The best part about being stuck, unable to figure out how to move forward, was that he could watch the facilities improve as more people came and there was time to build better places to live. The old tents gave way to larger tents, then buildings; most recently, the interior “public” camp had been clearing out small rooms and moving everyone as if they actually intended to use A’Atla’s facilities instead of shipping everything in.

No, it was getting to see all the junk that had collected on the island that people could find in even such a short time. Serenity would never have believed it if he hadn’t seen it. Liam and Samantha were almost as fun to watch as a sitcom, too; it was too bad he wasn’t really that interested in most sitcoms.

No, it was the enjoyment of restoring A’Atla itself. Serenity couldn’t spend much time on it, but it was a nice break when he needed to think about something other than the rituals he created. He was fairly confident that his favorite fix was the air shafts; they were like individual elevators. They let him feel like he was flying.

A’Atla’s version of moving sidewalks was a close second. It was more like skiing than walking, but like the air shafts, it moved each person or group independently of any others and included some interesting collision avoidance features. You had to supply the mana and the ship handled the rest. There was no way Serenity would have been able to keep going back and forth between the campsites and the sealed room without the travel assistance; it would have taken far too long to get across the city.

No, it was getting to laugh with his parents about how no one was able to agree on what a multinational investigation really meant … until they had a team on the island. After that, it was like an agreement was reached overnight.

Even that didn’t stand up to seeing the island grow from a mudpit into something more. It happened shockingly quickly; A’Atla was definitely accelerating the plants’ growth. It might well still take years to reach whatever A’Atla was going for, especially the small trees that had started popping up in places, but it made for a beautiful sight when there wasn’t active fighting. Serenity enjoyed the dawn walks with his parents; he might not be a morning person, but they were worth getting up for.

Which of course pointed out the true best part about being stuck on A’Atla. He was able to spend time with his parents, something he hadn’t been able to do in years and something that he would probably only be able to do for a few more decades. At least they were both in good shape; Blaze had assured Serenity of that. He’d even said that they were in good shape period, not just good shape for their ages.

They just weren’t immortal and Serenity was fairly confident that he was. Dragons didn’t die of old age.

Which, of course, was entirely too close to the worst thing about being stuck: the rest of his family wasn’t there. Yes, he could talk to Rissa whenever he wanted. That helped, but it didn’t let him see her or Jenna. He’d missed Jenna’s first word. He hadn’t yet missed her first birthday, but if something didn’t change, he was going to. He tried not to concentrate on his family situation too much; it was depressing.

He could leave, but getting back to A’Atla without being observed would be difficult. The best way might be to travel through the Well of Souls again, but Serenity was somewhat less than confident that a second time would be any better than the first.

Serenity felt like he was missing something. There had to be a way into the room that wasn’t risking his own life; he just wasn’t seeing it. Part of the problem was knowledge, but he couldn’t even get that! If he just knew where the mana was going, he might have a starting point.

“Serenity?” Blaze set a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I know you’re frustrated, but staring at it isn’t going to get that door open. You should come to dinner.”

Had he missed the alarm? Serenity checked the time; no, there was another seventeen minutes left before it would go off. Blaze was early. Which meant he probably needed to put in another appearance as Tom Cooper. Serenity’s mother had even asked him to show his face at the outer camp a few times. “At the inner camp, I hope? I’ll get ready.”

Blaze shook his head. “No, the latest shipment came in and your parents want a small family dinner with some of the fresh food. They’re setting up at our site.”

Fresh food? Serenity might not need to eat, but that did sound good. He gave one last glance at the latest failed ritual, which had unbalanced and triggered his safety precautions almost immediately after he tried to reach past the wall, before following Blaze out of the depths of A’Atla.

Both Serenity and Blaze were now used to the quirks of A’Atla’s transportation system, so they were able to use it at full speed. They didn’t slow down until they were in the corridor that led to the dining area Serenity’s tent occupied the center of.

Serenity slowed even more when he noticed that there was someone sitting at the table other than his parents. Someone who hadn’t noticed him yet.

Someone he recognized.

Rissa was here?

Serenity accelerated as quickly as he could and whistled past Blaze before skidding to a halt next to the table. He darted around the table and enveloped his fiancee in a hug.

Rissa stiffened in surprise, then ineffectually batted at his arm before leaning against Serenity. He wasn’t sure what she was trying to achieve, but it definitely gave him mixed messages. “You doofus. Why didn’t you ask for me to come if you were that lonely?”

“I, er, it’s dangerous here?” Serenity was pretty confident that A’Atla’s surface was more dangerous than the real Wild West had been; there was a fight close enough to the outer camp to put the guards on alert at least once a week, usually more often. The good news, such as it was, was that a large number of the fights were with Skills rather than guns. Skills could do more damage but they tended not to have the same potential for long range accidents.

Rissa tugged Serenity into a chair next to her, then leaned back against him and pulled his arm against her chest. Serenity was happy to go along with it. “Yeah, but that’s above ground. Plus, you can’t always be keeping me away because it’s dangerous. We discussed that, right?”

They had. It didn’t make Serenity any happier about it. He sighed and shook his head. “You’re right. I just … it was all about rescuing my parents, then …” Serenity waved a hand. “It’s not that I rejected calling you, I just never really thought about it?”

Rissa patted the arm on her chest. “I know.” Her voice softened. “That’s why I’m here. Making both of us wait until you got over your terminal blindness wasn’t going to help either of us, and there was no point in asking you before I came. So I asked your Dad instead.”

“Dad?” Serenity was startled by that. He recognized that she had to have talked to someone, but his father? Wouldn’t Bethany have been the natural choice?

Come to think of it, Serenity didn’t actually know what his father was doing with his days. All he knew was that Lex was exploring, mostly on the surface, but he rarely talked about what he found. Serenity had dismissed it because it wasn’t like you’d find something exciting every day, but he couldn’t actually think of anything his father had found.

Rissa laughed softly. “Of course your father! He’s the one who had to leave his family behind; I needed to talk to him to know how he decided when to bring you. A’Atla doesn’t meet all of the criteria, but it meets most of them. I did have to bring a couple of nannies to take care of Jenna when we’re busy, though, plus a bunch of supplies. I really wish I had something like your Rift; the Tutorial backpacks are failing now and no one can make anything even that good.”

She brought nannies? Wait. “You brought Jenna?”

“Relax,” Rissa told Serenity. “We’re going to be in the inner camp; it’s safe. Jenna and I are both in A’Atla’s system; it turns out that there’s actually a setting for family. We can open the doors and everything the same way you and your parents can, even if something does happen. I’ve planned it all out; I’m here supposedly as an assistant but really as an incentive for you and your parents to cooperate since the senators fighting over who gets what know they don’t have much leverage at this point…”

Serenity listened to all of Rissa’s plans and speculation, happy to have her here and worried at the same time. Just having her cuddled against him was comforting.

He’d make sure she was safe, even if he had to draw runes on all of the walls in that part of A’Atla to do it. There were a couple of runescripts that would serve as a good starting point; he could even use A’Atla’s own authentication as a trigger.

All of Serenity’s thoughts and plans for rituals to get at whatever was in the sealed room were put on hold while he figured out what it would take to truly protect his fiancee and daughter. He didn’t know why this felt more dangerous than Aeon but it did and he wasn’t about to ignore that.

Once Serenity finished his plans for the protective runescripts, he had a long talk with his mother. Her advice was to apply them to the walls as Serenity; it was easy enough to explain his temporary presence. His parents, fiancee, and daughter were all on A’Atla, at least if you had the ability to find that out.

Bethany even had Serenity stage some small scenes, where he seemed to work on the runes while Tom Cooper was in the room. “They” even talked to “each other” a few times. She wanted to clearly establish that Tom and Serenity were different people, and while Serenity still sucked at managing two bodies at once, he could fake it if one could stay still while the other moved. It was good practice.

Rissa found herself juggling both her normal job, which was more than a little crazy with all the changes magic had brought, alongside helping Serenity’s parents. Strangely, she ended up in a new role, acting as the person who convinced people the argument wasn’t worth it. All her time with Serenity meant that she had a very good idea of what an aura could be used for and she was among the highest Tier of anyone on the island.

So were Serenity’s parents but they didn’t have the mystical knowledge yet. Neither of them really needed it, but they did need a third person to help keep a lid on things at times. Theoretically, it should have been someone with an official position, but there were simply too many people who wouldn’t accept the authority of someone from another country easily.

No one was trying to police the surface at first, but when the formal investigative team arrived, there were at least twice as many combatants as actual investigators. Things quieted down for about a month before the thefts and small fights restarted.

The day after Jenna’s first birthday, Serenity decided to do something about the fighting. He hadn’t yet shown a presence on the island beyond the inner camp, which was supposedly not publicly known; it was time to change that.

Lillene

Serenity is years away from being able to manage two bodies while they do anything difficult, but stand there and talk to himself? He can manage that. And as long as only one is walking at a time, he can manage that too.