The tales of Artemis: Arzaur the Beastslayer
One day, the beast started bringing humans from another world.
The sea hunters sliced the belly of their prey and a live human would emerge from the entrails of those mythical creatures. At the beginning of it all, it was a mess. The hunters would slice the beasts with the savagery that they practiced for hundreds of years, and the humans they would pull out of the beasts were nothing more but corpses succumbed by the same blades aimed at rescuing them. The sea beast hunting had to take a more delicate form for the beastborne to survive.
Though, not everyone welcomed the beastborne on their Island. Some saw them as a blessing from past gods, a gift to ensure the prosperity and some as the curse of the devil, a force to destroy what’s left of humanity on Artemis.
In this quarrel about the fate of beastborne, a man stood up against all and shouted:
“I am Arzaur the Beastslayer, the first Sea Hunter. I vow to free the captives of the beasts for they are the lost souls. Stand in my way and Arzaur shall hunt for you.”
No one dared to.
Anyone who had set the foot in Deer Port has heard the tale of mighty Arzaur, the first Sea Hunter. As a young man, he devoted his life to studying life on the Island and in the sea.
“Life will only thrive if enough of us believe it can”, he used to tell his son as he would take him out in the sea to gaze at magnificent sea creatures. “What if we don’t?” his little boy asked. Before his father could answer back, the sea beast rose from the water with magnificent force, towering over the rocking boat of father and son. The beast came down crashing on the boat and dove deep into the water, but when the trouble seemed gone, one of its tentacles grasped the boy and pulled it into the deep. Arzaur dove and swam to rescue his only son. But the last thing he saw was his boy disappearing into the abyss to be devoured by the monster. “I’ll slay you all”, Arzaur cried out as he emerged from the sea and many years after he spent hunting and killing the beasts that dwell in the depths around the Island.
Today as you look around the Deer Port, all the beauty and the riches that stands on it are built through the ferocious will of Arzaur to kill the sea monsters. The hunting boats, the tavern that serves the sea beast meat, and the lodging, all are the makings of Arzaur. For the hunt is his raging passion to avenge his son, but the meat of the slain beast is nothing short of a profit.
Thousands of them he had killed, and his beard had grown long and grey, yet he kept doing what he mastered till the day the beasts started bringing humans from another world. Now he not only killed the beasts but also freed the people inside them and he kept doing so day and night. “Take a rest Arzaur, leave some beasts for us to slaughter”, other hunters would say, but there was no stopping Arzaur. “The man is possessed, he thinks he will find his son in one of them’ monsters”, said a sailor. “At this rate of killing, I believe he just might”.
All the people he had rescued were not his children anyway. These were people, who escaped their world and came here in search of their place. And all the Beastborne went into the Island, some made fortune, some made a name, and some just died without leaving a mark or trace. But Arzaur cared none of it. He had the beasts to slay and people to free, and he believed that someday, he will free the one he wants the most.
