Young Writers Society

"You're out for vengeance, too, huh?" she looks up, green eyes filled with tears that she fights to suppress. "I never had a family. Not a two-legged one, anyways. I don't know why they abandoned me, but they did. I was glad for it, though, because the wolves found me. They raised me, taught me, trained me. But then....I came home one day. I was sixteen. Returned to the den, but the hunters had gotten there first. Wolf fur is expensive, valued, and harder and harder to find. I tracked them down, I killed them. The whole camp. Just like they did to us...but I can't stop, I won't. I kept going. Finding more fur-hunters, trappers, finding my revenge."

When he heard her utter those words, it was as if he was listening to a much younger version of him speak. What happened on Kartiel hadn't been the first time the people he loved had been ruthlessly taken away from him; it was just the scar that had been the last to be inflicted. Ra had dealt him a similar blow all of those years ago. And, like her, he had sworn vengeance on every last one of the Goa'uld. It had been a foolish goal then. Stuck on Earth, with no way to fight against them. Even now it would be difficult to pull off something of that magnitude.

But Rowan had a better chance that he ever had. She wasn't separated by light years of space; all she had to do was find them and enact her revenge. For the sake of her aching heart, he hoped she would. It wouldn't bring her family back. But it would give those who do others wrong the justice they deserved, and that was the best way to honor the memories of the lost.

She looks down, jaw clenched as a tear finally finds its way down her cheek. If only she was truly and utterly mortal; then she wouldn't have to live for an indefinite amount of time with this bloodlust and twisted agony that tore her apart. If only she was human, if the wolves hadn't taken her in, if they'd just killed her instead. If only the demons had never came.

He got to his feet. His heart still ached, but it always had. They had been upset long enough, and it was time to change that. He still didn't know what they were going to do. The only thing he was certain of was that he needed to learn more about the people in the vision. His people were gone. The truth hurt, and the vision had been a merciless reminder of that. But if he didn't know the complete ending to their story, how could he consider it over?

"They would probably be near here," Maahes suddenly announced, looking around them. "I think our best option is to find other people; anyone living here is either a descendant of that civilization or would be knowledgeable about the ruins."

"Or they're all dead. Whatever happened seems fairly likely to have been simple annihilation of the civilization here," Rowan points out.

"I've seen and heard of things like this before in my travels," he objected. He put his hands into his pockets and surveyed the area around them for any sign of intelligent life. "There might be a family that wasn't there, and their descendants may have passed down the stories for generations. Even if they had died out, anyone near here probably has legends about it or has an archeologist. The archeologist would be of a better help, but I'm not too bad with figuring out where fact and fiction are separated in myths."

"Well, there's no harm in looking, I suppose." She raises her glove and Shyriik leaps to it. "Alright, girl, go and scout for us, will you?"

Sending Shyriik out meant another period of time where they were limited to small talk and waiting. Small talk in itself wasn't bad, but he rarely had to do it anymore; the few times when he did, it had become incredibly awkward. This had been the case with their previous conversations. While grateful for Shyriik's ability to quickly survey an area, he wished they had been the ones going out instead.

She moves towards the ruins in a grid pattern, kneeling low and scanning the ground for tracks with a practiced eye. Unbeknownst to her, her bow starts glowing almost imperceptibly with a white light traced with pale green.

He stared at the bow. Was it supposed to glow, or was something else at play? His attention shifted to her face. She seemed entirely oblivious to it. "Is your bow supposed to do that?"

"Do what?" as she stands upright, the glow disappears.

"It-it's gone now," he incredulously said, watching the bow with wide eyes. It had been glowing only moments before. Why had it suddenly stopped? "Your bow was glowing white - though I think there might have been a little light green tint to it."

She nods with understanding and shrugs. "I must've inadvertently awoken it."

"Awoken?" he repeated. Was some sort of mysterious magic he had never heard of at play here? He peered over at the bow. It looked normal now, but that didn't explain why it had suddenly decided to wake up or whatever it had done.

She nods. "That's what I said."