Chapter 5

Trouble was brewing in the magical lands. For years the magical races had lived in seclusion, hiding away from the prying eyes of the non-magical folk. Centuries past the magical races had mingled with the humans, but the increase of suspicion and hatred towards magical folk over the past two thousand years led to the disappearance of the magical creatures of the world.

It was the giants who first left the human continents and struck out on their own, for thousands of years the humans had hunted giants and the giants had fought fiercely back, but with the ever growing population of the humans combined with advances in technology, it became easier to kill the giants. Advancements such as spear-casters and bows helped decimate the population of giants. So it because commonplace for giant hunts to happen around the Baltic sea where the giants made their home.

And so many of the giant clans decided to remove themselves from human influences and sailed away from the Baltic. They found themselves a large island in the middle of the north pacific ocean and using the meagre amount of magic gifted to the giants they made the island almost impossible to find. Indeed, one would have to know exactly where the island was in order to find it.

Though it would be misleading if not outright false to say that all of the giants left the Baltic. For many stayed and fought their human rivals. And over the next couple of hundred years the giants were hunted into extinction around the Baltic.

The next race to leave the human lands were the ferocious dragons that made their home in the middle east. Once worshipped by the Zhou dynasty the mighty dragons declined with those that worshipped them. As external pressures influenced China and the middle east the dragons became feared even hated. And so it was that dragons became creatures of prey for enterprising hunters.

Like their relatives the giants the dragons sought to remove themselves from the influences of the humans and left the middle east. Over the next few hundred years there were reports of dragons being sighted all over the world. They settled in many different places but as the humans began to explore more of the world the dragons became tired of moving about and instead searched for a place to make their own.

It was then that they came across the last few giants in the Baltic who told of their brothers who had found land in the pacific and protected it from the humans. And so the dragons sought out this land and made deals with the giants in order to gain access to the island they had claimed.

The island inhabited by the giants was a large land mass formed in the middle of the pacific with high mountains in the east of the island which were topped with active volcanoes, the perfect home for the dragons while the giants inhabited the caves in the lower slopes of the mountains.

And so a bargain was struck, the dragons joined the giants on their island and claimed the peaks of the mountains as their own. Once there the dragons added their own protections to the island. For like the giants they too were gifted with natural magical abilities. Whereas the giants merely wove magic around the island forming a circle which repelled all non-magical creatures the dragons were more subtle and added their own protections, strengthening the power of the giants spells with their own natural abilities for weather magic.

Now instead of merely being replant to non-magical creatures the defences around the island consisted of horrific storms which could reach full power in minutes and destroy and human ships. An unexpected side effect of the magic the dragons added tot he giants protection was the extension of the protections. Whereas before a determined sailor could get to within a mile of the island the protections now were pushed out to almost a hundred miles around the island. Such was the power of the dragons and giants that the protections began to become a permanent property of the island. No longer did it require the giants or dragons to actively maintain a spell they simply just had to refresh it every few years.

Now it may sound like the giants and dragons had fount the ideal home and all was good but this would be a very incorrect assumption. Giants were generally peaceful folk who liked to dwell in dark earthy places but they also had a passion for farming. And so the giants cultivated much of the land on the island, over hundreds of years the giants redirected rivers, made dams and dug irrigation ditches to help their crops grow.

However the dragons were of a different nature. They were natural predators and loved to hunt, whether land animals or fish from the sea the dragons were ferocious hunters. Their natural gifts allowing them to be almost completely invisible before they struck and then deadly fast as they attacked their prey.

There were very few altercations between dragons and giants, because although depicted to be feral and wild creatures both races were intelligent and respected their neighbours. The giants envious the dragons grace and speed for they were of great stature and renowned for being clumsy. The dragons however were very wary of the giants great stature and brute strength which was the dragons only downfall, for in order to maintain extended periods of flight the dragons had to be light and streamlined and as such learned to be graceful and deadly fast.

It was a sore point between the two races that they had to live in such confined quarters, as usually the giants and dragons both would claim large tracts of land each. But now the majority of their populace was inhabiting one island which although large was not sufficient for the creatures who yearned for freedom but the expansion of human empires meant they had no other choice.