#htk au

[aniimoni]

Yaoi?

Yes, but it’s the kind that haunts them, even when they have technically been given what they wanted.

[malt-rants-and-stuff]

MALT today I was maladaptively daydreaming (as one does) about kghr fantasy AUs and I was thinking... an assassin AU would be neat. But why would one of them be an assassin and how would they actually meet.

This thought process leads to -> what if hirano became Kagi's body guard but all along he's supposed to assassinate him in the end -> wait a minute.. betrayal... I've seen the name of a similar concept somewhere... -> Knight's betrayal??? -> WAIT A MINUTE WASN'T THERE A MALT AU CALLED KNIGHT'S BETRAYAL AU

WHAT IS THE KNIGHT'S BETRAYAL AU, MALT, I NEED TO KNOW MORE NOW THAT I REMEMBERED I'VE SEEN YOU TAG IT BEFORE

okay first of all, that sounds like such a fun au and the timeline between all of your thoughts is hilarious lol

second of all, don't think I've ever actually fully explained what's up with knights betrayal on here oops. that's on me haha I'm used to just letting people guess what my brainwaves mean. I'll try my best to explain!! continuing under the cut :)

okay so the basic break down of knight's betrayal is that kagiura, a child of a famous and well-respected family of knights, spends his days guarding the third prince of his empire (niibashi) after war has broken out on the eastern half of the continent. he was sent there by his family a year prior to keep him away from the harsh realities of battle and has stayed there until now.

hirano, on the other hand, is a different story. having grown up working for a lesser known noble's household and being drafted at an early age, hirano is a talented swordsman forced to retreat from the front lines after being mortally wounded and losing his left eye. he is given a choice by his captain afterwards: either retire early and be taken back to his old household, or work as an inside man to send information back and forth from the battlefield to the palace. stubborn and not willing to return to his old life, he chooses the latter.

this all leads up to their first ever meeting, when hirano walks into the palace where niibashi lives and delivers a message to his staff while kagiura is standing guard by the prince's side. there isn't much to say about this meeting, since afterwards kagi leaves with niibashi while hirano is taken to the medical wing to receive proper treatment for his eye and other wounds he gained while traveling. then they dont see each other for at least another month and a half ^.^

my main thing with KB is that i want it to be short but feel large, so the story takes place over a large span of time and is only about 20-30ish chapters give-or-take? lots of it is still drafts and things probably will change so i wouldn't get attached to that figure but yeah. it is just generally an excuse to write kagihira as two people who seem to be similar but are from such wildly different backgrounds and hold such different views of the world that it leads to them misunderstanding a lot about their relationships and conversations haha. also gay ass knights.

then, of course, there is the betrayal that comes along with knight's betrayal. Obviously. i will say that the politics are a huge part of the story, but kagiura "unreliable narrator who has been sheltered by his family and never been made to see real battle" akira isn't really focused on all of that. he is aiming for his strangers to lovers mysterious bad-boy with golden heart romance and is not about to let things like "lineage" and "suspicious behaviors" get in the way of that. unfortunately for him, hirano has not gotten the memo and will use every opportunity to sniff out strange faces and rumors that hold a little too much weight.

there's plenty of other things too, like sasamiya bakery romance and shirahama starting a great revolt. there's a side story i wrote ages ago that i have to resist spoiling centered around hanzawa the bookkeeper and tashiro the informant. kuresawa and his girlfriend are acting out romeo and juliet across the continent. poor bodyguard ogasawara is trying and failing to keep archivist eimi from lighting things on fire in the name of her sacred tomes. makimura gets arrested for slandering the emperor. everyone is having a bit of fun :>

the exciting thing about KB's story that has me frothing at the mouth though is that it is in the very end a Tragedy. not in a "everyone is going to die" way necessarily, but everything happens for a reason. everything has consequences. everything.

i'm so excited just getting to talk about it tbh! its been such a silly little thing in my mind for the longest time so its awesome to get to share a bit of it :)))

[aniimoni]

Here, you can have some test pages. Been tired and slumped with school work, was finally able to breathe yesterday.

I’ve had this comic in mind for a while, and I had drawn it out (I redrew it), these are only the first 2 pages. I don’t think I’ll get to the full thing. There’s another thing i’m working on 🐛

Context? I’m not sure if I want to keep this in the canon HtK lore, but it was fun to get back into making these. Also, coming up with petty nicknames is super fun. I think the lamb would have plenty for him. Mister Waits is perfectly patronizing and reminds him of his past, they’re just smart like that.

I like to think that they had all these ideas for nicknames stored, but were never really able to use them. Now that he’s free and out-and-about, it’s one of their ways of letting their anger out on him in the most passive-aggressive and socially acceptable way possible.

But isn’t passive-aggressiveness bad? Well, yeah, that’s exactly what I’m going for 👨🏻‍🔬 They have a very unhealthy way of thinking that has developed, which ends up affecting everyone around them, whether they intended it or not.

I’ve had a ton of time to think about their character (aka: lying awake at night and daydreaming), there’s so much I could talk about, but not enough time/energy lmao

one of my favorite panels

[aniimoni]

guess who got to play cotl on their roommate’s switch!! in which everyone nearly died multiple times and i suck at crusades

i was going to include a sketch of TOWW, but i’m lowkey his biggest hater right now, so all i’m gonna be drawing is Mordias and the lamb because they the only ones that matter—honestly

[aniimoni]

uhhhh do you mind????

[aniimoni]

So why would your lamb have a keloid scar? Genuinely curious :0

OHHHHHH MY GOODNESSS!!!! OK OK 1) THANK YOU FOR ASKINGG and 2) Sorry this is such a late reply, been busy.

Anywho, my lamb has a keloid scar because I think it would just make sense healing wise- but let me elaborate.

CW talk about scarring + some imagery (just drawings)

Keloids are a bunch of extra skin tissue that has formed to close a scar. Don’t ask me the science behind it, I am only speaking from my own experience (wildly enough, I also have a keloid on my neck lol). An axe to the neck wouldn’t be just one quick swipe, so it wouldn’t be a clean cut. To me, it would only make sense that it would take a lot of extra skin tissue to heal a wound like the lamb’s, considering the manner in which it happened.

In my au (named Hearts to Keep btw), the only way that TOWW was able to put the lamb back together was by making their body form that extra tissue on their neck.

When they were first resurrected, it looked a lot more red because still kind of in that “healing process”. They didn’t cover it at first because 1) a lot of fabrics just feel uncomfortable near/on it, and 2) they just didn’t feel like it 🤷‍♂️ This led to a lot of their cult members being taken aback VERY frequently:

More rambling + drawings ⬇️ so i don’t take up ppl’s screens

And more often than not, they would constantly forget the basic courtesy of not touching strangers (again, taken from my experience).

Which, of course, annoyed them very much. This makes them look for solutions, leading them to the conclusion that it would be better to cover it; mainly due to the fact that cultists don’t know what personal space is when it comes to them, yes, but it’s also because it bothers them that it’s so exposed in battle and to fabrics/their wool. Sensory issues basically.

Much to their avail, they can’t find anything that feels even the slightest bit comfortable around that area. And so, they decide to bring up this problem to none other but the one who started it.

He doesn’t really know what they would like for him to do. They both go back and forth, half arguing, half trying to understand eachother. Eventually, it is brought to their attention that ICHOR is very useful and versatile! And what is ichor? The blood of a god. And who is in the room with us right now? A god.

TADAAA!!! Lamb gets their very own little neck cover + their bell! Surprisingly, ichor makes for very good fabric.

Of course, this doesn’t erase all the experiences that come with having a keloid, but it takes unwanted attention/touching away from them.

HOWEVER!!! The keloid also ties to their emotions- in more ways than one- but, maybe that will be for another post 😋

Let me know if there are any more questions, cotl au related or just keloid related. Goodnight, and thank you for coming to my TedTalk 🫶🏼

[aniimoni]

Y’all remember Saimon? Love this guy for sure.

This is part of a comic,, but shhhhhhhhh

[aniimoni]

WHO IS THIS DIVA 🗣‼ (Mordia)

MORDIAS!!!!! FINALLY I GET TO DO THE MORDIAS POST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GODBLESS

I've been DYING to answer this, but my motivation to draw her hasn't been as good as my motivation to write about her lol,, I'll do my best (I started writing this a while agoooo LMAO I have absolutely been motivated to draw her recently, but I don't have anything for this right now)

To reiterate, Mordias came across the Lamb shortly after her father was murdered for being part of a rebellion group. She ran off on her own, and eventually came across another group that had actually formed some sort of a community of their own.

On the outside, she could absolutely tell they were very charming; I like to think that they would walk around old villages trying to recruit people, at least in the earlier days when they were barely getting the hand of crusading. However, what caught her attention over time was how undeniably whole they were. They were keenly aware that they were a live being, with flaws, emotions, sensations, and a brain. They were always leaning into it, rather than running away at the very idea that something could go wrong. Eventually, the Lamb and her made for an impossible duo, always bouncing ideas off of each other and building up; being prepared to take on anything when it came. They never really get married, because they see marriage as more of a political/power thing (which is also relevant to Narinder at some point). Their relationship is political in some aspects, especially since they manage the cult together as partners, but if its simply labeled that way then it doesn't really take into account their mutual choice to be vulnerable?? They're just happy that they don't have to guess whether anything is mutual I guess. Hopefully I captured the gist of whatever they've got going on at this point.

However, a noticeable strain in their relationship was brought to light when the Lamb chose to spare Narinder's life, and even take him into the cult they built together. The very cult that stood against every ideal that the older gods had established.

It was fine for a while I guess, but it just got messier after it became very obvious to Mordias that the lamb was willingly shoving certain conversations aside and deciding to not be vulnerable with their followers, witnesses, even Narinder, and ESPECIALLY her. This sapphic situationship stuff gets real y'all.