She burns. 

Beneath the waves, her hair rises and sways with the currents. Her dress flutters around her like a sea fan. Hot tears bubble up out of her eyes and rise to the surface to join the wreckage still splashing down from on high. And she burns golden. 

Of course she does! She is the diamond that has been crushed and pressured until all that's left is shining and inviolate; the little piece of Alina that even the void saw and said, "Ah yes. You." There's nothing left to break. No more pieces of her to slough off and leave to the graces of the ocean around her. This is the whole of her, and she is burning. Of course she is!

Her halo burns golden as the Garthim swarm and scrabble about her. Even now her eyes are darting this way and that for any sign, anything at all, of a cat or a girl, of her beloved heart who is both of these at once. Her fingers curl around sharp spears of blazing orange and yellow light. She lashes through the water and they cut as though in air, smashing into hard shells and knocking Garthim away from her. She twirls Yellow in her left hand and thrusts with Orange in her right, a shield and a sword in single form. But she must fight with spears: this is what Kazelia means. 

Across her legs and through her stomach, up one arm and down the other, through her neck and up her cheeks to join around her eyes, red veins of light and power crackle all about her. The strength of a hundred tiny princesses compresses itself into her single form. She swims at speeds beyond her ability, a mighty huntress of the sea, and kicks wave and rotting monster crab alike with unrestrained power and bravery. Somewhere deep inside of her she's always been afraid to let this power take her fully. Perhaps because it was borrowed, or perhaps because it scared her to wind up like a certain someone, having to struggle and forcibly relearn how to hold things without destroying them. But here at last, she embraces it fully, and it accepts her in return. A claw catches about her wrist. She flings herself into a spiraling, underwater flip and smashes the offending Garthim against three of its friends. Her Red is reborn in full, and the name it whispers is Adila. 

All about her back are motes of color. Blue, Indigo, Violet, and even gentle Green are firing, crashing, distracting, shielding their princess. Violet catches the underside of a Garthim with a shot hot enough to scald the sea itself, and the beast floats in stillness for a moment before weakly clacking its terrible grasping claws at a broken crate. In the space freed around her, Green and Blue snatch what pieces of the ship they can find closer and hold them in their Princess' aura for a moment before discarding them. Is this? No, but is that? Is this? Is this? Rita [i]where are you?[/i]

And she burns golden. Invincible and untouchable and all alone. All about her there is bits of ship sinking down or floating up while Garthim scrabble and bubble and hiss in numbers too much for any princess. Is this it? Well that's, that's, that's fine then. If everything she is, all of her wisdom born from pain with the full glory of her crown, the memories of her most precious friends, her love, her life, her everything, and even the ultimate treasure of her homeland... if, if, if, if if if if that is not enough to swat away some crabs, then...

So be it. She'll carve this next failure into her heart as well. Gold swells up around her, brighter and brighter, before it shrinks into a single molten point at the tip of her left spear. No one. Not ever again. She's going to protect everything that is left for her to hold, and if she can't do that, then let her fall while her heart still burns. She draws the spear back and thrusts it with a wave of force that sounds across Argossa like a mighty thunderclap once it breaks the surface of the water. The golden beam of light tears effortlessly through a full dozen Garthim at once. But there are still an impossible number of them surrounding her. 

Claws grab at her waist, her legs, and her arms. Bubbles escape from her lips. Through it all her spark stays lit, but the darkness takes her anyway. 

[Alina Cascade has gained the power of the Chronicles of Crystal. Hereafter she may name one Overlord or Location stat per scene and grant those in her lantern's light Protection]