***** PoV: Victrina Vitafino *****

[So you said that you wanted to run some tests while we wait?] I asked.

{Yes, mostly to get a better idea as to how your layers interact with mine, but also to get a feel for what you can do and how much magic you have. Fair warning, some of these are going to feel rather weird.}

[Alright, go for it.]

With that out of the way, he held out his right hand, palm pointed at his face, armor receding up past his elbow, and then did something that felt like he grabbed my hand while doing something that I did not have the words to describe. There was some resistance to whatever he was trying to do, then suddenly his hand and half of his forearm were replaced by my own.

[Oh! Is this the reverse of what you were trying to do when our layers were still a tangled mess?]

{Yes, this is the exact opposite of what I was trying to do.} he replied, running my hand through a full range of motion. {This is more or less what I expected, the real question is can we get my form armor running on your hand?}

This time, there was a crawling sensation flowing up my forearm and over my hand, encountering slightly more resistance than the first test. {Well, that appears to be working, but that feels like about as far as we should push it for now, any further and we’ll risk damaging the layers themselves, and I don’t have the required medical equipment to handle that. Fortunately, we’ll still be armored when your human form is the active layer, and we have to go somewhere that wearing actual armor would be rude. It won’t be perfect coverage, largely because faces are full of gaps in the armor, but partially because there are a couple places where your human form has certain… assets that mine does not.}

[Let me guess, chest and nether regions?]

{Correct. I’m unfamiliar with your world’s fashion, but it shouldn’t be too hard to hide a pair of armored underwear under your clothes. I’m both more and less concerned about the chest. I’m less concerned because the difference in shape is a lot less drastic, which will cause less interference. I’m a bit more because, depending on fashion, it would be harder to hide extra armor.}

[Aren’t you being a bit paranoid there?]

{Not really. My adoptive father is the Lord High Admiral of Terra, and my adoptive mother is the spymaster for the council. Both of them have enemies that would be perfectly willing to hurt them by killing one of us. Fortunately, by the time I was a teenager the mana cost of form armor didn’t even qualify as a rounding error on my mana regen.

{Speaking of mana regen, the last test I want to run is about the size of your mana pool and the speed of your regen. That way I know what your limits are for the magic portion of your training, not to mention having an idea of how long we’ll need to hang out in high concentrations of the appropriate mana types for your elemental bloodlines.}

[Ok, fair enough. How do you want to do this? Do I have to cast something?]

{Not at the moment. I just put this band on your wrist for a moment, and it’ll take your measurements passively.} he said, holding up a strange bracelet. The band was made of an unfamiliar material that appeared to stick to itself somehow at the ends, allowing it to fasten to my wrist. In the middle of the band was a square of metal and glass with rounded corners about 3 centimeters on a side and slightly less than a centimeter thick. {Are you ready?}

[Go for it!]

{Right, here goes.} he said, stopping the form armor spell and gently fastening the bracelet to my wrist with a soft click. I expected to feel it doing something, but a few seconds later it beeped and projected a screen with two numbers on it. Unsurprisingly, they were a match for the 1500 mana and 8.3 mana per minute regen the system says I have.

{That’s not bad for a non-mage. I can work with that}

New Faction detected! Reassigning Faction Quest to Calador Instance: Terra…

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

[Huh. I guess the System found a bunch more of your people somewhere?]

{It probably found them floating through whatever dimension the Displacer’s shenanigans use to send things elsewhere. I hope they’re ok! I assume that Calador is the name of the world that the Quests take place in?}

[Correct.]

Error! Faction Quest cannot be assigned to Calador Instance: Terra because it is already assigned to Calador Instance Terra due to Systemic Prophecy Automatic System Override.

Searching for solution…

Solution found: no action necessary.

Resuming Quest Preparation Process.

{Well ok then. Do you get those kinds of errors often?}

[Not in my experience, no. but I’ve never had any contact with the Systemic Prophecy part of the System before, so your guess is as good as mine at this point.]

{I think the Systemic Prophecy is doing it’s own thing and leaving the rest of the System to deal with the consequences.}

[Yeah, that makes sense.]

Quest Preparations complete! Opening portal in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…

Right on queue, the portal smoothly expanded in front of us without any fuss or bother.

[Are you ready?]

{As ready as I’m going to be. Hopefully this doesn’t take too long, I need some sleep.}

Without further ado, we stepped through the glowing blue oval in the air, and arrived on the battlements directly above what appeared to be the main gate, assuming the map given to us by the System was anything to go by.

“Oi! You’re late! You were supposed to be here three days ago!” exclaimed a goblin dressed for battle, who had either the Captain of the Guard, or the ruler of the city, who’s title the System had neglected to tell us, judging by the quality of his armaments. Before we could do any further examination of him or our surroundings, there was a loud popping noise from the portal as it closed.

“Wait, there’s only one of you?!”

“Yes, that is correct, but…” started Arthur, after the helmet faded away, before swapping places with me.

“...also very much no.” I finished smoothly. The resulting look of utter confusion on his face was priceless.

“We apologize for the inconvenience, but everything has been a bit strange on our end as well, the System keeps talking about a Systemic Prophecy but tells us almost nothing about what is actually happening.” I explained, “If I’m understanding what it is talking about, the Systemic Prophecy seems to believe that we can handle the horde, the only question is how quickly we will do so.”

“If you say so,” he sighed, shaking the distractions out of his head. “Right, I’m Vistoban Comathu, Mayor of the City of Hashkranth. The horde is coming down the valley, they should be coming around the bend momentarily. Is there anything that you need from me at this point?”

“No, we should be good from here.” I assured him, stepping over to the battlements to get a better view of the valley. As shown on the map beforehand, the city was located in a bowl at the end valley, about 100 meters of clear land around the walls, and a solid carpet of pine trees beyond that up to the snow line. I’m not entirely sure why there were no trees on the floor of the valley, leaving an uninterrupted slope leading deeper into the mountains, which was starting to turn to the left as it went over the top of the mountain.

Sure enough, the horde started coming over the top of the rise, and I was immediately suspicious that something was wrong. [I think there’s an illusion of some sort, as per usual, but I’ve never quite been able to see through it. They’ve always been at least one step ahead of me.]

{Oh? Why would someone use an illusion on a horde?} he said, putting the helmet back on and activating a zoom feature and flipping through several filters and doing something I didn’t quite catch.

[What is that other thing you did beyond the other vision types, and why did you switch between them so fast?]

{Oh, that’s the illusion breaker. It takes the various sensor types, compares them together, and finds all the discrepancies, and finds a way to use those to see through the illusion.} *Boo-beep!* went the helmet as the illusion shattered. {And there it goes! Oh… I didn’t expect the entire horde to be undead…}

[Oh. Oh no… they’ve always been undead.]

{Who?}

[Everything I’ve ever had to fight in Calador. Well, maybe not everything, but close enough.]

Congratulations! You’re the first person to see through the illusion and discover the First Cataclysm!

[{Oh shit.}]