Lillene

Enjoy!

When the moment finally came, Serenity was in a room only a little ways down the hall, watching the cameras he’d installed wherever he could get access. It meant he had a view of about half of the sphere; the other half was inside walls or through connections that were so many miles out of the way without being able to go through the connecting room that he hadn’t managed to get there and set up cameras. They were the last thing he’d done, after all.

As it turned out, everyone wanted to watch - everyone who knew about the event, anyway. Amani was there, of course; she’d even helped with the party setup once Rissa proposed it. Rissa and Jenna were there, along with two of Jenna’s nannies. They’d set it up as a real watch party with comfortable places to sit, drinks, and snacks. Serenity had suspicions that Rissa had even planned a meal in case things ran longer than expected.

Blaze and Ita were there; from what Serenity could tell, it was Blaze’s first break since they entered the powerplant. Someone was always getting too close to the manastream or tripping over something and injuring themselves. The move into the tunnels only made things worse; Blaze was confident that not all of the accidental injuries were truly accidental.

Serenity’s parents were both there. Disappearing for a few hours wasn’t unusual for Bethany, but Serenity didn’t know how his father had explained it. 

Serenity wasn’t sure how they heard about it, but Samantha and Liam and all of Team Two were there as well. They hadn’t come with anyone else; they’d just shown up. The fact that Samantha simply greeted Amani while Liam had to be introduced to her gave Serenity some guesses, but he didn’t see any reason to worry about it. He’d always intended to introduce them eventually; if it happened a bit early, why should he care.

Everyone gathered and started talking most of an hour in advance; no one wanted to be late, after all. Serenity didn’t pay much attention to the conversation; all he cared about right now was whether or not the solution worked. Would the plug really work? If it did, would it actually allow the nexus to connect properly into Gaia’s network, or would the nexus collapse? What would happen to A’Atla in either case?

Serenity had no way to know the answer to any of those questions. He knew being nervous wouldn’t help, but that didn’t mean he could prevent it.

Well, actually, he probably could prevent it if he asked Aide to change his hormone levels, couldn’t he? The thought made Serenity give a short laugh, but he didn’t ask Aide to do anything. He didn’t want to lose the possible edge adrenalin might give him, even though he knew there was nothing he could realistically do.

At a minute before the projected completion, Aide threw a countdown into the top-right of each camera image. Serenity controlled his voice to not show his nerves when he spoke. “One minute, everyone. Remember that we probably won’t see anything for several seconds afterwards.”

He’d already said that, hadn’t he? Well, maybe not to everyone; he definitely hadn’t talked to Samantha, Liam, and Team Two about it. He couldn’t remember who he’d told and who he hadn’t other than that. So it was probably a good choice to say it.

Thirty seconds until A’Atla finished.

Serenity forced himself to lean back in his seat. He wanted to lean forward, but it wouldn’t help anything. Maybe if he looked relaxed he’d feel more relaxed.

Fifteen seconds.

Serenity caught himself leaning forward again. This time, he didn’t try to force himself not to lean forward.

When the counter ticked down the last few seconds, Serenity found himself speaking the seconds in a chorus with everyone around him. It was just like at New Years’ or a spaceship liftoff. “Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Zero.”

Nothing visible happened when the counter hit zero. A second later, it ticked over to +1.

Serenity checked; yes, he’d gotten the timing right. A’Atla was done building the plug. Now he just had to wait for it to work. There was nothing he could - no, wait, that wasn’t true. Serenity had Aide split the view between the plus itself and A’Atla’s mana level sensor readings. It wasn’t obvious, but they were rising. Serenity had Aide put that on the screen, as well. It was great news. Even better, nothing seemed to have gone wrong yet. It was still early, but it seemed to be working. 

It might take time for him to be able to talk to Gaia. In fact, Serenity expected it to take time. He still couldn’t prevent himself from trying, but she wasn’t there yet.

A few seconds later, Serenity could feel the mana levels rising with his own senses. A check of the numbers showed him he wasn’t wrong; it was rising faster. No, wait, now it was declining? It still felt like it was rising.

Maybe he should look at more sensors. He was still looking at the small subset he’d used when navigating A’Atla so he’d know what he was getting into. A quick glance told him that something was definitely happening; unlike when he selected the subset for travel, they weren’t all moving together.

Serenity had Aide format the data into a heatmap so that he could see what was happening across all of A’Atla. It was an odd pattern, almost like ripples in water. The good news was that while it was noticeable, it did seem to be smoothing out with time; as little as a minute after he first started looking, the highest and lowest values were clearly closer together. 

The lowest value was higher than the highest had been, however, which said that the mana level was definitely still rising. That clearly explained why Serenity couldn’t feel Gaia yet; there was still no outgoing mana connection. 

“...tie into the rest of the ley line network.” Amani explained what was going on to everyone at one of the other tables. Samantha seemed to be paying the most attention. Good; that meant he didn’t have to try to explain. 

“How bad is it?” Rissa asked from Serenity’s other side. Her voice was soft; not quite a whisper but clearly intended to not carry far. “I can tell this isn’t quite what you expected.”

It said something that Rissa and Blaze were the two people paying attention to Serenity. No, wait, there were three; Ita was next to Blaze, as usual. Serenity’s eyes found his parents. They weren’t far away either, though they seemed to be content to watch him instead of pushing in the way Rissa had. It gave Serenity a warm feeling that the people who mattered most to him were there for him.

Well, other than Jenna. She was too young; she was here, but she clearly had no idea what was going on. She was paying more attention to Diane than to Serenity. A silly smile crossed his face as he looked at his child.

When Serenity turned his attention back to Rissa, his smile faded. “Not great. Not terrible, but not great. So far we’re within expectations but that’s because I didn’t know what to expect. The last time I saw a nexus without an anchor was after we destroyed a dungeon; you remember those, don’t you?”

Rissa nodded. “You made an anchor. Sometimes it was a dungeon, sometimes it was something else. I think the first time it just made water?”

Serenity chuckled at that. The Corn Maze Dungeon was a good memory despite the fact that the dungeon itself was feral. “Yeah. Well, those times, Gaia was there to stabilize things and give me a starting point. This time I don’t have that. It’s also a much bigger nexus. I was hoping … no, I am hoping that it’ll stabilize on its own. It ought to; I just don’t know how quickly.”

“How are you feeling?” Blaze interjected. “With what the mana level is doing…”

Serenity frowned at the question, then his expression cleared with Blaze’s explanation. He nodded. “I feel fine, so far. I ought to be more tolerant of high mana levels, since I’m at a higher Tier. It’s low mana levels I have issues with.”

“Uh huh.” Blaze didn’t quite sound like he believed Serenity. “If you stop feeling fine, let me know. With the way your healing works…” Blaze stopped and shook his head. “Any luck at all and that’s not a problem, but bodies don’t really go with what’s lucky.”

Blaze was a pessimist. Serenity couldn’t really argue with him; he was often correct. Serenity had once been told that pessimists rarely had bad surprises, but he knew that wasn’t how Blaze would say that sentiment; he’d say something like “I like my surprises to be pleasant,” and he’d say it with a smile. Blaze was probably the happiest pessimist Serenity had ever known. 

Serenity felt something move in the mana. That might be a good sign, but it felt violent. Violent mana movement was likely to have bad side effects. Serenity’s attention flicked to Aide’s heatmap; it looked like a rock had just been thrown into a puddle. It was quickly followed by another rock, then another. Serenity had just enough time for his eyes to widen and say “Oh shi-” before he wasn’t in his body anymore.

In front of everyone, a line of light ran straight through Serenity. It came from above and ran downwards. Anyone who could see detail despite the brightness of the light, which meant only Blaze and Rissa, could see that it wasn’t straight. Instead, it was curved, as though it neither came from straight above nor went straight down. This was definitely not simply bad luck; Serenity must have attracted it somehow.

To Blaze, it was obvious what was happening. This was the densest mana he’d ever seen; indeed; he normally had trouble seeing raw mana, while this was visible even without the ability to normally see mana. It had to be from the nexus linking Serenity was waiting for; he was simply going to be more involved than he’d expected. Blaze simply had to wait.

To Ita, it was also obvious. Serenity was acting as a Shameless One again. It was Ita’s honor to be in His presence when He chose to exercise His power, even if she couldn’t see what He was doing.

To Rissa, it was obvious that Serenity had gotten himself in trouble again. Sometimes she missed Thomas, who almost never got himself in trouble. At the same time, she wouldn’t actually trade them back. Despite all his issues, and Serenity had a lot of issues, he was Rissa’s and Rissa was his in a way Rissa didn’t think would have been possible for Rissa and Thomas. She simply had to deal with it when he got himself in trouble and trust that he’d find his way out again.

When the light disappeared, Serenity wasn’t there anymore. At the same moment, the armor on both of his parents puffed into dark smoke that dissipated in the mana-filled air.

On the surface of A’Atla, right where Serenity saw the “rocks” hitting the “water” of the local mana levels, was the half-melted temple of Ea. A line of light nearly identical to the one that covered Serenity fell from the sky to a spire hidden within the temple. A number of other lines of light ran along the ground and all met at the spire; some even passed through the ground where it was in the way. 

Within minutes, the exercise was canceled as a true “weird magic stuff starts happening on the magic island-ship” situation developed. Those who were close enough to one of the temporary harbors were sent onto ships, which prepared to move away in case the island started to sink. Those who couldn’t get to a ship were sent underground, into A’Atla’s tunnels. 

No one knew what was going on, but no one wanted to take any chances either.

Ships that were miles away from A’Atla reported seeing and avoiding the lines of light. Only one ship was unlucky enough to be caught inside one of the lights when it suddenly appeared. There was no immediately apparent effect on the ship’s systems but no one could see anything other than the light while they were in it. The ship’s automated collision avoidance system was also blind. Fortunately, the ship was headed out of the line of light at the time.

Lillene

For anyone who’s worried: No, I’m not killing off Serenity. That would be a really terrible thing to do and this would be an even worse way to do it. He technically wasn’t even vaporized … well, not in a “took damage” way at least.

This will probably be obvious next chapter but I figured I’d try to soften the cliff a little until then.