Time flew by. The day to day of running an empire and raising young dragon gods took up all of my focus. The children had taken over finding planets. It was almost a hobby with them. Worlds opened up to us like a field of wildflowers in the spring. Haladoria watched over them as best she could, but she knew that there was no way she could keep up with them. One nice thing about having planar god-lings for your children, they never stayed out all night. It didn’t matter what happened in the day, there were five dragons in the caldera that night. They knew their mothers pain and were there with her as much as they could be.

The children were a mystery to all but themselves. They never spoke to each other, but after the lord dragon crack, when they projected to the entire population, we had a pretty good idea how they talked. They grew, but not as a dragon would. They were almost twelve feet long by this point, but it was linear. Dragons had growth spurts. Hatchling to juvenile, juvenile to adult, adult to ancient. It was only after they hit ancient that they had any steady growth, and that took centuries. A lot of them.

Strangely, everyone knew them by name. Even though there was no way to tell them apart… at least that I had found. They were beautiful. I had studied their scales, the shimmering white was deep within. It was hard to look into their eyes for very long. The vertical eye slit was there, but the glowing colors around it would pull you in. The talons and horns looked, at first to be the only normal dragon trait that they had, until you looked closer. They were black, but it was so deep that they looked like all of space was inside their claws.

The ship? Well that was another mystery. It sat in the back of my mind like an itch I couldn’t scratch. It had to be moving at a very high rate of speed when it came though the portal. The portal, a miscalculation? Sabotage? The rings suggested escape pods, or the equivalent. The gods, crew on the ship? Command? Or were they only game related? Then the question of why they couldn’t tell me. Ta was around so much now that she was almost part of the family. Then the comment that they had found blessing under my rule…

“You worry too much father.” Ronan said in my mind.

I looked down into the eyes of my son. “It is a thing I do to keep the things I don’t worry about from biting my tail.”

He let out a tinkling, almost bell like laugh. Their voices were still developing. “You will know soon.”

I stared at him as he let his head sink back down.

“What do you make of that, Michael?” Arienach said in my mind.

“I don’t know.” I replied looking out from the cone.

Then there were the people. I stared out at the lands around me. There was no dissension, no unrest, no rebellion. I thought back to Torgos. The pirates there had taken over almost half the island, the empire comes calling and suddenly they are all wanting to join and they lived happily ever after. Once part of the empire, they fell into place like a well oiled machine. They were creative, cooperative and quite productive. I sighed. There was a picture here, but I was just not seeing it. Was the way the people responded just the way of the game? None of them could see it for themselves. They had bright personalities and their lives almost sparkled. I shook my head. Maybe it was just me.

Just me. Time seemed fragmented. I didn’t see things unless they were… what? Necessary? Important? I had watched the land around my lair grow, but I hadn’t really seen it. I didn’t notice the small things unless they were pointed out to me. I knew I was more dragon than human now. Having two minds merging… I was still me, but I wasn’t. Most the time I was content unless, I laughed at myself, I worried about it. I heard Ronan chuckle in my mind. Arienach joined him.

I was the dragon god emperor… shut up and deal with it.

It was later that day, while I was at the Dragons Head with Haladoria, Dorvus, Darhla and Shryke, I got a call from Eric.

“Father, you should come see this.”

I sat bolt upright in my chair. Somehow he had told me where he was as he had spoke to my mind.

“Michael. What is the matter?” Haladoria looked at me curiously.

“I just had Eric tell me that there is something I should see.”

“Where is he?” Shryke asked.

“Almost half way across the galactic plane.” I replied wonderingly.

“I would be joinin ya, but I seem ta be lackin wings.” Dorvus chuckled. Still he looked concerned.

The others said they would come, so we left the pub and went to the docks. The normal flight formed up and I opened a portal.

At first, I couldn’t see what the fuss was about. It looked like one of a thousand different worlds. Quite alive, the sky was clear… then I saw them. They were so old that they were almost completely hidden. Partially buried ruins. Eric met us then flew to what could have been a harbor… it was hard to tell. As we flew over it, I got a perspective in the size. It was vast. I looked out over the city, what I could make out of it. It was almost completely buried and covered with vegetation. I circled higher while the others landed. From the looks of it this city as almost as large as Torgos.

I finally landed. The others were still in dragon form. I think that this place had them unnerved. The dock I landed on was quite wide but it was cluttered with mounds and small hills. Creation and earth… I lifted the earth and plants away to see what was underneath. It wasn’t a big section… for a dragon, but at least we would get a look. The dock looked to be metal, if there was any wood in the construction, it had long since rotted away. It looked like it had tracks set in two rows on either side running parallel to the length. Metal boxes of some type, some broken open. Whatever was inside was long since gone, save for scraps of metal in the debris. There were other strange things laying here and there. I suddenly realized I was looking at machines.

We had found the ruins of a very advanced civilization. Well, compared to where we were. I had no scale to measure it against the ship back home. Haladoria had peeled a layer back from the face of a building and I could see some glass and whatever the metal was in the construction. There was also what looked like concrete. Haladoria seemed fascinated with the glass. I couldn’t help but smile. Darhla came over with what looked like some kind of scooter in her mouth. I held back the mental image of a dog playing fetch. She put it down and looked at me.

“What are these things?” She asked.

“I am not sure. We need to bring in the wyvern and map this place. If there are no threats, I think we should turn it over to the people to look at, they may be able to figure this stuff out.” Part of me felt a little guilty for lying, but no one knew, save the gods and the children… they had to know, that I wasn’t just a dragon.

Shryke came up a few minutes later. “Michael, this place is strange. I cannot help but wonder what happened.”

I looked around at what I could see. “Yes. This place looks amazingly intact for how old it must be.”

The children made an appearance, landing on Haladoria’s back.

“What will we do, father?” Tristan asked. Her stare was a little too intense and I looked away.

“Map it and give it to the races if it is safe.”

They nodded.

The planet was indeed safe. The wyvern came back with their report; nothing harmful. The largest predator was along the lines of a jungle cat, but they were well away from the cities. Most of the world was populated by these cities which argued a very large civilization… when it was alive. We hadn’t found any remains, but the doors we had found were about the same size as what we used. I could see no real harm, so I turned it over to the races.

They went after the city with a will. Haladoria, the children and I cleared as much as we could. The city stretched farther than I had originally thought, since it has suburbs surrounding it. I had found what I thought was a power plant, but saw no wires to transfer the energy. Probably buried. The roads were all paved with what looked like asphalt or whatever passed for it here. They were amazingly intact as well. I did find an airport on the south side of town. The wrecks there looked to be only slightly advanced over what I we had had back on earth.

The people, for the most part, didn’t report unless they saw something that they considered important. They recognized the planes immediately, but were puzzled by what made them fly. The vehicles on the streets and in the garages were puzzles for them as well. They were about to make a major leap into the future. I detected no magic in anything that they brought to show me, so this would be strictly technology. There was a major party when they discovered the library. Hundreds descended on in. The books were dissected and transcribed. Then they set about learning how to read them.

The tradesmen found machine shops and service areas and were learning as fast as the others. The dragons went from city to city, just looking at the shapes and reporting anything that looked different. That was how we found the spaceport. Again it didn’t look to far advanced from what we had back on earth. After we cleared the debris, it was remarkably intact as well. I surveyed the facility with a growing unease. Of the cities we had uncovered, none looked damaged beyond age. We had also found no remains. We had pictures now. The houses and buildings were full of them. They were human.

The people seemed to have adopted a policy of not disturbing the cities any more than they had to. Alistor told me that they didn’t want to do anything that would disturb the memory of the people who used to live here. They were making a planet memorial, it seemed. That didn’t stop them from pulling samples of just about everything they found. They had set up something akin to a research lab on one of the other planets we weren’t using and it was growing fast. I did a tour of the place and had to look away when I found something that just had to be a cell phone.

The part of the building that was dedicated to books was growing as well. They hadn’t taken long at all to be able to read what they had found, but they were puzzled that some of the books were in different dialects. Eventually they found that the dialects were from different regions. Except for the shape of the landmasses, this could have been earth. The parallels were uncanny. The major question was where was everyone? What happened? Did they just clock out from work one day and say, hey! Lets disappear and leave no trace.

“You are troubled Michael.” Ta had appeared.

I had never seen her off planet before. “Well, from what I can tell, the inhabitants of this planet just disappeared for no reason.”

Ta looked around. “We do not know. Our scope was limited and this happened before we arrived.”

“Have you ever see anything like this?” I asked watching her.

“No. The pattern of development is pretty standard. Entire populations disappearing is not.”

“From what we can tell, the wildlife is intact. There is no sign of damage whatsoever, save what time has done.”

Ta paused a moment. “Maybe it was something that targeted intelligent life?”

I snorted. “Then where are the politicians?”

She stared at me for a moment, then laughed. “I had to find the references for that. You had a low opinion of them.”

“Sorry, that was a sore spot for me. I find it hard to respect someone who is for sale to the highest bidder and does not do the job that they agreed to do.”

She shrugged. “I could see that being a problem, seeing as they set your laws.”

“Doesn’t help here though. I suppose all we can do is keep our eyes open. This happened a very long time ago.”

“Truth. We will keep watch.”

“Thank you.”

She smiled and disappeared. Typical Ta fashion.

It was about a month or so later when the people figured out how electricity works. Almost. The next lesson after that was sudden and taught them about rotting insulation and what shorts could do. They had replaced one of the reactors at the power plant at the space port with a crystal that was tapped to the energy plane. Apparently, the children taught them the enchantment. When it went online, it caused quite a few fires before the feed lines completely shorted an tripped the breakers.

They studied the problem and figured out how to make their own wires. To be honest, I kept out of it. I seriously doubted that anything electronic would have survived that long, but I figured it would be an exercise in learning for them. It seems I was wrong. The bunkers where control and several of the labs were sealed. They had discovered computers. What they couldn’t find in all of the papers and books they found on hard drives.