Tushar Srivastav

Chapter 22: The Throne and the Choker

Added 2025-07-03 14:15:37 +0000 UTC

Sam Carter's point of view

The smell was like ash and cedar.

Sam's first impression of Laconia was the strong, earthy smell that stuck to her uniform and hung in the air like ghosts of old fires. The Stargate shimmered behind her, and a ripple of unstable blue energy cut off the last sound of home. A broken world waited ahead.

Buildings that were almost pyramids and made of black obsidian surrounded the Stargate plaza. Useful. Very harsh. Effective. She realized they were bunkers. Defensive positions. And they were manned; tall, quiet figures stood at attention with staff-like weapons in their arms. Jaffa.

She swallowed and moved the strap of her duffel bag. She looked around with the soldier's eye she had kept all her years with the SGC. There were no clouds in the sky, which was a pale indigo color. Two distant moons hung like watching eyes on the horizon. And in the distance, there were ruins. Steel that was bent, stone that was burned, and scaffolding that was only half-built. This world had been at war not long ago.

But the ruins didn't bother her.

People stared at him in a strange way.

Harry walked ahead, with guards on either side of him. He was neither a prisoner nor an ally. A king. He moved like someone who was used to being obeyed. Someone who is serious. As he walked by, people bowed. Some went down on one knee, while others lay flat on the ground. And he... he hardly even noticed them.

The quiet man she had questioned on Earth was no longer there.

She didn't know what to think about what had taken his place.

They moved quickly through the city. There were roads that branched off from the plaza and ran between buildings like veins. Some were still piles of rubble, but others had been rebuilt. They were clean, sharp, and elegant in a way that felt both old and new. Drones flew above, silently guiding construction beams and power lines into place with perfect accuracy. Kids peeked out from behind doors and alleyways, their big eyes darting to Harry before they disappeared.

No one paid attention to her.

Not right away.

It wasn't anger. It was... being careful, as if Sam was something delicate or dangerous. Or not important.

When they got to the base of the citadel, Sam's boots were covered in ash. The building looked like a carved mountain from above, with tiers, angles, and veins of molten gold that glowed even in the daytime. It was beautiful like a blade, but twice as cruel.

She stopped at the door and looked at the glyphs carved into each stone. Some of them she knew from old dialects. Some were strange, changing, and hard to read.

A light pull on her sleeve made her jump. She looked around. Kreacher, the elf who Harry called his servant, glared at her.

He said, "Muggle is to come now," and his nose wrinkled in disgust. Your master told you to act right.

Sam almost said something back. But what would she say? That she didn't like being touched by a walking cryptid? That she hadn't agreed to any of this?

Instead, she followed along quietly. The oppressive grandeur of the place quickly drowned out the sound of her boots on the stone floor.

The throne room, or whatever it was, was huge.

The columns on the sides were carved with spirals and symbols that seemed to hum softly under her skin. Instead of fire, the torches burned with orange light that floated in the air. There was a throne at the end of the hall on a raised platform of black stone. It could have belonged to a pharaoh. Harry was in it.

Sam stopped just inside the door.

He looked... different here.

Not older. Not changed in any way. But the way he sat—relaxed, poised, and watching everything with that unnerving calm—was not how a man would sit. It was the way a king would appear.

One by one, Jaffa stepped forward to kneel and spoke in voices that were hard to hear. Harry listened, nodded, and spoke in low tones that made his guards stand up straighter. His words were sharp. Exact. In charge.

The SGC hadn't caught this man. Not completely.

And it wasn't the man she thought she knew for sure.

Kreacher called her over after the last Jaffa left and the room was quiet.

"This way to your room, Muggle. No wandering. No big bangs. Don't steal artifacts. Kreacher is keeping an eye on you.

Sam bit her cheek to keep from snapping back.

The hallway they went into was cleaner than the throne room. It had golden sconces and walls that sparkled with runes she didn't know. The air was cooler and cleaner here. And less noisy.

Not loud enough.

The room she was given was nothing like what she thought it would be.

A lot of space. Minimalist decorations. There was a big window that looked out over the city, and shelves were already full of datapads. The bed seemed too big. The desk was too shiny. The only rug had a fancy symbol made of gold thread woven into it. It looked like an eye or a starburst in some ways.

The choker pulsed again around her neck.

She absentmindedly touched it, her fingers brushing the rune.

Choker had come after she tried to get away for the first time. She had pulled on it, yelled at him, and threatened to sue him. It didn't matter at all. The choker didn't move. She now understood that the mark—Harry's mark—had slowly formed in the middle like a birthright.

And it did something to him.

It got warmer when he was around. Not uncomfortably, but... closely. Like something was resting on her throat. When he looked at her, it would thrum like a second pulse.

She didn't like it.

Not just because it meant control, surveillance, and a loss of freedom, but also because there was a part of her that didn't pull away. That looked at the rune late at night, figuring out how it was woven, how its energy was structured, and how it was built up in layers. It was brilliant. And beauty. It gave her the creeps.

"Damn him," she said out loud.

The choker didn't say anything.

She tried to sleep that night. The mattress was too soft. The quiet is too loud. Instead, she got up and walked to the desk, where she looked through the datapads that Kreacher had left behind. It was clear that they were meant for her: technical briefs, engineering specs, and even partially decrypted Ancient databases.

And at the center of all of them... Potentia.

A project? A rule? She had no idea. But it kept coming up, like a mission sewn into every plan.

If this world had time cycles like Earth, it was only around midnight when her body gave out.

The dreams came quickly. Shapes that are dark. Voices. People chanting in a language she didn't know. And there was always the feeling that someone was watching.

Not on purpose.

Just... with hope.

Like the necklace.

⟡

Kreacher showed up again the next morning before dawn.

"Muggle must get up. You have been given permission by the master to go to lower levels.

"Great," Sam groaned as she got out of bed. "Can't wait."

She put on standard off-world fatigues and zipped up her collar, ignoring the slight itch of the choker. It didn't matter. She would find a way to get rid of it eventually.

The elf took her through a lot of winding stairs until they got to a hallway that was very well guarded. Here, metal took the place of stone. The walls sparkled with hard light projections, and the air smelled like ozone. The Vault is at the end of the hall.

Old data banks.

Even though she didn't want to, Sam's eyes lit up.

They had been carefully put together, with a mix of physical objects and digital interfaces. Most of them were broken. Others were buried under layers of language that made it hard to read. But she knew this was where she could help.

Where she could study.

And if she was lucky, she might be able to figure out what Harry was making.

She was there for hours. Days.

No one bothered her. No one gave out jobs. It was like being accepted. Or looked at.

She read about rules for terraforming. Changes to old star charts. Plans for power lines that didn't follow the rules of physics. It was spellbinding. So annoying.

And alone.

She only saw Harry once, from a balcony. In the throne room again, their eyes met for a second before he turned away. He hadn't talked to her since he got there.

And then, one afternoon, everything changed.

She was halfway through decoding a grid protocol when she heard a noise that made her stop.

A quiet hoot.

Slowly, she looked up.

A snowy white owl sat quietly and majestically in the rafters above her.

Sam looked.

It looked back.

"You're not supposed to be here," she said softly.

The owl turned its head. Hooted again. Stay calm. Sure.

It slowly floated down with strong wings and landed on the edge of her desk, its talons tapping softly.

Sam's throat got dry.

"You're his, aren't you?" she asked.