Distress: Day 7

Word Count: 42,010

Summary of Events:

When Olwyn woke up the following morning she found that her fellow attackers had been forced to retreat without her. Needing to change out of her clothes lest she get killed, as she couldn't escape in broad daylight, Olwyn found a dress in the closet she'd hidden in that fit her and decided to snoop around and see if she could find the Prince of Sygæðelwulf. Instead she ended up being found and taken to the throne room of the Queen of the North, as she'd ended up taking a dress that was the uniform of the Queen's ladies in waiting. So disguised, Olwyn went about being a lady in waiting and trying to find the prince, but not succeeding, so she took a break from searching for him to do some reading on two strange men she'd heard about, one named Bælor, and the other called the Black King . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

Walking along the shelves, Olwyn scanned the titles, looking for any that had something to do with the gods so that she might find one telling who the gods were and which one Bælor was among them — after all, Olwyn had grown up in a kingdom in which the gods were neither worshipped nor taught about.

Olwyn found a volume which was titled Greater and Lesser Gods and took it down from the shelf.

She turned through its pages until she found one which was headed Bælor, with the name illuminated with symbols of death, such as marking stones, skulls, pyres, and what looked to be a goblet of blood.

The text underneath proceeded to tell that Bælor was the god of the dead and the underworld who was supposed to live under a thing known as a dolmen, particularly one in a forest Olwyn had never heard of, but underneath every dolmen was supposedly a portal that led to his domain of caves and such in the bowels of the earth.

Some of the portals allowed those who peered in through them to see and speak to their dead relatives, but some of the portals demanded that the person who found them be sucked down into the domain and be considered someone who was dead without dying.

Bælor was told to be married to a half-dead princess, who was called such because she had been a living princess, and he had loved her, but yet she’d had to become partially dead in order to marry him and live in his domain, where he had sired several children by her who were all half dead like she was, and had the chance to choose whether they would go aboveground and be permanently alive, or whether they would remain below ground and become permanently dead.

The legend also advised that the dead be buried or burned while still fresh, and accompanied by certain plants and spices, dependent upon which time of year the person died and what they were chiefly remembered for, as well as with charms and other tokens which would help them to do well in the underworld.

Olwyn had to admit it all seemed foolishness to her, and she couldn’t be bothered to take the whole tale seriously, even though the language used was so definitive in nature, suggesting that the author was thoroughly convinced of the veracity of what he was writing down.

Such fallible gods couldn’t possibly exist. There was no way there could be such beings, and Olwyn was not going to be convinced by anyone otherwise, be they a person speaking face to face with her, or someone whose writing she was reading off of a page.

Once she’d read the portion on Bælor, which included some notable tales involving him that sounded not altogether unlike the tales Olwyn had heard around the fire of the warriors of Sygæðelwulf — in style more than content, but even the content wasn’t altogether different — she flipped on through the book in search of any heading which said the Black King, but didn’t find any.

Pronunciation:

Bælor: b'ayelohr