The Map World Trilogy

Part Seven

 ‘Long ago, many, many years before man walked upon the soil of the world, it was governed and looked after by us; the protectors. The protectors kept safe all the lands in your world and sought to uphold peace and prosperity – fighting off any foul beast that was determined to see otherwise. You see, Harriet, the land that you call home...In..ger..land....’

‘You mean England, Verk,’ Horace pointed out with a roll of his eyes.

‘Yes England, was once a stronghold for all the Protectors of the earth. It was a beautiful place, where animal and person lived side by side in harmony, free from tyranny and oppression. This lasted for many years, hundreds in fact and our ancestors lived happily with one another. A day came when a child was born. One not of our ilk. She was human. Or what you refer to as human, our translation is one a little more complicated! This human child had no magikal essence at all, and was deemed to be a mistake by it’s parents whom were believed to have coerced with creatures of darkness and shadow – which was later found out not to be true of course!

 ‘Anyway, as the years passed and this child grew into a woman, questions brewed around the Court of Protectors as to whether this ‘mistake’ was one that we should be worried about. It was understood that the human was to be guarded at all times for fear that she may turn into something rather nasty. But, she was not alone. After her birth, more children of the human nature were born and secretly hidden away, as to not be found by the protectors. The underground formation of these humans was large, far beyond anything that the Court of Protectors could ever imagine and as they grew up to become adults, the population began to grow at an enormous rate – no longer being able to remain secret. The Court, reluctantly decided to allow these humans to become members of society, and granted them lands to which they could do with what they pleased. The original human girl, Mya, was released to them and they fled the Protectors lands in search of a new home.

‘The years went on, and we Protectors kept a close eye on your kind, watching them and studying them as if they were wild animals on a safari. Mya, the ‘Original’, as we called her had become the leader of this band of humans and she relayed stories of what she had experienced whilst captive. The humans were incensed. Tired of being seen as outlaws from birth and shunned from their towns and villages because they were not magikal. They used this anger as a weapon, rallying humans from all over the globe to aid in their quest to bring down the Protectors of the land.

‘The Protector contingent known as the Battlesworn, led by a powerful and noble individual Tharndul Rosebelt, addressed the human situation by leading his men into the fray against these powerless people. Tharndul grew heavy with dread that they may one day turn the tide of the Earth and ultimately take up the rule of it as their own. He was right. Tharndul’s efforts were not enough to stop the ever growing population and soon the Protectors were under real treat from your kind. The human beings had something that we did not possess, something that was built heavily into their accidental DNA, a passion and a drive for power – at any cost. Across the globe, human beings for all walks of life formed together and developed their own governmental state, a government solely bent on removing the Protectors, or Wizards as they had now called us, from their home lands.

‘The Court of Protectors realised that a war was imminent, not a physical one of course you see, but a political one, one that would see the human beings – who now outnumbered our kind greatly - taking over the lands we protected for centuries. Tharndul Rosebelt, the Battlesworn who had killed many of your kind knew that his band of brothers would not be able to defeat the humans and the court decided to disband his army, with the Battlesworn being rested to the pages of history, never to practise again.

‘During a meeting between the Humans and the Protectors, we were cast out; shunned; out casted as we had done to them. Tharndul’s war like tactics had angered the humans and they deemed our kind as monsters for what we had done to their sacred Mya. It was a tragic day, a day that we were no longer able to be who we were. The humans demanded that we left the shores of Earth, never to return to this place for all eternity. All magikal creatures and beings were banished with immediate effect, a rather fine fitting ending wouldn’t you agree? An ironic ending considering our behaviour, regarding the humans as second class citizens.