If this was “gentle, Serenity didn’t want to feel “rough”.

The sad thing was that it probably was gentle. A’Atla rocked like a subway car suddenly slowing to come into a station, from all directions, repeatedly and unexpectedly, but it was never worse than that.

Serenity pulled up the overview screen and filtered out all of the warnings that were older than a year old. There was one left, which worried Serenity until he realized that it was two weeks old and halfway across A’Atla. That was still enough to get Serenity to investigate, but this time it was curiosity instead of worry.

It seemed that a valve was stuck in a secondary air handling system; it was prioritized as ‘low’ because the area it served was currently flooded. There was an ‘estimated automated repair time’ of a bit over two years. Serenity flipped that open to look at it and found that it took into account all of the other higher-priority ‘minor’ repairs.

He had the ability to change repair priority, but most repairs had ‘No Estimate Available’ for when they could be completed. They simply required more mana than was available; anything that would drain A’Atla below the minimum critical level and wasn’t considered a critical failure simply wasn’t being done. Even with those limits, this finally explained where all the mana A’Atla had to be pulling that wasn’t getting stored was going: it was being used to repair the multitude of small failures that had developed over its time on the seafloor.

On the other hand, if the mana was available, it looked like A’Atla could repair every bit of the old damage. That sent Serenity on yet another dive into the records; with this much time, why wasn’t any of it fixed? Sure, it was possible that it had just never gotten to it, but the odds that damage accrued at almost exactly the repairable rate for millenia without ever damaging something vital, getting so far behind that everything fell apart, or actually fixing significant amounts of damage were slim.

It took a long hard look into the records and then some helpful analysis and charts from Aide to figure it out. A’Atla had completely repaired itself as far as it could more than once.

In fact, the reason the valve had a two-year timeframe was that it was the third item on the list and each item had a more than a year initial timeframe for repair; the first was nearly repaired, even though it had only been seven months since it failed. Before then, A’Atla hadn’t even tried to repair anything for over a year. That was a very reliable system that clearly wasn’t being stressed, but more than that it was a terribly slow repair rate.

The energy available told the real story. Until earlier that day, A’Atla hadn’t been above the critical minimum level within the past two hundred years; even then, it was only for a short period of time. It simply drained away even when the great ship wasn’t using it for anything.

The lowest level when there was no drain seemed to be about a year and a half earlier, more or less around the time of the first Tutorial. It had been constant for several years at that point, having risen up to a measly 28% of the critical minimum after a repair that took it below 20%. That was also the time when the first of the most recent set of minor failures occurred, so Serenity couldn’t exactly identify whether or not there was an inflection point there.

He could, however, see each of Gaia’s Tier increases since then. At first, the drain from the repair decreased; Serenity suspected that the ship was putting the same energy into the repair but the power level stabilized a little higher. About the time Gaia reached Tier Two, the level passed the 28% mark even with a repair running; it very slowly floated all the way up to 30% before Gaia reached Tier Three. The rise after that was even faster, though still extremely slow.

Serenity compared the power gain after the most recent Tier up against the rate of increase just before his father told the ship to move and discovered that the power wasn’t increasing as quickly without the regular infusions of his parents’ and Blaze’s mana. It all added up to one thing: A’Atla had the same problem Serenity did, but it had that problem even in a ley line.

A’Atla was designed for a world much higher Tier than Earth was, even today.

Serenity reached that conclusion moments before A’Atla stopped shaking. A glance at the energy indicators he’d just been examining told the story.

“Does that mean we’re floating?” Blaze picked himself up off the floor. He must not have been watching the mana level indicator.

“No,” Lex spoke before Serenity could. “We’re back below the critical mana minimum. That’s the bad news; the good news is that A’Atla’s giving me an estimate of the amount of power required to follow the command I gave it.”

Serenity glanced back at the power meter. It wasn’t actually accurate to say that they were below the power minimum; A’Atla had stopped as they reached it. They were actually slightly above the minimum now. Serenity’s eyes flicked to the spire and he saw why his mother hadn’t yet spoken: she was concentrating on pushing her mana into the spire. It wasn’t as easy for his parents as it was for Blaze or Serenity. It really was too bad that Blaze still didn’t want Serenity contributing mana. He could have sped the process up a lot.

“How much mana?” Blaze was probably asking Lex the question, but his eyes were on the spire.

Lex sighed. “Thirty percent. Several more days of filling the spire even with your help, especially since I’d like a buffer. We should probably aim for at least fifty percent over the critical minimum. This isn’t going to be fun.”

Serenity could understand that. He seemed to remember that being completely out of mana was uncomfortable and repeatedly running it down was worse. He looked over at Blaze. “Are you sure I can’t help?”

“I’ll need to monitor you and even then it won’t be immediately,” Blaze answered. “I want to make sure you’re completely recovered first, so at least another two days.”

It was actually three days before Blaze allowed Serenity to help. Even then, he wasn’t allowed to drain his mana by more than a quarter and he had to spend hours with it full between each time he donated mana. Blaze admitted he was being overly cautious but he didn’t relax the rules.

They all had a lot of free time, at least theoretically.

Serenity spent some of it exercising and some trying to teach his parents basic bladework. Unexpectedly, his mother was faster to pick it up than his father and seemed to enjoy it more, despite her lower overall level of fitness. The rest of his spare time was spent digging through A’Atla’s records, conducting some of the magical experiments he’d planned to work on for a while (but only while he was at full mana after the first time Blaze caught him practicing immediately after a mana donation), and listening to Aide complain about how much faster the analysis would have been if Serenity had allowed him to get some of the items that should have arrived by now.

Serenity didn’t really feel like it was “free time”. He was always busy with something. Whether or not he was busy, though, he was more relaxed than he’d been in a long time. There was nothing he had to hurry and take care of. There was no threat looming over a family member. There was not even anyone threatening the planet or a friend. He was busy, but it was a good sort of busy, making himself better and helping his parents while working on something interesting.

The only missing piece was Rissa and Jenna. He was glad that he hadn’t brought them because of the potential danger, but now that that was past he missed them. Sure, he could talk to Rissa whenever he wanted, but he couldn’t hold her in his arms and he could only hear her reports about their daughter.

There was a threat in the distant future, but he had over eight years to figure out both the second round of invasions and why Earth exploded. The fact that the two events were less than a year apart did seem to indicate a connection and Serenity didn’t know what it was, but he didn’t let that occupy much of his thoughts. He had time and he didn’t know where to begin, so for now he handled what he could. The future could take care of itself.

When the second attempt to raise A’Atla finally arrived, they all gathered in the spire room again. It wasn’t any more necessary than the first time, but it still seemed right. This time, however, they were smart: they set up a group of four chairs near the spire where they could all see each other and not be knocked off their feet by the shaking.

Lex gave the command and the shaking started. It was uncomfortable but no worse than the first time in intensity. What was different from the first time was how long it lasted.

Serenity tried to track the ship’s progress, but if he had the right options to be able to see it, he couldn’t find them. Since the “Lord Wizard” position seemed to be similar to an engineer’s position or maybe a designer’s, he suspected that he probably did have access, but it was probably hidden in a submenu somewhere that he simply hadn’t found yet. It wasn’t directly applicable to the position most of the time, so the Lord Wizard who set up the menus probably didn’t see any reason to make it easy to find or get to.

Blaze was similarly lost, but both Lex and Bethany could see a number of different views that gave them information on what was happening. Unfortunately, for the first several minutes, nothing seemed to happen. When something finally changed, it wasn’t just one thing.

The room didn’t just shake, it actually tilted far enough that Serenity had to catch himself before he fell out of his chair. The high side of the room suddenly fell, bringing the room back to more or less level with a thud that they all felt. How had something as gigantic as A’Atla moved that quickly?

When Serenity checked with Aide, he found out that it wasn’t actually very far, just a few degrees off level. The surprise made it seem like more. It was still impressive, anything was impressive at that scale, but it wasn’t the 20 degrees or more that he’d thought it was. He probably hadn’t actually needed to catch himself.

There were several new damage notices after the movement. It was clear that A’Atla wasn’t meant to move like that. There was also a new sound in the air, a thrumming noise that Serenity didn’t recognize. He couldn’t figure out what it was until a damage notice changed: some of the rooms that had been flooded now simply had notices of salt contamination. He was hearing the ship start to pump water out of its internal compartments. If he was reading the notes correctly, it was even supplying breathable air, though Serenity didn’t know where that was coming from.

They were at 138% of the critical minimum mana. That meant they’d used far less than the 30% estimate; somehow, Serenity doubted they were done. “I think it’s going to do that again in a few minutes, after it gets rid of some water.”

“It’s going to have to,” Lex responded. “I really hope A’Atla knows what it’s doing.”

One more shove wasn’t enough to free them but, after some more compartments were drained, the third round of shaking and acceleration sent them bobbing upwards. Serenity would have said “like a cork”, but it wasn’t nearly that quickly. In fact, Serenity was fairly confident that part of A’Atla was still below the level that was probably counted as “sea floor” before A’Atla moved when they stopped rising. There was now a large dent in the ground below them; it essentially matched the dimensions of the bottom of the ship.

Lillene

A'Atla is not shaped like an ordinary ship; it is more like a plate with relatively little depth for its width. I couldn't come up with a better word than "dent" - sure, it's as thick as half a mile in places (not draft, total thickness), but half a mile isn't much compared to the over 1500 miles of its widest dimension. It's a dent.

With that said, it's still enough that it's not getting out of deep water.