“Will I ever wake from this nightmare?”

“Hush up, Ulrik.”

“This morning Dennet inflicted a list of his newest rankings on us. He couldn't be stopped! I even put my hands over his ears. No effect. Who knows where he gets them?”

“Ulrik, honey, baby boy, it was your plan in the first place.”

“After that, Firefighting! Again! Does the game itself not know how elemental advantage works? Send Floods!”

“They're busy with their Rowing and their quiet dignity, aren't they?”

“And now! Deprived of my constant comrades, circumstances force me to party up with this . . . thing.” Ulrik pointed his scimitar at something he could never bear to approach closer.

“Hi, I'm Cadmos,” Cadmos said.

“Hello, Cadmos.” Vinnette Melban waved.

“I'm Local Celebrity! Fisher! I'm Local Fisher. Let's go vacation together!” She reared on her hind legs and brandished her net and fishing pole in a heroic display.

“Oh, what a lovely thought! We're all raring to go, aren't we? Let me just have a teeny tiny talk with my associate here before we set forth boldly and merrily, hm?” Sindze U. Radalo grabbed Ulrik's tunic, hustled him to the side, and hissed, “Listen up, moron. This is our chance to explore the Tasgan Federation with a UR and an SR carrying us. Do NOT ruin this with your moaning, all right? Look how excited Vinvin is to visit her country.” The two Rares turned and watched Vinnette shift from one foot to the other while humming and tapping her caduceus on the ground to her own beat.

“I remember your concern for making my return to Dovesk pleasant.”

“Dovesk is a wet mess, you don't like it either, and you're not Vinvin.”

Ulrik counted on his fingers. “Three irrefutable points.” He shook himself loose and walked back to the waiting officers while saying, “Off to Tasgan! Hip hip hooray!”

The Tasgan Federation! Location of Part 2 Chapter 5, and what else? “Paintings . . .” Just as Vinnette Melban boasted, the trends and styles of the Tasgan art world transformed aesthetic understanding across the planet. “Theater . . .” Right again, Vinnette! Theories about unity of space, unity of time, and unity of emotion were put into practice first on the stages of the Tasgan Federation and then imitated elsewhere. How many actors in a play? Did every performance require musical accompaniment? The world waited on Tasgans to provide the answers. “Windmills . . .” Those existed too.

The Rares, or rather the officers of the Three-Rarity Alliance, stepped onto Tasgan territory and engaged Morado Ven's Space Pirates. “Challenge Blade! My Taunt only affects a single enemy, sorry. Domination Blade! No Flinches? That's fine, maybe next time. Anyway, I wanted to ask you two, how did you find the missing genii? Whoa, watch out Sindze, you're taking some damage. Heroic Succor! That's my Selfless Redirect, but it gives me 15% Attack Up, so we both come out ahead.”

“We rode a cannon. Your kit is all over the place.”

“Yeah, starting character syndrome is what I call it. I ended up with a little bit of a bunch of stuff. My passives grant Eclipse Fortification after ninety seconds and my Attack and Defense go up if I drop below 50%. Taunt, Flinch, elemental advantage manipulation, time conditions, health conditions. Gotta introduce players to the mechanics, even if it's kind of ugly. A cannon, you say?”

“A big cannon. Still in testing. Did your SR friend just give herself every buff in the world? And half of them to us?”

“We can be friends too. It's summer! As long as I'm here, at least. We've never fought together, so here's the briefing. My ST active gives me Vampirism and Recovery Blessing, not that they work together, plus! I'm now immune to Poison, Burn, and Frostbite. For a while. Then my AoE, it's centered on me, gives my allies in the area 15% Attack Up, same for Defense, and Inferno Fortification 15%, so stay close. I get another 15% Defense and Attack. Enemies within the span suffer 10% Flood Vulnerability. Oh, and they take damage, of course.”

“Of course.”

“I'm a Harasser, so I have the usual Harasser passives. Nothing special, just Debuff Chance Up near water, chance to inflict Burn, Speed Down, and Nova Delay with each hit and any of my attacks can have Intimidate, and every time I land a hit I gain a stack of Endless Summer which raises my Flood Intensification until I reach twenty stacks. When that happens, I lose all my stacks and you guys all get an extra 3% Flood Mimicry, so enjoy that if we run into any Infernos.”

“I hate those guys,” Ulrik said.

“If my stacks come back up it happens again, up to five times. Finally, my Nova is single target with 10% Defense Penetration. It ignores Evasion too, but all it does besides damage is Stun the target for eight seconds. Standard stuff. That's it, I think.”

“Thank you for telling us! It was so exciting to hear about your Skill Star, and honestly, I felt like I was on a vacation inside a vacation when you talked us through all those effects. If we'd been competing, I would have run out of things to say halfway through your second skill! I'm so glad we're not! Competing!” Some people take vacations to relax, but Sindze appeared to believe a “vacation inside a vacation” was a great time to practice her grimacing and tooth-gnashing.

“A windmill! See?” The windmill may have been visible without a caduceus pointing to it, but every little bit helped.

“Oh, that's true, there is a windmill, isn't there? I remember what I wanted to say now. In idle mode, do those stacks fall off? Endless Summer or whatever? Or do they just build and build? Because if effects with the condition of first thirty seconds only activate once, shouldn't that mean we'd all end up with 15% Flood Mimicry, like, forever?”

“I'm very much excited to find that out myself. This is my first time in this mode, you see. I'm a little nervous. Hope it doesn't show too much!” Local Fisher's tail swished back and forth hard enough to create a tornado, she had balled up her net in her left hand and was rolling it in her fingers like it was part of a stress relief fad, and she tugged her flower-bedecked caparison every few seconds.

The Rares shook their heads. “I would never have known if you hadn't told me,” sharp-eyed huntress Sindze U. Radalo claimed.

“Infernos are coming . . .” Pirate Hopefuls joined the authentic Space Pirates. Those local lowlifes who hoped to sign on with an interstellar crime band wheeled in small, thoroughly tested cannon that fired the normal sort of cannon projectile instead of that Eclipse nonsense.

“That's a low-cooldown AoE, but Local Fisher's Flood Mimicry and Inferno Fortification combined with Princess Vinnette's Regens should keep us safe.”

“Yes. Ulrik's Inferno Strike will do damage as well. Narrate the whole thing. Finish what you start.”

“Did I say a little too much?” Cadmos scratched his head. “I wanted to make sure we were all on the same page. Working together in a new team can be difficult in ways you don't expect.”

“That makes sense to me. For instance! Suppose there are two Harassers. One is clearly stronger than the other. That's good until blood starts running out of the weaker one's ears.”

“Yeah, that kind of thing happens pretty often. But even so, we have to work together! Dominion Imperia!” Silhouetted by darkness, Cadmos's body radiated silver light that pushed back the night. Nearby Pirates died and officers gained 18% Defense.

“Wasn't that a three on the Dennet scale, or around there? By the way, thank you very much for your concern, but my ears are just fine, and some might even say above average.”

“Haven't seen an ear tear list, but it probably exists. As for me, I'm more confident in my technique than my ears! Prize Catch!” Local Fisher whirled the line over her head and cast the rod with her eyes closed. She yanked the target Pirate Hopeful in, opened her eyes, and held her catch up while cameras flashed. “I'm getting the hang of idling. Hey, nice windmills!”

“Yes! They are!”

“Our bonds have strengthened,” Cadmos observed.