Chương 642: Crisis in Solitude (5)
A/n: 13 Early Access Chapters on P4treon and MORE! ➡️ https://linktr.ee/donovel ⬅️
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The Dragonborn was a serious threat to all Dragons. Even without the support of Jon Dare, he proved to be very powerful.
The moment he joined the battle on Solitude, he displayed nothing but pure martial prowess. First, he used a bow and chased off a Dragon that was attacking the Bard's College. He then kept hunting the remaining Cultists in the city to wipe them off completely in less than 3 minutes.
"Stealth Archer build! Still too OP!"
Without hesitation, the Dragonborn moved to the front gate of Solitude and joined the skirmish from the top of the walls. The Dragon Cult forces seemed to have taken control of the passage to the city gate from outside and were volleying their arrows into the city which locked the Imperial Legion's movement and made them focus on the cultists outside.
Eventually, Jon used archery instead of directly casting Magic to devastate the Cultists on that front. He would print a rune on every arrow he held before letting it loose to explode and kill half a dozen cultists with every shot.
The last that was seen from the Dragon Cult was them running back to the mountains. Even the two Dragons retreated to the high peaks to the west but their roars were still echoing in the skies.
The defenders couldn't even cheer or celebrate the retreat of the cultists as the result was clear. The losses suffered among the Legion Soldiers, the Guards, and the Civilians were already over 2000 dead and 5000 more injured.
The remaining soldiers who were in an able fighting condition were around 3000 and the civilian refugees were innumerable.
On top of that, the sound of the Dragons roaring over the mountains meant that they are still nearby and they are merely regrouping.
"Reporting!" A Legion Soldier came running towards General Tullius, "Lord Jon Dare is still fighting the Cultists beneath the city, Sir. He is greatly outnumbered."
"Take 400 men and rush to his aid with Legate Rikke." The General replied.
"No need."
It was then when the main character of the scene appeared, Jon himself, or rather Jon who is disguised as the Dragonborn.
"Excuse me?" The General turned to the Dragonborn with a frown.
"He is retreating to the city right now." The Dragonborn replied.
"Alright." The General nodded, "I must thank you greatly, Dragonborn. We are in your debt but we're not out of the woods yet. These monsters are bound to come again, we need to reorganize."
"How far is the main Legion?" The Dragonborn asked.
"Less than 6 hours." Legate Rikke replied.
"The Dare Fleet will arrive in 6 hours." The Dragonborn said.
"The sun is already rising. This will be at the time of noon when they get here." General Tullius estimated.
"General Tullius." At that time, a man came in from the sky.
"Thane Jon." The General replied as he saw the levitating magician land but he ignored the Levitation part even though it was a felony.
That Jon was of course Mirren who disguised himself as the actual Jon using Lust.
"I can't open portals to Winterhold from here so the Dragonborn is all I could bring." Jon (Mirren) said.
"He is enough so far." The General replied.
"However, there's an urgent matter we need to discuss first." The Dragonborn said and looked at Jon (Mirren).
"We discovered that the Dragon Cult has lined up many runes and soul gems under the rock which Solitude stands on." Jon (Mirren) continues
"We believe its purpose is to cause fractures in the city's foundation and…" The Dragonborn continued but General Tullius interrupted.
"I'll stop you right there." The General said, "Truth be told, when I was assigned to Solitude for the first time, I was fearful of a city hanging on a rock myself. I couldn't bring myself to live in such a place but when I looked at the historical records of the Legion, Solitude was described as unshakable even against Catapults and Magic." The General clarified.
"Well… that's better than we thought." Jon (Mirren) was taken aback.
"Hmmm…" The Dragonborn thought for a second before looking around, "But what if the rock was fractured enough for something big to hit it."
Both General Tullius and Jon (Mirren) looked at Jon with strange eyes.
"Something as big as a city?" The General asked.
"Well, the Dragons are cunning and won't take such a step without a reason." The Dragonborn said, "They added some under the city, and some under the Blue Palace. Still, they wanted to break into the East Empire Company storehouse and plant their spells on it too."
"Maybe… multiple Dragons, no?" Legate Rikke said but the three men looked at her and dismissed the idea.
"This is not misogyny or anything because you suggested it, I respect women in uniform and all but that's not what a Dragon would do." Jon (Mirren) replied awkwardly.
"Totally. Not at all." The Dragonborn joined the awkwardness.
"Bro, this is the scene where the woman turns out to be right and we men start looking like bigots cause we doubted her." Jon (Mirren) took the Dragonborn aside.
"Bro, this is you and me in the same scene. We're extra liberals. It won't go that far." The Dragonborn said.
"But bro, think about it. Women are always right on Netflix." Jon (Mirren) said.
"I know I shouldn't have let you see that." The Dragonborn said.
"But still, if the Dragons wanted to do something themselves, their shouts would have been enough. Why resort to normal magical means?" Legate Rikke asked.
"Is it me or is this woman too smart for us?" Jon (Mirren) asked.
"Shush, bro. Enough misogyny." The Dragonborn said then looked at Legate Rikke, "I think you are right. The Cult is either planning this on their own as they aren't planning to involve the Dragons or…"
"A third party is joining the fight." Legate Rikke flicked her fingers.
The four people present on the wall looked at each other with concerned faces.
"Alright. Lord Jon should make sure to remove those exploding runes and analyze them." The Dragonborn suggested.
Jon (Mirren) seemed distracted for a second before realizing that the actual Jon was talking to him.
"Ye… oh, yes. I'll do that. Arch-Wizard Jon Dare to the rescue as always." Jon (Mirren) took his leave and left the wall flying fast into the city.
"Alright, I will go and take a look at…"
As the Dragonborn was about to say something, he heard Nefertiti's voice in his head.
{Hooman! The magic is starting.}
"Shit!" Jon couldn't maintain his cool and looked towards Mirren who was halfway through the city before shouting, "WAIT!"
Mirren heard Jon and stopped immediately but he felt the land shiver under his feet.
Jon immediately jumped off the wall to the nearest roof and prepared a Blink spell midway to reach Mirren.
*RUMBLE*
Everyone in the city started to feel the shock as if an earthquake was occurring and their panic reached a new level.
Meanwhile, Jon reached Mirren and the two of them put their power together to reinforce and cast an Alteration spell on everything around them to keep it intact.
"Some buildings may fall." Mirren said.
"Hold on tight. Try to take the shock away." Jon shouted.
"Easy… for you… to say." Mirren held on to the spell as much as he could and tried to absorb all the tremors he could but he failed midway and his spell broke.
"ARGH!"
*RUMBLE!*
"Hold on!" Jon tried the best he could as well and channeled as many tremors as he could with his staff but the output of the explosions exceeded the input Jon could dish out and he was blown away as well.
From there, the chain reaction of the runes laid around the rock of Solitude started to hasten up the process and the real scale of the spell was shown.
Jon may have not discovered it before but these runes were even laid down on some parts of the city.
"Who the fuck cast such a spell?" Mirren roared in anger.
"Someone powerful. An Arch Wizard." Jon replied with his head running out of solutions for this situation.
"Jon, look." But Mirren looked somewhere where Jon wasn't looking.
"What the f…" Jon barely turned his head and his brain went completely blank.
Not far from him was the famous Windmill of Solitude, the tower that stands as high as Castle Dour and is accessible to it through an arch bridge. Under that Windmill is the spiral stairway leading to the dock. On that windmill, white fractures of arcane energy started to run through its walls all the way up.
*Crack* *Crush*
The fractures started to widen and the Great Windmill of Solitude staggered, lost parts of its outer wall, then lost an entire section as it was blown to smithereens, before systematically falling outside the city, down towards the docks.
Jon felt a shadow coming from above and as he looked up, the bridge that was connecting the Castle and the Windmill was falling towards his head.
"Not this again." Jon raised his staff up as a traumatic memory came to mind and with no restraints, he opened a portal so huge that it swallowed most of the bridge's debris and then reopened again at the middle of the sea far to the north.
But "most of the debris" isn't "all of it" since the portal he made wasn't big enough even though he moved it to swipe all the large chunks of the bridge.
"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!" On the other hand, Mirren kept firing as many spells as possible to destroy all the remaining debris before they hit the buildings down below.
Finally, the rumbling and devastating sound of the Windmill crushing down the city was heard and the screams of the people got louder as their hearts sank from terror and a cloud of dust covered this section of the city.
"Mirren." Jon called.
"Yes." Mirren replied.
"Switch Roles. You're Dragonborn, I am me again."
Using the cover of the dust cloud, Jon held Mirren's shoulders and the two of them switched appearances. He then clicked the ground with his staff and all the dust was dispersed.
Many debris hit the city but not all buildings were affected and the casualties were minimal since these buildings were emptied. But there is now no Windmill over Solitude and a collapsing section of the castle was still threatening what's under it.
"I didn't know they had rigged the Windmill." Mirren said.
"Me neither. I couldn't detect it at all." Jon replied with an ashen face.
He hurried up to where the Windmill once stood and climbed the rubble to see beyond the city.
"Oh, God. No." And that was his reaction.
His words caused Mirren to hurry up to him and look down to see that most of Solitude's Dockyard that was right beneath the Windmill when it fell and… it became no more.
The Legion Soldiers, the Guards, Captain Aldis, Legate Rikke, Thane Bryling, and General Tullius all rallied from around the city to the collapse sight only to see that the ancient windmill is now gone and both Jon Dare and the Dragonborn are standing over there looking down.
The soldiers who were at the scene first cleared the road to General Tullius and Thane Bryling who walked on top of the rubble to see…
"What in Oblivion has happened here?" Bryling asked.
"Look for yourselves." Jon pointed at the collapsed Windmill and the devastated Dockyard.
The sun rose and shed its light on Solitude but no one could shake off the coldness of the scenery down at the river when all turned to ruin.
"They destroyed the Dock and half of the river is now blocked." Legate Rikke spoke in worried eyes, "The Legion supplies may be solved through other ways but the city's economy will be…" She shied off saying the last word.
Devastated. That's the word on everyone's mind. Solitude is a coastal stronghold rather than a city on a main traveling road. Most of the travelers come here via ship and rarely by traveling through the harsh mountain roads.
"They weren't planning on dropping down the city, Jon." The Dragonborn (Mirren) said, "They were planning on dropping down the economy of the city."
Initially, the explosive runes were meant to destroy chunks of the rock of Solitude in order to make it impossible to pass through the river. Jon blamed himself for not figuring that part out when the Cultists were attacking the East Empire Trading Company's Storehouse. He assumed that they wanted to destroy the city's foundation which the Storehouse is under but it seemed that his mind had wandered too far.
"But we can still rebuild it easily." The General said, "The fae half of the river is still intact."
"We can rebuild a temporary pier and put a floating bridge to this side." Legate Rikke continued for him.
This was true but with the current state of things, the reconstruction effort will take at least half a month which the Stormcloak may use to sweep off the lands before Solitude can be prepared again.
Both the General and the Legate seemed to be trying to cheer themselves but a Dragon's Roar made their hearts sink.
A shadow of a dragon passed above all of them as one of the enormous beasts took to the skies and looked down at them.
"Motaad us zey, Joor. Zu'u los hin Daan!" (Tremble before me, Mortals. I am your Doom!)
The Dragon's tongue shook the skies as it took a curve in its flight and flew down towards the city at a terrifying speed.
"It is going to ram the city." The General shouted, "It wants to block the open part of the river!"
"WITH ME!" Jon held the Dragonborn (Mirren) and ran on the city's edge before jumping off the wall together to intercept the Dragon before it arrived.
"YOU MAD?"
"SURE!"
The two young men stopped midair. Mirren tried to aim for the eyes of the Dragon while Jon prepared for a big spell.
"This… is… called…"
A large quantity of arcane energy wrapped itself around Jon's staff as the Dragon approached with all its momentum like an unstoppable train and…
"YOL TOOR SHUL!"
"FAZ AUS AG!"
*ROAR*
*CRASH*
All sorts of loud chaos happened in an instant. Two shouts, a powerful spell, a dragon's roar, and a crash.
The Dragon was lying in the river and squirming as if it was possessed by something. Its Fire Breath shout was blocked by Jon's spell and both Jon Dare and the Dragonborn were floating up again.
The people had to run to the other side of the city to see this scene as the dragon was just screaming rather than roaring by this point.
The shout "Faz Aus Ag" meant "Pain, Suffer, Burn", a spell of pure malice discovered and recreated by Jon from an ancient record.
The Dragon was being occupied by the Torture Shout since Jon knew it would be impossible to immobilize the Dragon by any other means.
"Mortal! YOU'LL… I'LL GET YOU FOR THIS!"
Jon wanted to hurry and slay that Dragon before the shout's effect ended but another shout echoed.
"WULD NAH KEST!"
Another Dragon appeared at a frightening speed and before anyone could react, he lashed his tail at Jon and Mirren, sending them off at an unimaginable speed.
The Dragon didn't stop there and immediately rushed towards the rock of Solitude to wreak havoc and block the rest of the river.
"SHIT! GET THE BATTLEMAGES HERE!" General Tullius shouted.
"ARCHERS! BATTLE STATIONS!" Thane Bryling led the guards.
The second round was over. Now, the sun was rising to the sky and the third and final round had begun.
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A/n: 13 Early Access Chapters on P4treon and MORE! ➡️ https://linktr.ee/donovel ⬅️
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