Crystallized air? Well, he was half right. The cage was certainly crystalline, though air played no part in it. Instead, it was a rock formed of highly ordered carbon atoms stacked in octahedral patterns. On the common market, it was simply known as diamond, and would be considerably harder to break or remove than crystal air. Either way it wouldn't matter. She had what she needed.

Just as her diamond bauble veered back into her halberd it shattered like glass in a shower of sparks into a mist of water vapor and air pockets. Simply enchanted aerogel, the weapon few smiths would dare craft was only good for a single direct hit, be it against flesh or steel. This explained its color and affinity for manipulating air currents. In the end, as Shin had hoped, Crystal would be momentarily disarmed. 

Or so he thought. Again, her methodology was worth restating:

[Quote=Crystal]She expected point blank disarms and feints.[/quote]
Shin would be behooved to recall the blue dust from earlier as he'd find both himself and his weapon encapsulated within a Guardian Crystal, this one almost otherworldly in its rigidity. It resembled saphire origami, the way it glowed in the sun and folded upon itself into sharp points. [B]This[/b] was her real weapon. The magical string was a trigger,  a pull acting as the action signal. The rapid dispersal of its anchor would certainly suffice. While she could not morph so long as she was restraining he and his weapon, so too could his weapon not morph, subjected to her magic which acted as a powerful binding agent.

The glowing dust --Ishtalle in the form of a fine grain-- and the seeming fading of said dust was in fact her sublimating into a gas.

The prison would have been hermetically sealed, had it not been for two tiny slits. One in the front and one in the back, they were so thin as to be virtually invisible, even further exacerbated by the strange way light was refracted into rainbow ribbons from within. Water from the severed irrigation pipe imploded towards Crystal, appropriately crystallizing all the way into an icy blue, razor sharp sword. Proportioned to fit perfectly through the openings, the blade would pass through the Guardian Edge prisom --and Shin's back-- to find its place in her hand.