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 seiðr.
