so the basic premise of this au follows xisuma - a geneticaly engineered special force soldier in a dystopic nation without a country; it's only known as "the Army", because the only thing left of it is the armed force, restlessly tearing through all land that isn't theirs and leaving behind only burnt remains and "the Fog" - thick smoke that seems to travel with them. generaly, their ideals are really racist and even holocaust-esque, following a principle that was forgotten so long ago there isnt a single source where it's been written down. all generals are dead set on one goal - to kill and burn, to burn and kill.

x and ex (pictured above) are both clones created from the genetic material of "the First General" - the legendary man who started this madness and died before he got to see the horrible consequences of his actions. the only difference is the two have been modified to have additional organs near their necks that allow them to manipulate the highly condensed Fog with their breath, which in a concentration as high as what they can produce is a deadly poison gas.

they might be geneticaly identical (which makes them sorta-twins), ex's Fog manipulation skills seem to be inactive; deemed more safe for direct contact with others, he is being trained to eventually take a high position in the Army. he's even thought to be eventually able to bring the nation back to its "former glory", back when the First General was alive.

xisuma, however, has proven to be quite skilled at breathing the Fog, and dispatched to lead a tiny special force division (consisting of whopping five people, himself included). the whole problematic of the au focuses on the contrast between him and ex; specificaly, the fact that it's specificaly being great at what he was made to do being the reason he gets constantly played down and dehumanised - the clone of the most important possible person for hypertraditionalists who are also fucked in the head is treated no better than a glorified smoke grenade. and the mask he wears? its airtight, designed to fit his face perfectly. when activated, it lets no liquid, gas, or any other state of matter for that matter (ba dum tss. that was pretty clever wasn't it) slip through, and to deactivate it, another person has to type in a code on the back, near the clasp. basicaly, once activated, the mask ensures that even if accidental (or deliberate) usage of the Fog takes place, the only casualty will be xisuma himself. oh yeah! he is not immune to his own poison, which means he can very much kill himself if he isn't careful.

now for the reason you probably asked, that is wels (and by proximity, hels, because it was a drawing of him that i posted earlier)! wels is obviously a part of xisuma's tiny division, and also a dragon in human(ish) form. he was taken hostage when he was a tiny baby and raised among the soldiers, which can only mean two things:

1) he was never properly taught how to dragon

and

2) what he was taught is that he is strange (killing machine style) and also a lot of propaganda.

so, as you can see, a delightful package indeed. the flaws are plentiful - one of the worst certainly being the fact that the difference between the Army's nation and dragons makes it plain impossible for a dragon raised by them to safisfy their natural urges and behaviours. you may be wondering, surely the soldiers have seen another dragon by now, how bad can it be? well, you would be correct. they saw the dragons, sure. they also killed every single one of them on sight, only finding the almost-abandoned nest by pure chance. as far as the Army is concerned, there are no other dragons. it led a war against them, like against every other nation it came across, and inevitably it won. wels is the last, with a deeply rooted imposter syndrome and an allarming amount of unresolved health issues (both mental and physical). a worth mentioning coping mechanism of his would be his fixation on knights - he is absolutely caught up with the idea of noble warriors in shining armour, protecting the weak and fighting for grace. the idea of fighting for a reason brings him peace - a reason he never had, but liked to tell himself he did.

okay but you are surely wondering, how does hels fit into all of this. and i would absolutely love to give you a full and satisfying answer, but i could talk about his character for the entire lenght of this post and then some more, and this one is already getting pretty long, so i will try to condense the most important stuff!

as you probably expected, there are still dragons. after all, its hard to kill out something as large and powerful as them. wounded and grieving, most of them never making full recovery, they retreated into the tallest mountains of the world, seeking shelter in their cold, stormy peaks. one of them happens to be hels - a terribly scarred dragonet, left out of the carnage just because he was thought to already been dead. everybody, including his parents (both died from wounds later on), were convinced he was the miracle, the only survivor from the ravaged nest. well, we know how that went so lets skip ahead! how do wels and hels meet? well, you see, wels' health issues get worse and worse, and the generals refuse to react. his division is told to either deal with it themselves, or to let him die. through a series of surprisingly convenient events, they get a hold of an appaerently surviving dragon, who, after seeing the terrible condition in which wels was left, decides to help. on one principle - they will get wels out of there, even if it costed them their life. hels in return teaches them how to treat dragon wounds, and how to prevent most common diseases.

and now, i slumber, cause its late at night and i just spent two hours typing this out