Julius Heartstriker

Julius Heartstriker a twenty-four year old Dragon and son of Bethesda Heartstriker. He is the main protagonist of the Heartstriker series. He is the founder of the Heartstriker council, Dragon of the DFZ, and all around nice dragon. He is currently married to Marci Novalli.

## Appearance

In his human form, Julius has dark hair, bronze-like skin, and the piercing Heartstriker eyes, due to Bethesda placing a spell on all of her clutches except for A in the eggshell. In his dragon form, the green eyes remain. His dragon appears as a small blue feathered dragon, at least three times his size.

## Personality

Julius is a very atypical dragon. Where most dragons are greedy, violent, and amoral, Julius is kind and caring. He has great empathy for others due to growing up in a family where such things were seen as weakness and being belittled as a result. While not completely altruistic, he tries to be fair with everyone he meets, often undervaluing his own contributions as a result. He is also one of the only dragons, aside from Amelia, to see the inherent potential of humans and see them as equals.

Julius' moral code can at face value seem more human than dragon, but at his core he does retain the basics of dragon culture. He has a deep seated care for his family, despite the pain they put him through. As a result of Bethesda's tendency to throw dragons away from minor gains, he sees murder as inherently wasteful for the clan as a whole.

Despite his mostly passive personality, Julius can become extremely stubborn on certain issues, usually when the safety of his friends and family are on the line. As time passed, the constant conflict with larger dragons help to desensitize him to his own fears. The best example of this is when he called out his mother when she tried to intimidate him into selling out Amelia.

## Background

### 2071-2095

Julius hatched as a part of J-clutch, Bethesda's 10th clutch (later revealed to actually be her 9th clutch). He is know to have hatched shortly after Justin. During the first month Bethesda watched over Julius and his clutch. During this time, Julius developed a method of hardening his magic to protect himself from his larger siblings. His mother praised this technique, even declaring him gifted. Afterwards, J-clutch was raised by two members of F-clutch.

Over the next few years, Julius became known as a failure. He was the smallest member of his clutch and was very undraconic in his families eyes. His only noticeable achievement during this period was Julius' speed. Justin claimed that, "...You[Julius] to be the fastest of all of us..." His mother became increasingly displeased with Julius as time pasted. Bob later claimed that he constantly had to convince Bethesda not to eat him over the years.

After they were finished with training, Julius retreated to his room and rarely left. He spent his time gaming and taking online college courses, eventually getting 4 different degree. During his time he stopped training and essentially had no contact with the rest of his family aside from Bob. This continued until he was twenty-four years old. On August 7th, Bethesda stormed into his room, burning down the door, and dragged Julius to the throne room where he was quickly sealed. She then sent him to the DFZ, with the understanding he had one month to prove himself or be killed.

### August 8th, 2095

Julius spent the night at his sister Jessica's house and received some basic supplies from Bob before heading to meet Ian. Ian introduced Julius to Svena and the two of them explained that he was to retrieve Svena's sister in the next three days, as part of Bethesda's test. Svena informed him that Katya would be attending a mage party and that he would need to get in. Julius ran into Marci, who offered to remove his seal, believing it to be a curse. Although she couldn't remove the seal, Julius hired her to cast a glamour so he could sneak into the party. Marci brought him back to her house to apply the spell and once she was finished they headed to the party. Julius was informed by a mage at the party that Katya had left with a group of shamans before he arrived. When he went to leave, he saw Marci being help hostage by a man working for Bixby. Marci overloaded the spell on him to get free and the two of them attempted to escape down an alley but were cornered by more of Bixby's men.

## Abilities and Equipment

### Shape-shifting

Like all dragons born on Earth, Julius possesses both a human and dragon form. These forms are not inherently separate states. When he was sealed, Julius could still feel his wings and tail. Based on his thoughts, the human state seems to constrict and compact their dragon form. This makes it uncomfortable to remain in the human form for long periods of time. The human form is more magic efficient than a dragon's natural form, so, during The Drought, dragons remained in this state near constantly to survive. Once magic returned, dragons could change back and forth at will. Julius, having been born after the return of magic, has been able to shift freely his whole life.

#### Dragon Form

Julius is a small and relatively young dragon, and as a result is possibly the physically weakest dragon in the series, with the exception of the hatchling Felicity. Despite this, he is fairly fast, able to outmaneuver Gregory for a limited amount of time. This was despite spending the previous month sealed and being centuries younger.

#### Human Form

In his human form, Julius is faster and stronger than a normal human by several magnitudes. Even when he was freshly sealed and hadn't trained in years, Julius was able to move faster than the eye could track and take out several augmented humans with relative ease.

### Dragon Magic

All dragons have an internal source of magic, or fire. Julius is relatively unskilled in magic and never actively trained to control his fire outside of the minimum training he was required to possess. His only notable use of magic was hardening it into a defensive shield to protect himself.

### Regeneration

As a dragon, Julius can regenerate almost any injury, so long as he has enough fire. He once survived being bombarded by Gregory's fire for minutes, on top of various wounds, and he was almost completely healed in a day.

### Tyrfing

Tyrfing was an enchanted sword that Justin gave Julius. Previously a part of Bethesda's horde, the blade was enchanted to hit any target with magical accuracy. In the past, it had been cursed to kill every time it was drawn, but the curse was removed before Bethesda obtained it. The sword was lost when Justin was defeated by Van Jaeger, though it was possibly reclaimed by one of the Empty Wind's ghosts, and it has not been seen since.

### Diplomat's Fang

Julius wields the Diplomat's Fang, the sixth Fang of the Heartstriker. When Bethesda killed her father, she used magic to preserve parts of his body. The blade is a former tooth of the Quetzalcoatl, and as a result possesses unique magical properties.

As long a Julius is touching the sword, any Heartstriker who attempts violence on another member of the family is frozen until they cease their aggression. It is unknown if the magic would affect Julius, but Bob hinted that he was immune from the effect when he used it to overthrow their mother. It was capable of restrain Amelia, Conrad, Chelsie and Bethesda, while the former three were under Estella's control. The magic does have its limits, but no dragon has fully broken free on their own. Chelsie managed to force Julius to put both hands on the hilt in order to stop her from murdering Bethesda, which implies that there might be a limit to its strength. The blade is also unable to deal with indirect threats or traps that were set up in advance. Several siblings attempted everything from curses to plastic explosives in order to kill him without being affected.

The fang transforms with Julius, becoming a bone-white crown. In this state it is still capable of freezing hostile Heartstrikers.

### Intelligence

Julius is incredibly intelligent. Over his years in isolation, he acquired degrees in Art History, Ecology, Accounting, and Pop Culture. Able to devise unique strategies on short notice and outsmart older, more experienced dragons. Even Bethesda recognized this, stating on multiple occasion that she knew he wasn't an idiot. Despite this, Julius is often unsure of himself and unable to assert his plans, though this fades somewhat overtime.

Julius thinks differently than most dragons and as a result is an enigma to much of his species. Bob once described Julius as completely unpredictable and at the same time entirely predictable. This is because, although Julius is very consistent in his actions, he acts so contrary to normal dragons that he seems random to most of his own kind. However, even knowing his actions are predictable, Bob told Chelsie he did not know how to predict Julius without looking into the future.

### Seer Lynch-pin

Julius was the center of Bob's seer plots. As a result of this, the future of every Heartstriker was tied to his choices. This gave him the ability to offer those futures for chains of fate with immense results, though he chose not to use the futures of others. Once Amelia became a spirit, Julius' future intertwined with the fates of every dragon in existence. Bob claimed he could use this power to do almost anything involving those dragons, even surviving the destruction of the plane, though this would destroy their free will. Once Bob's plan was complete it is likely most of this power was lost, but if another seer was able to use him, Julius would give them an immense amount of futures bargain with.