#only for ik to come along and show him that the solution is simple really

[journey-to-the-attic]

Okay idea for the Dragon AU--

WHAT IF Diavolo is the king and Barbatos is his servant and Diavolo is secretley half-dragon on Sonnos side? And him trying to make peace with dragons is so he can reveal to his people that he's half-dragon and show they aren't bad

But at the point of the AU, people still hate them hence IK stumbling upon Mammon deep in the woods after being accused of being a witch

The reason I thought of this is because I think an AWESOME concept would be if Barbatos was a dragon that learned how to take on a human disguise and act like a human

But as a dragon he's like oroboros!!!! He's watched the rise and fall of both dragon and human kind over and over and over, essentially watching the world eat its own tail and unfortunately he's as much of a slave to it as everyone else, it's just that he's one of the only ones who realizes and actively remembers ALL of it

And he's hoping that Diavolo (with the power of this strange little human) might be able to break this cycle

Just an idea but my brain is firing at 100% right now

ohohohoooo this is GOOD

okok so imagine that diavolo's been (subtly) trying to make contact with the full-blood dragons, but barbatos knows this never works out - no matter how promising things start out, something always ends up going wrong, because there is a fundamental mistrust between both humans and dragons

so there's always a miscommunication that makes either side think they've been betrayed, or one side will be too tense and convinced they'll be attacked, so prematurely attack the dragons in retaliation; it always ends in either a mass-hunting of dragonkind, or destruction of the kingdom

but then this cycle is the first time ik shows up, and this important because ik explicitly trusts that her friends will NOT do anything to hurt her on purpose - the kind of unwavering faith that diavolo wants to establish between humans and dragons

of course, there's a bit of an obstacle in that ik is also mistrusted at this point - "of course the witch child would ally with those wicked dragons!" - i imagine there'd be moments where public opinion begins to change, e.g. when ik along with one of the brothers helps save a merchant being robbed by bandits

maybe they get on diavolo's radar for the first time because one of the nobles in his court (om mephistopheles perhaps) gets attacked by monsters while technically invading the dragons' territory, but the brothers save and then return him back to safety. to diavolo this is a MIRACLE, and he MUST meet this witch-child who's prompted the dragons to show compassion to humans immediately

(to put an ironic twist on this, maybe the reason ik's never appeared before now is because barbatos's attempts to set things on the right track in previous cycles always butterly-effected into her being killed prematurely; she only survives in this one because barbatos is standing back in the hope that diavolo would be able to break the cycle)

(he only figures this out upon going back over his memories from past cycles - since at the time the deaths were just part of the (what he thought was) inevitable collateral damage of his efforts)