US Air Date: 25/01/2008

Writer: Martin Gero

Director: William Waring

On a visit to one of Atlantis’s important trading partners, Sheppard and McKay meet a 13-year-old princess, Harmony, who must make a traditional pilgrimage alone to the ruins of the Temple of Laros before she can be crowned as her people’s new queen. Because Harmony is so young, one of her sisters begs the visitors from Atlantis to serve as secret bodyguards for the girl on her dangerous journey. Sheppard and McKay reluctantly accept the job.

Harmony turns out to be demanding and self-centred, and tensions soon rise between her and McKay. Three Genii soldiers ambush the group; Sheppard shoots them but dozens more are on their way. Because the details of the pilgrimage are supposed to be a state secret, someone in the royal family must have betrayed Harmony’s location to the Genii.

Sheppard and McKay decide to return to town but harmony slips away, determined to complete her quest. They track her to a cave and hide overnight, while outside a mysterious beast attacks the Genii soldiers.

The next morning, the trio reaches the Temple, which turns out to be a mass of Ancient ruins. After Sheppard stuns two Genii guarding the site, McKay discovers that this is where the Ancients designed their drone weapons. The beast is actually a cluster of drones that patrols the forest and kills those who do not carry the Ancient gene. Like McKay and Sheppard, Harmony has the gene. She also carries a pendant that McKay thinks is an Ancient access key to control the drones. The Genii attack but Sheppard uses the pendant to control the drones and defeat them.