"Then have her will it to NOT EXPLODE, while we get in somebody who knows how to tell her how to fix it!  DO YOU HAVE ANY BETTER IDEAS?"

While the other two bicker, Opalyn wills the lightline to look how it looked before she threw that extra 27x of intensity at it.

She also sneaks a look at Fdera to see if he's still got the death wand and his full attention aimed at her, and at the crown guy to see if he looks like he's got a death wand.

Fdera:  Death wand pointed at her, but is looking at crown guy.

Crown guy:  No visible death wand, but he's got a lot of magic running around him, including a lot that's anchored on items on or around his person.

The moment Opalyn tries to bend her will to making the lightline look like it looked before, she can feel that this would take really a lot of magic making drastic changes at every point, possibly more magic than she actually has at her current level of upsetness; and also she can sort of feel intuitively that this would not make the lightline actually be how it was, just look that way.

Completely fixing the lightline sure didn't work. Can she actually just will it not to explode? That feels like it shouldn't work, in this magic system? It's one thing to visualize how you want the magic to be and entirely different thing to visualize how you want the magic not to be. Opalyn will just have to trust that crown guy might have made a decent suggestion and just try it.

She wills the lightline not to explode... but in case that doesn't work, she'd really prefer not to be done with this universe quite yet. There are at least three different ways she might die in the next minute: lightline explosion, Emperor, or death wand. The death wand seems like the smallest risk of the three.

Shields up? If she can figure out how to put up shields, that is. And if she can, then she does so more definitively, no question mark.

Shields up!

He doesn't realize immediately what Healthy-Orphan is trying for because of the major magical working she's already doing, and then he hesitates to fire immediately because of the implication that they're all dead anyways if she can't stabilize the lightline, and then of course it's already too late--

Opalyn now has Orphan's style of shields up.  The one that totally failed to protect her from that one guy dressed as a knight, to be clear.  But it's quick and instinctive and requires almost no attention from her at all.

Her sorcery can't will the lightline to not be like something, but she can feel the major tremors running through it, and try to quiet them, maybe.

Yay! Shields are up! This is a much better situation to be in! Now she would really like the Emperor not to appear just yet. First priority: quiet the lightline. Second priority: use this upper hand she's gained, somehow.

She feels the major tremors and tries to will them to be less, first just by willing, and then if that doesn't work maybe she tries to cancel them out with an opposite waveform.

Willing them to be less works, but it takes so much power that even she can't quell more than one disruption at a time.

Trying to cancel them out with opposed waveforms... doesn't work perfectly but it sort of works, and it takes less power to do...

Crowned Guy steps up beside her and raises his own tightly clenched fist, and the aftereffects of Opalyn's attempted cancellations quiet further.

He's yelling a lot of things that he wants her to do instead of what she's currently doing, and is using terminology that makes almost no sense except for faint hints of semantic associations and possible related meanings.

Using a combination of remembered instinct, feedback from the results she's seen so far, and the semantic associations she's getting from crown guy, Opalyn tries to get the lightline as stable as possible. She doesn't exhaust herself doing it, though; she'd rather not burn herself out, and to whatever extent she can manage her power expenditure, she'd like to encourage the crown guy to burn a lot of power, here.

Does any of this remotely work?

It works, for a short time.

And then someone else is present.

He steps forth and raises one hand, and power equal to Opalyn's own rushes out in a vast surge, but aimed with precision and complexity; and the lightline that was blasting leakage in all directions begins to quiet.

"Explain.  Briefly."

Opalyn is paying very close attention to what this guy does to fix the lightline.

She does not speak first, though if neither of the other guys says anything, she won't let the silence hang for long.

"Yes, explain!" the crowned guy says to the Lightline Monitor, sounding very angry about it and like he just showed up himself.

"Prisoner designated Healthy-Orphan with blatant entrance paper anomalies attempted very naive fakery of her calibration test, suddenly surged from Grand-level to Prince-level counter to instructions.  She and Prince Shade-of-Purple-Gray have been attempting stabilization for one and a half minutes, partially successful to my eyes; Healthy knows math but has zero prior experience with sorcery, Prince had insufficient strength."

If that's the Emperor, then Fdera is, in fact, pretty worried; first on the count of this sudden claim that the Emperor kills anyone responsible for an incident; second about the fact that this newcomer does not seem to be putting out more power than Healthy-Orphan, who now has shields up and has previously appeared annoyed with Fdera at several points.

Being visibly the only competent person on this scene seems like his best bet for surviving.  He'd spare the only competent guy on the scene if he was Emperor.

Prince-level? FDERA.

She suspected he might be lying but is still annoyed to have been placed at Prince level already.

Is now the time to blurt out her isekai story to this person who might be the Emperor? She's torn.

If he's a decent sort at all, or if she really is a Summoned Hero, it might be a good idea to identify herself and make her otherworldly assets known. Getting tagged as very out of the ordinary and potentially very valuable might save her from summary execution, if the crown guy was right about how that works -- though maybe also her shields save her from the Emperor's first attempt at murder? Hard to predict that.

Opalyn starts to open her mouth to explain herself when --

The lightline stabilizes; and the man, the bruise-like marks on his forehead shifting with each of his motions, turns about and blurs toward Prince Purplegray and lifts him by the throat with one hand, in the same motion shattering every shield that was about him.

Then he squeezes, almost casually, and the Prince's head falls off.

Fdera is already dead; a fact that wasn't noticeable enough to stand out, whenever it happened.

"You have exactly one chance to avoid coming to the Dread Emperor's notice and dying, and it is for you to look as normal and unrelated to this situation as you can possibly manage," the man says to Opalyn.

OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT

"I understand! How do I do that?"

She bolsters her shields as much as she can but makes no aggressive moves; she doesn't know if she can take this guy. Her heart is pounding; she's not at a three out of ten anymore. More like seven out of ten, emotionally.

"I am trying to figure that out.  Keeping the Prince alive would have made a lot of other things simpler, but I couldn't trust him.  Can I trust you not to make trouble and get both of us killed, if I go to the bother of trying to save you?"

"I will form a temporary alliance with you. I will not make trouble suddenly or without warning, until this current crisis is resolved, and I will inform you when I consider the alliance dissolved. Until then I will follow your lead."

She hopes this reads as "trustworthy and legible" rather than "too persnickety, just murder her."

Without word or gesture, a massive power lashes out in unfamiliar form at an unfamiliar dimensional angle; Opalyn's shields shatter as easily as a dropped egg, leaving her inside untouched.

"I appreciate that measured reply," he says, "but it's my own life at stake too, and in my own interest I could protect it far more easily by killing you here and now, instead of letting you be hunted later.  You are worth much as a future ally, but not that much.  Will you obey as the price of your life."