a suggestion of his to Ra when he had been part of his court. With a few thoughts to his kara kesh, and a brief use of precognition for the needed password, he had control over the spies. His presence would be scrubbed from their take as a matter of course, and he could always conceal anything else he wanted concealed at need.
With that, his form shifted to match the locals appearance and his armor changed from its normal black to give the appearance of appropriate clothes; homespun desert robes.
Marius moved through the city, mingling with the crowds, talking with merchants, and all the while using legilimency to learn the true opinions of the goa'uld that the locals held. Within a week he had what he wanted and moved onto stage two. The nanites were injected while his agents slept, bonding to their brains and tapping their senses much like a goa'uld did to its host.
He moved from city to city across Earth, repeating the process until every city that a goa'uld called home had its own unknowing fifth column.
A year passed in that way, with Marius slowly but steadily increasing the numbers of his unwitting agents and pre-positioning caches of zat's and staffs with their own built in self destruct nanites in the cities under cloak.
He would also spend days at a time tailing Egeria, the secret mother of the Tok'ra, and identifying her progeny. Getting them to begin contemplating a slave rebellion on Earth against Ra only took the smallest of nudges to a few of her underlings.
As they slept, those agents would live lives overthrowing the false gods and learning to wield their weapons against them.
With the pieces in place, he made his move.
Staging the capture of a Tok'ra acting suspicious by Jaffa was a matter of a few mental nudges.
A scrap of paper slipped into Egeria's robes warned her that Ra had captured one of her underlings, knew it was goa'uld, and that it was only a matter of time before the Tok'ra broke. She had perhaps hours to get off world before Ra moved against her.
Code entered into the computer of the lone Ha'Tak in orbit, Ra not allowing any other ships in Sol, was activated and caused the vessel to crash directly into Sol unshielded.
The nanite infected agents heard "Rise up people of Earth! False gods enslave you! Now is your chance, seize your freedom!" and received directions to the nearest weapons cache. As they looked at people, their allies were highlighted in green and their enemies in red. As they moved, the voice commanded them. The subconscious training they had undergone as they slept had them moving, acting, and reacting as trained soldiers.
Critical pieces of goa'uld infrastructure were slagged by sabotage.
The Tok'ra largely acted on their own, their plans not truly ready but their contingencies were enough to see them assassinating their fellow goa'uld as they were able.
A ZPM, used as a religious icon by Ra to awe the mortals, was lifted from one of Ra's vaults even as the Supreme System Lord and his fellow goa'uld (those able to make it to a set of Rings and through the gate) fled the planet.
Before the day was out, everyone who was anyone in goa'uld society seemed to "know" that Egeria had declared herself against Ra, tossed him off of Earth (getting a great many goa'uld killed in the process), blown up his Ha'Tak, and escaped from him. Messages from mysterious sources were also fed to a great many middle tier goa'uld providing critical military intelligence on their enemies.
Within two weeks the Goa'uld Empire was in what amounted to a full blown civil war, supposedly at the hand of Egeria. On Earth, the Stargate was buried in a random stretch of desert with a cloaking device attached to it set to keep it hidden for ages to come.
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Year 02 of the Third Age of Ra
The minor goa'uld Revan made his appearance on the goa'uld political scene with a big splash, wiping out a dozen minor Goa'uld in coordinated lighting strikes while capturing their combined ten Ha'Taks and seven planets. At his side were a hundred Jaffa dressed in armor of finest gold and with all manner of advanced technology integrated within; he called them his Custodes.
By the end of the Goa'uld Civil War in Year 122, Revan would be firmly established as a System Lord in his own right - if one who was fairly firmly isolationist.
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1620 AD, Year 4320 of the Third Age of Ra
A cloaked Ha'Tak emerged from hyperspace in Sol, having taken nearly a decade to travel from its construction site. Unlike most such vessels, no goa'uld symbiotes were onboard until Marius stepped through the gate.
"Sir, welcome aboard the Arcanum." said Captain Solomon of Revan's Science Directorate. Like everyone else on the vessel save Marius, he was an upload into a cybernetic body.
"The journey was pleasant I trust?" asked Marius.
Solomon gave a shrug, "We had our experiments, so pleasant enough I suppose."
By the time Marius's party had reached the bridge, the Arcanum was in Earth orbit and already deploying an entire network of surveillance satellites.
"Focus on the southern polar region. There should be a stargate buried there."
Barely twenty minutes later Lieutenant Greer spoke up "Found it." even as he mentally highlighted the relevant sensor data in the ships tactical net.
A silent command from Marius had a set of phase shifted rings shot to the coordinates, with a Custodes squad transporting in once the Rings were on sight. Within ten minutes the gate was phase shifted, equipped with its own AG drive, and returning to orbit with the rings.
As that operation was conducted, the area around where the gate had been found received even more intense scrutiny as the scientists searched for an Ancient Outpost and the ancient asleep in the ice nearby.
In the next twenty four hours, every major Naquadah concentration on Earth was raided by Custodes. Seth, Hathor, Isis, and Osiris all found themselves Marius's prisoners. All were useful and would have useful information, but the biggest prize was the Ancient Healing Cube pulled from the jungle in what would become Hondorus one day in the future.
By the end of the week virtually all Naquada based technology outside of the Giza stargate had been grabbed and, more importantly, Cyla Urbanus had been found still alive in the ice. A block of ice five meters on a side with the Alteran in the center was carefully cut away, loaded onto a Tel'Tak, and then transported to a purpose built lab under the most stringent of security. The first blood samples had barely touched the scanner before Captain Salome, the project lead on the study of the Ancient, let out a low whistle.
"This is one virulent plague. Highly adaptive too."
"It wiped out the Gate Builders and took them exterminating all life in the galaxy and then reseeding it to defeat. There is a reason that the bio-safety precautions on this project are so extreme. Now what can you tell me about the Alteran DNA?" commented Marius even as he was examining the data himself.
Salome shrugged, "That it is way beyond me. A human evolution, definitely. But one with millions of years of divergence, and probably a lot of genetic modification."
A few hours later, Marius would relocate a blood sample to his personal lab.
'Am I really going to do this? The plague beat the Ancients for gods sake! The Basilisk venom should purge it while the Phoenix tears heal the damage, but still... On the other hand, I need to ingest a blood sample if I want to be able to metamorph a perfect genetic match. Near ascended powers though... and I think those are soul based, not like the magic of my last reality. So I should keep them after I reincarnate again. Screw it, I have the Ancient Healing Cube and can put my symbiote back in a minute at need. YOLO!'
Marius removed his symbiote and downed the vial without another thought. The Plague did indeed go to work, but even its highly adaptive nature wasn't enough to overcome a mystical poison that could corrode even magic. That was not the true test though, for purging the human body of the plague was far easier than purging an Ancient body would be and the plague was intrinsically tied to Cyla's DNA so shifting to her form would bring the plague with it.
He shifted and with the shift entire new vistas opened before his eyes. His body became almost infinitely more receptive to the energy of the aether and seemed to be an almost physical ritual as it steadily fed that energy to his soul. Without his precognition he would have broken the Arcaneum in seconds as the power he now commanded ran out of control, but the warning was enough for him to clamp down hard with his Occlumency. Once his mind was empty and placid he turned to examining his body.
The Plague was still putting up a fight, siphoning some of the aetheric energy his body was absorbing and using it to adaptively modify itself far beyond what it had been. Indeed, it was even adapting to the Basilisk venom slowly but steadily.
With a thought, Marius directed his own soul energy to empower the venom, tears, and dragon blood and then linked the ritual to his precognition. That changed things, for the venom was adapting to counter the future changes of the plague, the tears were constantly rebuilding his body iteratively better than it had been before, and the dragons blood produced more magic to work with. Enough so that for the first time since he arrived in this reality he could summon the Elder Wand out of his soul. The wand, in turn, amplified his magic still further.
It still took nearly nine hours to full purge the plague from his body and in the process more changes had occured. After a moments examination, he smiled savagely and simply ate his symbiote. The genetic memories were just that, genetic, and found themselves consumed wholesale, examined, and filed away in his mind. As he dealt with that, the Naquadah of the body was consumed and integrated into his blood cells in place of iron.
When he shifted back to his normal form, his soul energy once more briefly tried to rage out of control but was harnessed by his will and rituals to be directed into his own body for the purpose of rebuilding it to the equivalent of the previous state.
Even as he was lost in wonderous awe, his body was constantly improving. His precognition hadn't gained any greater insight into the future but it had gained far greater discrimination amongst possible futures and was now tied into the rituals that could constantly shape and reshape his body. Every second his body was adapting in some most minute of ways to become better.
Eventually he had to get back to business though and so Marius exited his meditation and rejoined the rest of the world.
He had to hold back a grimace when he saw the ships crew; for all that their minds perfectly emulated the humans who had been uploaded, their souls had not transferred with them and to his new sight they were simply dead things no different from the walls or floor.
While Marius casually listened to reports with a fraction of his attention, his primary focus was on the CAD program in his hand device as he designed and redesigned goa'uld tech to be better, making connections between disparate pieces that he had never seen before. With that focus it was plain that a great many things had been excised from his symbiotes genetic memory.
'It does make sense, it was just one of the mass spawned goa'uld intended to keep a jaffa healthy and then be a meal for a more important goa'uld. No reason for Isis to have included her more interesting memories. Actually, I do have those goa'uld. No reason not to extract and consume the symbiotes to gain their genetic memories. It would probably be easier than breaking Osiris for her Eye anyways.'
Ten minutes later Setesh, Isis, Osiris, and Hathor were no longer among the living and their secrets belonged to Marius. Stockpiles, boltholes, insight into other goa'uld, secret technologies, contingency plans; all his now.
Orders were rapidly given to Custodes and as he was using the Rings to travel to a set Merlin had left in his cave under Glastonbury Tor his strike teams were leaving through the gate. If they were their usual efficient selves then by the time he had returned with Arthur's Mantle the more critical of those items would be his.
Opening a pot, arranging ancient symbols in order from one to eight, and fighting a holographic knight might have been a test for SG1 (version 3) but to him they were trivial. After gathering the Mantle, journal, and Long Range Communicator Marius called down a team to gather up the rest of the caves contents and transport it to an isolated storage bay for processing.
Then he ringed down to right above the Outpost and started phasing through the ice with the ZPM he had stolen from Ra so long ago.
Marius carefully approached the command throne on its dais and gave it a brush with his fingers before taking a seat; only to run headlong into block after block. He was Alteran yes but his genetics weren't on file so he was limited to guest access, and even then it was a very limited guest access.
'O'Neill had to have done something when he sat in the chair the first time, because there is no damn way that anyone but an authorized user could use this thing to fire drones and even with precog I can't find a bypass. And trying to take Cyla's form would see me failing that soul scan and me dead. God dammit, I can't even get a gate map to show up!'
With that waste of time over, he saw only one option to gain what he wanted and so decided to wake an Ancient.
"Are you sure about this, sir?" questioned Salome when I told her that I was going to awaken the Cyla.
"Yes, the healing cube should help stabilize her and we have things to discuss. The plague is far beyond our science to cure and we have both genetic samples and full, high resolution, subspace scans of her entire body."
The room was empty minutes later with Cyla defrosting, all of the rooms surveillance functions disabled, Marius protected behind his personal shield and environmentally sealed armor, and the healing cube radiating its energy.
While he waited, he was examining her with every sense at his disposal so he felt it when she regained consciousness and he tentatively reached out a soul tentacle to brush against her own soul. And grimaced as the Plague once more tried to gain a foothold in his body.
"What kind of damn fool touches souls with a plague carrier?" the Alteran women sharply asked in our mutual soul space.
"The kind of damn fool who didn't know it could spread metaphysically. Besides, my body can fight it off." he snarked back.
Her eyes lit in hope and wonder, "Truly?! There's a cure? And it only took... WHAT! How the fuck did it take ten million years to beat off the Ori Plague?"
"Because you lot trusted those idiots who would name themselves Lanteans and end up losing a war against some bugs that they accidentally evolved as a science project and who lacked shields, intergalactic hyperdrive, or basically any of the technology that you take for granted. Incidentally, the last of them fucked off to Ascension a few thousand years ago." Marius replied, deciding on honesty.
Her face was stunned into slackjawed disbelief, "...we wiped out all life in thirty six galaxies in one go only to reseed it moments later and they lost to barely evolved bugs with Atlantis?"
"Yes, and left it parked on the bottom of an ocean with the shield raised and three potentia left to power it when they abandoned the city, returned to Earth, and decided to spend their days navel gazing as they attempted to Ascend."
True anger bloomed on Cyla's face as she asked in a most dangerous tone, "They abandoned my city on the bottom of the ocean because they were too fucking stupid to beat up jumped bugs with an Alteran city ship at their disposal?"
Marius gave a firm nod, "Yes, that about sums it up."
"I'm going to forcibly descend the lot of them so I can destroy their souls." she exclaimed darkly.
Marius cocked his head in surprise, "You can do that?"
"I'll invent a way, maybe bribe some of the others to force them into mortality before they come back down."
He hesitated for a long moment, "I don't think that's going to happen. I don't know a lot about Ascended politics but they did create some hardcore rules over interfering with the non-ascended and when I said that my body can fight off the Plague, I meant that was kinda exclusive to me and not really replicable at any kind of scale."
"Then why did you wake me? Even with the healing energies bolstering me I will be dead in a matter of days." Cyla questioned.
Marius gave a sigh, "Because for all that I am genetically Alteran, I am woefully lacking when it comes to our knowledge. I tried to use the control chair to find the location of one of the Repositories but it wouldn't give me more than guest access, said my genetics weren't on file."
"Even if they were, you still couldn't have learned those locations from a control chair. They have access to the Repository network but the node locations are under the highest of security restrictions and even the Repository doesn't contain the data you sought. Only Clava Thessara Infinitas has that data, and the capitals security wouldn't let an unknown in even if you did manage to bypass the other security features." she explained.
"I thought Atlantis was the Alteran capital." said Marius.
Cyla gave a snort, "I loved my city but Atlantis was nothing more than the capital of Terra, and even at Terra's height as the capital of Avalon it was still nothing compared to the seat of the Alteran Imperium. The Sol system could have fit entirely inside the capital with space left over."
In a very small voice Marius let out a simple, "Oh."
He hesitated for a few moments before tentatively saying, "Perhaps a sharing?"
She theatrically brought a hand up to her mouth before smiling and saying, "My, how forward to ask to share souls before we have even shared names."
Marius shrugged, "Marius." was all he said as he opened up his soul in invitation.
"Cyla." she answered, accepting the invitation.
She saw it all, every moment of his three lives and even the entire goa'uld genetic memory. To the collective twenty thousand or so years of memories that he had, she had a hundred and seventy three thousand of her own.
While he saw some of the wonder of the Alteran's at their height, and the locations of the two Repository nodes that Cyla was aware of, she saw a life where her entire reality was a television show and how the man who had defrosted her had tentatively thought to save her.
"A soul joining?" she questioned incredulously.
"Not exactly. For all of the commonalities between the magic of my second life and our enhanced abilities, they have their differences as well. A soul joining would be enough to let me share my magic with you and thus let you cast the Horcrux creation ritual to make me your Horcrux. If I am in your form at the time, the compatibility would be extreme and I should be able to copy my own rituals onto your soul given my skills, my nature as your Horcrux, and our soul joining. Once I have the rituals ready, you die, the Horcrux fragment pulls the rest of your soul to it instead of you Ascending, and I take that moment of combination to embed the rituals into your vulnerable soul before shifting your now bodiless soul to the Ressurection Stone itself. Then it is just a matter of supplying the energy to recreate your body for your to possess." Marius explained, providing all of the needed information for her to truly understand what he proposed even as he spoke the words.
"Not the point. Even without your rituals, breaking a willing joining between souls is both incredibly difficult and debilitating to both parties. When you factor in your magic and the nature of your soul, I honestly don't think it would be possible for us to break the joining even if we both wanted to. Legally speaking, you and I would be one and the same under Alteran law. One joined entity with two bodies and two viewpoints." Cyla countered, her own memories of relevance being shared in turn.
Marius just gave a shrug, "I'm on my third life and have gone from an eighty year old businessman to being reborn as a fictitious wizard and violating basically every taboo that society held all in pursuit of my own power and knowledge to now being, for most practical purposes, a goa'uld who awoke you mostly because I wanted to gain your species knowledge after I had already used your blood to make myself your genetic equal. I've seen enough of your memories to know that you aren't one of those Lantean fuckwits and having a companion to travel through eternity by my side would be nice. In the end, it's your choice that matters here."
Cyla sighed, "Not truly a choice at all. I owe it to my people to ensure their legacy is one they can be proud of and not this Lantean abomination, and that means I need to beat the Plague. Not to mention your Cloak would be a huge boon when it comes to avoiding Ascended interference."
Marius thought things through before an idle thought occurred to him, "Oh, do you know what is parked under Saqqara that the Eyes are needed to use?"
Cyla gave another snort, "Avalon Ascendant, an Ascendant-Class Battleship of the Alteran Imperium and the flagship of the Avalon fleet. Even if those snakes had all the keys and full knowledge of the ships systems, they would still gain nothing from it."
The memories that came with her explanation earned a smile that would do a shark proud from Marius. The Ascendant Class was what happened when the Alterans had purpose built a warship on the same scale as a city ship and equipped it to fight peer competitors when their society was powerful enough to make the Khardivash scale look quaint.
"Marius wants."
"We will need the keys to lift the lockdown." Cyla cautioned.
"I already have one in my possession and know where three others can be found. But does that mean you are accepting my marriage proposal?" he replied.
"I suppose it does."
-x-x-x-
A/N:
And that's the prologue over. Not the greatest, too much tell and not enough show. But another main character so that should start changing. Besides, it's not like Marius is going to trust minions with his critical plans
Oh, and Marius's rituals.
-Bound the Cloak of Invisibility to his mind and soul, shields him from divinations, precognition, soul detection, soul targeting, mind reading, and similar effects. Basically his soul is invisible unless he chooses to make it visible and he can make that choice selectively from individual to individual.
-Bound the Resurrection Stone to his soul. Protects him from basically all soul based attacks, ensures that his memories aren't scrubbed when he reincarnates, enchanted as a Pensive providing limitless and perfect memory/storage
-Bound the Elder Wand to his soul. Can summon it if he supplies the needed energy, when summoned it can take the shape of a wand, staff, or basically any weapon that Marius understands. Amplifies magic ten fold when wielded, twists fate to ensure accurate hits, when used as a physical weapon it can directly attack souls.
-Seven second precognition. Always on as "spidey sense", can be activated as "combat" precog, with an exertion of focus and will he can choose a desired outcome and search for a future where that outcome occurs within the next seven seconds. Post Alteran this is working with his body enhancement rituals to actively evolve his body into a better state constantly and to keep it healthy.
-10 fold strength enhancement. Muscles exert ten times as much force as they should, precision muscle/body control including the level of force exerted. Allows superhuman movement.
-Dragon bones. Bones were replaced with alchemically created hybrid of his original bones and dragon bones. Weightless, basically unbreakable, bone marrow produces alchemically hybridized blood.
-Dragon heart. Heart was replaced with the heart of a dragon alchemically modified in the egg for compatibility and, after the dragon was grown, its soul was bound to its heart before it was transfigured into a human heart and replaced Marius's before he then consumed the included dragon soul in a later ritual. Causes Marius to be a magical source, creating HP magic ex nihilo to some limited extent.
-Blood. Blood replaced with an alchemically hybridized combination of dragon blood (providing better magic flow and acting as a magic battery, also grants some benefits related to fire magic and causes blood to burst into flame and burn away if separated from his body against his will), Basilisk venom (destroys anything inside the body not recognized as part of Marius, including foreign magics and cells that are imperfectly replicated), Phoenix tears (provides a healing factor, limitless stamina, perfect regeneration given time), and own blood. Post Alteran, iron in cells was replaced with Naq molecules, precognition was linked to the healing/destroying effect, and all effects are supercharged via soul energy.
-Metamorph. Able to shift to basically any non-magical form. Can consume a genetic sample to create a perfect genetic duplicate of a form. Protean body that can and does constantly shift to better serve Marius's purposes at any given point in time. Post Alteran, works with precognition and blood rituals to constantly evolve body to be better.
-Enhanced senses. Able to shift to IR and UV vision, Daredevil like hearing, senses can't be overloaded or debilitating.
-A number of other rituals largely related to HP magic and basically entirely irrelevant outside of that setting as they were designed to work with and harness the specific metaphysical rules of that reality.
-Goa'uld provided a "base" body with a light speed nervous system, twenty thousand years of genetic memory (and consequent mastery level skills in basically every and any field you care to name), enhanced brain functioning, the ability to interface with most goa'uld exclusive tech, and physical capabilities that are across the board about five times what would be expected of a "peak human" in that area.
-Alteran "near-ascended" body. Basically anything that Cyla, Adria, a Prior, or Khalek was capable of as a starting point. Honestly, think stable 40k Psyker and you wouldn't be far off. Can supercharge other abilities
-Revan's Goa'uld symbol. https://i.ibb.co/DMBfYTd/abrasax-sigil.png
Gringotts Bank, Diagon Alley, London
July 31st 1972
As his grandfather rummaged through a file cabinet, Regulus wanded the massive vault that stored some of the treasures the House of Black had gathered over the millenia it had been an extant House of Magic.
For all of the Black scions young age, he had turned eleven just today and once grandfather was done they would be meeting up with the family to celebrate, he was careful to keep his curiosity in check. While the vault didn't hold the families truly priceless treasures, never trust a goblin with anything you can't afford to lose after all, it did hold some of the lesser curiosities too dangerous to display in the family homes - either because of their magic or, more often, because of the political fax pau of displaying them where others might see.
The boy was distracted examining a suit of black armor, a war golem created by Morgana Black to help her son in that unpleasantness over the throne of Camelot. It was apparently immune to magic with a blade that would absorb the souls of whomever it killed, and the controlling intelligence of the golem would gain integrate the skills of those killed.
The shouted exclamation of his grandfather caused young Regulus to start, stumbling backwards. His head struck an ornate black crown whose placard listed it as an unknown soul magic based curiosity picked up in China during the Boxer Rebellion.
The person who regained his feet moments later was no longer just Regulus Arcturus Black, scion of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, eleven year old wizard about to start his first year at Hogwarts and destined to die defiant before he turned nineteen. No, wizards blood from the line of Semerkhet had touched his crown and a wizards head had contacted it. Soul magic of the most esoteric defied the heavens and restored memories stripped by the cycle of rebirth. A life once lived was remembered.
Eighty years of life crashed into the consciousness of a child and the child's will was found wanting.
'I croaked huh? Not surprising, I wonder what actually did me in. At least I don't remember it, just going to sleep last night. But waking up as Regulus Black? In Harry Potter? This is one fucked up afterlife. Still, may as well take advantage.'
-x-x-x-
Hogwarts
Friday, September 1st 1972
"SLYTHERIN" exclaimed the Sorting Hat bare seconds after it had touched my head, the families protections concealing from it everything he held to be secret (everything, he despised the idea of anyone reading my mind) and thus making the Hat's decision easy.
The next morning would find Regulus pacing on the Seventh Floor until the door to Hogwarts greatest secret appeared.
He walked in and in an awed whisper said "The Room of Requirement" as he took in the nice summer meadow with a comfy chair incongruously sitting on the ground next to a table with a book on it. He made his way to the chair and the book that he had required - one containing the details on this room of wonders, its limitations, its capabilities, and its history.
-x-x-x-
Hogwarts Express
Saturday, June 9th 1973
It had been a productive year. He had excelled in all his classes, an adult mind and work ethic found the required studying trivial and the Room had proven an exceptional study aid, and aced his exams. Still, that was only the barest fraction of what he had studied. Occlumency had been his first subject of interest - a necessity as the family magics wouldn't protect his secrets from his brother, father, or grandfather if they should try and read his mind - and the art had proven rather easy. A few candles made from a potion that the Room had provided was enough to provide a perfectly clear mind.
That empty mind allowed one to see their own magic and command it free of emotion or distraction. Using it to call up and conceal memories was merely a matter of willing it. It would not resist the focused efforts of a master legilimens but it would be more than enough to alert one to the intrusion.
-x-x-x-
Room of Requirement, Hogwarts
October 31st 1978
The ritual circle, the product of years of study and no few resources beyond the ken of most wizards, came to life as Regulus poured in his power. The soul fragment and memories of Tom Marvolo Riddle where ripped from a destroyed Diadem of Ravenclaw, shorn of connections and taint to the rest of the soul, and then added to Regulus's own soul. In one fell swoop he had gained the knowledge that made Voldemort the threat he was; and the ability to command snakes.
-x-x-x-
Hogwarts
June 1978
Term ended in two days and the Marauders were all off playing a pick up Quidditch game. Polyjuice as James Potter, a Notice Me Not, and a Disillusionment got me into his chest without any of the Gryffindors in their common room noticing anything. A Cloak was stolen, replaced by a far more common one that was outwardly identical and woven with enchantments to cause Potter to think it his families cloak.
-x-x-x-
Tonks Residence, Scotland
November 3rd 1981
"It's been too long cousin." mused Regulus as he sat beside Andromeda, watching Nymphadora play in the snow outside.
"Why are you here Regulus? The family disowned me if you recall, something about marrying a muggle instead of Lestrange." the elder witch snarked back, bitterness evident in her tone.
"Because our parents generation are a collection of fools whose very existence is an insult to the House of Black. Grandfather Arcturus has been too busy dealing with the family holdings overseas and my father...well the nicest thing you can say about him is that he is my mothers puppet. Her? A harpy without redeeming features, and one the world would be better off without.
"It was her who saw the family supporting the Dark Lord when we could have stayed neutral without issue. He put a slave brand, one bound to the very soul, onto a daughter of House Black and she still tried to push me into his service!" Regulus said, rage and disgust plain for her to hear.
"How did you avoid it?"
"A fidelius protected vacation home overseas. That story about a grand tour of the world after I graduated? Her excuse to save face. I came back when grandfather formally disinherited Sirius yesterday over his betrayal of the Potters." he explained.
"Interesting, but none of that explains why you are here bothering me." Andromeda said, redirecting the conversation to what she truly cared about.
"Because I need an heir and I refuse to have it be Draco Malfoy of all people. If you would allow it, I would formally adopt Nymphadora as my daughter and she would become Heiress Presumptive of the House of Black with all the rights that position entails." said Regulus.
That startled Andromeda into exclaiming, "A half blood daughter of a disowned daughter adopted into the main line and named heir for the House of Black?! No one would accept it!"
"Grandfather has already approved. You can't be officially returned to the family, the contract with House Lestrange would interfere with that, but legally speaking your daughter is simply another witch and magically speaking she has the blood needed to be accepted by the family magics."
He would leave the Tonks residence two hours later with their agreement and thus access to a metamorphmagus who shared his blood.
Two months later he would down a modified Everlasting Elixir Polyjuice with Nymphadora's blood mixed it and then, over the next seven months, would conduct a series of blood magic rituals to first make that acquired ability truly his own and then harness, enhance, and control it.
-x-x-x-
Little Hangleton
June 6th 1982
It was a nice summer evening and not a soul noticed when someone hissed like a snake, walked through the deactivated protections on a falling down shack, carefully moved a cursed ring into a container, and left.
Ten minutes later, fiendfyre would consume a soul fragment and purify the Resurrection Stone of the curses that successive generations of the Gaunt line had tried to place upon it.
From the most impressive of dead wizards would Regulus continue his quest for knowledge.
-x-x-x-
Black Manse, Black Island, Mediterranean Sea
August 17th 1991
Regulus sat on the porch off the master suite of the villa his predecessors had called home since Semerkhet had been overthrown by the heir of the Pharaoh he usurped and fled for his life in 2918 BC. With his grandfather's passing the day before, he had become Black of Black and gain full access to the secret records of a lineage shrouded in myths and legends for millenia.
Semerkhet, and later Imhotep, of Egypt. Hades of Olympus. Hel of Asgard. Morgana Le Fay and Mordred of Camelot. They were only a small handful, if standouts of historic proportions, of the witches and wizards who had called the House of Black their own over the ages. Black Magic, Black Arts, Blackmail; indeed the very association between the color Black and "evil" could be traced to the House he now ruled.
And in a few weeks he would begin another year teaching History of Magic at Hogwarts, his students (and most of his fellow teachers) blissfully unaware of just what it meant to be Black of Black.
'Meh, not my problem. A few hints in the right ears, and bribes in the right pockets, and I can discover that Sirius never had a trial. I'm Black of Black now, so he can't regain the title. Besides, it gives a good in with Dumbledores crowd and the Boy Who Lived. And lets me toss egg on the Ministry, that's always fun.'
-x-x-x-
Hogwarts Headmasters Quarters
August 30th 1997
Regulus fingered the Wand he had claimed via aerosolized basilisk venom. The pictures and ghosts had seen young Draco throw the potions vial down the steps as Dumbledore walked bye, and seen him flee before the alarm could be raised. The boy himself had the memories of planning the act and carrying it out to win Voldemort's favor, that he had been Imperiused and most of the planning wasn't his own was no matter. He had gained the Elder Wands allegiance and with it mastery of all three of the Hallows.
That it had also freed up the position of Headmaster was just a nice bonus.
-x-x-x-
Diagon Alley
July 31st 2172
Two hundred years to the day since he had arrived in this reality, Regulus Arcturus Black would die; assassinated by a null magic bullet containing a nanogram of conjured antimatter set to lose containment on contact with his blood and enchanted against divinations to bypass his precognition. His assassin would never be identified, even as the wizarding world mourned the loss of one of the greats. Unknown to all, that was not the end of his story.
Regulus was one of the most accomplished soul magic masters of all time and knew how to make a Horcrux before he turned fifteen. He had rejected that path towards immortality for it would bind his soul forever more to this reality and, in his judgement, that would be boring. Instead, he had chosen another path.
-x-x-x-
Heliophos
Egypt
Year 4093 of the Second Age of Ra
A boy was born, Marius his parents would anoint him. He was born to scribes in the employ of a minor merchant house that in turn owed fealty to one of the lesser gods, Lilith, of Ra's court.
'Well it worked, that's always good. The lack of magic is an issue though, if I have to resort to blood magic to get enough energy to kickstart my rituals then this could take a long while.'
When his eyes were developed enough to see clearly three months later, he would see a Jaffa with armor and staff for the first time.
'Stargate? Now isn't that interesting.'
-x-x-x-
Heliophos
Egypt
Year 4108 of the Second Age of Ra
Marius, just recently turned fifteen, stood over the corpse of Telath. The Jaffa had been nice enough to the boy as he patrolled the streets of Ra's capital on Earth but that did nothing to change the fact that he was scheduled for the replacement of his Primta in a little over two weeks. Speaking of which...
The boy reached down under the Jaffa's armor and into its stomach pouch, carefully grabbing the writhing Goa'uld.
Once he had the parasite in hand, three shots from Telath's zat'nik'tal had removed the evidence of the crime. Then, with a slight grimace of distaste, Marius brought the recently matured symbiote to his mouth and released it.
The Goa'uld did what its kind always did when presented to a host, it burrowed into the back of the neck, melded with the medulla oblongata, analyzed the hosts DNA, created and released a flood of tailored retroviruses and stimulants, started sending specialized neural tissue laced with Naquadah into the brain to act as a neural interface, and replaced the rest of the bodies nervous system with similar tissue. All told it took almost a minute to complete the process, and then the Goa'uld reached out to its hosts mind to make its memories the goa'ulds own and repurposes the host brain into another processor.
That is when the goa'uld that had yet to gain a name found itself outmatched. Marius no longer had access to the world's magic like he had grown used to as Regulus and the many rituals he had done over those two centuries of life and bound to his soul remained dormant without the needed magic to jump start them, but his seat of consciousness was no longer his physical, meat, body. His soul was were his mind resided and the goa'uld had willingly made itself a part of his body. His soul lashed out at the newborn goa'uld and crushed its still young soul with pitiful ease, taking advantage of the opportunity to feed its soul energy to one of his dormant rituals.
His bones changed, becoming as strong and light as they had been since he removed his bones, alchemically bonded them to dragon bones, created a Skele-Grow potion that would grow the modified bones, and then regrown his whole skeleton bone by bone. An immediately useful ritual, no doubt, but its true benefit was the bone marrow at those bones cores. Over time his blood would be replaced with the alchemical concoction created from dragons blood, his own blood, basilisk venom, and phoenix tears. That blood would, in turn, slowly rebuild his body over a period of seven years and eventually it would become magical enough to jumpstart the rest of his rituals.
That was an issue for the future though, his eyes flashed gold and he smiled as he started towards Ra's palace.
When the Jaffa guarding the gates tried to stop him, recognizing him and that he wasn't authorized to enter, the golden eyes had them bowing instead.
-x-x-x-
Antechamber of Ra's Throne Room
Heliophos
Egypt
Year 4108 of the Second Age of Ra
Ra's host was young, perhaps 19, Marius thought as the Supreme System Lord entered the room. Marius flashed his eyes gold and bowed his head.
"Your name?" Ra demanded.
"Revan, my lord." Marius said, supplying what he had decided to make his goa'uld name.
"I've never heard of you." he said, the unstated question plain in his tone.
"I'm a spawn of Isis, my lord. My Jaffa host died barely an hour ago in the city, I took the boy who discovered him as host, used the Jaffa's zat'nik'tel to remove the body, and came to you." Marius answered.
"You should have brought the body for resurrection so that the fool could be questioned."
"My apologies, I thought it better to keep the Jaffa's death concealed from the slaves."
Ra waved a hand dismissively, "What's done is done. I will have one of the servants bring you clothes appropriate to your station and then introduce you to court." left unsaid, but plain to his newly acquired goa'uld memories, was that he would be a minor hanger on and gopher for the court at large. Whatever odd jobs any of the important goa'uld had that needed to be done by a goa'uld but didn't need to be secret from their fellows would be sent his way until he built a power base of my own or impressed someone.
-x-x-x-
Year 4120 of the Second Age of Ra
Twelve years as a freelancer of Ra's court came to an end when Marius, Revan to the goa'uld, simply sent Marduk's jaffa through the gate first with the Naquadah that he had been sent to pickup and didn't follow them. When the gate closed, he dialed another address and stepped through. His body shifted; now 6'6" in height with black hair, amethyst eyes, and the build of an olympic gymnast. He had his freedom, but it would be a long few thousand years before he could afford to start making waves.
Another gate address punched in, another wormhole transit, and then he pumped in the symbols of his first destination.
The SGC called it P9G-844, better known as the secret home of the Sodan. Marius didn't have to wait long, or wander very far in the forest, before the seven seconds of precognition that he had gained from the life of Sybill Trelawney so long ago warned him of the plasma bolt that would be fired at his back. A casual step to the right had it missing by almost two whole inches. With an effort of will, he more actively exerted the power and tried taunt after taunt in myriad possible futures before finding one that would cause the Sodan to charge him.
"You shoot like a tau'ri child, shol'va. Have the Sodan truly fallen so far since you fled Ishkur's service that you qualify as one of their warriors?" he taunted. Two seconds later his hand lashed out, deactivating the cloaking device. His right foot snapped forward and shattered the Sodan's left leg, two punches and another kick saw the rest of the jaffa's limbs similarly disabled.
Marius followed the Jaffa to the ground, making eye contact with his victim and ripping what information he needed from his mind. In a matter of moments he was done.
The cloaking bracer went on his own arm and was activated with an exertion of his will through its included neural interface. Unlike most cloaking devices, the Ancient based ones of the Sodan moved the user ever so slightly out of phase with reality and allowed users to see one another.
A Goa'uld already has muscles more than twice as strong as a Jaffa (and approximately five times as strong as a normal human), and in Marius that was multiplied ten fold thanks to the Re'em's blood based ritual he had done more than a lifetime ago. With that strength, a nervous system operating at the speed of light, precognition, unbreakable bones, and a body that would actively and constantly shift its protean form to best serve its purpose moment by moment the slaughter was no contest at all.
In moments the other five members of the six strong patrol joined their brother in death and Marius was making his way to the obelisk that would take him to the Sodan village.
Before night fell on the world, the Sodan were exterminated and Marius had learned a great many things of value; chief among them was fluency in written Ancient and knowledge of the Ancient device that he was now standing before.
'Amazing what things can be found. An Alteran matter constructor secreted away and containing plans for these babies.'
When he put his head in the device, it asked for a password like he had seen in the Sodan chieftains memories. Instead of offering the code the Sodan knew, he instead tapped his precognition to try every possible combination. Death ended most of those timelines, it being a consequence of supplying the wrong password. Most of those timelines, not all of them.
One of those passwords gave him access to an Alteran CAD program, if one lacking in any blueprints save for the Sodan cloak. Still, he spent hours learning a great deal about the exact properties of all the myriad elements of the universe - far more than even his goa'uld memories had told him existed. When he exhausted that knowledge base, he opened up the cloaking blueprint and quietly exalted.
Whichever Ancient had given the Sodan these plans had intentionally crippled them. These weren't cloaks, they were standard issue Alteran infiltration pendants; designed for Alteran explores to safely and discreetly infiltrate places they wanted to study. They did indeed provide a cloaking effect but that was the only effect whose activation wasn't locked behind the ATA gene, and even then the ability to modify the optional features of the cloak was locked down.
Phase shifting, a personal shield, subspace sensors and communications, a far superior variant of the goa'uld healing device that would constantly keep the user in peak health, note taking programs, interfacing with both Stargates and Ring Transporters using Alteran protocols; all of it able to be controlled by neural interface and HUD.
'These have to be the ultimate basis for the kara kesh, although the goa'uld hand device is a pale shadow of this baby. Daddy likes.'
With that last he used some of the Sodan's stockpiled Naquadah as feedstock to create three of the devices. One was in the form of a fairly ornate pendant, another was a simple crystal, and the third was in the shape of a normal goa'uld hand device - done in black and green as opposed to gold and ruby - with several additional features added in thanks to his goa'uld genetic memories; the standard kara kesh features, the ability to fire intar shots, and a za'tarc finger laser. Both devices would require a randomly generated password be supplied every time a user tried to bond with them - Marius would be able to use his precognition to find the correct password while anyone without a similar gift would find themselves vaporized.
He would spend several more hours delving the goa'uld genetic memory and designing his best approximation of Tony Stark's Bleeding Edge armor. Alas it was a pale shadow of that most badass of designs, but the Trinium-Carbon-Naquadah nanites could still expand from the chest piece to cover the entire body in armor that was bulletproof (and strongly plasma resistant) and could adjust how it absorbed and reflected EM radiation.
Once in his new armor, Marius gathered up the Sodan bodies, zatted them away, and recycled their cloaking devices into raw materials before making a goa'uld gate shield with a random, variable, password and heading back towards the gate. A command through his new hand device was all it took to cause the obelisk to activate its own phase cloak, locking away the Sodan settlement and Alteran constructor behind a device that no other goa'uld had or understood the capabilities of.
His next trip through the gate brought him to P3X-888, the Goa'uld homeworld. Once there he opened up the DHD and stored the small, unremarkable looking, crystal in a free spot where it wouldn't interfere with the DHD's normal operation; backup plans and contingencies were just good sense.
-x-x-x-
Year 4121
Shortly after the flash of light was blocked by his shield, a man hurried into sight.
"Comtrya" spoke the balding, pudgy, man with brown eyes and dressed in robes.
"Hello." Marius replied in the Alteran trade tongue that the Stargates implanted in the minds of everyone who ever traveled through a stargate.
"Welcome to Altair friend, it's been too long since I've had a guest." he said excitedly.
"It's my pleasure...?" Marius said, trailing off in question.
"Oh, I'm Harlan."
"And I'm Marius, exploring through the stargate network to meet interesting people and learn interesting things."
"Good to meet you Marius, would you care for a tour?" Harlan asked, waving a hand at the massive bunker complex sprawling out behind him.
"Gladly. Forgive me for asking, but is there anyone else here?" Marius questioned ten minutes into the tour, cutting off Harlan's excited explanation of repairing a power conduit.
Harlan got a forlorn look on his face, "Not since Wallace passed approximately five thousand standard years ago."
"Ah, my condolences. That is a very long time to be alone, and your people must have impressive life spans." Marius commiserated.
Harlan blushed slightly, "Only a few hundred years actually. That's why we developed the ability to upload our consciousness into android forms. After the disaster hit, our population slowly gave up until I became the only one left. And let me tell you, it gets frightfully hard maintaining this place on my own."
"Very impressive, and interesting. Do you mind if I make a few scans of you?", Marius asked as he gestured with his hand device.
"By all means, I could also show you the machine used to produce the android bodies and duplicate the mind." Harlan happily replied.
'Impressive for the tech base, definitely not goa'uld based. Not advanced enough for Ancient either. All the more impressive if this really is basically home grown tech. And lots of room for improvement, a liquid Naq power cell alone would match the output of the current battery and last thousands of years. Replace the carbon based superconductors with Naq alloys, use trinium in place of titanium. Integrate one of the Sodan devices. Hmm, with the space savings that better materials and technology makes possible I could probably cram in an actual Naq reactor'
"As I said, very impressive. Especially given that the tech base seems to be entirely your own without any commonalities to gatebuilder or goa'uld technology." Marius said as he gestured for Harlan to lead the way.
"Goa'uld?" Harlan questioned.
"The currently dominant species in the galaxy. A small handful of them are nice but most run around enslaving humans, demanding to be worshipped as gods, and blowing up anyone with a more than agrarian society. Very much not nice people." Marius explained.
Harlan gave a nod, "Ah, luckily Altair has never had the displeasure of meeting them.", then he stopped before a pod and gestured, "There it is."
Marius made several more scans of the device before thinking for a long while.
"Harlan, this complex seems a bit much to maintain with just you."
"Oh it is, it is! I spend my days constantly running around trying to maintain it but every day I fall further behind."
"So you would like some upgrades and some help then?"
"Yes! Yes!."
"I might know some people, but it would probably be a few decades."
"I've waited six thousand four hundred and twenty two years, a few more decades is nothing."
Marius gave a nod, "True enough. I'll make it a point to stop by from time to time to talk and help out. If nothing else, I believe that I will be able to give you an improved body once I get back home and can play around in my lab."
-x-x-x-
Marius returned a week later with an android body outwardly identical to Harlan's own but internally far superior; if lesser than what he could have produced. When he left the excitable android, promising to provide him with some companions in time, Harlan didn't need to know that the subspace communicator integrated into his body was sending every bit of data from the complexes databases to Marius's own computer core.
Or that on the world he called Sodan, two hundred virtual reality pods had been constructed along with the needed artificial wombs. A hundred were destined for Altair, raised in a virtual environment that aped Earth of 2100 and where Marius was a known ally who would rescue them after the goa'uld leveled their world. They would be the survivors who just wanted a nice quiet life where they could continue to advance science and who were too damaged for most medical technology to save them. Shaped and molded, they would willingly embrace becoming androids and would make a wonderful think tank to develop technology for Marius.
The other hundred would grow in a very different virtual environment. They were Jaffa raised and indoctrinated for fanatical loyalty to Revan and who were taught to fight not just as Jaffa but as post-modern soldiers. When they proved their mettle and won their place, they would leave the Heavens to guard Revan's mortal avatar.
-x-x-x-
Year 4232 of the Second Age of Ra
Revan had spent twelve years practically living under cloak as he infiltrated goa'uld controlled worlds, spirited away both choice bits of technology and Naquadah, planted subspace trackers on their vessels, and just generally learned everything that he could of their secrets, personalities, and foibles.
Ready, he returned to Earth.
-x-x-x-
Earth
Year 4233 of the Second Age of Ra
Marius walked the streets of his birth city unnoticed by any of the people present, or the Goa'uld sensors that unobtrusively tracked the residents; a suggestion of his to Ra when he had been part of his court. With a few thoughts to his kara kesh, and a brief use of precognition for the needed password, he had control over the spies. His presence would be scrubbed from their take as a matter of course, and he could always conceal anything else he wanted concealed at need.
With that, his form shifted to match the locals appearance and his armor changed from its normal black to give the appearance of appropriate clothes; homespun desert robes.
Marius moved through the city, mingling with the crowds, talking with merchants, and all the while using legilimency to learn the true opinions of the goa'uld that the locals held. Within a week he had what he wanted and moved onto stage two. The nanites were injected while his agents slept, bonding to their brains and tapping their senses much like a goa'uld did to its host.
He moved from city to city across Earth, repeating the process until every city that a goa'uld called home had its own unknowing fifth column.
A year passed in that way, with Marius slowly but steadily increasing the numbers of his unwitting agents and pre-positioning caches of zat's and staffs with their own built in self destruct nanites in the cities under cloak.
He would also spend days at a time tailing Egeria, the secret mother of the Tok'ra, and identifying her progeny. Getting them to begin contemplating a slave rebellion on Earth against Ra only took the smallest of nudges to a few of her underlings.
As they slept, those agents would live lives overthrowing the false gods and learning to wield their weapons against them.
With the pieces in place, he made his move.
Staging the capture of a Tok'ra acting suspicious by Jaffa was a matter of a few mental nudges.
A scrap of paper slipped into Egeria's robes warned her that Ra had captured one of her underlings, knew it was goa'uld, and that it was only a matter of time before the Tok'ra broke. She had perhaps hours to get off world before Ra moved against her.
Code entered into the computer of the lone Ha'Tak in orbit, Ra not allowing any other ships in Sol, was activated and caused the vessel to crash directly into Sol unshielded.
The nanite infected agents heard "Rise up people of Earth! False gods enslave you! Now is your chance, seize your freedom!" and received directions to the nearest weapons cache. As they looked at people, their allies were highlighted in green and their enemies in red. As they moved, the voice commanded them. The subconscious training they had undergone as they slept had them moving, acting, and reacting as trained soldiers.
Critical pieces of goa'uld infrastructure were slagged by sabotage.
The Tok'ra largely acted on their own, their plans not truly ready but their contingencies were enough to see them assassinating their fellow goa'uld as they were able.
A ZPM, used as a religious icon by Ra to awe the mortals, was lifted from one of Ra's vaults even as the Supreme System Lord and his fellow goa'uld (those able to make it to a set of Rings and through the gate) fled the planet.
Before the day was out, everyone who was anyone in goa'uld society seemed to "know" that Egeria had declared herself against Ra, tossed him off of Earth (getting a great many goa'uld killed in the process), blown up his Ha'Tak, and escaped from him. Messages from mysterious sources were also fed to a great many middle tier goa'uld providing critical military intelligence on their enemies.
Within two weeks the Goa'uld Empire was in what amounted to a full blown civil war, supposedly at the hand of Egeria. On Earth, the Stargate was buried in a random stretch of desert with a cloaking device attached to it set to keep it hidden for ages to come.
-x-x-x-
Year 02 of the Third Age of Ra
The minor goa'uld Revan made his appearance on the goa'uld political scene with a big splash, wiping out a dozen minor Goa'uld in coordinated lighting strikes while capturing their combined ten Ha'Taks and seven planets. At his side were a hundred Jaffa dressed in armor of finest gold and with all manner of advanced technology integrated within; he called them his Custodes.
By the end of the Goa'uld Civil War in Year 122, Revan would be firmly established as a System Lord in his own right - if one who was fairly firmly isolationist.
-x-x-x-
1620 AD, Year 4320 of the Third Age of Ra
A cloaked Ha'Tak emerged from hyperspace in Sol, having taken nearly a decade to travel from its construction site. Unlike most such vessels, no goa'uld symbiotes were onboard until Marius stepped through the gate.
"Sir, welcome aboard the Arcanum." said Captain Solomon of Revan's Science Directorate. Like everyone else on the vessel save Marius, he was an upload into a cybernetic body.
"The journey was pleasant I trust?" asked Marius.
Solomon gave a shrug, "We had our experiments, so pleasant enough I suppose."
By the time Marius's party had reached the bridge, the Arcanum was in Earth orbit and already deploying an entire network of surveillance satellites.
"Focus on the southern polar region. There should be a stargate buried there."
Barely twenty minutes later Lieutenant Greer spoke up "Found it." even as he mentally highlighted the relevant sensor data in the ships tactical net.
A silent command from Marius had a set of phase shifted rings shot to the coordinates, with a Custodes squad transporting in once the Rings were on sight. Within ten minutes the gate was phase shifted, equipped with its own AG drive, and returning to orbit with the rings.
As that operation was conducted, the area around where the gate had been found received even more intense scrutiny as the scientists searched for an Ancient Outpost and the ancient asleep in the ice nearby.
In the next twenty four hours, every major Naquadah concentration on Earth was raided by Custodes. Seth, Hathor, Isis, and Osiris all found themselves Marius's prisoners. All were useful and would have useful information, but the biggest prize was the Ancient Healing Cube pulled from the jungle in what would become Hondorus one day in the future.
By the end of the week virtually all Naquada based technology outside of the Giza stargate had been grabbed and, more importantly, Cyla Urbanus had been found still alive in the ice. A block of ice five meters on a side with the Alteran in the center was carefully cut away, loaded onto a Tel'Tak, and then transported to a purpose built lab under the most stringent of security. The first blood samples had barely touched the scanner before Captain Salome, the project lead on the study of the Ancient, let out a low whistle.
"This is one virulent plague. Highly adaptive too."
"It wiped out the Gate Builders and took them exterminating all life in the galaxy and then reseeding it to defeat. There is a reason that the bio-safety precautions on this project are so extreme. Now what can you tell me about the Alteran DNA?" commented Marius even as he was examining the data himself.
Salome shrugged, "That it is way beyond me. A human evolution, definitely. But one with millions of years of divergence, and probably a lot of genetic modification."
A few hours later, Marius would relocate a blood sample to his personal lab.
'Am I really going to do this? The plague beat the Ancients for gods sake! The Basilisk venom should purge it while the Phoenix tears heal the damage, but still... On the other hand, I need to ingest a blood sample if I want to be able to metamorph a perfect genetic match. Near ascended powers though... and I think those are soul based, not like the magic of my last reality. So I should keep them after I reincarnate again. Screw it, I have the Ancient Healing Cube and can put my symbiote back in a minute at need. YOLO!'
Marius removed his symbiote and downed the vial without another thought. The Plague did indeed go to work, but even its highly adaptive nature wasn't enough to overcome a mystical poison that could corrode even magic. That was not the true test though, for purging the human body of the plague was far easier than purging an Ancient body would be and the plague was intrinsically tied to Cyla's DNA so shifting to her form would bring the plague with it.
He shifted and with the shift entire new vistas opened before his eyes. His body became almost infinitely more receptive to the energy of the aether and seemed to be an almost physical ritual as it steadily fed that energy to his soul. Without his precognition he would have broken the Arcaneum in seconds as the power he now commanded ran out of control, but the warning was enough for him to clamp down hard with his Occlumency. Once his mind was empty and placid he turned to examining his body.
The Plague was still putting up a fight, siphoning some of the aetheric energy his body was absorbing and using it to adaptively modify itself far beyond what it had been. Indeed, it was even adapting to the Basilisk venom slowly but steadily.
With a thought, Marius directed his own soul energy to empower the venom, tears, and dragon blood and then linked the ritual to his precognition. That changed things, for the venom was adapting to counter the future changes of the plague, the tears were constantly rebuilding his body iteratively better than it had been before, and the dragons blood produced more magic to work with. Enough so that for the first time since he arrived in this reality he could summon the Elder Wand out of his soul. The wand, in turn, amplified his magic still further.
It still took nearly nine hours to full purge the plague from his body and in the process more changes had occured. After a moments examination, he smiled savagely and simply ate his symbiote. The genetic memories were just that, genetic, and found themselves consumed wholesale, examined, and filed away in his mind. As he dealt with that, the Naquadah of the body was consumed and integrated into his blood cells in place of iron.
When he shifted back to his normal form, his soul energy once more briefly tried to rage out of control but was harnessed by his will and rituals to be directed into his own body for the purpose of rebuilding it to the equivalent of the previous state.
Even as he was lost in wonderous awe, his body was constantly improving. His precognition hadn't gained any greater insight into the future but it had gained far greater discrimination amongst possible futures and was now tied into the rituals that could constantly shape and reshape his body. Every second his body was adapting in some most minute of ways to become better.
Eventually he had to get back to business though and so Marius exited his meditation and rejoined the rest of the world.
He had to hold back a grimace when he saw the ships crew; for all that their minds perfectly emulated the humans who had been uploaded, their souls had not transferred with them and to his new sight they were simply dead things no different from the walls or floor.
While Marius casually listened to reports with a fraction of his attention, his primary focus was on the CAD program in his hand device as he designed and redesigned goa'uld tech to be better, making connections between disparate pieces that he had never seen before. With that focus it was plain that a great many things had been excised from his symbiotes genetic memory.
'It does make sense, it was just one of the mass spawned goa'uld intended to keep a jaffa healthy and then be a meal for a more important goa'uld. No reason for Isis to have included her more interesting memories. Actually, I do have those goa'uld. No reason not to extract and consume the symbiotes to gain their genetic memories. It would probably be easier than breaking Osiris for her Eye anyways.'
Ten minutes later Setesh, Isis, Osiris, and Hathor were no longer among the living and their secrets belonged to Marius. Stockpiles, boltholes, insight into other goa'uld, secret technologies, contingency plans; all his now.
Orders were rapidly given to Custodes and as he was using the Rings to travel to a set Merlin had left in his cave under Glastonbury Tor his strike teams were leaving through the gate. If they were their usual efficient selves then by the time he had returned with Arthur's Mantle the more critical of those items would be his.
Opening a pot, arranging ancient symbols in order from one to eight, and fighting a holographic knight might have been a test for SG1 (version 3) but to him they were trivial. After gathering the Mantle, journal, and Long Range Communicator Marius called down a team to gather up the rest of the caves contents and transport it to an isolated storage bay for processing.
Then he ringed down to right above the Outpost and started phasing through the ice with the ZPM he had stolen from Ra so long ago.
Marius carefully approached the command throne on its dais and gave it a brush with his fingers before taking a seat; only to run headlong into block after block. He was Alteran yes but his genetics weren't on file so he was limited to guest access, and even then it was a very limited guest access.
'O'Neill had to have done something when he sat in the chair the first time, because there is no damn way that anyone but an authorized user could use this thing to fire drones and even with precog I can't find a bypass. And trying to take Cyla's form would see me failing that soul scan and me dead. God dammit, I can't even get a gate map to show up!'
With that waste of time over, he saw only one option to gain what he wanted and so decided to wake an Ancient.
"Are you sure about this, sir?" questioned Salome when I told her that I was going to awaken the Cyla.
"Yes, the healing cube should help stabilize her and we have things to discuss. The plague is far beyond our science to cure and we have both genetic samples and full, high resolution, subspace scans of her entire body."
The room was empty minutes later with Cyla defrosting, all of the rooms surveillance functions disabled, Marius protected behind his personal shield and environmentally sealed armor, and the healing cube radiating its energy.
While he waited, he was examining her with every sense at his disposal so he felt it when she regained consciousness and he tentatively reached out a soul tentacle to brush against her own soul. And grimaced as the Plague once more tried to gain a foothold in his body.
"What kind of damn fool touches souls with a plague carrier?" the Alteran women sharply asked in our mutual soul space.
"The kind of damn fool who didn't know it could spread metaphysically. Besides, my body can fight it off." he snarked back.
Her eyes lit in hope and wonder, "Truly?! There's a cure? And it only took... WHAT! How the fuck did it take ten million years to beat off the Ori Plague?"
"Because you lot trusted those idiots who would name themselves Lanteans and end up losing a war against some bugs that they accidentally evolved as a science project and who lacked shields, intergalactic hyperdrive, or basically any of the technology that you take for granted. Incidentally, the last of them fucked off to Ascension a few thousand years ago." Marius replied, deciding on honesty.
Her face was stunned into slackjawed disbelief, "...we wiped out all life in thirty six galaxies in one go only to reseed it moments later and they lost to barely evolved bugs with Atlantis?"
"Yes, and left it parked on the bottom of an ocean with the shield raised and three potentia left to power it when they abandoned the city, returned to Earth, and decided to spend their days navel gazing as they attempted to Ascend."
True anger bloomed on Cyla's face as she asked in a most dangerous tone, "They abandoned my city on the bottom of the ocean because they were too fucking stupid to beat up jumped bugs with an Alteran city ship at their disposal?"
Marius gave a firm nod, "Yes, that about sums it up."
"I'm going to forcibly descend the lot of them so I can destroy their souls." she exclaimed darkly.
Marius cocked his head in surprise, "You can do that?"
"I'll invent a way, maybe bribe some of the others to force them into mortality before they come back down."
He hesitated for a long moment, "I don't think that's going to happen. I don't know a lot about Ascended politics but they did create some hardcore rules over interfering with the non-ascended and when I said that my body can fight off the Plague, I meant that was kinda exclusive to me and not really replicable at any kind of scale."
"Then why did you wake me? Even with the healing energies bolstering me I will be dead in a matter of days." Cyla questioned.
Marius gave a sigh, "Because for all that I am genetically Alteran, I am woefully lacking when it comes to our knowledge. I tried to use the control chair to find the location of one of the Repositories but it wouldn't give me more than guest access, said my genetics weren't on file."
"Even if they were, you still couldn't have learned those locations from a control chair. They have access to the Repository network but the node locations are under the highest of security restrictions and even the Repository doesn't contain the data you sought. Only Clava Thessara Infinitas has that data, and the capitals security wouldn't let an unknown in even if you did manage to bypass the other security features." she explained.
"I thought Atlantis was the Alteran capital." said Marius.
Cyla gave a snort, "I loved my city but Atlantis was nothing more than the capital of Terra, and even at Terra's height as the capital of Avalon it was still nothing compared to the seat of the Alteran Imperium. The Sol system could have fit entirely inside the capital with space left over."
In a very small voice Marius let out a simple, "Oh."
He hesitated for a few moments before tentatively saying, "Perhaps a sharing?"
She theatrically brought a hand up to her mouth before smiling and saying, "My, how forward to ask to share souls before we have even shared names."
Marius shrugged, "Marius." was all he said as he opened up his soul in invitation.
"Cyla." she answered, accepting the invitation.
She saw it all, every moment of his three lives and even the entire goa'uld genetic memory. To the collective twenty thousand or so years of memories that he had, she had a hundred and seventy three thousand of her own.
While he saw some of the wonder of the Alteran's at their height, and the locations of the two Repository nodes that Cyla was aware of, she saw a life where her entire reality was a television show and how the man who had defrosted her had tentatively thought to save her.
"A soul joining?" she questioned incredulously.
"Not exactly. For all of the commonalities between the magic of my second life and our enhanced abilities, they have their differences as well. A soul joining would be enough to let me share my magic with you and thus let you cast the Horcrux creation ritual to make me your Horcrux. If I am in your form at the time, the compatibility would be extreme and I should be able to copy my own rituals onto your soul given my skills, my nature as your Horcrux, and our soul joining. Once I have the rituals ready, you die, the Horcrux fragment pulls the rest of your soul to it instead of you Ascending, and I take that moment of combination to embed the rituals into your vulnerable soul before shifting your now bodiless soul to the Ressurection Stone itself. Then it is just a matter of supplying the energy to recreate your body for your to possess." Marius explained, providing all of the needed information for her to truly understand what he proposed even as he spoke the words.
"Not the point. Even without your rituals, breaking a willing joining between souls is both incredibly difficult and debilitating to both parties. When you factor in your magic and the nature of your soul, I honestly don't think it would be possible for us to break the joining even if we both wanted to. Legally speaking, you and I would be one and the same under Alteran law. One joined entity with two bodies and two viewpoints." Cyla countered, her own memories of relevance being shared in turn.
Marius just gave a shrug, "I'm on my third life and have gone from an eighty year old businessman to being reborn as a fictitious wizard and violating basically every taboo that society held all in pursuit of my own power and knowledge to now being, for most practical purposes, a goa'uld who awoke you mostly because I wanted to gain your species knowledge after I had already used your blood to make myself your genetic equal. I've seen enough of your memories to know that you aren't one of those Lantean fuckwits and having a companion to travel through eternity by my side would be nice. In the end, it's your choice that matters here."
Cyla sighed, "Not truly a choice at all. I owe it to my people to ensure their legacy is one they can be proud of and not this Lantean abomination, and that means I need to beat the Plague. Not to mention your Cloak would be a huge boon when it comes to avoiding Ascended interference."
Marius thought things through before an idle thought occurred to him, "Oh, do you know what is parked under Saqqara that the Eyes are needed to use?"
Cyla gave another snort, "Avalon Ascendant, an Ascendant-Class Battleship of the Alteran Imperium and the flagship of the Avalon fleet. Even if those snakes had all the keys and full knowledge of the ships systems, they would still gain nothing from it."
The memories that came with her explanation earned a smile that would do a shark proud from Marius. The Ascendant Class was what happened when the Alterans had purpose built a warship on the same scale as a city ship and equipped it to fight peer competitors when their society was powerful enough to make the Khardivash scale look quaint.
"Marius wants."
"We will need the keys to lift the lockdown." Cyla cautioned.
"I already have one in my possession and know where three others can be found. But does that mean you are accepting my marriage proposal?" he replied.
"I suppose it does."
-x-x-x-
A/N:
And that's the prologue over. Not the greatest, too much tell and not enough show. But another main character so that should start changing. Besides, it's not like Marius is going to trust minions with his critical plans
Oh, and Marius's rituals.
-Bound the Cloak of Invisibility to his mind and soul, shields him from divinations, precognition, soul detection, soul targeting, mind reading, and similar effects. Basically his soul is invisible unless he chooses to make it visible and he can make that choice selectively from individual to individual.
-Bound the Resurrection Stone to his soul. Protects him from basically all soul based attacks, ensures that his memories aren't scrubbed when he reincarnates, enchanted as a Pensive providing limitless and perfect memory/storage
-Bound the Elder Wand to his soul. Can summon it if he supplies the needed energy, when summoned it can take the shape of a wand, staff, or basically any weapon that Marius understands. Amplifies magic ten fold when wielded, twists fate to ensure accurate hits, when used as a physical weapon it can directly attack souls.
-Seven second precognition. Always on as "spidey sense", can be activated as "combat" precog, with an exertion of focus and will he can choose a desired outcome and search for a future where that outcome occurs within the next seven seconds. Post Alteran this is working with his body enhancement rituals to actively evolve his body into a better state constantly and to keep it healthy.
-10 fold strength enhancement. Muscles exert ten times as much force as they should, precision muscle/body control including the level of force exerted. Allows superhuman movement.
-Dragon bones. Bones were replaced with alchemically created hybrid of his original bones and dragon bones. Weightless, basically unbreakable, bone marrow produces alchemically hybridized blood.
-Dragon heart. Heart was replaced with the heart of a dragon alchemically modified in the egg for compatibility and, after the dragon was grown, its soul was bound to its heart before it was transfigured into a human heart and replaced Marius's before he then consumed the included dragon soul in a later ritual. Causes Marius to be a magical source, creating HP magic ex nihilo to some limited extent.
-Blood. Blood replaced with an alchemically hybridized combination of dragon blood (providing better magic flow and acting as a magic battery, also grants some benefits related to fire magic and causes blood to burst into flame and burn away if separated from his body against his will), Basilisk venom (destroys anything inside the body not recognized as part of Marius, including foreign magics and cells that are imperfectly replicated), Phoenix tears (provides a healing factor, limitless stamina, perfect regeneration given time), and own blood. Post Alteran, iron in cells was replaced with Naq molecules, precognition was linked to the healing/destroying effect, and all effects are supercharged via soul energy.
-Metamorph. Able to shift to basically any non-magical form. Can consume a genetic sample to create a perfect genetic duplicate of a form. Protean body that can and does constantly shift to better serve Marius's purposes at any given point in time. Post Alteran, works with precognition and blood rituals to constantly evolve body to be better.
-Enhanced senses. Able to shift to IR and UV vision, Daredevil like hearing, senses can't be overloaded or debilitating.
-A number of other rituals largely related to HP magic and basically entirely irrelevant outside of that setting as they were designed to work with and harness the specific metaphysical rules of that reality.
-Goa'uld provided a "base" body with a light speed nervous system, twenty thousand years of genetic memory (and consequent mastery level skills in basically every and any field you care to name), enhanced brain functioning, the ability to interface with most goa'uld exclusive tech, and physical capabilities that are across the board about five times what would be expected of a "peak human" in that area.
-Alteran "near-ascended" body. Basically anything that Cyla, Adria, a Prior, or Khalek was capable of as a starting point. Honestly, think stable 40k Psyker and you wouldn't be far off. Can supercharge other abilities
-Revan's Goa'uld symbol. https://i.ibb.co/DMBfYTd/abrasax-sigil.png
