"I forgot something today, didn't I?" Yu said as he rose from the sarcophagus. As soon as he set eyes on his First Prime, Oshu.

'Move the fleet to Shotawa.' Yu's order echoed in Oshu's memory.

Move them to the other end of the galaxy' that was all he heard. Good gods. Yu was insane.

Those words were a betrayal. Oshu had to call Miranda and tell her. The Union ships withdrew not long after. He was dishonored in the process of passing blame onto another.

Oshu listened to the bare success of attacking Anubis. He was shocked his God pulled them out. He was so stalwart against Anubis. His proud, last bastion of the old way. The comfortable, agreed upon, lie.

Yu was dying.

Worse still, he was forgetting. Forgetting what he stood for and his role in the ranks of heaven and the galaxy.

Oshu listened and prayed to something he called Yu but was beyond both of them. Because his god was painfully human.

Yu spoke to him everyday. Everyday, strategy, logistics, the details of running an empire. Though that came less and less everyday. The details were left to him alone. And the time that would normally be apportioned to those details went to cryptic conversation. Philosophy.

Late in the night, Yu would speak in metaphors and veil his words. Oshu would only skim the surface. He listened like moonlight on water, only seeing and reflecting the ions of the surface. He willed himself to look no further, despite Yu's persistence. Even when Yu gifted him with a millennia old text: The Tao Te Ching. It was an old Tau'ri text detailing a religion sans gods. There was an overarching force, but it was more a philosophy than a religion.

Oshu read it, chapter by chapter, in private. Privacy was a thing quite difficult to come by, even as a first prime. It spoke of gods learning and becoming something greater than they were. It posed questions to people. Question upon question, of how to live, how to exist, how to interpret the book's ineffable words.

"You forgot something." Oshu returned to his god. His god who could stand before him and see him nod and therefore was not eternal, was not invincible. His god whose existence was at once a blessing and a curse. Ostensibly immortal while slowly proved uncomfortably mortal.

His god crossed to his desk, took pen and paper, and wrote. Yu's robes swished along the ground as he turned. He walked past Oshu, but just before he passed his hand caught on his First Prime's forearm. Oshu thought it an accident at first, before Yu's palm traveled down to his hand. His God's fingers pressed a slip of paper to his hand.

Yu's hand tightened and so did Oshu's. "Soon, my son." His god whispered to him before sweeping out.

Oshu looked at the paper in his hand: "You are my heir." It read.

Gods did not need heirs.

That was the moment Oshu decided to visit the Shol'va.

"We had an agreement." Teal'c spoke before the cell door ground closed.

"You have not been betrayed." Oshu raised a hand to interrupt, "Not deliberately."

"I do not understand"

"My master is not well." Having taken one step in Oshu saw no reason not to take another. "He spends most of his time in the sarcophagus. He is there even now."

Teal'c was incredulous. "Why does he not take another host?"

"I believe he has reached the point where he is incapable." Even then he used too many words. Rather than the simple 'He can't do it' he drew it out over fifteen syllables. "Lord Yu is the oldest of the System Lords. He has reigned for countless centuries." He looked away in shame. But the words still spilled from his mouth. "But now I am beginning to fear that even Gods cannot live forever."

The Shol'va—Teal'c's words were half way between a proclamation and a comfort to one in mourning. "Lord Yu is not a god." Careful but forceful.

"There was a time I would have struck you down for speaking those words." Oshu felt empty, and he saw ghosts reflected in the metal around him. The gleam from his forehead mark shown bright along the bronze of the cell door. But all was as thin as that reflection.

"And now?"

Oshu schooled his lips and larynx to evenness. "He was convinced that Anubis was in the Shotawa System. And even though I knew this was not the case" He took a pause to reorder his defenses. "I could not contradict him."

That was the moment he knew—Oshu knew—unequivocally—that they had to call yet another player into the game.

The world and characters depicted in this story belong to Roland Emmerich, Dean Devlin, Jonathan Glassner, Brad Wright, and the Sci-Fi Channel. No profit is made of their use herein.

As always, all comments-encouraging, critiquing, or both-are welcome. Thanks for sticking with me. Some big stuff coming up for Hades and Ba'al. I am excited to write it and I hope you will like it when it comes out.