Moira turned to Derek and asked, “Did your lawyer send over the LLC paperwork for you to look over yet?”
“No,” Derek shook his head, “They are still working out some minor details. And I need to give them a name.”
“You aren’t just going to call it The Adventurer’s Guild?” Moira asked.
“I suppose I could,” Derek frowned, “Do you have any suggestions?”
Moira scoffed, “I’m terrible at coming up with stuff like that. I’m just the mascot, remember?”
Although Derek was putting her down as a second owner of the company, which she appreciated.
“We could call it The Dragon Guild.” Derek mused.
Moira scrunched her nose up because that was a terrible name. It wasn’t descriptive at all. People would think they were a guild of dragons when there was, in fact, only one. She was about to point this out, but her phone vibrated in her pocket. She slid it out, expecting to see Pierre’s name on the screen, then lifted her brows when she did see who it was.
“Hey Jeremy,” she said as soon as she lifted the phone to her ear. Derek paused and leaned closer, immediately interested because Jeremy had already provided them with more useful information than they had ever gotten from the stuffy old Council. He was probably a hair’s breadth away from trying to convince Jeremy to come and join the guild, stopped only because he seemed to be learning so much from wandering around wherever he was at.
“Moira, hey.” He sounded a little distracted, like maybe he did not actually expect her to pick up and needed to hastily stop whatever he had been doing while waiting to leave a message.
“What’s up?” She asked.
“Nothing too crazy, all things considered.” Jeremy huffed and then his voice became more focused. “Listen, I’m making some progress on this spell that will let people see some stats about magic - like their level and stuff – and…it’s not finished yet…but while we were fighting off some slimes for the power company -”
“Woah, there. Hold on,” Moira interrupted. “Derek is here and he is definitely going to want to hear about fighting the…you called them slimes? Let me put you on speaker.”
She lowered the phone between her and Derek just in time for them to hear Jeremy confirm that he had indeed called the monsters slimes.
“Those creatures that eat metal,” he explained, “Anyway, as we were fighting them there was some interest from the bystanders in giving me their contact information so that I can share the spell with them when it is done. Zanie decided to put together a newsletter so we can share other information as we learn, too. I was just wondering if you guys might want the link so your people can sign up too.”
“Hell yeah,” Moira grinned. Outsourcing some of their educational efforts to Jeremy sounded like a great idea. The pamphlets were working for now, while everyone was in a centralized location in the camp, but with the way things were going with all of the supply shortages and logistical difficulties in getting things like that printed, they were not really feasible long-term. “Send me the link and we’ll spread it around.”
“Okay cool,” Jeremy’s voice faded a little as though he had put them on speaker or held the phone away while he was focusing on something else again. “Derek, do you know anything about mana crystals?”
Derek tilted his head and frowned, “No, I’ve never heard of that, why?”
“I need some to make the finished product of my scan spell,” Jeremy chuckled, “Was hoping that the Council had a secret stash somewhere that we could raid or something.”
“Sorry, buddy.” Derek shrugged, then asked a question of his own, “Can you tell me about the metal-eating slimes? One of the contracts I’m hoping to get is with the power companies to do some pest control against them.”
“Well, they don’t take physical damage.” Jeremy said, “Like slicing or hitting them or whatever, unless you, like, crush their entire form. So you can do that – crush their entire form if you have a weapon large enough – because you ensure you’ll destroy their core. Or you can do something like melt them. They are literally made of some kind of metal, so whatever you might be able to do to metal.”
Derek and Jeremy continued to go back and forth about the logistics of fighting metal slimes while Moira dissociated and wondered once again how they managed to get to this point. She supposed it was easy for Derek to take all this in stride, since he’d already known about magic.
They started to talk about the logistics of hunting down the slimes and other monsters that Jeremy had run into. Jeremy started to explain to them about dungeons and how they could be cleared and sometimes shut down so that they no longer spit out monsters. Moira could already see the wheels turning behind Derek’s eyes as he thought about a dungeon clearing service. He started talking to Jeremy a little more about the guild and his plans for it.
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“Hey,” Derek leaned toward the phone, arms crossed and a contemplative expression on his face as he peered out over the camp, “what do you think of calling our organization The Adventurer’s Guild?”
Jeremy was silent for a moment. “Are you taking people on adventures?”
“Well,” Derek tilted his head from side to side, “kind of.”
“I thought you were doing this to help people survive.” Jeremy’s tone had turned a little dark, “This isn’t some adventure, it’s real life.”
Derek’s face smoothed out and his tone grew impassive like it did whenever he was dealing with his parents or some other important business-like person and needed to appear mature and commanding.
“I’m not trying to make light of the situation here,” he said. “We are set up in a refugee camp. So, I understand. We’re trying to give people jobs while cutting down the monsters. Set up some kind of order, because this is real life and we do need some kind of new order to it so that people can continue to live.”
Off in the background of the call, Caleb’s voice came through faintly as he asked, “Why the hell does he talk like that?”
Jeremy must also have them on speaker. There was a harsh sigh from Jeremy himself before he spoke again. “You are right. That’s the whole point of me trying to create this spell, to make some kind of order out of magic. So, call Guild of the New Order, or something.”
Moira scrunched her face up in distaste, and Derek narrowed his eyes in contemplation.
“That’s terrible Jeremy. You should literally never come up with names.” A woman’s voice came through faintly, just like Caleb’s had. Moira tried to remember the name of the girl that had started traveling with Jeremy, but could not. Whatever her name was must have come closer to the phone, because the next time she spoke it was loud and clear.
“Your basically getting paid by the job, right?” she said, “So you should call yourselves the Magical Mercenaries.”
“That’s even worse,” Caleb groaned in the background.
“What?” The woman’s voice faded again. “Alliteration. I’m telling you.”
“Thanks for the input,” Derek said, although his face was less than impressed. Moira didn’t think that the girl’s suggestion was bad, although, honestly, she was still leaning towards the most simple of all, The Adventurer’s Guild.
“You should create your own organization for your educational efforts.” Derek suggested to Jeremy, “Make it an actual business.”
Jeremy hummed, “I’ll think about it, but doesn’t registering a business cost money? Plus, it’s not like we’re actually trying to contract out like you guys. Might not really be necessary given how chaotic everything is.”
Derek shrugged. Moira’s phone buzzed and a notification for another incoming call from Pierre popped up.
“Hey, I’ve got to go Jeremy,” she said, “Send me the link for your newsletter, okay?”
“Will do.”
Then she hung up and answered Pierre’s call. Nick had come out of the medical tent and was making his way towards them. As she spoke with Pierre, bringing him up to speed on enchanting and getting updates about how all the companies were doing, Nick and Derek began discussing the name for the guild. She hung up with Pierre and joined them.
“Man,” Nick was saying with a wry smile, “The New Order just sounds like one of the cults that is popping up. Don’t think that’s really what we are going for.”
“Yeah,” Derek glanced toward the two guys on their milk crates, hollering at anybody walking past and those in the line to talk with Rose.
“Name it that and we’ll never beat the satan allegations.” Nick emphasized.
Moira rolled her eyes but had to agree. “I don’t care what Jeremy says, I think The Adventurer’s Guild sounds best.”
“What’s wrong with calling it that?” Nick asked.
“Jeremy thinks it’s too fun sounding for the very serious situation that we are in.” Moira told him.
“Well, it makes sense that he’s not a businessman then.” Nick pointed out. “We’re trying to make magic less scary and more accessible. Teach people that they can learn to defend themselves against monsters, right? What better way to do that than to turn it into an adventure.”
All three of them stared at the angry, shouting men on their milk crates.
“I mean, that’s exactly the type of advertising that the army does.” Nick continued. “They make it sound like and adventure or a way to better yourself or whatever.”
Derek was slowly nodding along.
“Anyway,” Nick shrugged, “Nobody’s come into the medical tent for a hot minute, so I’m going to go sit with Rose. Talk to you guys later.”
He wandered off toward the table and pulled out a chair to sit beside Rose, who smiled sunnily at him as he took the next person in line for her. Derek scratched his chin and turned to Moira.
“You like The Adventurer’s Guild?” he asked. She nodded and he dropped his hands to fold them over his chest again. “That’s what we’ll go with then. Paperwork should all be in order soon in that case.”
He pulled out his phone to either make a note to himself or shoot a quick message to his attorneys then put it away with a shake of his head and a sigh. “A spell to let people know their levels.” he mused. “Sounds useful. Speaking of that, we should probably go practice magic with them some.”
He jerked his chin toward the guild recruits who had moved on jumping jacks or whatever other craziness the guardsmen were having them do. Now they were making balls of water out of the buckets placed around for them to practice with and throwing them at each other like they were in a water balloon fight. They were shrieking and laughing and slipping in the mud.
Moira thought that perhaps calling their guild something light and fun like an adventure really was not such a bad thing. The world was slowly crumbling around them. More and more people were being displaced from their homes as more monsters ravaged neighborhoods while there was nobody to respond and help. The government was in shambles, still just telling people to sit tight while they figured out what the heck to do – which consisted of nothing very useful so far. And Nick was correct that there was lots of extremism and cultish thinking creeping in now that magic, which was apparently quite a polarizing thing, existed.
Beyond just making the guild sound appetizing to join, making the magic and monsters out to be less of a nightmarish apocalypse and more of an adventure, despite the danger of their actual operation, seemed alright.
And a water balloon fight on a hot muggy day like today looked like exactly the levity they needed.