The World in Dissonance (Volume 1)

Chapter 3 - Part 4

Part 4

Actaeon,

That was the name of a famous Theban Hero.

“Lesson for the day, Lil’ Sis!”, said the eldest sister of the Liddel Family while addressing to her younger sister Laurencia. “Have ya ever heard of the ancient Greek Hero Aktaion?”

“As much as I strive to recall, you have not yet told me of it!”, honestly replied the young girl.

By extension, it implied that her sense of Euhemerism mostly had root from the knowledge her elder sister, Dedicatus, imparted to her. Thought, It went without saying that those knowledge afforded little to no use in an ordinary daily life.

It was already past noon, and both of them had finished assisting one another with the chores, leaving the mansion in an impeccable state. The two siblings now stood in Dedicatus’s room, preparing a piece of luggage as they exchanged those words.

“Aktaion, or Actaeon if ya prefer, was the grandson of the sun god Apollo, as well as a famous hero that was trained by Chiron, the wisest and justest of all centaurs in the Greek Pantheon. His story is that of a Hunter who stumbled across the goddess Artemis, who was bathin’ in the woods, and thus, seein’ her fully naked! And well, bein’ a man, he stopped and stared at the goddess’s garden of eden. The dude was amazed and probably enjoyed it, but that ain’t mentioned in the myth.”, narrated Dedicatus in her own mannerisms. “Then when the goddess Artemis noticed she was observed in her most vulnerable state by a peppin’ tom, she acted and got her revenge on the hunter by forbiddin’ him Speech. If he dared tryin’ to speak, he would be changed into a deer, and thus he would never be able to boast about seein’ her virginity’s mystery. But unlucky as he is, he was turned into a deer after hearin’ the call of his party members and tryin’ to reach out to them. The Hunter was turned into a stag, fled into the woods and was chased by his own hounds to finally die a pathetic death.”

Laurencia didn’t know much how to react to the story as she didn’t get a grasp on what Dedicatus wanted to say. As a matter of fact, the elder sister was not even done yet.

“There are many interpretations of his myth, such as the ‘Hesiodic Catalogue of Women’ or the ‘pseudo-Apollodoran Bibliotheke’ in which his offense was that of bein’ a rival to the chief god Zeus himself for Semele, his mother’s sister, whereas in the tragedian Euripides’s ‘Bacchae’ in which he was portrayed to have boasted bein’ a better hunter than Artemis herself! Euripides described Aktaion’s transgression with the following text: ‘Look at Actaeon's wretched fate, who by the man-eating hounds he had raised, was torn apart, better at hunting than Artemis he had boasted to be, in the meadows.’ Well there are other parallelism in classical times, such as how the King of Uruk Gilgamesh gave Ishtar of her mistreatment of her serial lovers in the ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’ or the story of the Ugaritic hero Aqht and the war goddess Anath!”

She did it again. The girl named Dedicatus did it again. It was her signature to get too much into historical, philosophical or mythological details despite the fact it could be explained with simple words. It left the little girl Laurencia speechless as she was trying to understand the ‘lesson of the day’ her elder sister was trying to share with her.

“To sum it up, Aktaion’s story is that of the Hunter who became the hunted just cuz that poor soul messed up with some gods! And so, the lesson is to never dare messin’ up with otherworldly bein’ unless you are ready to face the consequences!”, finally clarified the girl with a medical eyepatch on her left eye. “The culprits that lied about the Witch Hunt in Lancaster, Carnforth messed with somethin’ beyond what they can possibly face, n’ now, they are bein’ hunted by Alyss and Sonya, to be brought to justice before the fate of Aktaion falls upon their head!”