#disciples au

Just some concepts for my disciples au, including a peak at one of Dream's girlies!

Not much for her now, but one day you'll get a proper introduction for this gal, till then you have a few quick thoughts about the dark prince, Athens.

Nightmare's slinky and charming guardian, all grown up. I tried to keep the general gist of his younger design with something that felt right. Still gotta work on him, I'm not completely happy with his clothes, then again I'm going to have Nightmare's original fearsome silhouette in the back of my mind so it will take some work for me to be happy with it. Then there's all the gorgeous fanart of the design I'm thinking about.. Anyway, for anyone who recognizes the tags may know this is the au where Nightmare gets his own guardians (along with his brother of course). With every newly born guardian they get certain properties to heal or benefit the guardian who makes them. Features may just be seen as what the guardian wanted within his hearts of hearts, his deepest most interwoven desires and cravings shape their guardian.

Nightmare may have only had a wanting to just be accepted, but it had slowly been stripped away as he grew angrier and older. Athens is his need to flee, hooves thumping and disappearing deep within the trees to never be seen again. To be both glorious and unseen. To have his own deep seated strength and means to just be. Take that as you will, but Athens provides that. His sharp talons and crooked smile is a safeguard against all that may try to harm Nightmare again. The metaphorical silver tongue the king and prince share guides their enemies away gently. The claws are for the history that was written in blood, so Nightmare may never dip his hands again.

Meh well, just a peak at some deep thoughts.

Just a quick thought on nightmares "healing" design. I had made a post on a quick concept doodle before, here's more of that concept, side by side with his usual look. I will expand on this later, and maybe change it a tad. Oh quick thought to go along this ahem, I looked over the original comic to see how Nightmare might have been damaged under all of his goop. Like if you peeled that off and it wasn't holding him together what would be the most damaged. Well his spine is one. Since his tentacles exploded out of him, and yes its an educated guess since its seen before that the tentacles are in his mouth and they didn't just snake onto his back. So he has treelike vines winding up and along his spine and ribs holding him together, dotted with those apple blossom-like blooms. A second place would be his jaw, shown only by a couple cracks, due to the earlier pressure from the tentacles. Third would be his eye socket, yes the working one in his corrupted design. I saw an alternate nightmare ( I'll find and link the artists work) where the socket during the transformation was utterly destroyed (due to more of the sudden buildup of pressure, hence the blooming like effect around the bone of nightmares skull in my drawing above, indicating a buckle of the bone and where it was coming from.) and his other socket mostly OK. So that makes me think the corruption allowed him to see with a broken socket, but blind in the working one. (can be seen as a metaphor but not right now) But when he's been burnt away, he has no support for an eye-light so its dead, but the mostly unhurt eye socket can still harbor a light. Well, his NATURAL like born with magic tries to fix it in a way. Filling the hole with flowers and allowing them and their roots to support his other broken parts. Such as his whole spine and that area providing full support for the guardian. As I said this au is sort of a look at a guardians supposed natural system of protection, or like an immunity of sorts. Sorta. How his magic linked with balance would try to naturally fix the situation when the twins hit a wall so hard it can finally get a foothold and restore him, if only enough to balance the universe. So he gets medical (flowersss-) and psychological (babiesss-) help to restore aforementioned balance. Or something. I will add to this post or make another one, with some actual concept doodles. Not just one-

AND Dream's stuff will be expanded upon eventually (yes he becomes a mostly absent dad too) Im mentally working on his girls to really nail down their work and..colors. Heh.

Ps. found the inspiration for this design, @angstyhikka