She lifts her staff.

She wants to know what's going on in there.

She needs to know what's going on in there.

Because if she doesn't know what's going on in there, people will get hurt by her inconsistent response.

So may the Light help her see.

It's blurry, like trying to see through frosted glass by sheer emotion.

But the people of Bialya ... mostly they're scared. Of the sky, and of their own confusion. Countries are big, though, and there are a handful of small areas — just there — where the emotive mix is different. Two stand out in particular: Anger, at the intrusion, and Love of C_HA^OS.

"...I can confirm that the Witch Boy is very probably on site. Nobody else I can think of would feel like that right now.  There's also a signature that seems like it could be Queen Bee, but that's just because it's angry."

Fuck.  How does she deal with that?

The power of incredibly violent friendship?

...Unlikely to stick and going far closer to moral lines about mind control than she'd like.  Nonetheless a better plan than not having a plan.

...The Chaos/Light interaction?  No, Klarion's intelligent, he'd slip out of a geas faster than you can say 'geas'.  And that probably goes for Edicts, too, damn it.

She doesn't have Tunon's sigil, or have more than half a clue how the Spires work, let alone have one available.

"The...  middling...  news, is that only the sky is wrong in there."

"Kid Flash, please be advised that once we bring this thing down you are probably our best hope of disarming - the Witch Boy - before he can start throwing a tantrum with phenomenal cosmic power."

...She could try to argue he's not really following the bargain.  But he's not particularly bound to it.  Yet, at least.  So it's a risk.

She could try to distract him, but playing Calvinball against a hostile godling, with no real conceptual backing of your own save what you've made out of duct tape and twine and desperate scrambling, is a fool's gambit.  And her Eide is only not real, right now, not properly λ-real.  She can't meet him strength for strength.

(...They either absolutely should or absolutely shouldn't introduce him to the actual game of Calvinball.)

The worst problem, though, is that he's probably going to get bored eventually.

"The most important question that I don't have a good answer to, is whether the Witch Boy is going to get bored of this particular shenanigan.

"I can't say I think he will.  And I can't say I think it would necessarily be good for us if he did.  But if he actively cares about this...

"I have thoughts and hopes.  But not plans.  The last time I faced him, I fought, effectively, from ambush.  This time...  There's no way he doesn't know we're coming.  This was aimed to draw out me, on some level, and I have no idea what he's - not, really, planning, he's a Lord of Chaos, but 'planning' is close enough - to do when I actually respond.

"...Hell of a vote of confidence that he thinks I can handle this level of bullshit."

"The most planlike object that I have is to effectively pull the same trick twice and more durably kidnap his familiar."

She does think she could do it.  If her magic works.

Now's as good a time as any.  And she has a plan for how to make a containment circle.

"Let me see if that's remotely viable right now."

At least Void beats Chaos, in her cosmology.  And she has some symbolism in mind.

But first, she needs to know if she can actually call upon her native magics.  And while, in WoW terms, she's more of a Frost and-or Arcane spec, that's not because she doesn't know the fire she wants to call upon, to sear sand into glass.

....... no. No, she cannot just pull a fraction of the bleed membrane, precisely structured to have a predictable effect, into the world — essentially doing structured nanoscale thaumic metric manipulation — just because she asked nicely! She doesn't even have a special glowy soul-power dedicated to that right now.

She's going to need at least a fancy looking piece of symbolically appropriate jewelry that her enemies can target as a weak point. It would also be easier if she were wearing more gold, since she's trying to call on the powers of Order and the universe has coherent visual artistic direction, thank you very much.

Maybe some little ankhs ...

Now hold on there! Normally, that would be the case, but she's standing directly next to a big-old weakness in the cosmic fabric of reality — and she does actually have a pre-existing power dedicated to making it easier to reach for out of context powers.

She hasn't even despaired yet! You can't have a triumphant scene where the hero overcomes their limits without a bit of despair first. It's not done!

... fine, she can get basic feedback from her technique, letting her feel out and manipulate the nearby pinch in the fabric of reality. But it would be more dramatically satisfying easier if she despaired and/or acquired an appropriately mystical symbol.

Well her Order is purple and likes magic rocks, so the universe will just have to deal.

Well, okay, yes, she was kind of expecting there to be a need for ankhs and-or a bit of a palette swap somewhere in there, But Still.  She might be stuck in the 'wrong' body, bereft of most of her focusing tools qua coprocessors, and utterly disjoint from the strand of the Twisting Nether that was woven through her native soul, but she is still a fucking wizard.  If she can't warp reality by sheer force of will then what the hell is she doing?

Though speaking of magic rocks, she Does have the Lantern staff!  With White Light in it!  And wouldn't you know it, ankhs are a symbol of Life!  So there!

...It's been ages since she's needed to focus to call up basic magical symbology.  But she still remembers how.  And imbuing a single symbol, anchored to the Lantern's heart...

She can refine the flickering flame at the center into another symbol of Life, surely?  She can already feel how.  She might not be Diana or Ophelia, to be able to so readily invoke the shining White - she's not nearly as much of a poet - but when it comes to working with what's already there...

Let a symbol of Life be born from its fires.

And with that done, she can sidestep into projecting Order from the lenses of her staff by weight of visual similarity.  Which isn't Order, but is close enough, don't you think?

Yes! Yes, that will do. Now that she has a glowy weak spot with an appropriate color and meaningful symbolic associations, she may proceed.

The magic supporting the pinch in the world is, in the way of Chaos, fuzzy and hard to pin down. It's immediately clear to her wizardly senses that there is a significant amount of power running through the spell — which is both good and bad. On the one hand, fighting it directly to bring Bialya back into phase with the rest of reality is hard. On the other hand, nudging the flow of chaotic energies to form a bridge between  there and here looks distinctly possible.

...Grumblegrumble.  She's going to have to enchant this thing with Recall sooner rather than later.  It's practically already soulbound anyway.

As far as the Chaos problems go... She doesn't need to fight it, if she can, instead, channel it into something productive.  She's not a warlock.  But she knows some of their tricks.  "...I should be able to bridge us in.  And then we can steal the Witch Boy's cat again.  Kid Flash, please be ready for that no matter what we're doing.  Base, if you can get him a picture, all I really have to describe Teekl is 'orange'.  But there's something else I want to try first, that means we might be able to bring Bialya back first."

Once she has the containment circle up.  Glass ought to make for an appropriately symbolic material, for it is a chaotic mess of an amorphous crystal structure, that is nonetheless solid enough to build a wall out of.  There was a glass brick thing in a house she's relatively familiar with, she knows what she's talking about.

Whether this plan is at all a good idea?  She doesn't know.  (It probably isn't, but there's bad ideas and then there's Bad Ideas™.)  But it's probably not wrong to say that there's still such a thing as a path of least resistance for all that Chaos.

She just needs to change what the path of least resistance actually is.  And that's not a matter of power, really, when reality's already this squishy.  It's conceptual judo.

This is a spell that manipulates whether a thing is in phase with reality.  Wouldn't it be less Orderly if it stopped imposing upon the stochastic processes of reality, and let the power unnaturally contained within it bleed away by bringing Bialya back?  Perhaps with a balloon-y pthhhhhhhhbbbt noise.

Hmm ...

Hmm ...