Chapter 38
Thirty-Eight
Elara
Sitting upright, Elara called her seier back to her. The golden flames settled in her hands, and she stared at them. Her unseeing glare went on for too long. She struggled to focus. Struggled to find the essence that swirled in her magic.
The ones she needed to summon Alruna.
Ignoring the thud in her temple, Elara searched for the hidden threads that swirled within the blaze.
Something iridescent glittered in the center. The combined braid of her and Njáll’s thread anchored the flame, standing like a stone against the storm. Her inky, silver-streaked thread mingled beautifully with his dark coiled one, pulsing with a rhythm all its own.
Still, they needed more. Their bound threads weren’t enough.
Elara needed to do the thing she had never done consciously: conjure Alruna. Her ribs ached as she tirelessly searched the flame, not even knowing what she was looking for.
A gust of wind blew around her feet. The scent of lavender followed.
Hlif’s words echoed in her mind.
Alruna is not a gift bestowed by Freyja, but the embodiment of your will to survive.
The panther wasn’t a tangible, separate thing. She was an inherent part of Elara. They were the same.
Static crackled at her fingertips.
A jolt zipped through the base of her spine, and Elara sucked in a slow breath.
How was she supposed to manifest something that had only ever happened on its own before?
When she’d woven her thread with Njáll’s, the panther hadn’t appeared.
Elara retreated further inward, determined to succeed, to latch onto that powerful piece of her spirit that glittered with Freyja’s blessing.
Every thought tunneled into one singular truth. Her love for Njáll, her need to protect him as pure as his desire to save her.
A breathless sob irritated her throat, frustrated tears leaking from her eyes.
“Yes,” she breathed.
She found it.
It wasn’t the soft thread she expected.
Instead, braided steel rope hummed with its own sound.
Elara held her breath, staring at the purest form of Freyja’s light. The core of her own soul stared back at her.
As she lifted her arm, Elara groaned, the limb heavy with exertion. Her body screamed with effort as she reached out.
One by one, her fingers closed around the thick, golden steel cord.
Pain returned, the sear of it instant and consuming.
She winced, her entire body shuddering against the burn, making it hard to suck in one gasping breath.
The pain was different from before. It made her blood boil and her skin melt.
It felt as if her soul were being torn from her body.
Each second took more from her as struggled to hold on. Her body begged her to give up, to rest, but instinct demanded she push forward, no matter how much pain she was in.
She bit down on her lower lip, the blood on her tongue a reminder that she still lived.
If only barely.
A scream bubbled in her throat.
Through the pain, the tears, the agony, she bent the cord to her will, weaving it alongside the combined braid of Njáll and Elara that already existed.
The golden rope fought against the union, resisting her.
Trembling with the effort, Elara forced the threads together, pouring the last reserves of her essence into the knot.
Noises from outside slowly seeped into her mind.
The faded slash of steel and the howl of a wolf.
She felt as though she were drifting, losing herself in the tide of her seier.
Her limbs grew cold and stiff, her mind dangerously distant from her body.
I won’t lose him. I can’t.
She chanted the words in her mind, too weak to say the phrase aloud.
With a final mental roar, the rope melded with the bound threads of her and Njáll.
An agonizing spasm seared through Elara’s body, snapping her from her trance.
She gasped, choking on air as her hands fell into the dirt. Strangled coughs caught in her throat, the scent of decay invading her senses.
She still knelt on the wet grass, her physical body seemingly unharmed.
Half a dozen draugar surrounded Njáll. Dirt streaked his sweat-stained face, his braids wild and flying behind him as he fended off the corpses with a feral snarl.
Njáll’s back was pressed against the longhouse, his toned body strained. He fought with a surge of strength, the kind that only came when faced with the inevitable.
The grim cloud suffocating her thinned when her gaze landed on the creature beside her.
Alruna.
A disbelieving laugh rattled her ribs. Something solid, immense, and impossibly real stood next to her.
She did it.
The panther was not the shimmering, wispy shadow Elara remembered.
No, this creature was a magnificent, massive obsidian beast whose dark fur twinkled with flecks of gold. Her eyes hummed with the same liquid gold hue, the air around her cracking like shattering ice.
“Njáll! Jarl!” she shouted, still shaking on the ground.
Wide, dim eyes found hers.
An exhausted smile pushed against his cheeks. Color swirled back into his eyes, his arms shaking. When he saw Alruna, a relieved breath expanded his ribs.
The undead turned their attention to her.
At the sight of Alruna, the draugar recoiled, a shrill, screeching sound staining the night sky. Everyone covered their ears.
“Alruna,” Elara breathed, the name a command and a plea.
The panther moved with deadly elegance. With the first step, a surge of untamed seier simmered in her veins.
Every move of Alruna, every flex of her claws, taxed Elara.
Clarity settled into her soul, truly understanding what Alruna was and what having her here meant.
Elara’s spirit fueled Alruna’s movements.
Digging her nails into the dirt, Elara held on, channeling her will into the panther, pointing her toward the creatures who circled Njáll.
Alruna bounded, the ground shaking under her. Her black fur sparkled as she moved, circling the draugar. The closest corpse reached out an icy, gnarled hand.
Alruna tore through the creature with ease. Long claws swiped through the bloated corpse, golden dust glittering on the sharp claws.
The decayed flesh caught fire, incinerating in a plume of crimson smoke. It swirled higher, making the moon appear as though it dripped blood. The corpse buckled, falling in on itself, collapsing into a pile of smoldering ash.
No warmth remained in her body, but Elara pushed through, ignoring the protest in her muscles.
“Leave none,” Elara roared, fighting the dizzying exhaustion that was so tempting to give in to.
It was chaos.
Fire and ash.
Panther and wolf.
Once Alruna cleared the closest draugar, Njáll sprinted to Elara’s side, his figure both close and impossibly far away. His axe swayed in his hand, his body poised like a shield in front of her.
“Burn, little flame,” he growled, spurring her on.
In the center of the village, the Konungr fought with all the savage rage of a god. The wolf pushed the undead back, preventing them from reaching the woods where the families hid.
The only thing that kept Elara from succumbing to the terrifying pull of sleep was Njáll’s hard, warm body anchored to hers.
In the depths of her soul, she felt it. The beat of his heart. The hum of his breath.
Shaking, Elara drew from him, from them, pushing herself and Alruna to the brink.
One by one, Alruna slashed through the draugar, turning them to dust with a decisive swipe of her claws, golden dust clinging to the scattered bones of the dead.
With a snarl, Alruna drove her body through the last two remaining corpses near their dwelling. She pinned them under her claws, tearing soiled flesh from bone as their bodies burst into clouds of golden ash.
The sheer vacuum of power overwhelmed her.
Sharp, blinding pain stabbed at her like a dagger to the heart. A sobbing whine echoed in the darkness.
Elara collapsed with a wet breath, her limbs twitching.
The connection broke and Alruna dissolved in a wisp of black smoke, shimmering gold dust falling across Elara’s body.
The world went black.
“Elara!”