[center][h3][color=8f676f]Atarah[/color][/h3]
[img]https://i.imgur.com/4WzhS6f.png[/img][/center]

[color=dedbb6]"Yeah! Go dragon! Hmm.. Better do something about that.."[/color] Atarah cheered on the dragon as it attacked, before seeing Saef begin to charge an attack. Looked light based. Atarah smiled.

Serah transformed into a lance, and rocks swirled around her, forming a bigger and bigger lance, and when Saef launched his attack, Atarah jumped to the Rose Dragon's snout and shoved Serah forward, activating her Soft Shadow Style as she did. The Soft Shadow Style that had been created precisely to defeat hard light. 

The majority of Saef's meter wide laser deflected off Atarah's Magnetic Aura, hitting neither her nor the Rose Dragon. By choosing to hide layers upon layers within his spell, rather than simply making the whole thing one holy laser, Saef had unknowingly weakened his attack against Atarah, who had specific counters to both light and hard light. The hard light spikes would be destroyed with hardly any impact at all, Atarah's Soft Shadow Style specifically countering them, weakening their nature and shattering them apart as Atarah thrust her lance forward to meet the beam. Only the flares of holy light a moment later would have any effect, but Serah's giant ablative barrier of rock she had formed around herself absorbed those. And those holy light flashes were the weakest of the three parts of the spell, Saef having made them last and not 100% sure of their detonation with full fury.

All in all, only one third of Saef's attack would have any effect at all, and holy power vs rock, while it broke the rock away from Serah's control, and shattered the extra layer of the lance, Atarah had countered Saef's attack for a comparable pittance of effort. And even if the whole beam had been holy light, it still would have been an even trade of energy, as Holy countered Demons, but Atarah countered Light.

Unless Farris intervened, the Rose Dragon would suck in the blood free of interference.  [color=dedbb6]"You'll have to try a little harder than that, Pretty boy! You'll need to fight me face to face if you want to breach my defense!"[/color] Atarah taunted Saef, still standing on the snout of the Rose Dragon, blood swirling around her into its maw.

[@KoL][@Silvan Haven]

Edit for those from the Future: Turns out the entire attack was holy, so Atarah loses Serah and an arm off of this, in return for blocking the attack.