8

Goliath didn't come back to the cave until morning. The shuttle hadn't left yet so I couldn't just go out freely like I did when we were alone with the wolves. I figured something like this would happen more often now that the world had settled, and that meant I needed to get off planet for a while. Hiding someone Aurora's size would be easy. Hiding someone my size was pretty much impossible.

I was the proverbial bull in the china shop. It was a lot easier to hide in some poorly maintained guild settlement off planet then it was the camera infested earth we lived on now. I looked around the cavern multiple times. There were even a few additional tunnels that had been sealed off a long time ago. The first one I went down was filled with things that had long since disintegrated.

From the shape of the floor, and the placement of the disintegrated stuff I guessed it was some sort of bedroom. The kind a young dragon would have found comfortable. The next was full of magical equipment that had long since lost the power of the crystals they were made of. The metal was even beginning to degrade. The racks they had been on were little more than dust.

The last room had one shelf on the back wall. Built straight into the stone. With four crystals that were meant to be recharged, and reused. There was a magic circle built into the wall that looked as if the crystal went in the center. I didn't know what it was used for, but Gaia had sent us to this place because she knew something about it.

I had charged one of them about halfway, and found that I could charge it or use mana from it freely. Since the magic circle, and the crystals were in the same room I assumed that they had to be related in some way. I was suspicious of the crystals, but my passive mana generation was high enough that I wondered what would happen if I placed the crystal in the slot at the center of the magic circle.

"What are you thinking about?" Goliath drew my attention back to him while Aurora was playing with the laces of his boots.

"The future," I tapped my talons on the stone floor, "Humanity has forgotten a large portion of their history. The most important thing being the impact origin species have on the survival of the world. Dragon's are earth's origin species. They won't believe that until they have some sort of proof, and that would mean letting the world die, but we can't allow that to happen for obvious reasons."

"Origin species," Goliath looked at me, "What do you mean the world will die without the origin species?"

"That's why the elves stopped their assault, and didn't take the world with their first attack," I stared at Aurora playing, "They couldn't. As long as our world still has the life mana that originated here they can't live here without being poisoned by the very mana that keeps this world alive." I looked up into Goliath's eyes, "That's why they needed to kill the dragons off in the first place. They invited a full scale attack from the dragons by picking off the young, and then sealed the space around our world when the dragons took the bait."

"How do you know?" Goliath was fully invested in what I had to say now.

"Those dragon crystals I absorbed," I clicked my talons off the floor, "Mana makes up a large amount of a dragon's life force. Memories can become intertwined with a creatures mana along with emotions if they use it enough."

Dragons were practically built with mana. That much Goliath could even figure out with how much I could use it at will. Even now as big as I was I barely weighed nine hundred pounds. My body alone was close to the size of a full size car. I could increase or decrease my weight at will using my shapeshifting skill.

It didn't just change my size, and shape. It was far more versatile then I'd originally thought. It was going to be a long haul before I made it to my next evolution. The XP requirement made it kind of obvious.

"I need to get off the planet for a while," I stared at Goliath, "Can you arrange something?"

"Won't you get mana poisoning?" Goliath asked.

"As long as I avoid using the natural mana of whatever planet I'm on I should be fine," I stared into Goliath's eyes unflinching as I tapped my talons on the stone floor, "My main concern is how do I keep funneling mana to his world while I'm off world, but I may have a solution to that as well."

I thought back to the crystals in one of the hidden rooms. It wouldn't take me long to fill it if I funneled all my extra mana into it. My body kept producing mana even if my reserve was full so why let that go to waste. I just needed to figure out if the magic circle in that room did what I thought it did. My wings twitched at the thought.

It wouldn't be hard to find out. The crystal I'd been filling with mana. It was only half full I could see what kind of effects it had when I inserted the crystal into the slot at the heart of the magic circle. I shifted so that I was resting more on the other side of my body. It was harder to ignore my body falling asleep with my weight sitting on one side while I was awake.

"I'll see what I can do about getting you, and your friends off planet," Goliath stood up slowly, "What about little miss here?"

He gestured toward Aurora. Savannah, and Jax were practicing their mana manipulation in Jax's room. Ethan was leaned up against the wall. Listening to us talk calmly.

"She will be staying here for now," I shrugged, "She's small enough that she should be able to stay off the radar. For a while at least."