I was laying in my pool staring at the sky. Strange things had happened back on the dead world. Funny, the elves like to name everything, but they refused to name that planet. It was officially the dead world. The people were digging deeper into the records from the space center. They had discovered several more in rooms that were sealed. The children opened the rooms for them. Security locks didn’t stand a chance against a planar. I had been told that only about a third of the computers the people had found had worked. So they read the fracking manual and found out what a hard drive was.

They were piecing together something about a mission to the fifth planet. The children went there, but couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary. It had a high metallic ore composition and they had no real coordinates to work off of. That was what the people were working on. They had already found an installation on the moon of that world. It was a sad affair. A simple dome with an airlock. They did recover a computer from it however. Space is a good preservative, it would seem.

I sighed.

“Problem love?” Haladoria snuggled in next to me.

“Not really… at least nothing more than we already have.”

“You worry too much.” She smiled as she said it.

“Someone has too.”

“I have an idea. Why don’t we fly down and see the girls. You have been neglecting them terribly.”

I laughed. Who could argue with logic like that?

The day was pretty relaxed so far. I was trying to keep my mind off the empire for a while. Too many questions, not enough answers. Of course, it couldn’t last.

“Father, we found something.” Ronan sounded pretty excited.

I rousted Haladoria and told her of the message. We left the girls sleeping and ported to the coordinates he gave me. We came out over the fifth planet and dropped like a rock, there was no atmosphere. We suddenly slowed and touched down. Haladoria was shaken, but she recovered quickly. I had no clue how we could survive with no atmosphere, but as planar dragons, it came with the package.

We made our way over to an area that had been cleared out. There were three domes and something in an open space just beyond them. I walked over and looked at it. It was a ring with a bunch of cables coming from it. It looked broken on one side and I could see a platform. It probably stood vertical on the platform, was my first thought.

“It is a portal.” Tristan said as she appeared next to me.

I tried to speak and remembered, no atmosphere.

She laughed. “You should learn mind speak, father.”

I thought about it for a second. “Call me old fashioned.”

“Very good. We are in the dome now retrieving the drives from the machines there.” She said.

“What do you think this is about?” I was getting used to projecting my thoughts now.

“Not so loud, love. You are pushing a bit hard there, they probably hear you back on Dragonhaven.” Haladoria laughed.

“Sue me, I am new at this.”

“You are fine, father. We will work with you later if you wish.” Tristan said with a chuckle. “We are keeping the conversation local, however.”

“You are a bit loud.” Eric said. “We have the drives, lets head back.”

I was bemused as I watched Eric and Ronan walk through the wall of the dome.

“Father, you do not use half of your powers.” Tristan chided me.

“I have never needed them.” I replied.

“If you do need them, you won’t have them… or the fine control.” Ronan argued.

We ported back to the dead world. I looked around and was curious to find that no one was around except us dragons. Haladoria and I shifted and followed the children into one of the buildings. It was deserted as well.

“We are not sure if we wish to release this bit of information to the people.” Ronan explained.

“Why not?” Haladoria asked.

“Because it goes beyond dangerous. You are now a planar and father hasn’t taken you across planes for a reason.”

She looked at me curiously, then turned back to Ronan. “I am sure he has his reasons.”

I chuckled. “No need to defend my actions, love. Yes I do have my reasons. One of which is that you can go to places like, say, the chaos plane or to the lower realms and not be able to return. The other reason is quite selfish. I do not want to lose you out there if you become lost while exploring. I’ve gotten quite attached to having a snuggle dragon.”

She stuck her tongue out at me. “Love you too dear. But it should be safer now.”

“Safer is not safe. You were not born a planar, mother. Father is right to worry, as we worry about both of you. Neither of you were born gods. Even though Father has, as he puts it, read the fracking manual, it is not the same as having the reflexive reactions of your abilities.” Eric explained quietly.

“Your noninterference policies have worked quite well with the people to this point. But cases such as this, where we are not sure what we are dealing with, you should have all of your resources available to you, father.” Tristan chided.

“We cannot do this for you, you must do it for yourself.” Ronan said, staring at me.

Ronan had walked over to a crystal tablet on the floor. With his forelegs, he plugged one of the drives in. A second crystal lit up on the wall and resolved into pictures and data from the drive. It looked much like the displays I was familiar with back before I came here. As I watched him work, I thought about all that had happened and the time it would take me to learn my full powers. I mentally sighed, it seemed a daunting task.

“We will help you father, it need not take that much time and we can watch over your people for you. Mother should be included on this as well, even though we were able to give her some instruction with her gift.” Tristan said quietly.

I sighed as I watched Ronan work. The children were right of course. They knew more than we did. I had the feeling that they knew about the ship and the gods as well. Strangely, I trusted their judgment. I found myself staring at the crystal that Ronan was using and wondered at it.

“We found where the original machines were made and recovered the designs. Rather ingenious the way they manipulated electricity and magnetic fields to almost make those things think. I wasn’t hard to build layered crystal latices to work the same as their machines." Eric explained to me with a smile.

“So now you have them working off of mana.” I chuckled. “Magic computers.”

“Computers is a base term, but acceptable I suppose. These are far beyond the calculators that they were using. We intend to let the people catch up to the technical aspects before integrating the magical.” Ronan cocked his head and looked at me. “Your trust issues are understandable and not really issues. Any of what they have learned so far can be abused. And too large a jump can make one fall.”

“Your servant analogy is quite accurate. We must watch over them so they do not fall. They have came so far.” Tristan added.

Ronan froze for a second. “As these fell. I have found where the people of this world went.” He said sadly. “Their portal worked, however there is no record of what happened after they opened it. They probably didn’t have time to do anything. Their portal opened on the demon plane.”

Eric disappeared. His words hadn’t quite been understood by Haladoria yet, and Tristan just started shaking. I felt numb. They must have feasted well that day. An entire planet of souls in one go. I watched as Eric returned, the displaced air making a loud pop in the room.

“It is done, I destroyed the base and the lab on the moon. We will have to watch the people carefully when they achieve the ability to make portals." Eric said with a tired sigh.

I reflected on his words. He was quite right. They would eventually figure out portals on their own. We would have to step in at that point and teach them the dangers and responsibilities that came with them. They were good people, but even good people could make mistakes.

I felt immensely tired after what we had learned. Then something occurred to me. “What about scouts?”

Haladoria looked at me strangely. “Scouts?”

“We have not detected anything that used mana for life, but we were not looking for them. We should bring back the wyvern and have them scan again.” Ronan said.

“Scouts, as in someone left behind to see if anyone came back to the world so the demons could return.” Tristan explained.

Haladoria froze. “They would do that?”

“I know I would in their position. An empty world that was just made to be explored. It would make a perfect trap.”

“Our portals are keyed so that no one who is not of the people can use them.” Ronan looked an me with a lopsided smile. “It seems that fathers paranoia has worked in our favor to this point.”

“The wyvern didn’t find anything their first scan, why would they now?” I mused.

“Because this time we know what we are looking for.” Eric said just before he disappeared again.

“Quarantine the planet. Take what we can to study back home.” I said quietly. “Once the people are out, destroy all of the portals except for one. Make sure it is in and obscure place and remove the keys.”

Haladoria’s eyes widened. “Why would you do such a thing? They could find us then.”

I smiled sadly. “Not if the remaining portal is set to the chaos plane.”

Ronan nodded. “It would discourage them from searching any deeper into this realm.”

Tristan disappeared. Probably to start evacuation. Ta appeared in her place.

“We would help with this.” She said simply.

“Get the people off this planet as fast as possible. And make sure nothing else goes with them.”

Ta disappeared. I commanded the gods. I just shook my head.

Eric reappeared. “Gremlins” He said. “There are ten on this continent, the wyvern are scanning the others as we speak.”

“Set a filter on the portals and scan everything that has been taken from this world. Lets get moving.”

It didn’t take long, all things considered. I did something I rarely ever did. I commanded them to leave. They simply dropped what they were doing and left. The portal screens had caught one trying to sneak back with us, I almost laughed, he was hiding in a cell phone. I always thought those were the work of the devil. We had the wyvern do one last scan then we left the world. The scans of the things that were brought back turned up nothing. We made sure to check for residual mana traces, as even with the gremlin stealth skill, they had to use magic to remain undetected.

We got lucky.

The demons didn’t have the skill to raise a portal without a lot of work, but I wasn’t going to allow them the chance to build a portal. They didn’t need to be in our plane. After everything was settled, I went back and nudged one of the planets further out-system. I was going to make the pool shot from hell. I sensed a build up on the dead world, so I pushed harder. Suddenly, there was twelve gods and the children helping. I had to correct course because of the acceleration, but when they hit… The dead planet held together long enough to soak up the kinetic energy from the ‘pool ball’ and was knocked from orbit as it started coming apart. The others left, but I stayed and watched for a while. It wasn’t a perfect shot, but the sun is a huge pocket and I was sure the planet would hit it.

Haladoria, the gods and the children were waiting for me as I returned. I cocked my head as they surrounded me, then the world disappeared in a white light. The light faded after a few moments and I knew. They had connected me with my powers and I understood what the children meant. I felt them all. I let myself travel outward and I could feel all of the people as well. I looked at the children and they just grinned at me. Ta bowed to me and her and the other gods went back to the ship. I could feel them now and knew where they were. I thought back on the day and suddenly, I was tired. It had been so close.

I looked over to Haladoria with a slight smile. “What say we see if the girls are awake?”

The children laughed and went back to the caldera.

She grinned. “Yes, lets.”