#dragon!aether

Sketch practice of Aether's expressions in both forms ^^ I'm figuring out all the methods of (sitting on two chairs) tending to hyperfocus urges without drowning in it completely — otherwise all work schedule will go south. As long as I ignore elephants in the room (two longfic wips & 3+ pages of sketch comics ToT) but do something relevant to the Dragon!Aether AU, it works!

I chickened out again from drawing them properly (for now >xD), so more of the dragon!Aether AU shenanigans. (And yes, polyamorous Kaeya/Aether/Ajax c:)

A little bit of exploration prompted by a discussion with Vaz, and an attempt to fuse headcanons while at it xD What's with the eyes - I hc that Tartaglia's human eyes are blind in Foul Legacy form and have a prominent tapetum lucidum effect. Original pic:

Some trivia: Enjou is Lumine's envoy here, since in this AU she can't properly recover until whichever "knot" holding Teyvat is untied (trying to formulate stuff without spoilers, just in case xD) And this track is now 100% association for dragon Aether. "Battle, war, victory, pain, trial, war, terror everywhere" xX

Think of this AU as taking place after the final (successful) war with Celestia, in which Aether participated in the form of that huge eldritch gentleman from the last sketch page. Also, most of my Genshin content revolves/will revolve around my polyamorous Kaeya/Aether/Ajax (Kaetherajax) OTP in any dynamic. Although "my" Aether is far more on a leading side, a "connecting link", and an anchor for Ajax and Kaeya - all three ultimately being a secret safe space for each other.

So wth did this come from:

I once had a dream about Aether being stuck in the dragon form in a different world xD He looked similar to a dragon OC of mine, as if he +- belonged to the same species but with his own quirks. In the dream he looked somewhere in-between the "condensed" (was also a liiiiittle bit bigger than that) and "uncondensed" versions. The twins found themselves in a "classy fantasy" world with different branches of magic, and Aether turned out to be a metamorph-healer. They helped to alleviate this world's global crisis, but a fragment of something connected with the local "dark side of the force" got lodged in Aether's chest, seized control over him and forced him to slip away in an unknown direction, stuck in the form of a dragon. Lumine and the local Chaeya set off to search for him - and succeeded! He almost R.I.P.ed them, but came to his senses in time. Most memorable moments:

Aether's appearance - he had three eyes, and when he was under control of the shard, the right and third eyes were just rolled back white, while the left had multiple pupils, similar to a demon from my bw pict attached. But he was overall incredibly creepy in this "possessed" state.

When Aether began to struggle for control, he moved like... I don't know how to describe it, but it was SO fucked up - it was clear from the movements that two entities were fighting for the "seat at the helm", and the body looked like a marionet at times. The closest I can think of is the monkey boss from Sekiro in its headless phase, when it does plunge attacks and forward dashes with a sword x'DDD The sight was absolutely chilling.

When Aether "surfaced" and allowed Lumi, Kaeya and Ajax to get their hands almost elbow-deep into his chest and try to pull out the shard. But while it was budging, it was burning their hands almost to the bone, even despite Lumi's healing and the combo of water-ice cooling from Cheya. In the end it tossed them all aside by some sort of shockwave - so Aether dove into his own wound while he was still "lucid", and ripped the shard out with his own teeth, for Lumine to destroy it.

And the last but not the least was the most hilarious scene of licking the wounds of the companions - Aether was capable of healing almost any damage but in such a strange way, 'cause dragon incarnation enhanced all the abilities, but something about its "composition" influenced "magic conductivity" xDD He carefully used Kaya's palm as an example for what he had in mind (he had a hard time speaking in this form). Kaeya immediately bared Childe's nasty wound (on his side) from Aether's claws, and Childe was instantly alarmed for the most ridiculous reasons:

Сhilde: Nononono wait - he's her brother, right? A human! Another very human man licking me! How is that okay?! Kaeya: ... Do you HAVE to make things even more awkward than they are? Lumine: does a discreet eyeroll

Turns out it was very much okay, but there was one very awkwardly fluffed up Aether licking the wounds of a tomato-grade red Childe, who was hiding his face in his hands.

oO Thought I'd posted it here as well, but apparently not.