SG-1 is caught in the middle of a war after the Jaffa use a powerful weapon to kill 10,000 Ori followers.

During their quest for the Sangraal, SG-1 must join forces with their enemy and face a real-life dragon.

The SG-1 team hadn't counted on a real dragon as a guardian until one flies out, breathing fire. However, Daniel thinks the Sangraal probably is a hologram. They escape, but the dragon follows them outside. Ba'al admits not to know its secret name, while Daniel believes that the name probably holds power over it. While they guess, Cam thinks of luring the dragon to blow it up, but the C4 barely impresses its digestion. Daniel makes it disappear by using Morgan le Fay's name in Ancient, Ganos Lal. They find it had guarded the frozen 'grave' of the realm's arch-magician, Merlin (or rather, Myrrdin). Vala accidentally triggers a mechanism which revives Merlin when she approaches an Ancient repository device. In the meantime, the team is transported to another planet via the obelisk by the gate outside. Sam surmises that the gate and obelisk are programmed to dial automatically every few hours and transport them to a set of planets that are cut off from the rest of the gate system. Unfortunately, they can't dial out to any other planets either while the program is operating. When he comes to, Merlin seems to confuse the team and Ba'al, with Arthurian characters, but once convinced they are on the same side, he goes to work with the Ancient device to create the Sangraal. Merlin dies at the device, wishing them good luck and referring to one last task. Ba'al's stargate programming skills now seem their only chance. Daniel tries the Ancient repository device himself, but is knocked unconscious. Meanwhile, Adria keeps searching for them via the stargate dialing program on different planets- each time a bit quicker- being one planet behind them. While she is searching, the team is once again transported to another planet, minus Merlin's body. Daniel awakens with valuable memories from Merlin and tries to construct the Sangraal using the repository device again, in exhaustingly intense phases, and finds it also gives him telekinetic powers. It also messes with Daniel's mind, having two different personalities and memories present (his own and Merlin's). Before he can finish the work, Sam and Ba'al disengage the dialing device, just as Adria's Ori troops arrive, allowing SG-1 to escape. Adria is able to capture Daniel before he can escape as well.

Daniel Jackson, who was left behind fighting off Adria while the other SG-1 members escaped through the Stargate, is found working as a Prior: the best in the business, who doesn't need to use any threats to talk people into conversion to Origin. Hoping there is still some of his personality left, the team (plus General Jack O'Neill) kidnaps him. Daniel explains how he temporarily has Merlin's personality and knowledge in himself, and had deliberately allowed Adria to turn him into a Prior, while delaying to finish Merlin's weapon she'd wanted, meanwhile hoping to get an Ori ship for Earth's side. But time is running out, since the team took unexpectedly long to capture him. Still, the generals, Carter, and Vala are most reluctant to go along with releasing him and opening the wormhole he needs to bring the weapon through. Even the White House wants to kill him, or at best, keep him in stasis until he is reverted to his human nature by Merlin's genetic manipulation. But then his plan is wasted- unless the others can be trained to do it in his place (so only they are at risk, not the entire galaxy in case Daniel is Adria's Trojan Horse). After giving them the necessary information, Daniel suddenly frees himself while Richard Woolsey is with him and takes control of a space ship after beaming up Jack too, just after the others have undertaken their mission to Adria's lair, where Daniel, about to be genetically reverted, arrives just in time to tip the balance in their favor.

Vala gambles, wins a cargo ship, but is found cheating; then Adria appears, throws everyone out and claims she has a new Ori fleet and an operational intergalactic Stargate. Vala tells her scary daughter how she helped Daniel, after a dream, reading the mysterious clava thessara-symbol's mystery, which led to a single planet address, where Athena's treasure house must be; after a disastrous visit there, the team refused to follow the next interpretation, fearing it's just a trap set up by Adria, so Vala is declared a security risk, grounded and confined to Area 51, but escapes through the Stargate. Adria takes her along as she hears the team still plans to visit the address, by starship. Upon arrival, they are trapped by SG-1, which however finds itself surrounded by lord Ba'al's troops. Ba'al uses the rings to beam up Adria into an electromagnetic cage in his starship. Back on Earth, General Landry worries what damage the two might do together and wants Adria back. Daniel and Sam now show Vala she has been implanted by Galaran technology with fake recollections of her entire adventure 'til the meeting with Adria. Even though she claims that's impossible, Ba'al is confident he can take control over Adria's loyal Ori troops through her- by implanting a symbiote. The team finds Ba'al's Jaffa and clones killed by symbiote poison, except one Jaffa who secretly used tretonin. The team ring-beams from the cloaked Odyssey starship into Ba'al's, shoots him and captures Adria, but back on Earth, she is found to be under the control of his symbiote. Instead of just killing the evil double, they contact the Tok'ra which send Ta'Seem to extract the symbiote and replace it with a Tok'ra one, but Ba'al manages to poison Adria, who has to be put down. Suddenly Adria wakes up, uses mind-power barricading herself in the sick bay with Vala, tells them she needs time to prepare for ascension, as Daniel guesses outside, and succeeds before the team can cut their way in by blow torch. Nobody knows what this will mean for the future, especially as it remains uncertain whether the Ori are still alive. If not, she may have gained all their former powers, and at least one clone of Ba'al still remains...