If one could ascribe emotions to the inflexible golden scaled features of His head, then The Golden Dragon Lord was viewing the human female on the other side of the Viewing Portal with frigid disdain.
"And to what do I owe the displeasure of your presence Maleficent ?" hissed The Dragon Lord. He had been able to decide his responses in advance, otherwise he might have been more wary.
"I would like you to answer a simple question for The Blue Fairy" snapped Maleficent in her most petulant manner. Yes, thought the Dragon Lord, and that's how you put everyone's back up, including Me when you broke our bargain. You annoyed The Evil Queen even before She demanded The Dread Curse back. The fact that he had been far-spying on their amusingly poisonous conversation was something to keep for another time.
"I already know the question" hissed The Dragon Lord without wishing to explain how He knew in advance. Remote far-spying was a perk of either the metapsychicly gifted or those with advanced meta technology. He had access to both and wanted to create as much unease as possible since only the likes of The Sibylline Witches were supposed to be able to know such things. "The answer is far from simple".
"Then will you tell us how to get the child safely to the World Without Magic?" asked Maleficent, now feeling rather uneasy.
"And what do I get out of it?" He hissed using the double voice only his bird like syrinx could produce. He was feeling a bit throaty and really needed another bath in the hot pool. The last one had not been hot enough as His new junior valet, a squire He had recently captured along with it's previous master, a Knight Errant currently chained up in the dungeon, was obediently docile but not yet fully house trained.
The Blue Fairy seemed to swell with indignation.
"Throughout my life I have had to deal with those who want something of value and can pay for it, yet expect to get it for nothing. Generally Noble trash and Wizards". Maleficent was both, well, minor nobility and an accomplished Witch.
The Blue Fairy accepted the point and un-swelled, asking "What do you want?"
"From you, nothing. I will give you an answer and help in any way that I can to break the curse. As you know, the Imp actually wants the curse to be broken so that He can get to His son. But there are dangers that even He does not appreciate. There are powers even greater than magic to contend with in this matter, and the World Without Magic is neither as bereft of magic as it seems, nor as primitive as He and You would assume. There are other ways besides magic to get things done"
Like building the Medieval Decor Dragon Towers where He now lived with His son's Alex and Liam and their grown up broods, in one of the deep fertile ravines on an otherwise airless world (1) . The Dragon Lord continued :
"From, Maleficent, I want what I wanted long ago, male children"
Maleficent had made a bargain with him but run off after learning the Dragon form morphing spell he had devised for her. Continuing :
"There is time for the children to be born before The Dread Curse is unleashed. I shall care for them, all of them". The "all of them" would please Maleficent, who had few maternal feelings. However, his real reason was to ensure their safety. As He had looked into the Time Vortex in metaconcert with His sons and The Daemon Lord also known as The Source, He knew something of what The Evil Queen was planning. He might have learned more, but the constant disruption of The Vortex by the passage of sentient organic Lymlak ships (4), sentient organo-metallic Simbari colony ships (4), the Vorlon Fleet of worlds, The Shadow's Crystal Planet, and the odd Tardis on Time Lord business, was too much of a distraction.
Maleficent nodded in reluctant acquiescence. Empathetically, He sensed that this was feigned; she was actually planing to get something out of this too, girl children. Well she was in for a shock. He had "seen" in The Vortex something of what The Evil Queen had planned for Maleficent while The Dread Curse held sway. He then instructed them :
"You need a magical vessel to affect the transfer, to act as a Portal in itself. Because such an enchantment is too difficult to achieve by any means in your realm, you must use the last enchanted tree remaining in your realm. Make it into a suitable vessel and I will program it so that it will send the child to safety"
"What about the parents" asked The Blue Fairy, clearly uncertain about the nature of the answer that I was giving, and as The Dragon Lord knew, she didn't have a clue what "program" meant.
"It can only contain enough enchantment to transport two people, one at a time. So use it before the child is born. That is all. First locate the tree, then I must advise you further concerning it's preparation"
The Blue Fairy left to locate the tree.
I transformed the viewing portal into a gateway, morphed into my human form and stepped through, naked except for my moving meta-active, almost Patryn style, full body dragon bio-glyph "tattoos". Maleficent sniggered and lead me to The Perverted Boudoir. She must think I'm stupid. I refused to enter, business before her version of pleasure was vital now, so I became "insistent" and we went to her normal bedchamber.
This business was going to require many years away from the tower. Which meant getting help to ensure that His prized dungeon collection of chained up Knights Errant were fed, watered, and mucked out. Alex and Liam would have to check on the Gremlins (5) each week, otherwise He might be forced to release His collection back into the wild as a conservation measure. Alex and Liam would be happy to look after His other "servants", as good help is always hard to come by. Then there was also the problem of the auto-vermin, needed to maintain the correct dungeon ambience in the lower tower and the dungeons. Left to themselves, the dwarven spider bots always ended up hiding the skeletons and doors under a thick coating of webbing. Really, maintaining a quality dungeon decor was quite expensive.
What He had not yet told the Blue Fairy is that He had been forced to lie, otherwise The Evil Queen might learn too much. Only one life form could be transported, and The Time Vortex had revealed that for some reason it had to be the baby. However, there was one other who could be transported because of his unusual enchanted origin - the wood carvers son, Pinocchio.
Appendix
1. No surface trace now remains of the base created by the human genetic engineer progenitors and their machines that created the rift ecosystem wonders of the world, apart from the FTL drive ship (2) stashed inside the orbital asteroid base. The ORAC Device that was brought with it is elsewhere.
2. The ship is needed because either a fast physical evacuation might be needed, or because some of the other inhabitants of the world need to buy special supplies that cannot be obtained from The Outsider traders or because some of the kids want to play at astrophysical investigation. A Discovery class ship, it has neutron cannon, force wall, dark energy power supply tap, gravity polarizers and impellers, microwave drive, reaction less inertial thrusters, a Herculaneum hull made from synthetic 2nd island of stability transuranic metals, sentient AI, auto-repair and a working teleporter (3) purchased from the currently bat like Simbari (4). How a group of scientists got their hands on such a ship under the nose of Fleet Commander Servalan is another matter, and it's not the only ship of that type that went missing from the Blue Science Research Institute ...
3. Star Trek style ad hoc portal to point teleportation is not what it is cracked up to be as it is only short range and the users either have to wear a special suit which acts as a portal or be Master-Class telepaths who can link to and channel the AI generated quantum entanglement wave functions. In fact the Simbari teleport system is more like a mass / energy projector. It's annoying that the likes of Malificent and The Twisted Imp can just teleport ad hoc point to point by "thinking about it".
4. The Simbari and Lymlak are races more meta-psychically evolved than either The Shadows or The Vorlons. The Gli think that the Lymlak predate the First Ones and with the Simbari are part of a powerful galactic meta-alliance that has little business with the First Ones, or any non telepathic race. These telepathic races are coordinated by, and are part of, The Overmind. Only the Lymlak can fabricate Dyson Spheres, thus hiding their existence from most other races. Some think that the Lymlak were preceded an earlier telepathic race that has dispensed with the need for physical bodies even more that the Lymlak have.
5. Gremlins are to good magic users what small goblins and scamps are to evil wizards like Saruman, and pixie elves are to Santa. Dragon Gremlin's are a reptilian variant of the Evil Mogwi. Small, winged, toothy and semi intelligent, they can smell a Dragon even in human form and even determine if the Dragon belongs to their owner's family. They are the Oz equivalent of the winged monkey, not the Dragon equivalent of dogs, that is the wyvern. The Dragon Lord's extended family has two types of wyvern-dog, the Alsatian for guarding and the Staffy as a lap dog. Both have powerful jaws and venomous bite.