#seleukos is azem's personal name obviously. this is like. when they're all in amaurot college

[azems-familiar]

i'm writing snippets - little flashbacks really - of my wol as Azem (or, in this case, pre-Azem), Emet-Selch, and Hythlodaeus, for a bit piece i'm writing that may or may not end up finished enough to go up on AO3, and i fucking. i love these guys. they're so HORRIBLE.

The trip to Elpis was meant to be a learning experience - to see the practical side of their studies, what goes on when concepts are approved to be studied more thoroughly, to introduce them to researchers and give them a wider view of jobs they might be interested in when they graduate. What was not meant to occur was a failure of the security system, resulting in several dangerous concepts escaping out of the contained observation areas and into the general fields of the main isles. The students were supposed to stick together, be led to a safe point, and await the researchers’ attempts to get everything under control, but Hythlodaeus had looked into the distance and had seen one of the escaped creations moving freely, away from the Elpis staff meant to capture or revert it, and heading in their direction. Someone has to do something, he’d said, before taking off running, and Seleukos had cursed under their breath and followed, after a single shared glance with Hades, because Hythlodaeus is many things, but an ideal combatant is not one of them. And now here they are, facing down a carnivorous creature with fangs as long as their arms, razor-sharp claws that’ve already torn a hole in Seleukos’s robes, and scales like armor all the way across its body. A snake with four legs and claws. What even was the point of creating something like this? “Why would anyone create this?” Hades hisses next to them, and Seleukos just shakes their head, channeling more aether into the protective barrier they’ve raised - the barrier the creature is currently trying to chew through, dripping something from its fangs that smokes suspiciously like venom when it hits the grass. Protective magicks aren’t usually their forte, but the creature had lunged at them the moment they got close - thermal senses, likely - and it’d been an instinctive reaction, their staff manifesting into their hand in the space of a heartbeat. “There is a certain sense of artistry to it,” Hythlodaeus muses. He’s standing further back, safely out of range of claws and fangs and tail, occasionally firing arrows at weak points in the creature’s scales, though he hasn’t managed to do much beyond anger it so far. Which is, Seleukos supposes, more than Hades’s bolts of fire have done, no matter how much power is behind them. “Though its attitude leaves something to be desired.” “Hythlodaeus,” Seleukos snaps, tightening their hand around their staff. “Priorities.”