Dragonborn Saga-Chapter 757: Jul-Ah-Naar

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Outnumbered almost 2:1, the War Dragon Cult still launched an attack with enough cunning to catch the city of Saarthal off-guard. The Cult made use of a trading conference day to infiltrate the city and start summoning all the Daedra and Undead they had prepared.

Thanks to the Tower of Music's automatic defense system installed all around the hold, the civilian losses were mostly mitigated. Above all, the defenders were already familiar with how to defend the city, and its walls and houses were designed to form many defensive layers that would ward off any attacker.

Still, there were Dragons, and half of the city was already evacuated, which caused losses among the civilians and the defenders. The War Dragon Cult, unlike what their name suggested, were not mostly warrior cultists as one would assume. Aside from their combat expertise, they were excellent summoners who could conjure and maintain small battalions of Daedra and Undead.

This was the same style Jon excelled at, and aside from Nurina and Alina, no one else was as proficient as the three of them; for their weapon to be turned against them was almost a new experience.

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The thing about summoners is that even if they had smaller numbers at the beginning of the battle, as long as they can maintain their Magicka, their troop numbers barely decrease, as they can always replenish what they lose.

And so the fight went on.

The streets of Saarthal turned into a bloody war zone, and the defenders were holding the main lines and choke points, but against Dragons, who already dominated the sky, the air defenses of Saarthal were barely holding up.

"Dahsul mu al Saarthal ontzos!"

In the sky, the Dragons roared as if they were chanting a song, promising to eradicate Saarthal once again, like how the Snow Elves had done once before.

With these words, six Dragons took to every corner of the city and seemed about to launch a coordinated assault on the aerial defense towers.

Their coordination was flawless, and they saw through the weaknesses of the defense. These aerial turrets were really deadly once they focused on a single target, but if the target escaped, they would take a short while to be able to aim at another target again.

Six dragons, six towers; the dragons evaded the turrets with their incredible speed, and without even retaliating against their attackers, the dragons would immediately switch their attacks to the other towers while escaping the range of the previous ones they were attacking.

As the tower defenders would try to bring down one dragon, they would find themselves subjected to the attacks of another dragon, and before they could fix their aim and retaliate, that dragon would escape, and another would come from a different angle.

The defense towers were formidable, but the Dragons' magic was destructive beyond sense. Their agility and flight made them the ultimate bombardiers, capable of achieving incredible speeds, taking sharp turns, defying gravity, and reaching the pinnacle of aerial warfare.

If that momentum they achieved was never broken any time soon, the situation would turn bleak very soon.

But who would stop the momentum of these warmongering Dragons? There are six of them, and there is only one Dragonborn. To make things worse, he is nowhere to be seen.

But just as things turned desperate, so long as people persisted against the odds, fortune would turn their way, even for a brief moment.

And that brief moment appeared in the most unexpected of ways.

A seventh Dragon was driven into the Dare Tower just now, and an explosion occurred, but the Dare Tower in itself is Saarthal's strongest last bastion. The Dragon that hit the tower just would not be right any time soon.

That, however, diverted the attention of the six Dragons, and one of them broke the formation in order to attack the one who just took down the seventh Dragon, Jullanar.

As she just finished that Dragon, she was launched in the air in a majestic momentum and seemed to be enjoying her victory, only for the Dragon to appear and swallow her whole.

After that, as if it had eaten the most potent poison in the world, the Dragon fell from the sky and landed in the largest plaza in the city.

It seemed like a mystery, but nobody was curious about it for the time being, unless of course, you were one of the people who were witnessing this absurdity in the plaza.

A few seconds later, the Dragon returned to the sky, but as if it had hit its head on something when it fell, the flight and motions of that dragon were all offbeat, even for a human who knows nothing of a Dragon's powers. Once it stabilized itself midair, it headed straight towards the other five Dragons that were maneuvering around the towers, and once it got close...

"DRAGON BODY SLAM!"

The absurdity continued to develop as the sixth dragon crashed into one of the other dragons, and the two fell from the sky together.

"Lokyoldrog! Fos los dreh?!"

Befuddled by their kin's actions, the Dragons questioned what he was doing, but the reply they got almost made them fall out of the sky.

"I am no Lokyoldrog! I am Jullanar!"

"Jul-Ah-Naar?"

**Jul** means Human, **Ah** means Hunter, and **Naar** means Peak. The name composed of such words can mean many things; to Dragons, it is the Man-Hunter of the Peaks, a Dragon that enjoys hunting humans; as to Humans, it means the Hunter who lives on the Peaks.

Jullanar, or Jul-Ah-Naar as heard by the Dragons, was definitely a mix of both: an assassin who kills men and a hunter who lives in the mountainous Winterhold.

As for her actions as a Dragon, and the explanation of how she took over the body of one, that will be explained in a moment.

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I, Alina Dare, was never such a jealous woman. I married Jon Dare first, and while he is Dragonborn, I am a Sybil of Kyne. All for the good, we make a good team.

But that...

"DRAGON BODY SLAM!"

... that made me jealous.

"What did you give her?" I asked the man who was frowning beside me.

"Nothing I didn't give you."

"Firemane!"

"I swear. I am a man who gifts his women equal things."

"I'm sure a Dragon transformation is something Jullanar didn't buy from a street vendor."

"Hey, I'm the Dragonborn here! Transform my soul into a Dragon, yeah, doable. Metamorph into a fucking Dragon... never done that."

Somehow, that didn't convince me.

"Unless..."

Here it comes.

"No! That's... plain impossible! Hahaha!"

Seeing Jon laugh like that, I knew he had arrived at some sort of an explanation.

"Out with it."

"Babe, that's just a theory."

"I love your theories, darling."

"Aw! Thank you, honey."

"Out with it!"

"Well... a Dragon's Soul is needed to control a Dragon's body. You can't do it any other way unless it is some sort of Necromancy. The only other theoretical way to achieve that is to be in control of the Dragon Soul somehow. If Jull was to do it, she would need to overpower the astral form of the Dragon with her astral form."

"Alright. No mortal can do that."

"Yep."

"And I see that you are still thinking..."

"Well, one other way to do it is to... I can't explain it in words. Do you see our wedding rings?"

"Yes."

"As polygamous partners, we share these rings with the other girls."

"Yes."

"And I periodically enhance these rings with stronger enchantments the more I develop them. For example, the Escaping Teleportation."

"Aha! Quite nifty, actually, when I want to get home fast."

"Here is the thing. When I was almost trapped by Hermaeus Mora and his son in Apocrypha lately, I couldn't escape from the grasp of the Daedra even with that enchantment as a last resort. For that, I modified it lately to be able to escape the influence of Divine Spirits, Daedric Princes most of all, and of course, this includes..."

"Dragons."

"Yes. So... how it works is that it creates a strong spiritual resonance that acts like a shocking artifact that stuns anyone who tries to cast their influences over it. It causes damage to the Soul that tries to exert any sort of power over the one trying to escape, of course, but that sort of damage is only enough for that influence to slip. Nothing serious happens afterwards."

"You are starting to lose me."

"Here's how it all comes together. The Dragon tries to swallow Jullanar, she activates the escape function from within the Dragon, her soul is surrounded with the resonance that causes other souls to slip; however, since he swallows her, he can't even let her slip, and the soul resonance hits him from the inside."

He said all that while drawing a silhouette of the Dragon and another of Jullanar inside the dragon. This made me realize what he was trying to say.

"So you're saying that your enchantment has caused damage to the Dragon's soul, a damage that is in the shape of..."

"Jullanar, yes."

"Like... a Jullanar-shaped hole in the Dragon's soul."

"Somehow."

"And her soul is inside that hole... let's call it a soul void."

"Soul Hole is a better term."

"Well... either way... the Dragon's soul was damaged in the process, and hers wasn't because of the ring's protection. She now influences his body."

"Yes. The fact that she fits well in that Soul Hole makes her the central piece of a Dragon's soul without actually being part of it."

"And her physical form?"

"Part of the escape process is to keep the body in an ethereal state for protection. It is there, but it is completely safe."

"Lucky girl... poor dragon!"

If you put it like that, then this is one of the most unfortunate dragons in the world... aside from that one Jon killed with his butt once.

"Let's go assist her then," I said and looked at Jon, who seemed to be looking somewhere else.

"Jon," I called for him once again.

"Yes, yes... Hey, you go and do that. Wulfur and the others will be here in a jiffy. You guys can deal with the dragon according to protocol," Jon said and turned away as if he was looking at something even I couldn't see.

"Something the matter?" I asked.

"Yeah. Just one annoying guy making his presence clear at last," he said, and a couple of seconds later, I too could see a golden dragon sitting above a nearby peak, watching us like a predator.

It seemed like the Bosses of each side of this battle were finally meeting up, a situation that my senses and survival instincts told me to avoid.

As I moved towards the city, I could see Jon and that golden Dragon approaching each other at a careful pace. Jon is surrounded by his draconian aura as the Dragon immediately takes to the sky. On its back was something I never expected to see, however, as someone was riding that Dragon.