>Had a dream about this city where kids were just known for... disappearing. Getting kidnapped, dying, whatever. The kids who were found were later discovered to be sold to foreigners: as "orphans" who needed new "parents", or for more unfortunate fates; and the kids who aren't found are assumed dead.

>Anyways, that's not particularly relevant to the AU; but the part that is was that I was a kid who lived on the streets of said city. Me and a few other kids got nabbed at some point, but I was able to help the other kids escape; at the cost of basically having these thorny vines embedded into my abdomen, fated to die. I ended up not dying, due to being found by a family that took me in, though the vines were still there when I woke up from the dream.

Some time today, I thought about the kid and turning him into a character, then I thought of Klas, then I thoughts "hey, and AU where Derum doesn't have a terminal illness, but instead has these cursed magical vines inside him sounds cool". And here we are lol. It's just an idea right now though; I might still make a different character with the curse, I might continue on with this AU.

The AU is temporarily being called the "Tangled Souls" AU; where Klas died and came back as Derum because of these cursed vines inside him. He's still... kinda alive... in a similarly undead state as canon; but the vines are tangled and piercing into his organs, so he's kind of in pain all the time. He was found and adopted in by the Zheng family; Hao has a temporary cure for relieving his pain, and Lian Yu is out searching for a cure. And of course, in the meantime, Derum and Chen are hanging out with each other and becoming good friends.

Oh! Also: Derum is NOT an angel. This is a fantasy AU, so he's a sort of sky elf (think the Avariel from D&D). No particular reason why. I just made him an elf, wanted to give him a tail, and the tail came out more feathery than furry, so I gave him wings and made him a bird elf :D

No ideas on what the Zheng family are going to be yet. I have considered making them a "lesser" species of elf, like wood elves or something; but I could also go some more fun routes like: making them one of those anime-a-fied minotaurs where they are *basically* human, but have bull horns, ears, and hooves (because I like cow boys, and I want cow boy Chen lol). Or I could take more inspiration from D&D and make them a Goliath inspired race. OR EVEN, make Lian Yu a Goliath, Hao a Dwarf; and then Chen can be a Goliath/Dwarf hybrid that is normal human sized, instead of being giant OR short X'D (many potentially good ideas...)

One last little detail: the black thorns are ones that are poking out from underneath Derum's skin. He's not bleeding from them (unless new ones pierce the skin), since the vines are basically a part of his body at this point, but he do just have random thorns poking out of his stomach and chest. Red parts are internal though.

>That's all, just a quick sketch and an idea. I would've fleshed out this design more if my drawing tablet was fixed, but alas... I hate drawing in a non-chibi style on my phone. I used to do fine at it, but now that I'm used to drawing on the tablet, it's really hard to do it on the tiny phone screen :'(

>Might do some creative writing on this idea though (or at least some idea) so I can do something not drawing related in the meantime =w=;

New Derum AU Idea??