W.W.H.D.: Princess Hornet would want to fetch her cube companion from her knapsack and take a relaxing, manticore venom induced nap. She didn't have anyone counting on her though. Kathelia thought that maybe, if she did, Princess Hornet (who was objectively, the coolest princess) would have a device around to turn on some theme music so she could do something really, really cool. 

Lacking both, Kathelia takes in the garden. Her vision is...oh mother void, how to even describe it? You're watching still, from the center of her heart, so maybe you have the best seat in the house for this. Her vision is a swirl as the sight of the labyrinth garden with its grasping vines and ivy walls wars with another of leafy trees and mountain needles from manticore poison and Kathelia's past. The two struggle back and forth, plants swirling and changing and interposing with each other until flames lick the edges and burn away the dross. She isn't stung during this time because Red shines in her left hand, the flames swirling outward and around the fist grasping it tight next to her heart. Its fires mix with those of the spear in her right hand and the manticores can't even get near her as she scans the garden, so intense is the heat. 

Alina had been dragged down by vines and should be somewhere but...there was crushed foliage and...she peers through the flames following the trail to some kind of cage on a cart approaching the orchard. She thought she glimpsed someone else dart by wearing silks as well and moving lithe and fast. But that wasn't Alina, which meant, logically, that she was in the cage, so that was where Kathelia needed to go.

Kathelia spares one more thought for Kyouko before she leaves her perch. She steps past the manticores and fastens her spear onto her back, leaving the flames swirling around her. Keeping a tight grip on Red, she bends down to pick up up Kyouko effortlessly with her off hand, letting the flames part around just the two of them. "Thankth Kyouko" she says to the already drifting off fox, blushing slightly at the lisp even though you'd think she'd have gotten used to it by now. It didn't exactly fit the rainbow flame theme she was trying to pull off here. 

Nevermind though. With Kyouko slung over one arm and Red held firmly to her chest, she leaps with a strength that she's never had. Her hypothesis had been right! The localized labyrinth conditions [i]were[/i] unsuited to preventing aerial traversal! She had just enough time to exult before coming down with a [i]Thunk[/i] and a rattling on the...area a few feet to the side of the cage. Listen! There's a big difference between theory and execution and she had hardly had time to calculate localized gravity with empirical precision before that jump, so it's pretty solid that she got close! 

She cradles Kyouko to herself for the landing (gosh that's...that's really nice, does Adila feel this way when she picks people up all the time?) and then lays her gently on the ground on some grass. She rushes to the pallet, lets out a sigh of relief when she sees Alina there and pulls her spear out to slash the bars, which turn to ash before her. Her fires are dying down though. Once she finishes that, it's no more rainbow flames highlighting her pigtails, it's just red shining in that hand: beating steadily next to her heart. The edges of her vision are all fire now, crackling and surging to hold the manticore poison at bay a little longer. 

"Alina, I brought your light! Itth right here!" She holds her hand out, wobbling only a little as she moves Red away from her body. It wants to come home Alina, but Kathelia is going to need a little help pretty soon because it's about to be nap time for her.