About the Xande thing, he's casting Float on 3 people, the fact that we use said float to save the alliance is an unforseen consecuence (why cast it? wanting to see despair on the eyes of those 3 adventurers before ofing them himself? which is exactly what would happen if 3 squishies are left alive after everyone else bites it. Alternatively, he's been driven mad, so he's not thinking all that straight).

Granted, the actual important thing is... how is Ark saving us from Alexander? from how it looks in the trailer we leap into Ark to save us from himself crashing into the arena, essentially hijacking him with little more than our WoL powers (since those arrows seems more mechanics markers than coming from Ark). I'm still most looking forward to Sophia's story, Alexander may be my favorite summon in the series but... there's been very little focus on HIM so far, hopefully with us actually fighting him for A12 that'll change.