The ice rises around her more, and the blizzard strengthens. A bolt of lightning crashes out of the sky to tear Iceheart's frozen prison asunder.

And out of the shattered ice rises Shiva. Titan and Garuda invoked the humanoid form, but neither did so quite so well. Pale blue skin and a crown of icicles decorate the lovely fae creature that floats gracefully above them, and both the blizzard and the dissipating aether of the crystals swirl around her as she spins and lets out a little joyous laugh.

The Dragoon picks herself up from being thrown off with a mid-air twist and a lancefirst landing onto the ground, but once she's down she has to hold onto said lance for stability against the magical gales.

Aymeric is standing in front of the rest of the party, his shield magically enhancing the protective ward he's holding over the others, and he withstands the onslaught of wind and ice and aether. "Saint Shiva...?!"

    "You fool," gasps Alphinaud in surprise before summoning an aether construct in the form of a small quadruped to start casting.

Otohiko's fairy, meanwhile, twirls in the air and breathes a magical wind that increases everyone's natural regeneration. They'll need it for this fight.

The laughter darkens to an ominous cackle, and the primal spins in the air to face them. Her head tilts, and she smiles at them. For a second, it seems like she plans to just peacefully float there. Then her burning blue eyes slide towards Aymeric, and her smile becomes a cruel smirk. She descends, and reaches for Iceheart's abandoned greatsword from where it was stabbed into the floor. As her hands reach the hilt, ice swallows the blade and hilt of the sword, and forms a new sword of ice around it, to make it a bit more appropriately sized for her new primal form.

She sweeps across the amphitheatre with a flying slash from her icy greatsword, and the battle begins in earnest.

It's like fighting a force of nature. Every slash of her greatsword brings with it an impossibly cold chill, and she sends frigid gales of ice-aspected aether to ensnare and slow her enemies. A wave of her hand makes ice shards rain from the sky, and a click of her heel against the floor ices over their arena with something far too slippery to be real ice. It's like fighting an actual knight, with training and experience and at least some measure of intellect. She takes advantage of the iced over arena to swoop over to an edge and break the ice over her sword to send a rain of shards at her foes with more accuracy than her weather summoning seems to have. Before they recover from the volley, she summons a shield of ice and switches to a stance more befitting of a proper paladin, blocking their blows with a casual ease. She is beautiful and terrifying, unprecedented and powerful, and—

—and—

—and it's not enough. Not to beat the greatest warriors of Ishgard and the Scions, not all at once, not working together. Not with only a couple of stolen shipments of aether crystals to power her. Not with complete inexperience at using her new form, at not knowing the extent of her powers or her own weaknesses. Not with the confusion and fear and pain that swirls through her mind like the blizzard swirls around her. Her shield shatters under their barrage, and she snarls and switches back to a greatsword and leaps with incredibly speed at their healers, Otohiko first. The power she brings to bear is enough to break through her enemy's protective magical shielding, but this doesn't make it past the extra shielding underneath it, courtesy of Otohiko. None of her clever tricks are working. The Warrior of Light knows what she's going to do before she does it, and is always one step ahead, each and every time. The Lord Commander is a talented paladin in his own right, able to take her beating without losing his head or flinching in the face of her primal wrath. The Azure Dragoon is there every single time there's an opening, stabbing her with that goddamned lance of hers. The primal is outmatched.

She lets out a scream of fury and pain when the realization hits. It freezes them solid, but leaves them alive. She does not have the power to kill them.

And then, quite unexpectedly, she speaks.

"FOOLS, you have no idea what crimes have been committed against those you call the villains—!" she roars, snarling with rage and agony from the blows they've landed against her. She floats high above, raising her sword and charging it with power to see if a massive aetherial strike while they're frozen and vulnerable will be enough to finally kill them.

Then she stops.

"... no," she murmurs, to the wind. The blizzard fades, and she floats delicately to the ground. "Walk the same path and reach the same destination. No." She raises her her sword and looks at it thoughtfully. "Every new breath, a victory." Then she smiles, and plunges the sword into her own chest.

"I win, fanatics and fools," she hisses, in clear and obvious agony as she carves out her own heart. As she carves out, most importantly, the vessel inside. She raises the frozen Elezen woman's body in her palm, and she ices a protective barrier for it. Then, with the last of her strength, she throws it and the precious cargo inside like a lance, fast and far away.

"I... win..." murmurs Shiva, as she crumples to the ground, dissipating into aether. The ice trapping them disappears with her.

Otohiko lands on his knees and immediately summons a protective barrier on the ground around them to soften their landings and to... protect against something that never comes. He looks confused, then massively relieved for a second when whatever it is he was afraid of doesn't happen.

The Azure Dragoon... doesn't need it. As soon as she's free, she falls onto the hard ground with her spear, and then she pulls it out and jumps, all the way atop one of the fading ice pillars. "I'm going after her," she says, and jumps again an instant before it fades to nothing and into the distance.

"...does she always do that?"

"More often than would be any good for morale," replies Aymeric, straightening up and dusting himself. "Is everyone here alive?"

    Alphinaud lets out a squeak of a reply, then clears his throat and says, "Hale and healthy, milord."

But just to be sure, Otohiko's fairy moves from party member to party member, dropping a little bit of healing here and there on them all. "Well. That fight as a whole was... unexpected. And easier than I thought." The au ra stands up straight, too, and looks at Alphinaud. "That, summoning a primal into her own body, that shouldn't have been possible. Should it?"

    The elezen boy clears his throat again to meet Otohiko's gaze. "It's hard to say. I don't think I've heard of anything like it before, though, no."

    "If the Scions haven't, we haven't," says one of the Temple Knights that came with them—the other healer in the group, who's casting a few more active spells to ensure everyone is fine.

"There could be something about it in the church archives..."

    "Urianger would know about it, if it had ever happened," declares Alphinaud with a confidence he does not quite feel. "I'll return to the Waking Sands and inform him of this fight."

"I should... probably come with you," agrees Otohiko, somewhat reluctantly.

Aymeric turns to them and bows in the Ishgardian fashion. "Good travels, and I hope next time we see each other will be in less tense circumstances."

Alphinaud starts floating in the air as he casts teleport, and Otohiko follows suit. After five seconds they both disappear.

And since most people who are not the Warrior of Light and his friends do not have enough anima to teleport everywhere all willy-nilly like that, the Temple Knights have to walk.

Chasing down a single giant icicle in a snowy mountain range is not precisely easy. But the Azure Dragoon has the trajectory, and it's not like Shiva was aiming for subtle when she threw Iceheart away. It's difficult, but possible, to find the crater where the shattered remains of the Elezen's icy protection lie.

But Jacqueline is not the first to find it.

A hyur man sits in the crater, muttering expletives to himself as he stubbornly chips away at the remains of the lady's icicle with a dagger. Clearly, he means to free her. Lady Iceheart, for her part, looks quite unconscious.

"'I have a plan,' she says, 'I'll catch up,' she says. Could have blightin' told me your plan was the far side of crazy," mutters the hyur, as he continues to work.

The chasing elezen does indeed not have trouble finding the crater, and she drops from a particularly cool jump that the hyur would absolutely have admired had he noticed it was happening. As it is, though, she was silent enough, so she should probably arrive mostly by surprise there.

"I could have, you know. Set up a tarp or something. For the landing." Chip chip chip. "Halone, that sounds stupid when I say it out loud."

He's got no idea that he's got company.

She withdraws her helmet and sinks her lance on the icy ground, deep enough that it can hold her weight as she leans against it with one shin crossed over the other. "She probably did not plan that far ahead."

"Shrivelled blue dragon balls—" he swears, jumping. Then he adjusts the grip of the dagger in his hand, and draws a second one, and he's between Jacqueline and Iceheart and trying (and... mostly failing...) at looking protective and menacing.

"Where did you come from?"

The Azure Dragoon points up with her right index finger, smirking a bit.

“.... Right.” He summons up his courage and tries to look tough. “Well, just. Just sprout some wings and go back, then, there is nothing to see here.”

"Really? Girls trapped in icicles a common sight for you heretics?"