So, began this new phase of dragon existence, birds and mammals proved more clever than the dinosaurs had been and were, therefore, harder to catch. However, these dragons had an advantage: the beginnings of sentience. While the great herd mammals would never supply the amount of food that the dinosaurs had, they did nonetheless provide enough for some of the dragons to reach the former size. Intelligence ,this time, kept pace with size, and they had never forgotten the advantages of cooperation and communication. Therefore, by the time the first of a series of Ice Ages hit, the dragons had already begun to develop a culture. That culture survived that ice age and the ice ages that followed.

Well, with culture comes history and preparation for the future. So the dragons began to teach lessons to their children, and record events for study, so that past tragedies could be avoided in the future. However, the records showed patterns, and dragon curiosity made them look for the cause, so they came to understand cause and effect. Over time, one of the cause and effects they noticed was that strong beliefs could make small changes in the outcome of events. If enough small changes were made, then large changes could be made in the world IF the belief was strong enough. The dragons wanted to be able to make these changes, to help insure their survival, so they searched for ways to increase belief. Thus it was that dragons developed first religion, then magic. With belief systems as a focus, incredibly strong beliefs were now possible, and the dragons took advantage of this to change first themselves, and then the Earth. For themselves, they improved already efficient metabolisms even more, and altered their interaction with gravity, so that they could grow even larger and still fly. Now, 100 foot and up dragons were the norm. They also slowed, then suspended their aging process, but with this it was necessary to reduce their reproduction rate as well. In the world, they periodically increased the size of the herd mammals, and made a few big predators for their population control, (and probably the occasional more thrilling hunt). They even altered one bird so that it could grow much larger and still fly for the occasional aerial hunt. To store information, the dragons used magic to alter crystal and metal matrices, and then stored them in their lairs. They also found that these materials could be used to store and channel magical energy, so they gathered all they could find. Dragons now able to communicate over great distances, gathered together less, becoming more solitary and set in their ways. That's how things were in the golden age of dragons. The wisdom of the past had been lost by these cultured dragons, they had forgotten how they had survived past disasters. So it was that after the last Ice Age, they weren't prepared for the disaster that befell them.

For a time after that ice age, they didn't notice anything wrong, but then the magic they depended on started to behave in odd ways. The changes they had made to the world began to unravel and the world resisted their attempts to change it back. The large mammals and especially the large predators where hit the hardest. Dire wolves, cave bears, saber tooth cats, and the giant birds of prey -- both in the air and on the land, the giants started to die out, usually to be replaced by their smaller counterparts. However; the giants of the sea: whales, sharks, squid, and the like seemed unaffected . Eventually, the dragons themselves began to feel the effects, the Earth was becoming uncomfortable. Many dragons chose to leave Earth using magic to cross over to alternate realities that were more to their liking. For the ones that stayed, things got worse, faster. This in turn, caused more dragons to leave, and the cycle continued. Finally, it took all the dragons remaining on Earth to create a gateway to a world, they could change to suit themselves. So, Earth's remaining dragons created this final portal to flee their now hostile home world.

After the final exodus, a few dragons remained on Earth. They knew they would be trapped, since the world would no longer let so few dragons create a gate to other worlds, but they had stayed anyway. They were of two groups. Ancient Dragons too stubborn and set in their ways to change, and the adolescents that still thought they could take on the world and win. The first group retired to their lairs and their studies, but the second group searched the world for the cause of their problems. It wasn't too long before they found it. Unnoticed, a type of arboreal mammal had been evolving, one line would evolve wings and become bats, hunting insects on the wing, catching them with scooping tails instead of striking necks. They would prove to be one of the most successful lines of mammals, must be the job.

However, this time it was another line, one that stayed in the trees that developed the more dangerous abilities. They changed rapidly by the standards of evolution, going from tree shrews to prosimians with grasping hands, in short order. They didn't stop there, opposable thumbs and binocular vision were also developed. They became anthropoid primates. Monkeys had sacrificed the sense of smell for better vision, and larger brains. They were very successful and grew larger as a result. Larger size for a tree dweller has disadvantages. Their movement had to be modified to accommodate the larger size, swinging by their arms under the branches was the solution, and they became apes.

Apes do well in jungles, but the drying effect of the Ice Ages shrunk jungles. Some apes found they needed to go to the ground more often and travel the Savannas too. The predators found them delicious. Standing up to look over the grasses helped, so did cooperation. A few would take the risk at a time to find food, then carry it back to the ones that guarded the young in the cover of forest. If you used both hands, you could carry more so the groups that adopted that strategy did better then the ones that didn't. Nature selected for this trait, and soon they became full time bipeds. Early man had hit the scene. They started to use tools to make up for their body deficiencies, and like dragons, learned to wield fire though as a tool, not a body function.

After the last Ice Age, man had become human, Homo Sapiens, thinking man, believing man. Humans must have believed very strongly that their competition was too big, because the giants started to go away, and man's numbers increased. By the time the first of the young dragons realized this creature was the cause of their problem, humans had already developed agriculture, and the beginnings of religion, so their beliefs grew stronger even as the dragon's numbers had been falling due to the exoduses, and when it comes to changing the rules of a planet like earth, the number of beings that have the same belief can make all the difference. Humans bred fast, dragons bred slow. The numbers were in favor of the humans, and improving all the time.

The young dragons still thought they could win. Their solution was to either change the human's beliefs, or change their numbers. The dragons were divided on which solution to try so some choose diplomacy or teaching, frequently becoming gods in the eyes of those humans they helped. The others attempted genocide, becoming demons and monsters in the eyes of those they tried to destroy.

Either might have worked except that humans had developed currency. Gold, silver, and gem stones were now valuable to them. The very things that the dragons hoarded for information and magic storage. Humanity learned of this dragon trait and soon, it was the dragons, under attack. Those that had tried to destroy humanity went first, humans didn't let the diplomats last much longer, in the end even the helpful dragon fell before human greed. So the young dragons ended up leaving earth after all, though not in a pleasant way.

However, the ancient Dragons remained unknown to humans, any human that had found one never reported that find, and they had kept up their studies. They learned and recorded much. They looked into the past, with what magic still worked, to discover their origins, but they found the future to blurry to view. The present was proving interesting though. Humans continued to develop rapidly. Soon their beliefs left magic behind in favor of their new tool: science. Dragons watched this science with interest, but they didn't realized they were watching their own downfall.

On its surface, Science seemed to offer the dragons a chance to reclaim magic and the Earth. Most of the ancient dragons didn't even notice when a branch of science call biology, change the rules of life on earth, making their existence impossible. They hadn't seen that science, unlike magic, froze the world rules eliminating magic, not freeing it as they thought it would. Science, like the meteor, had caught the dragons off guard. So it was that the last of the dragons left the Earth without humanity even knowing it had destroyed them. Science had relocated them to mythology as impossible, and the human belief in science had made it fact.